Despite the premier names available to be had, free agency in Major League Baseball has once again conspicuously moved at a snail’s pace.
We’re just under a month away from when pitchers and catchers are slated to report for Spring Training in preparation for the 2019 season, and yet the biggest names who are out there on the open market remain unemployed.
Heading into this off-season, there was much speculation that Bryce Harper and Manny Machado could command massive paydays with teams falling over backwards for them but, so far, it’s been the exact opposite. Much the same could be said of premier pitchers Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel — again it’s been mostly crickets as far as their free-agent prospects are concerned.
San Francisco Giants third baseman Evan Longoria has been witnessing much the same as the rest of us and he’s pretty fed up about it.
Taking to Instagram on Friday, Longoria wrote out an impassioned plea to fans that he and his fellow MLB peers — such as Harper, Machado, Kimbrel and Keuchel — should be better valued than they seem to be right now.
“It’s [sic] seems every day now someone is making up a new analytical tool to devalue players, especially free agents,” Longoria wrote. “As fans, why should ‘value’ for your team even be a consideration? It’s not your money, it’s money that players have worked their whole lives to get to that level and be deserving of.
“Bottom line, fans should want the best players and product on the field for their team.”
Longoria won’t be a free agent until after the 2022 season at the earliest, so his words do appear to come from a place for support for his fellow players.
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