Five biggest Winter Meetings losers
Team | Reason |
|---|---|
1. Atlanta Braves | Lost their ace, and their direction |
2. New York Yankees | Fried for Soto is not an even swap |
3. St. Louis Cardinals | Arenado deal up in the air |
4. Chicago Cubs | Stuck with players they want to move |
5. Houston Astros | Pending losses lead to paralysis |
Loser: New York Yankees
Yankee apologists will argue that the Bronx Bombers also emerged from the meetings as winners because they compensated for the loss of Soto by signing Max Fried for eight seasons at $218 million. Those people need to learn how to read a stat sheet.
Not only is Fried four years older than Soto, he’s a less-talented player. In 2024, his value to the Braves worked out to +3.5 WAR, less than half Soto’s value to the Yankees. Since 2021, Fried has averaged +4.1 WAR for the Braves; that’s nearly 2.5 WAR fewer than the +6.5 Soto has averaged.
There’s still plenty of time in the offseason, and Brian Cashman may have more “Plan B” moves up his sleeve. But the stark reality is that the Yankee front office left Dallas with a significant deficit in talent.
Loser: St. Louis Cardinals
Team president john Mozeliak made only one headline in Dallas, and that stemmed from his declaration that third baseman Nolan Arenado would be traded.
There is a hard and fast rule of front office diplomacy that the surest way to undercut your own position is to declare your intention to trade a player before you have a deal in hand. Mozeliak destroyed that rule, and he leaves Dallas in a weaker position vis a vis Arenado’s marketability than when he arrived.
Loser: Chicago Cubs
The Cubs left Dallas empty-handed. They failed to trade Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki or Nico Hoerner, and failed to close the deal with Houston that would have brought them Kyle Tucker.
Any or all of those things could still happen, of course. But as of this moment, the Winter Meetings have to be viewed as a wasted opportunity for team president Jed Hoyer.
Loser: Houston Astros
The best thing you can say about GM Dana Brown’s Winter Meetings experience is that he hasn’t lost anybody yet. Alex Bregman is still available and Kyle Tucker hasn’t been traded. The problem is that both those things appear to be inevitable and the path to adjust to those transitions is now less clear.
Loser: Colorado Rockies
The highlight of GM Bill Schmidt’s time in Dallas was the signing of free agent Thairo Estrada for one season at $3.25 million. He is penciled in at second base.
Estrada is coming off the worst season of his six-year career. He hit .217 for the Giants in 2024 with a pitiful .590 OPS. You can maybe accept that in a middle infielder if the guy can play the field, but Estrada was a -7 DRS second baseman in San Francisco. It’s not clear in what universe adding Estrada helps the Rockies.
Loser: Atlanta Braves
Atlanta boss Alex Anthopoulos has a well-deserved reputation for front office genius, but that reputation did not serve him well in Dallas. Anthopoulos lost one of his aces, Fried, to the Yankees via free agency, and did nothing to offset that loss.
Their backup plan was reported to be Nathan Eovaldi, but that blew up when Eovaldi re-signed with the Rangers. For one of the few times in the Anthopoulos tenure, the Braves front office leaves Dallas looking uncertain about the team’s direction.