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Grading the AL East's offseason: How much better have the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays gotten this winter?

The Orioles' and Rays' offseasons leave something to be desired, but it's reasonable to expect a strong 2025 from this group

jake mintz
Senior writer
·8-min read

Long considered baseball’s most dominant division, the AL East had something of a down year in 2024.

Sure, the Yankees finished with the best record in the American League along the way to a pennant, and the Orioles, too, reached the postseason. But the three other clubs — Boston, Tampa Bay and Toronto — very much underwhelmed.

Most likely, 2024 will prove to be a blip and not a trend for the SEC of MLB. The Yankees still have championship ambitions even after losing Juan Soto. The window remains very much open for the Orioles and their young core. The Red Sox have a tantalizing group of prospects expected to debut in 2025. Tampa Bay has an underrated, fantastic starting rotation. And the Jays — well, the Jays can’t be that much of a disappointment again, can they?

The AL East remains the only division in baseball in which all five teams can genuinely believe they have a chance to finish first in 2025. Let's go over these five offseasons.

  • Signed SP Max Fried to an 8-year deal

  • Signed 1B Paul Goldschmidt to a 1-year deal

  • Acquired OF/1B Cody Bellinger via trade from the Chicago Cubs

  • Acquired RP Devin Williams via trade from the Milwaukee Brewers

  • Acquired RP Fernando Cruz via trade from the Cincinnati Reds

  • Signed RP Jonathan Loáisiga to a 1-year deal

Not sure if you heard, but Juan Soto is a New York Met. It might have made the news.

In the Bronx, it was a sobering moment, a humbling sign for a proud franchise. Soto’s decision was the fulcrum, the turning point not only for this Yankees offseason but also for the next decade of Yankees baseball.

Here’s another sobering fact: The Yankees are no longer the game’s most dominant financial force. That mantle has been taken over by the big-spending Los Angeles Dodgers, who have launched an ambitious plan to equal and surpass the cultural footprint of the Yanks. In fact, the Bombers aren’t even the highest rollers in their own town, now that megabucks Steve Cohen is burning through billions over in Queens.

But that’s not to say that owner Hal Steinbrenner spent the winter penny-pinching. In the immediate wake of Soto’s departure, GM Brian Cashman and Co. initiated Plan B. Before the Mets could even introduce their new superstar, the Yankees agreed to an eight-year deal with lefty starter Max Fried, one of the game’s most consistent starting pitchers. A trade with Milwaukee to acquire all-world closer Devin Williams further solidified the Yankees’ run-prevention unit as the strength of the ballclub.

Offensively, the Yanks sought to replace Soto in the aggregate, which ... duh. Adding the endearingly aloof Cody Bellinger in a swap with Chicago and veteran Paul Goldschmidt on a one-year pact gives the lineup some much-needed depth. Still, one of Bellinger, Goldschmidt, Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm Jr. or Giancarlo Stanton will need to deliver an All-Star season to provide Aaron Judge an impactful sidekick. And don’t overlook the loss of Gleyber Torres. His frustrating mental lapses on the bases shouldn’t overshadow the fact that he was New York’s third-best hitter last season.

The failure to retain Soto means the Yanks cannot get anything higher than a B here, even if the aggressiveness of their backup plan was commendable.

  • Signed OF Tyler O’Neill to a 3-year deal

  • Signed C Gary Sanchez to a 1-year deal

  • Signed SP Charlie Morton to a 1-year deal

  • Signed SP Tomoyuki Sugano to a 1-year deal

  • Signed RP Andrew Kittredge to a 1-year deal

It’s not that any of these moves are bad; it's that together they appear woefully insufficient. The Orioles crashed out of the wild-card round in embarrassing fashion last season, scoring just one run in 18 innings against the Kansas City Royals. Since then, two of the club’s most important players, ace Corbin Burnes and 44-homer-knocking Anthony Santander, departed in free agency without any obvious replacements coming into the fold.

O’Neill, who cranked 31 taters last year, is a nice upside play, especially with Camden Yards’ left-field fence moving in to a reasonable distance in 2025. That he was the first free agent to receive a multi-year commitment from the current front office is news in and of itself. But he also comes with risk; the injury-plagued muscleman has played more than 113 games only once in his seven-year career and struggled enough against right-handed pitching last year (.693 OPS) that it’s fair to worry he might settle into being an expensive platoon option by season’s end.

Morton, 41 years old, and Sugano, 35, are high-floor, low-ceiling acquisitions. Despite his advanced age, Morton is still a league-average hurler, while Sugano comes over from Japan having just won the NPB’s MVP award. Still, he’s no Roki Sasaki; the right-hander is more of a crafty soft-tosser than a flame-throwing strikeout monster. Kittredge and Sanchez are fine depth pieces who likely won’t swing the needle much in either direction.

Altogether, these five free agents represent a significant financial investment from Baltimore’s ownership group in its first offseason. The $96 million committed is the eighth-highest figure in baseball. At the very least, it’s an enormous uptick from how the Orioles used to operate. Still, the moves themselves feel underwhelming, particularly for a team whose competitive window is wide open.

  • Signed SP Walker Buehler to a 1-year deal

  • Acquired SP Garrett Crochet via trade from the Chicago White Sox

  • Signed RP Aroldis Chapman to a 1-year deal

  • Signed SP Patrick Sandoval to a 2-year deal

Offseason grade: B- (incomplete)

For a pitching staff that melted into a puddle in the second half of 2024, adding Crochet is a huge deal. The flame-throwing southpaw was one of MLB’s best arms a year ago. He’s now the Opening Day and hopeful Game 1 playoff starter in Boston. Buehler, whose October heroics for the Dodgers somewhat overshadowed what was a rocky regular season in 2024, should give the rotation a higher floor. Chapman has declined, but he could still be useful in the bullpen. Sandoval will miss the entire 2025 season due to injury.

What’s missing here, obviously, is the big-money offensive free agent. Alex Bregman — he of the career .848 OPS — remains on the open market. A union between the two parties feels inevitable at this point, but don’t count out the relative frugality of Boston’s leadership group. Signing Bregman would be a huge boost for the Red Sox’s lineup; not signing him would be a massive indictment of this organization’s hunger level. Let’s talk in a few weeks.

  • Signed C Danny Jansen to a 1-year deal

The Rays do this every winter, it seems: Trade away established players getting closer to free agency. Sign one middle-tier free agent to a one-year deal. Acquire a platoon of under-the-radar relievers on minor-league deals. Rinse, repeat.

As far as baseball operations goes, it has been a boring offseason in Tampa. That’s probably a good thing, considering all the turmoil swirling around their stadium plans.

  • Signed OF Anthony Santander to a 5-year deal

  • Signed RP Jeff Hoffman to a 3-year deal

  • Acquired 2B Andrés Giménez via trade from the Cleveland Guardians

  • Acquired OF Myles Straw via trade from the Cleveland Guardians

It’s easy and somewhat fun to clown on the Jays for finishing second on seemingly every major free agent. They made a competitive offer to Soto, but it wasn’t enough. They outshot the Diamondbacks on Corbin Burnes, but he opted to take less to live at home in Phoenix. They secured an in-person meeting with Roki Sasaki, only for the highly touted hurler to sign in L.A. Their decision to send veteran reliever Chad Green, among others, to Sasaki’s meeting, while the Dodgers sent — oh, I don’t know — Shohei Ohtani, kind of elucidates where this organization stands.

But all together, it’s actually a pretty solid offseason. The Jays needed power, so they signed Santander, one of the game’s top tater-makers. They needed lineup depth and infield defense, so they traded for Giménez, an all-time-great second-base glove. They needed bullpen upgrades, so they brought in Hoffman, arguably the second-best reliever on the market.

If they can reel in Bregman or Pete Alonso, the Jays could be sitting pretty entering 2025.

Of course, it would all go up in smoke if Toronto can’t reach an extension with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. But so far, not bad.