Kimbrel's agent isn't holding Kimbrel out, Kimbrel is holding Kimbrel out. If Kimbrel wants to sign a deal presented to him, he would direct his agent to accept the deal. Or change agents. Yes, you are correct. That was a poor choice of words on my part. Especially with Kimbrel, who is a veteran that's been around the game a long time, has played for different teams, has seen many teammates come and go. Albies is still a very young guy that hasn't been around MLB clubhouses that long and probably relied heavily on his agent. If Kimbrel gets burned by his current situation, he really has no one to blame but himself. He should know how the business works. And maybe Kimbrel has had a somewhat miserable time of it constantly moving around all the time chasing the highest paycheck all over the country--thus refusing to sign a one year deal. He wants to settle down for 5 or 6 years and end his career in one place. Nobody has been willing to commit to a reliever for that long. His agent sees this and Albies sees this and is like "I want to stay in Atlanta for the rest of my career--Meter, make that happen" For him perhaps the difference between 35 million and 100 million is just negligible monopoly money--the way the difference between 100 million and 300 million would be fairly negligible monopoly money to me. That may or may not be the case for him 10 years from now, but that might be how it seems right now. Speculation is fun.