Visualization: The geographical offseason

After five long months, the flurry of handshakes, fresh ink, and fax machines is finally coming to a close. In total, a reported 224 players found themselves with new organizations as of this Sunday, March 24th. That’s 80 free agent signings and 144 players involved in trades, not counting the 37 who inked new contracts with their old employers.

When it was all said and done, the new contracts combined for nearly 1.4 billion dollars, and after including the small handful of financially undisclosed contracts and the hundreds of minor league deals that go unreported, that number is actually higher still. What better way to graphically sum up the chaotic activity of the offseason than a map? Click to enlarge.

image

Every line corresponds to a player moving from one team to the other. The width of the line is directly linked to the number of players—the giant blue line linking Toronto and Miami was drawn because of the enormous 12-player deal that sent Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, and Mark Buehrle up north. Red lines are free agent signings, while blue lines are trades, so naturally, the blue lines tend to be thicker than their red counterparts. Click here for a free agents only version, and here for a trades only version.

References & Resources
All data from Tim Dierkes’ excellent Transaction Tracker on MLB Trade Rumors.


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Greg Simons
11 years ago

Very cool graphs, Dan.

Dennis Bedard
11 years ago

Fax machines?  How 1990’s of you.  Now, it’s scan and e mail.  Get with the times.

tink
10 years ago

Looks like Lohse is missing, I guess that was after last Sunday.  One thing that stands out is how isolated Seattle is for baseball.