A headline in USA Today last week called Major League Baseball’s “free agent freeze” an embarrassment for baseball. The newspaper is correct, but I have another name for what is going on in M.L.B. I call it collusion.
No, I have no hard evidence that the 30 teams are colluding, and maybe they’re not doing it the way they did it in the 1980s when two arbitrators nailed them for $280 million. But that kind of penalty encourages wealthy owners to be more clever and to find a way to cheat without getting caught.
They appear to have succeeded in that quest, at least for now, because union officials have spent this off-season and last and haven’t found evidence with which to make a collusion case. They need a Bill Giles smoking gun, and no one is handing it to them.
What is a Bill Giles smoking gun? Chairman of the Philadelphia Phillies in the ‘80s, Giles took notes at an owners’ meeting at which Commissioner Peter Ueberroth instructed the owners and general managers on how they were to refrain from signing free agents. Giles, however, didn’t destroy the notes and turned them over to the union when it requested relevant materials in the discovery phase of the grievance hearing.
Giles later wrote in his 2007 book, “Pouring Six Beers at a Time:”
It had been almost 10 years since the advent of free agency. Player salaries were getting out of control, bidding for free agents with skyrocketing, and the industry was losing money. Ueberroth devised a plan for the 1985 signing season where teams were not to make any significant offer to a free agent if the team that had that player under contract wanted to keep him. The plan did help slow down escalating salaries in 1985, 1986, and 1987. Unfortunately, the plan also happened to be illegal and blatantly obvious.
When I asked a former union official why he thought Giles hadn’t destroyed his notes, he said, “It’s possible he didn’t think they had done anything wrong. Maybe none of them thought they had done anything wrong.”
Supporting that possibility was the owners’ knowledge that they had colluded against free agents in 1982 and did not incur any penalties. The first time around, though, the union was naïve and the owners were slicker.
If the owners are colluding now and getting away with it, they have to get credit for being slicker than slick. But this year’s free-agent market certainly has that collusion look.
As of Saturday night, 84 free agents had signed contracts, according to the Associated Press, but 80, or 49 percent of the total free agent class, remained unsigned. Has anyone noticed that spring training starts this week? You know, pitchers and catchers.
Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are the most obvious of the unsigned, but let’s not forget Craig Kimbrel, Dallas Keuchel, Mike Moustakas, Josh Harrison, Marwin Gonzalez, Matt Wieters, Ervin Santana, Doug Fister, Yovani Gallardo, Tyler Clippard, Brad Ziegler, Ryan Madson, Gio Gonzalez, Joaquin Benoit, Jose Bautista, among many others.
Many relief pitchers populate the unsigned platoon, and teams might find them valuable additions, given the emerging strategy of opening games with relievers.
Without intimate knowledge of negotiations, it’s not known what might be keeping free agents unsigned. Maybe they aren’t getting offers that would induce them to sign. Maybe the teams they want to play for aren’t interested in them.
Until last off-season, though, with the exception of the collusion years, free-agent developments seemed to proceed routinely. Teams that wanted to win, or at least compete, sought free agents to fill holes in their lineups or bolster their pitching staffs. You haven’t seen much of that this off-season.
A year or 18 months ago, the Yankees, for one example, said they were intent on keeping their payroll under the luxury tax threshold of $197 million. By achieving that goal, they would be able to restart the tax rate, reducing the rate from 50 percent to 20 percent. The Yankees had pail the tax every year since its inception in 2003.
The Yankees succeeded in their taxless quest and put themselves in good position to sign Harper and/or Machado. However, barring an unexpected development, neither of those superstars will be showing up next week in Tampa, Fla. General Manager Brian Cashman did not make himself accessible last week to explain the non-development.
The Los Angeles Dodgers also played the tax game last year. After supplanting the Yankees as the biggest spender for four years under a new owner, the Dodgers ducked under the threshold last year, attributing the decision to the tax rate. However, except for signing outfielder A.J. Pollock to a 4-year, $55 million contract, they have not busted their bank this off-season.
Scott Boras, Harper’s agent, and Dan Lozano, Machado’s agent, did not return calls seeking comment on how they see this year’s free-agent market. When Boras speaks, he is usually critical of the owners for not offering what he thinks his clients are worth. As part of his negotiating strategy, Boras typically prolongs negotiations. A year ago, J.D. Martinez, a Boras client, signed with the Red Sox Feb. 26. Martinez, though, had a great season and finished fourth in the most valuable player voting.
Major League Baseball officials vehemently deny clubs are conspiring to thwart free-agent movement and keep their contracts in check. They scoff at the idea that clubs are engaged in collusion in violation of the collective bargaining agreement. None of them, though, says it would be foolhardy to do that since the basic agreement calls for triple damages if anyone is caught colluding. Had that provision been in effect in the ‘80s, it would have cost the clubs $840 million instead of $280 million.
I agree it would be insane for clubs to risk that type of penalty, even as annual industry revenue approaches $11 billion and with the looming addition of new revenue from legal betting on sports.
I spoke with one lawyer who said owners are making so much money they don’t care about free-agent contracts or payroll. I disagree with that view. I believe owners will care about contracts and payrolls no matter the amount of their revenue. They don’t want the players getting what they think is rightfully their money.
The lawyer, who has been involved in baseball, also said he thought rules changes in the last labor agreement, have made a difference in the owners’ view of what is important. They see draft choices, he said, as having a greater potential impact than free agents.
Then, he added, there is job security. He said he heard an interview with a general manager who said his team won’t win as many games next season and maybe the one after that as it won last season.
“He said it will take three, four years,” the lawyer said. “He’s creating job security for himself.”
That angle seems to be a different way of creating job security, and it’s more novel than reasons baseball officials have been feeding writers, who seem to readily buy them, for why clubs aren’t signing free agents.
Here’s one: Clubs want to stay under the luxury tax threshold.
The tax has been in effect since 2003 and with few exceptions, clubs have been able to keep their payrolls below the line. There should be no reason for that to change.
Here’s another: The increased use of analytics has taught clubs to restrain themselves in the size and value of multi-year contracts they offer.
In 1985, when he retired as chairman of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, Lee MacPhail wrote a letter to the owners outlining the perils of lucrative, long-term contracts. MacPhail didn’t need analytics, which had yet to pollute baseball. A lifelong baseball executive and son of a baseball executive, MacPhail learned the game by watching it and used his knowledge as the foundation for his study.
MacPhail’s letter virtually coincided with the owners’ 1985 collusion, but I don’t recall that it became part of the union’s case.
Nothing like the MacPhail letter or the Giles notes are available to the union this time around, but union officials are scrutinizing all of the moves and non-moves management has made. With so many free agents still unsigned, union officials are paying close attention to management moves.
“It’s definitely on our radar screen,” an official said. “It’s potentially collusion of a more subtle way.”
People on the players’ side rejected the reasons management officials have given for the unsigned free agents. “It shouldn’t be the tax,” one person said. “That’s become a convenient excuse. There’s nothing that would explain what we’re seeing.”
APPRECIATING FRANK ROBINSON
When I was covering the Yankees and Ralph Houk resigned as manager after the last game of the 1973 season, my first thought was Frank Robinson. A super player and person, Robinson had not managed or coached in the majors but had managed in the Puerto Rican winter league.
Major League Baseball had never had a black manager and was way overdue. Just as Jackie Robinson had been the majors’ first black player, Frank would be a great choice to be the first black manager.
I wrote that, but before it got into the newspaper, The New York Times, a news editor read it and said to an editor in the sports department, “If we’re going to mention Robinson, we should mention Elston Howard.”
And without asking me, an editor inserted Howard, the Yankees’ former catcher and then a coach, into the article.
Bad mistake. Howard had been an outstanding player and was a nice guy, but he was not a potential manager. Not for the Yankees, not for anyone.
And there was no way the Yankees would have hired a black manager. Forty-seven years later they still haven’t hired a black manager.
The Yankees named Bill Virdon manager, and a year later the Indians hired Robinson to break the managerial color barrier in Cleveland.
Robinson, who died last week at his home in Bel Air, Calif., at the age of 83, was one of my favorite baseball people I covered. He could be tough, but you just had to be tough back and he accepted it. He enjoyed getting on writers and could be brutal if one made a mistake. He especially liked getting on writers who got the identity of a black player wrong. “We all look alike,” he would say.
That mix-up occurred easily for several years when Robinson played in Baltimore. The Orioles had two outfielders, Don Buford and Curt Motton, who were on the smallish side for athletes and resembled each other closely enough that if they weren’t together it was sometimes difficult to distinguish them from each other.
One day it was my turn to make the fatal mistake, and Robinson was within hearing distance to hear me introduce myself to Motton, thinking he was Buford. It made Robinson’s day. “We all look alike, don’t we,” he chortled once, twice, three times.
Identity mix-up aside, Robinson was always good to talk to, as a player, a manager and an executive in the commissioner’s office. He was always candid, too, except for times when he had to be careful what he said because he was working for Bud Selig.
Robinson was a proud player, proud of his impressive achievements. One of those achievements was his home run total. He hit 586 home runs, and when he retired, after the 1976 season, only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays were ahead of him.
However, the steroids era produced several other players who hit more home runs than Robinson, and Robinson resented them. He is now 10thon the all-time list, and in my opinion, at least three of the nine – Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa – got there by cheating. Robinson never cheated in any way.