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Nobody saw this one coming.Brace Hemmelgarn/Getty Images
With the free-agent market picked clean and the trade market not exactly buzzing, it seems safe to close the book on what’s been a wild 2021-22 offseason for Major League Baseball.
So much happened that it’s not easy to take stock of it all, but we thought we’d share what we’re taking away from baseball’s latest hot-stove season.
Certainly the biggest event happened in early March, when MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement following a 99-day lockout. There’s plenty to take away from that alone, but we more so focused on what can be learned from all the player movement that went down.
We figure there are eight things worth talking about, starting with just how much money was flying around.
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Corey SeagerAssociated Press
As reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN on Tuesday, the $3.3 billion that teams invested in free agents throughout the offseason is a new record. And by quite a wide margin over the $2.4 billion of the 2015-16 offseason.
It’s easy to point to the new CBA as the decisive factor in all this, given that it introduced things to incentivize spending and deter tanking. Namely, an expanded playoff field, a higher luxury-tax threshold and an NBA-style draft lottery.
At least for now, though, it’s hard to take this for granted. Quite a bit of spending happened before the lockout, when teams could merely guess as to what the next CBA would contain. And for the most part, the spending that occurred after the agreement defied expectations.
Rather, perhaps this was an inevitable post-COVID spending spree.
Following a shortened season played amid empty stadiums that cost MLB teams billions in 2020, the business side of baseball started to come back online when fans returned en masse in 2021. With mask requirements and even New York’s vaccine mandate for professional athletes now going away, business only figures to get better for baseball.
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Nick CastellanosLynne Sladky/Associated Press
If there’s one part of the new CBA that seemingly did influence the free-agent market, it’s the one and only major rule change that the league and union agreed to: the universal designated hitter.
Even before the lockout, it seemed like a good bet that the National League would indeed finally get the DH for 2022 and beyond. After it became official, some notable bat-first players cashed in with NL clubs:
- Nelson Cruz: one year, $15 million with Washington Nationals
- Jorge Soler: three years, $36 million with Miami Marlins
- Kyle Schwarber: four years, $79 million with Philadelphia Phillies
- Nick Castellanos: five years, $100 million with Phillies
In crowdsourcing its projections, FanGraphs had estimated these four to make merely $156 million. By actually landing a combined $230 million, they went way over that.
Though not impossible, it’s doubtful that Cruz, Soler, Schwarber and Castellanos would have gotten as much money from those specific teams without the universal DH. It essentially doubled the size of their markets and, accordingly, their negotiating power.
The universal DH probably also helped Kris Bryant and Freddie Freeman, who signed with the Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers, respectively, for a total of $344 million over 13 years. Because both stars are north of 30 years old, the position can only help them age well.
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Carlos CorreaBrace Hemmelgarn/Getty Images
On the other hand, the universal DH always was neither here nor there for Carlos Correa. He entered the market as a 27-year-old superstar who was surely due for a long-term megadeal.
Or not, as it turned out when the Minnesota Twins scooped Correa up on a three-year, $105.3 million contract. Thus did he accept about a third of the $325 million that Corey Seager—who’s several months older with less production to his name—scored from the Texas Rangers.
What a win for the Twins. By signing Correa, they turned what had been a major weakness into a significant strength. And they didn’t even have to issue the largest contract in their history to get it done.
It’s also not a bad deal for Correa. His $35.1 million average annual value is second to only Mike Trout among position players. By way of opt-outs, he can also re-enter the market after 2022 and 2023.
Correa’s agent, Scott Boras, made it sound like there wasn’t a long-term deal out there after the lockout. Yet with Trevor Bauer leading the way last year, this makes it two offseasons in a row that a superstar has signed a shorter deal with a huge AAV. As such, a sort of new normal could be emerging here.
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Kris BryantAssociated Press
In addition to the team’s typically shallow pockets, one thing that made Correa’s deal with the Twins so surprising is that they weren’t even a contender in 2021. On the contrary, they finished in last place.
Then again, perhaps we ought to have known better by the time the deal was struck.
Non-contenders from 2021 were the top spenders even before the lockout, and so it went after the lockout as well. Ultimately, 16 of the 19 contracts worth at least $50 million came from teams that fell short of the 2021 playoffs. That’s 84 percent, up from the normal 62 percent as found by Zach Kram of The Ringer.
This is surely the best argument for the notion that the expanded playoff field spurred spending throughout the offseason. Because even if it didn’t become a reality until March, it was largely seen as a foregone conclusion before then. It follows that teams would act accordingly.
The broader truth, though, is certainly more nuanced. The Twins, for example, rightfully saw spending as a way to get back on the level they were at in 2018 and 2019. And while none made the playoffs in 2021, teams like the New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers and Rangers aren’t exactly short on money.
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Luke MaileNorm Hall/Getty Images
Still another thing that complicates any effort to read into how the CBA influenced spending is all the spending that didn’t happen.
You probably saw that tweet from Joc Pederson in which he expressed his embarrassment for fans of the Cleveland Guardians, Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles. Their payrolls are slated to be under $40 million in 2022—or, less than Max Scherzer is going to make all on his own.
There are other factors as well, but it doesn’t exactly help that these three clubs have spent a combined total of just $20.8 million in free agency, according to Spotrac. The Guardians account for just $900,000 of that via a deal with backup catcher Luke Maile.
Let’s also not let the Oakland Athletics and Cincinnati Reds off the hook. Through trades of Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Chris Bassitt, Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suarez and Sonny Gray, both clubs have gutted their payrolls. Further, the A’s hadn’t signed even one free agent before reuniting with Stephen Vogt on a one-year deal.
Hypothetically, each of these clubs could have seen the expanded playoff field as an excuse to spend. That they chose not to is fodder for the argument that baseball needs a payroll floor. Or, at least, a reverse luxury tax.
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Matt Olson and Matt ChapmanAssociated Press
If you get a chance, go hug an A’s fan today.
Even though they missed the playoffs in 2021, they went a respectable 86-76 to continue the successful run they’ve been on. In all, they have baseball’s fifth-highest winning percentage since 2018.
Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall when manager Bob Melvin departed for the San Diego Padres on Nov. 1. A’s general manager David Forst then made it explicit, telling reporters: “This is the cycle for the A’s. We have to listen and be open to whatever comes out of this. This is our lot in Oakland until it’s not.”
Hence why Olson, Chapman and Bassitt are gone now, with Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas likely to follow. This cycle—in which the A’s move star players before free agency—is now so routine that you have to go all the way back to Barry Zito to find the last time an A’s star cashed in after a big walk year in Oakland.
Some good news is that the new CBA made the A’s a revenue-sharing recipient again, even if it’s tied to a stipulation that they finally reach a deal on a new home stadium by 2024. Yet this is hardly a comforting thought for A’s fans, who are being asked by the team to pay more for tickets in the meantime.
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Brian CashmanAssociated Press
On the other side of the spectrum from teams like the A’s, Reds, Guardians and Pirates are the New York Yankees, for whom $200 million payrolls are basically an annual tradition.
But while this will once again be the case in 2022, the general feeling about the Yankees’ offseason is leaning firmly toward disappointment.
They have added some notable players, including Anthony Rizzo off the free-agent market and Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa via trade. But these aren’t quite the upgrades that they were expected to make. To wit, Rizzo is not Freddie Freeman, and Kiner-Falefa is not Carlos Correa.
In defending the team’s approach, GM Brian Cashman noted to Randy Miller of NJ.com that it’s going to “run out the highest payroll we’ve ever had in our history.” With a projected Opening Day payroll of $246 million, this is technically true.
It used to be, though, that nobody else could come close to what the Yankees spent on their payrolls. That’s no longer the case even though the franchise’s value is roughly $2 billion higher than any other. So, fans who are wondering if the club’s bottom line matters more than its trophy case have a legitimate gripe.
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Max ScherzerMark Brown/Getty Images
Apropos of how teams didn’t used to look up at the Yankees in terms of spending, the Mets never even sniffed a $200 million payroll before 2021 even though they shared the same humongous market.
But as soon as Steve Cohen took over in 2020, the Mets promptly opened last season with a $195.5 million payroll. A year later, it’s telling that there’s a whole new tax that’s unofficially named after Cohen.
As a tradeoff for the first luxury-tax threshold being raised from $210 million to $230 million, there’s a new set of penalties that kick in when a team exceeds that threshold by $60 million.
This is being called the “Cohen tax” because the Mets had already pushed their payroll close to $300 million by spending over $250 million on Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha and Eduardo Escobar prior to the lockout. After acquiring Bassitt and Adam Ottavino, their luxury-tax payroll is now projected just short of Cohen tax territory at $287.3 million.
Granted, this doesn’t mean the Mets will have the best team in 2022. It is nonetheless astonishing to see a team in New York spending whatever it takes to win games, and then realize it’s not the Yankees.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference.
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