MLB winter meetings have become a snoozefest

Another year of baseball’s winter meetings has come and gone, and most of the top free agents remain available.

In addition to the two competing for the biggest contract — Bryce Harper and Manny Machado — there’s Craig Kimbrel, who reportedly hopes to become the first nine-figure reliever, and potential closers Zach Britton and Andrew Miller. Among the available hitters are Nelson Cruz, Michael Brantley, A.J. Pollock, D J LeMahieu and Marwin Gonzalez. A smorgasbord of talent is there for the taking, almost two months into the offseason.

All of them will sign sooner or later, just like in last year’s slow market. But the lack of movement during the annual meetings, which MLB Network televises almost nonstop, makes the affair seem anachronistic. How many times can you listen to reporters discuss the possibility of a J.T. Realmuto deal?

Only 16 official moves were announced during the three days in Las Vegas: six waiver claims, six signings, three trades and one player (Troy Tulowitzki) released. It was a snoozefest from start to finish.

“There’s a buzz today,” one TV host said Wednesday, clearly trying to create interest in an absence of real news.

It makes you wonder whether the meetings are even necessary in this day and age, when team executives can text or teleconference with each other or with agents from their offices instead of traveling across the country to talk. Red Sox President Dave Dombrowski came up with a good idea, suggesting baseball should consider an offseason deadline for making moves, which would force teams and agents to work quicker to get things done.

“I don’t really know what’s happened where it has changed,” Dombrowski said, according to masslive. com. “It just doesn’t seem to be very important for people. I have suggested that the game needs to look at that.”

The July 31 trade deadline is one of the best days in baseball. The winter meetings have become three of the dullest.

“It’s amazing how people work toward deadlines,” Dombrowski said.

Borderline Baines: The Harold Baines Hall of Fame controversy reminds me of the days of the Nellie Fox Society, a group of Chicago attorneys who pushed the Hall candidacy of the popular former White Sox second baseman during the early 1990s.

A career .288 hitter and 12-time All-Star, the 5-foot-9 Fox won the AL MVP award in 1959 and was a good glove with elite contact skills, once going 98 consecutive games without striking out. Still, many writers considered Fox a borderline candidate — a very good player with a few great years — like many others.

Fox was voted into the Hall by the veterans committee in 1997. Committee member Ted Williams said afterward he lobbied for his friend.

Baines’ selection sparked a debate over his stats and the presence of two of his friends, Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and former Sox manager Tony La Russa, on the voting committee. Baines’ great moment was marred, and the controversy isn’t likely to subside soon with BBWAA voting for the Class of 2019 due Dec. 31.

As the Fox saga suggests, few will remember this episode years from now. Baines is a Hall of Famer, and no one can take that away.