General Manager's Meetings: Starting Pitching at a Premium
Major League Baseball is hosting the General Manager's meetings this week in in Scottsdale at the Omni Resort and Spa. The top baseball operations executives are gathered to discuss the state of the game, new rules impacts and tweaks, and of course have the opportunity to lay the groundwork for current and future deals.
As the American League GM's came out of their meetings this afternoon and stepped into the courtyard one by one, media contingents gathered around them. Everyone wanted to talk about Shohei Ohtani of course, but for the most part all they could offer were platitudes about how great he is and every team would love to have him. GM's are not allowed to discuss specific free agents in public.
The one overriding and inescapable theme is that the starting pitching market, always a priority, is at an even higher premium than usual. The question of how many of the 30 major league teams had starting pitching at the very top of their priority list was answered in a somewhat uniform manner.
Chris Young, GM of the World Champion Texas Rangers stated the number was probably close to 25, while Scott Harris, President of Baseball Operations for the Detroit Tigers said the number was at least 20. Mike Elias, the winner of the 2023 executive of the year who heads up Baseball Operations as President and GM for the Orioles, said he thought the numbers was closer to 30 than 20. Chris Getz, GM for the Chicago White Sox said tongue in cheek it was probably 30 out of 30.
That may be a slight exaggeration, but he went on to say if it's not number one, it's number two for almost every other team. Jerry Dipoto of the Mariners has a deep pitching staff, with at least seven starters he can reasonably pencil in to a rotation. He said that while a lot of teams have and will continue to approach him, he's not looking to subtract from his stable of pitching talent. He guessed out of the other 29 teams, almost all would be looking for starting pitching at some point.
The Diamondbacks are certainly a team that is on the hunt for starting pitching, but as we can see, the competition will be fierce and the prices will be sky high. Yesterday and today Michael McDermott took a look at potential free agent and trade targets that might be good fits for Arizona. The state of the market as outlined today by the market setters themselves helps put the challenge in context. Tomorrow we'll get to speak to the National League GM's, including Mike Hazen of the Diamondbacks, to get his reaction to this state of the market.
