Yes, the only logical conclusion can be collusion when Manny Ramirez only gets one contract offer for $25 million.
Down through the years, I've always enjoyed the accusations and finger pointing from the Player's Association and player agents when things don't exactly go their way. With the calendar now flipped over to February, and players starting to filter their ways towards training camps in Arizona and Florida which open in a mere two weeks, there are still well over 100 players/pitchers without contracts for the 2009 season. While most are middle of the road types hoping to land one more deal to pad their retirement portfolios, there are still some major names waiting to find a new area code.
The biggest fish remains Manny Ramirez; he of the 500 home run club, a career average well over .300 and a 1.004 lifetime OPS. His greedy agent, the much maligned Scott Boras, thought that the sky was the limit when Man-Ram went back out onto the open market with dollar signs in his eyes. And after CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira extracted deals totaling $423.5 million (US) out the Yankees, they had every right to believe they could back up the Brinks truck to the offices of the Dodgers, Giants, Angels or Mets and come away with a multi-year deal - despite Ramirez's advancing age - with an annual salary between $20-25 million. To date, only the Dodgers have made an offer to the superstar slugger which, at last report, currently sits at $25 million over a single year.
So now the whispering begins yet again, as it does every time the agents don't get what they want for their clients, that the owners are acting in concert to keep salaries down. Well, judging by the way that Yankees G.M. Brian Cashman has been throwing around the cash, I don't think that's even close to being the case. What is happening this off-season is just a dose of reality. With the global economy slowed to a crawl, and hundreds of thousands of people now without jobs, the vast majority of owners are taking a wait-and-see approach to free agency. Advertisers have been letting contracts expire, and it will be interesting to see what effect this all has on season ticket renewals and attendance this season.
At some point, the golden goose was going to stop laying the eggs and there would be a correction to a market that kept going up and up. Pretending that the owners had something to do with this is laughable. MLBPA union boss Don Fehr and the agents can whine all they want but the fact is the money is just not out there.
The perfect example is with the Blue Jays. Not only are advertisers and ticket buyers casting a leery eye, but they also get the double-whammy of the fall - again - of the Canadian dollar against the Yankee greenback, with the majority of their funds coming in the door Canadian and then leaving American. That's a tough way to operate, although it wasn't a problem back in the early 1990's when the SkyDome was full every night and Joe Carter and company were winning on a nightly basis. Since the end of the 2008 season, the Canadian dollar has fallen 15 percent, and with the team being nowhere close to contending a prudent decision was made to keep an eye on the bottom line. That may not sit well with you Jays' fanatics, but it is the right move at this time.
Basically, common sense is the order of the day during these tough times and there is nothing sinister about that, despite the protestations of the union and its' agents.
NOW, IF I WAS RUNNING THE JAYS...
If the whispers are true that the Jays may have some financial wiggle room then the one free agent I'd target would be Orlando Cabrera. The longer he sits out there the better positioned the Jays become to offer the 34-year old shortstop a modest base salary plus some very reachable performances bonuses should he have a good season - by his career standards - and the team's questionable offence is improved because of him. A well-sold deal, combined with a chance to play for Cito Gaston, should play right into the pride and sensibilities of the talented Venezuelan.
I've always liked a couple of things about Cabrera. One is that he's a winner. Since joining the Red Sox in a trade deadline deal in 2004, Cabrera's teams have won at a .576 clip, including the 2004 World Series. For a lot of Jays players that would hopefully rub off on them. And the second is the fact that he's been injury-free, having averaged 156 games a season since becoming a regular with the Expos in 2001.
In my mind, all that would hold up getting this deal done is some creative accounting.
