Baseball Winter Meetings Aren’t What They Used To Be

For a hardcore baseball fan of a certain age, the MLB Winter Meetings once were must-see TV - even though absolutely not a single second of them were carried on the medium. For a long time they were held in late November/early December, right after Thanksgiving. In the years just before and after the advent of free agency, this is when and where most major player movement went down.

The building of the very best version of the Big Red Machine was completed at the 1971 meetings, when they acquired Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo, Jack Billingham, Denis Menke and Ed Armbrister from the Astros for Lee May, Tommy Helms and Jimmy Stewart. The very next year the Yankees acquired Graig Nettles from the Indians in a six-player deal, adding a foundational piece to the other truly great team of the era. These types of trades were downright routine Winter Meetings fare for an awful long time.

Things just aren’t the same anymore, for an awful lot of reasons. The changes had already begun to take place during my years working for the Brewers and Mariners, when I regularly attended the festivities. Analytics had begun to take hold in front offices, though not nearly to the extent they have today. The old school smoke-filled rooms and alcohol-fueled meetings weren’t totally extinct, but they were clearly on their way out.

During my first Winter Meetings with the Mariners in 2008, we made an old-school wheeler-dealer type trade, a three-team, 11-player monster that at its core brought ace defensive CF Franklin Gutierrez to Seattle and sent closer J.J. Putz to the Mets. The deal was conceived and consummated in a relatively short period of time at the Bellaggio Hotel in Las Vegas.

But even then, the meetings were changing. The world had been getting smaller for a long time, and there was absolutely no reason that a deal couldn’t take place at any other time during the offseason. The meetings were beginning to evolve into merely an opportunity for fact-finding and laying the groundwork for deals and free agent signings later in the offseason. Since the advent of free agency in the mid-1970s it was about a whole lot more than team execs at these conventions - it was now about the agents and in some cases the players as well.

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The “best”, most efficient meetings tend to take place in venues like the Gaylord Hotel in Nashville, where this year’s event is taking place. If you haven’t been there, you simply wouldn’t understand - this is an indoor city we’re talking about. You have to budget an extra 15 minutes of walking time to get anywhere under this place’s roof. But there are no Vegas-esque distractions, and work gets done. This work, however, often does not come to fruition until each club’s delegation returns to its home city.

Another important reality that must be noted is that are still more large constituencies that comprise the large throng of individuals descending on the Winter Meetings city. Much of MLB’s official business is transacted at the owner and GM meetings, which have already been held. But minor league personnel - employees of both the MLB clubs and their affiliates - rely on these meetings to make their operations tick. A massive trade show, meetings with vendors and prospective employees - the Winter Meetings are vital to the very existence of the minors.

And the largest constituency of all might be jobseekers. The lobbies are crawling with mostly very young potential interns and entry-level employees looking for that crucial first break. Current MLB team presidents and GMs were once among that group.

Club employees have plenty of obligations beyond the player personnel arena at the meetings. For many it will be their only opportunity to get together with minor league affiliate personnel and show their appreciation for their efforts. There are awards to be awarded and receptions to be attended - stuff that doesn’t excite the fan, but have to be done to maintain productive professional relationships.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the very nature of “work” changed. More and more is accomplished online, via Zoom, etc., and while the pendulum certainly has begun to swing back the other way a bit, people simply aren’t in the same room as often when large deals are transacted. Shohei Ohtani isn’t parading around the meetings looking to make a deal - he’s doing it his own way.

The image of the senior baseball executive has changed as well, no longer the old wheeler-dealer archetype smoking a cigar and sipping a martini, replaced by the circumspect Ivy League business school graduate. As a result, deals are made differently. Out went the gut feel, high risk/high reward moves, replaced by more of a Wall Street mindset. There are still winners and losers, but everyone is playing shades of the same game today. And when the stakes are particularly high, ownership needs to be involved, and they’re typically not in attendance at the Winter Meetings.

So what was once a swap meet is now more of a job fair, minor league trade show and an opportunity for front office members to lay the groundwork for deals that will be consummated in January/February. That plus the increasingly non-impactful Rule 5 draft, and in a new twist this year, an amateur draft lottery. It ain’t what it used to be, but at least it’s something. Some deals - like Alex Verdugo moving from the Red Sox to the rival Yankees - will get done in the next couple of days, but most of the big ones will have to wait.