I don't feel a lot of sympathy for the mega-star FAs who just aren't satisfied with the $25m per year with only a 5-year term offers they've gotten, or whatever it may be.
Then again, I don't feel any sympathy for the owners, who are swimming in money.
The problem is the guys who are in their first few years in the league don't get paid a fraction of what they're worth. So, yes, it is much more cost-effective for a GM to hope that one of those guys can do approximately as well as a medium-tier veteran that he'd have to pay $5m a year instead of $500k.
I don't know what the solution is, but it just seems like a huge problem when teams have free reign to pay their youngest players a fraction of what they'd have to pay similarly-skilled older players. There's so much money in baseball these days, you'd think there would be a way to throw more of back to the 1-3 year service-time guys, not to mention the minor leaguers, who get paid an inhumane wage.
If the younger guys' salary corresponded a little more with their contributions, then maybe the extra experience and dependability of the veteran becomes a little more appealing, if you're talking about, say, $5m a year versus $3m a year rather $5m vs. $500k.
