It seems that free agents, their agents, and everyone in baseball already knew the substance of this, although maybe not the specifics.
For any Seattle baseball fan, USS Mariner is a great site to add to your bookmarks, and here is one writer's (not mine) reaction (I have excerpted a paragraph from this link:
http://www.ussmariner.com/2013/12/08...long-exploded/)
"For all of us, this was a difficult article to read. It was powerful and worrying and it’s come at almost the worst possible time. It was difficult for me not because it’s going to change anything. The Mariners didn’t suddenly develop worse leadership. They’re not going to suddenly have a more negative perception around baseball. It was difficult for me because it supports the worst feelings I’ve had about the organization for what feels like a handful of years. The message is that the way things are is about as bad as people have feared. People around the Mariners already knew that. People elsewhere in baseball already knew that. Now the people in Seattle can know that. The team’s going to bring in a lot of new talent, but are these the people we trust to make that happen in a responsible, intelligent way? For a while, we’ve been cynical. Now it’s been laid out for us why we’re not wrong."