One Explanation for the Mega-Deals

ESPN’s Mark Kreidler offers this pithy assessment of the current free agent market:

Generations of fans have come and some have gone, but the one constant of the modern game, besides the final score and an immediate OPS update, is the just-can’t help-it spending sprees of owners who suddenly find themselves – almost in spite of their own Gatsby-esque [the greatest American novel of all, by the way – Bob] baseball existences – up to their monocles in cash.

{snip}

We are back to watching Part I of baseball’s recurring two-part baseball miniseries, the one where the owners start throwing idiot money out into the great winds of trade and blaming each other in turn for “setting the market,” as though such a concept exists in pro sports anymore. (Then again, maybe it does: it only cost Seattle $13 million to gain the rights to talk turkey with Ichiro back in 2000. Today, $13 million barely gets you Ted Lilly for a year, and only halfway to saying howdy to Kei Igawa.)

Like all great benders, too, this one will end in sour pain. Part II is always where the dark plots kick in, after all. It’s the part where the owners begin asking – no, leading – for baseball’s players to protect the owners from themselves. There’s never an intervention around when you need it.