In fact if you would go back and read the other long thread about this, you would find that there are people who have identified times when the opt out presents "more favorable terms towards the team." The real sticking point is between the words "never" and "rarely." To wit: if the signing player will have 10-5 rights with the signing team (so that they, the signing player, can not be traded), and if the league as a whole places a higher expected value on a players' later years than the signing team, then it can benefit the team to have the player opt out of the final years of their contract, which contract will somewhat paradoxically be overvalued in terms of the performance the player actually gives, but undervalued in terms of what some shitty front office is willing to pay, this paradox being in fact the greatest signal that the market for free agent superstars is inefficient, forcing teams desperate for a big name to overpay, the perhaps best example coming down the pipe being James Shields, but there also being plenty of historical examples (presented in the other thread) of players who should not have been paid $1 million for their age 35+ seasons, but in fact will be paid 25 times that, and the signing team would have been quite happy to see those players opt out a year early and bury some other team with the burden of dedicating 18.2% of their projected payroll to a guy who may or may not have working hardware in his left elbow, the decline of such hardware being somewhat unpredictable, but the overall aging curve for pitchers being so overwhelmingly negative at about age 32 that you'd be surprised how many GMs, supposedly savvy financial types, are willing to gamble such obscene amounts of money on something that has worse odds than an Arco slot machine outside Winnemucca. The actual willingness to let a player opt out (c.f. Sabathia and A-Rod) is the third sticking point here, but you will find people arguing that an opt out "never" benefits a team and then pointing to these two Yankees as examples of players who, okay, admittedly, would have benefitted the Yankees by opting out had the Yankees actually let them walk, therefore because teams won't be willing to let an opting out player actually walk away kind of seems like a small admission that an opt out can benefit a team if that team is willing to let the player go. So if the argument is an opt out can benefit a team, but "never" will because the team will "never" let that player actually walk away, I guess that's an argument that some people can try to make, but it seems to walk a fine, if not nonexistent, line between the theoretical financial value of an opt out only benefitting the person with an opt out (recognized, agreed), while ignoring the practical value of letting some other team overvalue the opting out player, while also only focussing on the practical situation of the original signing team not wanting to let the player go.