Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Why the Slow Market?

With the holidays upon us the major league off-season has hit the usual "pause" button on transactions and moves. But it's not like there were a flurry of moves taking place before the holidays. The biggest free agent move came out of no where when the Phillies picked up Carlos Santana for 3 years at 20 million per season. An unexpected move because the Phillies were thought to have found their first baseman of the future in Rhys Hoskins who hit 18 home runs in 50 games and an impressive streak where it only took him 19 games to get to 10 home runs, but now with the acquisition of Santana Hoskins is going to be forced to play left field where he was less than impressive. The Phillies have been rebuilding since their fall in 2014, when their roster got older by the pitch, which makes the addition of Santana even more perplexing. There are over 50 free agents still out on the market and most of them were thought to be on their way to getting lucrative deals from various teams looking to improve.

One thing that is keeping the market from moving are teams looking toward to the future and trying to get under the luxury tax threshold (there's a lot of math when it comes to the luxury tax so I'll leave that to the folks with a calculator) and making a real push for next year's crop of free agents who have huge names like Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Clayton Kershaw (who has an opt out clause in his contract), Josh Donaldson, Charlie Blackmon, among others. So making sure that teams are under a certain number so that they can wheel and deal with the big names next year is the plan for the several teams. That's why the LA Dodgers and Atlanta Braves traded Mark Kemp for a flurry of bad contracts so both teams can be in position to make moves next year. Being a free agent after this past season has been lack luster so far since teams are scheming for next off-season. Which makes you wonder if and when the big dominoes are going to fall.

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