Baseball fans can be excused if they’ve felt as though there were clowns to the left of them and jokers to the right this off-season. As is always the case when the owners and players square off, fans get stuck in the middle.
In this exceptional off-season, where many top free agents remain unsigned and the market unfolded at the most painfully slow pace in memory, the voice of the fan was scarcely heard above the din of sabres rattling.
There have been some unflattering comments made about fans, with super agent Scott Boras approaching an insinuation that fans are suckers, buying into a false narrative from the owners around being uncompetitive in the short term to win later.
This view of fans as passive and malleable chumps runs counter to everything we’ve seen over the past two decades of baseball fandom. The explosion of fan-generated content that rises far above reflexive griping and aspires towards discourse has helped to raise the level of discussion around the game. If there is a “collusion of common sense” occurring this off-season, the fans are equal partners therein.
And even as baseball fans become more well-versed in the relative value of the performances on the field, most every fan base has been burned by a contract that was too big or too long, and eventually did more harm than good to their team’s competitiveness.
And given that we’ve had more time to assess the outcomes of the monster deals signed since the turn of the millennium, it is increasingly clear that big-money-long-term deals that work out well are by far the exception as opposed to the rule.
It shouldn’t be lost on us that what set the context for the successful rebuilds of the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros was failed attempts to win through free agency. The Cubs had modest success with Alfonso Soriano at the start of his deal before he increasingly became a liability. The Astros signed Carlos Lee to be a cornerstone, but instead he became a millstone.
The first step in the deliberate process of tanking is, it would seem, often inadvertent.
The number of bad deals signed since those are too numerous to mention, though we have reached a point where some of the most transcendent players of our lifetimes are now regarded as much for their lousy contracts as for their contributions to the game. Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera are two of the greatest players in the history of the game, but most fans would not want them on their team at this point for fear of being stuck paying a king’s ransom for past performances.
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Even Joey Votto, whose acquisition would surely make most Blue Jays fans’ hearts skip a beat, carries a contract that is daunting enough that any trade scenario concocted by fans assumes that either the Reds retain much of the expense, or that little of consequence is sent in return.
As fans have become savvier and more well-versed in both the sabermetrics and econometrics of the game, they understand that the trade-off of two years of competitiveness for five years of pain is likely not worth it.
It shouldn’t be lost on us that what fuelled the explosion of interest in the advance analysis of the game was the perception that baseball had become, as the subtitle of Moneyball suggested, an “unfair game”. The number of teams that have been successful at beating the Yankees by trying to be the Yankees is negligible. The Yankees aren’t even trying to be the Yankees anymore.
In the 15 years since the publication of that seminal tome, almost all of the analysis around the game has focused on extracting more on-field value for less in payroll output. If there are not only 30 front offices that are committed to this perspective, but also 30 fan bases that mostly agree with the approach, then maybe this off-season is the logical conclusion of this revolution in the game.
This is not to say that fans universally want to see players get squeezed out of their proper due by owners. While there are still many fans who believe that players are overpaid given the relative importance of their profession, it should be clear to all that the revenue generated by baseball and drawn extensively out of the pockets and through the eyeballs of fans should be distributed more fairly.
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In the aggregate, we can look at what Pujols will make for his career and suggest that it is a fair assessment on his complete contribution to the game. But there isn’t a fan alive in 2018 who wants to be paying the rent this year on Pujols’ contributions to the 2003 St. Louis Cardinals, when he produced 9.5 wins above replacement for $900,000.
There are many changes to the system that fans could easily accept that would help to tilt the financial fairness back towards the players. Raising the minimum salary, allowing players to reach arbitration sooner, or some form of restricted free agency that would allow players at the peak of their career to be closer to the peak of their earning potential would seem equitable to the average fan.
It would certainly be more palatable than imagining the discrepancy between the pay and the contributions in the 2023 season for J.D. Martinez, or Eric Hosmer. Or even Josh Donaldson.
As odd as it now seems, a lot of Blue Jays fans might be coming around to Paul Beeston’s oft-stated notion that there’s nothing good that comes out of a contract that is longer than five years.
The universal truth about fans of any franchise is that they want that team to win, above all else. But increasingly, they know that expensive stars who are past their prime are not a path to success.
Caught between the owners, the players and their representatives, no one should expect fans at this point to help tilt the balance towards impulsive spending on expensive free agents.
