Sports

Baseball entering a Golden Age for player swaps

The talent from future free agent classes keeps drip, drip, dripping away.

Not long ago, next offseason’s market was going to include Joey Votto, Adam Jones, Adam Wainwright, David Wright and Alex Gordon. All signed long-term extensions. For now it has Robinson Cano. But maybe for not much longer if his agent change away from Scott Boras actually does lead to a multi-year deal with the Yankees.

In that scenario, the best position player likely to reach free agency would be Jacoby Ellsbury — talented, but injury prone and erratic. The best pitcher is, well, that is a tougher one depending on the dubious health/worrisome declines of Josh Johnson, Matt Garza,

Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay.

The following year’s class was going to feature Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw — arguably the majors’ three best starters. But Hernandez and Verlander signed long-term extensions in recent months. And the expectation is the Dodgers will do what is necessary to retain Kershaw — even if it means making him the first $200 million pitcher.

The money now flows all around the game, not just New York and Boston. In the past 36 months, 15 players signed extensions worth more than $100 million that bought out free-agent years. Just one (CC Sabathia) was by the Yankees — or as many as the Mets (David Wright), Rays (Evan Longoria) and Brewers (Ryan Braun). And this doesn’t include the sub-$100 million group such as Wainwright, Jones, Chris Sale, Yadier Molina and Jose Bautista, whose long-term extensions further diluted the future free-agent pools.

Still, organizations are not going to stop chasing premium talent even if less and less of it reaches the open market. Which is why

I believe we have entered the Golden Age of the Trade.

“I agree whole-heartedly with your premise,” an AL general manager said. “There has always been some element of scarcity with the top players, but now that commodity is even more scarce. Trades are virtually the only way to acquire these guys, but with the supply diminishing, it puts the buyers into an extremely competitive process, which is good because I think we will see a lot of big trades over the next 3-5 years.”

Nine GMs, assistant GMs and personnel heads responded to a query and all anticipated — at minimum — an uptick in attempts to trade. There continued to be strong belief that with star prices rising, teams would remain cautious about moving prospects who provide cost containment/certainty. Nevertheless, the stronger consensus of my panel was that the hunger to find talent/win in this current environment will foster more trades, particularly of stars.

As another AL GM explained, “With the new CBA limiting clubs’ strategies in regard to acquiring amateur talent, and the wave of extensions reducing the free-agent pool, teams are going to have to look elsewhere to address their needs. I think we saw that this winter.”

In fact, this winter we saw other elements also stir the trade market. For example, the extra wild card has convinced more teams they can contend. That led to the Royals (Wil Myers) and Blue Jays (Travis d’Arnaud, Jake Marisnick) trading touted prospects to improve their playoff chances by acquiring players such as James Shields, Wade Davis, R.A. Dickey, Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson.

Also, teams no longer believe a handful of superpowers — Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies — will dominate the market. That emboldens others with championship aspirations. So the Nationals gave up Alex Meyer for Denard Span and the Reds surrendered Didi Gregorius for Shin-Soo Choo, though Choo can be a free agent after this season.

To land the offensive player they couldn’t find on the free-agent market, the Mariners included touted pitching prospect Taijuan Walker within a strong package to get Justin Upton. But Upton invoked his no-trade provision and was dealt from Arizona to Atlanta instead.

The rule changes and trends have more teams into go-for-it-mode than ever before, which led Brewers GM Doug Melvin to predict a hyper-active July trade market “because so many teams made moves to go all in, and when you do that like we did in 2008, you might just as well go all the way in if a July trade entices you.”

Milwaukee obtained Sabathia that July.

But here is the reality: Not every go-for-it team will succeed. Failure will lead to buyer’s remorse, which will lead to even more trades of these long contracts. There always have been financially motivated swaps. But the frequency is heightening. In this way, one personnel head said, “Trades have become the new free agency.”

For example, few teams were interested in signing Reyes to a six-year contract. But he was traded

with a five years left. And if the Jays are unsuccessful with this talent/payroll buildup, would there be surprise if Reyes were dealt again when he had three years remaining (assuming this current ankle injury does not derail his speed)? Would there be shock if the Reds one day explore moving Votto or the Twins Joe Mauer or the Angels Josh Hamilton?

These contracts become more attractive with fewer years/dollars or if the current team is willing to eat cash — more attractive still if there is not a suitable free agent available as a countermeasure.

Consider that of the 35 contracts worth $100 million-plus that were done before the last 12 months (so not including Verlander, Hernandez, Cole Hamels, etc), 11 have been traded a total of 12 times (Vernon Wells twice). Of the seven contracts between $90 million and $99 million (not counting the recently done deal for Wainwright), three have been traded. That is 15 trades involving players who had signed contracts for more than $90 million. And that does not include stars who fall below that pay grade and have been dealt such as Johnson, Upton, Dickey, etc.

More to come. We are in the Golden Age of the Trade.

joel.sherman@nypost.com