Murray Chass on baseball signings, collusion...

In a post a month or so ago, I threw out the idea that the current economic recession might provide an opportunity for a significant number of baseball teams to collude in an effort to push down salary levels.  McLane's abrupt limitation on Wade's budgeting, Bud Selig preaching to owners about cutting costs in light of the recession, and rumors that many teams would wait until late to sign free agents, all seemed to point toward my pure speculation on this matter.

Murray Chass, the ex-New York Times baseball columnist had a blog entry which discusses the history of payroll cap talk and mentions that some agents are also suspicious of collusion.  An excerpt:

“There are a lot of rumblings that all the teams know exactly what everyone is doing with free agents,” one prominent agent said.

But a union lawyer said the union didn’t have any evidence of information sharing, and Rob Manfred, the owners’ chief labor executive, denied the existence of any sharing operation.

“I don’t know how an agent would have any information about that,” Manfred said. “There is no formal notification about information. Given all the information that’s out there publicly, it would be difficult not to know what teams have offered.”

Whether or not the clubs are sharing offers, there’s no question that the market is moving slower than usual and except for some of the big contracts, free agents are signing for or being offered less than in past years.

But agents acknowledge that the clubs have a ready-made excuse, or cover, for not acting as they have in previous years: the economy.

“There’s continuing pressure for teams to cut their budgets,” an agent said. “Teams that intended to be aggressive had to cut back because budgets have been lowered.”

Commissioner Bud Selig has warned clubs about watching what they spend because of the depressed state of the economy. Most teams seem to be heeding the warning. The Yankees aren’t in that group.

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