3 thoughts on MLB’s Hot Stove, including Willson Contreras’ jersey exchange and a possible thaw between Dusty Baker and Sammy Sosa

Only 10 months ago we were looking at a prolonged lockout that threatened to destroy the 2022 baseball season and alienate fans for years to come.

Now we’re looking at a bunch of billionaires handing out 10-year deals like M&Ms and treating the once-dreaded luxury-tax threshold as an afterthought.

For some owners, overspending is an accepted way of doing business. They’re trying to win now, and making a budget is just a formality. That’s good news if you’re a fan of a team that’s spending big, but it makes things worse for the majority of teams trying to win while keeping a strict budget.

The spending spree at last week’s winter meetings proves that Chicago Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts wasn’t speaking for everyone when he told reporters in September: “The fact is you can’t buy a championship team in baseball.”

Maybe not, but you sure can give it your best shot.

More than $2 billion has been spent this winter, with Steve Cohen’s New York Mets increasing their payroll to a record $349 million, forcing them to pay another $70 million for surpassing four tiers of the luxury tax.

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Is it any wonder Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was against approving Cohen as the Mets owner?

With the first winter meetings since the pandemic now over and dozens of free agents still available, here are three thoughts from one of the more memorable MLB gatherings in years.

For every team that spent heavily at the winter meetings, there are three or four that did next to nothing — or nothing at all.

But don’t call them “losers.” They prefer to be thought of as thrifty shoppers waiting on some bargains to fall into their laps.

Almost every executive these days speaks from the same MLB handbook, noting the offseason “is still young” and advising not to make any rash judgments on the absence of movement.

The Milwaukee Brewers, who traded star closer Josh Hader to the San Diego Padres before the deadline in August and blew a wild-card spot that was in their hands, selected a pitcher in the Rule 5 draft. That was all.

“This week, just because we’re here doesn’t mean something necessarily has to get done,” first-year Brewers general manager Matt Arnold told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “You’re laying the foundation for a bunch of things that can happen over the course of several months.”

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White Sox GM Rick Hahn, who brought in starting pitcher Mike Clevinger on a one-year, $12 million deal that was reported before the meetings began, essentially said the same thing when asked about Sox fans’ frustration with the lack of activity.

“I 100% empathize with it,” Hahn told reporters in San Diego. “At the end of the day, there’s no added benefit to acquiring a player (at the meetings). Doing a bad deal on December 6 is a lot worse than doing a good deal on January 6.”

As upset as the fan bases in Milwaukee and on the South Side are about the lack of urgency, there’s some truth in those statements. Players’ demands come down the closer you get to spring training, and some teams will try to get rid of excess contracts to get under their 2023 budgets.

So circle Jan. 6 on your calendar. By then we should have a better idea of whether the waiting game was a sound strategy or just talk.

During Willson Contreras’ introductory news conference in St. Louis, the former Cubs catcher told a story about sending a note on a jersey to Yadier Molina after a Sept. 4 Cubs-Cardinals game at Busch Stadium. Contreras called Molina “my idol.”

Molina returned the favor, and that night Contreras put on the signed Molina jersey and modeled it for his wife, Andrea.

“I did get (goose) bumps,” Contreras said Friday, according to MLB.com “It was a nice moment I had with my wife, putting on that jersey. I asked her, ‘How do I look?’ She said I looked great, and I love the jersey even more now.”

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Coincidentally, the day before the jersey exchange I asked Cubs manager David Ross about the possibility of Contreras winding up in St. Louis as a free agent and what would happen if the nightmare scenario occurred.

“Then we’ll try to kick his butt every time we come here,” Ross replied. “I’ll give him a big hug, and then it’s like anything else. We’ll try to take advantage of him when we come here and try to win the games.”

The Cubs still are searching for a catcher, but none is available with Contreras’ offensive numbers. Yan Gomes, who had 31 RBIs and a .625 OPS in 2022, likely will be the primary catcher barring a trade.

While Fred McGriff was a unanimous choice by the Hall of Fame’s Contemporary Era committee for the 2023 class, the three nominees with an alleged steroids taint — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro — got fewer than four votes from the 16-person committee.

Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker said at the winter meetings he was happy for McGriff but also had hoped Bonds, his former San Francisco Giants player, would make the cut. Surprisingly, Baker also mentioned his former Cubs star, Sammy Sosa, among the players he feels have been judged too harshly.

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“I was also pulling for the guys at some point in time maybe we can forgive them,” he said. “But Barry, Sammy, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire, I mean, what they meant to baseball and the amount of energy and enjoyment that they gave to the world … you still can’t take that away from them because, man, there were people following baseball during that period of time that weren’t even baseball fans.

“So we can’t forget how much they did for the game and how much they made in this game and how they paid you guys and paid me too.”

While Baker and Sosa didn’t see eye to eye at the end of Sosa’s Cubs tenure, it seems like old wounds have healed, at least on Baker’s part.

You have to wonder if Sosa feels the same way.