This year's free-agent class, headlined by Bryce Harper, is widely viewed as far stronger than last year's groupGETTY IMAGES
Teams and agents as the MLB offseason starts "aren't sure whether the market will revert to its previous pace or whether clubs will try to wait out players again" like they did last offseason, according to Ronald Blum of the AP. One difference is that this year's free-agent class is a "far stronger group" than last year's. Phillies VP & GM Matt Klentak said, "The good ones will get their money. They'll sign. They'll end up in good places. And whether that's here in November or whether it's in December, January, February or even March, I don't know." Meanwhile, Blum noted new Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen, while still a CAA agent last year, suggested before Spring Training that players consider "boycotting spring training because of the slow market." Van Wagenen on his comments last year said, "Hard to say about whether there will be a carry-over effect to this year. I think there was an element last year where the trade market was slowed, as well, which also pushed the free-agent market back." Octagon Baseball Managing Dir Alan Nero, who negotiated 1B Carlos Santana's three-year, $60M deal with the Phillies last fall, said that agents "have to be realistic with their clients." Nero: "You have to understand we're in a changing market and you're not going to get a 10-year deal. It's a matter of managing expectations" (AP, 11/6).
NO REPEAT OF LAST YEAR: THE ATHLETIC's David O'Brien notes agent Scott Boras, who reps free agent RF Bryce Harper, believe this offseason "won't feature a free-agent logjam like the jam baseball endured last year." Boras last winter "railed repeatedly against what he saw as teams' unwarranted new fiscal conservatism, accusing some of being non-competitive by design and 'murdering' their seasons, while also seeming to suggest that teams were conspiring to suppress free-agent salaries." None of Boras' top free agents last year "signed before February," largely because offers made to most of those players were "below -- well below -- what Boras had expected." He would not "relent just to get players signed before the holidays, or even before teams started reporting to spring training." Boras "doesn't expect there to be any of the sort of glacial pace to this year's free-agent market like there was a year ago, when things were complicated" by Angels P/DH Shohei Ohtani's unique situation along with the "sudden availability last winter of some high-level players in potential trades." Boras also noted there were "four luxury-tax teams that weren't in the market" last winter." Boras: "When you consider those three variables are not in this market, I would say it makes the market, and the perception of the market, very different" (THEATHLETIC.com, 11/7).
