All things considered, Craig Kimbrel’s sole season with the Phillies was pretty productive: 71 appearances, 69 innings, a 3.26 ERA, and a strikeout rate of 33.8%. Kimbrel saved 23 games in the regular season, plus the All-Star Game, plus three more in the playoffs. But the last meaningful impression he made in red pinstripes was an abject and total loss of command that cost the Phillies at least Game 4 of the NLCS, and probably Game 3 as well. Given that context, it’s not surprising Dave Dombrowski’s outfit is moving on.

Kimbrel’s new home? A team that, in Game 2 of the ALDS, scored eight runs and lost because its pitchers walked 11 batters — one short of the record for a nine-inning playoff game.

The Baltimore Orioles will be Kimbrel’s eighth stop on a road that will likely terminate in Cooperstown, and it’s fair to expect that by October this will be the sixth team for which Kimbrel will have appeared in the playoffs. At $13 million, the one-year deal represents a significant investment for the low-payroll Orioles. Not just in salary for Kimbrel, but because any trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore involves paying a fortune to drive the Delaware Turnpike. Read the rest of this entry »

As the leading lights of the baseball world sit around Nashville, Tennessee, waiting for Shohei Ohtani to choose his forever home, the reliever market finally sputtered to life on Day 2 of the Winter Meetings, with two veteran right-handers signing contracts for 2024. Kirby Yates, late of the Braves, is bound for Texas on a one-year, $4.5 million deal. Chris Devenski, meanwhile, re-signed with the Rays on a one-year deal with a team option; the first year will pay him $1 million, after which the team holds a $2 million option with a $100,000 buyout.

As much as a balky bullpen can derail an otherwise championship-caliber team, the 2023 Rangers were the kind of club that makes you think the whole thing just isn’t worth worrying about. Texas won the World Series with a relief corps that did not fit its implacable offense, posting the worst strikeout rate of any playoff bullpen. The only team whose relievers fared worse on an ERA basis was Miami, and the Marlins lasted all of two games against a Phillies lineup that thrashed them around like a hungry cat tormenting a lizard. Read the rest of this entry »

Rule no. 1 of MLB’s Winter Meetings: Beware of water features. Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, which for the next three days will serve as Vatican City for dudes in quarter zips and running shoes, contains within its expansive halls an artificial river. I’m in the process of putting together a bounty pool to see if we can get a writer to fall in the drink by the end of the week, but so far everyone’s stayed dry.

Nobody has suffered the fate of this legendary unfortunate, who absentmindedly stumbled into a Dallas hotel fountain in 2011, live on MLB Network. I’d like to propose — with the understanding that this might be controversial — that face-planting into a water feature would’ve been a more productive use of Jerry Dipoto’s Sunday evening than what he actually got up to.

The first major transaction of Winter Meetings is as follows: The Seattle Mariners traded outfielder Jarred Kelenic, pitcher Marco Gonzales, and first baseman Evan White to the Atlanta Braves for right-handed pitchers Jackson Kowar and Cole Phillips. Read the rest of this entry »

Before Ben Clemens puts together the official Top 50 Free Agents list, he posts a rough draft in Slack and asks for everyone’s opinion. I, personally, didn’t give him much in the way of feedback, because he’s a floating brain in a jar and I’m the guy who’s mostly interested in baseball as a conduit for making stupid jokes in headlines. As long as Shohei Ohtani is no. 1, I’m good. Beyond that, I trust Ben. He knows more than I do anyway.

With that said, I do want to share what little feedback I did offer, because I’ve been thinking about this for weeks: “I have no idea where Mitch Garver should go. I balked at him being as high as no. 18 and then immediately started talking myself into putting him closer to 10.” (Garver was 18th on the first list I saw; he migrated up a spot by the time it was published.)

So let’s do it. Let’s talk ourselves into Mitch Garver as a top-10 free agent. Read the rest of this entry »

Emilio Pagán has heeded the call. Whose call? The guy in the red tank top in Angels in the Outfield, who yells, “Go back to Cincinnati!”

Pagán, 32, is the second-best right-handed pitcher in this free-agent class who played college baseball in North Carolina and pitched for Puerto Rico in this spring’s World Baseball Classic. (Marcus Stroman remains unsigned as of this writing.) He’ll slot in nicely in the Reds’ bullpen, setting up for Alexis Díaz, the second-best Díaz brother who pitched for Puerto Rico in this spring’s World Baseball Classic.

The Reds like Pagán enough to sign him to a one-year, $8 million contract with a player option for an additional $8 million in 2025. Bob Nightengale noted at the time of the signing that Pagán had just become Cincinnati’s highest-paid player. Fortunately, Pagán held that distinction for just 12 hours before the Reds added Nick Martinez as well. But it was pretty bleak there for a minute. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, it’s best not to mess with a good thing. So say the Dodgers, who according to ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel have re-signed right fielder Jason Heyward to a one-year, $9 million contract.

In his first year with the Dodgers, Heyward appeared in 124 games, 98 of them starts, and hit .269/.340/.473 in 377 plate appearances. That’s a 121 wRC+! That’s 14th out of the 45 players who primarily played right field last year and managed 300 or more plate appearances, just a tick behind Adolis García, and ahead of Nick Castellanos, Lars Nootbaar, Fernando Tatis Jr., and George Springer.

The separating factor is that all 98 of Heyward’s starts came against right-handed pitchers last year. You might say that $9 million is a lot to pay for a platoon corner outfielder. Poppycock! The Dodgers, who have harvested the infinite galactic power of the cosmos, overpaying? The Dodgers, stuffed to the point of bursting with Guggenheim Partners’ limitless lucre, overpaying? Who cares? Surely not I. To them, $9 million is a pittance, spent here on a crucial roster player; otherwise it might have been spent on a medium-leverage relief pitcher, or caviar, or some other frivolity.

The Heyward-Dodgers reunion is exciting not just because a good team returns a productive player, but also because of how well this player fits with this team. Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the St. Louis Cardinals’ activity before Thanksgiving, the going rate for a right-handed pitcher in his mid-30s with a recent track record of high volume but unimpressive results is one year in the low eight figures with a club option for year two. For a mid-30s right-hander with better results but a major injury in his recent past? Apparently you have to guarantee the second year.

The Detroit Tigers have landed Kenta Maeda, late of division rival Minnesota, for two years and $24 million. The top two teams in this year’s AL Central standings both have holes to fill in their rotations, as Minnesota has to replace Maeda and Sonny Gray (who reportedly signed a three-year, $75 million deal with the Cardinals this morning), while the Tigers need a replacement for Eduardo Rodriguez. (As much as I like Maeda, he’s probably not that.) Read the rest of this entry »

The theme of free agency so far is returning to one’s origins. A day after Aaron Nola re-upped with the Phillies, Lance Lynn signed a one-year contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that drafted him in the first round in 2008. Lynn’s deal will pay him $10 million in 2024, with a 2025 club option for $11 million that comes with a $1 million buyout, and $3 million in incentives. That brings the total guarantee to $11 million and the total potential value of the contract to $24 million.

Lynn won a World Series with St. Louis as a rookie in 2011, made his first All-Star team in 2012, and in total pitched six years and nearly 1,000 innings with the club before leaving as a free agent after the 2017 season.

Much has happened since then. Read the rest of this entry »

The non-tender deadline isn’t usually an event that screams star power. The players involved are pre-free agency, making them cheap and controllable — qualities that appeal mightily to big league GMs. So if there’s even a question about whether a player is worth retaining or trading, as opposed to cutting loose, that usually means the player is neither good nor particularly promising.

All that goes out the window, apparently, when it comes to a pitcher who just underwent shoulder surgery. The Atlanta Braves, who went all Marie Kondo on their 40-man roster as the weekend approached, sent Kyle Wright to the Royals in exchange for Jackson Kowar. The same day, the Milwaukee Brewers did them one better and flat-out non-tendered two-time All-Star Brandon Woodruff. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the estimable and exquisitely coiffed Jeff Passan reported that MLB is considering a small change to the pitch clock for 2024. In its first year, the pitch clock counted down from 20 seconds with runners on base; MLB wants to bring that number down to 18 seconds. The proposal also includes a reduction in mound visits from five per team to four. MLB’s competition committee will deliberate over these proposals and then — considering more than half of the body is appointed by the league — most likely rubber-stamp them.

As for the headline change? It’s two seconds. It’s nothing. Two Mississippi. The Astros’ pitching staff alone has two Mississippi guys. (Okay, two Mississippi State guys.) MLB has already made the single biggest change it’s ever going to make to the timing of the game by instituting the pitch clock in the first place. How much can two seconds possibly matter? Read the rest of this entry »