MLB Teams that will be buyers ahead of the 2020 season

Here are seven MLB teams, some of them surprising, who are positioned to be active in the winter bidding.

Three MLB teams remain alive for the 2019 World Series championship. But that leaves 27 teams free to plan for 2020.

The free-agent market opens in November. But not every team will be a major player in that market.

Some, including the 2018 World Series-winning Boston Red Sox and the Houston Astros, may defer due to ongoing financial commitments that push either their recent spending patterns or the projected 2020 payroll tax threshold.

Others, notably the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies, are still in the process of assimilating their 2019 spending splurges into their ongoing operations. Still others, among them the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers, are enmeshed in rebuilding programs that have not yet matured enough to justify large free agent commitments.

There are teams, however, that should find themselves in the ideal free agent window this winter. They have at least some payroll flexibility, their roster contains the talent potential that would justify making a big-dollar move, and they have one or more roster gaps a big free-agent signing might fill.

More intriguing, these clubs are not necessarily the usual free agent suspects. Rather, they tend to be mid-tier, developing clubs that have shown the willingness in previous years to be willing to bite into the free-agent market, and which in 2018 showed some element of upward mobility. Those are the teams that could be most active in this winter’s market.

Here’s an argument for why seven of these MLB teams – only two of them 2019 playoff clubs – can and ought to be aggressive in the 2020 free-agent market.