The Nationals have found the left-handed bat that they were looking for. Yesterday, Bob Nightengale reported that Dominic Smith has signed a one-year deal that will send him down I-95 to Washington. Robert Murray of FanSided reported that the deal was for $2 million, with performance bonuses worth up to another $2 million. According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, those bonuses relate to the number of plate appearances Smith makes. The Nationals 40-man roster is full, so they will need to make a move in order to clear space for Smith.

After snagging Jeimer Candelario on a one-year deal in November, the Nationals have now filled both corner infield spots with free agent bounce-back candidates. In Washington, Smith might finally get the one thing he’s always needed: time. After six big league seasons, the 27-year-old Smith has never had a regular position, and has topped 200 plate appearances just once.

Nightengale also reported what might be the most important part of this story: that Smith will be playing first base for the Nationals. Although the team non-tendered Luke Voit earlier in the offseason, that was not necessarily seen as a certainty. Manager Dave Martinez said during the Winter Meetings that he hoped first base would be the primary position of 2022 rookie sensation Joey Meneses. Over the course of his career, Smith has spent more innings in the outfield than he has at first. It’s at least reasonable to imagine that playing every day at his preferred position could make a real difference to a player who’s never had the luxury of stability. Read the rest of this entry »

The hot corner got a little hotter in the Valley of the Sun last Friday, as the Diamondbacks topped off a busy holiday season with the acquisition of a new third baseman. Evan Longoria is heading to Arizona on a one-year, $4 million contract with an additional $1 million in incentives. He figures to play most of his games at third base, with opportunities to DH as well.

These two sides are a good fit for several reasons, chief among them that Longoria simply wanted to play in Arizona. Heading into the offseason, he stated that he would only consider offers from the Giants, Rays or Diamondbacks (in other words, places he already had homes). It’s likely he lost some leverage by showing his hand so early — $4 million is a tad low for a player who posted 3.0 WAR over the last two seasons — but it’s hard to imagine Longoria is losing any sleep. He gets to play close to home (one of them, anyway) for a team that will give him a real opportunity to prolong his career. The D-backs aren’t true contenders, but if Longoria plays well enough, he’ll find himself in a new uniform by the trade deadline anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Jean Segura is headed south; the two-time All-Star infielder, late of the Phillies, inked a two-year deal with the Marlins in the days after Christmas. Segura, who will turn 33 two weeks before Opening Day, hit .277/.336/.387 last year and .281/.337/.418 over four seasons in Philadelphia, where he played mostly second base. His contract will pay $6.5 million in 2023 and $8.5 million in ’24, with a $10 million club option for ’25 that comes with a $2 million buyout. That comes to some $17 million in guaranteed money, on what will probably be the last big free-agent contract of Segura’s career.

This is the sixth big league stop Segura has made after being part of four multi-player trades, the first of which came just three days after he made his big league debut. For those of you who view Guy Remembering as a holy sacrament, here is a partial list of players who have either been traded for or with Segura in the past 10 seasons: Zack Greinke, Isan Díaz, Aaron Hill, Mitch Haniger, Taijuan Walker, Ketel Marte, J.P. Crawford, and Carlos Santana. Consider how numerous and how significant those players’ other trades have been (Díaz for Christian Yelich, Greinke for most of the 2014–15 Royals, just to name two), and we could get quite a bit of editorial mileage out of Jean Segura’s Web of Trades.

For better or worse, that is not this post. Read the rest of this entry »

Long, successful baseball careers usually have a predictable shape to them. A young, highly-regarded prospect gets his first cup of coffee, then becomes a full-time starter over the next few years, possibly ascending to star level. Then he slowly ages and declines, riding off into the sunset in his late 30s. Some choose not to follow that trend. Jamie Moyer pitched twice as many innings in his 40s as he did in his 20s, finally retiring at the absurd age of 49. In 1965, a 59-year-old Satchel Paige returned to the majors for one more game, and despite his signing being a largely ceremonial move, he still tossed three scoreless innings.

Then there’s Rich Hill. First drafted out of high school in a different millennium, Hill debuted with the Cubs in 2005 at age 25. Over the next decade, he bounced around the league, often struggling with elbow injuries and poor command. At the end of 2014, Hill was a 34-year-old who had played for six different teams, only completing 100 frames in a season once. After opting out of a minor league deal with the Nationals in the middle of the 2015 season, Hill ran out of offers with affiliated clubs. He signed with the independent Long Island Ducks and laid waste to his Atlantic League competition… for two starts. Hill was then tendered a big league contract with his hometown team, the Red Sox, had four excellent starts to close out the season, and has held down a big league roster spot ever since. Hill will begin the upcoming spring training by celebrating his 43rd birthday, making him the oldest major league player since the then 45-year-old Ichiro Suzuki last suited up in 2019. The Pirates will be his 12th team, making him one of just six players to appear for a dozen or more clubs.

When a slightly younger Hill signed with the Red Sox (for the seventh time in his career), Ben Clemens used the prophetic projection system RiPS (Rich is Pitching Superlatively) to forecast a 4.15 ERA and 1.7 WAR for his 2022 season. Hill’s actual numbers? A 4.27 ERA (but a 4.13 SIERA), and 1.8 WAR. Not bad, RiPS. But it gets even better. Ben wrote, “If he pitches to this line, he’ll earn $8 million next year and be well worth it for Boston.” In 2023, the Pirates will be paying Hill (checks notes) $8 million on the dot. Can we get some RiPS projected standings for the season? They might even turn out to be more accurate than the baseball Reddit’s marble race simulations. Read the rest of this entry »

In the days before Christmas, the Chicago Cubs filled out their starting rotation by bringing back a familiar face: Drew Smyly. This past season was one to forget for the Cubs, but Smyly was one of the bright spots. After confusing hitters with a breaking ball-heavy attack, Smyly earned an equally confusing contract structure: $8 million in 2023, $8.5 million in ’24, with an opt-out after this year and a $10 million mutual option for 2025, which comes with a $2.5 million buyout. That brings the total guarantee to two years, $19 million.

Once one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, Smyly spent most of his late 20s and early 30s bouncing aimlessly from team to team. But in 2022, he found stability in Chicago, and rewarded the Cubs with his best full season since 2014: 22 starts, 106 1/3 innings, and a 3.47 ERA. While his ERA would seem to flatter his underlying numbers, Smyly still posted a respectable FIP (4.23) and xERA (4.17). Compared to comparable free agents (Mike Clevinger, Noah Syndergaard, Matthew Boyd), Smyly’s getting an extra guaranteed year, but at a slightly lower AAV. If you want a starting pitcher who’s likely to throw 100 innings or more, with a reasonable chance of better-than-replacement-level rate stats, two years and $19 million is about what you should expect to pay.

That’s not too bad for a back-end starter, which is all Chicago will need him to be. The Cubs have already added Jameson Taillon to a rotation that includes Marcus Stroman and Justin Steele, who was quietly impressive in his first full season as a big league starter. Kyle Hendricks is also on course to return from a shoulder injury, which means Smyly is basically just there to make up the numbers. Let’s put it this way: If Smyly ends up having to be anything more than Chicago’s fourth-best starter, this is going to be a lost season anyway, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the 33-year-old lefty. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was assigned to write about Nathan Eovaldi’s eventual free agent signing — this prior to the Winter Meetings — my best guess was that he’d be returning to his baseball home for each of the last four-plus seasons. Boston had been a good fit for the 32-year-old right-hander, and the Chaim Bloom-run club needed him more than he needed them. Given the uncertainty of their rotation — not to mention increasing pressure to spend like a contender, not a small-market pretender — the Red Sox bringing back Eovaldi would have made all the sense in the world.

That didn’t happen. Last week, the Texas Rangers, a team that actually has been spending like a contender, inked the no. 15 player on our Top 50 free agent rankings to a two-year, $34 million contract. It was their third ambitious signing of the winter. Earlier in the offseason, Chris Young and Co. jumpstarted the starting rotation by signing Jacob deGrom to a five-year, $185 million deal and Andrew Heaney to a two-year, $25 million pact. The cumulative $244 million expenditure was based on need. Lacking front-of-the-rotation quality, Texas finished fourth from the bottom among American League clubs in starting pitcher WAR last year.

The trio of newcomers join a rotation that includes Jon Gray and Martín Pérez (back with the club after accepting Texas’ qualifying offer), with Dane Dunning, Jake Odorizzi (acquired in trade from the Braves in November), and Glenn Otto serving as solid backup options. Thanks to the additions, this is one of the deepest — and potentially among the most productive — starting staffs in either league. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, they had the money. After the sensational done-not-done saga that ended with Carlos Correa signing with the New York Mets, the Giants spent the rest of the week signing two of the top remaining free agents on the market. They added Michael Conforto on a two-year, $36 million deal that includes an opt out after the first year, then signed Taylor Rogers to a three-year, $33 million deal after that.

I ranked Rogers 19th among this winter’s crop of free agents, so let’s start with him. To me, he’s one of the best handful of relievers in the game. I think this was a great pickup for the Giants — and would have been a great pickup for any team in baseball given the contract he got. Rogers spent the first six years of his major league career with the Twins and was reliably excellent, accruing a cumulative 3.15 ERA and 3.01 FIP. That earned him a spot on AJ Preller’s must-trade-for list; the Padres acquired him last offseason to head a closer-by-committee situation in San Diego.

He split time between the Padres and Twins last year – he was traded in the Josh Hader deal at the deadline – and had his worst season as a pro. He posted a 4.76 ERA, easily his worst mark and in a year where league-wide offense declined markedly. It looks to me mostly like bad luck, though; he still posted a 3.31 FIP, but largely got BABIP’ed (.327) and sequenced (63.5 LOB%, compared to a league average mark of 72.6%) to death. He struck out more than 30% of opposing batters while walking just under 7%, and gave up home runs at roughly the same clip he always had. The biggest cause for concern, in my eyes, is that he gave up a raft of hard contact in Milwaukee, but given that he only threw 23 innings there, I’d put it in the too-small-of-a-sample-to-matter bucket. Read the rest of this entry »

This holiday season, everybody wants a new catcher. Between free agency and the trade market, over a third of the league’s teams have added to their catcher mix this offseason, with most of those moves coming in the last few weeks. Catchers are finding new homes so fast that yesterday, my colleague Leo Morgenstern covered the Mets signing Omar Narváez and dealing James McCann to Baltimore, and Austin Hedges inking a one-year deal with Pittsburgh – and then two more backstops signed that afternoon. In Cincinnati, the Reds announced an agreement with Curt Casali (as well as first baseman/outfielder Wil Myers), designating Mike Moustakas for assignment in the process. And elsewhere in the NL Central, former Red and Tiger Tucker Barnhart got set to continue his tour of the teams closest to his home city of Indianapolis, joining the Chicago Cubs on a two-year, $6.5 million contract with a player option after the coming season. The two-time Gold Glover will pair with Yan Gomes to form a catching platoon after the Cubs lost three-time All-Star Willson Contreras to the rival Cardinals in free agency.

Barnhart did well to secure himself a two-year guarantee with the player option – of the eight free agent catchers who have signed major league deals this offseason, Contreras (five years), Christian Vázquez (three), Narváez (two), and Barnhart have earned multi-year commitments. Those other three are much more significant adds, as is reflected in their significantly higher total contract values. But Barnhart may have had extra motivation to lock down a second year – with a couple of months over eight years of service, he heads into this contract within reach of the 10-year service threshold that the Players Association calls the “holy grail for players.” Of course, while the money is guaranteed, the service time isn’t, but if Barnhart can remain healthy and productive enough to reach 10 years of service, his MLB pension will fully vest and he will notch a coveted milestone. The option adds another layer of player friendliness – if Barnhart bounces back from a down year in 2022, he’ll have a shot to test free agency again next winter, when, to be fair, the catcher market may once again be busy. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, the Reds broke the silence hanging over their quiet offseason with three notable moves. The club inked both former Rookie of the Year Wil Myers and veteran backstop Curt Casali to one-year deals with mutual options. The former is guaranteed $7.5 million; the latter will take home at least $3.25 million. To make room for Casali, the Reds DFA’d Mike Moustakas, who was heading into the last season of a four-year, $64 million contract he signed prior to 2020.

After blowing it up when their previous rebuild resulted in merely a Wild Card contender, Cincinnati’s current reconstruction period is entering just its second season; at best, the team has an outside shot at the playoffs. That said, these moves don’t strike me as pure roster-filler or eye-toward-July transactions. Instead, they make real sense as supplements to a young team, potentially aiding in the development of up-and-comers in concrete ways. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of transactions this past week. There’s been a lot of drama, too, involving a top free agent, a medical issue, and boatloads of cash. The long weekend is just around the corner. It’s been an exhausting year, and we’d all like to get on with our lives. Between relaxing on the sofa and reading up on Drew Rucinski, deciding on which is the more appealing option doesn’t seem like a difficult task.

Which, fine, I understand. My livelihood isn’t affected by page views, so we’re cool here. But Rucinski isn’t just some random starter the Athletics chose as their annual innings-eater. When he last appeared in a major league game, he was a lackluster middle reliever for the Marlins. Since then, he’s undergone quite the transformation. Four years later, there’s an argument to be made that he was the best starting pitcher during his time in Korea. That’s a testament to how much he’s improved, in terms of stuff, command, and durability. Read the rest of this entry »