Hello, and welcome to another edition of Semi-Rebuilding Team Signs Solid Players. Last time, we saw the Kansas City Royals sign Michael Wacha and Hunter Renfroe. This time, we’re headed 800 miles east, to Pittsburgh, because the Pirates are our next feature. In the past week, they’ve added Martín Pérez and team legend Andrew McCutchen on one-year deals.

The McCutchen signing is the more interesting of the two to me – and also one that felt inevitable since the conclusion of last season. McCutchen enjoyed a resurgent 2023 in Pittsburgh, his first year back after a five-year, four-team odyssey that he embarked on after leaving before the 2018 season. He walked more, struck out less, stole more bases, made solid contact more frequently; if you can dream it, he did it better last year than he had in his previous peregrinations.

The result of that improvement was a 115 wRC+ and a .256/.378/.397 slash line, heavy on on-base and light on homers (12, the lowest he’s posted in a healthy season). Early in the season, it looked like that performance might be a key part of a Pirates playoff berth. But the team faded in the second half, and McCutchen’s season ended on September 4 when he partially tore his Achilles tendon legging out a double. Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants shored up their catcher situation late Monday, signing Tom Murphy, formerly of the Mariners, to a two-year contract worth $8 million. A third-round pick by the Rockies, that club had little playing time available for him due to the presence of superstars like Tony Wolters and Nick Hundley. At risk of becoming an organizational player, he found a new home with Seattle, which paired him with Omar Narváez and watched the home runs flow like alcohol in Belltown. In four seasons of timeshare catching there, Murphy hit .250/.324/.460 with 38 homers in 807 plate appearances. Patrick Bailey (rightly) remains the starting catcher in San Francisco, but he now has a high-quality junior partner when rest or the occasional offensive oomph is needed.

Since Murphy’s initial season with the Mariners (2019), his best in the majors to-date, he’s suffered a run of injuries that have prevented him from seizing larger portions of a starting job. A broken foot in the COVID-shortened 2020 ended his season before it began, and a shoulder injury cost him most of ’22. By the time he was healthy again, Cal Raleigh had become a key part of the lineup and earned the lion’s share of the playing time.

Bailey is the no. 1 catcher in San Francisco, a deserving Gold Glove finalist in his rookie season. What he isn’t is an offensive powerhouse. ZiPS projects 2.4 WAR from him in 105 games, but that’s largely driven by a defensive projection of 13 runs better than the average catcher, not a projected .226/.294/.361 triple-slash. And that’s where Murphy comes in, both spelling Bailey on rest days and giving the Giants the tactical opportunity to get a better bat in the late innings when they’re facing a deficit and could use an additional hitter. Also helping Murphy in getting plate appearances is the Giants long being a team that has protected the health of its starting catchers; Buster Posey only started 120 games there once in his career. Read the rest of this entry »

Arizona took one of the few quality outfielders available in free agency off the market over the weekend, re-signing outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to a three-year contract worth a guaranteed $42 million. Gurriel gets an opt-out after the second year of the contract, and the Snakes get a $14 million option for a fourth season. While he didn’t have a star-level season for Arizona in 2023, he was a steady contributor in left field and designated hitter, putting up a .261/.309/.463 triple-slash en route to 2.1 WAR.

Gurriel wasn’t the primary reason that Arizona surprised a lot of people in 2023, but he filled a hole in the Diamondbacks’ lineup. In 2022, Arizona designated hitters combined to hit .215/.320/.382. And Jake McCarthy’s struggles — he had a .481 OPS in April — ensured there was plenty of time for Gurriel in the field. While nobody will ever confuse Gurriel with Kevin Kiermaier with the glove, he had the best defensive season of his career by OAA. If you prefer DRS or UZR, he was one of the best defensive left fielders in baseball. I’m not going to go nearly that far, but the combination of respectable work with both leather and wood left Gurriel a league-average starter overall.

In 2024, Gurriel will likely play a similar role, splitting time at left field and DH. The estimates of Ben Clemens (3/45) and our crowdsource (3/36) did well here. Even in a free-agent market with few impact hitters, an ordinary player hitting 30 years old without a ton of defensive value was never likely to set the market on fire. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Flaherty, still just 28 years old, has already endured more ups and downs than most pitchers do in their entire careers. His peak, a 4.7-win, fourth-place Cy Young finish in 2019, tells a story far different from the middling 3.3 WAR he’s accrued in 299 innings sandwiching a variety of injuries since. What should we make of the former heir apparent to Adam Wainwright?

Let’s start by asking how teams are assessing him, now that we have at least one more data point. The Tigers evidently see enough in the erstwhile ace to fork over $14 million for a year of his services, with games-started-based incentives that could tack on an additional $1 million. Incentives aside, his age and upside helped him net the largest guarantee for a starter on a one-year deal so far this offseason, outpacing the likes of Luis Severino, Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, and Wade Miley. Among two-year contract recipients, his AAV is higher than that of Erick Fedde, Nick Martinez, Tyler Mahle, and teammate-to-be Kenta Maeda. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the Padres had a clear approach to the offseason. They came in badly needing innings, but with a decorated and devastating lineup – particularly after they signed Xander Bogaerts to add to their shortstop treasure trove. They did have a few holes, though, so they shopped in volume for complementary bats and mid-rotation arms. Their two preferred pitching targets: Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha. Clearly, the Royals were taking notes.

That’s right: After signing Lugo earlier this month, the Royals turned around and inked Wacha to a two-year, $32 million pact last week. They also addressed some of their outfield deficiency by signing Hunter Renfroe to a two-year, $13 million deal of his own. Both contracts feature player opt-outs for the second year. By sheer number of major league deals signed this offseason, the Royals are now lapping the field. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers love a free-agent starting pitcher: Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney, Martín Pérez. And now Tyler Mahle. The 29-year-old righthander, previously of the Reds and Twins, has signed a two-year, $22 million contract with the Rangers. He will make $5.5 million in 2024 and $16.5 million in ’25, plus up to an additional $5 million in incentives depending on how many innings he throws in the latter season.

This news, which was exciting enough to draw approximately zero eyeballs away from the Shohei Ohtani introductory presser that started half an hour later, is a shrewd signing by the reigning world champions. I encourage you to click More and read anyway, but I’ll give away the ending, I don’t care: I really like this deal for the Rangers, as well as Mahle’s fit with the team. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, the Royals continued to bolster a pitching staff that desperately needs bolstering, signing Seth Lugo to a three-year, $45 million deal, and Chris Stratton to a one-year, $4 million pact. After signing left-hander Will Smith over the weekend and infielder Garrett Hampson in late November, the Royals have been among this offseason’s most active teams on the free-agent market. With Lugo, the club has made its fourth-largest financial commitment to a free agent in franchise history, and the largest since signing Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy to the two biggest contracts in franchise history after winning the World Series in 2015.

That Lugo will be made one of the richest Royals ever says more about the market size and the finances of the club than it does about his value, but he makes for a nice add for a team who came out of 2023 with a lot more questions (Jordan Lyles? Brady Singer? Daniel Lynch IV?) than answers (Cole Ragans!) in the starting rotation. Kansas City identified a target in a crowded starting pitching market and went after him with an aggressive offer, and they’ve landed our 22nd-ranked free agent of the winter. Stratton, meanwhile, gives them another veteran in the bullpen at a modest cost. Read the rest of this entry »

After they were left at the altar by Aaron Judge and objected to the results of Carlos Correa’s physical last offseason, the San Francisco Giants have finally made a long-term splash in free agency with the addition of 25-year-old Korean center fielder Jung Hoo Lee 이정후, who is joining the team on a six-year, $113 million deal, per Jon Heyman of The New York Post. The contract has a player opt-out after four years.

Lee has been evaluated as a Top 100-quality prospect at FanGraphs since the 2020 KBO season. He was the first player in KBO history to go straight from high school to their top level of play and won Rookie of the Year as an 18-year-old in 2017. He has a career .340/.407/.491 line in the KBO, and has made elite rates of contact (roughly 5.5% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate combined the last two seasons) while playing quality center field defense.

Lee immediately becomes the best defensive center fielder in a crowded Giants outfield group that was toward the bottom of the league in production last year. He’s a plus runner with above-average range and ball skills, and a plus arm. He did suffer a fractured ankle that effectively ended his season in July (he made one pinch-hit plate appearance toward the end of the year), and the deal is still pending a physical, but as The Athletic noted, he reportedly conducted agility drills for teams recently. Read the rest of this entry »

Many transactions were obscured by the Ohtani-mania of the past week, perhaps none more than the always unheralded glove-first catcher signings. No one represents this category better than Austin Hedges, who MLB.com’s sources say returned to Cleveland on a one-year, $4 million pact after departing for Pittsburgh last offseason and winning a World Series ring with Texas. Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Astros finalized their deal — a two-year, $12 million contract — with Victor Caratini, whose own defensive skills have taken a huge leap forward the past two seasons. Each will serve as a backup to an exciting young catcher, hopefully furthering their respective development trajectories in the process.

Let’s start with Hedges. At this point, what you see is what you get with the 31-year-old veteran. His framing was as good as ever this past season, saving his clubs an estimated 16.9 runs per our FRM metric, good for second best in the majors. It’s his fourth season saving at least 12.5 runs, though his 2023 total came in fewer innings than all but one of the rest of the top-ten framers (Jason Delay, who ranked eighth). Baseball Savant sees a similar halo sitting atop Hedges’ catcher’s mask, with sterling framing and blocking more than making up for a merely average arm. Neither Savant nor FRM has him as a below-average framer (save for a small-sample 2016) in any individual season, and Savant has never cast him as a below-average blocker. Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest domino of the offseason has fallen. Shohei Ohtani is the newest member of the Dodgers, and the discourse surrounding the unique nature of his contract could be enough to last the entire offseason. But for teams, the floodgates are now open to throw the money earmarked for Ohtani elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Cody Bellinger or Yoshinobu Yamamoto news to report; it’s only been three days, after all. But the weekend did bring a couple more reliever signings, this time at least slightly more impactful than the wave of minor league and split contracts that characterized the early offseason.

Royals sign Will Smith to one-year, $5 million deal

Smith has been a solidly good, sometimes great reliever for a decade now, but his biggest claim to fame (aside from his name) is that he’s won rings in each of the past three World Series, each with a different club. His talents took him from Atlanta to Houston to Arlington, celebrating a championship in each city before promptly leaving for a new destination. His latest stop is a return home of sorts; Smith made his big league debut with the Royals back in 2012 as a starter, before being moved to the bullpen the next year and immediately taking off.

Smith has consistently found himself near the top of the league in strikeout rate thanks to his plus slider, which he threw nearly as much as his fastball before it was cool to do so. But he isn’t the pitcher he used to be before crossing the wrong side of 30, and his days as one of baseball’s premier late-inning arms are coming to an end. Read the rest of this entry »