One of the most interesting subplots of the Gerrit Cole signing has been how it’s shed light on free agent recruitment in baseball.
We hear all the time about how NBA teams and players try to convince free agents to sign, which makes sense because it’s a league with a salary cap. NBA teams can only offer identical max contracts and so a player’s decision on where to sign is about environment and supporting cast instead of money.
But up until recently I think I was (naively) under the impression that MLB teams just haggled with players and agents over contract details until they came to an agreement on a dollar amount and put ink to paper.