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The Free Agent Market is Frozen Because the Players Bargained for Luxury, not Labor

Training camps open in two weeks, with more than a hundred free agents waiting for more money than what’s been out there and commissioner Rob Manfred ready to unilaterally implement pace-of-action procedures. These are nervous times for the players association. Nobody revealed this anxiety more than Brodie Van Wagenen, an agent who turned, in Trumpian style, to Twitter In The Morning to bare his worried soul.

Van Wagenen penned a screed against the stagnant free agent market, in the most inflammatory language heard in years. He hinted at charging the owners with collusion, though instead of using the word he danced around it awkwardly by saying, “It feels coordinated,” with the big-time hedge of adding “rightly or wrongly.