I kind of agree with this, but on the other hand I also agree with teams not wanting to pay a guy into his mid-30s when he's likely to be utterly replaceable several years before that.
I think the big problem here isn't the fact that stars are severely underpaid, but that young players are. In other words, I don't think the problem is 26-year old Bryce Harper not getting $300 million, it's really that 21-year old Bryce Harper didn't get $300 million.
There were as many 3.5 WAR players 22 and under as 33 and over. The former all got paid $500K on one-year deals, the latter got paid an average of $16 million on multi-year deals.
If you were drawing it up from scratch, shouldn't it be the opposite? The young guys with their careers in front of them get the long deals, and the old guys get 1 or 2 year deals?
I think hockey has the opposite problem. They had out 8x8 or more like candy to every 22 year old who really hasn't proven that he's going to be a star for years to come. Don't forget, Bryce was pretty well paid the last couple years and over 20 million/year. A shade off what he'd get on the free market, but not that far off. Teams seem willing to pay high annual salaries, they just are shying away from 10 year deals that never seem to work out.
It also seems that MLB teams are preparing for the local tv deals aren't going to be the same in 10 years, and don't want to over commit. The problem was giving out those mega long term deals earlier, not that they aren't willing to do it now.
I'm guessing Boras's strategy at this point is to get more teams bidding on short term contracts, and they've probably got the annual dollar figure where they want, and are trying to see if they can get anyone to bite by adding a couple more years on.
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