Second, Michael Lewis might not have written “Moneyball” and the utility of Billy Beane (who really was an MLB utility player) might have been more remembered for that, rather than for being the “genius” of Moneyball. In sum, we wouldn’t have heard of Boras and his fellow agents. That would mean that if I were to mention a name like Scott Boras, one would have to assume he must have played second base for the Cubs at some point, rather than having become a household name as a player-agent. The owners would basically hold all the cards as they did prior to the advent of free agency. To carry this pretend scenario forward, I have to make a couple of fairly dramatic assumptions:įirst, the MLB players union (arguably the most powerful union in the land) wouldn’t be that powerful. Rather than “worst to first” it more likely would have been “worst to better,” and that doesn’t have much of a ring to it. In fact, without Jack Morris, it’s unlikely that we’d all view the year 1991 as we do 1987. But perhaps most importantly for Twins history, Jack Morris wouldn’t have been a Twin, and that would have been a big problem. Frank Viola and Johan Santana wouldn’t have been Mets. Maybe A-Rod would never have left the Mariners.Ĭloser to home, maybe Rod Carew and Torii Hunter perhaps wouldn’t have been Angels (though I’m sure they’re nice guys). Perhaps Reggie Jackson would have been an Oakland A for life. Beyond all of those who left via free agency, many more would not have been traded because of impending free agency. ![]() There, of course, would be hundreds of examples of players who wouldn’t have changed teams. ![]() Thanks to some prompts by our Twinkie Town (and SBNation) leaders, one of the things I’ve pondered in recent days is how MLB history might have changed without free agency? What if players were still the property of their teams…until traded or released? What if the legal implications of all of that, had never been litigated? This little essay imagines that a few things would’ve changed, and a few words and phrases wouldn’t have entered our vocabularies.
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