Freeman: Not a Free Man

A brief recap of the Freddie Freeman situation, in case you missed the story last month: Freddie Freeman, the longtime Atlanta Brave and current Dodger, fired his agent, Casey Close. It was no secret that Freeman had been unhappy with how the negotiations with his former team had unfolded this past offseason. Freeman had wanted to return to Atlanta, but the two sides could not come to terms, and so instead the Braves traded for a replacement, Matt Olson, and signed him to an eight-year, $168 million deal. Freeman went to the Dodgers for six years and $162 million.

So when Freeman dismissed Close last month, it was speculated that he was blaming his agent for failing to close a deal with his preferred team. There was even some reporting that Close had failed to communicate the Braves’ final offer to Freeman, but Close has denied that, and it’s probably just a lie the Braves are spreading to make Close look bad—you should never trust stuff that gets leaked by teams amid a contract negotiation.

But rather than dwell on the specifics on the negotiation, I want to highlight what it reveals about how power is distributed in capitalism. Because Freddie Freeman, all things considered, has it pretty good. He is going to make $27 million per year for the next six years to play baseball. As far as workers go, that’s pretty good. But he does not own the means of production, so ultimately he is at the mercy of those who do. Even though he wanted to return to Atlanta, he couldn’t, because workers—even workers who are very well-paid—do not have power under capitalism.

The Braves’ decision was, on some level, reasonable: They reportedly offered Freeman a five-year deal worth ~$140 million, but Freeman and Close wanted a sixth guaranteed year, that would have taken Freeman through his age-37 season. Olson is a very similar player: another left-handed hitting first baseman with very similar career numbers (139 career OPS+ for Freeman vs. 133 for Olson), but Olson is more than four years younger. So, while his deal is bigger than Freeman’s, it’s spread over more years, and only takes him through his age-35 season. That’s not nothing, given the drop-off a lot of first basemen have after they turn 35.

So you can sort of see why they did it—but just barely. They traded a fan-favorite and four prospects to possibly avoid two seasons of declining production. Whether or not this is the “right” move for the team won’t be clear for years, and depends on things that can only be assessed probabilistically. (FWIW, Baseball Reference has Freeman as being worth ~2 more wins than Olson this season—and the Braves are 2.5 games out of first place in the NL East.)

What’s more striking is how little say anyone outside of the ownership class has in decisions like this. Freeman wanted to return to Atlanta; Braves fans wanted him to return; his teammates seemingly wanted him to return. But none of that mattered, because the owners have the power under capitalism. Whenever people object to socialism because they supposedly love “freedom,” they have to ignore this massive contradiction: that under capitalism, the owners of capital have near-dictatorial control over how that capital is managed. If Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos decides that Olson is better than Freeman, then we all just have to live with that decision, no matter how wrong it may be or how it may affect the rest of us.

There are two common objections to this. First is that this is just how it must be, because we can’t let good business sense be overwhelmed by sentiment. That is the tone of so much of the coverage of the Olson/Freeman brouhaha. Take this representative passage, from a story by RJ Anderson of CBS Sports:

“What mattered to Anthopoulos was what mattered to him last deadline: putting his club in the best possible position to succeed. You can argue that's a mistake, or, at least, that the business of baseball should leave open room for emotions. It's a reasonable position; it's certainly the more romantic option. But if you view it through Anthopoulos' eyes, doing what he did, letting Freeman walk and trading for Olson, makes a certain kind of sense.”

In this framing, Anthopoulos is just a rational realist, “putting his club in the best possible position to succeed.” This is a common justification for the poor treatment of workers. Amazon drivers have to pee in bottles, fast food workers can’t get paid a living wage, Starbucks workers can’t join a union—otherwise the companies wouldn’t “succeed.” But that is only true if we define “success” by the ability of the ownership class to extract wealth from the workers.

For the Braves, the stupidity of the Success Excuse is clear. What puts the Braves in the best possible position for success is having the best players, and they must have thought Freeman was the better player to offer him a higher average salary than Olson. They weren’t trying to make the team better by trading for Olson—they were trying to avoid paying a guy slightly more than his late-30s production merited. But, of course, there’s no reason why a team can’t succeed with an overpaid player—in fact, most successful teams DO have overpaid players, because to build a good team, you need to sign free agents, and not every signing is perfectly efficient. The Braves weren’t trying to improve their team—they were just trying to save money.

The second objection is to insist that workers like Freeman DO have agency. After all, the word “free” is right there in “free agent”; if Freeman wanted to stay in Atlanta so bad, he could have just accepted the contract he was offered. He’s the one who chose to insist on that sixth guaranteed year. It’s hard to have too much sympathy for a guy because his boss wanted to pay him ONLY $140 million.

Personally, I find this pretty unpersuasive, since I don’t see why Freeman is obliged to accept less than he’s worth on the open market just so Liberty Media can squeeze more profit out of the Braves. But it’s worth acknowledging that Freeman IS somewhat lucky in this regard. Since his skills are so rare and in-demand, he could find a nice, soft landing in Los Angeles worth $162 million. Most workers don’t have that option.

But the fact that even Freeman, who is in such a good situation as a professional athlete, is ultimately at the mercy of the capitalist class, is a useful reminder of the position that workers occupy under capitalism. Most workers are, understandably, reluctant to see themselves as easily replaceable. After all, people develop skills at their jobs, no matter how dull or mindless the work is, with time and experience. That makes it hard to imagine that the boss could just ditch you to save money with no consequences.

On the other hand, most people realize they are not as hard to replace as Freddie Freeman, a former MVP and World Series champion. So if his fate is not ultimately in his own hands, then what hope do the rest of us have?