UTK Special 12/4/23
Pre-Meeting Notes
The Winter Meetings open Monday and many expect this one to be big. There’s obviously a number of big free agents available, lots of trade rumors, but remember that it’s like this every year. We simply haven’t had big action over the last few years at the Meetings, with most of the action happening (like so much of life) over Zoom. Agents and players don’t need to go on world tours, avoiding the media, when most of this can be done at home.
The two big stories will be Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto. With Ohtani, the rumors are that he’s eliminated down to four or five, depending on where you see the Giants, with teams like the Rangers and Cubs moving on and starting on other targets. True or not, there’s certainly some basis in truth. The thing to keep in mind is that when you’re hearing from credible sources, you’re not always getting the truth, but what they’re being told. Teams don’t like to lie, but they don’t have to tell the whole truth. What they do is give information, so any new rumors are likely to encase some truth, which is easy to put together, after.
One of the most interesting things is a lesson learned from fantasy drafting. Years ago, I forget who said it, but they said to keep notes at auctions on who was the last bidder on everyone you won, for trade notes. It really works and also works for teams. Johan Santana was very close to signing for the Red Sox, but instead went to the Mets. It showed where Theo Epstein thought his team was and how he valued pitching, even though the info was called “wrong” at the time I reported it. (It wasn’t.)
The same is likely true here. Even if five teams, more or less are in, and the others have moved on, it’s not feeling like anything is imminent. There’s little value in Ohtani signing quickly unless someone came in with that blow away number we’ve heard about. There’s note that Chicago is the furthest east and that teams like Texas who look set up to win for years are out. If Ohtani really is locked in on the Dodgers, well, it may have been as inevitable as some led us to believe, but the Dodgers are no lock to win for a while, especially with their pitching issues.
John Heyman is saying the bidding for Ohtani is over $500m already and closer to $600m. Anyone up there without it being significant bonuses or conditional clauses could be bigfooting to end this early.