J.D. Martinez says the Players Association needs to counter the ’embarrassing’ state of free agency
"The game has to change."
Last offseason, J.D. Martinez had to wait until Feb. 26 to finalize his five-year, $110 million deal with the Red Sox. By the time his agent, Scott Boras, finished negotiating with the Boston brass, Martinez knew something had changed in Major League Baseball.
Martinez told WEEI.com that players were getting paid fairly and the sport as a whole was thriving until 2016. Since then, the free agent market has dried up, and even superstars like Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are forced to wait until well into spring training to ink contracts. Martinez said he “100 percent” thought the players this winter would suffer the same fate he did last year.
“They got away with it last year,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they do it again? What’s going to happen? Nothing. It’s embarrassing for baseball, it really is. It’s really embarrassing for the game.”
Martinez noted the owners claim the market is down, but the slugger said that’s because they are “trying to suppress it.” The chief of the Players Association, Tony Clark, recently hinted at collusion among franchises, noting that some free agents have received inquiries from multiple teams in a short window of time after going long stretches with no contact.
“It’s more of a race towards the bottom now than a race towards the top,” Martinez said. “You can go right now through everyone’s lineup and you already know who’s going to be in the playoffs. What’s the fun in that? We might as well just fast-forward to the end of the season.”
The 31-year-old pegged the number of teams intentionally trying to lose at 80 percent. He recognized that the players are locked into their current collective bargaining agreement for the next three seasons, but wants to ensure the Players Association has their “ducks aligned” when the sides sit down to negotiate again in 2021.
“We just gotta go to the drawing board,” Martinez said. “The Players Association comes, sits down with the CBA, and we gotta figure out how we’re going to counter it. The game has to change. We have to incentivize to win, not to lose.”
