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Once again this week, we're taking a look at how life has changed in that one-time Super Lotto known as the free-agent market. This time, we'll compare the dollars taken in by this winter's top free agents versus last winter's (ranked by average annual value of the contract, whatever its length). Foreign free agents aren't included:
This winter
$14 million-plus: 1 (Jim Thome -- with Greg Maddux, who is bound for arbitration, still to be determined).
|  | | Jim Thome was one of the few players to haul in big money this offseason. |
$12-14 million: 1 (Tom Glavine -- with Greg Maddux still to be determined).
$10-12 million: 0 (Pudge Rodriguez and Roger Clemens technically signed contracts in this area, but Rodriguez has $7 million of his $10 million deferred without interest and Clemens has all $10.1 million deferred without interest).
$8-10 million: 1 (Jeff Kent).
$6-8 million: 8 (Cliff Floyd, Edgardo Alfonzo, Ray Durham, Woody Williams, John Olerud, Frank Thomas, Pudge Rodriguez -- whose contract is valued at slightly under $8 million by the Players Association -- and Roger Clemens -- whose contract is valued at $7.06 million by the Players Association).
$4-6 million: 8 (Steve Finley, David Bell, Paul Byrd, Robin Ventura, Edgar Martinez, Jamie Moyer, Ugueth Urbina, Steve Trachsel).
Last winter
$14 million-plus: 2 (Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi).
$12-14 million: 1 (Chan Ho Park).
$10-12 million: 2 (Juan Gonzalez, John Smoltz).
$8-10 million: 3 (Moises Alou, Brett Boone, Aaron Sele).
$6-8 million: 7 (Javy Lopez, Jason Isringhausen, Tino Martinez, Jason Schmidt, Hideo Nomo, Sterling Hitchcock, Johnny Damon).
$4-6 million: 8 (Albie Lopez, Roger Cedeno, Rick Helling, Steve Karsay, Rondell White, John Burkett, Vinny Castilla, Pedro Astacio).
So let's sum all this up:
Eight free agents last winter came away with deals that paid them at least $8 million a year -- versus only three this winter. That speaks volumes in and of itself.
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The all-unemployed team
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Barely two weeks until spring training, and all these household names are still unemployed. Hard to believe.
1B: Travis Lee
2B: Keith Lockhart
SS: Felix Martinez
3B: John Valentin
LF: Rickey Henderson
CF: Jose Cruz Jr.
RF: Reggie Sanders
C: Tom Lampkin
DH: David Justice
Starting rotation: Kenny Rogers, Chuck Finley, Rick Helling, Julian Tavarez, Robert Person
Bullpen: Juan Acevedo, Mike Jackson, Mike Fetters, John Rocker, Ron Villone
Spring-training site: Baseball City
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But that doesn't even measure the hammering taken by mid-level free agents. Sterling Hitchcock got $6 million a year last winter. Roberto Hernandez wound up with $600,000 this winter. Vinny Castilla was a $4-million man last winter. Jose Hernandez barely got $1 million this winter.
Only seven pitchers will come out of this market making $4 million a year -- versus 11 last winter.
And position players took an even worse bludgeoning. Just five of them came away with deals between $2 million and $5 million this winter. Last winter, there were 11, including Craig Paquette, Ricky Gutierrez and Eric Young.
Keep in mind that, even with more than 50 free agents still looking for work, only a handful will even get a big-league roster spot or guaranteed money -- let alone more than a million bucks. So it's been a verrrrrrry cold winter for your average free agent in more ways than just the wind-chill factor.
Schedule Rumblings
This year's interleague schedule theoretically pairs NL East vs. AL West, NL Central vs. AL East and NL West vs. AL East. But as always, all interleague schedules will not be created equal. So get ready for the possibility that some division races could be decided by inequities like these:
Besides their nine interleague games against the West, all the AL East and NL East teams were also scheduled to play six interleague games against each other. So the Mets play six against the Yankees -- while the Braves get Baltimore and Tampa Bay.
In the AL Central, the White Sox and Twins both have to play Arizona, San Francisco and San Diego. But the Twins' other nine interleague games are against Colorado (three) and Milwaukee (six). The White Sox, on the other hand, get stuck with the Dodgers (three) and the Cubs (six).
While Arizona plays only 15 interleague games against the five AL Central teams, the Dodgers and Giants play 18 interleague games. The Dodgers won't have to face the Twins at all -- but play home-and-home against Anaheim. The Giants will miss the Indians -- but play home-and-home against Oakland.
In the AL East, the Yankees play all 18 interleague games against teams that figure to contend -- the Cardinals, Astros, Cubs, Reds and Mets (six). The Red Sox play only nine games against projected contenders -- the Astros, Cardinals and Phillies. But their other nine are against the Pirates, Brewers and Marlins.
In the NL Central, the Reds play just 12 interleague games -- but the Cardinals, Astros and Cubs play 18 each. The Cardinals get to play a home-and-home against the Royals, while the Cubs are going home-and-home with the White Sox.
And, as always, nobody has a stranger interleague schedule than the Tigers. They've got a home-and-home double-dip with their traditional rivals, the Rockies. And they'll play their other heated NL rival, the Diamondbacks, for the third straight year. If you're wondering, in three previous meetings with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, the Tigers have whiffed 35 times in 21 innings.
Miscellaneous Rumblings
It probably will never reach the hearing room. But Greg Maddux and the Braves shapes up as the arbitration case of the century -- because there never has been an arbitration-eligible player like Maddux.
Maddux and agent Scott Boras filed at $16 million -- well under the $18-20 million being speculated but still more than any pitcher has ever gotten in arbitration (or anywhere else). The Braves filed at $13.5 million -- $400,000 more than Maddux made last year.
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Hey, Mate!
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One of the best spring-training stories in anybody's camp is Dave Nilsson, who hasn't played in the big leagues since 1999 but has a real shot to make the Red Sox as a catcher-first baseman-DH.
Nilsson has been playing in Australia this winter. And his old friend from down under, Craig Shipley, reported to Red Sox GM Theo Epstein that Nilsson had "dropped a couple of stones" (i.e., a ton of weight), was in great shape and could even still catch.
All Nilsson asked for was a chance and a plane ticket. So Fort Myers, here he comes.
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What makes this one fascinating, says one club executive who handles arbitration cases, is that Maddux will be asking the arbitrators "to place him in the (free-agent) marketplace. The real argument is: Which marketplace? Is it the pre-basic-agreement marketplace or the post-agreement marketplace? Knowing Scott, you'd assume he'd be asking for money in the pre-agreement marketplace."
The Braves, of course, can argue that Glavine's deal (three years, $35 million) is all the evidence the arbitrators need that the market has changed. Boras, on the other hand, can argue that Maddux has won more Cy Youngs than Glavine and has had a higher salary for years.
But one agent who argues his own arbitration cases says he would love to handle Maddux's case -- if only so he could start by filling the room with Cy Young trophies, Gold Gloves and All-Star rings.
It's still likely they'll settle this somewhere in the middle ($14.75 million). It's even possible they could work out a three-year deal. But if it ever got to a hearing room in late February, you could make millions by getting the pay-per-view rights to this one.
Other arbitration cases to watch:
-- Javier Vazquez looking for a raise from $4.725 million to $7.15 million ($1 million more than Kerry Wood) after a disappointing 10-13 season in Montreal.
-- Shannon Stewart asking for a $3.25-million raise (to $7.5 million) after a tough-to-evaluate season in which he hit .303 and scored 103 runs, but also hit only 10 homers and drove in 45 runs.
-- Carlos Beltran and Boras taking on the Royals after a breakout year by Beltran (29 HR, 44 doubles, 105 RBI) and dimming hope the Royals can keep him away from free agency after 2004. Beltran is looking for $6.95 million, with the Royals offering $6 million.
-- Jacque Jones attempting to vault from $312,500 to $3.2 million after his breakout year (.300, with 27 HR out of the leadoff hole). The Twins are offering $2.75 million.
Before Pudge Rodriguez took the Marlins' money, he turned down an offer from the Orioles that was juicier than the three-year, $18-million figure often reported. The Orioles' final shot was more in the range of a three-year, $21-million deal that could have grown to close to $10 million a year if the guy they signed turned out to be the 1994-99 Pudge instead of the banged up 2000-02 Pudge.
Orioles executive VP Jim Beattie says he was apprised of the Marlins' offer by agent Jeff Moorad -- "but we didn't negotiate against that. We negotiated against what we felt most comfortable with for us. We knew the prospect of that $10 million was sitting there. But we approached it with the idea that, if we felt uncomfortable with the dollars, we'd have felt just as bad if we'd signed him, probably even worse."
The Orioles continue to poke around for bats of just about any size or shape. They'll bring B.J. Surhoff in for a workout Monday. And they've kicked the tires on some of the remaining free agents (Reggie Sanders, Ron Gant, etc.). But they've backburnered Jeromy Burnitz, whom the Mets continue to offer around.
"The one thing we've got going for us is financial flexibility," Beattie said. "We know there are a lot of players out there that teams need to move (between now and Opening Day). Cash is king. We have some cash to spend, so we think we can still do some things."
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The all-Petco team
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Petco Park sounds like the kind of place you ought to walk your Golden Retriever -- not the kind of place you ought to walk Barry Bonds.
But, alas, Petco Park is the fishy new name of the new ballpark in San Diego. And let's just say that reported $50-60 million Petco is paying the Padres for that name will buy a whole lot of goldfish flakes.
Well, we have two choices. We can look upon this name as the end of civilization as we used to know it. Or we can use it to have a little fun -- by naming our first ever All-Pet team, populated by players who were born to play in a place called Petco Park.
Here's our team:
1B: Fred (Crime Dog) McGriff
2B: Tito (Parakeet) Fuentes
SS: Rabbit Maranville
3B: Doug (Rooster) Rader
LF: Possum Whited
CF: Rex (The Wonder Dog) Hudler
RF: Dave (The Cobra) Parker
C: Birdie Tebbets
DH: Mo (Hit Dog) Vaughn
Starting pitchers: Mark (The Bird) Fydrich, Catfish Hunter, Greg (Mad Dog) Maddux, Old Hoss Radbourne
Relief pitchers: Goose Gossage, Steve and Dizzy Trout, Jeff Parrott, Brad (The Animal) Leslie, Doug Bird
Mascot: The Pirate Parrot
And click here for what users had to say in choosing their All-Pet teams.
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Another team still under its projected payroll budget is the Red Sox. But they're in no hurry to spend it -- not on Kenny Rogers or anybody else.
The odds of the Red Sox making any more major moves before spring training seem to decline by the day. According to sources, they might just stockpile their payroll dollars until July, when $4 million buys you an $8-12 million player instead of a $4-million player.
The Sox do plan to sign one more right-handed-hitting outfielder in the Ron Gant-Reggie Sanders-Alex Ochoa mold. But they're now leaning toward taking Shea Hillenbrand to camp. And they're backing off on Rogers unless, according to one club official, he's willing to turn himself into "an exceptional bargain." After turning down two years, $10 million from Texas, Rogers still isn't in a bargain-hunting mood.
Pudge Rodriguez took that one-year deal in Florida to re-establish himself so he can try to hit the lottery again in next year's free-agent market. But one prominent baseball man wonders if he picked the right place to do it.
"If Pudge wants to re-establish himself," he said, "there has to be a better reason (than $10 million) for changing leagues, losing the opportunity to DH, playing in a pitcher's park in front of like 20 to 25 fans a night, and regularly suffering through those two-hour rain delays."
One more reason it's a lousy time to be an unsigned free agent: Not only does almost nobody have money left, but almost no teams even have roster spots left. As of Friday, there were only 19 vacant spots left on the big-league rosters of all 30 teams combined -- and eight of them were owned by the Giants (five) and White Sox (three).
In case you hadn't noticed, the two teams that have been least aggressive about adding players this winter are two clubs that have reason to like the teams they ran out there last year -- the Twins (who have brought in only Chris Gomez and Jose Cabrera) and Angels (Eric Owens, Rich Rodriguez).
"To me," said one NL executive, "it takes a lot of courage to go into battle the way they're doing it. But they're right. You don't make moves just to make moves. You're supposed to make a move based on what you're needs are."
One team still active in the market is (whaddayaknow) the Devil Rays. With new manager Lou Piniella pushing for more veteran reinforcements, the Rays look like the favorite to land Jose Cruz. And they're still working on adding an experienced first baseman, with Travis Lee and Brian Daubach high on that radar screen. But two GMs once interested in Lee -- who deflected the Braves' overtures when it was apparent they were going to offer "only" the million bucks they gave Robert Fick -- say he and Boras continue to look for big money which doesn't appear to be there.
As the days dwindle before spring training, it's amazing to see what some players are forced to sign for. While Bill Mueller got two years and $4.5 million from the Red Sox after accumulating 13 homers and 61 RBI in the last two years combined, Jose Hernandez wound up taking $1 million (plus another $300,000 if he plays 150 games) from the Rockies after totaling 49 homers and 151 RBI the last two years.
"That will be a great signing for Colorado," said one baseball man. "Everybody knows he's susceptible to the breaking ball -- but there are no breaking balls in Colorado."
Finally, our bobblehead czar, David Hallstrom, reports that all you southern Californians need to circle Aug. 17 on your calendars. It's the promotion of the year -- Rally Monkey Bobblehead Day in (where else?) Anaheim. (You were expecting maybe Pac Bell?)
Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
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