Baseball free agency begins Tuesday, giving all 30 teams an opportunity to fill holes, create depth or look for that one player who can boost TV ratings and bring fans to the park.
How many teams will use this opportunity wisely remains to be seen.
Nearly a third are at the start or in the middle of long-term rebuilds, and another five or six teams are wary of exceeding the $208 million luxury-tax threshold.
The Cubs aren't saying if they'll be buyers or just window shoppers.
"As an organization, we're not talking about payroll or luxury tax at all," Cubs President Theo Epstein said last week. "I feel like every time we've been at all specific, or even allowed people to make inferences from things we've said, it just puts us in a hole strategically."
A few days later, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts went on WSCR-AM 670 to inform everyone the Cubs paid millions last year in luxury-tax penalties, calling it "a dead-weight loss" and allowing people to infer the Cubs won't be spending big this winter.
The Cubs may even have to shed some big salaries, Ricketts warned.
"Maybe we can't keep them all because of the salaries that they'll demand over the next few years," he said. "But ultimately, now I think we can stop talking about windows (to contend)."
Meanwhile, White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf needs the next phase of the rebuild to include some winning along with the nonstop developing. The Sox have the resources to address the rotation and outfield while also getting a left-handed bat and rewarding free agent Jose Abreu.
After failing to outbid the Padres for free agent Manny Machado in February, general manager Rick Hahn said the Sox would be just as aggressive down the road.
"The money will be spent," Hahn said. "It might not be spent this offseason, but it will be spent at some point. This isn't money sitting around waiting to just accumulate interest. It's money that's trying to be deployed to put us in the best position to win us some championships."
Assuming they did accumulate some interest on the $250 million Machado rejected, Hahn will have even more to play with this winter.
Now would be a good time to spend it, with stars such as Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon and Yasmani Grandal available and potentially J.D. Martinez and Stephen Strasburg as well, if they invoke opt-out clauses.
Here's a look at the top available free agents, though some will re-sign with their teams and others will be available when teams non-tender arbitration-eligible players next month.
