It has been a wild winter, featuring significant swings, crazy conditions and unpredictable outcomes.
But enough about the weather. Let’s talk baseball.
Unlike the winter weather, the Hot Stove season doesn’t need a La Niña pattern to create sharp shifts from the norm. Baseball reliably delivers shocks to the system, and this offseason was no different.
Before the league at large leaves the winter weather (hopefully for good … but you never know when those April snow delays will invade) and heads to Florida and Arizona for Spring Training, let’s take a look back at some of the storylines that emerged over the last few months. Like travelers who forgot to pack their hats and gloves ahead of a snowstorm -- these were the ones that caught us off-guard.
The Giants hired a college coach as their manager
Obviously, blown leads and botched ball-strike calls miff a Major League manager. What you might not know is that they also HATE being called “coach.” Within MLB circles, it’s considered disrespectful to refer to the skipper of a squad by that mistaken moniker.
But let’s extend some grace to anybody who accidentally drops a “coach” on new Giants manager Tony Vitello, because he answered to that label for more than 20 years in the NCAA, including nearly a decade as head coach at Tennessee, where he built the Volunteers into a national powerhouse.
The modern managerial job has changed a lot, and it’s no longer unusual for a team to hire someone who lacks experience in the role at the Major or Minor League levels. But the Giants’ first-of-its-kind hiring of Vitello directly from the collegiate ranks was still an historic step in the growing symbiosis between the college game and MLB, and it will be fascinating to see if it works.
The landing spots for the Japanese stars
Just like the connection between the college game and the Major League game, the bridge across the Pacific has never been stronger. More teams are getting involved in aggressively scouting and shopping in the Japanese professional market. That showed in a winter in which none of the three biggest Japanese stars to come over from Nippon Professional Baseball -- infielders Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto and pitcher Tatsuya Imai -- wound up with a West Coast club.
While Imai is in the AL West, it’s not on the California coast or up in Ichiro’s former stomping grounds in Seattle. It’s with an Astros team that had never previously signed an NPB free agent.
Meanwhile, Murakami’s market, which was lighter than advertised, landed him in an unexpected destination on the South Side of Chicago, where the rebuilding White Sox got him on a low-risk deal with their first signing of an NPB player in more than a decade. And Okamoto’s landing spot in Toronto was pretty surprising, too, given that the Blue Jays were widely expected to bring back Bo Bichette if they didn’t sign Kyle Tucker.
Basically, the entire Mets offseason
The 2025 Mets were considered World Series contenders after signing Juan Soto and had the best record in MLB as late as June 13. But their fall from grace -- a 21-35 finish that was ahead of only the Rockies in the NL -- certainly made them ripe for change.
We just didn’t think the change would look exactly like this …
- Pete Alonso, Edwin Díaz, Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo gone.
- Bichette … at third base, where he’s never played professionally.
- Jorge Polanco … at first base, where he’s played for just one previous pitch.
- Devin Williams and Luke Weaver both making the move from the Bronx.
- Freddy Peralta plucked from Milwaukee.
The Mets made three of the most intriguing trades of the winter. Nimmo-for-Marcus Semien, a straight-up swap for established big leaguers, came out of left field (literally, Nimmo’s position the last two years). The deal for Luis Robert Jr. with the White Sox, who had taken a calculated gamble in picking up the disappointing, would-be star’s $20 million option, is fascinating, too. And Peralta was the best player traded this winter.
Once again, the projections are high on a talented Mets team. But it’s a much different team than a year ago … and that’s by design, of course.
The Orioles went big for bats
Another team that disappointed last year was the Orioles, whose era of contention around a homegrown position player core has yet to amount to so much as a single win in the playoffs.
The Orioles were expected to do something -- anything -- to augment that group in the offseason, though one would have guessed their biggest moves would come on the pitching front, given that their rotation was a mess last year. But to date, their biggest change in that department was a trade for the talented-yet-unproven Shane Baz.
Instead, the big investments have come on the offensive side. The five-year, $155 million commitment to Pete Alonso gives the Polar Bear the highest AAV ever for a first baseman. And a trade for one year of outfielder Taylor Ward also came at the significant cost of four years of control of pitcher Grayson Rodriguez, the 11th overall pick in the 2018 Draft.
Dylan Cease’s Blue Jays contract
By now, we should know not to rely too heavily on a pitcher’s ERA to assess his season. It masks the deceptiveness of defense, the significance of stuff, the meticulousness of more modern metrics.
Dylan Cease had a 4.55 ERA with the Padres last year, but his expected ERA, based on Statcast data, was more than a full run lower (3.46), and he was in the 80th percentile or better in stats like expected batting average allowed, fastball velo, chase rate and whiff rate. You don’t have to look back very far to find a time when he vied for a Cy Young Award or squint too hard to see him getting back to that point.
Still, the Blue Jays’ seven-year, $210 million investment in Cease was, even when adjusted for deferrals, a bold one for a pitcher whose previous club didn’t trust him to face the opposing lineup a third time in Game 2 of the NL Wild Card Series last year.
We’re not saying it’s a good contract or a bad contract (time will tell us that). All we’re saying is that it was a contract that speaks to how far the industry has evolved in evaluating pitching, and it set the tone for an especially aggressive winter for the defending AL champs.
The Padres haven’t made a trade?
Padres general manager AJ Preller was up to his usual transactional tricks at last summer’s Trade Deadline, when he pulled off a stunner of a swap for closer Mason Miller. Afterwards, we put together a fun video looking back at his trade-heavy tenure and counted -- this is not a misprint -- 132 Padres trades involving 373 players since Preller took over San Diego’s front office in August 2014. (If you watch that video, enjoy the Star Wars-style scroll of every trade made. It’ll break your brain.)
So for Preller to go an entire offseason without making a single swap is grounds for a wellness check of some sort. (It’s not too late, AJ!)
A multi-year pact for the Pirates
We are all for the Buccos building something special around Paul Skenes. And while they struck out on some more ambitious potential acquisitions such as Kyle Schwarber, Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez, at least they succeeded in adding Brandon Lowe’s power and Jhostynxon Garcia’s upside in trade.
And for the first time since signing pitcher Iván Nova (!) in the winter of 2016-17, they landed a free agent on a multi-year contract in the form of first baseman Ryan O’Hearn.
OK, so that’s not earth-shaking, but it’s a big step forward for a squad that hit all of 117 home runs last year.
Derek Falvey left the Twins. On January 30th
A late entry to the list … and that’s the point. It’s just not common for clubs to change their head of baseball operations shortly before reporting to spring camp.
Falvey, whose title was president of baseball and business operations, left in what was described as a mutual parting of ways. The Twins are coming off two highly disappointing seasons and have responded with mixed signals -- selling off 10 players at last year’s Trade Deadline but not extending the sell-off to involve some of their biggest names this winter.
Obviously, any time teams fall short of expectations, changes can be made. But Falvey leaving the Twins the same day the NFL’s Vikings dismissed their GM accentuated the odd timing.