It is reasonable if it is still taking you a while to recover from that World Series. It may take a few weeks to shake that one off and move on. (And if you’re a Blue Jays fan, it may take the rest of your life.)
But the offseason is, in fact, here. That means it’s time to start looking forward not just to the 2026 season, but all the activity the Hot Stove is going to provide. The Dodgers winning another World Series just raises the stakes for all the teams that didn’t win the World Series. There are a lot of teams with an even greater sense of urgency.
So here’s a look at a team from each division that promises to be particularly interesting this winter. Maybe it’s a team that needs to make significant moves to get over the hump. Maybe it’s a team with new management wanting to take big swings. Maybe it’s a team that’s somewhere in between. But if you’re looking for the teams with the most interesting offseasons coming up, here they are:
You want urgency? The Orioles were supposed to be the studs of this division, and maybe the entire American League, by now. Instead, they’re still looking for their first postseason win in more than a decade and just came off a losing season. They’re going backwards. (Meanwhile, the last two AL pennant winners came from this division.)
The Orioles are in danger of having their whole long buildup to contention add up to … nothing. All those young players are starting to get older and more expensive, too, which means that the Orioles are starting to run out of time. Then again, a year ago at this time, many would have said something similar about the Blue Jays.
The Orioles have a new manager in Craig Albernaz, but what they really need — all together now — is starting pitching. You would think the O’s would be in on every starting pitcher available, but we all thought that last year, too. So how will Mike Elias and his front office change their approach, if at all, this time around? There is reason to expect some internal improvements, but this roster also needs some reinforcements.
The central question, before anything else can be settled, remains: Are they going to trade Tarik Skubal? Or extend him? Or will both sides just let 2026 play out before Skubal reaches the open market?
Obviously, considering the value of top starting pitchers, if the Tigers traded Skubal (who next week will likely win his second straight AL Cy Young Award), they could fill their coffers for years to come. On the other hand, well, this is a team that has made the playoffs for two consecutive seasons that could be considering trading the best pitcher in baseball.
Are the Tigers coming or going? Are they building or rebuilding? Do they consider themselves the best team in the AL Central? Or do they consider the last two years their ceiling with their current roster? When they decide what to do about Skubal, we will all find out exactly what the Tigers are thinking. And what they do will affect just about every other team in the sport.
It feels unlikely that the A’s will suddenly go out and be ultra-aggressive on the Hot Stove. But considering how many young hitting stars they suddenly have, and how little they’d really need to do to raise the pitching bar, they may not have to spend all that much to turn this into a playoff team.
Seriously, look at this offense: Lawrence Butler. Shea Langeliers. Tyler Soderstrom. Jacob Wilson. (The other) Max Muncy. Zack Gelof. And, of course, Nick Kurtz, who basically hit like Shohei Ohtani as a rookie. Langeliers, who turns 28 on Nov. 18, is the oldest of those players; every single one of the rest of them is 26 or younger. And that doesn’t even include the greybeard that is 31-year-old Brent Rooker, who is nonetheless signed through at least 2029.
There isn’t a team in baseball that wouldn’t want an offense packed with young hitters like that — it’s basically what we all thought the Orioles were going to be but still aren’t. What will the A’s do to supplement them? Because if they can get some pitching … are we sure they can’t win the AL West next year?
It’s always fascinating to see what the Mets are going to do, but there may be no team with more fascinating questions to answer this offseason than the Phillies. They have three huge free agents who will require major decisions: Kyle Schwarber (who is coming off a career year), J.T. Realmuto (who isn’t but remains one of the game’s most reliable receivers) and Ranger Suárez (who may end up being the odd man out here).
The debates won’t stop there. Is there any place for Nick Castellanos here anymore? Are they going to make a move at third base to replace Alec Bohm, or will they give him one more year? Will Andrew Painter make the rotation? Perhaps most important: Can they get the apparent disagreement between Bryce Harper and Dave Dombrowski settled?
Time tends to focus the mind, and time is something the Phillies are very much running low on, when it comes to winning it all with this core. They’ve got big, big decisions to make — and fast.
The Cardinals probably aren’t major contenders in the NL Central next year, even if the Brewers can’t repeat last year’s success, the Cubs don’t bring back Kyle Tucker or the Reds can’t build off their first full-year postseason appearance since 2013. But this is still a prideful organization that has gone three straight seasons without making the playoffs, and one with a new president of baseball operations in Chaim Bloom who has been biding his time for a year waiting to remake this organization.
The Cardinals look like they’re going to have a massive overhaul this offseason, and the presumed trade of Nolan Arenado is the least of it. Just about anyone who isn’t Masyn Winn or top prospect JJ Wetherholt is probably available if it’ll boost the already-improving Cardinals farm system, and that includes big names such as Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Brendan Donovan, Lars Nootbaar, Nolan Gorman and perhaps even former top prospect Jordan Walker.
A year ago, it seemed like St. Louis might have a very busy, roster-reshaping offseason. That amounted to very little in reality, but don’t expect the same result with Bloom now in the big chair. The Cardinals are about to look very, very different. There is no team more open for business.
The Padres and a probably-quite-desperate-by-now A.J. Preller are always worth watching in the offseason, but the experiment happening in San Francisco is impossible to ignore.
President of baseball operations Buster Posey has kept himself very busy since taking over a little over a year ago. He signed Willy Adames last offseason, traded for Rafael Devers during the season and then, after parting ways with manager Bob Melvin at season’s end, shocked the baseball world by hiring Tony Vitello to replace him, straight from the University of Tennessee, an unprecedented crossing of the streams from college baseball to the pros.
What does this signal for what’s coming next? Will Posey keep his foot on the gas trying to catch back up to the Padres and Dodgers? Will Vitello’s former student and good pal from the University of Missouri, Max Scherzer, head to San Francisco to join him? Whatever happens, it will be unmissable.
