Locking up players before lockout
Major League Baseball’s off-season being dubbed The Hot Stove has never felt more appropriate than it does right now with a free agency frenzy that has taken the league by storm.
Over the last two weeks, teams have been spending at historic levels. Faced with the possibility of a lockout starting Thursday, when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, agents and front office executives have been working around the clock to get their business done before a shutdown.
Teams have already spent well over $1.6 billion (U.S.) on this year’s crop of free agents and there are still plenty of premium targets up for grabs. Once the likes of Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Nick Castellanos, Marcus Stroman and Kyle Schwarber find suitable offers, MLB undoubtedly will set a record for off-season expenditures. The most money guaranteed to free agents was in the 2019-20 off-season, when owners spent approximately $2.1 billion.
Just look at some of the jaw-dropping deals that have been handed out so far. Corey Seager and Marcus Semien are guaranteed a combined $500 million from the Texas Rangers. Infielder Javier Baez signed with the Detroit Tigers for $140 million, 37-year-old ace Max Scherzer got $130 million from the New York Mets while Kevin Gausman and Robbie Ray both signed fiveyear deals valued at $110 million or more.
Thursday’s lockout doesn’t explain the truckloads of money that are being tossed around, but it provides context for why the deals are coming together so quickly. Most free agents are looking for stability before the shutdown and general managers are aggressively trying to finalize deals to avoid having too much work left to do whenever the lockout is lifted.
MLB used to operate at this pace. Up until about a decade or so ago, teams typically tried to get most of their moves completed before the end of the annual winter meetings, which take place in the second week of December. More recently, the bulk of the work has been pushed to January, essentially making baseball a year-round sport.
While some hardcore baseball fans might appreciate the deliberate approach, few can deny the excitement that has overtaken the league the last couple of weeks. Almost every day has felt like the trade deadline, with late-night reports about who is signing and where. Put your phone down for 10 minutes and you might miss a dozen moves.
The NHL and the NBA have been doing this kind of thing for awhile. Each sport has the bulk of its top players sign the day free agency opens, but neither one is a fair comparison to baseball because they both have salary caps. When there’s only so much money to go around, players must act fast to avoid missing out.
MLB has a competitive balance tax that the top spending teams must factor in, but there is no hard cap. So instead of moving quickly, everyone involved takes their time. Agents set up meetings with teams that span several weeks or months.
Or at least they did. Thursday’s artificial deadline changed everything.
As mentioned before in this space, nothing spurs baseball into action like a deadline. Whether it’s July 31 for trades, early December for nontenders, or camps opening in midFebruary, put an expiry date on something and suddenly executives from across the sport move from a saunter into a full-blown sprint.
For the sheer entertainment value alone, MLB and the Players’ Association should think long and hard about replicating this off-season again during a non-lockout year. Implement a roster freeze shortly after the winter meetings and extend it into January to see if that can create the same type of magic fans are getting to experience this year.
A similar idea has been proposed before. In 2019, MLB reportedly suggested to the MLBPA that all multi-year contracts must be completed by the end of the winter meetings, anyone who signed after that would have to settle for a shortterm commitment. The players said no because they felt teams would wait until the last minute before making take-it-or-leave-it offers, thereby suppressing salaries.
A proposed free agency shutdown that begins at the end of the winter meetings and lasts until the start of spring training likely would illicit a similar reaction. That’s why free agency can’t be shut down entirely after the second week of December, but it could be put on pause until about a month before camps open. That would incentivize early signings while not causing much harm to the stragglers.
Per MLB, the term hot stove originally referred to a baseball season, when players stayed in shape by playing in their hometowns using actual stoves to keep warm. The term was later used the same way as water cooler, referring to how fans would gather around a stove to discuss their favourite team.
Over the last few years, those same fans would have frozen to death because the hot stove was barely operational.
An artificial deadline might seem silly, but the last couple weeks have proven it can also be effective. It’s about time MLB and the MLBPA gave it a shot.