The noun "Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings" contains five capitalized words, so straightaway you know it's of grave importance. It's also over – this year's edition, anyway.
Yes, the protracted industry hootenanny in Nashville drew to a close on Thursday, and that means it's time for some partially forced reactions to what went down over those four or five days, depending upon how you count the start and end dates. No, it wasn't the most frantic of Winter Meetings in the annals of such things, but important transactions went down, momentum was established, foundations were laid, hands were shaken, and roundly misleading expense reports were submitted.
So to give you the view from above and set the stage for the (vast) remainder of the offseason, let's unfurl a few Winter Meetings takeaways for your uplift and enrichment. Forthwith …
1. It was mostly a slow one
While we did see a handful of second-tier signings and trades, the Winter Meetings were largely uneventful save for the blockbuster noted below. Sometimes that's what happens. The Winter Meetings, after all, are not the entire MLB offseason, and let's not forget that Aaron Nola (Phillies) and Sonny Gray (Cardinals) were plucked from the board before the calendar even flipped to December. However, given all the ballyhoo surrounding the Winter Meetings, it's easy to be taken aback when headline-grabber after headline-grabber doesn't go down.
There's good news, and the good news is that we have lots of free agents and trade candidates still available for hire and acquisition, and the abundance is such that it will help us survive the baseball-less expanse before us. Most notably, the game's biggest star, Shohei Ohtani (more on him in a moment), is still seeking his next employer, but that's just the start of it. Peruse our ruthlessly updated free-agent tracker for the 2023-24 offseason, and you'll find that a whopping 43 of our top 50 free agents remain unsigned. Moreover, our top four free agents and eight of our top 10 are still available. That's to say nothing of potential trade candidates like Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease, Corbin Burnes, Shane Bieber, and probably others who are all still being (reportedly) dangled to varying degrees. Yes, the Winter Meetings were a letdown, but the leading consequence of that is that almost all of the action is still ahead of us. That's good news as we begin to lock eyes with darkest winter.
2. The Yankees and Padres pulled off a blockbuster
The Yankees fortified their outfield by adding not one but two left-hitting fly-catchers whose last name ends in "o." The Alex Verdugo swap was noteworthy because the Yankees' trading partner was their blood rival in Boston. The big news, however, was that the Yankees added Juan Soto in a major seven-player trade with the Padres. In Soto, who's going into his age-25 season, the Yankees get one of the best "take and rake" hitters in all of baseball (which is another way of saying, well, one of the best hitters in baseball). He's a perfect lineup complement to the Yanks' franchise slugger Aaron Judge, and he's precisely the kind of offensive boost the club sorely needed in order to return to contention. The 2024 season will be Soto's walk year, which means a leading subplot will be whether the Yankees can extend him before he reaches free agency (probably not is the guess here).
As for the retrenching Padres, they clear Soto's salary in his final year of arbitration eligibility, which will probably exceed $30 million for next season. They also added reserves of MLB-ready or close-to-MLB-ready pitching to cushion against the likely free-agent losses of core arms like Blake Snell, Michael Wacha, and Josh Hader (all still available!). No doubt, the Padres made themselves worse in 2024 by trading away Soto, but they at least got something for him given that they had little chance of re-signing him beyond 2024.
However you come down on the trade, it tracks as one of the biggest ever made by a franchise that's no stranger to blockbusters.
3. The Ohtani plot thickened
At some point probably soon, the two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani will select his next team and ink the largest contract in MLB history – maybe one worth more than $500 million. No doubt, the league was hoping that Ohtani would put ink to paper during the Winter Meetings, but that didn't happen. What did happen, though, is a bit of compelling intrigue. To wit:
- Dodgers manager Dave Roberts may have earned himself a talking-to by disclosing his club's meeting with the two-way superstar, which the Ohtani camp wanted to keep under wraps.
- The Blue Jays and GM Ross Atkins went to some lengths not to tip off reporters or anyone else that they appear to have met with Ohtani at the team's Florida spring-training complex. Inevitably, citizen-journalists rose up:
- Cubs lead operator Jed Hoyer and Bob Nightengale of USA Today got the Nashville block hot with an apparent argument about Nightengale's report that the Cubs' Ohtani hopes were on the wane.
- A number of journos complained loudly that Ohtani's efforts at secrecy were negatively affecting the pace and profile of the offseason.
- The Dodgers, perhaps to make up for the loose lips of their skipper, reportedly asked reliever Joe Kelly to give up his No. 17 in the event of an Ohtani signing. One could argue the proper approach is to tell Joe Kelly he's giving up his number for Shohei Ohtani and not ask him, but that's ultimately unimportant.
The smart money remains on the Dodgers, of course, and we'll know soon enough whether the long expected becomes reality. The light dusting of intrigue is certainly appreciated, though, and it remains possible that an Ohtani stunner could come to pass.
4. The Yamamoto derby is underway
The best free agent available who's not named Shohei Ohtani is Japan's Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The 25-year-old right-hander combines youth with ace stuff and ace results, and every team could use that kind of long-term upside in the rotation. He's rightly coveted, and there's a chance he could fetch a $300 million commitment before you even account for the posting fee owed to his NPB team, the Orix Buffaloes. The Winter Meetings brought us some compelling scuttlebutt on that vital front.
Most notably, Mets owner Steve Cohen was reported to have met face-to-face with Yamamoto in Japan. That passes the sniff test, as the Mets badly need rotation help after dealing away Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer at the deadline, and Cohen of course is a willing and able spender among MLB owners. The Yankees have strong designs on making it "YamaSoto" in the Bronx, and other interested squadrons we learned or had confirmed in recent days include the Giants, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs. Whether Yamamoto is waiting for clarity on the Ohtani front is uncertain, but posting rules mean he has to sign with an MLB team by Jan. 4 or return to Orix. Given that the face-to-face meetings with suitors are underway, he'll probably make his choice soon.
