More than 40 players were not tendered contracts by their clubs by last Friday’s deadline, making a much larger pool of free agents. Some of these players (complete list here) were starters for their teams last year and quite a few had been solid performers in recent seasons, if not in 2018.
There’s a larger issue here, too, in that many of these players, still productive, would likely have cost their teams a fair amount of money in 2019. What this accomplishes, essentially, is to depress the free-agent market for the mid-level player. The big boys like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado will still get paid.