page_title: Winter Meetings
section_title: Player trades and signings
hierarchical_section_title: Winter Meetings / Player trades and signings
caption_attribution_description: English: Barry Bonds on deck in 1993.
context_page_description: Representatives of all 30 Major League Baseball teams and their 160 minor league baseball affiliates convene for four days each December in the Winter Meetings to discuss league business and conduct off-season trades and transactions. Attendees include league executives, team owners, general managers, team scouts, visitors from baseball-playing countries, trade show exhibitors, and people seeking employment with minor league organizations. The Rule 5 draft, in which minor league players who are not on a team's 40-man roster can be drafted by a major league team, is held on the last day of the meetings.
context_section_description: With all the principals in one place, the Winter Meetings are typically the site of player trades and free-agent signings. However, the informal meetings that used to take place in hotel lobbies up until the end of the 20th century have been replaced by texting and emailing; most interactions take place in the privacy of suites due to the preponderance of media personnel and fans converging on the site.
  Among the notable trades and signings that have been made at the Winter Meetings are:
  At the 1975 Winter Meetings in Fort Lauderdale, new Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck sat at a table in the lobby behind a sign that said "Open for Business". During the course of the meetings, Veeck negotiated six trades involving 22 players.
  At the 1988 Winter Meetings in Atlanta, the Texas Rangers closed three trades involving 15 players and signed free agent pitcher Nolan Ryan.
  At the 1992 Winter Meetings in Louisville, first-time free agent Barry Bonds was signed by the San Francisco Giants for six years and $43 million. Bonds personally negotiated to have a hotel suite at his disposal during road games.
  On the last day of the 2011 Winter Meetings in Dallas, Albert Pujols, who had won a World Series ring with the St. Louis Cardinals that fall, inked a 10-year, $250 million deal with the Los Angeles Angels.
  In the space of 24 hours at the 2014 Winter Meetings in San Diego, the Los Angeles Dodgers concluded six transactions with four teams, involving 19 players and a free agent.
caption: Barry Bonds playing for the San Francisco Giants in 1993
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