December 02, 2008
Free Outfielders
Adam Dunn and Pat Burrell joined Bobby Abreu as good free agent outfielders not offered arbitration. All three get on base and have decent power, but are certainly on the downside of their careers. None plays defense that well.
With all three of them available, the supply of this type of player should keep a cap on the price of all three. Do you want Abreu, but he's asking too much? Go for Burrell. Adam Dunn gets signed by another team? Bobby Abreu is still available. This likely figured into the reason for not offering these players arbitration. Not only would an arbitrator likely keep their salaries high, the Yankees, Phillies and Diamondbacks have plenty of other options.
The question in my mind, now, will this drive down the price of Manny Ramirez. While Manny is better than these three, he's also a poor defender on the downside of his career. A team can afford to lose out on Manny and hire one of the other three and still have a good offensive player. Given that, and the cost of a draft pick, there's no reason to really fight over Ramirez.
Some idiot will still offer Manny 25-28 mill for 3-5 years.
I don't see how this affects the pricing on the market. Sure, there are more good outfielders, but there are also more teams with good sized bidding on them (e.g., the Yankees or Phillies could bid on Dunn, which they would be less likely to do if they went to arbitration with Abreu and Burrell).
These free agents aren't coming to the Marlins (who would replace them with free AAA players). These teams will be both flooding and draining the market simultaneously.
How is Dunn on the downside of his career? He'll be 29 next year and just incredibly hit 40 HRs for the 4th consecutive season. Had 122 BB. His consistency is pretty amazing.
Adam Dunn being not offered arbitration means the A's might go for him. He'd be an enormous upgrade over Daric Barton at 1B and is pretty much the prototype of the kind of player Billy Beane lusts after.
Why is Dunn necessarily on the downside of his career? He's entering his age 29 season, and big bodied sluggers have fared well through age 32 or so (hafner, greg and mo vaughn, papi) .. Dunn, at least according to PMR, was middle of the road defensively last year
Rich B. do you understand the concept of supply and demand? Clearly you don't or you wouldn't have posted.
Say there are 10 teams taht want to upgrade an outfield position and there are 3 good outfielders to bid on. That's 7 teams that are going to be left without a good outfielder - bidding war ensues. Now, say, all of a sudden there are 6 good outfielders to choose from. The price of all the players goes down as the bidding war is not as intense.
And to clarify since I didn't address this point...
There are more teams competing for services, yes, but the ratio is not consistant.
10 teams bidding on 3 players is a significantly stronger position for the 3 players then 13 teams bidding on 6 players.
It is the most simple of all economic concepts. People failing to grasp concepts like this is part of the reason our economy is so god damn troubled.