Why MLB Is Asking the Wrong Question About Freddie Freeman
The league's new "Cornerstone Player" proposal identifies a real problem...but tries to solve it in exactly the wrong way.
(My apologies on the site being dark for a day or so - still getting over being under the weather.)
Freddie Freeman was never supposed to leave Atlanta.
Not because the Braves owed him a contract, and not because he deserved special treatment. Because that’s what fans want. They want franchise icons to finish their careers where they became franchise icons.
Major League Baseball seems to understand that.
Buried inside its latest collective bargaining proposal is something called the “Cornerstone Player Provision,” a rule that would allow teams to sign their own free agents to contracts a year longer and for more money than those available elsewhere.
On its face, that’s one of the most interesting ideas owners have proposed during these negotiations.
The problem is that MLB isn’t really proposing a “Cornerstone Player” rule.
It’s proposing a salary cap system that happens to include one.
Those aren’t the same thing. Let’s talk about it.
The Problem MLB Is Actually Trying to Solve
Fans hate watching franchise icons leave. Freddie Freeman is the perfect example for the Braves - drafted by Atlanta in 2007, he signed a contract extension with the Braves in 2014 before ultimately choosing to leave after the 2021 season because the Los Angeles Dodgers offered the free agent a longer contract than the Braves were willing to go.
And this isn’t uniquely a Braves problem - Juan Soto arguably should have remained with the Washington Nationals, just like Mookie Betts should have remained with the Boston Red Sox. But both players departed after their original teams couldn’t come to contract terms with them on a long-term extension, with Washington trading away Soto and Boston dealing the veteran Betts when he was looking to sign long-term.
The league deserves credit for identifying the problem. I just don’t think it deserves much credit for the proposed solution.
Fans want their best players, the ones that came up through the minor league system and debuted with the team and became cornerstones; they want those to stick around. They want to be able to buy those jerseys without worrying that the player will leave.
This is a legitimate problem worth solving.
But the way they propose to do it? That’s not it.
The Part They Got Right
In the league’s newest CBA proposal, they introduced the concept of the “Cornerstone Player Provision.”
Essentially, MLB’s owners propose giving teams an advantage in trying to resign their own free agents, similar to the NBA’s “Bird Rights” provision.
In basketball, the “Qualifying Veteran Free Agent Exception”, shortened to “Bird Rights” after Boston Celtics superstar Larry Bird, gives NBA teams a mechanism to re-sign their own free agents through a circumvention of the salary cap.
Essentially, while signing a new player is prohibited if that contract puts the team’s total payroll over the league’s salary cap, Bird Rights bypass that restriction. The team effectively holds an advantage in offering the most years and the most money, as they are the only team legally permitted to go “over the cap” to match a competing team’s offer to retain one of their own players.
The ability to retain your own stars is interesting and something that MLB needs. That’s the kind of incentive baseball should be discussing.
But notice how MLB chose to accomplish that.
Incentives vs. Restrictions
Imagine trying to encourage home ownership by outlawing apartments.
You’ll probably wind up with more homeowners. But you’ll accomplish that mostly by eliminating alternatives rather than making ownership more attractive.
But it won’t do as much to increase the number of people who are buying homes as if you made it easier to buy homes, whether that be through down payment assistance, interest rate reductions, or other financial maneuvers.
Allowing MLB teams to offer special, better contract terms to their own free agents is an interesting and constructive way to solve the problem.
But limiting what players can sign for if they go elsewhere? That’s overly restrictive. The league went with that tack, limiting free agents to five-year deals if they sign elsewhere, but six years if you stay.
Capping annual salary at 15% of a team’s payroll if you leave, but allowing for slightly more if you stay, is overly restrictive.
Prohibiting any sort of payment deferrals, which are unpopular among fans but allows players to mitigate the state income tax disparity between franchises, is overly restrictive.
If MLB’s purported goal is keeping stars where they started their careers, why is almost every mechanism built around limiting the alternative?
There Are Better Ways To Do This
I’m a firm believer in incentivizing the behavior you want, not restricting the behavior that you don’t. There are ample ways within the current economic structure of the league to incentivize the re-signing of homegrown stars.
Maybe it’s CBT relief. Maybe it’s revenue-sharing incentives. Maybe it’s draft compensation. The point isn’t that any one of those ideas is perfect. It’s that they all encourage the behavior MLB says it wants.
For example, teams that are over the luxury tax threshold can receive a CBT discount for a “Cornerstone Player” contract - i.e., excluding a percentage of a homegrown star’s AAV from CBT calculations. Treat this like the NBA’s Bird Rights idea: the longer the player has been in your organization, the more flexibility you have with their contract terms.
Teams that are on the lower end of luxury tax payrolls can elect a different incentive, if they choose: receiving additional revenue-sharing monies for long-term extensions of Cornerstone Players. Treat this similarly to the NBA’s Bird Rights provision, too - the longer the player has been in the organization, the larger the percentage of their contract that is covered by an increase in the league’s revenue sharing distribution to you.
What if we modified the Qualifying Offer system, which both the MLBPA and the owners have mutually agreed should go away in this CBA? Rather than losing a draft pick for signing a Qualifying Offer player, what if re-signing a qualified “Cornerstone Player” earned your team additional draft compensation?
Every one of those encourages teams to keep stars.
None of them requires shrinking the free-agent market.
Carrots, not sticks.
Be Skeptical of the “Competitive Balance” Framing
I’m skeptical that competitive balance is their primary goal.
If competitive balance were truly the primary objective, I’d expect to see far more incentives to spend than restrictions on spending.
The accusation levied by sports business reporters like Evan Drellich of The Athletic that the primary concern of the owners is increasing the rate of franchise valuation, to come closer to matching the NFL and NBA, isn’t exactly proven wrong by proposals like what the league put forth today.
Systems with greater payroll certainty naturally create more predictable business operations. More predictable businesses tend to become more valuable.
Whether that’s the league’s intent or simply the economic consequence, it’s difficult to ignore that this proposal focuses heavily on cost certainty while doing comparatively little to encourage additional spending. It constrains the top without boosting the bottom.
The Braves Work Under A Different Model
One of the best parts of this proposal already exists.
Atlanta has repeatedly extended their young players, retaining several of their homegrown stars, including Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, and Spencer Strider
They didn’t need a Cornerstone rule to do it. They needed an organization willing to invest.
That’s an important distinction.
The current system already rewards organizations that prioritize keeping their stars.
The conversation in Pittsburgh is about how long Paul Skenes continues to pitch for the franchise before either being traded or departing in free agency. The Washington Nationals broke up the band, trading generational stars Trea Turner, Juan Soto, and Max Scherzer before they reached free agency, all while watching Bryce Harper sign with a divisional rival. Even the deep-pocketed Boston Red Sox weren’t willing to keep their stars, trading away Mookie Betts and letting Xander Bogaerts walk in free agency before reluctantly extending (and then trading) Rafael Devers.
The challenge isn’t that teams can’t keep their stars. It’s that not every owner chooses to prioritize doing so.
Even successful franchises are guilty of this. The Milwaukee Brewers, with very few exceptions, have dealt their expiring veterans a year early rather than watch a Josh Hader or a Corbin Burnes walk in free agency, receiving only a compensation pick in return.
It's worth noting that these aren't mutually exclusive ideas. Baseball could absolutely adopt some version of the Cornerstone Player Provision without limiting free-agent contracts to five years or imposing maximum salaries. In fact, I think the proposal becomes much stronger once you separate those ideas.
The Better Path Forward
The Cornerstone Player Provision deserves to survive these negotiations. It just deserves a better framework. Honestly, I hope some version of it survives. Baseball should absolutely encourage teams to keep their franchise icons.
But there’s a fundamental difference between encouraging something and restricting every alternative.
The current proposal spends far more time limiting what players can do than helping teams do what fans actually want.
If Major League Baseball wants more Freddie Freemans to spend their entire careers with one franchise, it should make staying more rewarding, not make leaving less attractive.