Key MLB Free Agents Opting for 'Greener Pastures' an Early Offseason Trend

So far, the MLB offseason has been the winter of jumping ship. 

With the exception of Victor Martinez, who re-signed with the Detroit Tigers on a four-year, $68 million deal, all of the big-name free agents will be playing for new teams in 2015. Just take a look at the list:

• Melky Cabrera
• Nelson Cruz
• David Robertson
• Hanley Ramirez
• Pablo Sandoval 
• Jon Lester

There's no overarching explanation for why all of these prominent free agents set out for greener pastures, but the players do fall into at least two different groups. 

It starts with Jon Lester, who is something of an outlier in this conversation after spending the final two months of the 2014 season with the Oakland Athletics. Of course, before his summer trip to the Bay Area, Lester racked up 241 starts for the Boston Red Sox. Early in the offseason, it looked highly plausible that the 30-year-old would be returning to Fenway Park. 

Ultimately, that didn't happen, as the Red Sox lost out to the Chicago Cubs, who landed Lester on a six-year, $155 million deal. Part of the reason why the Cubs won the bidding war is that the National League is a far more pitcher-friendly environment. After all, who would you rather face: a starting pitcher or a designated hitter?

As Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe writes, there's also the botched spring training contract-extension offer to factor into the equation:

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We can all agree that $70 million is a huge bag of money — and that starting offers are never final offers — but the opening bid by the Sox was an insult to Lester’s intelligence (less than half of the package the Tigers were offering Max Scherzer at the same time) and a clear signal that the Sox owners wanted Lester to forgo his market value for the privilege of pitching for the Red Sox.

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Pablo Sandoval is the other top free agent who likely was not overly impressed by an underwhelming offer. After departing the San Francisco Giants to join up with the Red Sox, Sandoval said it was all about finding "a new challenge."

"I want a new challenge. I need a new challenge," said Sandoval, via Gordon Edes of ESPN Boston. "I know that I had a great career in San Francisco. But I'm going to have a new one here."

Like Lester, Sandoval was the recipient of a subpar offer last spring. According to Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Giants started the conversation at three years and $40 million. Even for a starting point, that's ridiculously low—especially for an accomplished switch-hitter who plays excellent defense at third base.

The second group of free agents—Nelson Cruz, David Robertson, Melky Cabrera and Hanley Ramirez—all appear to have sought new employers because their old ones didn't care to re-sign them at a reasonable market price. 

Cruz clubbed 40 home runs to lead all of baseball last year, and yet the Baltimore Orioles let him walk. As Roch Kubatko of MASN reports, the O's were never interested in offering Cruz more than three years. As a result, the outfielder/DH opted to sign a four-year, $57 million deal with the Seattle Mariners. 

Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

As was the case with Cruz, Robertson also didn't receive a ton of interest from his most recent club. Robertson told Tim Rohan of The New York Times that he "wasn't surprised" by his departure from the New York Yankees. 

"Obviously when they signed [Andrew] Miller, I kind of had a feeling they might not approach us as well as we would have liked," said Robertson after leaving the Bronx to ink a four-year, $46 million deal with the Chicago White Sox. 

Cabrera joined Robertson on the South Side of Chicago after his old team, the Toronto Blue Jays, also decided to go in a different direction. The switch-hitter signed with the White Sox on a three-year, $42 million contract, per Doug Padilla of ESPN Chicago. As Jon Heyman of CBS Sports explains, there was no room for Cabrera in the outfield at the Rogers Centre once the Blue Jays traded for Michael Saunders. 

The last player on the list is Ramirez, who arguably deserves to be in his own category altogether. As Bill Plunkett of the Orange Country Register writes, there was no way that Ramirez and the Los Angeles Dodgers were going to work out a new deal:

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Though they did express interest in signing Ramirez to a contract extension following his outstanding 2013 season, those talks never went far and were discontinued entirely early in the 2014 season. It became apparent the two sides would part ways once the season ended. 

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From Ramirez to Sandoval, the theme of the MLB offseason has been jumping ship. All of these stars cashed in by signing with new clubs, but it remains to be seen just which players made the right call and which players made a big mistake.  

If you want to talk baseball, find me on Twitter @KarlBuscheck.