The MLB free agent period starts up officially on Tuesday, as that marks the sixth day after the World Series and that means teams can start negotiating with players and talking dollars and cents and some of the top players on the market as starting pitchers includes Matt Garza, Masahiro Tanaka, A.J. Burnett and Ubaldo Jimenez among others.
The key dates for the MLB offseason starts with free agency and that came after qualifying offer dates and now teams need to figure out where they want to address their needs and as usual, a focus will be on the starting pitching and while there aren't any huge names on the market, all of those players could have significant impacts come later next season. Some other players that will be on the market that should draw some attention includes Robinson Cano, Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Napoli, Brian McCann, Nelson Cruz and Carlos Beltran will be top names and they can start signing after Tuesday.
Later on in the offseason will be the GM and winter meetings and this year it could take some time for the top names on the market to sign. This season there could be upwards of 190 free agents and that means a ton of player movement and new deals. The qualifying offers given out will help teams try to keep their players or at least get draft picks if they sign elsewhere and a number of teams have given those offers to their players, including the Red Sox with their top free agents and the Yankees to Cano and others. Players can reject the deal to become a free agent or they can take it and it obviously is a way for teams to help get something out of losing their top players.
The Boston Red Sox won the World Series and now they have the chance to retool and add or decide to let players go and they have some big ones in Ellsbury and Napoli. David Ortiz was one player that did not take an offer last season, but clearly he stayed with the Sox and now names like Matt Garza, Masahiro Tanaka, A.J. Burnett and Ubaldo Jimenez could be the top pitchers. Tanaka has been great in Japan and he will have interest after the way Yu Darvish pitched and on top of that, Garza is considered to be the top veteran pitcher free agent after being traded to the Rangers and Burnett has turned his career around with the Pirates.
