you are most certainly wrong Then it is a startlingly different era of baseball that we are stepping into. look around, we've been in it for several years now. the decline of ped's and the rising average age of prime free agents has absolutely changed the way front offices should approach free agent acquisitions. you're absolutely right that the sheer level of injuries and rapidly declining performance is uncanny and unpredictable, but only insomuch as how *quickly* those things have happened So won't the game just adjust accordingly based on past practices as opposed to ideal ones? It seems unlikely that you'll be able to snag guys like Castro and especially Rizzo on such team-friendly deals real soon; we'll probably just see prime free agents becoming available at younger ages as their agents and the union talk them out of waiting. And the pitching thing especially just feels more like the fluky timing of a bunch of injuries in close proximity to each other as opposed to an actual trend. sure, just as the pendulum swings one way, we can reason that it will swing back. i'm not sure what value that knowledge is though, since it has little bearing on the here and now of the baseball labor market. furthermore, a signing like albert pujols to a 10 year contract starting his age 32 season reinforces the current trend. until those contracts stop coming, the market for younger players won't change. in that it mostly won't exist