Article: Free agents didn't reap as much this time

ATLANTA -- With more than half of the winter crop of free agents now signed -- 97 out of 183 who filed in November -- it might be possible to claim baseball is actually behaving itself.

No one will get the deals like Carlos Beltran or Magglio Ordonez got last winter. Framed against 2004, when the average salary actually dropped 2.7 percent, you might think ownership has learned something.

Or, you might not.

"Most people in baseball would tell you that this free agent class was viewed as, if not weak, then thin, very shallow," Braves general manager John Schuerholz said. "And the way it seems our industry dealt with it was to spend more money."

With most of the big-ticket contracts out of the ...

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