CARLSBAD, Calif. – If you didn’t know any better, baseball’s GM Meetings could be mistaken for any North American business conference.
A lot of khakis, a lot of quarter zips and a slate of meetings to discuss the finer points of an industry – whether that happens to be dentistry, software development or Major League Baseball.
Granted, you’re less likely to find dozens of media members lurking in the lobby of a dentists’ convention. But at their core, the MLB GM Meetings are an administrative event. This is where executives discuss potential tweaks to the replay system, offer feedback on MLB’s recent efforts to prevent illegal sign stealing and compare notes on health and safety procedures.
Once they’re done with that? Then it’s finally time to talk trades and start exploring deals with what looks like a tremendous class of free agents. And as of Sunday evening, MLB’s quiet period is over, meaning all those free agents are now able to sign with any team.
All day Monday, baseball executives from around the country will be arriving at the site of this year’s meetings, the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif. As they prepare for the first full week of the off-season, we’ll look more closely at what goes on behind the scenes at the GM Meetings and what to expect from the Blue Jays.
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Who attends the GM Meetings?
After going virtual in 2020, the MLB GM Meetings are back to being an in-person event. And there’s a chance this is the only major off-season event that takes place this year with many expecting the Winter Meetings to be cancelled if there’s no new collective bargaining agreement when the current one expires Dec. 1.
For now, at least, it’s business as usual. That means each team sends a small handful of executives – typically a GM, an assistant GM or two and a couple more high-ranking executives (some but not all team presidents attend).
That’s on the team side. The league itself sends executives to run the scheduled meetings and be sure the 30 clubs get the information they need.
Along with all those team and league officials, many agents attend, too – though some consider it unnecessary depending on which free agents they represent that year. This year’s agent meetings are set to begin in Carlsbad on Thursday, meaning many agents will show up a day or two early to allow for some in-person meetings with teams.
Lastly, there’s a media contingent covering the event. It adds up to a few hundred people, but compared to the chaos of the Winter Meetings it’s far smaller in scale, allowing GMs to conduct business with relatively few interruptions from autograph collectors or job seekers.
What actually happens in these free agent meetings?
When teams and agents meet this time of year, a sort of dance unfolds. There are initial expressions of interest and promises to keep in touch, but firm offers are less common. Get ready to hear the phrase ‘laying the groundwork’ a lot this week.
For instance, let’s go back to 2019, the last time baseball held traditional GM Meetings. That week, a Blue Jays contingent including manager Charlie Montoyo met in person with catcher Yasmani Grandal, who was then a free agent. There was enough mutual interest for a meeting, but that ‘groundwork’ never led anywhere concrete.
That year, the Blue Jays were also intent on adding pitching so they also held internal discussions about the likes of Jordan Lyles, Julio Teheran, Dallas Keuchel and Wade Miley. In some cases – Kyle Gibson and Jake Odorizzi, for example – talks got more serious. And while we didn’t know it at the time, the preliminary discussions the Blue Jays held regarding Tanner Roark and Hyun-Jin Ryu at those 2019 GM meetings would eventually lead to deals.
Of course not all of it is so structured. Now that the GM Meetings are once again an in-person event there’s the chance for unplanned run-ins between baseball people in lobbies, coffee lineups and outside elevators. Sometimes those little interactions can lead to much bigger deals.
What should we expect from the Blue Jays this year?
If the right deal emerges, the Blue Jays will strike, as they did with a one-year, $8 million deal for Robbie Ray this time last year. More likely, though? Meetings that provide the Blue Jays with useful information about the market and set up deals later in the winter.
That won’t stop the rumours from flowing, as agents sometimes like to link their clients to the Blue Jays now that they’re spending quite aggressively. There will be truth to many of those rumours, as the Blue Jays are nothing if not thorough. Especially in a year where they have clear needs for a bat and multiple pitchers, they’ll check on the vast majority of free agents, including the best of the best.
But it’s also worth understanding how these rumours emerge. For instance, agencies will often present information on numerous free agents at once instead of creating separate meetings for each player. That means when the Blue Jays meet with Scott Boras about Marcus Semien, other Boras clients like Corey Seager, Max Scherzer and Kris Bryant are likely to come up in conversation.
So, brace yourself for headlines along the lines of ‘Blue Jays interested in Max Scherzer.’ They’ll technically be true. The Blue Jays will certainly engage on top free agents once again, and what big-market team wouldn’t have interest in Scherzer? But it’s one thing to discuss a player at the GM Meetings and it’s another thing to find mutual interest and develop real traction on a deal.
This week, it’s all about getting those conversations started.
