Bear with me, I'm a business guy so I like to look at teh business implications on baseball. As within all businesses, the market not only reacts to supply and demand (i.e. last year there was high demand for SP, low supply, hench ridiculous contract to mediocure SP), but also the market reacts to the market itself, and I wonder if the market reacts to the fact that outrageous contracts were given last year did not provide a good return, making them less willing to throw money at FA in another weak FA market (example, no one has even come close to Boras's demands for A-Rod)

It has happened before in baseball history (I think it was Kirk Gibson after winning ALCS MVP 1984 couldn't get anyone to sign him and ended up resigning with Detriot for a pay cut. Obviously this is an extreme example as it was ruled the owners were guilty of collusion that year)

Now there are some speculating that there was collusion again. Looks like the GMs and owners took the right course to make sure it was not collusion, but still, them meeting and taking about goals could easily mean that infact the owners are reacting to last year's FA signings and are backing away from a repeat.

How does this effect Red Sox? Well maybe Lowell won't get the crazy offers we feared (he's been on the market a couple days and already the only reported 4 year offers have all been denied and disproved so far), and though he is sure to get a 4 year offer from someone, maybe it won't be big enough to convince him to say goodbye to Fenway