Plenty of players will tell you that baseball's "middle class" is eroding in free agency. But fear not, super agent Scott Boras says he has a solution.
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Now, first you should know that Bruce Meyer and Tony Clark are the MLB Players' Association brain trust, and Boras has been accused by some of being too aligned with Meyer. So the players have their suspicions, it seems.
And baseball players are suggesting that the rich keep getting richer, while older players who deserve "mid-range" salaries are getting the shaft.
Boras addressed all this after a press conference in which veteran pitcher Blake Snell was introduced to the San Francisco Giants media.
"I think having veterans in the clubhouse is very important for young players. They create better winning environments because they are more familiar with the league," Boras told The Score's Travis Sawchik. "I think there are players in that age group, 32 or so, they should have a luxury-tax exclusion. An amount of $15 million on down, if you sign a veteran player in that age bracket, they are excluded from your luxury tax.
"That would put those players in their own category. The prohibition is (because) those players are usually added late, and the owners are saying, 'Because of my tax situation, I am not going to sign this player.'"
For the record, the MLB luxury tax currently does not include exceptions for certain player types. So Boras' suggestion, while fairly doable, may not ever be utilized.
"While MLB is no stranger to introducing complex mechanisms into the roster section of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it's anyone's guess if such a rule would materially enhance the market for the middle class free agent," wrote R.J. Anderson of CBS Sports.
"After all, teams would still have to explicitly choose an older, more expensive player over a younger one earning closer to the league minimum. In this day and age, where teams are obsessed — at times to the point of detriment — with the concept of surplus value, it's possible that Boras' well-intended proposal would have minimal effect."
And middle-class MLB earners everywhere gave a hearty amen.
