Rob Manfred says MLB wants a free-agent signing deadline, Scott Boras fires back with ‘death-line’ quip

MLB spring training camps are open across Arizona and Florida and still many high-profile free agents remaining unsigned. Fourteen of our top 50 free agents are still without a contract, including four of the top 10: Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, Jordan Montgomery, and Blake Snell. All four are Scott Boras clients, which is almost certainly not a coincidence.

Free agency moving slowly is not unusual — it was only a few years ago that the MLBPA had to set up a spring training camp for unsigned free agents — and, on Thursday, commissioner Rob Manfred said MLB proposed an offseason free-agent signing deadline to liven up the market. It was not well-received. Here’s what Manfred said via the Associated Press:

“We would prefer to have a free-agent signing period, ideally probably in December with a deadline that drove people to make their deals, get things settled. We actually made proposals to that effect, to the MLBPA. They were not warmly received,” Manfred said, referring to a mid-agreement proposal in 2019.

“One of the tactics that’s available to player representatives is to stretch out the negotiation in the belief that they’re going to get a better deal,” Manfred said. “That’s part of the system right now. There’s not a lot we can do about it. But certainly from an aspirational perspective, we’d rather have two weeks of flurried activity in December, preferably around the winter meetings.”

Boras responded to Manfred’s comments, telling The Athletic: “Deadlines are death-lines to the players. It’s a death of their right (to free agency). It’s an artificial reason not to get your value. Teams cannibalize deadlines. Everything they would do would be around the deadline. ‘I’ll wait and get this value at this time, because I have a deadline,’ rather than, ‘What’s the player worth?’”

The idea of an offseason signing deadline is not new. MLB expressed interest in one during the 2019-20 offseason — it’s possible this is what Manfred referenced Thursday — but the players’ union rejected the concept. “After due consideration, we rejected their proposal as not being in the best interests of players,” MLBPA senior director Bruce Meyer told The Athletic at the time.

MLB had an artificial free agent signing deadline during the 2021-22 offseason, when the owners locked out the players. According to research by The Score, there were 54 free agent signings in the 30 days between the end of the World Series and the start of the lockout that offseason. There were never more than 24 signings in the first 30 days of any other offseason dating back to 2013.

In all likelihood, a signing deadline would increase free-agent activity early in the offseason, and free agency is fun. We all love to track rumors and see who goes where, etc. Baseball is the entertainment business and the hot stove is entertainment. The lull later in the offseason would be the result of heavy activity early on, not because teams and players are engaged in a game of chicken.

That said, there are obvious issues with a free-agent signing deadline. First and foremost: what happens to the players who don’t sign before the deadline? Do they just not play baseball anymore? Would they be limited to smaller and/or shorter contract after the deadline? In that case, a whole lot of non-elite free agents will get squeezed beyond the deadline and have to take smaller deals.

The MLBPA strongly opposes anything that restricts free agency, be it a salary cap or a signing deadline. They take the “free” part of free agency literally. If a player wants to wait out the market and not sign until spring training or even into the season, that’s his right. Is that best for the sport? I don’t think so, but neither is a team tanking for half a decade, and that happens all the time.