Strangely enough, the Giants seem to be uniquely positioned in regards to the economic downturn as it relates to player salaries. The timing of the ’08 payroll slash, the seat license renewal and the CSN deal has left the Giants as one of the few teams willing to take on salary this offseason.

Don’t get me wrong. I doubt this has anything to do with the ownership group or Brian Sabean divining the economic future last season via crystal ball. More than anything, they are the beneficiaries of fortunate timing.

Another thing I was wondering about, if economic realities start putting the crunch on baseball teams, doesn’t it make overpaid contracts even more damaging? If we see teams paying less for players over the next few years, deals like Barry Zito are going to look even worse than they do right now.

Personally, I blame the reverse vampires.

That said, I voted option 3. MLB has shown, through many examples, that they have no problem with collusion.

needs more bullet points

I think what we see with Burrell, Dunn, Lowe, Fuentes and Rodriquez will tell us a lot if enough teams are risk adverse to shrink contract lengths. Yes I voted #3 for the reason Marcello stated. But will enough team “toe the line” to make shorter commitments stick for more then a couple years?

Firstly, the graph makes an excellent point.

I voted 3. I also think some owners are asking their GMs
Why cant we have the Satan Ray’s payroll and go to the WS?

Economics aren’t really my bag

Then what’s this book “Economics: It’s My Bag, Baby” by Grant Frisbee?

More than collusion, I think what we’re seeing is teams making an effort to keep as much flexibility in an economy where no one knows for sure how bad things are going to be. Sure Boras can claim baseball is recession-proof, but is it depression-proof?

To me, it doesn’t seem that surprising that teams might be changing their tact and only offering arb to guys they’re really interested in keeping. In this economy, picking up an extra draft pick might not be worth the risk of being saddles with a big salary of a guy you really weren’t that keen on keeping.

This arb thing is probably also a case of teams blinking wondering what the FA market will look like. What if the the value of baseball players dips like the stock market and home values? At that point, being able to bargain hunt for FAs is lot more appealing than paying some guy a high salary because the arbiter didn’t get the memo that the economy is in the crapper.

If I owned a team, I’d be pretty cautious right now.

To quote Ralph Barbieri (shudder) “Two things can be equally true.” The owners can be reverting to their old, collusion-like selves now, while they’re still flush with cash, and they can be (genuinely) worried about the economy going forward. Lots of teams (the Giants included) have money invested in their broadcast partners; a couple teams own their cable channels outright. Advertising is tanking on TV, radio and in newspapers and it’ll probably only get worse in the long run. Which is to say nothing of falling season ticket sales since corporate budgets are being impacted, and lots of season ticket holders have gotten laid off.

I don’t mean to be an apologist for the team-ownin’, top-hat-and-monocle-wearin’ crowd, but they may only be partially, not completely, full of shit on this subject.

While the economy is in the crapper, my 401(k) is taking a dive, unemployment may be going up… I refuse to get too worked up over whether or not any millionaire gets10 million more on this contract than he would have gotten on that contract.

And if Scott Boras drowned while burning alive as his intestine were being removed while he’s fully awake and his testicles get dragged through broken glass, it STILL wouldn’t be as much as he deserves.

A lot of businesses are not spending money, even if they have it, because they are very uncertain of the economic future. This isn’t that surprising that teams will be much more careful about shelling out $10+M contracts.

Plus, you have to consider that a lot of the owners of baseball don’t JUST run baseball teams. They run other business as well that may be struggling (not that they’re personally poor), they’ve personally lost a lot of wealth in the recent market downturn and are being a bit more frugal.

Just because everybody acts similarly doesn’t mean there’s collusion. There doesn’t need to be collusion. The players scream collusion whenever owners tighten up their wallets, but that’s just a tactic and doesn’t mean it is so.

Also, Boras is just puffing. He’s sold all of his clients on all the money the owners should spend on them and raised their expectations. He can’t come around now and tell those same guys “Sorry, but you’re not gonna get Jorge Posada money”. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2008/11/epstein-boras-t.html