Major League Baseball had its second most expensive offseason with around $3.2 billion, a sum that was largely reached by the $765 million spent by the New York Mets in the deal to keep Juan Soto.
Of the elite free agents who entered the winter market, the only one still available is Alex Bregman, but there are still many players who do not know where they will play in the 2025 season, which has already begun with Spring Training.
MLB analyst Jeff Passan of ESPN did an exercise to highlight the spending by the Mets this offseason and it was more than $1 billion, mostly for the aforementioned deal with Juan Soto, but the figure goes even further when compared to most of the 30 Major League Baseball teams.
Eight teams dominate MLB’s winter market
The Mets’ investment is more than the combined spending of 22 teams on free agents, which reached a total of $755 million, 10 less than the deal for Juan Soto.
Passan’s analysis also added that along with the Mets, there are eight other teams made up of the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants, Toronto Blue Jays, Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles, which together account for 76% of what has been spent in the winter market, which has ignited the debate about the need to implement a salary cap, so that competition is maintained.
At the end of the 2026 season, decisions will have to be made between the league office, the owners and collective bargaining to renew the labor agreement, where this point could be touched on that worries many fans, not only for the Mets, but also for the way in which the Dodgers have made their latest transactions.
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