Mike, simply by trying to contain salaries that have "sky-rocketed" you are limiting the market price. In any auction system it only takes 2 players to drive a price up. Who's to say that player is not worth X amount to that team? Would it be any different if it were a UFA? What if I were in a bidding war with another team and agreed to send a pick if they stopped bidding? Would anyone have a problem with this?
As for your comparison to the NFL compensatory picks, I would argue it is different because those rules are outlined from the beggining. Any team bidding on another team's RFA knows that if that player signs with them, they will have to give up draft picks to the team with the RFA rights. They know this before even attempting to sign the player.
In my example above Team Y is getting screwed. Lets say for example team Y has alot of cap space left but no roster talent or draft picks available to trade. All he can do is bid for RFAs and UFAs to improve his team. Team X has picks to trade so he makes that deal with the RFA's team and sends some draft picks for the RFA that was just matched. Team Y is cannot counter offer because all he has is cap space, but he would have certainly outbid any other team for that player. Now he's lost the player he really wanted and has all this cap space left to spend. What will happen is he'll just overspend for another player.
Any time there's a player that isnt signed at the correct market price, the whole league loses out (one of the main reasons why I'm cutting Alexander). As stated in previous threads, it inflates the value of other players and you'll see overpriced salaries.
As the Dodgers stated the RFA tag was instituted to give teams the ability to resign certain free agents, not negotiating leverage.
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