Agents Now Help Drive GM Meetings

Working lunches have been replaced by sales pitches

- Peter Gammons

There was a time when business was accomplished at the General Managers Meetings. They weren’t media events, and instead featured quiet meetings and dinners when the official business of the day was finished.

Today, things are different.

“It’s mainly the agents meeting, a sale conference,” one American League GM said. “Frankly, we’d get more done by phone and text.

One National League GM said he planned to be in Orlando at the hotel for “a day and a half, then leave and do business. All you need to see now is all the roped-off areas and 50 media people surrounding an agent.”

These meetings have become the overture to the Sanskrit opera that is the offseason. But while it is fun to ponder where Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Ohtani will end up, there is no clear front-runner right now.

What makes Stanton fascinating is that while one can speculate about what the Marlins might or might not do in marketing him, they hold no cards.