The price of free agents in baseball keeps rising

It seems that money just doesn’t go as far as it used to.

This off season, a handful of baseball teams made very lucrative offers to free agents.

Some offers can be justified, others look as if they will come back to haunt the team in the years to come.

The best signing goes to the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies acquired starting pitcher Cliff Lee for $120 million over five years. With the addition of Lee, the defending National League East Champions have one of the best rotations in MLB history. This move makes Philly the team to beat in the N.L.

The worst contact signing in the off season came from the Washington Nationals. For some reason, the Nats decided to give outfielder Jason Werth a seven-year $126 million contract. Although Werth has put up solid numbers the last few seasons, he is now on a team that does not have a solid lineup. In Washington, there is no Ryan Howard or Chase Utley to protect Werth in the lineup. It is very difficult to see him living up to his contract.

Other losing teams include the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees. The Rangers failed to keep Lee after he helped lead them to the World Series while the Yankees failed to sign both Lee and Carl Crawford, who signed a seven-year $142 million contract with the Boston Red Sox.

The one team that has gone under the radar this off season is the Milwaukee Brewers. Although the Brewers gave up the majority of their prospects, they got back starting pitchers Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum. Those two additions, who will be the top two starters in their rotation, make the Brewers a dangerous team in the N.L. Central.

In Chicago, things stayed pretty quiet during the off season.

The Cubs made some minor additions to their team while the White Sox signed one of the most coveted free agents on the market.

The Cubs traded for SP Matt Garza and signed first baseman Carlos Pena to a one-year deal worth $10 million. But perhaps the biggest steal in all of baseball was the signing of Kerry Wood, who signed a one-year deal worth just $1.5 million. Add in the minor league signings of Reed Johnson and Braden Looper and the Cubs could contend in weak N.L. Central division.

On the other side of town, the White Sox re-signed Paul Konerko, A.J. Piersynski and Alexi Ramirez to multi-year deals while signing free agent slugger Adam Dunn to a four-year $56 million contract. The Sox have spent a lot of money and are hoping that Dunn and Konerko can get this team back to the postseason.

With each passing year, baseball players are getting more and more expensive. The days of finding bargains and signing players to minimal contracts may be over for good.

Players are no longer paid what they deserve, but rather, what the market dictates their value should be.

This does not bode well for many teams going forward.