The core of any successful baseball team is homegrown talent, players drafted and developed by the franchise who perform at their athletic peaks at little cost. But no team, especially post-Reserve Clause, has shown the ability to develop an entire World Series-winning roster on its own. This is where free agency comes into play.
Free agency is where Major League Baseball front offices make their most high-profile mistakes. Large sums of money are being given out to players who may have already played their best baseball. But baseball teams inevitably have holes, and they cannot ignore those holes for the sake of their own vanity.