With the additions of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on deals lasting 10 and 12 years, respectively, the Dodgers are entering a new era when it comes to their headlining superstars — not to take anything away from Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, both of whom remain at or near the top of their respective games. On Monday, we learned that the next stage of Dodger baseball will also include another familiar superstar: The New York Post’s Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman reported that free agent Clayton Kershaw will return to the only team for which he’s ever pitched.

The exact terms of the deal — which is pending a physical on Thursday — have yet to emerge at this writing, but USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale reported that the deal is a “one-year, incentive-laden contract,” while The Athletic’s Andy McCullough added that the contract includes a player option for 2025. If exercised, that would allow Kershaw to join Ohtani — who won’t pitch in 2024 after undergoing reconstructive surgery on his UCL this past September — in the Dodgers’ rotation.

Player options tend to carry advantages when it comes to Competitive Balance Tax accounting, a significant concern for the Dodgers, who rank second in payroll (both actual and CBT-based) only to the Mets and are nearly $12 million over the fourth-tier tax threshold of $297 million even before adding Kershaw’s salary. For example, Justin Turner’s two-year, $21.7 million deal with the Red Sox last year called for a base salary of $8.3 million for 2023, then a $13.4 million option and $6.7 million buyout. By opting out, Turner made $15 million on a deal whose average annual value was just $10.85 million. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night, just four days after the Brewers traded perennial Cy Young candidate Corbin Burnes to the Orioles for a package of promising young players and a competitive balance draft pick, Milwaukee signed a pitcher with an even better FIP to take his spot at the front of their rotation.

Sorry, that was misleading. Let’s try this again: After spending five years in Kansas City and two years in San Francisco, right-handed pitcher Jakob Junis has agreed to a one-year, $7 million deal with the Milwaukee Brewers. Kiley McDaniel reported the signing, which according to Ken Rosenthal includes a $4 million salary in 2024 along with a $3 million buyout on a mutual option for the 2025 season. While the Giants moved Junis to the bullpen in 2023, the 31-year-old is expected to join Milwaukee’s starting rotation. After the team non-tendered the injured Brandon Woodruff and traded Burnes, the rotation was looking particularly threadbare, relying on Freddy Peralta and a series of other pitchers with question marks surrounding their health, stuff, age, or some combination of the three.

Peralta, who was worth 3.0 WAR over 30 starts and 165.2 innings in 2023, had excellent stretches last season, including taking home NL Pitcher of the Month honors in August. Still, his 3.86 ERA, 3.85 FIP, and 1.41 HR/9 were all the worst marks he’d put up since the shortened 2020 season. Wade Miley, back on a one-year deal, has been fantastic over the last three seasons, but the Brewers will need him to continue his contact suppression sorcery at age 37. Colin Rea put up 0.8 WAR in 2023; the Brewers are hoping he can post back-to-back seasons with a sub-5.00 ERA for the first time since 2015 and 2016. DL Hall, who came over in the Burnes trade, is a truly exciting young pitcher, but he’s also dealt with injuries over the last two years and ended up in Baltimore’s bullpen in 2023. After a shoulder injury, Aaron Ashby pitched just seven minor league innings last year, while Joe Ross, coming off his second Tommy John surgery, threw 14 minor league innings and hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

The reliever merry-go-round rarely stops spinning, and one team’s castoff might be another’s potential cog. Case in point: on Monday the Dodgers re-signed righty Ryan Brasier, whom they plucked from the scrapheap in mid-2023, to a two-year deal. To add him, they dealt lefty Caleb Ferguson to the Yankees for itinerant lefty Matt Gage and righty prospect Christian Zazueta Jr.

The 36-year-old Brasier, who made $2 million last year, his final one before free agency, is guaranteed $9 million for 2024–25, with a maximum of $4 million in incentives possible as well. At this writing, the specifics of the annual breakdowns and the benchmarks for those bonuses aren’t known, but suffice to say, this represents a big upgrade in his standard of living. The Angels, Cardinals, Red Sox, and Yankees all showed interest in him this winter as well, according to The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya.

Such an outcome would have been almost unthinkable back in May, when Brasier lost his job with the Red Sox, for whom he’d pitched since 2018 with varying degrees of success. Though he made 68 appearances for Boston in 2022, he posted a 3.61 FIP but a 5.78 ERA in 62.1 innings, with a .335 BABIP — owing to too many hard-hit balls — playing a significant role in the discrepancy between those two run prevention figures. Through the first six weeks of his 2023 season with the Red Sox, it was more of the same: a 7.29 ERA, a 4.35 FIP, and a .344 BABIP in 21 innings.

On May 15, a day after Brasier had allowed three runs in a season-high 2.1 innings of garbage-time duty against the Cardinals, the Red Sox designated him for assignment; six days later, they released him. The Dodgers signed him to a minor league deal in early June, with Rob Hill, the team’s director of minor league pitching, and Brent Minta, their pitching analytics coordinator, suggesting he add a cut fastball to a repertoire that also includes a four-seamer that averages almost 96 mph and mid-80s slider.

Brasier spent about two weeks working on the new pitch at Camelback Ranch, then made two appearances for Triple-A Oklahoma City, during which he struck out five of nine hitters without allowing a baserunner. The Dodgers called him up, and he was outstanding, pitching to a 0.70 ERA and 2.48 FIP in 38.2 innings the rest of the way. Throwing the new pitch to lefties 46.8% of the time (though just 6.2% to righties), he held batters to a .152 average and .273 slugging percentage with a 16.4% whiff rate. Meanwhile, he cut his four-seam fastball usage in half, got better results on contact and higher whiff rates on all of his pitches:

Brasier had been scorched at a .389/.463/.611 clip by the 41 lefties he faced with the Red Sox, striking out just three of them while walking five. Once he joined the Dodgers, lefties hit just .123/.167/.211 in 60 plate appearances, with three walks (one intentional) and 18 strikeouts.

Overall, Brasier’s strikeout-walk differential doubled, and his results on contact improved dramatically:

All of which is to say that we can add Brasier to the ever-growing list of pitchers — Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, Evan Phillips, Alex Wood — whom the Dodgers were able to get far more out of than other teams thanks to various tweaks in mechanics and repertoire. Noah Syndergaard and Lance Lynn are proof that they’re not always successful at doing so, but they’ve helped enough hurlers to justify their effort. As Phillips, the owner of a 7.26 ERA and 5.37 FIP in 57 innings at three previous stops before arriving in mid-2021, told the Los Angeles Times’ Mike DiGiovanna earlier this month, “When the Los Angeles Dodgers come calling and say, ‘Hey, we think you can be great,’ you tend to listen. They really forced the envelope and said, ‘You’re gonna need to do these things to pitch well,’ and I was in no position to argue with them.”

Phillips is now the closest thing the Dodgers have to a regular closer; he led the team — which had the majors’ third-best bullpen ERA (3.42), second-best FIP (3.73) and best WAR (7.6) last season — with 24 saves. Brasier is now in the mix for a late-inning role, along with fellow righties Brusdar Graterol and Joe Kelly. The latter, whom the Dodgers reacquired in the Lynn trade with the White Sox on July 28, then re-signed to a one-year, $8 million deal in December, has a notoriously spotty health history, as does Blake Treinen, who’s hoping to return to action after throwing just five innings in 2022 and none last year due to labrum and rotator cuff tears that required surgery. A healthy Brasier offers some insurance within that group.

The Dodgers haven’t cleared a roster spot yet for Brasier; they’ll likely just wait until Thursday, the first day that the team can move Tommy John surgery recipients Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May — not to mention newly re-signed Clayton Kershaw — to the 60-day injured list, where they won’t count against the 40-man roster limit. The team did already make a bit of room for Brasier within the bullpen and on the payroll by trading Ferguson to the Yankees. The 27-year-old lefty, who had been in the Dodgers organization since being drafted out of high school in 2014, set career highs in appearances (68), innings (60.1), and WAR (1.3) in 2023 while posting a 3.43 ERA and 3.34 FIP. As Davy Andrews pointed out in August, he restored a cutter to his arsenal in 2023. In his case, he ditched a reasonably effective curveball to do so, though it didn’t work too well against lefties:

In fact, Ferguson has yielded a higher wOBA to same-side hitters than he has to those of the opposite hand in each of the last two seasons and three out of five in a career that’s been interrupted by the pandemic and a late-2020 Tommy John surgery, his second. (His first was in 2014, just a week before he was drafted.)

For the Yankees, who last week lost stalwart lefty Wandy Peralta to the Padres, that’s something of step backwards. Peralta had been very effective against lefties (.217 wOBA in 174 PA in 2022–23) while also being pretty effective against righties (.300 wOBA in 276 PA over those two seasons), though that composite masks a 70-point year-to-year jump (from .266 in 2022 to .336 in ’23) against the latter. Ferguson, who will make $2.4 million in 2024, his last year before free agency, is less expensive, so there’s that for the Yankees.

Interestingly enough, Ferguson will join another former Dodgers lefty, 28-year-old Victor González, in New York’s bullpen; he was traded to the Yankees on Dec. 11 along with infield prospect Jorbit Vivas in exchange for another infield prospect, Trey Sweeney. Ferguson figures to be the higher of the two in the pecking order, in the setup mix along with righties Jonathan Loáisiga and Tommy Kahnle, ahead of closer Clay Holmes. It’s worth noting that Loáisiga and Kahnle combined for just 58.1 innings last year amid injuries, so manager Aaron Boone could call Ferguson’s number with some frequency.

As for the more experienced of the two pitchers the Dodgers received in exchange for Ferguson, the 30-year-old Gage is now in his eighth organization since being drafted by the Giants in the 10th round in 2014. He’s passed through the hands of the Mets, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Blue Jays, Astros, and Yankees while totaling just 16 games in the majors, 11 with Toronto in 2022 and five with Houston last year; he was optioned four times for his trouble. He’s pitched pretty well in his limited major league opportunities using a fastball-cutter combo with an occasional slider in the mix, posting a 1.83 ERA and 3.97 FIP in 19.2 innings while striking out 26% of hitters. He got knocked around at Triple-A Sugar Land last year, however, posting a 4.58 ERA and 5.29 FIP with a 23.4% strikeout rate; though he held lefties to a .203/278/.328 line in 73 PA, righties hit .333/.425/.559 in 121 PA against him. If you’re getting the sense that he’s a guy on the fringe of the 40-man roster who’s likely to change addresses multiple times in 2024, you’re probably right. He might be one free agent signing or a couple of bad — or even long — outings away from being sent down or out at any moment. It’s not entirely out of the question that he could be DFA’d to make room for a more experienced lefty reliever, as Alex Vesia and Ryan Yarbrough, the pair currently penciled in for the active roster, don’t exactly strike fear into anyone.

As for Zazueta, he’s the 19-year-old son of Christian Zazueta Sr., a still-active 15-season veteran of the Mexican League who spent last year with El Aguila de Veracruz. The younger Zazueta, also a native of Mexico, is listed at 6-foot-3 and 163 pounds. He’s spent the past two seasons in the Dominican Summer League, where last year he posted a 3.29 ERA and 4.59 FIP while striking out 23.6% of all hitters in a team-high 52 innings. He earned an honorable mention spot on the Yankees’ Top 36 Prospects List in December, where Eric Longenhagen lumped him among the swingmen while noting, “He has the pitch movement foundation to break out if he can throw harder as he matures. He currently has a rise-and-run upper-80s fastball, a shapely mid-70s curveball, and a precocious changeup, all of which have bat-missing promise.”

Bringing Brasier back is a nice move for the Dodgers, but by trading Ferguson, they still have a significant number of higher-leverage innings to fill, and may need another addition to the bullpen. Likewise, Ferguson probably shouldn’t be the last move the Yankees make in what’s been a rather underwhelming winter when it comes to patching their pitching staff.

Last year’s Mets were a bit of a mess. After entering the season as a projected powerhouse, things fell apart quickly. They jettisoned their two highest-paid pitchers at the deadline for prospects and finished with a lackluster 75 wins. There were multiple reasons for such a disappointing season — their bats stalled and only one starting pitcher reached 130 innings — but perhaps no loss was more devastating than that of closer Edwin Díaz. Before the season, his injury dropped the Mets from second to 19th in projected bullpen WAR; they ended up 29th.

The Mets knew that Díaz would be back in 2024, but they still entered the offseason needing to improve a bullpen that way too often turned to the likes of Trevor Gott, Tommy Hunter, and Jeff Brigham. And in a wave of recent moves, they’ve done just that, signing Adam Ottavino, Jake Diekman, and Shintaro Fujinami to one-year deals. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve seen this movie a million times. The Rays make some innocuous transaction, adding a reliever you’ve heard of but perhaps forgotten about in trade or free agency. You remember that guy – but now? Him? Surely they can’t be serious. But of course, they are serious, and it ends up working out better than anyone expected, and next thing you know that guy is getting key outs against great hitters.

You might think the team’s most recent reliever transaction fits both parts of this trope: an obscure(ish) pitcher who will no doubt become good. But you’d only be half right about Phil Maton, who has reportedly agreed to a one-year deal for $6.5 million, with a $7.5 million team option for 2025, per Mark Feinsand and Robert Murray. A physical is still pending, and the contract isn’t expected to become official until next week, per Marc Topkin. Will Maton lock down key innings for Tampa Bay this year? I’d bet on it. But where you’d go wrong is in thinking that Maton came to the Rays to get better. While you weren’t looking, he’s already become a great reliever, and the Rays are in fact engaging in another of their favorite offseason pastimes: seeing a great performance before the rest of the league and capitalizing.

I can hear your skepticism, and that’s perfectly okay. Phil Maton is a great reliever? How come our Depth Charts project him for a 4.10 ERA next year? How come his best season produced a 3.00 ERA and peripherals on either side of four? How come he signed this deal in February? Am I thinking, perhaps, of a different Phil Maton? Read the rest of this entry »

With the news that Byron Buxton is eyeing up a return to center field, the Minnesota Twins have quite a bit of flexibility at the heavy end of the defensive spectrum. When they need some thump and don’t care much about the defensive consequences, the Twins can choose from a variety of designated hitters, left fielders, and first basemen: Matt Wallner, Alex Kirilloff, Trevor Larnach, and most recently Carlos Santana.

Santana, who will turn 38 just after Opening Day, has been around so long he’s the only reason anyone remembers Casey Blake. By now, you know what he’ll provide: Lots of walks, a little power, and decent defense at first base. Santana’s last season of 2.0 WAR or more was 2019, and after spending 10 of his first 11 seasons in Cleveland, he’s bounced around quite a bit; this is his fifth team since the start of the 2022 season. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres are falling apart a little, having divested themselves this winter of Juan Soto, Trent Grisham, Josh Hader, and (most likely) Blake Snell. But reinforcements are on the way, in the shape of Wandy Peralta, who on Wednesday agreed to a four-year, $16.5 million contract. Peralta might be the second-best active pitcher named Peralta, and the second-best left-handed pitcher in baseball history named Wandy, but he’s still a good reliever.

Peralta made 165 appearances over two and a half seasons with the Yankees, with a cumulative ERA of 2.82 despite pedestrian strikeout numbers. But in the age of heavy metal fastballs and sliders, Peralta is a little more refined and subtle. His most common pitch is a changeup, which is useful against lefties as well as righties, and it’s hard to square up. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve spent a fair deal of time the past few months discussing the AL West, producers of the past two World Series winners. There’s the reigning champion Rangers constructing a pitching staff built for next October, the always-potent Astros assembling a mega-bullpen to go along with their core of offensive talent, and the Mariners making a whole lot of trade as part of their perpetual roster churn. Each of these three teams won at least 88 games last year, and all three had a shot at the division crown entering the final weekend of the regular season. Their offseason moves reflect their hopes to contend again in 2024.

The same cannot be said for the two other teams in the division. The Angels spent most of the offseason bolstering their bullpen while doing nothing to fill the Ohtani-sized hole in their lineup. The 112-loss Athletics did even less. They signed reliever Trevor Gott, traded for Abraham Toro, and that’s about it. That is, until a few days ago, when Oakland signed lefty Alex Wood and Los Angeles added outfielder Aaron Hicks. The two players improve their new clubs along the margins, but it’s going to take more than them to turn things around.

Alex Wood Moves Across the Bay

Wood, 33, agreed to a one-year deal with Oakland over the weekend, though the terms of the contract have not yet been reported. He began his career as a highly effective starter on the Braves and Dodgers, posting a 3.29 ERA and 3.36 FIP through his first six seasons. Since then, he’s been more up and down. After injuries limited him to nine appearances combined in 2019 and 2020, he took a prove-it deal with the Giants on their miracle 2021 squad, parlaying a bounceback campaign into a two-year, $25 million contract, which didn’t work out as well. Wood had a 4.77 ERA across the two seasons and was nearly replacement level in 2023, looking nothing like the mid-rotation arm he once was.

Wood’s struggles in the first year of his second contract with the Giants were largely the product of batted ball luck; he outperformed his peripherals by about a run and a half. While his numbers in 2023 returned to nearly league-average levels, the under-the-hood numbers took a big turn for the worse. Take a look at his three-year run in San Francisco.

The numbers in 2021 and 2022 look remarkably similar, despite a vastly different ERA. But nearly everything fell apart last year. The drop in strikeout rate is significant, but what stands out most to me are the elevated walk rate and plummeting chase rate, signs of a loss in command. Part of the issue may be mechanical; Wood dropped his arm slot significantly upon joining the Giants, and his funky delivery almost resembles a shotput throw rather than a baseball pitch. But between 2022 and 2023, his vertical release point stayed about the same while his arm got about two inches less horizontal extension.

In terms of actual pitch locations, Wood often missed his spots high. I’m not just talking about intentionally-placed flat sinkers; his slider and changeup also had a generally upward drift – not an ideal outcome for someone who uses the lateral action on each of his offerings to induce ground balls. Indeed, last year he had the worst grounder rate of any full season in his career. These frequent misses made it easier for batters to lay off pitches just below the zone, an area where Wood has frequently generated value in the past, leading to a ballooning of his walk rate.

This signing is as much about Wood’s role as it is about his performance. A career starting pitcher, Wood was frustrated last year when the Giants made him a swingman. San Francisco’s decision to break down the traditional roles of starter and reliever gave jobs to rookie arms like Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck, but staff veterans certainly had to adapt to the unorthodox change. Wood averaged less than four innings a game in his dozen starts, while making relief appearances of between one and 15 outs. On one occasion, he tossed four innings and 70 pitches the day after a bullpen session and on short rest from his previous appearance.

Luckily for Wood, the A’s are the perfect team for a veteran to attempt a comeback in a consistent role. He joins fellow low-slot lefty JP Sears as the only members of the projected rotation to ever complete 120 innings in a big league season. The presence of “relative innings eaters” like Sears, Wood, and Paul Blackburn (who has topped at 111 innings) will allow a pair of young arms with big stuff in Luis Medina and Joe Boyle to pitch full seasons in the rotation with minimal risk of being overworked. They’ll also help take the load off Mason Miller, who touches 102 mph and projects as a top-five reliever by Steamer, but has spent the bulk of his professional career on the injured list. With this signing, both sides gain some stability, and if Wood pitches well, the A’s could trade him to a contender before the year is over. In the meantime, though, Wood gets a team willing to give him the ball every fifth day, while Oakland gets a live breathing man willing to pitch on a bleak-looking squad – the smallest of win-wins.

Aaron Hicks Comes to Anaheim

Once an everyday center fielder who received an MVP vote in 2018, Hicks has taken quite the fall from grace in recent years. He signed a seven-year deal worth $70 million with the Yankees after his ’18 campaign, when his combination of solid home run power and a disciplined approach made him a four-win player. But his subsequent issues with injuries and performance have sapped his value, and in May, he was released with nearly three years left on his contract. He played out the rest of 2023 with the Orioles and had a surprising return to form, though he did this in just a 65-game sample and outperformed his expected numbers considerably. The Yankees will now be paying Hicks over $8 million to play for the Angels as he attempts to rebuild his career.

First, there’s the health aspect of things. The season that prompted Hicks’ lengthy extension is, to date, the only time he’s qualified for the batting title, thanks to a laundry list of injuries that have afflicted pretty much every body part there is. These issues have had a considerable impact on his performance, most notably seen in his steady decline in power over the past half decade. Since his best season, his maximum exit velocity has declined by 4 mph, and his barrel and hard-hit rates have cratered. As someone who’s never excelled at spraying line drives, Hicks isn’t able to rely on soft flares that land in front of outfielders.

A switch hitter, Hicks tapped into his power with New York because of his ability to pull the ball in the air, a skill aided by the juiced ball era and Yankee Stadium’s short porch for left-handed hitters. The Yankees as a whole were successful in optimizing the batted ball profiles of many of their hitters, turning DJ LeMahieu and Didi Gregorius into 25-homer threats. During the peak juiced ball years of 2018 and ’19, Hicks hit nearly all of his homers to the pull side, especially taking advantage when stepping into the box as a lefty. Since then, his aerial contact has been considerably weaker. Combine that with a baseball that behaves in line with normal physics, and his entire source of power disappeared. From 2017-19, Hicks homered every 22 plate appearances; that rate has been slashed nearly in half over the past four seasons. Hicks is still likely a near-average hitter, but that value will be exclusively coming from his still-great walk rates, not through homers.

The addition of Hicks, now 34, complicates the Angels’ outfield situation a bit. They already have two clear everyday outfielders in Mike Trout and Taylor Ward, leaving just one spot and a fraction of DH time for Hicks, Mickey Moniak, and Jo Adell. Even without Hicks in the picture, allocating playing time is still a challenge. On a contending team, it would make sense to set up Moniak and Adell in a power-heavy (and OBP-light) platoon. But the Angels aren’t in such a situation. Rather, they should be prioritizing the out-of-options Adell in their plans, either to build up trade value or to give him a last chance at being a viable everyday player. Now with Hicks, a veteran and known quantity who can also be traded, in the picture, the playing time picture gets squeezed a bit more.

Because of the team’s outfield logjam, Hicks probably won’t see tons of playing time to start the year. But he certainly provides a much-needed insurance policy if things don’t go as planned. He can play center field if Trout gets injured or a corner if Moniak or Adell are waived or traded. And the positional shuffling in the case of an Anthony Rendon injury could open up time at DH for him to fill. Hicks certainly shouldn’t be stealing playing time, but especially at his price point, the Angels will be glad to have him if (or when) things go wrong.

Justin Turner, the longtime Dodgers stalwart and kind of guy who makes you wonder when “professional hitter” stopped being a baseball idiom in common usage, has a new gig. After one season in Boston — moderately successful for him, less so for his team — Turner is moving west to Toronto, where he’ll make $13 million this season, with the chance to earn an additional $1.5 million in bonuses and incentives.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you probably saw the news that Turner would be sharing an infield (and/or a DH spot) with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and thought, “Wait, didn’t Turner come up with the Orioles around the same time Guerrero père was winding down his career there?” And sure enough, he did. But Turner isn’t just so old he played with his new teammate’s dad. He’s so old he played four years of college, got drafted, spent three seasons in the minors, played parts of two seasons in the majors with the Orioles, and got traded away before his new teammate’s dad even got there.

Turner just turned 39, which is still 39 years old in Canada after you account for the exchange rate. I checked. That’s relatively young for someone who spent their young adulthood working on a humanities PhD while all their friends were starting families and getting established professionally. (You’ve still got your whole life ahead of you! I believe in you!) But it’s old for a ballplayer. Particularly a ballplayer on a contract that indicates he’s meant to be a key contributor on a playoff team. Read the rest of this entry »

In the second half of the 2023 season, three players shared designated hitting duties for the Arizona Diamondbacks: Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Tommy Pham, and Evan Longoria. Three more started multiple games at DH: Dominic Canzone, Kyle Lewis, and Buddy Kennedy. By mid-November, none of those players remained with the organization. The D-backs quickly replaced Longoria, trading for veteran third baseman Eugenio Suárez in November. A few weeks later, they re-signed Gurriel. However, neither move fully addressed the hole at DH; Suárez will slot in at the hot corner, while Gurriel should start most days in left field. The Diamondbacks still needed a regular designated hitter, and late last week, they finally found their guy in Joc Pederson.

Pederson will earn $9.5 million in 2024, with a $14 million mutual option ($3 million buyout) for 2025. If both sides pick up their end of the option, the deal will max out at $23.5 million over two years, quite similar to our crowdsourced estimate of two years and $24 million. In the more likely scenario where one side or the other declines the option, Pederson will earn $12.5 million for a single year of work, almost perfectly in line with Ben Clemens’ prediction of one year and $12 million. That is to say, nothing about this contract comes as much of a shock. Read the rest of this entry »