i got what i think is better idea for free agency after last wednesday's non- meeting of the league's board of directors. i went there to discuss my non- compulsory draft notion and, fortunately, it wasn't discussed. the board had to reschedule because only four members showed and a quorum couldn't be reached.
i say "fortunately" because the guys in the small meeting room at frozen ropes ( jim konstantakis, john corrigan, don ball and kevin jackson) talked about my original idea and their comments led to this new notion. they're not to be blamed for it, however. its all my fault.
i call it a new free agency, it's simple and, if it works right, it could address the troubling questions surrounding free agency and the league's talent distribution. it could help players go where they'd like far easier than they do now. it could also help managers get the talent they'd like from an enlarged talent pool. and it could help all the teams in the league, from top to bottom, not only survive but get stronger.
it might also help prevent, or at least reduce the impact of, the sudden folding of any team, such as happened with the 11-5 thunder last week, when a handful of players found new teams and another handful were thrown to the winds.
the short of the idea? for starters, the notion tosses into the dustbin the word "draft," (thanks, john corrigan and, earlier, jonny martin,) then, it would expand free agency like we've never done before, (thanks, jimmy k, though i suspect you'll grind your teeth over that, at least initially.) it would help lower- ranking clubs lure talent, and in some instances, doing that with money of sorts (thanks, kevin); the system would also have repair mechanisms for any problems that arise (thanks, don).
the good thing? this system would be exceedingly simple to set up, requiring only a few modest changes to the league's website and no more monitoring than guys do now as they read the bulletin board. it's essentially a system based on e-mails.
this new free agency would include these elements:
(1) it'd define a free agent as any player who is free to play for another team. (2) that freedom would run nearly 10 months of the year; the only time that players could not be free agents is from the time the rosters are frozen (around july 1st in most divisions) until the end of the season, so for roughly 10 months, all the players would be free to contact any manager and ask if there are spots for them; (3) correspondingly, all managers would have the freedom to make offers to anybody on any team roughly 9 months of the year; their offering period would run from a season's first to its last pitches. in effect, this forbids in-season tampering but allows for unlimited off-season contacts. (4) no public announcements of these deals would need to be made until they are concluded by the manager and player; at that point, the manager getting the new player must post a notice on the league's bulletin board and send a copy of that notice to the manager of the team losing the player. the deal would not be official until the two emails are sent. now, "official" here simply means that player is on the second manager's roster. but since the free agent period would run until july 1st, the deal would not be fixed in place until the rosters are frozen. so that player could, in theory and in fact, get and accept a second, third and fourth offers and so on. (the odds that would happen are, i'd guess, very low.) the same posting procedure would follow; (5) as a matter of courtesy and of helping managers' record-keeping, players moving to a new team must also e-mail their former managers and tell them of the move. (6) to do all this smoothly, managers and players will need contact and biographical information. so on the league's website, on each roster, there should be three pieces of information that are not there now: after each player's or manager's name there should be the positions played, birthdates and e-mail addresses. with that, managers can then email players they would think would be good additions to their squads and players who feel they want to move on, may contact managers. (7) for any and all disputes,the board could set up one to three mediators for each age division. it's possible that some of these moves will anger players or managers; they could, for various reasons, cry foul. in that event, the board could appoint mediators to resolve disputes. with all mediators, of course, the aggrieved parties have to agree in advance that they'll accept the mediators' decisions. (thanks to don ball here; he talked about a player represenative helping with trades and that notion morphed for me into mediator.) (8) the board could decide on approrpriate sanctions for anyone it learns has tried to make deals during the 2- to 3-month prohibited period. canceling the deal could be one.
now, all of this can be done without forcing players to post their names on the waiver wires, the waiver wire isn't much or well used anyway. for proof? see 35s commissioner tommy smith's note on the bulletin board on sunday, responding to mario arduini, who was asking where he might find 35+ players: "There should be a lot of free agents out there, since three teams have ceased operations in the 35's. (Nationals, Orioles, Shaskys)," tommy wrote. well, those names aren't there. nor for that matter were the names of the seven thunder players who found three new teams last week. this suggests to me a real need to streamline the distances between managers and free agents.
this proposed system would differ from the current one in several ways.
first, there's the definition of a free agent. on wednesday, there was some puzzlement there. jim said that according to the rules every player is a free agent at season's end. but, again, many if not most free agents these days dont go through the posting process.
part of the reason for that lack of posting (and it seems there are fewer posts each year since the system started three years ago), is that a lot of guys don't want to put their names out there for fear they would anger their current manager (or anger him more) or that they wouldn't be picked up. or they'd worry about being picked up by a team that they're not keen on. that would put these free agents in a pickle: they could go back, hat in hand to their former manager, join the team they're not crazy about or quit. so making deals on their own quietly, in parking lots after games or in tournaments, seems increasingly the preferred route for free agents. and it makes sense.
also, another reason for these quiet deals is the simple fact that players and managers don't know how to reach each other; they lack contact information. rather than risk not being able to reach one another over the off-season, players and managers talk during the season, infuriating some managers, like jim,( on wednesday, jim virtually spit out the words: "god! i hate free agency!") to them, such talk is tampering. and it is, but i'd suggest it's brought on largely by the simple fact that the two sides worry they can't reach each other once the season ends. so, breaking league rules, some managers and players talk. it may be done in code, but both sides know what's being said.
if, however, we had a system where it's both easy to reach guys (with a posted email address) and a defined period of allowable contact, those problems could be erased. there wouldn't be a need for parking-lot deals. players and managers could make decisions slowly, smartly, players could also leverage some of the offers they get to get better ones.
but, yes, this system would allow about two months of in-season tampering (may and june, before the rosters are frozen), not to mention another seven months outside the season. and that could be a problem. but that's why its important for managers to have more than 12 guys on their team and, more important that they be able to talk to their players, resolving issues as they arise.
i don't envision wholesale tampering or departures and arrivals. the real fact is that leaving one team for another is never easy.i suspect most players would prefer to stay with their original teams: they know their roles and often they like their teammates; going to a new team means players would have to make new aquaintances, buy new uniforms and prove themselves to a new set of faces, several of whom, could be fellows they'd be replacing and might not feel at all welcoming. and it could also mean that these players would incur the anger of former teammates for leaving them.
i can foresee one possible limitation to the system: i'd suggest that only the teams that finished in the top two-thirds of the standings the year before would have players open to offers from other managers. the bottom third would be protected from offers until those teams climbed into the top two-thirds of the standings. that would prevent upper-level managers from plucking what might be a limited talent pool from the lower teams and further weakening the teams. the system wouldn't prevent players from those lower-level teams trying to market themselves as free agents, however, nor would it stop the managers of lower-ranked teams reaching out to free agents.
how might this work in reality? well, consider the thunder's collapse. if we had this system in place this year, once thunder manager bob weitz learned that seven of his players were leaving, he could eye the rosters of all the other teams in the league and see which players he might lure to his team. in fact, he might start with the reds (who got 3 thunder), the marlins (who got 2) and the vets (who got 2).
who'd he go after? well, as kevin pointed out on wednesday, there's almost always "a cascading effect" that takes place whenever one or more talented players go to a new team. suddenly, players who saw, say, a modest amount of playing time the year before realize, and not too happily, that they might have even that time cut with the arrival of the stars. the new talent may be good for a team but not always for every player on that team.
bob might have then looked at players he admired on each of those teams, players who might be facing the loss of playing time, and he could have e-mailed them, asking them to come play for him. or, conversely, sharp players on those teams, facing the loss of playing time, could have written bob and asked about joining the thunder.
then, everybody wins: nobody would have to know about either set of requests until they were posted because they would be done by e-mail. since he'd have the contact information at his fingertips, bob would have the entire division to choose from and for that matter, the 55s, too and wouldn't have to ruffle through phone books looking vainly for numbers. and if he just happened to pick up seven players from the marlins, reds and vets? well, the net effect would be a trade. it would have the further advantage of allowing those three managers, however upset they may be by the loss of their players (no more, i'm sure than bob was), to at least avoid the trouble of sitting players who the year before made contributions.
the pool of baseball talent in any area is limited and it's more limited the older players get. there can be only so many former university of miami shortstops out there. our top teams keep winning in part because they get those ex-miami players. but the talent pool would increase greatly for every manager if he could make offers to nearly all the players on most of the other teams. then the sixth-ranked team from the previous year just might get that ex-miami shortstop, if the deal is right. these cross-team offers shouldn't surprise anybody: it's what major league teams do half the year, less a few hundred million dollars, of course.
and there could be lots of inducements at our level, among them, the chance, as noted above, to keep playing time, or to play a position a player covets that he's not allowed to play on the higher-finishing team (many position players harbor the not-so-secret desire to pitch), or the chance to play with friends, or to help lift a team up from near the bottom to the top, or to co-manage, or the hope to escape an unpleasant situation. and so on.
and money may be a lure. or, more accurately, a money subsitute. as kevin pointed out, if some team "gets $3,000 from a sponsor, then each guy not only can play for free but he can probably get a jersey, cap, and bat too." to save those costs could be a big inducement for some players.
so that's the idea. in the end, we could be strengthening our own teams by just using or recycling our own players. and this approach in turn could strengthen john reel's unbalanced schedule that was started a few years back and works so well. then maybe one day we'll have a season where every team will be strong, every game competitive and the top team will finish at, say, 10-6 and the bottom team no worse than 6-10. that'd be some season.
i hope others take the idea and run with it. i hope, too, that the board would consider this notion, not the earlier one, for the 2013 season. i'd be happy to discuss the idea with the board.
i would also encourage thoughtful posts about this new free agency system. i've found you never can tell where good ideas will come from.
-mike
-- Edited by mhart on Sunday 8th of January 2012 11:24:39 PM
Mike, You really put a lot of time and effort in this. I didn't realize that we were playing Major League Baseball. I thought we were a recreational league playing for the love of the game, playing with our friends,yes being competetive but not to the point where you don't have the chance of playing where you want.
I think the system works ok as it is now. It is up to the Team Manager or Gm to work the system. If you start telling players they have to play where they don't want to players are not going to play.
This is just one mans opinion right or wrong. Lets just all get out there and play ball.
Oh my Gosh with all due respect Mike, but I think this is going a little too far. My Lord, I feel like I am a part of a Star Trek Convention where all the trekies are just going a little overboard with the whole being a treki thing. It totally consumes their life, their reality gets so warped, and they go on actually believing Leonard Nimoy has special powers. In the end all we want to do is kick some dirt, swing a bat and hope we don't get hurt. Remember the sportswriters and tv broadcasters when they used to say, " remember when it was just a game" they were talking about the big leagues, not a league with a bunch of old, hard working, beer drinking guys who, in the end hope they can still get it up when the time is right.
