Only one team can win the trophy that truly matters, seven and a half months from now in the World Series.
But ever since Josh Sborz struck out Ketel Marte to seal a first championship for the Texas Rangers on November 1, another prize has been on offer – winning the off-season.
There were colossal contracts, blockbuster trades and eight new managers in the winter that was 2023-24, but now it’s spring and the season is set to get underway.
Here, Mail Sport takes a look at the five biggest winners and losers…
WINNERS
1) Los Angeles Dodgers
What do you get the team that has everything? How about a unicorn? And the record-setting, mystifying pitcher everyone wanted? And a 6-foot-8 flamethrower? And a 25-home run bat? And a few shutdown relievers? Oh and the franchise icon thrown in, but only when he’s ready.
The Dodgers won this winter, as they would almost any of the last 50, with their gluttonous $1.2billion haul of acquisitions, headlined by Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Any team would have been transformed by either.
The Dodgers – thanks to Ohtani’s selfless deferrals – got both. Add in Tyler Glasnow, Teoscar Hernandez, Ryan Brasier, Joe Kelly and, eventually, Clayton Kershaw, and we’re going to need a phrase a few levels above ‘championship or bust’.
But not everything is perfect in Dodgertown. Ohtani’s long-time friend and interpreter was fired by the team this week after a suspicious wire transfer from the player’s bank account to an illegal gambling operation that is reportedly under criminal investigation.
And while his spokespeople deny that Ohtani had any involvement, there was more bad news for his countryman, Yamamoto, who surrendered five runs in just one inning of work in his Dodger debut on Thursday in Seoul.
Shohei Ohtani #17 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto #18 of the Los Angeles Dodgers in Seoul
The Dodgers added pitcher Tyler Glasnow (left), while the Giants acquired Blake Snell (right)
The Blake Snell deal completes a full set on the Giants’ off-season wish list.
They have an ace (Snell), power (Jorge Soler), defense (Matt Chapman), speed and contact (Jung-Hoo Lee), rotation depth (Jordan Hicks, Ross Stripling and Robbie Ray when he recovers from injury) and an old wise hand to tie it all together (new manager Bob Melvin).
Each individual move is not going to be enough to slay the Dodger dragon, but this is now a team primed for playoff contention.
3) Baltimore Orioles
Remember when we were all worried about the Orioles? How they had blown their chance to build on a glorious young core, and it was classic thrifty Baltimore scraping by, and how they would never win anything again?
Well that’s all a distant memory now, fading into a Corbin Burnes-shaped shadow as they finally gave their rotation an ace.
Burnes, the 2021 Cy Young Award winner with Milwaukee, is not just pitching to impress his new team but all 29 others too, with his contract expiring this winter.
Joining the cast of young stars – led by Adley Rutschman, Grayson Rodriguez and last year’s rookie of the year Gunnar Henderson – is former No1 overall pick Jackson Holliday and outfielder Colton Cowser, whose bat is making all the noise in Spring Training.
Baltimore’s Jackson Holliday looks on from the dugout during a 2024 Grapefruit League game
4) Chicago Cubs
Yes, they could have done more. Shota Imanaga, Hector Neris and Michael Busch were all promising additions that, should everything come up Cubs, will probably have them as favorites to win the NL Central.
Cody Bellinger could win another MVP. But the key is new manager Craig Counsell, and that is why the Cubs pushed out David Ross, went to their division rivals in Wisconsin and paid the best skipper in the game twice as much as any of his peers are getting.
The Cubs missed the postseason by one game last year. Counsell’s addition alone should put them over the top.
5) New York Yankees
Aaron Judge is the most intimidating hitter in the American League, and parking an on-base machine in front of him in Juan Soto is going to make the nightmare all the more terrifying. Keep these two in the lineup and New York will pile up runs and wins, with Soto’s discipline driving pitchers mad and Judge’s power driving him in.
But they do have to keep them on the field, though, and Judge’s fragility alongside a two-month absence for reigning Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole is the reason the Yankees are not higher up this list.
Juan Soto #22 and Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees talk during spring training
LOSERS
1) Milwaukee Brewers
Life in MLB’s smallest media market just got a marked amount tougher as bigger fish came to swim in the Brewers’ waters.
Counsell was snatched by the Cubs, while Burnes’ talent was always going to put a contract extension beyond Milwaukee’s reach – so off he went to Baltimore. Now closer Devin Williams is out for three months, and that may be the final straw to trigger a full teardown – the Dodgers’ links to Willy Adames will not go away.
It’s still just about a winnable division, and top prospect Jackson Chourio has a skillset that any fan can dream on, but this looks like a step back when they should be taking a leap forward.
2) Boston Red Sox
The Red Sox top brass are making it very easy to forget that they are the most successful team of the 21st century, including ending an 86-year title drought.
Ever since their fourth championship in 2018, it has been one long succession of disappointments and body blows to their fanbase, summed up by another winter of doing very little.
Lucas Giolito was the biggest arrival on a two-year, $38.5m deal, and then he blew out his elbow – and won’t pitch for half of his contract. In the toughest division in baseball, the Red Sox have once again let an off-season sail by.
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora is already facing injuries with his pitching rotation in 2024
3) Los Angeles Angels
The only light at the end of the tunnel for the Halos is if the universe-altering revelation comes that, actually, Ohtani was a bad player to have on your team. Seems unlikely though, doesn’t it?
And particularly unlikely that the Angels will end their decade-long postseason drought by replacing their two-way, all-world star with the small cast of veterans that make up their off-season spending.
Snell was linked, Dylan Cease was linked, Chapman was linked, and even a reunion with Ohtani was linked. But none came to fruition, and Mike Trout is now pretty much a one-man band.
4) Colorado Rockies
The Dodgers spent $1.2billion, the Giants $400m, the Padres got Cease to soften the blow of losing Soto and even the Diamondbacks added a few names as reigning National League champions.
The Rockies, very much the ‘other’ team in the NL West, are coming off a franchise-worst record of 59-103 last season, and still decided to keep things as they are.
It’s very hard to see a road back even to respectability.
5) Chicago White Sox
It really was not long ago that the White Sox were an exciting, young core of talent. Even last year, they were favorites among many to win the AL Central.
But then they contrived to finish with their worst record for 53 years, and the bottom has now completely fallen out of the roster.
With Cease now in San Diego, there’s Luis Robert Jnr, and there’s not much else. In their division, it really wouldn’t have taken much to build around Robert in the final four seasons left on his contract, but instead this is going to be another long, painful slog on the South Side.
