Last week, the MLB Players Association and team owners came to agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement. The old one expired December 1and before expiring, the two sides came together, continuing baseball's historic lack of work stoppage.
One large point of contention between owners and the MLBPA was draft pick compensation. Under the old system, teams could lose first round picks for signing players who declined a Qualifying Offer (set at an average of the top 125 salaries in baseball, a $17.6M one-year deal this year). This served as a drag on those free agent salaries for those players as teams did not want to penalized for signing those players.