SARASOTA, Fla. -- The busiest off-season in baseball history has come and gone, leaving a major-league landscape so new and different that spring training figures to be an adventure in itself.
That adventure begins today, when hundreds of pitchers and catchers begin reporting to the 26 spring-training camps in Florida and Arizona. The rest of the position players will report next week, but it will take the better part of two months to sort through all the new faces.
Thanks to the latest free-agent free-for-all, almost every team has undergone significant transformation since the Cincinnati Reds swept to the 1990 world championship. More than 100 free agents went to market in November. Another 16 became new-look free agents as part of baseball's collusion damage settlement. And the prospect of future free-agent eligibility led to some blockbuster trades, including the one that brought first baseman Glenn Davis to the Baltimore Orioles.
The salary spiral has continued unabated since Jose Canseco became the first $5 million player last year. The Los Angeles Dodgers opened this year's baseball-wide spending spree by handing Darryl Strawberry more than $20 million over five years. The Boston Red Sox recently gave Roger Clemens a five-year deal worth a record $26.5 million. During the three months in between, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in an effort to alter the balance of power in baseball's four divisions.
Can money buy happiness? The Kansas City Royals found out that it couldn't in 1990. They spent a fortune to unseat the defending American League champion Oakland Athletics, but spent most of the season in the AL West cellar. This off-season, the NL West rival Dodgers and San Francisco Giants dominated the free-agent market, but at least one of them will feel that was a mistake by the end of the 1991 season.
Can youth be served? Spring training is supposed to be a place where the young show their promise and the old show their age, but the new laws of baseball economics make it very difficult for a young player to unseat a highly paid veteran. The roles have been completely reversed in Sarasota, where Mike Flanagan and Jim Palmer will try to unseat some highly touted youngsters.
It is against this backdrop that spring training begins anew. Here's a quick look at what the future might hold for each of the four divisions:
