Free Agency and the 2009 Free Agent Class

One of the crucial periods that obviously determines how successful a franchise could be is during free agency. We have seen teams (i.e Yankees) attempt to build their team through free agency, we have seen other teams use free agency to add missing pieces (i.e Red Sox/Keith Foulke) and others use free agency to single handedly destroy their franchises and their flexibility (see Mike Hampton, Kevin Brown, Mo Vaughn, Barry Zito, Carl Pavano, Andruw Jones, Richie Sexson, Jason Schmidt, etc.). Over the pat ten years, Major League Baseball has become flush with cash because of unprecedented growth and prosperity in the sport. Obviously there are many benefits to having baseball prosper like it has, but the obvious negative is that players are receiving contracts that they don't deserve. General Managers throw around millions of dollars like its candy expecting that a certain level of performance will be maintained. This is rarely the case.

With that said, free agency is one of the most exciting times of the season because so many players change places as fans and teams optimistically look forward to the next season. Obviously we are still months away from the season ending and even further away from free agents hitting the market, but that doesn't mean that we can't speculate about the potential deals these free agents will command. When trying to determine a player's contract, we will look at a variety of factors. Past contracts, age, performance, agent, comparable free agents, quality free agents that play the same position (for example: If there are no good FA first basemen besides Teixeira, then the odds increase that teams could enter a bidding war for his services).

Jorge Says No! will start with it's first player contract evaluation with new Angels first baseman Mark Teixeira, who will undoubtably command a huge contract.