An Off Season for Free Agents

Now forming coast to coast, baseball’s annual winter parade of free agents will not receive the warm reception that the Angels did on Main Street.

This is not to say that the boom years of salary growth will turn to bust, but ...

It is likely to be a long, cold off-season for a comparatively thin group of quality free agents.

In addition, many other players who are arbitration eligible or whose 2003 status is linked to option clauses may be dumped onto a diluted and unrewarding market.

The key reasons for this bleak forecast:

* Alleged industry losses of $800 million this year.

* The new bargaining agreement that taxes high payrolls and increases the revenue-sharing burden for the clubs that have previously driven the salary market.

* The comparatively modest nature of the free-agent class.

The phrase heard throughout the industry is “market correction.”

“I think the economics of the game alone will dictate a correction, and the economics combined with the spending disincentives in the bargaining agreement virtually ensure a correction,” Dodger President Bob Graziano said. “How big is difficult to say, but I think we’ll start to see a lessening in the disparity between player payrolls and, in time, a correction in the competitive imbalance because of the disincentives for the large-market clubs to continue their wild spending.”

Said Brian Sabean, general manager of the San Francisco Giants, during the World Series:

“I think it’s definitely going to be a buyer’s market. People will be shocked at how few clubs are going to be involved, bidding for free agents.

“The new agreement aside, everybody is tightening their belts.”

It is not only the economics, however.

There is no marquee free agent, no Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez, to whose salary coattails these free agents can cling.

After Jim Thome, who is agreeable to staying in Cleveland if the rebuilding Indians can find a way to translate his 101 homers of the last two years into dollars and sense, and Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui, who has notified the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants of his desire to play in the U.S. next year through the same posting system that brought Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki, among others, there is considerable falloff.

The next tier of eligible position players, including Jeff Kent, Cliff Floyd, Edgardo Alfonzo, Ivan Rodriguez and Steve Finley, is beset with questions of age, injury, performance, etc.

Similarly, a shallow list of free-agent pitchers is basically led by 40-year-old Jamie Moyer and the 37-year-old Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux.

Glavine and Maddux are headed to the Hall of Fame, of course, but whether the cost-cutting Braves can retain both, or whether the two will receive offers commensurate with their resumes from teams grown weary and leery of signing older pitchers to multiyear contracts, is doubtful. Glavine, who was 18-11 with a 2.96 earned-run average this year, has already rejected a one-year offer from the Braves for the same $9 million he made in 2002.

Players eligible for free agency were allowed to begin filing Monday, the day after the World Series ended. In the 15-day period that began with that filing date, those players can talk to any interested clubs but can receive offers only from their previous clubs.

An agent who represents several eligible players said he had already concluded that few clubs, even those interested in re-signing their own free agents, seemed willing to take advantage of the exclusive negotiating window.

“The impression I get is that most clubs want to follow the market but not set it,” he said. “It looks like a long winter of tough sells.”

The players’ union, of course, is always leery. Does correction translate to collusion?

It is far too early, a union lawyer said, to draw a conclusion.

Besides, wasn’t the union a partner to a bargaining agreement that strikes at the New York Yankees and may take the other big spenders out of the market?

As John Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, told the Boston Globe in claiming that his team’s average revenue-sharing obligation will climb from $9 million a year to $35 million:

“With the new [collective bargaining agreement], there is no doubt in my mind that the monetary demand for free agents and arbitration eligible players will drop this year.

“Rather than having the larger revenue teams setting the market, it will be teams like the [Pittsburgh] Pirates and [Detroit] Tigers who will drive the market. Where they will drive it remains to be seen. But I think this is a big plus for baseball.”

His point was that small-market clubs like the Pirates and Tigers should be able to use their revenue-sharing increase to improve their teams, reducing the competitive imbalance.

Many big-market owners, however, still worry that the increase will merely go into the recipient owner’s pocket.

Brave President Stan Kasten said he isn’t really sure that in the first year of the new agreement the recipient clubs will be receiving enough “to go out and spend on a lot of guys” considering their ongoing losses.

“But,” he added, “if it allows them to avoid cutting back, if it permits them to keep the same team together, despite the certain payroll growth that’s built into the system, that’s a positive and important thing in itself.”

When revenue sharing is totally implemented in the third and fourth years of the new agreement, the amount of money being distributed to the smaller-market clubs will have increased from the current $169 million to $258 million. Meantime, three teams -- the Yankees at $171.1 million, the Texas Rangers at $131.4 million and the Dodgers at $118.8 million -- will have to pay a tax of 17.5% on all payroll above the initial tax threshold of $117 million, a figure most clubs will now use as a de facto salary cap.

With the tax hit and the increased revenue-sharing burden, the Dodgers will have to pay $3-4 million more than before.

The Yankees’ obligation may reach almost $60 million, which is why they reportedly are considering a step they have been judicious about avoiding during their recent domination: trading one of their home-grown regulars, catcher Jorge Posada, to help lessen the bite of that obligation and, perhaps, facilitate the signing of Matsui.

Of course, sanity does not always prevail.

Some owner may think Kenny Rogers or Doug Glanville is just the ticket and blow out the market, despite the new consequences.

The Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies (who move into a new ballpark in 2004) are expected to inflate the Thome pursuit, and the Red Sox -- despite Henry’s cautious remarks -- may join them. Who knows, as well, about Jerry Colangelo when the Arizona Diamondbacks’ managing general partner thinks about adding Las Vegas resident Maddux to a rotation of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling? What’s a little more deferred salary?

It is difficult to say how it will play out, but maybe there was a lesson in the underdog-dominated playoffs, especially a World Series pitting the mid-level payrolls of the Angels and Giants.

Commissioner Bud Selig would call it an aberration, but others might be reminded of the feasibility and possibility of building a championship team from within, as the Angels basically did, and securing it with careful signings that stayed ahead of the market.

“Everybody preaches scouting and development,” the Dodgers’ Graziano said, “but you’ve got to be patient to do that.”

So, it took the Angels 42 years to reach and win their first World Series.

Now, a new kind of bargaining agreement may help foster patience.