The Atlanta Braves, the Off-Season, and the Coming Mess
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling to properly characterize my concerns about this off-season. It’s time to put that into words.
The Atlanta Braves have signed no major league free agents this off-season. They are not alone in that (Marlins, Orioles, Rays)… heck, even the Dodgers have only signed one: Tom Koehler: 1 year, $2 million.
Even more, there are more players signing with Korean and Japanese league clubs (2 apiece, not counting those released from clubs to do so) than several US-major league teams have inked.
There are multiple reasons for this happening, and many have already written a lot to try and explain this behavior. I’ll hit the highlights of my own view:
- 1. On clubs not ready to win. That’s a tough message to explain to fans, and one that even rebuilding clubs are finding new and wonderful word sequences to explain.
- 2. On the new luxury tax structure. Here’s where the player’s union simply got rolled in the last CBA negotiations. Tony Clark & Company did not anticipate the fallout of this at all – that even big-market teams would choose years in which to ‘reset’ their tax schedule to avoid confiscatory penalties. Example: if the Dodgers want to sign Yu Darvish right now, they could be committing to $1.50 for every dollar they pay him. So it’s not, say, $25m per year… it’s $37.5 million. (This is over-simplified – right now, LA is roughly $17.4m below that threshold, but Darvish would indeed push them over by several million).
- 3. The end of the lingering effects of the steroid era. This is important. I will elaborate.