MLB’s free agency has been open for a month and a half. But you could be forgiven for feeling as if it hadn’t really started yet.
This is increasingly the norm. Over the last few years, there have been fewer signings in November and December, and more in January and February (and even into March). As St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak put it earlier this month, “January is the new December.” The offseason has always been a time for waiting—you only sit around the hot stove, after all, when you don’t have anywhere else to be—but waiting has increasingly started to feel like the whole game.