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

A Shift in Thinking

During the period of time in which team payrolls initially exploded (the 1990’s), multiple large-market teams were willing to spend big money to bring in players who were studs. This group was actually initially led by the Braves under Ted Turner, and later by the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers and others.

Enter the steroid era. Now many players are able to be much more productive well into their 30’s… even late 30’s… than previously possible. Accordingly, the big money continued: those with big contracts in their early 30’s got bigger ones in the late 30’s. Even those not on the juice pointed at such deals at prototypes that they wanted also. Many of those latter deals tended to become ‘bad contracts’, but it was how the game was played.

Enter the end of that era and a stronger luxury tax system. Now everything changes.

Players will debut in the major leagues most typically between ages 22 and 24 (though the youngest on every team right now is between 20 and 23). Once debuting, teams have six years of ‘control’ over that player: 3 years of assigned salaries near the league minimum and 3 more years via the arbitration system (as we will see with Ronald Acuna, there is an easy way to wrangle a near-7th year, but we’ll skip that for the sake of this discussion).

So if you bring up a player who is 23, a team will have him through his age 28 season.  That’s an interesting time bogey.

That Pesky Biological Clock

We are told that on average, a player’s most productive years happen roughly from age 27 through 29 or 30. So if a savvy team either relies on the standard labor agreement or perhaps acts early to buy out the a player’s first couple of free agency years, then those years are covered:  you are almost guaranteed to get the best production from said player – at less than free market rates.

So fast forward a bit:  a player is in the age range of 29 to 32 or so and is finally hitting free agency for the first time. He wants a 5-to-8 year contract. He wants bigger money than what he’s been getting as a tethered player. This is what he’s been waiting for and what he’s seen others get in the past.

Except now, teams have finally wised up.

The notion of doubling a player’s contract for production that they have shown in the past yet may never duplicate again… that is 1990’s-2000’s thinking. It’s not collusion, it’s not coordination, it’s not ‘acting in bad faith’ as some are alleging. It’s smart business… and falls exactly in line with the language already well-established in the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement.

It’s in writing and has been for a couple of decades.

From the player’s perspectives, though, it’s not business as usual, and that’s clearly why they are getting more agitated by the day.  Unfortunately for them… this is the new paradigm.