Atlanta Braves and the future of contracts for the young

The Provisions

ARBITRATION SYSTEM

The Premise:  Today’s arbitration system allows teams to ‘control’ players for up to 6 full seasons of major league service time before free agency.

These 6 seasons are divided into 2 parts:  3 years of auto-renewal contracts (team sets the salary); 3 years in the arbitration system.  A 4th arbitration year can be had (earlier) for the 17% of players with the most service time after 2 years.

The Problem:  Studies have shown that players’ peak value to a team occurs between ages 25 and 31.  Given that the dates of the study linked included the entire steroid era, there is reason to believe that the ’31’ age may actually be lower now.

However, a player drafted at age 22 from college and taking 2-3 years to reach the majors will be out of that ‘window’ before hitting free agency.  Thus their original team has a severe cost-controlled advantage.

Then there’s also the problem of being able to retain favorite players that fans want to keep.

A loophole allows teams to hold a player in the minors for couple of weeks before bringing them to the majors and thus stealing back (nearly) an extra year of player control (c.f.:  Acuña Jr., Ronald).

PROPOSALS:

• An 8-year team control window – any portion of any season in the majors counts against the 8 years.
• After 2 of these years are counted, each player enters the arbitration cycle:
  • Years 3-5:  arbitration system as currently defined
  • Years 6-8:  ‘market rate’ arbitration system.  More on this in a bit.
  • No more ‘Super 2’ players.
• Arbitrators will be permitted to rule for the midpoint.  Currently, they must choose between one of the 2 submitted figures – either the team’s salary or the player’s.  If there is a close call between who is ‘most right’ in an arbitration trial, the midpoint would be a fair compromise solution, and thus most fair to the entire process.
• At any point, a team may choose to decline its right to retain a player (this is what we call ‘non-tendering’).  The player then becomes a free agent, but he can choose to retain his rights within the arbitration framework.
• If he does, then a new signing team would be obligated to bring him in at the same service-time rank that he left his former club with… a Year 6 player being non-tendered could retain Year 6 status, for instance.
• After year 8 (years 9 and beyond), market forces prevail.  Normally, clubs would sign 30+ players for less, though some exceptions will occur – as it should be.  The idea here is to get money into the hands of players sooner and commensurate with performance peaks.

Regarding Market Rates:  In today’s arbitration system, players are paid based on a percentage of their perceived value of their worth in the marketplace, depending on their experience (years of service).

For this proposal, years 6-8 would remove that percentage cap and allow consideration of full-market value.

However, it has been pointed out that the current system is inherently inflationary since it is difficult for team to lower their offers, even for poor performance.

My proposal will allow a team to lower year-to-year offers more than in the current system (to 70% from 80%).  This should support:

• Player retention (a good player could still be retained – even after a ‘down’ year – if the team wasn’t obligated to increase salary)
• Increasing the likelihood that the owners would accept such a scheme if they aren’t necessarily locked in to ever-increasing prices… regardless of performance.

As is the case today, teams may engage in long-term contracts with their players that avoid – or escape – all of the above.