Why are Bryce Harper and Manny Machado still free agents?

Ted Berg | USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. In this edition we'll be looking at Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, and why they aren't playing for any baseball teams yet. Weird, right? Extremely weird. Well, we’re here to help you understand all that. Or understand as much as can be understood.

Wait, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are still free agents?

Right!? The end of the Super Bowl marks the unofficial start of baseball season, and pitchers and catchers report to spring training early next week.

Something similar happened last year, when relatively big-name free agents like Eric Hosmer and J.D. Martinez didn't find new homes until late February. But when it happened last year, many believed teams were reluctant to spend because they were preparing to chase guys like Harper and Machado this year.

I thought those guys were really good

They are!

Are they super old or something?

No! In fact, both Harper and Machado are 26, or extremely young by the standards of MLB free agents. Baseball players don't typically start seeing big declines in performance until their early 30s, and just about everyone expected Harper and Machado would be choosing between decade-long megadeals.

The Angels gave Albert Pujols a 10-year, $240 million contract a month before his 32nd birthday. And there's more money in the game now than there was six years ago: Baseball's revenue keeps growing.

Well, what the heck?

It's complicated! But a big part of the hold-up involves the sport's most recent collective-bargaining agreement, which went into effect in 2017. It established more punitive penalties for teams exceeding MLB's luxury-tax threshold, currently set at $206 million.

As recently as the early part of this decade, teams like the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox would somewhat frequently field payrolls more than twice the league median, but no team has done that since 2015.

The surcharge is properly called the Competitive Balance Tax, and in that it exists to mitigate the payroll disparity between big- and middle-market clubs, it has succeeded. But because the financial penalties compound with consecutive years above the threshold, and because teams that blow past the mark now see their draft picks pushed back, front offices have incentive to keep their payrolls near or below the luxury-tax limit.

The existence of the threshold gives teams justification for limiting their investment in players, which allows teams to take in a larger portion of the sport's increasing revenues. The free-agent market just isn't what it was a few years ago, and so guys like Harper and Machado are left to dangle.

I thought it was because they're jerks!

No. Teams happily employ jerks if they're extremely good at baseball. There are undoubtedly way worse dudes than Harper and Machado inked in for 2019 playing time somewhere.

So what's going to happen?

It's increasingly unclear. If the price tag drops far enough on either player, plenty of teams will come sniffing. But talk of $400 million lifetime deals has dried up, and some of the teams thought likely to pursue Harper and Machado -- the Dodgers and Yankees, especially -- are acting as though they're not in the plans.

They're going to play somewhere. The team most consistently rumored in the mix for both players, oddly, is the Chicago White Sox, and the Phillies also still appear a potential landing spot for either. The Padres are said to be interested, but the Padres are often said to be interested. Mystery teams always lurk.

When are they going to sign?

It's sort of a game of chicken. It must be extremely annoying to have no idea if you'll be going to Florida or Arizona next week, and maybe one or both of Harper and Machado will get sick of waiting, swallow pride and sign a deal for less than they hoped, or maybe a team that really wants them gets nervous that a competitor is moving in and finally ponies up the cash.

My guess -- and it's a total guess -- is that Machado signs sometime in the middle of next week and reports to spring training more or less on time. Harper holds out a little longer, we hear a whole lot about Bryce Harper remaining unsigned as camps open, then he signs an opt-out loaded deal that's worth more but not much more than Giancarlo Stanton's record $315-million extension.