Latest post from The Sports Economist includes a snippet from the New York Times stating that "...A review of baseball’s transaction history since 2001 showed that the only period featuring fewer signings in the first 12 days of open bidding than this year came in the 2002-3 off-season..."

While the MLB free agent period does not get off to the bang that the NFL's does, and yes, it's a small sample size of 8 years, two guys have signed: Jeremy Affedlt, who while prized among fans such as ourselves is not exactly the big FA name the common fan has heard of; and Ryan Dempster, who from everything I've read was not really shopping his services around the league.

My thought is that talks may be slow due to the fact that none of the free agents expecting to command the top dollar contracts have signed yet.  Dempster's contract isn't chump change, but is it anywhere near what Sabathia will get, or even Sheets?  Market value has yet to be established, per se, for any offensive player.

On the other hand, I see from tobytobytoby's new fanpost that the Tribe just signed Greg Aquino.  Maybe now the dollars will start flowing into the market.

Could it really be economic uncertainty that's causing this, or are we just getting overanxious for news, any news, other than Greg Aquino?