FanGraphs Article on Market Value

Really interesting article on the "two markets to acquire talent", which are available to all major league teams. Those are:

• Sign players via free agency.
• Trade for another team’s player, who is already under contract.

The piece notes that there has been "significant inflation" in the free-agency market, and given that, hypothesizes that teams are reacting to the rise in prices in free agency by increasing their valuations of cost-controlled players.

Which means: prospects are worth more than they used to be.

So what's that mean to Oriole's fans? That ultimately, according to the premise of this article, trading for players (like Hardy and Reynolds) using prospects as tender will bring more value this offseason (dollar-for-dollar) than free-agent signings will. Very interesting.