After examining the most player-friendly free-agent contracts of the 2017-18 offseason, here I turn to the winter’s most team-friendly deals. As I explained previously, given the perfect storm of factors that suppressed free-agent spending relative to past winters, it feels unseemly simply to celebrate “winners” and pick on “losers.” I’m not here to punch down at a player such as Mike Moustakas, whose one-year, $6.5 million deal was less than one-tenth the value of estimates projected by Dave Cameron, the FanGraphs crowd, the MLB Trade Rumors crew, FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman, and MLB.com’s Jim Duquette back in November.

Instead, I think it’s more appropriate to view the free-agent contracts in terms of team- and player-friendliness. While acknowledging that shorter deals are inherently more team-friendly, I’ve stuck with apples-to-apples comparisons for this column and the previous one by considering the one-year, two-year, and three-year deals in their own separate categories — and grouping those of four years or more together due to the small sample size. Here, price and expected WAR aren’t the only considerations: player age, fit with a team’s roster, and competitive situation are among the additional factors to weigh.

As a refresher, here’s a graphic breaking down major-league free-agent deals by contract length over each of the past six winters, using data from the MLB Trade Rumors Free Agent Tracker. I’ve omitted minor-league deals as well as those signed by international players, including Shohei Ohtani.

Four Years or More

Lorenzo Cain, Brewers: five years, $80 million

Of the winter’s five deals that offer four years or more, only those signed by Cain and Alex Cobb (four years, $57 million from the Orioles) feature a total value under $100 million. Between those two players, Cain (who turns 32 on April 13) has the longer track record for productivity than Cobb, having averaged more than four wins per season over the past four years. He recorded 4.1 WAR in 2017, his last in Kansas City. Cobb was worth 2.4 WAR last year and hasn’t been above 3.0 in any of his four seasons with at least 100 innings pitched, plus he lost most of 2015-16 to Tommy John surgery and (checks roster) remains a pitcher.

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With the arrival of Opening Day on Thursday (!), a look back at the best and worst free-agent contracts of the winter would seem long overdue — except for the fact that dozens of free agents still haven’t signed and the ink is barely dry on several other deals. Just last week, Alex Cobb, whom Dave Cameron ranked 10th on his Top 50 Free Agents list, inked a four-year, $57 million deal with the Orioles. Five other players from among Cameron’s top 15 — Jake Arrieta, Lance Lynn, Jonathan Lucroy, Mike Moustakas, and Neil Walker — have signed since March 10. Prior to that wave, any attempt at an overarching analysis would have felt premature.

On the free-agent front, it was a weird winter of discontent, the slowest of the millennium when it came to free-agent signings. True, this year’s class was a relatively weak one, with the top free agents almost uniformly dealing with recent performance regression, injuries, and/or short track records of success.

The bigger story is the way in which the ramifications of the most recent collective bargaining agreement rose up to bite the players in the derriere. None of the five teams that paid the luxury tax for 2017 — the Dodgers, Yankees, Giants, Tigers and Nationals — signed anyone to a deal worth more than $10 million in total salary. The Dodgers, Yankees, Giants, and Nationals were particularly cautious about shimmying under the $197 million threshold so as to reset their marginal tax rates, while the Tigers were among several teams who used their status as rebuilders to justify meager expenditures in the market.

(The Cubs and Red Sox were initially reported by USA Today as having paid the tax, an error that was repeated here.)

Mid-market players who turned down qualifying offers and had the drag of a lost draft pick attached to their services were hit particularly hard, in part because an increasingly analytics-driven industry has gotten wise to the perils of paying aging ballplayers for past production.

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