Winners and Losers of the MLB Winter Meetings

The winter months can be a dark time for us baseball fans. Spending five whole months without our beloved sport is often times an excruciatingly painful undertaking. Thankfully, however, that has been far from the case this year, as we have been treated to the most eventful, entertaining, and downright surprising off-season in over a decade.

It is still only mid-December, but we have already seen an unbelievable amount of offseason action this winter from historic free agent contracts to utterly unexpected player trades and even more potential moves. With the Winter Meetings coming to a close this past week, let’s recap the biggest stories of the annual team owners’ conference by highlighting the teams that improved (and struggled) the most.

Winners: Los Angeles Angels

The Angels made headlines when they made the bold move of signing third baseman Anthony Rendon for a massive seven-year $245 million contract. Entering his prime years, 29 year old Rendon is coming off of his best big league season yet, finishing third in MVP voting and carrying the Washington Nationals to their first World Series Championship in franchise history. There’s no denying that Rendon is an elite hitter, and adding him to a lineup which already has the best player of the century in Mike Trout makes the Angels an instant contender for the postseason. Pitching remains a concern—they unfortunately lost to the Yankees in the bidding war for prized free agent starter Gerrit Cole—but this move sends a message that the Angels are ready to win right now and are willing to spend the money to make it happen.

Losers: Los Angeles Dodgers

On the other side of LA, it’s an entirely different story. The Dodgers have been the clear favorites in the National League for years, but plagued with poor execution in the playoffs, the team has nothing to show for their regular season dominance despite back-to-back World Series appearances in 2017 and 2018. After ending the 2019 season by getting swept in embarrassing fashion by the underdog Nationals in the NLCS, it became clearer than ever that it was time for change. So what have the Dodgers done to revamp their promising roster and bring new life into the clubhouse? Absolutely nothing. With the team’s potential on thin ice, it’s a bad look for the Dodgers organization.

Winners: Texas Rangers

Moving into a brand new stadium in 2020, the Rangers have been making sure fans have plenty to look forward to in the next decade, and that includes an array of newly acquired players. Despite showing some promise in 2019, Texas still finished with a losing record thanks to a pitching staff that ranked the fourth worst in baseball. The front office seems to have taken note of this, bringing in an almost entirely new starting five featuring the likes of Kyle Gibson and Jordan Lyles. Then, in a last minute move that nobody could have seen coming, the Rangers traded for Cleveland Indians ace Corey Kluber, a two-time Cy Young Award winner who has been one of the league’s very best starters since his debut in 2012, with Texas giving up next to nothing in the deal to acquire him. In the span of a couple weeks, the Rangers’ bottom-five pitching staff became one of the best in the majors.

Losers: Toronto Blue Jays

Here is a team that has found itself in an awkward transitional period and simply does not know how to handle it. The Blue Jays have an abundance of young, up-and-coming talent, with big name prospects like Vladmir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio. The problem is that many of their young players are not quite ready for the big leagues yet, and with the rest of the major league roster filled with role players and aging veterans, it should be obvious to anyone with ample knowledge of the sport that the Jays are not quite ready to be competitive again. So why, then, is Toronto spending $24 million on two seasons of Tanner Roark of all people? Why are they trading away prospects for guys like Chase Anderson? Moves like these simply do not do anything productive for the team’s present or future; the Blue Jays are trapping themselves in rebuilding purgatory.

Winners: Cincinnati Reds

The Reds have had a fairly quiet offseason all things considered, but with the signing of second baseman Mike Moustakas, they have become a promising sleeper pick in the National League. Moustakas, 31, is a reliable left-handed power bat who has put up consistently solid numbers as a number five hitter throughout his career and will provide some much needed protection for Joey Votto and Eugenio Suarez in the heart of the Reds lineup. His defensive play has improved significantly in the past two seasons with Milwaukee, and with experience at all four infield positions, his versatility will prove to be extremely useful in Cincinnati. With the rest of last year’s squad remaining almost entirely intact, including one of the best pitching staffs in the NL, the Reds are well equipped to make some noise in 2020.