The MLB trade market got the offseason moving thanks to A.J. Preller and the Padres trading for both Yu Darvish and Blake Snell in the same week. The free-agent market? Well, that's another story.
Here's what Jeff Passan is hearing about just how historically little action there has been this winter, the next big name to sign, a big date coming up on the MLB calendar and much more:
1. It's a new year, and 10 players have signed free-agent contracts for more than $5 million. It's January, less than six weeks before spring camps are slated to open, and only 30 free agents have received guaranteed contracts. It's long, long, long past time for Major League Baseball teams to start filling out their rosters, and the free-agency freeze is beginning to resemble the Huronian glaciation. Across the sport, players are equal parts puzzled and infuriated by the inaction this winter. And in order to understand what's going on, plenty are asking some variation of the same question: Just how abnormal is this?
The answer: extremely. The great ESPN content producer Paul Hembekides dug into the last decade of free agency, and he found that free agency in 2020-21 is unfolding like nothing in modern baseball. Since Nov. 1, the first day of free agency, 30 players have signed guaranteed deals totaling $208,825,000. (That does not count Marcus Stroman and Kevin Gausman accepting qualifying offers of $18.9 million each.)
How meager is that? Well, by Jan. 1, 2020, teams had committed almost $1.95 billion -- more than nine times as much spending as this season. And while spending on the Class of 2019-20 was the richest of the previous decade, teams exceeded $1 billion combined in that same time frame (through Jan. 1) in seven of the previous 10 seasons and averaged slightly more than $1.2 billion, according to Hembekides' research. Even the most parsimonious free-agent periods dwarfed the spending this year: around $580 million in 2017-18 and $695 million in 2018-19.
Yes, George Springer and J.T. Realmuto and Trevor Bauer and DJ LeMahieu and a few lucky others will get their bag, and spending almost certainly will exceed $1 billion total. (The previous low: around $1.3 billion in 2010-11.) Still, if the minuscule overall spending number isn't alarming enough, look at it this way: James McCann, who two years ago was cut loose by the Detroit Tigers, has accounted for nearly 20% of the money spent in free agency this winter.
2. The next front-line player to sign should be 31-year-old right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano, the reigning MVP of Japan's Central League and the most decorated pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball since Darvish. The operative word is should, because there is an increasingly realistic possibility that Sugano does not sign with a major league team before the expiration of his posting on Thursday, sources told ESPN.
The Yomiuri Giants, for whom Sugano has starred since 2013, have offered the opportunity to return on a long-term contract that includes opt-out clauses after each season. Such leverage is rare for a player, and in Sugano's case, it's not idle posturing, either. Sugano expressed a desire to play for the Yomiuri Giants, who were managed by his uncle Tatsunori Hara. The Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters won his rights via lottery. Rather than play for the Fighters, Sugano sat out a year and joined the Giants the next season.
Forsaking MLB would come with risks, particularly because an arm injury could derail a chance at a return. Sugano understandably values himself highly following a season in which he posted a 1.97 ERA in 137⅓ innings with a strikeout-walk ratio of 131-25. Further, Sugano pitched 53⅓ innings more than the MLB leader in 2020, Lance Lynn, and with teams concerned about pitchers holding up over the course of a full season after throwing so few innings last season, Sugano's allure extends beyond his precise array of pitches.
Thus far, that hasn't translated into the sort of offer Sugano expected. The New York Mets are out. Other teams to whom he has been linked, like the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox, are not expected to pay Sugano what he desires. The San Diego Padres, to whom he has been linked, have a finite amount of payroll flexibility after acquiring Darvish and Snell. Sugano also has been linked to the Los Angeles Angels and Toronto Blue Jays, and other teams remain in the mix, according to sources, but none has distinguished itself.
The next 24 hours are likely to determine Sugano's near-term future. Teams recognize that Sugano could see the depressed free-agent market and balk, targeting next year, when the worst part of the pandemic is expected to have passed and he can hit free agency without his signing team needed to pay a posting fee to Yomiuri. To get a deal done by Thursday, Sugano would need to fly from California for a physical, which makes the real deadline for an agreement that much earlier. And with Sugano not budging on his asking price, the clock is ticking loudly on a starter plenty consider the second best on the market this winter.
3. The next important date on the baseball calendar: Jan. 15, when teams and players exchange arbitration numbers. A quick-and-dirty primer: Every player with more than three years of service time but fewer than six is placed into arbitration to determine his salary. The precedent- and comparable-based system is designed to get the sides to agree to a deal. When that doesn't happen, each party offers an exact number on what it believes the player's salary should be, and a panel of arbitrators holds a hearing to choose who presented the best case. The result of a hearing can be worth millions of dollars in either direction.
In a typical year, the exchange date is as wonky as baseball gets, a constantly moving market that winds up with around the same number of cases. And maybe that's the result this year, too. But all the pieces are in place for a chaotic Jan. 15. There is the complete uncertainty of the system, which has no standardized rules to account for MLB's shortened 2020 season. Divergent perspectives on how to judge statistical achievements -- those who had good seasons want to project their statistics out over 162 games and use those, while others don't -- could cause spectacular disagreements.
One agent with multiple arbitration-eligible players said they want to go to trial simply on principle: that they're frustrated with the free-agent market and the treatment of players and want to cause MLB and teams as much work as possible. However noble or ignoble their motivation -- players did, after all, sign off on the March agreement that turned arbitration into the Wild West -- the sentiment surely does not begin and end with that one agent's brood. The 15th should be one interesting day.
4. In November, one particularly reliever-needy general manager scoffed at the idea that he would hit the market and scoop up some of the best available. "Why would I do that," he asked, "when there are going to be so many guys available late?"
The GM's assertion that the relief market was oversaturated and wouldn't move until after Jan. 1 was wildly accurate, and perhaps even an understatement. Trevor May, who received $15.5 million over two years from the Mets, is the highest-paid reliever this winter. Tommy Kahnle is second -- and he will miss most, if not all, of the 2021 season recovering from Tommy John surgery. Greg Holland is next at $2.75 million and Hansel Robles after him at $2 million. No other reliever has received more than $1.25 million.
The list of solid relievers still jobless is long and a function of the free-agent market in recent years shifting more toward short-term deals, which eventually was going to flood the supply. Liam Hendriks is the clear king of the class. He is unsigned. Executives generally see the next tier as Blake Treinen, Alex Colome, Trevor Rosenthal and Brad Hand. May is the only one of that ilk to get paid. Beyond them, the list of bullpen arms with a good history -- past or recent -- is long: Jake McGee, Archie Bradley, Ken Giles, Kirby Yates, Tyler Clippard, Shane Greene, Brandon Kintzler, Mark Melancon, Brandon Workman, Justin Wilson and plenty more. For those who don't want to pay name-brand price, like the GM above, there are dozens more. All told, the list of free-agent relievers numbers around 100. And as the GM suggested, if he can get 80% of the production for a fraction of the price, that's what he's going to do.
As free agents start signing and roster spots are squeezed, relievers will start grabbing big league deals right and left. The tune for relief-pitching musical chairs will stop, and dozens will accept minor league deals. This mess for relievers is years in the making. This year, more than any before, the paradigm shift away from veterans and toward hard-throwing, cheap young arms is clear.
5. With the NFL about to hit its postseason, the NBA season in full swing and the NHL ready to drop the puck on regular-season games, there is constant discussion among owners, players, executives, agents and others inside baseball as to whether its season will start on time. Until commissioner Rob Manfred declares otherwise, it's fair to assume the answer is yes -- though as one executive suggested, looking at what MLB is doing in the short term might not be indicative of the league's down-the-road plans.
Trying to report late to spring training or shorten the season now, the executive said, would be seen as an economic argument, and that's a disastrous public relations position. What could give MLB options -- and placate the swath of owners who don't want to return with limited fans available to attend games -- is the inauguration of president-elect Joe Biden. If MLB does indeed want to make a public health argument, the executive said doing so under a president who sees the pandemic as a public health crisis would at least offer the league cover. And doing so when half the teams are slated to go to Arizona, a current COVID-19 hot spot, could bolster any argument MLB tries to make.
It also would lead to another argument between MLB and the union over playing a 162-game season, something that multiple high-ranking officials think is inevitable. The union believes Manfred's powers during a pandemic are limited, particularly compared to other sports' commissioners'. Owners may be willing to pick that battle anyway.
All players want is their full 162-game salaries, regardless of start or finish date. Soon enough, they'll know whether they need to fight to get them or the baseball season gets off to a better start than its free agency did.