Here is an exercise I go through each year: I pretend baseball has an amnesty program — essentially a team could release any player and be free of his contract while receiving nothing in return. Who would go?

I do it annually as an antidote to amnesia, which is rampant at this time of year. There is nothing lauded quite like spending big in the winter, even with evidence that naming offseason champions based on that is so often a losing strategy.

It is what makes the Mets’ shopping spree last offseason so impressive. They signed five major league free agents — Mark Canha, Eduardo Escobar, Starling Marte, Adam Ottavino and Max Scherzer — and did not have any of the contracts go rancid. Might they ultimately have some regret about the two years at $86.6 million still due to Scherzer? Perhaps. Might they prefer to spend the $10 million still due Escobar in a different fashion moving forward? Maybe. But it isn’t as if they have received nothing for the dollars spent or that they are sitting on a disastrous pact.

Conversely, the Marlins, a team without Steve Cohen’s largesse to get spending wrong, signed two major league free-agent contracts last offseason, and both went terribly. Avisail Garcia (four years, $53 million) and Jorge Soler (three years, $39 million) combined for 0.0 Wins Above Replacement (Fangraphs).