AS PLODDINGLY AS this Major League Baseball offseason has proceeded, with dozens of veterans still unsigned while spring training rapidly approaches, it's worth understanding: This is not new. Just over half a decade ago, the free agent market was even slower -- and, for players, far worse.
Three weeks before spring training in 2018, MLB remained at a complete standstill. Over the previous three months, teams had spent less than $700 million combined. The biggest deal belonged to veteran first baseman Carlos Santana for $60 million. A staggering 51 players signed deals between Jan. 25 and Opening Day, compared to 25 last offseason -- all one-year contracts.
The similarities between 2018 and 2024 are striking. Back then, four of the best available players -- Eric Hosmer, J.D. Martinez, Jake Arrieta and Mike Moustakas -- were clients of agent Scott Boras. This year, the four best remaining players -- Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, Jordan Montgomery and Matt Chapman -- are repped by Boras. Shohei Ohtani almost certainly decelerated the market until he ended his historic free agency on Dec. 9 -- just as some executives suggested he did in 2017-18 when he came to MLB from Japan.
Years later, players would point to the 2018 winter as a galvanizing moment for their eventual collective-bargaining fight that threatened to torpedo the 2022 season. The reason players aren't up in arms this time around is because, despite the pace, the money spent so far generally reflects a healthy market.
It's not just the billion-plus dollars the Los Angeles Dodgers guaranteed Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto before the calendar turned. It's the additional $1.5 billion that teams have lavished on 95 or so other free agents. It's that 34 of those players -- even in a relatively weak free agent class -- received an average salary of $10 million or more. There are enough data points to suggest that even if Ohtani and Yamamoto held things up, and trade talks did the same, the biggest problems of this winter have been less about players not getting paid and more about the rate at which it's happening.
What's left, then, are the questions executives, agents, owners and others around the game are asking themselves and one another: Just how much money is actually still available? When is it going to be spent? And who's going to do the spending?
AT THE BEGINNING of the offseason, ESPN's Kiley McDaniel projected contracts for every free agent. His predictions, with a few exceptions, have been strikingly accurate, in many cases spot-on to the year and dollar. Of the players still remaining on the market today, McDaniel projected teams to spend just shy of another billion dollars to sign them.
More than half of that remaining money was earmarked for the Boras Four. And much of the narrative surrounding this winter leads directly back to their continued free agency.
Had two or three of Snell, Bellinger, Montgomery and Chapman signed, perhaps the cold-stove storyline wouldn't have nearly as much ammunition. But here they remain: Snell, the reigning National League Cy Young winner; Bellinger, a former MVP coming off a rebound season; Montgomery, a World Series hero; and Chapman, who owns the 10th-best WAR mark in all of baseball since his 2018 debut. Whatever warts they might have, each is the sort of player whose résumé traditionally begets a sturdy nine-figure contract.
If that kind of deal is the ultimate upshot of the delay, sources told ESPN they do not anticipate it will come anytime soon. Multiple executives interested in signing Boras' top clients agreed that none of the four is likely to sign before the calendar turns to February -- and said it wouldn't surprise them if some remained unsigned when spring camps open.
This is not unique, though the caliber of players available is rare. Over the past 10 non-lockout winters, only 11 players have signed major league contracts of more than five years later than Jan. 27, according to ESPN Stats & Information. Two went to young Cuban defectors. The other nine represent a relatively narrow range of outcomes. The top two, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, are in their own category of $300-plus million deals. Four others -- Hosmer, Martinez and Yu Darvish in 2018, and J.T. Realmuto in 2021 -- exceeded $100 million. The remaining three landed contracts that wound up rather player friendly: DJ LeMahieu (six years, $90 million), Lorenzo Cain (five years, $80 million) and Ian Kennedy (five years, $70 million).
Negotiating on the behalf of one player this late in the winter is tricky. Doing so for four, as Boras also endeavored to in 2017, takes an immense amount of patience and trust -- and sometimes even that isn't enough. Back then, Hosmer's $144 million deal with San Diego was a home run for the first baseman. Martinez's $110 million contract with Boston was a solid outcome. While Arrieta fell short of the nine-figure mark at $75 million for three years, that reflected his age (32) and signs of decline (an ERA nearly double that of his Cy Young-winning mark two years prior). Moustakas never figured to get to $100 million but re-signed with Kansas City on a one-year, $6.5 million deal -- nearly $11 million less than the qualifying offer he'd rejected four months earlier.
This time around, enough teams are interested in the Boras Four that each could very well land nine-figure deals. Among the teams that have indicated interest in at least one of the players, according to sources: the San Francisco Giants, Toronto Blue Jays, Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels.
The Giants match up well with multiple players. Chapman fits at third base; Bellinger could slot in the outfield or at first base. Though they intend to stretch out free agent signing Jordan Hicks as a starting pitcher, adding an arm the caliber of Snell would suit them. Toronto is focused on bats, and the return of Chapman or arrival of Bellinger would help salvage a disastrous offseason in which the Blue Jays whiffed on Ohtani and Yamamoto and have made just three noteworthy moves: re-signing center fielder Kevin Kiermaier and adding utilityman Isiah Kiner-Falefa and starting pitcher Yariel Rodriguez. The Cubs could re-sign Bellinger, lock down third with Chapman or pivot to either Snell or Montgomery. Texas and Boston make sense for Montgomery, while the Yankees and Angels have dabbled in the Snell sweepstakes.
All the teams are waiting for prices to drop, which they almost inevitably do, but to suggest Boras is playing a low-leverage hand ignores multiple factors. The impetuousness of owners has played in Boras' favor throughout his career (see: Kris Bryant's seven-year, $182 million deal with Colorado), and another team entering the fray is eminently possible. Injuries change teams' calculi, too. While All-Star closer Josh Hader had been on the Houston Astros' radar, sources said, season-ending shoulder surgery for reliever Kendall Graveman kindled new talks, and Hader wound up with $95 million over five seasons.
Any of these players could choose to forgo a longer-term deal for a shorter package with a higher per-year salary, as well. Snell could go that route, though if getting back onto the market is a priority, the prospect of doing so coming off a season as dominant as his Cy Young-winning campaign is unlikely. One ding on Bellinger's free agency is his dreadful 2021 and 2022 seasons -- and the concerns those performances create about whether his .307/.356/.525 line in 2023 could be the outlier. Interested teams will certainly push for a shorter-term deal accordingly, trying to sell Bellinger on an encore performance that would allow him to hit the winter with questions of consistency answered.
History has shown that even if it takes some time, good players often get what they're worth. Hicks' four-year, $44 million deal, signed last week, matched McDaniel's projection on the dot. Reliever Robert Stephenson's three-year, $33 million contract with the Angels was $3 million over McDaniel's estimate. First baseman Rhys Hoskins getting $34 million over two years was another nailed to the year and dollar. Playing in a nine-figure sandbox is a different story, of course, and the moneyed teams' leverage hinges on whether they prefer to take big swings or choose instead to bargain shop for deals with players in the next tier.
BEYOND THE BORAS FOUR, almost every potential need for teams to address can be filled among the remaining free agents. Want a DH? Take your pick of Jorge Soler, J.D. Martinez, Justin Turner and Joc Pederson. An outfielder? Perhaps Adam Duvall, Michael A. Taylor, Tommy Pham, Travis Jankowski, Randal Grichuk, David Peralta or Robbie Grossman would work. Tim Anderson, Amed Rosario and Whit Merrifield are the best remaining players in a weak infield class. A serviceable rotation and strong bullpen is there for the taking with starters (Clayton Kershaw, Hyun Jin Ryu, Michael Lorenzen, Mike Clevinger, Zack Greinke) and relievers (Hector Neris, David Robertson, Phil Maton, Wandy Peralta, Adam Ottavino) on hand.
Teams looking for value could feast in this environment. Arizona will sign a power bat to DH -- perhaps soon, if Hoskins' deal with Milwaukee portends that market starts moving the same way Hader's helped unclog the reliever dam. The San Diego Padres could spend some, as could the Seattle Mariners, and maybe even one of the teams that has essentially sat out the winter, like the Miami Marlins, Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Guardians, Tampa Bay Rays or Baltimore Orioles, will dip into the lower end of the market.
Soler, the best non-Bellinger bat available, should get multiple years at a robust price. Even on the wrong side of 35, Martinez and Turner are the sorts of hitters and leaders who would fit in any clubhouse at $15-plus million for a year. Duvall and Taylor should do well, and Anderson will find a suitor willing to pay for a bounceback. Robertson could exceed last season's $10 million salary on another one-year deal while Neris gets multiple years.
Will all that take the total outlay into the billion-dollar range? Maybe not, but if Snell can snag $200 million, Bellinger $175 million, Montgomery $150 million and Chapman $125 million -- or even three of the four hit those marks -- the march to $1 billion is a legitimate possibility. Considering all the impediments this winter -- the bankruptcy of the company that owns local television rights to more than half the league is another common excuse for free agency's languid pace -- reaching that mark would make this year's free agency far more successful for players than the current perception indicates.
In 2017-18, the five biggest contracts handed out in baseball that winter all came after Jan. 27 -- and four of them after Feb. 13. This offseason, in so many ways, is a spiritual cousin to that winter of discontent. There is risk in this approach for all parties, and it's the sort they're clearly willing to take. The staring contest is about to enter its fourth month. Everyone is straining not to blink. And there's no obvious end in sight.