The Atlanta Braves, the Off-Season, and the Coming Mess

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NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 22: Tony Clark (L) and Carlos Villanueva listen as Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig speaks at a news conference at MLB headquarters on November 22, 2011 in New York City. Selig announced a new five-year labor agreement between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images) /

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling to properly characterize my concerns about this off-season. It’s time to put that into words.

The Atlanta Braves have signed no major league free agents this off-season. They are not alone in that (Marlins, Orioles, Rays)… heck, even the Dodgers have only signed one: Tom Koehler: 1 year, $2 million.

Even more, there are more players signing with Korean and Japanese league clubs (2 apiece, not counting those released from clubs to do so) than several US-major league teams have inked.

There are multiple reasons for this happening, and many have already written a lot to try and explain this behavior. I’ll hit the highlights of my own view:

1. On clubs not ready to win. That’s a tough message to explain to fans, and one that even rebuilding clubs are finding new and wonderful word sequences to explain.
2. On the new luxury tax structure. Here’s where the player’s union simply got rolled in the last CBA negotiations. Tony Clark & Company did not anticipate the fallout of this at all – that even big-market teams would choose years in which to ‘reset’ their tax schedule to avoid confiscatory penalties. Example: if the Dodgers want to sign Yu Darvish right now, they could be committing to $1.50 for every dollar they pay him. So it’s not, say, $25m per year… it’s $37.5 million. (This is over-simplified – right now, LA is roughly $17.4m below that threshold, but Darvish would indeed push them over by several million).
3. The end of the lingering effects of the steroid era. This is important. I will elaborate.

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