What if it doesn’t end?
Dave’s post raises an interesting possibility, that early bad signings will later depress the market because it means there are fewer dollars in the pool, but it also reduces the number of potential players for that pool. Now, I hate using fantasy auctions as an example, but many people are familiar with what can happen next: say pitchers are hugely overvalued in your league. Top pitchers go for way too much money. Then everyone else starts worrying they won’t get any pitchers, and panic sets in. There are bidding wars for modest pitchers and the overpaid top guys start to look like bargains… but the fundamental distribution of talent remains the same. There will be few great guys, more good ones, many more okay ones. If you remain level-headed, you can still pick up a bunch of good values, but they’ll be at the low end of the spectrum, and you have to spend your money elsewhere.
So it is with this year’s free agent market. Say this trend continues, and teams continue to spend a ton of money on the worthwhile free agents. A team then faces a decision: do we too overspend to get something worthwhile, or is there a better application of this money?
If this scenario plays out as some of our readers fear, this may show the difference in the new front office versus the old one. I can objectively say that I have been too proportionally critical of the team’s failures in small matters over large ones. The team’s failure to pick up a decent platoon partner for Olerud, for instance: in the end, it’s what, a difference of 100 at-bats. Who really cares?
That was certainly Gillick’s attitude, and it showed — his Mariner teams had awful benches, with players badly suited to complement those on the field. By contrast, one of the things I love about Billy Beane is that, while he makes mistakes and has his problems, you know that Oakland pours over the minor league free agents, in the same way they obsess over the Rule 5 draft. They look for guys who might be good injury insurance, potential trade bait if they perform well, interesting injury rebounds, good drinking buddies, shiny objects of any kind.
They work the phones, talking to any front office that will answer, finding out who they’re thinking of moving, and why, and what they need in return.
That’s how you can do well if the market goes insane this year. If Bavasi & Co are smart and every position player starts to sign for way too much money, they can look to spend that money on the poor, the unwashed, the undervalued, but also they can look to find players on teams that are trying to dump contracts. If someone like Tampa Bay really wants to get rid of a veteran player to cut payroll, you can afford to take that on instead of filling that position in the open market.
If you’re good enough at filling the position with the random floatsam and stopgaps, and you retain payroll flexibility, you can also wait it out until later in the year, when teams may be trying to unload those same contracts (and others) and bulking up for the playoffs costs you much less.
I think Dave’s reasoning is sound — that bad spending on some players doesn’t have to result in the inflation of all free agent prices. But even if it created a one-year price spike, a smart team — especially one that’s not looking for a championship this year — can find ways to exploit market conditions and leave the free-spenders hurting next year and years after that.
Comments
53 Responses to “What if it doesn’t end?”
And I think you’re wrong. The authors of this fine site believe certiain things, like (for instance) that the Mariners will pursue Beltre, and that Koskie won’t sign unless it’s for $1 until they’ve failed to get Beltre.
As for our dear readers, many of them regard this with healthy and warranted skepticism. Many disagree entirely.
So in turn I disagree entirely with the characterization of this site as a self-satisfying mob. This isn’t freep by any stretch.
Mark,
I agree with what you’re saying, mostly. I don’t think everyone here is like that, but I do believe that a portion of the fanbase has attached their personal hope to some of the potential moves the team could theoretically make and have blown them out of proportion. I’ve seen three pretty distinct kind of Mariner fan over the past few months:
Bitter Fan. This is the one who is still pissed about the trade for Al Martin and Doug Creek and believes that the organization as a whole is never going to change. They’re the ones constantly reminding us that Howard Lincoln is cheap, that the team has no track record of signing big name free agents, and we’re all in for a big disappointment.
Hopeful Fan. This is the guy who took the reports I made about the teams interest in Adrian Beltre and Matt Clement and have decided that anything other than these signings will be a colossal failure. They see this as the offseason of restored dreams, a chance to bring in three or four all-stars, and will be very angry if the team “settles” for lesser players.
Ryan Howard Fan. By far the most annoying of all, this is the one who created the lame Ryan Howard rumor which has now permeated the blog, leading me to pull my hair out every time someone brings up his name. If I ever meet this fan in a dark ally, I might be blogging from the NC corrections department for the next 25 to life.
This is the one who is still pissed about the trade for Al Martin and Doug Creek and believes that the organization as a whole is never going to change. They’re the ones constantly reminding us that Howard Lincoln is cheap, that the team has no track record of signing big name free agents, and we’re all in for a big disappointment.
I prefer to think of this as being cynical. Goodness knows the past history of this management team has made it pretty deep. I just have a suspicion the faction that wanted a long term deal for kids got shot down by the bean counters at the Armstrong/Lincoln level, and Delgado and Koskie are the booby prize.