The Astros are World Series champions, officially bringing the 2022 baseball season to a close. As the party continues in Houston, the rest of the baseball world has already gotten started on winter business, as (knock on wood) the league prepares for its first “regular” offseason in three years. The 2019-20 offseason was interrupted by the pandemic, with that uncertainty continuing to cloud MLB’s preparations heading into 2021. Last winter, the offseason was shut down by a 99-day lockout, until the league and the players’ union finally agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement.
Fortunately, it looks like we might be in store for nothing but hot stove talk during this offseason, in a welcome return to normalcy. We at MLB Trade Rumors are already in the swing of things, with Matt Swartz’s annual arbitration projections posted and our annual Offseason Outlook series well underway. In addition, the annual Top 50 Free Agents list and Free Agent Prediction contest are both coming soon, so stay tuned.
Here is the rundown of the offseason’s key dates on the baseball calendar…
NOVEMBER 6: All eligible players can officially file for free agency, though even though this technically marks the start of free agency, players still aren’t allowed to negotiate with anyone but their current team. During the five days until the full opening of the free agent market, teams and players must make their contractual decisions about any club options, player options, opt-outs, and mutual options. The trade market also fully re-opens today, and it is rare but not totally uncommon to see a prominent swap take place as soon as the market opens.
NOVEMBER 7-10: The annual GM meetings, this year taking place in Las Vegas.
NOVEMBER 10: The free agent market officially opens, and free agents are now free to negotiate and sign with other teams. This is also the deadline for option decisions, as well as the deadline for teams to issue qualifying offers to eligible free agents. MLBTR’s Anthony Franco recently examined which players are most likely to receive the one-year, $19.65MM offers from their current teams, and which players represent trickier decisions for the clubs.
NOVEMBER 14-17: Awards week begins, as the league announces the results of one major award on each of these four days. The Rookie Of The Year winners are revealed on the 14th, the Manager Of The Year winners on the 15th, the Cy Young Award winners on the 16th, and finally the league MVPs on the 17th. Many players can earn extra contract bonus money based on high finishes in these awards races, but there is an extra hot-stove element this year. Due to the Prospect Promotion Incentive plan included in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the top two finishers in AL and NL ROY voting will receive a full year of Major League service time, regardless of how much time they actually spent on their clubs’ active rosters.
NOVEMBER 15: The deadline for teams to set their 40-man rosters in advance of the Rule 5 draft. This usually involves adding some prominent minor leaguers onto the 40-man to prevent their selection in the R5, and several clubs might be looking to swing trades to free up 40-man space and ease any possible roster crunch.
NOVEMBER 15: The deadline for the free agents issued qualifying offers to decide whether or not to accept the QO.
NOVEMBER 18: The non-tender deadline, as teams must decide by this date whether or not to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players. This date represents a notable difference to the regular offseason calendar, as the non-tender deadline is usually in late November or early December. Given the closer proximity to the 40-man roster decision date, it seems quite possible we could see some earlier non-tender decisions than usual, so teams can free up more roster spots.
DECEMBER 4-7: The annual Winter Meetings, this year taking place in San Diego.
DECEMBER 7: The Rule 5 Draft, returning to its usual date on the final day of the Winter Meetings. Last year’s Rule 5 Draft was canceled due to the lockout, marking the first time since 1891 that some form of the R5 didn’t take place.
JANUARY 13: The filing deadline for teams and arbitration-eligible players to submit 2023 salary numbers. Arbitration hearings will begin to take place in March, though teams and players can agree to a salary at any point (even minutes before) a hearing takes place. However, many teams adopt the “file and trial” tactic, meaning that they’ll automatically opt to go to a hearing with any player who doesn’t agree to a salary by January 13, with no further discussion about an arbitration-avoiding deal.
JANUARY 15: The international signing window officially opens, and closes 11 months later on December 15, 2023. Many of the top names of the 2023 int’l class will sign on the first day the market opens, as several of these prospects have already agreed to unofficial deals with teams years in advance. Because Major League Baseball and the MLBPA didn’t reach an agreement on the league’s desire to implement a draft for international prospects, the current int’l signing system and the qualifying-offer system will both remain in place for the length of the CBA (though the 2026 season).
FEBRUARY 24: Spring Training games officially begin.
MARCH 8: The World Baseball Classic begins, with games played in Taichung, Tokyo, Phoenix and Miami over the course of the 14-day, 20-team event. The WBC returns for the first time since 2017, as the 2021 tournament was canceled due to the pandemic.
MARCH 30: Opening Day
Mark, I agree. When looking at the offseason dates it feels like a lot of them have been pushed up to earlier dates. Is that because of how late the World Series went due to the lockout?
Yeah, aren’t the GM meetings usually much later, like December? Seems very, very early this year. I wonder what the advantage or logic is behind that? Perhaps to get the trade market moving more quickly?
Clipper. GM meetings have always been in November about 2 weeks prior to winter meetings.
I can’t reply to you directly, Love of the Game, but thanks. Still early this year then by about two or three weeks or so, I guess… I must be thinking of the Winter Meetings.
Yeah Clipper it’s the winter meetings you’re thinking of man. Wonder how busy this offseason will be for all teams before the meetings?
Congrats to the Astros fans.
Now there are 5 expansion teams tied with 2 championships
Marlins – 2 in 30 seasons
Blue Jays – 2 in 46 seasons
Royals – 2 in 54 seasons
Astros and Mets – 2 in 61 seasons
Lets see which expansion team can get to number 3 first.
Teams with zero World Series:
San Diego Padres 0-2
Texas Rangers 0-2
Tampa Rays 0-2
Colorado Rockies 0-1
Seattle Mariners (never been to WS)
Oops
Forgot
Milwaukee Brewers 0-1
Geez, thanks for the reminder
Still laughing about conforto last year rejecting the QO as soon as he possibly could like he was showing the Mets who the boss is. Never understood why he thought he was going to get the mega contract he wanted. You can say he was listening to his agent but sometimes you have to think for yourself. Lol.
Totally agree and to think he turned down 5/125 from the Mets. He’s going to be forced to sign a cheap 1 year prove it deal with a bad team. Boras is what’s wrong with baseball.
That is nonsensical. The best agent in the game getting top dollar for the talent is the ‘what’s wrong with the game’
Ummm… but he DIDN’T get top dollar. He followed the advice of Boras and lost big time
You don’t really know that now do you cosmo
There are many factors that go in to these decisions, many we aren’t privy to.
boras in terms overall negotiations is not only the best in baseball but the best sports agent in the world.
I completely disagree. He represents top talent that commands top dollar. They get top dollar. How is that a credit to Boras? They get paid what we expect them to. Boras has nothing to do with that. Don’t get me wrong, an agent does tons of other stuff, all of which I’m sure Boras is very good at but he often hurts his clients(Conforto, Stephen Drew) and the stars get paid with or without him. Trust me, I could’ve represented Harper and he stills gets that same basic payday.
Unless he was injured, and that’s a real possibility, there was no reason to think he shouldn’t have done fairly well. In his three previous seasons, he averaged 3.6 bWAR/650 PAs, and missed only 26 games in three seasons.
If Frankt below is correct, then I’d say that $125M/5 was probably ballpark okay. Not sure why he wouldn’t have taken that, but if it was me, I’d certainly have rejected the QO.
Joe Brady is the master at over thinking. Him turning down the extension then turning down the qualifying offer baffled almost everyone. Wasn’t really very strong interest in this guy from the get go last free agency season probably based on his asking price. He was an ok player but nothing spectacular. That’s all.
@JoeBrady How sure are we of that offer?
In sum Conforto was a 3.5 WAR corner guy whose defense, already poor, was likely to become a severe problem in his 30s. 5/$125m for what would have been his age 29-33 seasons looks generous, to put it mildly, particularly with a disabling shoulder capsule tear lingering on his resume.
A typical projection system gets him to about 10 WAR for that $125m over 5 seasons, only 3 of which project him to play well enough to hold down a starting slot, particularly with likely defensive decline. On top of that he’s only a platoon guy—which forces you to keep a 4th OFer on hand who can hit LHP in particular.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he just wanted to get the he!! away from the Mets. After suffering the Wilpons, Cohen came in and was the perfect buffoon, the Wilpons 2.0. No wonder he said ‘no.’
Trade everyone!
Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to run it like a fantasy draft every year? All the teams start with nobody, then have a draft to build your entire team from scratch using all of the eligible players at the ML level, still using the salary cap formulas. Players work for MLB, not the individual clubs. You still have farm systems and can utilize those players to beef up your rosters throughout the year. Would be kinda neat to see who the best organization would be from scouting through bench coaching. It’ll never happen, but would be interesting!
Houston set the bar.
I’m just puzzled at how they managed to do it without Osuna, given how vital they seemed to believe he was just a few years ago.
It turns out that you can win without a violent thug on board!
I for one credit all accusations no matter what. Saves time, and if adopted nationwide, would save billions.
JackStrawb assaulted me on June 9, 1988
What a surprise that sarcasm eludes you.
I evade a lot of things, but unfortunately I was not able to elude the sensuous groping of your meaty hand in the men’s bathroom at the Iowa State Fair on June 9, 1988
Wasn’t an accusation.
Does anyone really question that Osuna committed some terrible acts? I’m just saying. We don’t have to wait for a Supreme Court decision on this one, do we?
Normalcy finally returns to the hot stove. The earlier non-tender deadline of November 18th for arbitration-eligible players will also add to the free agent pool sooner than in the past. Typically this deadline had occurred closer to or on the eve of the winter meetings. This could have an impact on the trade market with deals consummated earlier than the previous norm. It would be nice to have the bulk of team rosters set before the winter holidays for a change instead of lagging into the early months of 2023.
No we deals at Winter Meetings so MLB Network doesn’t have to do repeat exipsodes.
Yeah. I like the earlier deadline.
The countdown begins…
As of today, November 6th 2022…
110 days till Spring Training
144 days till Opening Day
Dodgers sign EVERYONE!!
Let’s hope! Tired of all these small market teams signing all the top players.
/s
Same here Old York! MLB needs to put a salary cap on all of these small market teams that are spending big money to give big market teams like the Dodgers a chance to land the big free agents!
Last winter, the offseason was shut down by a 99-day lockout,
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It’s kind of funny,
On one hand, we had all these posters saying that they were quitting baseball because of a threatened work stoppage for the first time in almost 30 years..
On the other hand, you have people like me that have to be reminded that there was even a long-forgotten issue last year.
Lesson to be remembered 4 years from now: don’t panic and allow the players and management to decide how to chop up my $13 beer.
The twitter types run based on emotion, of course they over react to everything.
Agreed 100% JoeBrady! I almost forgot about the lockout until you mentioned it.
Mr. Polishuk, I know it is not directly related to baseball, but just for fun, how about updating the article to include the various HOF votes, announcements and celebrations? Gracie.
Not often there is a tribute to Royce at the end of a statement. Well done.
First, how do you know he didn’t mean Royler, Rickson, or one of the other family members? Second, ISWYDT, so it’s a well-played spin of the expression of gratitude. 🙂
Hi Mark, you forgot that December 6 will host the MLB Draft Lottery. Also I read in the Athletic’s post CBA reporting that all arbitration hearings were expected to take place between January 30th and February 17th. theathletic.com/3187914/2022/03/16/mlbs-collective…
The new CBA has moved the acceptance deadline for the Qualifying Offer to Nov. 15 this offseason.
Hopefully this free agency/trade season moves at a nice pace rather than the glacial pace of the past few offseasons (last season excluded obviously because of the lockout)
Will they set the Lottery draft order at the Winter Meetings?
Asking for a franchise.
Can arbitration-eligible players be traded before the tender decision is made? I would think they could because a team would have to make decisions with the 40-man roster before the deadline. The Mets will probably try to trade Dom Smith if they can since Vogelbach has his active roster spot now at a lower salary.
@phenomenalajs Yes they can. Iirc they then just go to arb or settle with their new team, no funkery involved. The Mets are surely done with Dom, particularly with his $3.2m arb award impending. Who’s going to want him at that price?
I fully expect the Mets to cut him, whereupon Dom will go to an intelligent team that will sign him to a split contract and promptly resurrect his career. It was similarly amusing to see JD Davis get dumped and immediately redisover his stroke in SF. God, the Mets’ FO sucks. Their minor leaguers looked completely suprised to be in the majors. Good job, bringing them up at crunch time, even though through the deadline they were getting nothing from the DH or 3B slots.
It used to only be the “Winter Meetings” now we have “GM meetings” where the stooges for the team owners openly talk about how hard they want to repress player salaries so some 75 year old geriatric can make even more money than he did last year by doing absolutely nothing for anyone but himself.
The GM Meetings have been in place for a while now, so are you just complaining for the sake of complaining? Are conveniently ignoring that it’s the owners who want to suppress player salaries and that GMs don’t give a stink so long as they have the budget to make moves.
This off season is set up better and looks to be good.