The noise around the Major League Baseball free agency world is getting louder. Today, we had Houston Astros star Justin Verlander speak out about it as well as the National League MVP Christian Yelich. These are two of the more notable stars in baseball. Yelich won the MVP last season while Verlander won the 2017 ALCS MVP along with a World Series trophy and is a bonafide first ballot Hall of Famer. Things are getting very ugly in baseball. This might be beyond repair with both sides playing the blame game about who’s fault this truly is and it almost seems inevitable that baseball will have their first work stoppage since 1994.

Consistent with your anti player rhetoric but adjusting to this “new reality” isn’t exactly the solution either https://t.co/OT8Z9HpGgH

— Christian Yelich (@ChristianYelich) February 11, 2019

The replies to Yelich’s tweet are a wild world of Twitter. One side of it features people saying ‘Power to the players, fuck the owners.’ The other part says ‘Fuck you rich crybabies, play for free.’ This is why it’s a crisis. The only way this is fixable is for Rob Manfred to create a salary cap with hard floor and luxury tax that isn’t low yet still prevents the major markets from going after players. While it’s failed in the NBA, I could see a SuperMax-type contract be in play for baseball to keep teams in small markets. SuperMax would become null if you traded the player away like Baltimore did Manny Machado last summer. This is the only solution that is logical and could maybe keep both sides happy.

If they choose on the side of cheap labor and try to nickel-and-dime they’re way through contracts, it will be a disaster. There are too many smart people in baseball to realize it’s not worth paying a guy an exorbitant amount of money. Market values are set high because the players before them and those guys should see more blame than we see on social media. Aaron Rodgers has the richest quarterback contract in football. Guess what the next free agent quarterback will say to his team – ‘Give me a higher AARV than Rodgers or I’m walking.’ Because teams are afraid to say no, the market value keeps increasing in football. In baseball, they hit a peak where things got too high and people started saying no. This led to what a massive market correction on the other side of the spectrum.

Hope this gets figured out yet I have zero faith in baseball’s management. Rob Manfred seems over his skis and not a baseball guy. The bottom line and how to make baseball appeal to a younger generation mean more to him than figuring out how to pay players a proper amount.

Charlie.