Is a free-agency deadline the solution to MLB’s stalled offseason? Players are skeptical

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — On his commutes to the ballpark this spring, Alex Cobb has often found his mind wandering to what he was doing six years ago at this time.

There was no stadium for him to go to, one of a handful of free agents sitting at home without a contract, or even a formal offer, in hand.

“It was terrible,” Cobb said. “I remember reading stuff like I need to hurry up and make a decision, like I had 10 offers on my coffee table that I was just pondering. There were just no offers. A lot of people get upset with the players. But there’s no offers.”

Eventually, Cobb signed a deal for four years and $57 million with the Baltimore Orioles. It was finalized March 21, a week before Opening Day.

Almost six years later, it’s difficult for Cobb not to draw parallels between his situation in 2018 and the current state of the free-agent market, stuck in neutral with four of the top players still unsigned almost two weeks after pitchers and catchers reported for camp.

With decision-makers from every Cactus League club in one room this week for the annual media day, the primary topic of discussion wasn’t the upcoming season so much as whether Matt Chapman, Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery would have teams by the time it begins.

“It’s not good for baseball,” Cobb said. “There’s a lot of talking. There’s a lot of delaying. It’s probably one of the main things that go into the strategy of negotiating. But that’s between a lawyer and a professional negotiator of the team. The players and fans end up losing the most.”

The most notorious lawyer in the sport, Scott Boras, represents all four of the top remaining players, and has been known to employ whatever tactic it takes to get his clients every dollar possible. Players must wait six years to reach free agency, and for many it is their one opportunity to cash in on a generational payday.

While the common refrain is that all four have their flaws, that was a harder argument to make in 2019, the offseason after Cobb’s late deal, when it took until the final day of February for Boras to seal Bryce Harper’s deal with the Phillies. It also took until spring training for Manny Machado to sign that offseason, leading many to question whether owners were willing to spend at levels commensurate with rising revenue streams.

Would it all be resolved if offseason activity was constrained to a certain window, as it is in the NBA and NFL?

“We have deadlines for a lot of things in the industry. Sometimes we need deadlines for things to happen,” said Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ president of baseball operations. “I understand the pros and cons, or the concerns that it might be considered restrictive of the market to have a cutoff point. But I also just think it’s not ideal for players to be free agents for this long. It creates a lot of anxiety. I don’t think it’s great for clubs, who want to sign players and to be able to market those players.”

Zaidi has been a leading proponent for something to speed along the offseason. At the Winter Meetings, he raised the idea with reporters of a deadline on multiyear deals. The rule would set a date, perhaps the final day of the yearly gathering in the first week of December or the end of the calendar year, after which point players would only be eligible to sign for the upcoming season.

It’s something the league has considered seriously enough to raise in the last round of collective bargaining negotiations with the Players’ Association, who rejected it over concerns of restricting the free market. Commissioner Rob Manfred brought it up again last week at his annual pre-spring news conference.

“One of the tactics that’s available to player representatives is to stretch out the negotiation in the belief that they’re going to get a better deal,” Manfred said. “That’s part of the system right now. There’s not a lot we can do about it. But certainly from an aspirational perspective, we’d rather have two weeks of flurried activity in December, preferably around the Winter Meetings.”

One agent controlling the top of the market has created some consternation among players represented by other agencies. (The Boras Corp. doesn’t have a strong foothold in the Giants’ clubhouse, where Ballengee reigns supreme.)

“We don’t want that kind of attention on a deadline,” said one player who requested anonymity to speak candidly, calling this the “worst-case scenario.”

Outfielder Austin Slater, who has been the Giants’ player rep with the union and now serves on the pension committee, said a deadline would be an “automatic no” from the players, even as a tradeoff for a salary floor or another concession from the owners.

“That’ll never be something that we agree to,” Slater said. “As a fan of the game, I would love to see more signings happening earlier. To put all the onus on the players and the agents, I don’t think is fair. To limit a guy to a certain period, it’s already a flawed system in favor of the owners. To do that would be to just add another lever for teams and owners to try to suppress salaries.”

While other clubs have pinched pennies — some citing the uncertainty of their TV deals in the streaming era — there has been no chilling effect on spending around the National League West. The $208 million dished out by the Giants this winter is second only to the Dodgers’ billion-dollar offseason.

Still, the clock is ticking and some of the game’s best players haven’t found a team.

Left-hander Robbie Ray, also abreast of labor issues, said he doesn’t blame guys for holding out.

“Teams get desperate,” Ray said. “That first two weeks (of spring training), it seems like somebody always gets hurt and a team gets desperate.”

But the longer they wait, the greater the likelihood those unsigned players won’t be ready for the season when they do latch on to a team.

After Cobb signed in 2018, he missed Opening Day and spent the first three weeks of the season at Triple-A.

“It took me close to the All-Star break to really catch back up,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for the players. It’s not good for the teams that are going to miss a guy for probably a few weeks of the season at this point. I would like to see that get resolved somehow.”