In November 2017, when baseball free agency ground to an unexpected halt, teams claimed that there was no nefariousness to the industry's sudden sheepishness in signing players. They were simply waiting for Shohei Ohtani to pick his destination and Giancarlo Stanton to be traded to a new one. This never made much sense, but then last winter was so tectonic in its changes to Major League Baseball's economic landscape that the early-winter excuses were long forgotten when the free-agent freeze continued into spring training.
This offseason, in ways big and small, free agency remains imperiled.