Quote:
Originally Posted by Nimajneb
Yet short-term contracts of the type assume less risk on the part of the team, provides less "security" to the players and drives up the cost of short-term performance, just as it does here. The more free-agents that follow this or a similar model, one might say it could simple exacerbate existing problems with payroll disparity.
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You are working with the existing model which is composed of one player and no competition. A model with an entire pool of such available talent could not help but drive down the costs.
As for driving up the cost of short term performance, the only comparative at the moment would be to players with full time contracts who only perform part time due to injuries, or as in cases like Bonds, the need to have additional rest days. If these short terms hirings became commonplace, the market for it would stabilize and you would wind up with a situation where a team, rather than paying Soandso ten million for a full time contract where he only plays 70 % of the time, would hire Soanso for eight million for his four months of service. It would have to work out this way because those part timers would be in a pool which is competing with the full time pool for those jobs.
Clemens would not have gotten his prorated 28 million if the Yankees and other teams had alternative selections. If Maddox, Johnson and Schilling had all been in some pool of part time fossil talent with Clemens, of course they would be biting into one another's possible incomes, how could that not be the case?