I completely agree with Beener on this. When I first started, before the introduction of free agents, one of the more daunting things was to see how rapidly the TL price rose for players that had even a small amount of training. To get a decent USA D5 starter would be over 100K, and that's for a guy that wouldn't be much of a backup in D4. That led me to buy some cheap 19 year olds and train them 2 position, which was fine, but I'm sure it delayed my team's progress a bit (not a huge deal, but I may have a longer view of team building than other brand new owners).
So I think the free agents have been great in helping increase the supply of these low to mid level players, and thus reducing prices.