No by defienition he set the market. If someone else signed them then that someone else would have set the market. The "market value" is what the player got, not what the palyer is worth. Hendry set the market by being the first to sign theses two mediocre middle releivers who were coming off of career years to bloated contracts. I am pretty sure there was a quote by either one of those two to the effect of, "after I heard the offer I didn't need to talk to other teams". I think the quote was from Howry. That leads me to believe that Hendry did not just out bid every other suiter he out bid every other suiter by a considerable margin. ADD:I think Hendry needed to do sometihing to upgrade the pen so I don't think the signings in themself are bad things, but the money and years given to these two are a huge risk. It is not out of the realm of imagination to say that those two positions couldn't have been filled by farm hands, but that might have been a bigger risk then the signings. To me the performance of the bullpen from year to year is among the hardest things to forcast in baseball.