Nearly $2 billion has already been spent on free agents during Major League Baseball's 2024-25 offseason cycle, though nearly 40 percent of that was Juan Soto's historic contract.

Soto, Max Fried, Blake Snell and Willy Adames each signed deals for north of $180M. Yet, there remains a lot of talent up for grabs with less than two months remaining before pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

So, if your favorite team isn't currently one of the biggest winners of the offseason, there's still hope that'll change. (Well, unless you root for the White Sox, Marlins or Rockies.)

From what has happened thus far in both free agency and trades, though, a few clear winners and losers of the offseason have emerged.

Winners and losers are presented in no particular order, outside of oscillating between the two.

Winner: Juan Soto

Might as well start at the top with the one contract to rule them all.

We knew since last offseason that Juan Soto was likely headed for at least $500M. By midway through the 2024 campaign, a $600M deal felt possible, if not extremely likely. After Soto helped steer the Yankees to their first World Series appearance in 15 years, we started hearing that $700M could be on the table.

But $765M—with none of it even deferred—was mind-blowing.

Soto didn't just beat Shohei Ohtani's record $700M contract from last winter. He absolutely obliterated it from a present value perspective, where Ohtani's landed at $460.8M. That's a more than 66 percent increase for Soto, who has yet to win an MVP, but who just turned 26 and is undeniably one of the best in the business.

Whether the Mets have done enough else this offseason to be better in 2025 remains to be seen, though.

Soto was obviously a huge splash, but it's presently looking like Brett Baty or bust at third base, a Tyrone Taylor/Jose Siri battle for the center field gig and a considerably worse rotation, with Frankie Montas, Clay Holmes and Griffin Canning taking the places of Luis Severino, Sean Manaea and Jose Quintana.

They're arguably slightly behind both Philadelphia and Atlanta in the NL East.

Still a fair amount of work to be done by a team that is already hovering right around the luxury-tax threshold, which is why the offseason's biggest winner thus far is Soto as opposed to the team that signed him.

Loser: Houston Astros

There are a bunch of teams who have thus far been nowhere near as active this offseason as we thought they would be. The Tigers signed Alex Cobb to a one-year deal, but that's about it. And aside from non-tendering a few guys a month ago, the Mariners and Nationals have been completely nonexistent this winter.

Then you have the Astros, who have actively gotten worse.

The one move they did make was trading Kyle Tucker to the Cubs for Isaac Paredes, Hayden Wesneski and Cam Smith.

With an .888 OPS dating back to the start of 2021, Tucker has the 10th-best mark in the majors in that department, one point ahead of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And Houston gave up its final year of team control on that three-time All-Star for a corner infielder who slugged .277 over his final 41 games last season, a long reliever and, mostly, a first-round pick in last year's draft.

It might be a great long-term move, but it's a mighty strange one for a team trying to win in 2025.

Meanwhile, they have yet to re-sign Alex Bregman, which we all assumed was their biggest plan for the offseason. And given the position players they added in that Tucker trade and their failed attempt to acquire Nolan Arenado, it sure looks like they're thrown in the towel on bringing Bregman back.

The futures market is still all the way in on the Houston Astros winning what would be their eighth AL West title in nine years. As of Thursday morning, DraftKings has the Astros at -115 to win their division, which is the second-best line for any team, trailing only the Dodgers at -350 to win the NL West.

But, goodness, that is aggressive for a team that presently has nothing but question marks both in the outfield and at first base. The pitching should still be good in Houston, but that offense might be a mess—even without accounting for the very real possibility that Jose Altuve continues to decline in his age-35 season.

Winner: Chicago Cubs

The flip side of Houston looking worse in 2025 for giving up Kyle Tucker is that the Cubs are looking better for it.

They subsequently shipped Cody Bellinger to the Yankees, so let's consider the totality of those two moves.

Sending Hayden Wesneski to the Astros and getting Cody Poteet from the Yankees was more or less a wash. Both right-handed pitchers are in their final year of pre-arbitration, each likely headed for an $800k salary. Poteet should be able to fill that sixth starter / long reliever role in which Wesneski served over the past few years.

Beyond that, they saved around $20M by giving up Bellinger ($27.5M) and Isaac Paredes (estimated $6.3M) and bringing in Tucker (estimated $16.7M), and arguably upgraded their offense in the process.

We'll see how rookie Matt Shaw fares at the hot corner—provided he breaks camp as the primary option there—but Tucker is very likely going to be more productive for the Cubs in 2025 than Bellinger was in 2024. And that outfield of Tucker, Ian Happ and Pete Crow-Armstrong should be downright elite on defense.

Where we could look back one day down the road and consider the Cubs a loser from this pair of swaps is with the prospect they gave Houston. Cam Smith was their No. 14 overall pick this past summer, and he posted an OPS north of 1.000 in 32 games played in the fall. If he ends up being the second coming of Alex Bregman for the Astros, getting one year of Tucker won't feel worth it unless the Cubs win it all this year.

That said, the Cubs also signed Matt Boyd to a two-year deal, scooped up a solid back-up catcher in Carson Kelly and are rumored to be pretty close to acquiring Jesús Luzardo from the Marlins. Meanwhile, the rest of the NL Central has either been stagnant or gotten worse this offseason, which has Chicago looking like a relatively clear favorite to win a division that seemed wholly up for grabs two months ago.

Loser: Milwaukee Brewers

Adding to the notion that the Cubs were a big winner from the early stages of the offseason is the fact that the Brewers seem to have gotten worse.

No one realistically expected them to be able to re-sign Willy Adames, but they did officially lose their 32 HR, 112 RBI, 21 SB shortstop to the San Francisco Giants.

Milwaukee also traded away two-time All-Star closer Devin Williams, getting Nestor Cortes and infield prospect Caleb Durbin from the Yankees in that deal.

Like Williams, Nasty Nestor is in his final season of arbitration eligibility and is likely headed for a 2025 salary very close to Williams'. That means they didn't gain any team control or save any real money in the pitching portion of that swap—and wouldn't have particularly needed Cortes (career 3.80 ERA) if they hadn't declined their $5.5M club option for Colin Rea (career 4.57 ERA).

Maybe Durbin ends up helping them out as early as this season, though?

Also of note, the Brewers got stuck holding the bill on Rhys Hoskins, who exercised his $18M player option—which is really more of a $22M player option, as it also triggers the mutual option for 2026 that includes a $4M buyout. There has been talk of them being open to trading him away, but we'll see if they can make that happen in a market that is already oversaturated with first basemen.

After the way they exceeded expectations in 2024, far be it from us to try to bury the Brewers as a result of their offseason thus far. However, of the teams who won their division this past season, they definitely seem least likely to repeat.

Winner: Southpaw Starters

Over the previous four offseasons combined, there were a grand total of four cases of a free-agent left-handed starting pitcher signing a contract worth at least $63M: Carlos Rodón's $162M deal with the Yankees, Robbie Ray's $115M deal with the Mariners and a pair of Eduardo Rodriguez contracts, the first for $77M with the Tigers and after he opted out two years into that one, the second for $80M with the Diamondbacks.

It's been a different story this winter with southpaws commanding some serious cheddar.

The most lucrative of those deals was Max Fried going to the Yankees for eight years at $218M—by no small accident slightly eclipsing the $217M contract David Price got nine years ago.

Fried's AAV of $27.25M is a far cry from what Blake Snell got from the Dodgers, though. The two-time Cy Young winner will be making $36.4M annually on the five-year, $182M contract that he signed to continue his tour around the NL West.

And before those nine-figure deals were completed, Yusei Kikuchi accepted a three-year, $63.675M offer from the Angels, nearly doubling his previous three-year, $36M contract signed with the Blue Jays.

Left-handed Garrett Crochet was also a pretty big winner of the offseason, freed from the sunken ship in Chicago in that trade to Boston. Whether the Red Sox get a long-term extension done before the season begins will determine just how much of a winner Crochet was, but he's in a much better place now.

Also, Jeffrey Springs got traded to the A's, but more on that in a bit.

Long story short, left-handed starting pitchers have been all the rage this winter, and we're still waiting to see where Sean Manaea, Andrew Heaney and Jose Quintana end up going.

Loser: Free Agent Corner Infielders

Pitchers have been flying off the shelf this offseason with 26 free agents already signing. Juan Soto headlines a list of about a half dozen outfielders with new homes. Willy Adames was the biggest of the four middle infielders on the move. And there have already been seven catchers signed this winter.

First base and third base, though?

Not a single one off the board yet.

That's certainly not for lack of talent available.

At first base alone, you've got Pete Alonso and Christian Walker who should be getting multiyear deals with salaries in excess of $20M, plus Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Josh Bell and Carlos Santana on the list of guys surely worth a one-year deal. Ty France, Joey Gallo, Rowdy Tellez and José Abreu could all be worth flyers, too.

Across the diamond, Alex Bregman is the biggest one by far, but Yoán Moncada could be a great buy-low candidate after three straight rough years with the White Sox. Nicky Lopez and Josh Rojas might be valuable options, too, if only for their versatility.

But while pitchers are repeatedly signing richer contracts than expected, it sure seems like that money is being pulled from what we thought teams would be willing to pay for corner infielders, who are all still available.

The expectation was that Soto's big signing would be the big domino that set everything else in motion, but maybe Alonso and Bregman were the linchpins all along? Sort of seems like a lot of teams are waiting around to see how low their respective prices drop before they move on to other options.

Winner: The Athletics

Not only have the Athletics moved a few (more expensive than originally planned) steps closer to breaking ground on what they hope will be their Las Vegas home beginning in 2028, but they've also taken major strides toward making a legitimate postseason push as early as 2025 in West Sacramento.

They could use a nice big dash of Moneyball mentality after posting a teamwide OBP of .301 last season, but the offense was already legit heading into the offseason. Four A's hit at least 20 home runs last season, with both Lawrence Butler and JJ Bleday breaking out in a big way. They have high hopes for rookie shortstop Jacob Wilson in 2025, too. If he delivers, they could be just one more piece away from having a top 10 offense.

But while they've yet to do a single thing on that front this winter, they made two big moves to improve the pitching staff, signing Luis Severino to a three-year, $67M deal before trading to acquire Jeffrey Springs from the Rays.

Severino had an impressive bounce-back year with the Mets in 2024. He was nowhere near as overpowering as he used to be for the Yankees back in 2017-18, but 182 innings pitched with a sub-4.00 ERA was plenty noteworthy. He'll probably be the A's Opening Day starter and should be the best starter they've had since Chris Bassitt and Frankie Montas were anchoring the rotation in 2021.

That is, unless Springs ends up being that best starter instead.

He missed most of the past two seasons due to Tommy John surgery, but Springs has a 2.44 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 10.0 K/9 across 184.1 IP since the beginning of 2022.

If both he and Severino stay healthy, they could make the type of impact for the A's that Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha did for the Royals last year while they improved by 30 wins.

Hard to imagine the A's making a similar leap from 69 wins to 99 wins, but they do at least look like a potential factor in the AL West after three years in the basement.

Loser: AL Central

At this point, we pretty well know that the AL Central is going to spend the least of the five divisions. Dating back to 2018, the five teams' average MLB rank in Opening Day payroll has been:

• Minnesota Twins 17.6
• Chicago White Sox 18.1 (but currently a rebuilding dumpster fire that might rank 30th in 2025)
• Detroit Tigers 21.0
• Kansas City Royals 22.9
• Cleveland Guardians 23.1

Even by their cumulative standards, though, it has been a very quiet winter.

Minnesota has done absolutely nothing beyond a few minor-league contracts and Rule 5 Draft pickups.

Chicago traded away Garrett Crochet and has signed three players (Mike Tauchman, Austin Slater and Bryse Wilson) for under $2M each. What they got in return for Crochet was respectable, but they probably could have gotten more. They also still have not yet moved Luis Robert Jr.

Detroit signed Alex Cobb on a one-year, $15M deal, but that's it. Kind of thought they'd be aggressive in their pursuit of impact bats to build on last year's surprise run over the final two months. So far, though, nothing on that front.

Kansas City hasn't signed anyone to an MLB deal but did trade Brady Singer for Jonathan India and Joey Wiemer. Bit of a surprising move after Singer was a major piece of the rotation in 2024, but they definitely need more offense around Bobby Witt Jr.

Lastly, Cleveland re-signed Shane Bieber on a two-year, $26M deal—which could end up being a two-month, $14M deal, as he's likely out until the All-Star break while recovering from Tommy John and the second year is a player option. The Guardians also re-signed Austin Hedges for $4M. But then they traded Andrés Giménez to Toronto for Spencer Horwitz and a prospect before turning around and flipping Horwitz to Pittsburgh for Luis Ortiz and two more prospects. Perhaps it was a savvy move with Giménez's salary about to balloon, but also perhaps one they felt they had to make in order to justify spending to keep Bieber and Hedges.

All told, does anyone in this division look better than it did two months ago?

Detroit, marginally, even though it has been less active than anticipated?

After producing multiple teams with winning records for the first time since 2020, this division might be taking a big step backward in 2025.