Any concerns about the health of Major League Baseball's 2025-26 free agent market vanished at the general managers meetings in Las Vegas last week. With the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement barely a year away and an extended lockout potentially crippling the sport in 2027, teams made it clear they are forging ahead without allowing the uncertainty of the future to derail the present.

Nowhere is that clearer than with the unlikeliest of winter spenders: the Pittsburgh Pirates . The largest free agent contract the Pirates have ever handed out was more than a decade ago: three years and $39 million to Francisco Liriano. They are consistently a bottom-five payroll team. And yet the Pirates were primed to spend more than twice that on Josh Naylor before he re-upped with S

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