HOT STOVE LEAGUE–FREE AGENTS

HOT STOVE LEAGUE—FREE AGENTS. I should note that after I said yesterday that the Bulls were unusually unbalanced toward defense, they went out and lost to Philadelphia, 123 to 108. Well, Charles Barkley also thinks they’re unbalanced toward defense. The subject of this post is that Carlos Lee signed a contract for $100 million years over six years. Carlos Lee is a favorite former White Sox so I smile at the news. There have been huge contracts for others as well—Soriano, Gary Matthews, Jr. The new Collective Bargaining Agreement seems to leave the small market teams like Kansas City in just as difficult a spot as ever. Because of arbitration, a wealthy team, by spending more money, can raise the costs of all its rivals. If Carlos Lee’s salary increases, so does Emil Brown’s. I think the smaller market teams are going to have to adopt the Marlins’ approach and go young. They should also not bring up their young talent until the players have dominated in triple A so as to optimize the benefit from the time in the majors before arbitration.