free agency | The Baseball Zealot

Free Agency season starts today

It’s free agency season. As of 12:01am today, all free agents are eligible to negotiate with all teams.

ESPN has my free agent tracker of choice. Take a look at it now while all free agents are rated “NR” which I guess stands for “No Regrets”.

The average age of the 167 eligible free agents is 33.9 years old but that includes Brad Ausmus who I thought retired. That skews it a bit by probably a tenth of the year or so.

Ausmus isn’t the oldest though. That honor belongs to reliever Trevor Hoffman who might like to add to his all-time leading 601 career saves in 2011.

Which team lost the most players to free agency? The answer might surprise you. The Tampa Bay Rays who succumbed twelve players including six pitchers.

Changes in Free Agency

MLB and the MLBPA announced a few changes in how free agency will be handled. Here are the changes in a nutshell:

Players will no longer need to file for free agency. The process will be automatic.
Players can entertain offers five days after the last game of the World Series instead of the previous 15 days.
Teams must tender contracts by December 2 which is nine days earlier than before.

The changes will take effect beginning next offseason.

Andre Dawson: Best free agent money could buy?

Askmen.com presents their top ten list of All-time Baseball Free-Agent Bargains.

I’m glad to see their memory is intact and they remember Andre Dawson at #3. In the collusion market after the 1986 season, Dawson was picked up by the Cubs for $500,000 (plus incentives which eventually came out to around $700,000). Even back then, that was a pitiful amount.

The rest, as they say, is history. Dawson had his famous 49-homer, 137 rbi season for the last place Cubs. Both figures led the NL that year and were enough to garner him the NL MVP.

Fortunately, the Cubs saw value in their new outfielder and gave him a raise. They signed him at $1.85 million the next year.

Dawson played six 20+ HR years for Chicago.

Where to find Free Agent info

Below are some good links to track the off-season free agency.

For my money, the best sortable list is ESPN’s Free Agent Tracker but Sport City’s and MLB Trade Rumors’ both list them qualitatively and sometimes with a little commentary.

ESPN’s Free Agent Tracker

Sports City’s Top 25 Free Agents

MLB Trade Rumors Top 50 Free Agents

Cot’s Baseball Contracts Free Agent position players/ pitchers

The Cot’s link is new to me but I had fun looking through their site earlier today. The site is not organized in a sorted list format rather it has very detailed information for each player. Alternatively, you can find a page for each team which has detailed salary and transaction information for each player.