The annual GM meetings are one of Major League Baseball’s best-kept secrets.

Situated at a luxury resort, more often than not somewhere out west, the GM meetings are a more productive and less well-attended version of the Winter Meetings. Teams bring anywhere from three to seven key employees, attend mandatory league sessions and try to set up meetings with other teams and agents.

The mandatory league sessions are usually about rule changes. Although, this year, I expect them to be dominated by the potential work stoppage. But usually, the meetings with other teams are live, in-person trade negotiations, which are as exciting and tense as they sound. The meetings with agents set the table for later contract talks on potential free agents.

Typically, teams have three of their top executives in the mandatory league meetings while the other members of the team are out working in the lobby, trying to gather information about what other clubs may be seeking. This extends to the media, who are effectively middlemen for trade and contract talks during these meetings.

With the Braves, longtime super scout (and former star MLB player and manager) Jim Fregosi was a good example of a key team member out working in the lobby, trying to gather information. We brought Fregosi every year until his untimely passing in 2014, and there was nobody more connected in the game. It was so much fun just to hear him talk about players, how they fit and what other teams might be thinking about doing at the dawn of the offseason.

MLB keeps teams busy with dinners to honor yearly award winners, including executive of the year. Early in my career as a senior executive, MLB even arranged various sporting activities for attendees. I remember playing in a basketball tournament with Chris Antonetti, Mike Chernoff and A.J. Preller.

There is also a private GM lounge not open to agents or media—only team officials. These lounges would offer snacks and drinks and sometimes included ping-pong tables or dartboards. Access to other teams was so easy that you would simply fall into conversations, more often than not about life, family and offseason travel plans rather than baseball or trades.

Some executives, however, would want to be out in the lobby talking with agents and writers. It was a way to get information and also to see what seeds were being planted. For example, if you were focused on a particular free agent and you knew a rival team also wanted that player, if you saw that player’s agent talking to that team, it might provide some insight into the level of competition for a player’s services.

It’s just as fun and exciting as it sounds.

Trades Born At The GM Meetings

My first GM meetings experience was 20 years ago in Naples, Fla. It was a homecoming of sorts for Braves GM John Schuerholz, who had a home in Naples. We actually went to that home one of the nights we were there to have a pre-dinner meeting with new Royals GM Dayton Moore. Moore had worked for Schuerholz for many years—as had most of the team he brought with him—and they still remained close.

I was so in awe of all of it that I don’t remember much about the dinner or much about my time at those initial GM Meetings. However, the one thing I do vividly remember is our team asking the Royals about a talented young pitcher who led the league in losses in 2005 and had pitched only 6.1 innings in 2006. Kansas City swiftly and wisely rebuffed any talk of Zack Greinke.

Eight years later, the Braves were in a different place while I was leading their front office through a mini-rebuild. Coming into those GM meetings, we had made the decision that we had to take one step back to take two steps forward. We would have to trade MLB players with value to rebuild a farm system that Baseball America had ranked at the bottom of all MLB teams in terms of impact and upside. We would need to take some chances and make some tough choices with our best and most popular players.

In the second half of the 2014 season, the Braves ranked dead last in runs scored among all MLB teams. And that was with Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, B.J. Upton and Evan Gattis—all of whom we would trade within the next six months.

There was no plan to trade any one of Heyward, both Uptons and Gattis in any particular order. The process we would undertake would be all about which teams showed the most interest and offered the best upside package for the players. Knowing we had our work cut out for us, we were proactive in exploring possibilities with other teams.

The player who drew the most interest from other teams was Heyward.

It was hard to trade away Heyward. He was an Atlanta native, a first-round pick, BA’s 2009 MiLB Player of the Year and a great person. He’d always been a talented player who could impact the game in a number of ways, but he had become such a great leader. We knew trading him would hurt us on and off the field and that fans would be disappointed. We just felt like we had no other options.

The approach we took was simple. Heyward was going to be a free agent after the 2015 season, and we could not afford to sign him long term. We also could not afford to replace the roughly 800 innings we had lost the two previous offseasons as a result of free agency (Ervin Santana and Aaron Harang) and injuries (Kris Medlen and Mike Minor). We needed to get more payroll flexibility and more club control over young players.

The first Heyward package we discussed had evolved into a 10-player mega-deal with the Yankees. Let me be clear here that we were the team to propose this deal and that the Yankees never accepted it—but they also didn’t turn it down outright.

The deal would have sent Heyward, Andrelton Simmons, B.J. Upton, Chris Johnson and David Carpenter to the Yankees for five minor league players: Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, Gary Sanchez, Ian Clarkin and Manny Banuelos (we later got Banuelos in a deal for Carpenter and lefthanded reliever Chasen Shreve). The deal would have saved us nearly $200 million in long-term contract commitments and totally rebuilt our farm system.

Less than 24 hours after we proposed this deal to New York, Cardinals GM John Mozeliak approached me at the close of the GM meetings. St. Louis and the entire baseball world had suffered a huge loss when Oscar Taveras tragically died in a car crash on Oct. 26, 2014. Taveras, rated by BA as the No. 3 overall prospect before the 2014 season, was the future for St. Louis. His unfortunate and untimely passing created a need for the win-now Cardinals.

Mozeliak asked what it would take to acquire Heyward, and we told him it had to begin with starting pitching. We had lost those 800 innings, and the only established starting pitcher on our roster was Julio Teheran.

The Cardinals were loaded with starting pitchers. Their only off-limits name was Michael Wacha, a rookie sensation following the 2014 season and a player under club control for the next six seasons. We quickly engaged St. Louis on Shelby Miller, a young and established starting pitcher, and began building a deal.

Longtime Yankees GM Brian Cashman, maybe the best to ever do the job and a no-doubt Hall of Famer, is usually aggressive with big trades. The fact that Cashman didn’t follow up on the 10-player megadeal led us to pivot to the Cardinals’ deal.

We completed the trade in less than 72 hours and announced a deal sending Heyward and Jordan Walden to St. Louis for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins on the Tuesday after the GM meetings. That trade kick-started our rebuild: Miller was an all-star for us in 2015 and was traded the following offseason in a package for Dansby Swanson, Ender Inciarte and Aaron Blair. Jenkins was dealt for Luke Jackson, who became a key reliever for the Braves.

Justin Upton was traded on a similar timetable the week after the Winter Meetings to the Padres in a deal for four minor league players. All four minor leaguers played at the MLB level, and the lead name was Max Fried. Gattis was traded the following month in a deal for power-armed starting pitcher Mike Foltynewicz. B.J. Upton was traded alongside Craig Kimbrel in a multi-player deal that netted us Matt Wisler and the 41st pick in the 2015 draft. That 41st pick was Austin Riley.

And it all started at the GM meetings.

The GM meetings are a venue for laying the foundation for trades and a multitude of other offseason moves. Two years later, in 2016, we sat down with the agents for R.A. Dickey and Bartolo Colon at the GM meetings, both of whom we would sign within weeks.

Seven years later, after being reinstated to MLB in January 2023, I went to the GM meetings hoping to network with team officials. Although it didn’t lead to anything tangible at that time, I remain eternally grateful to the clubs and team officials who made the time to meet with me and discuss opportunities.

I won’t be at this year’s GM meetings, and I have no idea what they may look like.

There is the potential for a work stoppage when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) expires on December 1, 2026. I’d imagine all the mandatory league sessions will be devoted to updates on labor negotiations and hopefully move the needle closer to a mutually acceptable resolution for all parties.

Keeping that in mind, there will still likely be a lot of the “fun stuff,” like trade talks with other teams and discussions with representatives of potential free agents. At some point, and hopefully sooner rather than later, baseball will resume.

Qualifying Offers At This Year’s GM Meetings

Earlier this week, MLB announced that eight players had received qualifying offers (QO): Randy Arozarena, Jake Bauers, David Bednar, Ryan Jeffers, Brandon Lowe, Adrian Morejón, Trevor Rogers and Seiya Suzuki. The decisions on whether or not these players will accept the QO, which is a one-year contract for $23,150,000, are due by Nov. 17.

The GM meetings, not coincidentally taking place the week before these decisions are due, will be a venue where the agents for these players can take the temperature of the market for their clients and get a feel for their next best course of action.

My guess—and it is only a guess—is that Bauers and Morejón will accept their qualifying offers. If that happens, it will be interesting to see what it means for their franchises.

Bauers has been a revelation this year and fits well in the Brewers’ lineup. However, his salary would make him the second-highest-paid player on the club behind team captain Christian Yelich’s $26 million salary. Bauers and Yelich would be the only two members of the team making over $15 million in 2027.

Likewise, Morejón fits well in the Padres’ bullpen. Like Bauers, his salary could be a potential issue on a club with five players signed to long-term contracts that extend beyond the 2030 season and have average annual values (AAVs) of more than eight figures. Preller always finds a way to make it work, but this will be interesting.

If Morejón accepts, the Padres could look to turn him back into a starter. They have significant starting pitching needs after losing Michael King, Robbie Ray, Nick Pivetta, Casey Mize and Walker Buehler, among other starting pitchers, to free agency.

Another potential option, if Morejón accepts the qualifying offer, would be to trade Mason Miller.

Yes, Miller is the best reliever in MLB, and it’s not particularly close. He’s been so dominant that his performance puts him in the conversation of the most impactful relievers in MLB history. Miller is projected by MLB Trade Rumors to make $8.1 million as a Super-3, second-time arbitration-eligible closer, but he may end up with a salary closer to $10 million.

Preller could trade Miller and get a young starting pitcher (or two) back in the deal—not to mention other prospects or players that he could use as trade chips down the line. The calculus would be trading Miller and taking on roughly $13 million to get Morejón, cheap and controllable starting pitching, and additional trade currency.

Whatever happens with Bauers and Morejón, much of it will be determined at the GM meetings. It’s one of baseball’s best-kept secrets.