Picking up where we left off last week, today’s Quickie will discuss the rules for free agency in the major leagues.
Readers of this space will recall that the reserve clause era ended at the conclusion of the 1975 baseball season. But that did not result in unrestricted free agency where a player could immediately go seek the highest pay he could find at the end of his contract year. Instead, the owners negotiated with the player’s union for new rules that would strike a balance between the owner’s desire for control versus a player’s right to sell his services at the highest price the market will bear.