There have been various statements recently about the New York Yankees being unable to sign any more Type A free agents, like Manny Ramirez or Orlando Hudson, this year. The reason given was that the Yankees had already signed three Type A free agents in Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett and since they didn't lose any FA yet, they would be at their limit.

This is absolutely untrue.

In order to get a better understanding of the free agency rules, I spoke with Greg Bouris, Director of Communications at the MLB Players Association.

He said the limit this off season is 12 Type A and B free agents which can be signed by each team. Unrealistic, but a fact.

This is based upon the number of players this season who elected to file for free agency, which was 175 according to Greg. That number includes not only Type A and B, but all major league FA’s. Minor league free agents are NOT included.

According to Greg, the rough guideline is a team can sign one FA for every 14 players which have filed.

Also, once a player files for FA, he is considered a “lost FA” in regards to amount of players who can be signed. According to Bouris, after this past season the Yankees had 9 “lost” FA’s. Therefore, Mike Mussina is considered a “lost free agent,” even though he retired. Same with Andy Pettitte even though he re-signed with the Yankees.

I then asked Greg if the reason why Mussina elected FA was to help the Yankees in regards to the “lost” status. He said probably not, but elected to file just in case he decided to unretire.

Arbitration status has nothing to do with regards to amount of lost free agents.

He also said the limits are in place to stop a team from hoarding the available FA’s if, say, only 10 players filed for FA in a given year.

I told him with the guy with a similar sounding last name (agent Scott Boras), and his boss (MLBPA chief Donald Fehr) involved, that will never happen.

So, although it is very unlikely, the Yankees conceivably could sign Ramirez, Hudson, Adam Dunn etc., but why would they want to?