The market names a price. It is usually above value, and that gap is the game.
The open market prices scarce players at a premium, so the engine prices value against market cost and reads the contract structure as the true cost.
The best players never reach it. The premium is the default.
Free agency is where cost most often exceeds value. The open market prices the scarce available players at a premium, and the best players rarely reach it, so what reaches free agency is the players other teams chose not to keep, priced by a market that pays for scarcity, need, and name.
This is the price-is-not-value doctrine pointed at the market that most reliably breaks it, the same discipline that finds the rookie-scale surplus and the cross-level value find, turned on the open market. The engine does not say do not sign, it says what the signing is worth against what it costs. The market names the price, the engine names the value, and the gap is the decision.
Illustrative on the real free-agency market dynamic (the best retained before the market, the available priced at a premium, the surplus discipline applied hardest, price-is-not-value on the open market). Composite market, demonstration figures.
Pay for what sustains, not for the career year.
A free agent's on-field value is his OVERALL KR read through his positional value, in win-equivalent terms, next-season projected and independent of what he is paid. His cost is the cap hit the bidding market sets. Surplus is the gap, and the engine does three things the market forgets.
On-field value is read through positional value, a position-relative grade converted to win-equivalents before pricing, so the engine will not let a team pay premium-quarterback money for an elite interior lineman. The same free agent is a different value to different teams, priced into each team's cap position, need, contention window, and scheme fit. Buy the surplus, not the name, at the value-to-team price, never a market-wide one.
Illustrative on the real free-agency surplus discipline (the on-field-value-against-market-cost surplus, the three disciplines, the negative-surplus flag, the value-to-team pricing). Composite players, demonstration figures.
The cap hit, not the cash, and the dead money it leaves.
A free-agent signing is not a fee, it is a negotiated, guaranteed-money contract, and its real cost is the cap hit across the years, not the headline total or the cash. The cap hit is almost never the cash in a given year, because signing-bonus proration and backloaded base salaries decouple the two.
The engine reads the cap hit across every year, so the structure's downside is priced at signing rather than discovered at the cut. Read the cap hit, price the guarantee, and know the dead money before you sign.
Illustrative on the real contract-structure layer (the cap hit as base plus prorated bonus not cash, the limited-guarantee structure, the void-year and dead-money risk, the true cost as the structure). Composite contract, structure current-as-of, scale numbers held in the Pro Cap Reference (v0).
The market always names a price; the space between it and the value is the only thing worth signing on.
Price the value, not the market.
Free Agency Intelligence prices each target's on-field value against the market cost, flags the negative-surplus overpay, hunts the value pockets, and reads the contract structure as the true cost, so a team signs on the surplus and the real cost, not the market buzz.