By Alex Schochet
Major League Baseball has a problem when it comes to keeping fans entertained during the offseason.
Because unlike most professional leagues, in the MLB there is no salary cap meaning teams have no limit to how much money they can spend, but they are also not incentivized to spend without a salary cap leading to slow movement during baseball free agency.
When fans think about basketball free agency, they get so excited because of the rush of signings right when free agency opens. When the NBA’s free agency opens, within the first minutes, huge names have signed to teams.
This gets social media talking about the NBA and keeps the fans entertained during the offseason. Some fans have even said they get more enjoyment when free agency opens then during an NBA game.
For the NFL, while to a lesser degree, there is still much more excitement around the leagues free agency then there is for MLB. The NFL also has a salary cap, and teams spend their money much earlier than they do in baseball.
With baseball, free agency starts in November, but most of the high name stars are usually still available in January. What this also does is show fan bases the lack of “win now” mentality that Major League Baseball owners have.
Another reason that MLB free agency is not as exciting as it can be is because of how long it takes most players to get to free agency. In the NFL, and the NBA, rookies sign rookie deals which are usually around three to four years, and unless the player signs a extension, that player goes into free agency three to four years into their career.
In Major League Baseball, players go through three to four years of the minor leagues before even making the major leagues and are paid very small salaries in the minors, and when they make it to the major league, they can have three to four years of arbitration-which is negotiating a contract between the players agent and team-before the player enters free agency. This means the player could spend more than seven years of their career without going into free agency and many players miss out on big pay days in their prime. Baseball has a lot of easy ways they can fix the offseason, and they should start by doing these fixes.
