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 »

It’s been a rough week for workers in certain sectors of the American economy, but for veteran right-handed relief pitchers, business is a-boomin’. David Robertson has signed a one-year contract with the Texas Rangers worth $11.5 million, with a mutual option for 2025. Hector Neris has landed with the Cubs on a one-year deal worth $9 million, with a team option for a second year at the same amount. If you pitched in relief for the 2019 Phillies, stay by your phone — a team is going to call any moment. That means you, Adam Morgan! Read the rest of this entry »

Every free agent left-handed pitcher entering his age-35 season is headed to Southern California. Canadian bird magnet James Paxton has agreed to a one-year deal with the Dodgers, with base compensation of $11 million and another $2 million (half of it fascinatingly attainable) available in bonus. Another top pitching prospect from the 2010s, Matt Moore, is returning to the Angels for $9 million.

These were two of the premier left-handed pitching prospects in baseball in the early 2010s, and their current fates really illustrate how far in the past that was. Nevertheless, Paxton’s ability continues to tempt teams into thinking, “No, this time will be different, he’ll stay healthy, I know it.” Meanwhile, Moore has reinvented himself into one of the best in baseball at a different job than the one he trained for. Read the rest of this entry »

The free agent market is finally starting to move. Rhys Hoskins is headed to Milwaukee, finalizing a two-year, $34 million contract with an opt-out after the first year, per Scoop Czar Jeff Passan. You don’t have to squint to see the fit here. Milwaukee needs hitting, Hoskins needs a place to hit, and it’s always nice to feel wanted. The option effectively makes this a pillow contract for Hoskins, who ruptured his ACL in spring training and missed the entire 2023 season. (This seems like a good place to note that the deal is almost certainly still pending a physical.) If he proves that he can still hit like Rhys Hoskins, he can opt out and go after a bigger deal while he’s still a fresh-faced 31-year-old with the world at his feet, rather than a doddering, unemployable 32-year-old. If he needs another year to knock the rust off, well, I’ve heard great things about Milwaukee.

Hoskins ranked 20th on our Top 50 Free Agents. Ben Clemens estimated that he would receive a three-year contract for a total of $45 million, meaning that Hoskins fell short of the estimate in terms of years, but exceeded it in terms of average annual value. Michael Baumann did a lot of the legwork a couple weeks ago, so I’ll leave it to him to remind you of just how good a hitter Hoskins is:

The value that Hoskins brings is obvious. His power can be streaky on a game-to-game basis — a danger of being a three true outcome-heavy hitter — but in the aggregate, he’s one of the most consistent players in baseball. Hoskins is a career .242/.353/492 hitter, with a 13.5% walk rate and a 23.9% strikeout rate. That’s a career wRC+ of 126.

In four full seasons in the majors (discounting Hoskins’ 50-game rookie season and the 41 games he played in 2020), he’s never been worth more than 2.4 WAR, nor less than 2.0. His full-season career low in wRC+ is 112, while his full-season career high is 128. You can like or dislike the total package, but you know what you’re going to get.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, I was surprised to remember that the Washington Nationals were still a going concern, so I wrote an article expressing my befuddlement at the organization’s inaction over the 18 months since the Juan Soto trade. The title of the story: “Let’s Poke the Washington Nationals with a Stick to See if They’re Still Alive.”

The Nats have found a stick and shown signs of life within just four days. And what a stick it is: Joey Gallo, one of the biggest, strongest, most powerful hitters out there. That’s a big stick. A stick fit to make Theodore Roosevelt use his inside voice. Gallo, late of the Minnesota Twins, will make $5 million on a one-year deal.

Signing Gallo won’t turn the Nationals around overnight, or even appreciably accelerate Washington’s rebuild. He’s just a man, after all. A big one, but merely a man. Nevertheless, this is exactly the kind of move the Nationals should be making. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a mean-spirited but persistent thread in American pop culture, in which the Midwest is depicted as a cultural backwater, populated by sleepy, gormless, unattractive rubes and devoid of meaningful art or culture. For example, this sidesplitting musical interlude from 30 Rock. As an East Coast snob who lived for many years among the Great Lakes, I find this line of comedy offensive. Midwesterners are friendly, vigorous, beautiful people, and they live in a land of marvels. (If you’re wondering why I’ve chosen to open with this confusing and risky metaphor: We just got a new assistant editor, Matt Martell, and I’m hazing him by handing him a grenade on his second day.)

But when it comes to pitching, the coastal elites might have a point: Standards have slipped a little in the heartland. For the Chicago White Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates, John Brebbia and Aroldis Chapman, respectively, are marquee signings. (Now I’ve thrown all that goodwill away by puncturing Pittsburghers’ delusion that they’re from the East Coast. How foolish of me.) Read the rest of this entry »

The first two months of the offseason were entirely defined by one player: Shohei Ohtani. The two-way star’s departure for (the actual city of) Los Angeles had a particularly meaningful effect on his former club, which is in need of some major moves to be remotely competitive in his absence. To fill the Ohtani-sized hole on the roster, the Angels have signed… a 37-year old reliever, two different sidearmers named Adam, and a hurler whose claim to fame is having suffered multiple self-inflicted injuries as a result of frustration. In spite of these lackluster additions, ZiPS views this team rather favorably given the circumstances – nowhere near title favorites, but not complete embarrassments either. And while none of the relievers they’ve added thus far will really move the needle in either direction, their latest signing adds a significant high-leverage arm to the mix, with righty Robert Stephenson inking a three-year deal worth $33 million to come to Anaheim. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros undoubtedly view their 2023 season as a disappointment. They won 90 games, their lowest full-season total since 2016. They won the AL West, but only via tiebreaker, and then lost a tight ALCS to the division rival Rangers. Viewed through the lens of Houston’s recent domination of the American League, even a solid result isn’t enough.

Just one problem: There weren’t a lot of obvious places for the team to improve. Their lineup is full of the guys who have been mashing for them for years. José Abreu might theoretically be a weak link, but he looked better in the playoffs, and it’s not like there are a ton of exciting first basemen available in free agency anyway. Michael Brantley’s retirement lets Yordan Alvarez DH more frequently, and between Jake Meyers and Chas McCormick, the team has outfielders to fill any voids out there.

Still, the Astros wanted to get better, and hats off to them for that. Could they use some pitching? Sure, of course, but their top duo of Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez is already great, and I really like both Hunter Brown and J.P. France as options behind them. If there was a weakness, it was a thin bullpen, but that can be fixed. Like, say, for example:

BREAKING: Star closer Josh Hader and the Houston Astros are in agreement on a five-year, $95 million contract, a source tells ESPN.

The deal contains no deferrals. It is the largest present-day value contract for a relief pitcher in baseball history.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 19, 2024

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