When it comes to giving the people what they crave, few in the sports industry deliver to the level of ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
From early beat-reporting days at Fresno State to writing for The Kansas City Star and Yahoo to now covering all things Major League Baseball, Passan has worked his way into national status and become one of the most valuable and respected insiders in the industry.
Ahead of next week’s highly anticipated MLB Winter Meetings, Passan was generous enough to spend some time with For The Win. He dives into his role, hints at what to expect ahead of the upcoming event and reminisces on some of his wildest experiences while covering the four-day event.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Jeff, when you're in San Diego for the Winter Meetings are you tied to the hotel all week gathering news? Do you ever go to sleep? Or are you up all night breaking news?
Jeff Passan: The winter meetings are probably the chunk of the year where I get the least sleep. I am not going to say that I pride myself on being the last one at the bar. But you know, as long as there are people around to talk to and to learn from then I want to be there as long as they’re there. So, you know, it usually winds up being 3:00 or 4:00 am at night [when I get to sleep] and I’m usually up by like 6:30 or 7:00 am the next morning. So it’s not a lot of sleep. It’s not healthy. I’m not proud of it. But it’s necessary.
But that’s the job and I want to do the job well and so if that means that people the next day, when they see me say “God, you look tired,” which is really about the worst thing someone can say to another person, I’ll wear that. I’ll take that.
Can you give us an over/under on how many free agents will be signed during the meetings?
JP: For total free agents, I’d put the over/under at 12.5.
I have a really difficult time handicapping these sorts of things because we have to remember markets are always changing. In baseball, your market makes what you get paid. If teams are really interested in you, and if a lot of teams are interested in you, you’re gonna do well. If they’re not, you may really struggle. And you may struggle to find a job, you may struggle to get paid what you think you’re worth. I mean, it’s not a completely free market, because there are things like the qualifying offer restrictions that are in place, generally speaking, some teams don’t participate in free agency. Some teams, revenue-wise, just don’t want to spend as much on a high-end play or because it would be too large of a portion of their budget. But generally speaking, baseball free agency is as close as you get in professional sports, to having a real free market. And I think we’ve seen that in some elements this offseason. There haven’t been a lot of signings, but the guys who have signed have done generally well compared to industry expectations.
Do you expect any specific player's free agency to drag on for a while?
JP: It’s it’s tough to say at this point. I was talking with someone earlier this offseason, and he said something I found to be pretty wise. He’s like, “there’s always somebody who thinks he’s gonna get paid, and the money dries up.” And it’s not going to be Aaron Judge. It’s not going to be Trea Turner. I don’t think it’s going to be Carlos Correa. But we can look at last winter, Carlos Correa went in thinking he was gonna get $300 million. And now he’s back [on the market] right now. I don’t think he’s gonna be the person who at the end of the day is caught standing there wondering, okay, what happened to my offseason that I don’t think it’s going to be to grow? I don’t think it’s going to be (Xander) Bogaerts. I don’t think it’s going to be (Brandon) Nimmo. I don’t think it’s going to be (Carlos) Rodón. Could it be Dansby Swanson? Probably not at the end of the day. Could it be Justin Verlander? No. I name all these guys. And I don’t foresee a situation in which they get hung out to dry. But I also know history and history tells me one of them is going to.
I think the market is still developing to a point where knowing on whom it may lay its hammer, it’s too early for that.
Are trades as frequent as the splash signings during Winter Meetings? Are there any blockbuster trades that usually happen during this time of the year?
JP: I mean, I remember winter meetings where Giancarlo Stanton showed up and he had been traded from the Marlins to the Yankees coming off a 59-Homer MVP season. I think this winter would look a whole lot different if the Angels were shopping Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani is the best player in baseball. If he were out there right now, everybody would be talking about Ohtani just as much as they are free agents.
But the big names that we could see move aren’t quite as big. A guy like Sean Murphy from Oakland [could be moved]. The A’s have a lot of catching and the ability to turn guys like Sean Murphy into three, four or five different players is how Oakland has sustained itself and won as often as it has over the past 20 years. Seeing what they do with Murphy, and you know, seeing if the Yankees make a move out of the surplus of their infield, there are chances for some pretty big deals there too.
On the topic of the Oakland A's, whether it's through expansion or relocation, should Vegas baseball fans get excited about potentially having an MLB team in the future?
JP: If it’s not the A’s, it’s gonna be someone or something. I think Major League Baseball sees what the NHL has done with the Knights and what the NFL has done with the Raiders and what the NBA is trying to do. They see the sport, they see the success, and they want in. And I think Las Vegas is big enough to support all four major men’s professional sports, to support the WNBA, or to support whatever it wants because it’s Vegas. And I don’t have to tell you, you put something in Vegas and it has a chance to be something special.
What's the worst bet you've ever lost?
JP: The worst bet I’ve ever lost is to my very good friend, Greg Bishop, who writes for Sports Illustrated. We were in college and I had seen Mike Dunleavy Jr. play earlier that day. He was at Duke at the time and I believe the terms of the bet were, I think, I said Mike Dunleavy Jr. is going to be an All-Star at least four times in his first seven years. And if [Dunleavy Jr.] gets four, then Greg would have to pay for me to fly to wherever he’s living at the time and pay for food and drinks and whatever we do the entire weekend. And if Dunleavy did not make four All-Star Games, then I would have to pay for [Bishop] to do that. And I’m pretty sure that like after [Dunleavy’s] second season, I just gave up.
I was living in Kansas City at the time we [settled] this. I love Kansas City, I’ve lived here for 15 years now, but to settle a bet from college, I felt like bringing him to Kansas City wasn’t the right thing. So we ended up going down to Miami and had a great time and laughed at my ineptitude. So yes, Michael Dunleavy Jr., you are why I don’t gamble.
Of all the years you've attended Winter Meetings, do you have a favorite story you can tell?
JP: Before I was really doing a lot of breaking news, I would go to the Winter Meetings and just hope to hear some good stories. One of the times, I asked a source, “what do you hear?” And then he said, ‘“I heard there was a fight between two agents in the parking lot earlier today and that someone has video.” So my antenna when I heard about this, I mean, they were straight in the air and I went hunting, and I was going to find that video all things be damned. And it led to a person who I didn’t really know or had met before and he had the video and gave it to me. It was grainy and didn’t show a lot. I’ll be honest, I still don’t know who the two agents who fought in the parking lot. I never got names. Nobody has ever fessed up to me. It’s been this mystery. I feel like my goal for the 2023 Winter Meetings and 10-year anniversary of this incredibly momentous event has to be to tell the world who the fighting agents were. Over the next year, I’m going to make it my duty to walk into the 2023 Winter Meetings with at least one scoop that I know I have over my competition.
