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?