Tomorrow is a special day in the baseball offseason calendar. What's so significant about November 3rd? Well, it's the first day of free agency. Woohoo! Signings and stuff! Unlike the NBA and NFL though, MLB free agents don't normally sign on the first day they're able to. Things usually drag out for weeks, if not months. Hell, Prince Fielder didn't sign until the end of January last offseason. The worst part about free agency dragging out so long is that teams tend to focus so much on one player that if he signs elsewhere late in the offseason, they don't have much of a contingency plan. For example, if a team is going hard after Zack Greinke, and he signs with another team in the middle of January…odds are that the next best free agent starting pitcher is much lower on the totem pole than a player like Greinke. That will result in the losers of the Greinke derby to overpay in the trade market, which highly benefits a team like the Rays that has the potential to deal both James Shields and David Price this offseason once the free agency dominos begin to fall.
Around the corner yesterday, we started mopping up the Free Agent Preview pieces with an east coast flair, discussing the Orioles, Nationals, and Yankees. We also learned that the Miami Marlins have named former catcher Mike Redmond as their new manager and the successor to Ozzie Guillen in Miami. Finally, Scott Allen took a look at the impending Dan Haren trade, which will be going down today if it happens at all. Scott and I had a chuckle on Twitter last night about how it seemed inevitable that Haren would be dealt to one of the teams that he *didn't* list in that piece, just because that's the way the world works sometimes.
Enjoy your offseason, everyone.
