MLB Offseason: The hot stove feeling is back!

This MLB offseason has featured its share of exciting moves, which seems perfectly timed now that the entire league has come together for MLB’s annual Winter Meetings. Will the free-agent frenzy continue?

It has been awhile since this particular period of the MLB offseason brought forth any real excitement. At least in the last 2 seasons, the one-word description for the offseason hot stove has been “slow motion”.  But with yesterday’s kick-off to MLB’s Winter Meetings, this week could certainly get interesting.

The first 3-4 weeks of the current offseason has certainly been different compared to at least the past couple of years, and multi-year deals seem back on the rise. Consider a few of them:

• CHW, Yasmani Grandal: 4 years, $73 million
• SDP, Drew Pomeranz: 4 years, $34 million
• CIN, Mike Moustakas: 4 years, $64 million
• PHIL, Zack Wheeler: 5 years, $118 million
• *CHW, Jose Abreu: 2 years, $32.2 million
• ATL, Will Smith: 3 years, $39 million

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*Abreu accepted his $17.8 million qualifying offer and than signed the above extension

These are just deals off the top of my head. When’s the last time you could name six multi-year signings before Christmas?

The Moustakas and Pomeranz deals really stick out, when considering how the free agent market has recently operated. Those two seemed like prime bait for one-year deals, even though the former has been shooting for a two or three year deal for a couple of years now (he instead settled for back-to-back one-year deals in 2017 and 2018.) Instead, Moustakas suddenly lands a four-year pact, as a second baseman no less.

Pomeranz made $1.5 million this past season, coming off a horrid year with the Boston Red Sox where he posted -0.4 fWAR in 2018, thanks to a 6.08 ERA (granted, injuries limited him to 74 innings). But a strong campaign with the Brewers in 2019 as a reliever (104 IP, 11.86 K/9, 0.7 fWAR) and what do you know, he gets a four-year deal paying him almost eight-times his previous salary.

These reclimation-type payouts didn’t happen in 2017 and 2018, as teams were way more hesitant in general to offer up multi-year contracts. There’s more urgency, more optimism so far this offseason.

It will be interesting to see if this momentum continues this week in San Diego, as all 30 teams will have their respective representatives searching the Hilton floors and gathering to talk business. You can sort of feel the anxiousness already.

On Sunday, MLB Trade Rumors relayed that the Yankees have made its initial offer to top free agent starting pitcher, Gerrit Cole — a seven-year, $245 million deal. You can be sure that several other teams will quickly send in their bids over the next few days, perhaps both LA teams and maybe even the Texas Rangers or Philadelphia Phillies, keeping the excitement going.

And that’s just one player. We’ve yet to see what guys like Stephen Strasburg, Anthony Rendon and Josh Donaldson will receive for their first offers of the winter.

In recent years that feeling of speculation wouldn’t be here yet, for it was already accepted that the bigger deals would be after the first of the year. But with what has transpired thus far, it seems like anything can happen.

The waiting and constant expectation that something else is going to go down — this is what it’s all about. This is what the MLB offseason is meant to feel like, and why it’s called the hot stove. That stove has been warming for a month now… and it could get hot this week in San Diego.