MLB Preview: Which Team Had The Most Disappointing Offseason In 2019?

Image credit: Left to right: Billy Beane, Kyler Murray, Scott Boras (Photo by Michael Zagaris/Oakland A's via Getty Images)

This is one of 10 burning questions in our 2019 MLB season preview. To see all of our bold predictions, click here. All answers to the question are from Baseball America’s editorial team.

Teddy Cahill: Rangers. For a team that won 67 games and finished a mile behind its in-state rival Houston in the AL West, it’s been a quiet winter of signing reclamation projects for Texas. The Rangers are opening a new ballpark in a year and it’s hard to see how they’ll be ready to compete by then.

Carlos Collazo: Rockies. To see Colorado do nothing to improve a club that’s the only competition to the Dodgers in the NL West is frustrating. Signing Daniel Murphy is something, but losing D.J. LeMahieu and Adam Ottavino to the Yankees is something, too. The team’s scouting and player development has the Rockies in a position to win but no steps were taken to improve a poor offense despite obvious potential remedies on the free agent market.

Justin Coleman: D-backs. Arizona sent their perennial all-star Paul Goldschmidt to St. Louis and haven’t made enough impactful moves at the big league level. They have some quality young pitching but lack firepower in the lineup..

J.J. Cooper: Braves. It may not matter because the Braves have so much young, big league-ready talent, but while the rest of the National League East kept making big moves, Atlanta’s offseason started strong (Josh Donaldson) and then quickly ran out of steam. Atlanta doesn’t have many big needs, but for all the talk of what the new ballpark’s revenue streams would do for the Braves’ payroll, we’ve seen little proof of it yet.

Matt Eddy: Indians. Cleveland kept its stellar rotation intact and still has all-world shortstop Francisco Lindor, but the club’s supporting cast was thinned by offseason departures. Michael Brantley, Josh Donaldson, Yan Gomes and Lonnie Chisenhall are gone from the lineup, while manager Terry Francona won’t have relievers Andrew Miller and Cody Allen to call on in the bullpen.

Kyle Glaser: D-backs. Arizona made the playoffs in 2017 and was in first place for all but the final month of 2018. Losing Patrick Corbin and A.J. Pollock hurt, but they still had enough to compete. Instead, they traded Paul Goldschmidt for an underwhelming package. At that price, they should have held onto him and given it one more go.

Kegan Lowe: Athletics. Maybe the trade for Jurickson Profar and the free agent signings of Mike Fiers and Joakim Soria will work out nicely for Oakland and its major league team. But we now know that the organization wasted their first-round pick in 2018, as Kyler Murray has chosen to focus on football and the NFL Draft. It was a colossal risk at the time, and the Athletics’ pick looks even more foolish now that they lost the high-profile tug-of-war to the NFL.

Josh Norris: Major League Baseball. Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, Craig Kimbrel, among many, many other players, were still unemployed as camp opened in Arizona and Florida. The ninth overall pick in the draft spurned the sport to pursue a career in football. The words “collusion” and “strike” have been thrown around frequently. Teams that lost a ton in 2018 have done little if anything to attempt to improve in 2019. This is fine. Everything is fine.