I once had a conversation with Scott Boras at an Arizona Fall League game, and I brought up the idea of making everyone a free agent. He thought the idea was horrible and did his best to steer the conversation in another direction. That was all the convincing I needed that the idea had some merit. Charlie Finely wasn't as dumb as he looked.

Does anyone else think that would also encourage more teams to pay something closer to slot in the draft?

If everyone becomes a free agent at the end of his contract, then obviously supply goes up. But demand also goes up -- now teams have many more spots to fill. Why, if demand and supply go up equally, would salaries be driven downwards?

Because the pool of players is bigger than the number of jobs available (think minor leagues). Also, teams have a choice. If there's one great free agent, a number of teams should bid and drive up his price. But if there are three or four great free agents, teams have a fall back plan and can go after someone else.

One of the main components of the current system is to keep players with the team that drafted them for some period of time. If you are going to make every player a free agent when his contract expires, you would need to do this all the way down through the minors. Otherwise you'd draft a guy, bring him along in your minor league systems for three years, he play for you for maybe one year and then jumps ship. You get no return at all on your investment in him. But if you implement this down through the minors, then there's no point in even having a draft. We back to where we were in the 1950's.

Now, if you want to throw a salary cap on top of all of that, you night be on to something.

A world where Neifi Perez gets paid a higher salary than a guy like Prince Fielder is a crazy, crazy world.

Scott,

Yes, I would push the system down through the minor leagues and eliminate the draft. That would put US players on the same footing as Latin American players.

isn't this one way in which baseball actually mirrors the real world, most hese guys already had their 1.5 million dollar signing bonus and they are making $400,000 can we stop trying to organize benefits for them. You get a job, you start out at a lower pay scale then the guys who have been there 10/15 yrs, you may be 10X more productive than they are but they've been there 10 years and deserve more money than you, let these guys keep producing and they will all be paid handsomely.

I have two comments to make on this.

1) If they make every player a free agent, which team do you think would benefit the most? Do fans and other teams in the game really want the team with the most money to benefit from having everyone become a free agent when their contracts end?

2) When players agree to refund money when they no longer deserve to get paid 10mil *cough* Pavano *cough* then I'll feel sorry for them earning less when they are worth more.

It is crazy to say the Brewers don't recognize talent at a young age and pay accordingly. Of course they want to buy out some arby and free agent years and sign their young players such as Weeks, Hart, Braun, etc...and they plan on doing so. Of course, there is no way in hell Boras would let Fielder do that. If Prince would sign a deal similar to Tulowitzki's, the Brewers would do that in a second. But do you really think giving him a few hundred thousand extra now would lead him and Boras to sign with the Brewers when he hits free agency? They played it exactly right: stick to their pay scale (which is quite generous compared to many teams) pay Prince handsomly when he hits arbitration, and most likely replace him with LaPorta when he leaves as a free agent.