Comparing MLB's free agency to the NBA, it's amazing that the league got players to agree to 5 year max contracts, with a max of four years if signing with a new team. I mean, we just saw a 13 year, fully guaranteed deal for Carlos Correa. 13 years?! Can you imagine if NBA teams were left to their own discretion to sign free agents? How many years would we have offered Gordon Hayward or Kemba Walker?
I think the baseball version of this in not sustainable. Position players in baseball are less susceptible to injury than say basketball or football players but even with that, paying players into their 40s is not going to end up being good for the game. The players may feel like they are "winning" but if this hurts teams and the game overall in the long run, players will not win in the end.
Can you imagine what contract you would have to give Brown or Tatum? 15 years? Giannis might get 20 years.
Agreed. MLB desperately needs to revise its CBA. I mean, Devers could command 12 years, $480 million in the open market. How does a team recover from that if there's a serious injury shortly into the contract? It's obviously great for the players, and I respect that most of them played for under-market deals their first six years. But, for the sustainability of the sport, there need to be changes. Give players a crack at free agency after four years, but limit contracts to six.
I worry about the "rich" teams in basketball outspending everybody, but overall the NBA seems very healthy. I'd like to see teams be able to use an "amnesty" provision to waive a player who would no longer count against the cap (but who would still have to be paid), so that teams can recover from their mistakes more quickly. But, just about every bad deal is moveable to some degree, and teams can't decimate their draft picks, so in theory every team can become competitive with smart management.
