With clubs cutting payroll anywhere possible due to losses incurred by the pandemic, it wasn’t surprising to see an extensive list of players who weren’t tendered contracts by their teams on last Wednesday’s deadline. The Mariners, of course, tendered contracts to all their players, as the only decisions they had to make were of the no-brain variety, including tendering contracts to three arbitration-eligible players: primary catcher Tom Murphy, bounceback candidate Mitch Haniger, and freshly-minted Gold Glover J.P. Crawford.
However, many other teams found themselves in the position of being unwilling to fork over the cash required to keep certain mid-to-lower-tier players, setting up a buyer’s market for their services.