Ken Rosenthal suggests a fix to what he calls a broken arbitration system:
One team executive made the point Saturday that clubs develop statistical models for everything they can think of, projecting what players might accomplish, projecting what might teams might achieve, and more. So, why not develop a model to determine salaries for arbitration-eligible players, too?
The union and management could jointly determine the proper statistics to evaluate each position, adjusting the formulas perhaps every five years to account for how the game evolves (not long ago, remember, teams placed greater value on one-dimensional power hitters, less on elite setup men.)
Once again, a pundit ignores the better solution, free agency after three years. When the six year free agency period was put in place, there was a much smaller difference between the minimum salary and what a free agent could earn for a one WAR season. So there was some justification for teams needing six years to recoup their investment in training players through the minor leagues. Now, when a team saves $7 million dollars by getting one WAR from a league minimum player, that length of time under team control makes less sense.
The sooner players reach free agency, the sooner they make the money they deserve. With more free agents on the market, prices won’t grow too quickly. Also, teams are much more likely to sign youngsters to long term contracts early. Everyone benefits.
Even free agency is no guarantee a player makes much more than in arbitration, at least the way this years market played out. Look at Chris Carter. Heck, utley signed for 2 million after a 2 WAR season
Players were willing to give in to 6 years rather than 3 years miller tried for precisely because the differential as a FA was expected to be much greater. This seems true now only for the elite players who make up a small fraction of MLB players.
Today ‘more than half the players make the minimum or close to the minimum and Clark somehow agreed to have the minimum stagnant in this CPA , increasing at CPI rates and not player payroll inflation rates over the past 5 years
Free agency after three years would reduce the ability of low-payroll teams to compete through better drafting and development. It would make it much easier for teams with the biggest budget to simply buy the best players, since players would be hitting free agency right at their prime.
I generally favor a free market approach to things, but through territorial rules MLB has locked in a situation where some teams will always have a much larger revenue base. Unless that changes, there needs to be something in place to allow smaller market teams to compete. Baseball would suffer if only the large market teams are competitive (and that would mean less money for player salaries).
This idea would also probably lead to more delaying of player call-ups to the majors for service time reasons, which harms players.
It wouldn’t increase the amount of money spent on players, but it would change the distribution of that money. It’s not clear how it would change, but probably even more of the pie would go to the top players. Whether this is good or bad depends on your perspective, I suppose.
It would give players more control over their own destiny, which is a good thing.
Overall, I’m not sure this would be a net positive, even for players. I would support such an idea, though, if territorial rules were also relaxed so teams could freely move into the larger markets and compete with the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, etc.