Free Agency: How Does It Work?

Thursday 15 September 2011


Expert Author Bob Kooyenga
Free Agency is very simple. To be eligible, a player must have at least 6 years in the league and not have a contract with any team for the following season. A player is allowed to file for free agency the first day after the World Series ends and must do so within 15 days of the end of the World Series. The players former team has exclusive negotiating rights with that player for that 15 day period no matter when they file. Once a player files for free agency and the 15 day exclusive negotiating period is over, any team may jump in and negotiate with that player. The player may sign with any team that he desires no matter how large or small the contract offer is. But if the player is one of the tops in the league, they are likely get get a huge payday. For example: as of today, 12/9/10, Carl Crawford has just signed a 7 year deal with the Red Sox as a Free Agent for 142 million dollars.
Free Agents are classified as Type A or Type B and not every player is rated. Players are rated based on how good of a player they are. Type A are the top 20% of players in the league and Type B are the second 20%. When a Type A player is signed by a new team, the former team is compensated with the first or second round draft pick from the team that signed that player, depending on the former teams record, plus a supplement draft pick between the first and second round. When Type B player is signed by a new team, the former team is compensated with a supplement draft pick between the first and second round.
If a Type A or Type B player is offered salary arbitration by their team and the player declines arbitration they then become a free agent and the former team receives the same compensation if they player signs with a new team. But if they team does not offer the player arbitration, then when that player signs with a new team, the former team receives no compensation for that player.
Free Agency is not a complicated process. The former team has the first chance to sign the player, but the player may want to test the market. There are no limits on how much money a player may earn on his free agent contract. And he may sign with any team that he desires, usually based on how much money the teams are offering. If a player has a strong tie with his former team, that team usually has the upper hand in re-signing that player.
There are many people who will argue that Free Agency has ruined baseball. They argue that players who are becoming free agents will listen to all the offers for their services and ultimately sign with the team who has offered them the most money. Greed is to blame for all of baseballs problems seemingly. Players who are drafted and developed by a team and become a highly sought after player will most likely go ahead and sign with a different team, usually leaving a team in a smaller market such as Kansas City or Tampa Bay to go to a larger market team like New York or Boston. This makes it fairly difficult to keep some of the top end players that are drafted by an organization. Some truth is involved in this argument but there are other factors involved. Plenty of players have taken pay cuts to stay with the team that they have played with for many years or have won championships with. In 2006, Paul Konerko turned down a larger offer by the Angels to stay with the White Sox. It is not just about making money for everyone.
Just for a minute, lets look at another sport, Hockey. Free agency is part of the game of hockey as well, yet you do not see this mass exodus from small market teams to large market teams, nor do you see contracts in the range of 20 million dollars a year. So how is it that free agency has not ruined hockey as well as baseball? The thing that hockey did that baseball has not done is institute a salary cap. The cap for the 2010-2011 season in the NHL is $59.4 million. That means that each team can only spend as much as that throughout the season for on ice talent. Now lets compare this to Major League Baseball. There are only 5 teams in all of baseball whose payrolls fall below the $59.4 million of the NHL and there are 8 teams over the $100 million mark and one team over the $200 million dollar mark. Baseball needs to institute some sort of Salary Cap, just like the NHL did, to combat the increasing values of free agents or the price of these players is only going to continue to rise out of control and small market teams are not going to be able to retain any of these players.
Check out other articles I have written at http://hubpages.com/profile/GBeckhamfan
By

0 comments: