While sitting at Panera Bread having dinner today and following a trip to take advantage of the Borders Book Stores closing and buying plentiful amounts of baseball books that will take me months to read, I had a thought. I was listening to the owner of Baseball-Reference.com on the Baseball Today podcast talk about the difference between theirs and FanGraphs.com WAR ratings, and it got me thinking about the future of player values and their reflection of contracts.
So.. will there be a day where there are no longer a need for agents? Will the ability to effectively peg a value to a certain player be so perfected that we no longer need to argue over years and dollars? What if it becomes so spot-on that there is no negotiating.. the science and math of analysis of performance, ROI, expected outcome and player value is so concrete that players are paid a certain amount as a rookie and then paid FOLLOWING their season based on WAR. The players union would hate it, but in all reality wouldn't it make sense? Jayson Werth, closer your ears my friend, because there may come a day where the industry looks back and says "what the hell were we thinking?!"
As someone who follows the evolution of how organizations are progressing, and how statistical analysis has come such a long way in such a short time.. its completely conceivable that negotiating will no longer have a place in the game and that performance and expected return will speak for itself. Players who perform are paid an equivalent share of the teams income based on their ability to drive revenue (contribute towards wins). Crazy? It may seem as though this is logical, but FAR FAR from reality, or at least modern day reality. At least then we would truly put the logic of statistical analysis to the test as brains in baseball will overtake feeling.
What do you think?
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