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Free Agent Spending Down This Offseason

ESPN's Buster Olney charts the decline in free-agent spending throughout baseball over the last two seasons. Except for the Yankees, of course.

Here's the table:

Free-agent spending (past three offseasons)
2006-072007-082008-09
Total$1,655,595,000$1,066,800,000$984,932,500
Yankees$61,250,000$396,150,000$441,000,000
Non-Yankees$1,594,345,000$670,650,000$543,932,500
$40M+ contracts1275

When you take out the Yankees, the decline is even more severe. You also have to wonder about the sustainability of a system where one team can spend 45 percent of the free-agent dollars.