While the shift from the winter stove to spring training isn’t always seamless, as pitchers and catchers report to Florida and Arizona in February 2024, the boundaries are typically a little more distinct.
With so many of the best free agents of the winter still unsigned, it is unusually difficult to distinguish one phase of the baseball calendar from the next. We usually use this pre-spring training Stock Watch as an opportunity to evaluate the work each team has done during the winter on its roster. We’re doing it now based on the current situation, but we also recognize that these images may change for some clubs after they add a significant player.
It’s not perfect, but that’s the predicament we have with Jordan Montgomery, Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, and Matt Chapman all stuck in free agent limbo. In the same way that our first spring Stock Watch gives supporters of every team the chance to dream, it also gives those supporters the freedom to let their imaginations go a bit crazy.
In light of this, we have created estimates for the impact of each team’s off-season efforts in addition to providing some wildly speculative projections derived from this thought experiment: What would happen if your team decided to go “all-in” and signed every elite free agent that was still available? Though it’s a charming idea that isn’t grounded in reality,
