Bill Madden: Despite a handful of big deals, most teams opted not to spend this offseason

Bill Madden, New York Daily News on Feb 16, 2025

Published in Baseball

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NEW YORK — With the arrival of pitchers and catchers, one of the coldest and miserly baseball offseasons in memory is nearing conclusion, and it can’t be understated that, other than the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets (on one player), hardly any team spent any money.

Something strange is definitely going on when (1) 22 of 30 teams have cut payroll, (2) only five free agents — Juan Soto, Willy Adames, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Anthony Santander — received contracts of five or more years, and, as of Friday, there were still 44 unsigned free agents, including Jose Iglesias, J.D. Martinez, Jose Quintana, Alex Verdugo, Justin Turner and Jose Urena. One would have to agree the behavior of many teams has been mystifying.

You start with the NL Central and the defending champion Brewers, who lost Adames, their 32-homer, 112-RBI shortstop, to the Giants and traded their closer Devin Williams to the Yankees and didn’t replace either of them. Likewise, the Brewers’ NL Central rivals, the Cardinals, who lost 400,000 fans last year but didn’t spend a dime in free agency, reduced their payroll by 19%, and spent the entire winter vainly trying to trade Nolan Arenado. And what does it say about the Pirates, who did almost nothing to improve their lineup for Paul Skenes and have not signed a free agent to a multi-year contract since pitcher Ivan Nova back in 2016?

The Mariners, who desperately needed a big bat, took a pass on Pete Alonso and settled by signing utility infielder Donovan Solano and re-signing Jorge Polanco — both to one-year deals. Even the Giants, after signing Adames to the biggest contract in their history (seven years, $182 million) right out of the gate on Dec. 10 — did nothing afterward other than signing 42-year-old Justin Verlander. Could it be, after watching the Dodgers sign almost every player in sight (including Blake Snell) the Giants just concluded the NL West was a lost cause and not worth investing any more money on ’25? In that respect, the NL West runners-up in ’24, the Padres, signed only one free agent, catcher Elias Diaz, before adding a needed starter Nick Pivetta on a four-year, $55 million deal last week.

After engaging in a futile effort from the start in the Soto sweepstakes, the Red Sox seemed content to have their trade for White Sox ace Garrett Crochet account for their offseason until last week when Alex Bregman, who’d been holding out all winter for a $200 million contract that never came, agreed to an opts-out three-year deal with them for $120 million.

Of the teams that raised their payrolls, only three — the Orioles (56%), Tigers (37%) and Padres (24%) — did so by more than 20%. On the other hand, the pathetic White Sox lopped their payroll by 47% and the Marlins, who have been a continuing embarrassment to baseball under the ownership of Bruce Sherman, cut theirs by 37%, to earn the dubious title of lowest 2025 payroll at $43 million — or significantly less than what the Mets will be paying one player in Soto.

There have been many theories floated as to why so many teams chose not to spend this winter, one of which, with an eye on a new collective bargaining negotiation coming up in 2026, they are gearing up for another battle for a salary cap. “That’s rich,” one agent told me. “They’ve already proven by what they haven’t done this winter, they can get a salary cap on their own!” Another related theory is that so many middle- and small-market clubs have taken major hits on their local TV RSNs, they can’t compete with the Dodgers, Yankees, Blue Jays, Red Sox, et al., for big-ticket free agents.

And it can’t be dismissed the growing number of analytically driven GMs whose credo is no contracts of more than three years, especially for players in their 30s, and building clubs through the draft and international signings. Finally, as one NL exec told me: “This also wasn’t exactly a stellar free agent class this year — a big drop-off after Soto.”