Free For All Friday #28

Cold Stove

Frankly, there just isn’t much going on in baseball these days. Yes, there have been some free agent signings, but other than Aaron Nola (Phillies) and Sonny Gray (Cardinals), none of the top free agents have yet to ink a deal. Utility player Joey Wendle signing a 1-year deal with the Mets just doesn’t move the needle.

If you do want to know about every free agent deal so far this offseason, go to and bookmark MLB Trade Rumors’ Contract Tracker.

We’re all waiting to see which team will sign Shohei Ohtani, for how much, and for how long. The betting money is very much still on the Dodgers because they have tremendous resources and because Ohtani wants to go to a team that will be in the postseason every year competing for a World Series championship.

The Yankees and Mets have the resources but haven’t been winning consistently. The Braves have been winning consistently, but have locked up all of their young talent and already have an 2024 Opening Day payroll near $200 million.

Jon Paul Morosi said on MLB Network a few days ago that the Giants are “devoting their full hearts and finances” to signing either Ohtani or Japanese superstar starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. That’s good PR for Giants ownership but I’ll believe it when I see Ohtani or Yamamoto put on a Giants uniform and shake owner Greg Johnson’s hand at a press conference that doesn’t get canceled at the last minute.

The other big deal everyone is waiting on is a Juan Soto trade. Nearly every baseball experts predicts the Padres will trade Soto this winter. Soto will be a free agent at the end of the 2024 season and will command a huge contract—perhaps as high as $40 million per year on average. With the Padres looking to cut payroll, trading Soto now—instead of losing him in a year to free agency—make a lot of sense.

MLB’s Winter Meetings will take place next week at Opryland in Nashville. Front office executives from all 30 MLB teams and from many minor league teams convene to conduct league business. Agents and some players also show up, as proximity sometimes leads to deals—either free agent signings or trades. Baseball media swarms the event, too, which is how we get all the juicy hot stove rumors.

Stay tuned.

The Yankees did what??

Not a terrible trade or absurd free agent signing. The Yankees did something much more egregious on Thursday.

The Yankees issued a public statement mourning the death of Henry Kissinger and posted it to social media.

What an absolute own goal by the Yankees to publicly praise a genocidal war criminal.

The Yankees didn’t view Kissinger that way, of course. The Steinbrenner family treated Kissinger as a frequent welcome guest at Yankee Stadium, per the public statement. No matter the terror Kissinger unleashed in Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Indonesia and elsewhere. No matter that Kissinger—once the highest ranking Jewish official in the U.S. government—had such contempt for his Jewish brethren. As Mark Joseph Stern wrote in Slate yesterday:

In fact, Kissinger repeatedly expressed contempt for Jews and Judaism throughout his career. “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic,” he said in 1973, according to his biographer Walter Isaacson. “Any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.”

I dearly hope that some high profile free agent decides not to sign with the Yankees simply because the Yankees publicly praised Kissinger.

A girl can dream, right?

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