Last season was a rare situation. The economy actually depressed FA prices and had teams looking to get payroll relief. The Nats were buyers in a buyers' market. Whether due to Bowden's incompetence or the Lerner/Kasten financial constraints, this opportunity was squandered.
Now the Nats are looking like they not only have a real GM in place that at a minimum won't be a detriment, and they are still buyers in a buyers' market with payroll coming off the balance sheets. They do have a fair amount of players hitting arbitration years, so that will add to the budget needed. However, they may find that most of their arbitration eligible players aren't worth dealing with at all and take their chances with the open market.
This snippet from Buster Olney on the state of the league's financial system means that a team like the Nats may actually get a second chance to be active in a rare year where inventory is high, prices are lower due to the economy, and they have limited long-term financial liabilities. What will they do? What will they do?
Baseball's financial structure appears to have reached a tipping point that can be simply defined. "The arbitration process is now outdated," said a highly-ranked executive, "because the players can get more money in arbitration than they would through free agency."
So now teams are about to adjust to this reality, and this is why multiple general managers expect that there will be dozens of young players with three, four and five years of major league experience who will be cut loose in the next 41 days, rather than offered arbitration. Not a handful, but dozens.
I went through the rosters with some executives over the last 48 hours and counted 93 solid non-tender candidates -- players who simply won't be offered contracts for 2010 by their current teams. If the final numbers come close to that figure, this would mean that there would be close to 300 veteran players looking for jobs this winter, a staggering number that will inevitably depress the asking prices for free agents.
