In the early hours of Thursday morning, the Reds made their second signing in as many days, adding right-handed pitcher Nick Martinez on a two-year, $26 million deal. Evidently, Cincinnati decided to get in on the regional pitching party; of the nine free-agent pitchers to sign MLB deals with new teams so far, six have joined the AL or NL Central. Not to mention that two of the four position players switching teams also came to the Central, and word on the street is that the Brewers are signing top prospect Jackson Chourio to an $80 million extension. The Central division teams, often the most overlooked and underfunded, have been surprisingly active so far this winter.

Martinez, who turned 33 this past August, is coming off the strongest season of his truncated career. Never a top prospect, he struggled over parts of four seasons with the Rangers from 2014 to ’17, posting a 4.77 ERA and 0.5 WAR in 415.1 innings. He was non-tendered following the 2017 season, after which he spent four years in Japan, pitching for the Nippon Ham Fighters and the Softbank Hawks of NPB. His 2021 season for the Hawks was particularly impressive; he averaged more than 6.2 innings per game and finished second in the Pacific League in ERA (min. 50 IP), trailing only Yoshinobu Yamamoto. His performance caught the attention of several MLB clubs, and when the lockout ended, he signed a four-year, $25.5 million deal with the Padres that included opt-outs after every single season.

Martinez performed well enough in 2022 to escape his deal at the first chance he got, pitching to a 3.47 ERA and 4.43 FIP in 47 games. His underlying numbers weren’t as impressive as his ERA, and while he pitched in nearly every role — starter, long-man, set-up man, closer — a lot of his success came in lower-leverage relief opportunities. Still, he knew he could do better than the three years and $18 million remaining on his contract, and indeed, only a few days after he opted out, he and the Padres agreed on a richer contract, albeit one still replete with options, team and player alike.

Martinez looked even better in 2023, but his performance wasn’t quite enough to convince the newly cost-conscious Padres to pick up their team option for $32 million over the next two years. At the same time, the righty decided he could do better than his player option for two years and $16 million. His new deal with the Reds splits the difference at $26 million over two years. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Mets began their offseason hunt for starting pitching by snatching up Luis Severino on a one-year, $13 million contract. After a rollercoaster season that led to -0.6 WAR, Severino had no choice but to take a prove-it deal and hope his performance in 2024 will be compelling enough to secure a multi-year contract next winter. For the Mets, this is likely the first in a series of moves to address a starting rotation that is significantly depleted after the trades of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander this summer.

The Mets have the coin to play at the top of the pitching market, and will likely do so, but this deal provides them with a short-term upside play to bolster a thin group of starters. With a rotation that is currently filled out by José Quintana, Tylor Megill, and Joey Lucchesi behind their ace, Kodai Senga, a low-cost, high-reward player was a practical move. If he performs and stays health, Severino becomes a trade option for them depending on the team’s performance. If they hold onto him, they can tag him with a qualifying offer or bring him back on a longer term deal. Either way, this move will not hurt them. Most importantly, it will not impact their ability to sign players such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who the Mets reportedly have interest in.

I’m sure Severino and the Mets hope that he can forget most of the summer of 2023 and instead build on the success he had in his final five starts. Among the 172 pitchers who threw at least 80 innings in 2023, Severino ranked 169th in WAR. His surface stats didn’t look any better. He set career worst marks in strikeout rate, HR/9, ERA, FIP, batting average allowed, hard-hit rate… the list goes on. As I said in his Top 50 Free Agent blurb, this wasn’t due to a concerning drop-off in rotational power. His four-seam fastball velocity (96.4 mph) was in the 88th percentile, and it even peaked as high as 97.7 mph in his second-to-last start of the season. This is a player who still has upper-90s gas in his back pocket. 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 »

On the heels of their worst record since 1990, the Cardinals have made early splashes in the free-agent market, adding Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn in moves intended to stabilize their underperforming rotation in unspectacular fashion. On Monday, they made a much more impactful addition, signing Sonny Gray via a three-year, $75 million deal.

Gray, who turned 34 on November 7 and who spent the past two years with the Twins, is fresh off a one of the best seasons of his 11-year career. You wouldn’t know it by his pedestrian 8–8 won-loss record — he didn’t get good support from either his offense or his bullpen — but he made his third All-Star team and finished second to Gerrit Cole in the AL Cy Young voting. In 32 starts and 184 innings (his highest total since 2015), he posted an AL-best 2.83 FIP, placed second to Cole with a 2.79 ERA, and tied with Kevin Gausman for the AL lead with a career-high 5.3 WAR (0.1 more than Cole). All told, it was an ideal campaign for a player hitting free agency.

It’s not hard to spot two big reasons for Gray’s stellar campaign: better health and a reconfigured arsenal. He made just 50 starts in 2021–22 with the Reds and Twins, taking three trips to the injured list in each of those seasons; in ’21, he missed time due to strains of his mid-back, groin, and rib cage, and in ’22, it was his right pectoral and right hamstring (twice). He’s made at least 30 starts in a season just once in the past eight years (31 in 2019), averaging 26 starts and 147 innings in the seven full-length seasons in that span. While it’s possible the Twins just caught lightning in a bottle, he did overhaul his offseason program, as he explained last February following a season in which he felt unprepared after the end of the lockout:

“Started earlier. Changed up a little bit, for sure. Worked out. Physically tried to get stronger. Throwing was earlier. Eating habits. Vitamin habits,” Gray said. “Doing things that I’ve seen people do and I’ve learned from other people and other guys to get farther along in their career. Just changing habits and consciously being aware (that) it’ll pay off in the long run.”

As the Reds’ union representative during the negotiations for the Collective Bargaining Agreement that ended the lockout (shortly after which he was traded), Gray didn’t throw a single bullpen session during the 2021–22 offseason and then battled multiple injuries. By his estimate, he came to camp this past spring having thrown “about 15” bullpen sessions, and the effort clearly paid off. 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 Cardinals’ 2023 season was disappointing, but it was anything but boring. The electric Jordan Walker cracked the Opening Day roster, tying a record for most games (12) with a hit to start a career for a player age 20 or younger. Then he went on to post what I can only assume (given the dearth of fielding statistics before 2000) is one of the worst defensive seasons by a rookie ever, costing St. Louis 16 runs per Defensive Runs Saved and 12 runs per Ultimate Zone Rating and Runs Above Average. Additionally, the Cardinals brought over veteran signal-caller Willson Contreras from the division-rival Cubs for $87.5 million, only to relegate him to DH and corner outfielder in May, then to just DH, before moving him back to catcher… all within the span of a week. And don’t even ask me, or Jack Flaherty for that matter, about the right-hander’s fastball velocity.

But Kyle Gibson is boring. Last year, the Cardinals were in the bottom 10 in baseball in ERA, FIP, xFIP, and SIERA, and at the General Managers Meetings a couple of weeks ago, Cardinals’ President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak made clear the team’s desire to upgrade their pitching staff this offseason. But the Cards whiffed on Aaron Nola despite their early interest in the ace, and instead went with… Lance Lynn and Gibson? Read the rest of this entry »

Good relief is hard to find. Well, that’s not strictly true. Pretty much every team in baseball has multiple good relievers, random guys who throw 100 mph and snap off ludicrous sliders. But enough good relief pitching is hard to find, because it takes a village’s worth of relievers to get through a season, and the playoffs are even more challenging. As teams go to their bullpen earlier and earlier, they put more pressure on every arm in it, and the penalties to overworking your best few arms are harsh.

The Braves seem to understand that, because they’ve been aggressive about adding to their options this offseason. They already had Raisel Iglesias and A.J. Minter as reliable options. They gave Joe Jimenez and Pierce Johnson contract extensions that valued them like solid mid-to-late-inning options. They traded a sampler platter of former prospects for Aaron Bummer. Now they’ve added yet again by signing Reynaldo López to a three-year deal. 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 »

Admit it: you had a feeling it might go this way. Aaron Nola is headed back to Philadelphia. After a short trip to free agency, he re-signed with the Phillies for seven years and $172 million, as USA TODAY’s Bob Nightengale first reported. He’s the first domino to fall this offseason, but this was hardly a shocking outcome. The move makes a lot of sense for both team and player, which helps explain why it came to pass so swiftly.

Let’s start with the team side of things. The Phillies are bona fide World Series contenders, and they’re built to win right this minute. Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, and J.T. Realmuto are all at or near the peak of their careers. Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos are in the same boat. The Philly offense is so good right now that it would be borderline criminal not to contend, and that’s clearly been the team’s plan. They made the World Series in 2022, then went out and added Turner in the offseason to bolster their squad.

If they didn’t act this offseason, they’d be moving in the wrong direction. The Phillies’ recent regular seasons may have been built around an excellent offense, but their playoff plan has been all about pitching. Nola and Zack Wheeler have each been October workhorses; taking advantage of off days, they’ve started 19 of the team’s 30 playoff games in the last two years. Giving the ball to elite starters that frequently takes pressure off both the rest of the rotation and the bullpen, the team’s two great weaknesses. Read the rest of this entry »