See: http://www.sportsbusinesssims.com

Some sports experts contend that the bad economy was the reason for
the first decrease in the average baseball free agent contract size in
the 21st Century. But Keith Dobkowski, Sports Legal Specialist for
Sports Business Simulations, Inc., has another view.

In his SBS Working Paper called "Disability Insurance 3, Baseball 1,"
Dobkowski contends that the new baseball disability insurance policy,
allowing insurers to place a two-to-three-year limit on insurance
coverage adopted earlier this year, will cause an even greater
difference in payroll between teams, at a time when the new Major
League Baseball (MLB) Collective Bargaining Agreement was created, in
part, to reduce such disparities.

To make his case, Dobkowski presents data to support his conclusion.
He illustrates that the average length of a free agent contract signed
between the 2000-01 off-season and the 2002-03 off-season dropped from
2.666 years, to just 1.781 years in length. The most dramatic decrease
occurred in the period between the 2001-02 and 2002-03 off-seasons
when the average length of new agreements fell from an average of
2.482 years to 1.781