Baseball’s Hot Stove Remains Frozen

Major League Baseball’s offseason began the first week of November with a ton of anticipation, as a number of big-name free agents were available and a number of big-time trade targets were likely to move. Nearly three months later and despite some deals done, MLB’s market is still shockingly stagnant.

Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Aaron Nola and Jung Hoo Lee have all signed lucrative contracts, while Juan Soto and Tyler Glasnow have both been traded — Glasnow also got an extension. Other than that, the money moves expected this offseason haven’t come, and there are still a ton of top free agents looking for homes.

Before the offseason kicked off, CBS Sports ranked the top 50 MLB free agents. As of now, 20 remain unsigned, including Cody Bellinger (No. 3), Matt Chapman (No. 4), Blake Snell (No. 6) and Jordan Montgomery (No. 11). That’s a pretty ridiculous list of guys still available when we’re about two weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting.

I mean, Snell won the NL Cy Young Award with one of the most dominant seasons we’ve seen in years. He posted a 1.20 ERA over his final 23 starts, Bob Gibson is the only pitcher to have a better mark over 23 starts in a single season (0.85 in 1968). He led all NL starters in ERA (2.25), ERA+ (182), hits per nine innings (5.75) and pitchers’ bWAR (6.0). Somehow he hasn’t sniffed a deal.

Meanwhile, Bellinger posted an OPS of .881, Chapman has the 10th-best WAR since he entered the league in 2018 and Montgomery was a playoff hero for the champion Texas Rangers.

So what gives? Why is the market so stagnant so late in the year? Well, the players still available all have two things in common: age and Scott Boras. Bellinger is 28, Chapman is 30, and Snell and Montgomery are both 31. All of them are in line to get what might be their final (or only) big payday. Boras won’t let them sign cheaply. They all almost certainly entered the offseason with a number in mind they were going to refuse to go below. Now they’re essentially playing a game of chicken with teams to see who will budge first.

As for the rest of the available free agents, the market started really hot and prices were high. Teams seemed to be willing to wait for it to cool down. In the process, things froze. Now you’ve got useful players like Jorge Soler, Justin Turner, J.D. Martinez, Tim Anderson, Clayton Kershaw, Gary Sanchez, Hector Neris, David Robertson, Whit Merrifield and Michael Taylor sitting at home waiting for calls.

I’d expect things to get moving quickly. We’re rapidly approaching the start of spring training and teams will begin to get despearate to fill out their rosters. But it’s worth noting, most of the expected contenders have their rosters fairly set. And teams that aren’t one player away from a World Series run almost always prefer to promote their own internal candidates over splashing big money.

We’ll see how things sort out, but this has been the weirdest MLB offseason I’ve ever covered. Record-breaking deals to start, two massive blockbuster trades and very little of note after.