Leaving the Major League Baseball winter meetings empty-handed can feel worse than it actually is. What it’s not is the equivalent of waking up on Christmas morning to find coal in your stocking and no gifts under the tree.
Teams that sign free agents or make blockbuster trades during the few days everyone of importance in the MLB universe congregates under one luxury hotel roof get out-sized applause for their moves. Reporters dutifully type up the winners and losers on their flights home.
So, yes, the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks appear to be scuffling at the moment. Inertia isn’t tolerated by fan bases, especially when their division competitors — the Dodgers and San Francisco Giants — are signing big names and holding splashy press conferences.
But the winter meetings are a snapshot, not a jury trial. Spring training begins in two months and opening day is nearly four months away. Plenty of free agents remain available — 197 at last count. Names big and small dangle as trade bait.
With that caveat, let’s explore why the Padres and Diamondbacks have stood pat.
In the Padres’ case, their unbridled spending under the late owner Peter Seidler seems to have hit its limit.
They were onlookers during the Juan Soto sweepstakes, with only memories of him posting in all 162 games in brown and gold in 2023 to tease them. They seem to be having buyer’s remorse at signing infielder Xander Boegarts to an 11-year, $280-million deal that runs through 2033.
So they mostly sat through the meetings at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas reportedly fielding offers for starter Dylan Cease and three-time batting champion Luis Arráez — both entering their final year of arbitration before becoming free agents — while making it clear to suitors that Boegarts is available.
Cease, especially, could fetch solid prospects in return, a startling turnabout for the Padres, who in recent years have been the ones shoveling promising minor leaguers from their fertile farm system to others in exchange for win-now veterans. It was the only way to keep up with, and occasionally surpass, the Dodgers.
“Every year, you always have a budget that you’ve got to be in line with,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller told reporters at the winter meetings. “This year, really no different from that standpoint. We try to be open-minded to certain players and player-specific moves that are out there — that if they line up we do have some flexibility.
“Even though we haven’t lined up on anything from a trade or free-agent standpoint, it’s been super active. Way further ahead from a knowledge standpoint today than we were when we got here.”
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That’s one way to paint a grin on the decision to swallow hard and sit. The shift in philosophy began last year when the Padres trimmed nearly $100 million off their payroll yet won 11 more games than in 2023 and gamely maintained their rivalry with the Chavez Ravine behemoth, falling a victory short in the National League Division Series.
Yet now they must try to maintain that competitive stance while reconciling that this offseason the Dodgers already added starter Blake Snell, who won the NL Cy Young Award in 2023 in a Padres uniform.
“We’re not naive that there are certain organizations that have just more competitive advantages,” Padres manager Mike Shildt told reporters. “That’s no state secret, right? We live that every day. … The reality from my seat, our clubhouse seat, our team seat is, it’s still a game that requires you to play right, compete a certain way, play the game a certain way.”
The Diamondbacks also tell themselves they play in a way that enables them to overachieve. They are one year removed from using the Dodgers as a springboard to the World Series, a remarkable achievement for a team that won only 84 regular-season games. Last season they increased that total to 89 and led the majors in runs scored yet didn’t make the playoffs.
A primary objective isn’t to add, but to subtract the one-year, $22.5-million contract of left-handed starter Jordan Montgomery, who went from postseason hero with the Texas Rangers in 2023 to a 6.38 earned-run average albatross with the Diamondbacks in 2024.
It would seem Arizona would need to eat much of the contract, but the market for starting pitching seems to climb with every free-agent signing: Snell (five years, $182 million), Max Fried (eight years, $218 million), Nathan Eovaldi (three years, $75 million).
Maybe the Diamondbacks can unload Montgomery and replace the offense lost by departing free agents Christian Walker, Joc Pederson and Randal Grichuk. They could trade from their outfield depth, moving either Alek Thomas and Jake McCarthy, both of whom are under team control through 2028.
Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen sounded a lot like Preller when assessing the winter meetings with reporters.
“A lot of meetings, didn’t really get much done,” he said. “But there’s been progress made in some conversations in some areas, so we’ll see what happens. Wasn’t necessarily expecting anything to happen here. We’ll carry those conversations forward.”
Besides staring at the backs of the Dodgers, the Padres and Diamondbacks must peek over their shoulders at the Giants, whose stunning signing of shortstop Willy Adames is an indication that new president of baseball operations Buster Posey means business.
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The Dodgers, honestly, didn’t do much during the meetings besides accepting congratulations for their World Series championship. But they accomplished plenty out of the gate this offseason, signing veteran outfielder Michael Conforto, giving the versatile Tommy Edman a five-year extension and re-signing high-leverage reliever Blake Treinen in addition to bringing in Snell.
And more is expected of Andrew Friedman, Brandon Gomes and the rest of the Dodgers’ brass. Whether that holds true for the two teams that stymied them recently enough that they can still feel the sting is undetermined.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
