Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2018 14:29:54 GMT -5
This off-season has been the slowest, most boring off-season I've ever seen. While there's likely many factors leading to the lack of activity, here are the main theories I've heard mentioned:
1) MLB owners are colluding. While I kept ignoring this as some crazy conspiracy, it's getting harder and harder to just write it off as wild speculation...
2) Teams are saving their $ and payroll flexibility for the insanely good FA class coming up next off-season (Harper, Machado, Donaldson, Kershaw, Blackmon, Keuchel, etc.)
3) The new luxury tax is essentially acting as a salary cap and it's causing teams to reign in their spending and minimize the number of mega deals they issue to players
4) The market is correcting itself. We've seen some INSANE contracts given out to players (even to below average players) over the past 5 or so years. It makes sense that the market may be starting to correct itself as teams realize how detrimental some of those FA signings can be a few years down the road
5) The 'super teams' in the league right now are to blame for the boring off-season. With most of the divisions in baseball having a team that's pretty clearly better than the rest of its division, it's causing those great teams to not feel the need to make major moves to shore up their teams. Fangraphs put out a pretty interesting article about this earlier today: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/maybe-super-teams-are-ruining-the-off-season/
Personally, while I think it's a combination of all of these things, I think #4 and #5 listed above are the main reasons for the terrible off-season. Teams are becoming smart enough (especially with all of the advanced stats/analytics that are widely available now) to realize that massive FA deals rarely work out, especially for a team with a smaller/middle of the pack payroll. As a result, the market is starting to correct itself some. As for the 'super teams' theory, I think it makes a TON of sense. If you're a team like the Angels or Mariners, you'd likely have to go out and sign 2-3 big FA's to overpriced deals just to get to a point where you may be able to realistically challenge the Astros for the AL West (similar situations in the NL West, AL Central, NL East). To go and spend $30m/yr for 5 or 6 years for a team like the Giants would likely be a really bad idea.
What do y'all think is the main reason the off-season has been so terribly slow? Which one of these reasons (or maybe ones I didn't mention) do you think is most at fault for the lack of activity?
1) MLB owners are colluding. While I kept ignoring this as some crazy conspiracy, it's getting harder and harder to just write it off as wild speculation...
2) Teams are saving their $ and payroll flexibility for the insanely good FA class coming up next off-season (Harper, Machado, Donaldson, Kershaw, Blackmon, Keuchel, etc.)
3) The new luxury tax is essentially acting as a salary cap and it's causing teams to reign in their spending and minimize the number of mega deals they issue to players
4) The market is correcting itself. We've seen some INSANE contracts given out to players (even to below average players) over the past 5 or so years. It makes sense that the market may be starting to correct itself as teams realize how detrimental some of those FA signings can be a few years down the road
5) The 'super teams' in the league right now are to blame for the boring off-season. With most of the divisions in baseball having a team that's pretty clearly better than the rest of its division, it's causing those great teams to not feel the need to make major moves to shore up their teams. Fangraphs put out a pretty interesting article about this earlier today: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/maybe-super-teams-are-ruining-the-off-season/
Personally, while I think it's a combination of all of these things, I think #4 and #5 listed above are the main reasons for the terrible off-season. Teams are becoming smart enough (especially with all of the advanced stats/analytics that are widely available now) to realize that massive FA deals rarely work out, especially for a team with a smaller/middle of the pack payroll. As a result, the market is starting to correct itself some. As for the 'super teams' theory, I think it makes a TON of sense. If you're a team like the Angels or Mariners, you'd likely have to go out and sign 2-3 big FA's to overpriced deals just to get to a point where you may be able to realistically challenge the Astros for the AL West (similar situations in the NL West, AL Central, NL East). To go and spend $30m/yr for 5 or 6 years for a team like the Giants would likely be a really bad idea.
What do y'all think is the main reason the off-season has been so terribly slow? Which one of these reasons (or maybe ones I didn't mention) do you think is most at fault for the lack of activity?
