The way the free agent system is…

I would guess that potential free agents will be more likely to sign extensions with their current teams than riisk testing the open market, and winding up in Lohse’s predicament. It won’t have an impact on true stars like Verlander, just the “marginal stars” (if that isn’t an oxymoron) like Lohse, Bourn, and LaRoche.

This year, the impact has been significant. Compare Edwin Jackson’s new contract to Adam LaRouche’s. The difference is that the Nationals didn’t make an offer to Jackson.

I doubt he gets 3 years at this point. He’s been good the last two years, but he’s also been outperforming his peripherals…he’s a 34 year old pitcher with a career 4.45 ERA, if him and Boras were looking for 5 years to begin with they were really overreaching. If they were a little more realistic about his market value he might have found a home by now.

Weiner is making a lot of noise about it now, but it’s questionable whether a change will get any traction given that only 9 players were given qualifying offers under the new rules. 5 players accepted, Adam LaRoche stayed with his team, Rafael Soriano joined him with the Nats by opting out of his deal with the Yankees. Michael Bourn eventually was signed by the Indians, who had the leverage of having a top-ten protected 1st round pick.

Last year, with Type A and Type B free agents, there were 35 players subject to compensation. The year before it was 37. Worth mentioning that 1/4 as many players were weighed down in value.

It is also worth mentioning that baseball doesn’t truly have a “compensation” system here as much as it’s a “punishment” system. The pick that is taken from the team that signs “another team’s free agent” (and I qualify this term because of its’ absurdity, once a player rejects a qualifying offer, why exactly do they still have a tie to their old team??) just disappears, and the team that made a qualifying offer gets a sandwich pick. So in all seriousness, why is there a punishment pick dissolved from a team that signs a free agent? That is anti-free market and makes no sense to me, however hard I try to puzzle it out. Why penalize a team for signing a free agent if no one is receiving that pick?

Why does the MLBPA keep getting beaten by the owners with socks full of quarters? Terrible job by Weiner negotiating this deal, absolutely terrible. If performing his job so badly has zero repercussions, what is Weiner’s incentive not to suck out loud? What was Billy Hunter’s incentive not to put his whole dang family on the payroll? These union negotiators are the worst.