Major League Baseball enjoys big momentum swing as offseason hot stove and free agency begin

With sparkling confetti still scattered on the Rogers Centre turf and the Commissioner’s Trophy belonging to the Dodgers, Magic Johnson, at 6-9, stood out among the celebrating pack.

One of L.A.’s minority owners, Johnson had firsthand knowledge regarding great championship runs and emerging dynasties, so the architect of the Lakers’ Showtime phenomenon could readily assess the entertainment value of what that thrilling World Series Game 7 had just delivered.

“This was outstanding for baseball,” Johnson said. “Always remember that they said we ruined baseball. Well, I guess we didn’t, because this series is probably going to be record viewership. We probably brought in new fans because it was such a well-played series. The Blue Jays and the Dodgers put on a show for fans all over the world.’’

His words turned out to be prophetic. Those numbers revealed that Game 7 averaged a combined 27.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game since 2017. And perhaps more significantly, MLB’s Game 7 buried Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Thunder and the Pacers, which registered only 16.4 million last June.

Overall, the 2025 World Series, an instant classic many consider to be the best ever, averaged 15.5 million viewers as compared to 10.27 million for this year’s NBA Finals. The combined Game 7 average between the U.S., Canada and Japan was 51 million.

We bring all this up now to illustrate the momentum baseball is carrying into this offseason, an encouraging backdrop to this week’s general managers’ meetings in Las Vegas, where the industry will gather at the Cosmopolitan Hotel starting Monday. For a sport that constantly harps on what’s wrong with the whole operation, whether between the lines or upstairs in the owner’s suite, the unrivaled success of this October’s World Series should provide somewhat of a springboard into the winter, further propelled by the free agency period already underway.

It will be interesting to see if what the Fall Classic taught us carries over into how MLB conducts business this offseason. Or will trepidation about next year’s expiring CBA (and the almost-assured lockout) put an early chill on spending as teams remain wary of any seismic shift in the sport’s economics?

On one hand, the Dodgers’ $395 million payroll this season provided a Grand Canyon-sized margin for error, and in that Game 7 victory, their entire $1 billion rotation — Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani — took turns during those 11 innings. Critics of MLB’s current no-cap system are quick to say it’s no coincidence that the Dodgers’ back-to-back titles line up with having baseball’s most expensive payroll in those years.

That argument is punctured, of course, by the fact that the Mets, whose $340 million payroll ranked second to the champs, won only 83 games and failed to qualify for the playoffs. They were edged by the tiny-market Reds, who invested $119 million, putting them at 23rd overall.

We certainly don’t anticipate Mets owner Steve Cohen dialing back the cash spigot, especially after publicly apologizing to the fan base for this season’s slow-moving car crash on social media. But his Bronx counterpart has been a salary-cap hawk in past labor discussions, and while it hasn’t been reflected in recent payrolls — the Yankees’ $320 million ranked third this year — Hal Steinbrenner needs to make good with his own paying customers after bowing out against the Blue Jays in the Division Series.

“I think on a year-in, year-out basis, we try to do everything we possibly can to put ourselves in a position to believe that we have a chance ultimately to be world champs again,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said last month.

That positioning is mostly the purpose of this week’s GM meetings. Even though untethered free agency began Thursday at 5 p.m., the glacial pace of baseball’s open-ended signing period means the biggest names on the market don’t typically come to an agreement until next month’s winter meetings, which begin Dec. 9 in Orlando.

The only marquee free agent currently on a clock is Japanese single-season homer champ Munetaka Murakami, who was posted Saturday by the Yakult Swallows and has until Dec. 22 to sign with a major-league team (which then also must pay a percentage of that contract as a posting fee to his former NPB club). Murakami, 25, enters a lefty-slugger market headlined by Kyle Tucker and Kyle Schwarber. It’s worth noting that all three are represented by the same agent, Excel’s Casey Close.

Another of baseball’s power brokers, agent Scott Boras, will be front-and-center this week, doing his usual stand-up routine for the assembled media.

Boras doesn’t have a record-breaker like Juan Soto in his stable this winter — Tarik Skubal isn’t a free agent until next year — but he has an ample supply of market movers, a list that includes Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman, Cody Bellinger, Ranger Suarez, Zac Gallen and two more of the premier Japanese stars: corner infielder Kazuma Okamoto (better contact, better glove than Murakami) and pitcher Tatsuya Imai.

Perhaps the most popular figure at these GM meetings, however, will be Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris, who is holding on to one more year of team control for Skubal. He’s almost certain to become the AL’s back-to-back Cy Young Award winner when the award is announced Wednesday. He and the Tigers reportedly are more than $200 million apart on a potential extension, suggesting that Detroit will be looking to deal its ace.

Skubal’s availability ties into baseball’s ongoing economics debate, but paying pitchers of his caliber certainly worked out for the Dodgers in October. The rest of the league now has to find a way to prevent all that talent from ending up in L.A.