This got me curious so I looked at all (most?) of the names that were tied to us in the offseason:
Willson Contreras - 5 years/$87.5m - .266/.343/.395 WAR, 0.5 WAR
Brandon Nimmo - 8 years/$162m - .300/.400/.446, 1.4 WAR
Michael Conforto - 2 years/$36m - .168/.300/.297, -0.5 WAR
Andrew Benintendi - 5 years/$75m - .262/.314/.315, 0.0 WAR
Josh Bell - 2 years/$33m - 2 years/$40m - .222/.331/.365, 0.0 WAR
Anthony Rizzo - 2 years/$40m - .296, .385, .467, 1.2 WAR
Christian Vazquez - 3 years/$30m - .225/.303/.263, 0.0 WAR
Tucker Barnhart - 2 years/$6.5m - .182/.245/.205, -0.3 WAR
Yuli Gurriel - 1 year/$1.25m - .256/.295/.402, -0.1 WAR
Daulton Varsho - .240/.320/.411, 1.0 WAR (meanwhile the pieces Toronto gave up to get him, Lourdes Gurriel Jr and Gabriel Moreno, each have 0.9 WAR)
Justin Verlander - 2 yrs/$87.7m - 5 IP, 0-1, 3.60 ERA, 0.1 WAR (immediately put on injured list, lost his only start of season)
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Conclusion, that's a whole lot of suck. The only dudes who unquestionably would have made us better to this point are Rizzo and Nimmo, and I'm not sure there's any way we would have been able to pry either of them from NY given the offers they received. (And, while Nimmo would have been an upgrade in 2023, that contract has a chance to get real ugly by the end.) And sure, we would also prefer Bell's numbers to what Abreu has been putting up, but we would still be bitching at the signing had we gone that route. Also, all those weird rumors about how we didn't want to use Contreras at Catcher seem to be pretty prescient given the recent developments in St. Louis.
While our three big contracts (Montero, Abreu, Brantley) are looking like shit so far, that seems to be a theme for all the players on the market this past year. Just a complete dud of an offseason. (And this is not meant to be a defense of the front office, just a statement about the players who were available.)