What Can MLB and NFL Teams Learn from Each Other?
NFL teams would be better served by trading with each other more, while MLB teams should aim to more frequently lock up star players before Free Agency
In pro sports, Front Offices face immense pressure to construct rosters that can deliver consistent success. While each major league has its unique characteristics, many best practices in team building and roster construction often transcend these differences. For team executives to be successful at their job, it is important to never stop learning. And since executives in the same league are usually hesitant to share their secrets with each other in real time, they can gain valuable and immediately deployable insights by looking beyond their own leagues and learning from the best practices of teams in other sports. This is a topic I plan to explore in more detail over the next few months, starting with NFL and MLB teams.
What Can NFL Teams Learn from their MLB counterparts?
More Frequent Trades - I explored this topic in detail around the NFL Trade Deadline, when I called for NFL teams to make more midseason trades like their counterparts in other leagues.
The NFL has made some progress in this regard in recent years, but trades remain an underutilized resource in roster building. While salary cap considerations and the relative economic parity between teams make trades more difficult in the NFL than in MLB (and other leagues), they do not alone explain the lack of trades. I believe that the desire not to “lose” a trade is preventing NFL GMs from dealing more often with their counterparts, at the expense of closing an avenue towards roster improvement.
As an example, the various trade charts make it easy for fans and analysts to judge who “won” a Draft Day trade. Were it not for Front Offices getting excited (and potentially overconfident) about picking specific prospects, thus necessitating a move up the board, we’d likely see very few draft day trades.
MLB teams, however, tend to do a good job building towards a contending window. It is why we see teams with little shot of making the playoffs frequently unloading players they do not envision being there when they are more likely to be a contender, usually getting back valuable prospects in return. While some trades end up with clear winners and losers, there have been countless cases of a trade acquisition being the missing piece on a championship team as well as prospects developing into key pieces of a young core down the line.
Of course, MLB GMs and Presidents of Baseball Operations tend to have a much longer leash than their counterparts in the NFL, which allows them to more confidently build for the future when the present looks bleak. It is for that reason I have argued for greater owner patience in rebuilding. Still, as NFL teams look for new ways to innovate, more frequent trading is something they can borrow from MLB.
What Can MLB Teams Learn from their NFL Counterparts?
Extend Core Players Early - In the NFL, top players rarely make it to Free Agency. MLB, however, is a completely different story. The past two off-seasons have seen P/DH Shohei Ohtani and OF Aaron Judge - widely considered to be the best players in all of baseball today - hit the open market. It would be unthinkable for players like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning to become Free Agents while in their primes.
The biggest NFL extensions typically occur after a player’s third season in the NFL - one or two years before they become Unrestricted Free Agents, depending on if the team can exercise a 1st year option. At this point, teams have a fair amount of leverage. Should a top player not want to sign an extension, he will have to risk playing out his rookie contract and the following season under the Franchise Tag or 5th year option - both of which would be much lower than what they’d make if they signed an extension. For players drafted in the first round, the 5th year option and Franchise Tag could postpone Unrestricted Free Agency by two years.
A lot can happen in that time, so it is easy to understand why players might be willing to sacrifice a little bit of what they’d likely make on the open market for long-term security, while also getting more cash earlier. Once a player hits Unrestricted Free Agency, the balance of power shifts. This is reflected in the contracts that players receive. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who believes that a QB like Daniel Jones or Kirk Cousins who signed a deal as a UFA worth $40-45M/year is a better value than Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert - both of whom signed extensions and are making over just over $50m/year.
MLB teams begin to lose their leverage after a player’s third or fourth season in the Big Leagues as well. At this point, a player is arbitration eligible, and 5th and 6th year players are often well compensated through the process. Without the possibility of a Franchise Tag, these players are less incentivized to want to sign an extension and more likely to want to hit the open market. This means that MLB teams hoping to buy out a couple years of Free Agency should aim to extend their players after 3-4 seasons, or even earlier.
In fairness, MLB teams are likely more reluctant to do so than their NFL counterparts due to the player development component of the equation as well as the fact that MLB contracts are fully guaranteed at signing for the most part. While NFL players have likely reached their primes by the end of their third season, MLB players take longer to develop; typically not reaching their peaks until their mid-to-late 20s. Thus, when signing a player to an early extension, an MLB team is betting on his ability to continue to improve rather than maintain current talent levels. Furthermore, we are seeing more and more teams try and lock up their young cores early - the 2021 World Champion Atlanta Braves a prime example.
What MLB teams should consider, however, is not the just the risk of an early extension, but also that of potential alternative moves. As an example, the Boston Red Sox should weigh the risks of signing young star 1B Triston Casas now against scenarios such as signing him later at then current market value, trading for a similar caliber player, signing a comparable Free Agent, or hoping a current Minor Leaguer develops into a cheaper alternative. Re-signing Casas looks much less risky in that context. In the NFL, signing Burrow or Herbert was not without risk, but the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Chargers rightfully saw it as a better gamble than having to potentially sign someone like Cousins in Free Agency as a replacement, hoping to find another star QB in the Draft as a cheaper alternative, or waiting a year or two and seeing Burrow and Herbert’s prices go up even further.
Indeed, a look at the biggest extensions in MLB history shows that teams have a solid hit rate on extensions - even those happening after that Year 3-4 window. And while the jury is still out on many of the pre-arbitration deals inked over the past several years, many have proven to be fruitful. It is this very strategy that has allowed the Braves to affordably lock in their core for the next several years. The risk on the pre-arb deals is mitigated due to the size, as just 3 of the 15 extensions signed in 2022 and 2023 were for more than $100m (though in fairness the Wander Franco deal has turned out to be a disaster due to off-the-field issues).
Still, teams like the Red Sox (among others) have struggled to sign their players before hitting Free Agency - whether pre-arb or later - until recently. Throughout the 2010s, it led them to lose homegrown stars like Jon Lester - who they had to replace with the far more expensive David Price, who wound up being largely a disappointing signing given the contract. The Red Sox, however, are not alone in overpaying for FAs. The list of MLB Free Agent disappointments is a long one and includes players that signed massive $100m+ deals. Some of the many examples are Albert Pujols, Carl Crawford, Anthony Rendon, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Josh Hamilton, with Xander Bogaerts looking like the next addition to this list.
With that in mind, I believe MLB teams should feel more at ease offering extensions both to pre-arb players they see as promising and to core players close to Free Agency and that are known fits in their clubhouse - such as the Dodgers did with Mookie Betts in 2020.