MLB free agency 2023: Winning ...

Exactly two years ago Wednesday, the Texas Rangers signed Corey Seager to a $325 million deal to headline a monster offseason haul that also included pacts with Marcus Semien ($175 million) and Jon Gray ($56 million). The spending rumbled through baseball like an earthquake, one that was especially shocking emanating from a club coming off a 102-loss season in 2021.

The Rangers, spying a rocket-booster for their plan to return to contention, were winning the offseason. As you’re surely aware, their most recent win was decidedly more concrete, as they claimed the franchise’s first World Series title last month. What came between those two winning moments, however, is worth remembering as baseball tips into its season of big numbers, knee-jerk reactions and short memories.

In the season that followed that winter of trumpeted intent, the 2022 Rangers went 68-94. Manager Chris Woodward was fired, and days later, ownership dismissed longtime president of baseball operations Jon Daniels. The New York Post’s headline said the move came after a “$500 million failure,” which is both incorrect and illustrative of the most common fallacy we fall into when assessing free agency.

While the Rangers committed to paying Seager and Semien $500 million in total, they paid only $58 million to that duo for the failed 2022 season and only $160.5 million to the entire roster that year, a middling 16th in MLB. There’s no questioning the failure part: The 2022 Rangers were trying, and the major-league team did not live up to the organization’s hopes, but the $500 million couldn’t have possibly soured in one disappointing campaign.

It’s patently incorrect — yet ubiquitous in baseball conversation — to flatten six- or 10-year contracts into lump-sum losses, as if the team defaulted on a debt that turned into an immediate anchor around their necks. More accurately, the Rangers committed $500 million to have 10 chances at glory with Seager, seven with both middle-infield stars and at least four while both are still in or around their peaks. They took their first shot that season, then adjusted.

The adjustment involved elevating GM Chris Young to top decision-maker and again spending vigorously, this time on pitchers, headlined by Jacob deGrom. The ensuing World Series run was propelled not by the most recent big-ticket signing — deGrom, who made six starts before going down due to an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery — but by Seager and Semien (and Nathan Eovaldi and a host of others, but you get the point). The deals that were deemed failures one year were worth every penny the next year.

The point is that we as a baseball community want to render judgment on these news-making contracts at all times. Big contracts attached to big names are the lowest-hanging fruit baseball has to offer. So-and-so is a bust. That deal is an albatross. This other deal is a bargain. Like spouting opinions about a single stock on a single day in the market, it is easy to make bold proclamations that seem correct and easy to forget about them when they turn out to be completely wrong. Almost all of MLB’s mega-deals are long-term propositions constantly being emotionally evaluated based on what happened yesterday.

That’s great for holiday conversation fodder with your uncle, but it might lead you to some misguided and unnecessarily depressive places if you’re hoping to see your baseball team succeed. So as teams start to jockey to win this offseason, let’s take a second to think about what that actually means.

Winning the offseason means upping the ante

One way to hear the phrase “winning the offseason” is as a winking or euphemistic barb. To use 2023 as an example, the New York Mets and San Diego Padres won the offseason with splashy additions such as Justin Verlander and Xander Bogaerts, but the shine wore off once actual baseball was being played on the field. There’s undeniable truth to the sarcastic bite of this interpretation. The highs of signing a superstar can mean a more crushing fall during a summer swoon.

But the Rangers are a terrific counterpoint, suggesting that — wait a minute — maybe some of those days of disappointment are worth it for what might still follow.

Yes, the Mets and Padres and even the New York Yankees — who re-signed Aaron Judge for $360 million and inked Carlos Rodón for $162 million last winter prior to their worst season in decades — are inspiring angst right now. They are taking the brunt of criticism and second-guessing because their moves didn’t pay off in the short-term, but the other way to view “winning the offseason” is more friendly and, importantly, more accurate.

A team that wins the offseason has upped the ante. They have placed a hope-building, ambition-boosting, stakes-raising bet. You might disagree with the direction or the potential of the player involved, but only the team owner (who can afford it) actually stands to lose anything. And sure, it’s possible to achieve the thrills of contention without putting yourself out there in free agency, but is avoiding the raised eyebrows of a questionable financial outlay more important than pursuing a championship?

In baseball today, teams that reach the summit of the sport overwhelmingly do so fueled by the star power — and financial risks inherent in acquiring it — required to plant their pennant flags. Over the past 10 seasons, only three World Series champions have finished the season outside the top 10 of MLB payrolls (by end-of-year Competitive Balance Tax calculations), and only one, the 2015 Kansas City Royals, won a title without rostering a player guaranteed $100 million or more.

2023 Rangers: 8th (Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Max Scherzer, plus an injured Jacob deGrom)

2022 Astros: 9th (Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman)

2021 Braves: 13th (Freddie Freeman, plus an injured Ronald Acuña Jr.)

2020 Dodgers: 5th (Mookie Betts, plus David Price, who opted out due to COVID-19)

2019 Nationals: 6th (Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Ryan Zimmerman, Patrick Corbin)

2018 Red Sox: 1st (David Price, J.D. Martinez, plus an injured Dustin Pedroia)

2017 Astros:19th (Justin Verlander, acquired at the trade deadline)

2016 Cubs: 4th (Jason Heyward, Jon Lester)

2015 Royals: 11th (none)

2014 Giants: 7th (Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner)

Now, guaranteeing a player $100 million or more isn’t some silver bullet, and no contract is guaranteed to work, but championship rings almost unyieldingly wind up going to the teams willing to pay what it takes to employ the sport’s best. Despite this pattern, three teams have still never signed a deal of any type guaranteeing $100 million, while six more have never signed a free agent for $100 million or more.

Spending big gets teams in the game

What we’re really dealing with here, if you asked a grad student who has spent too much time studying cognitive functions to pay attention to baseball, are variations on recency bias. We mentally set expectations based on a team’s winter posture. We react to their performance based on those expectations. Then we overwrite our previous expectations with new ones that weigh last season’s experience far too heavily. The goalposts keep moving. Our mind’s eye keeps rushing to adjust, and the perspective never stabilizes.

That’s why the Rangers feel like winners, and the Padres, for example, feel doomed, even though objective measures see little daylight between the two squads heading into 2024. They both have stacked lineups built from a mix of young talent and expensive stars entering the middle of their 30s. They both need external additions to assemble contender-worthy pitching units. And they both play in divisions in which they cannot reasonably be called the favorites. Sure, there are legitimate reasons to favor the Rangers’ side of the equation — Evan Carter and Josh Jung are better than the Padres’ pre-arbitration players, and the Texas farm system easily outstrips San Diego’s — but right now, the early runs of the Steamer projection system at FanGraphs see a hair more WAR on the Padres’ 2024 roster than the Rangers’.

In reality, the best reason to feel more optimistic about the Rangers than the Padres heading into next season is simply that they are reportedly interested in continuing to spend, while the Padres are rumored to be shopping Juan Soto to cut payroll.

However, even if the Padres do trade Soto, they will enter 2024 with four hitters who have received MVP votes in the past three seasons: Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ha-Seong Kim. The first three stars are all signed through 2033 (yes, 2033). Those deals won’t all age spectacularly well, just as they didn’t all launch spectacularly well, but they offer relative certainty that a team cannot get by waiting to sign someone in a future market or hoping for a star to emerge. The Padres, when including Soto, have five hitters whom Steamer projects to outplay the best non-Shohei Ohtani free-agent hitter available in 2024.

In short, the more you shed the blinders of one-season samples, the more you see evidence of expensive star players lifting expensive teams to relevance or all-out glory. Beyond the Rangers in 2023, there are Bryce Harper and Zack Wheeler’s Philadelphia Phillies leveling up in 2022, and before that, Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer’s Washington Nationals surprising in 2019.

Maybe the payoff was shorter-lived than fans hoped, or maybe the excellence didn’t quite carry over the October hump of playoff randomness, but over the past five seasons, 18 of 20 Championship Series combatants have run a top-10 payroll at least once in that span.

That chance, that latent hope? That’s what teams and their fans gain by winning the offseason. Pushing your chips to the center of the table is just about the only way to win big. Even if it doesn’t play out the way you expect, you are in the game.