MLB Front Office winners and losers from the Winter Meetings

The MLB Winter Meetings wrapped up Thursday in Dallas with a few headline-grabbing moves and a far longer list of unfinished business.

Most front office execs left Dallas echoing the same refrain: “We set the stage…”. A fair translation of that is, “we don’t have a deal yet and may not get one.”

Still, there were some obvious winners and losers from the multi-day sessions that always constitute a major winter highlight for baseball fans.

Here’s an assessment of which teams left Dallas in better or worse shape.

Five biggest Winter Meeting winners

Winner: New York Mets

Mets President of baseball ops David Stearns made the headline-grabbing move when he got Juan Soto’s signature on a 15-year, $765 million contract. Soto has his flaws, but he was decidedly the best hitter on the winter market, and offensive skills like his tend to age well.

Only five players had a better WAR in 2024 than Soto’s 7.9, and none of those five were available, either as a free agent or by trade. Neither, for that matter, were any others who ranked among the game’s top 20 in WAR.

The Mets also won the PR game by depriving their crosstown rivals, the Yankees, of one of the centerpieces of their 2024 lineup.

Winner: Red Sox

Craig Breslow won the Garret Crochet sweepstakes and although the price was high — catcher Kyle Teel and outfielder Braden Montgomery, both top-five prospects in the system, headlined the package — trading a top prospect for an established front-liner is the kind of swap any front office executive will gladly make.

Crochet only won six games in 32 starts last season, and that doesn’t sound like much until you consider that he was pitching for the 121-loss White Sox. His 3.58 ERA would have ranked second on Boston’s staff for any pitcher working more than 140 innings.

Winner: Chicago White Sox

Given their 41-121 record of a season ago, the bar was pretty low for improvement by the South Siders. GM Chris Getz had to trade Crochet and he got a credible return, which also included a pair of high-upside prospects in Chase Meidroth and Wikelman Gonzalez. And, like Keel, Montgomery was a first-round draft pick out of college.

It may be too early to call the Crochet blockbuster a win-win deal, but it certainly has the makings of one.

Winner: Toronto Blue Jays

The Jays needed an infielder and they got a good one in Andres Gimenez, acquiring the second baseman in a swap with Cleveland.

Gimenez had an down-season offensively in 2024, hitting .252 with a .638 OPS. Both numbers were well below his recent averages. However, he continued his excellent glove work, compiling 18 Defensive Runs Saved and a third consecutive Gold Glove. That makes him a two-win player defensively and a four-win player overall.

Winner: Texas Rangers

GM Chris Young locked up his ace, Nathan Eovaldi, for three more seasons at a cost of $75 million. Eovaldi was 12-8 with a 3.80 ERA in 29 starts last season, so securing his continued presence was a must-do item on the offseason agenda.

Young can check that one off the list. Most of what remains for Texas to return to postseason contention in 2025 is outside Young’s control. The list of Ranger centerpieces who had rough seasons in 2024 is extensive: Jonah Heim, Marcus Semien, Adolis Garcia, Evan Carter, and Corey Seager, and others. When the heart of a championship team’s order collapses simultaneously, there’s not much a GM can do.

Winner: Washington Nationals

Team President Mike Rizzo literally won the lottery, coming away with the top pick in next year’s draft. To do that, Rizzo beat a system that made his team only the sixth favorite in the drawing. He didn't accomplish much on his own in Dallas, but sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good.

Five biggest Winter Meetings losers

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.

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