The Milwaukee Brewers made a big splash in what has been an incredibly quiet MLB offseason when they signed outfielder Lorenzo Cain to a five-year, $80 million contract. Does that mean the free agent market is finally going to take off? Players don’t seem optimistic.
According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, free agents have been encouraging one another to hold their ground as teams have seemingly dug their heels in waiting for prices to come down. While the top free agents are almost always off the market by the time spring training starts in late February, that may not be the case this year. The players know that, and Passan reports that some of them have discussed the possibility of organizing their own training camp that would be similar to spring training.
As Passan puts it, there is a growing fear among players that teams are “going to wipe out baseball’s so-called middle class.” Even the wealthiest of teams have been refusing to spend above the $197 million luxury tax. Some of them have likely been hesitant because they would rather break the bank for next year’s free agent class, which features players like Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and Clayton Kershaw and is considered by many to be the best ever.
More from Passan:
The upshot, multiple people from both sides agreed this week, is the middle-class squeeze. Next year it could be particularly severe. The Yankees and Dodgers are almost certain to sign at least one of the stars of the boffo 2018-19 free agent class and blow past the CBT threshold next season, which nullifies the notion that it’s a ceiling. Once they do, though, the argument against signing others will be that tax implications make those players more expensive than they should be. The offers to the lesser players will suffer accordingly – and considering the number of one-year deals that will be signed between now and when the 2018 season starts, the glut of free agents next winter will be even worse.
We all know the one man who is being blamed for MLB’s slowest offseason in memory, but we didn’t really see this in past years. While teams have typically been willing to sign guys like J.D. Martinez to lucrative contracts that will pay them into their late 30s, there is a lot of hesitance this year. There’s no sign of that changing anytime soon, even after Cain signed his big deal.
