In my last post, I tried to argue that signing big name free agents may be a good idea or it may be a bad idea, but for the Jays signing the big name free agents who were available last year was not a good idea. In other words, the specific case is important. I argued that, at least so far, neither Machado nor Harper would have helped much; that the turn around the Phillies is not due simply to Harper and so assuming that something similar would have gone on with the Jays is misplaced thinking, and that the Jays, in fact, have no place to play Machado if they are serious about rebuilding. Not only, in this case, would have signing Machado not helped much, but it might actually have set back the process by taking at bats away from developing players who should be getting them. What I would like to do here is touch on a series of other consideration.
First, some folks (see my last post for the citation) argue that the failure to spend money on free agents is cheapness guided by profit motive. That might be true. In fact, I would not argue against it. But, there are also reasons for wanting to control salary growth, particularly when talking about high priced free agents. What are those reasons? The key reason is that one is committing a lot of money over a long time. While one my say, legitimately, "gee the Jays are being cheap" this year, no one would argue that they were cheap in the past. The doled out big contracts to Martin, Bautista, Tulo, and others with the effect of weighing their team down with a lot of money that was being given to players who, well, were not really that good any more or, in the case of Tulo, have barely played in the last couple of years and are now on the IL for another team.
Such long-term obligations can limit a team's freedom to maneuver, that is: to sign other players to long term contracts because one has so much money on the table, as it were, already. Some teams (the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Red Sox, eg.) don't have to worry about making money because they are money machines. Other teams do. I am sure the Jays are making money but there is a point where they don't. You cannot, in other words, spend forever and, unless you are the Sox or Yankees or Dodgers (and perhaps a couple of other teams), all teams need to limit their longer-term financial outlay mistakes.
What do I mean by this? If the Sox sign someone to a boat load of money and they turn out not to be all that good (think most of their starters right now) ... it doesn't matter. The Sox can almost print their own money. If they go over the MLB soft cap and have to pay a luxury tax ... it doesn't matter.
For just about everyone else, it does.
Why does it matter for the Jays? Big name free agents want long term contracts. Harper has 13 years; Machado has 10. That is a lot of cheddar for a long time. Even if I am wrong and they are better than I am allowing ... will they be that good for that long? They are young for free agents of this quality. There is no doubt about that. But where will they be in 10 or 13 years. Harper will be 39, well past the prime of just about every ball player ever. Yet, if you sign him, you will still have him. What about that injury history? Well, it could cut his playing career short and dramatically so. Even the shorter period of 10 years for Machado puts him into 36, again if we think that the average player is in decline by 32 or 33, this means that you are on the hook for several years of salary where a player might, in effect, be doing nothing.
A counter to this is: you could trade him. To whom? The Jays traded Tulo, right? Why not some other under-performing high priced vet? Well, the Jays did not trade Tulo. They gave him away and agreed to pick up the tab for his cost. They are picking up virtually his entire salary this year, which is 19.5$ million this year. They pay him another 14$ million next year and 4$ million the year after that. Put together that is 37.5$ million the Jays are paying Tulo to *not* play for them. That is a lot of money that, in my view, could have been better directed.
So, you see the problem for a trade. How do you trade a player no one wants? The Jays would have to make the deal worthwhile by shipping salary with the player and that salary doesn't clear the books. The longer-run financial obligations are still there: paying a player who is no longer on your team with money that could have been used to pay players or your team or to sign some other free agent is not, in my view, a road map to success -- teamwise or otherwise.
Financial flexibility might be a bit of a dodge for greedy owners. It really might be. But, there is also a good reason -- regardless of owners' greed -- if I were running a team that I would not want to load my team down with salaries for players that I no longer have on the team or who are preforming at such a sub-par level, they are hurting the team. Right now, in fact, the Jays are paying out over 49$ million to players that are not playing for them. You can find the data here.
That reason, as implied above, is that it limits the choices you have as team. And, those choices are particularly important in a period of rebuilding. You may want to lock of good young players with longer-term contracts of your own; you may want to add that missing piece after you are moving into contention -- say, like the Phillies. You may not want to price your tickets out of the market of a lot of fans (although this is a complicated calculation in which we will not engage here). You may want to redirect money internally to international scouting and player development or winter ball. There are all kind of things you may want to do rather than paying players who are not contributing to your team.
This is why most teams don't sign high priced free agents when they are rebuilding. They might be chap and they might be profit driven. But, they might also be looking to build a good ball team and signing players who really will not make a great difference to the hear and now in order to mortgage the future just does not strike me as a good plan.
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