Free agency in Major League Baseball is screwy. Maybe it’s just because I follow it more closely than I do other sports, but it seems that it’s very common for a player to be about to sign with one team and then sign with a team that wasn’t even necessarily in the mix.
As a Yankee fan, this has paid great dividends this off-season in the form of both CC Sabathia and Mark Teixiera. It seemed inevitable that CC would wind up on the West Coast and Tex looked destined to be a Red Sock. However, the Yankees added the extra cash needed and got the job done.
That’s old news, though. What prompted this train of thought is the Trevor Hoffman signing. Everyone knew he wasn’t going back to the Padres – not after they snubbed the all-time leader in saves – but it seemed like he was bound to land on the division rival Dodgers. However, I wake up this morning, and out of nowhere (or so it seems), he’s all of a sudden a Brewer.
What? Where’d that come from?
I don’t know if there are conflicting sources in the league or what, but whatever the reason, it makes tracking free agents far harder than necessary. Since when were the Brewers in the Hoffman sweepstakes? It’s definitely possible that they were there all along – I’m more interested right now in following the NFL playoffs than free agency anyway – but the signing seemed to come out of nowhere.
I can only hope that the same thing happens with Smoltz. I understand that he’s old, and if the Red Sox add him, it might even help the Yankees if he breaks down. However, I’m not looking forward to having to face a motivated Beckett-Smoltz-Schilling-DiceK-Lester rotation. That’s scary.
No comments:
Post a Comment