When the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year's Eve in the midst of baseball's past offseason, a total of 54 free agents had signed, according to the research of MLB.com's Sarah Langs. The pace of the action is dramatically different this winter. If you include the Miami Marlins' agreement with Corey Dickerson on Saturday, 77 players have already agreed to terms, or about 40% more than what we saw just a year ago.
Teams have waded into the free-agent market with their wallets open, from Toronto to San Diego, to the White Sox and the Yankees, and yes, to Miami. The agents are pleased, especially for their clients.
But among some of them, a conspiracy theory has hatched. Please remember that money, strikeouts and home runs are plentiful in baseball, but trust between the teams and the union is not.
What some agents believe is that part of the reason for the spending this winter is to soften the players' concern over the relative lack of activity in the free-agent market the last few years, in advance of the labor talks. As the theory goes, the more money that the big-name players in the union have at stake in any labor war, the less likely it is they would embrace a possible work stoppage.
Club execs counter that the current trend is an organic response to this particular market -- with Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg setting high prices, agent Scott Boras working aggressively early in the winter and using all of the information he gathered to the best advantage of his respective clients, and some teams souring on the concept of constructing a pitching staff on the backs of relievers. More clubs seem to be eschewing the tanking strategy, perhaps drawing on the examples of the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics, and recognizing there are multiple paths to success.
Whatever the reasons, the dollars continue to flow. Boras has been outspoken in the past about the free-agent freeze, and this winter, he's negotiated more than $1 billion worth of contracts. The share for the Boras Corp.: 5%.
News from around the major leagues
Now that the umpires have acknowledged the possibility -- really, the inevitability -- of an electronic strike zone as part of their new collective bargaining agreement with Major League Baseball, the forces might seem to be lining up for the technology to be used by the 2022 season. The technology was tested in the Atlantic League last summer, and presumably, it will be a topic of discussion as MLB and the Players Association dig through the layers of their CBA talks.
According to sources, however, there is no formal implementation plan in place, no how or when cemented. What was most important for MLB was for the umpires' union to recognize the right of baseball to implement the technology at some future date.
• As the Toronto Blue Jays prepared for their pursuit of Hyun-Jin Ryu, which culminated in a four-year, $80 million signing, they heard consistent feedback about how good of a teammate Ryu is, and how he used his developed sense of humor to overcome any language barrier.
"He's very low maintenance," Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts wrote in a text. "He has a way of being endearing to everyone. He has a consistent routine."
• It used to be that players would shut down for a couple of months in the offseason, in keeping with conventional wisdom that players needed to aggressively rest. But more and more pitchers, like Cy Young Award-winner Max Scherzer, throw close to year-round, although not with the same intensity as they do after New Year's, and position players seem to be back in cages working on their swings earlier than ever.
For example: Longtime reliever Steve Cishek has been throwing for weeks from 60 feet, starting Dec. 1, as he began to work his way back.
"I took a little extra time this offseason -- two weeks after the last day of the season [to start] weight training," Cishek wrote in response to a question. "I started throwing lightly about three weeks after the season -- something new I tried to keep my arm moving. I would say now more guys are starting to throw earlier in the offseason than before, although it obviously varies."
Texas Rangers left-hander Mike Minor replied, "I started working out two weeks after the season was over for us. Usually I'll only wait a week, but we decided to go to the beach for a week with family. I always thought that was a way for me to get ahead of the competition, especially the guys in the playoffs. I started throwing plyo balls in mid-November and baseballs in the first week of December. That part [of the preparation] has gotten earlier and earlier for me with all of the pitch analysis stuff."
The Dodgers' Gavin Lux responded, "I usually take about 10 days of doing nothing, just kind of relaxing. Then I start working out light the first week back. After that, I'll start hitting and doing defense work [beginning] right around Halloween. I'm kind of a baseball rat, and usually get bored, so I probably start doing stuff earlier than most."
• Ryan Thibodaux tracks Baseball Hall of Fame voting as writers release their ballots, and among the most interesting elements of this year's ballot is the fact that Andy Pettitte is polling at 12.2% so far.
Pettitte generated 60.2 WAR in his career, according to Baseball Reference, with a 3.85 ERA and a 256-153 record over 18 seasons -- and he pitched more than the equivalent of another full season in the playoffs and World Series, with 44 starts, a 19-11 record and a 3.81 ERA. His production merits consideration, certainly.
But Pettitte may have to wait awhile before gaining induction because his is among the dozens of names published in the Mitchell Report, which will be viewed -- ridiculously -- as a primer for PED use in the era. Pettitte's best chance for being voted in by the writers may hinge on his former teammate and one-time mentor, Roger Clemens. If the writers who have refused to vote for Clemens and Barry Bonds soften on their stance and those two all-time greats gain induction in the next three years, then Pettitte's prospects for election will change.
• Pettitte created an epilogue in his Yankees legacy when he became part of the team's pitch to sign Gerrit Cole, after general manager Brian Cashman learned that Pettitte was Cole's favorite player growing up, through an article by Andy McCullough. The Yankees also arrived at their meeting with Cole bearing one of his favorite vintages of wine; they had been tipped off by visiting clubhouse manager Lou Cucuzza, who related a casual conversation he once had with the pitcher.
• As Zack Britton returned from Achilles surgery in December 2017, he was told by his doctor that even after he got back on the mound and pitched in games, it would take some time for him to fully regain the flexibility that he had before the injury -- and sure enough, throughout Britton's 2018 appearances, he felt as if he was still gradually regaining the explosiveness in his delivery. He was healthy enough to pitch, but the recovery took a while.
Now Dellin Betances may face a similar challenge, in his first days and months with the New York Mets. He suffered a partial tear of his Achilles tendon in a September appearance for the Yankees, and when he reports to spring training with the Mets, the 6-foot-8 right-hander will be five months removed from the injury.
• What might be the most lasting fallout from the investigation of the Houston Astros' sign stealing is its indelible effect on the legacy of the team and on the players. Some evaluators say they are left to wonder how much the clandestine rule breaking may have helped individual players, and the unanswerable questions they ask mirror what was posed about PED users two decades ago -- how much of what they accomplished was legitimate, and how much was fueled by knowing what pitch was about to be thrown? "The sad thing is they probably didn't have to do it," said one staffer.
• One evaluator privy to his team's conversation with the Colorado Rockies about Nolan Arenado walked away with the sense that he's staying put, and that for now Colorado is just open to ideas rather than pushing to unload the third baseman's contract.
Arenado signed an eight-year, $260 million contract with the Rockies last winter, and it stands to reason that eventually, a deal of that magnitude will become onerous for a team that built a $100 million payroll for the first time only four seasons ago. If so, it would be a case of history repeating itself: The Rockies locked up perennial all-star Todd Helton with a deal that carried through the end of his career, and that contract limited other options for club improvement.
• Some of the best stuff I got to see in 2019:
1. Stephen Strasburg's emotions after the Nationals won the World Series. Some of his teammates were still in the process of putting on championship T-shirts in the middle of the field in Houston when Strasburg tried to describe what it felt like to share in a World Series title. As manager Dave Martinez explained, the reason Anibal Sanchez and Gerardo Parra chose Strasburg for the teammate sandwich in the Nationals' dugout was because the private Strasburg so rarely betrays happiness. But after the final out of the World Series, Strasburg's face tightened as he fought tears -- and he referred to Washington D.C. as home, an early sign he would re-sign.
2. CC Sabathia giving absolutely everything he had left at the finish line of his baseball career. It's a cliché offered by many but actually realized by few, but Sabathia finally broke, once and for all, in his last appearance, when he threw his shoulder out of its socket. From the time he began with the Indians through that last playoff appearance with the Yankees, Sabathia threw about 60,000 pitches in the regular season and October combined, battling to take the ball. In the fall of 2011, he was diagnosed with a 70 percent tear in his left labrum, and a few years later, he was sidelined by a troublesome right knee that he believes may have to be replaced.
The day after his last appearance, he spoke openly about the pain endured, saying that he needed two hours of treatment to prepare for 25-pitch bullpen sessions. Sabathia won a Cy Young and shared in a World Series title, but what a lot of his teammates will remember is how he tried to do whatever he could with whatever he had left, until he was physically unable to give more.
3. Pete Alonso's inspired effort in the Home Run Derby. As he explained a week before the All-Star break, this was an event he dreamed about since he was a kid, and in Cleveland he carried out that vision, surviving early rounds as his batting practice pitcher, Derek Morgan -- Alonso's cousin -- initially struggled to throw strikes. Alonso's joy carried the evening.
3a. The performance of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the same event. There had been some low-level griping about his participation among a few of his peers, who apparently believed that someone with eight career home runs should not have been invited to the Derby. But by the end of the night, everybody in the park -- players included -- understood why he was asked and his potential for the future. His power is absurdly easy.
4. The crazy 72-hour journey of Max Scherzer in the World Series, in which he went from being unable to lift his arm on a Sunday morning, to starting Game 7, to leading a championship celebration.