Gerrit Cole just signed a nine-year, $324 million contract with the Yankees that ranks as one of the biggest in the game’s history. To compare contracts, however, some context is required. In the strictest sense, Cole’s deal is the second-largest in free agent history, behind only Bryce Harper’s $330 million last season. It’s the fourth-largest contract in baseball history, with Mike Trout’s contract extension earlier this year and Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million deal back in 2015 joining Harper’s ahead of it. In dollars, it is ahead of Alex Rodriguez’s $252 million contract in 2001, as well as his $275 million deal from 2008. But the game’s finances have changed a lot since 2001, when the average major league payroll was just $67 million. Payrolls have increased by two-and-a-half times that amount, with league revenues growing even more than payrolls. So how does Cole’s deal really stack up? We can use payroll information to put Cole’s contract alongside Alex Rodriguez’s, and more evenly compare them.

About a year ago, I attempted to put Alex Rodriguez’s contracts in present-day payroll terms by adjusting them to 2019 dollars based on the average team’s payroll each season. Since that post, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Nolan Arenado have all signed large deals; I added them to the list in this post. After Mike Trout signed his extension, I updated the post again. In light of Gerrit Cole’s signing, another update is necessary. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the world champion Washington Nationals. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Younger Potential Helium Types
Pablo Aldonis, LHP
Viandel Pena, 2B
Junior Martina, SS
Yoander Rivero, SS
Daniel Marte, CF
Todd Peterson, RHP
Justin Connell, RF
Leandro Miliani, RF
Mirton Blanco, RHP

We’ll try to plow through these pretty quickly as this system has more of this tier of prospect than most clubs. Aldonis turns 18 in March. He’s a medium-framed, 6-foot-1, 55 athlete with a smooth delivery and advanced feel for three pitches. He’s a long-term physical projection sleeper. Pena is a stocky switch-hitter with bat-to-ball skills and he hit .360 in the GCL last year. He’s a 50 runner and infield defender who’s about 5-foot-7. It’s softer contact right now, but the barrel feel is there. Martina is a native of Curaçao and a 19th rounder out of Western Oklahoma St who crushed the GCL after the draft. He takes big hacks and could be a power-over-hit middle infield utility type. Rivero is an 18-year-old, glove-first shortstop. Peterson pitched in relief at LSU and would sit 92-94 with a 55 cutter/slider and curveball at times. Washington tried him in a rotation last summer. Connell and Miliani are bat-to-ball 1B/LF sorts; they have promising contact skills but probably need to end up with premium hit tools to profile. Blanco is a 17-year-old who has been up to 98 but he’s very wild.

Major League Ready Depth
Kyle Finnegan, RHP
Ben Braymer, LHP
Yadiel Hernandez, 1B/OF
Jordan Mills, LHP
Steven Fuentes, RHP
Andrew Lee, RHP
Nick Raquet, LHP
Tres Barrera, C
Nick Banks, OF
Jacob Condra-Bogan, RHP

Finnegan was a high-priority minor league free agent whose stuff was up late in the year, and has been strong in the Dominican Winter League. He’s in the mid-90s with an average slider and split. Braymer is also on the 40-man and looks like a lefty pitchability swingman with a 55 breaking ball. Hernandez is a weird one. He signed out of Mexico at age 29 and is now 32, but he rakes (it’s hit over power due to lack of launch, but the contact is very hard) and because of when he signed, he acts as upper-level depth without occupying a 40-man spot this year, so he has sneaky trade value. Jordan Mills sits upper-80s with sink, his changeup is plus, and his slider above average. Fuentes has reached Double-A and has a tailing low-90s fastball and above average changeup. Lee and Raquet are overhand four-seam, curveball relief types. Barrera is on the 40-man right now and is a well-rounded third catcher. Banks has several above average tools (speed underway, raw power, arm strength) but the bat is below. Condra-Bogan is significant because he’s the only player on this whole list who arrived by trade (he came back from Kansas City in the Brian Goodwin deal), as everyone else was drafted or signed by Washington. JCB touches 100; he’s still working on a breaking ball.

A Complete Mess of Other Guys
Jake Irvin, RHP
Fausto Segura, RHP
Jakson Reetz, C
Orlando Ribalta, RHP
J.T. Arruda, SS
Jhonatan German, LHP
Gage Canning, CF
Alex Troop, LHP
Felix Taveras, RHP

Several of these guys signed late out of Latin America, around age 21. Segura (23, NYPL) has a chuck-it-past-you fastball up to 98, German (24, Double-A) has a mid-90s sinker, and Taveras (24, GCL) has been hurt for most of the past three years but was up to 97 with 2500 rpm on the heater. Irvin was up last spring, down last summer, then up again during instructs, where he pitched in relief. He’s 6-foot-6 and sits 93-96 when things are right with an average curveball. Reetz is another athletic, late-bloomer type who makes consistent hard contact; he’s probably a depth catcher. Ribalta is a big-bodied fastball/curveball relief prospect who was up to at least 96 at Miami Dade College the summer after the draft. Arruda was a sophomore-eligible 11th rounder. He’s a lefty-bat infielder with good feel to hit. Troop is a lanky, over-the-top lefty whose fastball has carry.

System Overview

This system is not very good for very good reasons. Prospects have either been traded away (Elvis Alvarado, Jesus Luzardo, Yohanse Morel, Kelvin Gutierrez, Daniel Johnson, Taylor Hearn, Sheldon Neuse, Dane Dunning) or they’ve graduated (Juan Soto, Victor Robles), and several draft picks have been lost as compensation for free agents because the Nats have been busy winning. And so the list above includes just one player who wasn’t originally signed or drafted by Washington; they haven’t been in prospect acquisition mode for a long time.

Once Carter Kieboom graduates off the list, would you rather have this entire system or the Vanderbilt Commodores? It’s probably pretty close.

Over the last week or so, several players who had been playing pro ball in Korea or Japan (some originally from those countries, others former big leaguers kicking back to the States) have signed contracts with major league clubs. I had notes on several of them in our Top 50 Free Agents post, but wanted to talk about them at greater length now that we know their employers and the details of their contracts.

LF Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, Tampa Bay Rays
(Two years, $12 million, $2.4 million posting fee)

Tsutsugo’s deal came in a bit beneath what Kiley predicted on the Top 50 Free Agents post (Kiley had two years at $8 million per), where we ranked him No. 42 in the class, but multiple public reports have confirmed that Tsutsugo had more lucrative offers from other teams and chose to sign with Tampa Bay because of comfort with the org.

In addition to regular DH duty, Tsutsugo seems like an obvious platoon partner for Hunter Renfroe in one of the two corner outfield spots. The Rays have indicated he’ll see some time at third and first base, positions he hasn’t played regularly since 2014, and the notes I have from pro/international scouts and executives indicate he’s not athletically capable of playing there, though there’s no harm in seeing whether or not that’s true during spring training. Yandy Díaz isn’t good at the hot corner (he used to be, but he’s just too big and stiff now), but still played third situationally, so perhaps Tsutsugo can be hidden there, even if it’s for a few innings at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time Eric Sogard was on the Brewers, he was bad. Not just run of the mill bad, but really bad! He hit .134/.241/.165 in 113 plate appearances for them in 2018, good for a 14 wRC+. That was all the team needed to see to send him to Triple-A Colorado Springs — where he hit .225/.297/.270 at altitude. So it was hardly surprising when they parted ways, with Milwaukee opening up playing time for their packed infield and Sogard seeking an easier path to the majors in Toronto.

What a difference a year makes. Sogard was excellent in 2019 over 442 plate appearances with the Blue Jays and the Rays. He hit 13 home runs, more than he’d previously hit in his 1800 career plate appearances. He slashed his strikeout rate, put a few more balls in the air, and was handsomely rewarded; not only were the homers a career high, but he hit 23 doubles and two triples as well, leading to easily his best single-season production. A .316 BABIP didn’t hurt, either — in all, he produced a 115 wRC+ on the year.

There were reasons to be skeptical, of course. Those home runs were largely of the “hey, that got out?” variety. The average home run in baseball last year was hit at 103.5 mph. Sogard’s baker’s dozen dingers averaged 96.7 mph. If you’re more of an xwOBA person, combining angle and speed, his home runs had an expected wOBA of .701. The league average was a robust 1.359, and among players with five or more home runs, only Sandy León had worse expected results on homers.

In fact, if you want to be skeptical, you could say that Sogard didn’t even have a particularly impressive 2019 despite the surface numbers. His overall wOBA of .346 was excellent, but it vastly outstripped his xwOBA of .307, driven largely by his home run luck. None of this is surprising or hard to tease out from watching him play; he simply doesn’t hit the ball that hard, and even though lots of players ran into some extra home runs in 2019, Sogard really ran into some extra home runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, look at the Phillies! They’ve been busy! Again! Following their earlier signing of Zack Wheeler, they’ve signed Didi Gregorious to a one-year, $14 million deal, reuniting him with Joe Girardi and planting him at shortstop, a position where he’s generated plenty of value throughout his career. This acquisition bumps current Phillies shortstop Jean Segura over to second base where he, too, has been historically successful; he was worth 5.0 wins for the Diamondbacks there in 2016. Scott Kingery will be hovering somewhere around the Phillies infield too, and Rhys Hoskins will be at first. Not the worst group in baseball! But a certainly a different arrangement than the Phillies had last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.

The Phillies have been rebuilding, depending on who you talk to, since anytime between 2012 and 2015. The real question now is, when did it end? Did it end? Is a rebuild over when all the pieces are there, but the wins aren’t? Or do they have to win the World Series to complete it? Was it over before, and these are all adjustments? Wait, who is playing third base? And what is Scott Kingery’s job?

This sort of ambiguity has been a component of the Phillies’ infield for years. Two positions have cycled through three different starters in the last three seasons (first base, shortstop); the other two have been occupied by the same starters for the last three years (second base, third base). But both of those players were just non-tendered: the Phillies got some production out of César Hernández at second and at the top of their lineup during some lean years, and Maikel Franco melted from a top slugging prospect into a pool of negative WAR over the course of four full(-ish) seasons at third. Their departures don’t make the Phillies worse, but they do create another situation that makes you continue to wonder, “… what is going on?” Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Archer was bad in 2019. In fact, he was as bad as he’d ever been, posting his lowest WAR total and the worst FIP, ERA, walk rate, and HR/FB rate of his career. The performance has made the trade that sent him to the Pittsburgh Pirates from the Tampa Bay Rays look like a complete abomination.

Yet he shouldn’t have to walk the plank just yet.

For Archer, who turned 31 at the end of September, it’s something of a long shot that he’ll be able to return to being the pitcher he was during his heyday with the Rays. As you can see, what was once a good arsenal has devolved into a group of mediocre, if not weak, pitches:

The most significant dip for Archer came in the effectiveness of his two-seam fastball. The pitch worked well for him earlier in the decade, and after removing it from his arsenal in 2015, he brought it back three seasons later. Archer’s “new” two-seamer, which hasn’t been good (especially in 2019), was used sparingly against both left- and right-handed hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

“I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” – Billy Joel

The Cardinals are never really thought of as a small-market franchise, but in terms of the size of its media market — which is where the money comes from — St. Louis ranks between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Yet historically, the Cardinals have been able to punch above their weight, and built a fanbase much larger than you would expect from the size of the city.

One of the ways they’ve been able to do this is by building a consistent culture of winning. They don’t always make the playoffs, but the Cardinals are rarely a lousy team. There’s almost certainly no one alive who remembers a 100-loss Cardinals squad, unless I’m drastically underestimating the probability that one of the few remaining 116-year-olds was a Cardinals fan in 1908. The last time the team even lost 90 games was nearly 30 years ago, in 1990. And while I roll my eyes at the Best Fans in Baseball business, during the team’s three-year stretch without a playoff appearance from 2016-18, their longest drought in 20 years, attendance at Busch Stadium was practically unchanged.

Since John Mozeliak, now the team’s president of baseball operations, was named general manager after the 2007 season, the Cards have reached the Platonic ideal of Cardinalia. Only once has a Moz-led team finished below 85 wins, but even in the 100-win season, the team didn’t feel like an unstoppable juggernaut; no Cardinal that year garnered serious MVP or Cy Young support. Instead, the team projected steady competence.

The Setup

The St. Louis Cardinals have been baseball’s most consistently above-average team in recent years. But how does one measure that above-averageness? I like to set 90 wins as kind of the benchmark for a very-good-yet-not-great team; like most humans, I’ve been programmed to like pretty numbers that end in zero. And since Mozeliak took over from Walt Jocketty, the Cardinals have been the closest to the 90-win mark year in and year out:

In a dozen years, the Cardinals missed 90 wins by a total of 42 wins. The 2019 Detroit Tigers missed 90 wins by a larger margin in a single year! And it’s not just chance either; in the 12 years of ZiPS projected standings, the Cardinals had the smallest difference between their 10th and 90th percentile win projections in six of 12 seasons. At the top end, only a single Cardinal since 2014 has been in the top five in the NL in WAR for a pitcher or a hitter: low-key NPB pickup Miles Mikolas in 2018. And by the same token, the Cardinals lows are quite high; only two teams in baseball received fewer replacement-level plate appearances or batters faced than the Cardinals:

After the 2018 season, their third straight year without postseason baseball, St. Louis had a new problem: how do you shake up this situation? And, from the point of view of the people paying the salaries, how do you make that happen without spending $300 million on a Bryce Harper or a Manny Machado? As with Matt Holliday and Jason Heyward, the Cardinals decided to aggressively acquire a star before signing him to a long-term extension. This worked well with Holliday, as the team was able to re-sign him after he hit free agency; they had less success keeping Heyward, a failure that, in hindsight, I’m sure they’re positively giddy about.

This time, the big move was Paul Goldschmidt, who had a year left on his contract. The price was steep, with Luke Weaver and Carson Kelly looking like real major leaguers, but it was a refreshing gamble from a team that tends to go the safe ‘n’ sensible route. Let’s name all the first basemen who were worth more wins from 2013-18:

…

[crickets]

So, the Cardinals expected they had secured their plug-and-play offensive powerhouse. The winter was quiet otherwise, with the team’s other big pickup being Andrew Miller, formerly of the Cleveland Indians. There was a real need for added bullpen depth, as the team’s relief corps struggled in 2018, ranking 26th in bullpen WAR. Miller was just as eager to wipe out memories from the previous season, one in which his ERA rose to 4.24 and his FIP to 3.51, both worsts since the Red Sox converted him to relief in 2012. The hope was that Miller, along with continued improvement from flamethrowing standout Jordan Hicks, would give the Cards a potent one-two punch in the bullpen.

The Projection

ZiPS projected St. Louis to finish a close second behind the Chicago Cubs, with a mean projection of 86 wins. While a few years ago it looked like the NL Central would struggle against the Cubs juggernaut, that team’s frugal payroll strategy and weakening farm system left them more of a jugger-not. (Yes, I’m ashamed of that sentence.)

There was no concern about their first-base acquisition, with ZiPS projecting a .270/.379/.479, 4.4 WAR line for Goldschmidt, putting him behind only Freddie Freeman and Cody Bellinger. ZiPS thought the Cardinals had a two-win player at every single position in the lineup, plus Jose Martinez and Tyler O’Neill.

But ZiPS had concerns about the rotation. The computer projected Carlos Martinez to be the team’s best starting pitcher, but due to injury, he was ticketed for the bullpen. The system was skeptical of both Michael Wacha, who was coming off 2018 injuries, and Dakota Hudson and his big fastball but erratic command.

The Results

The season got off to an auspicious start before it even actually began when St. Louis was able to sign Goldschmidt to an extension a week before Opening Day. And while the Cardinals eventually won 91 games — an unsurprising result for the eternal 90-win team — the specific events that got them the NL Central title were far from anticipated.

Imagine you woke up from a coma in November, were unable to access the internet, and asked me to tell you how the Cardinals did in 2019. Now, let’s say I was a bit of a jerk, and rather than just telling you the team’s record, I detailed the list below and made you guess how many wins the team ended up with:

• Paul Goldschmidt had his worst year since 2012, hitting .260/.346/.476, and failing to hit the three-win threshold despite playing in 161 games.
• Matt Carpenter struggled all year, hit .226, and ended up with 1.2 WAR.
• Michael Wacha had shoulder problems and an ERA near five.
• Carlos Martinez never got back into the rotation.
• Harrison Bader regressed significantly.
• Jordan Hicks needed Tommy John surgery.
• Miles Mikolas went from leading the NL in wins to leading the NL in losses.
• Jedd Gyorko barely avoided being released.
• Yadier Molina had his worst OPS since 2007. [2010 -DS]
• Andrew Miller pitched even worse than he did in 2018.

At this point, the doctors would kindly-yet-firmly ask me to stop, as you cried out, “Sweet mother of mercy, are we the Orioles now?”

But nope! 91 wins.

St. Louis needed a lot of quality production to win the division, even as one of the baseball’s weaker ones, but it was largely from unexpected places.

Jack Flaherty becoming a serious Cy Young candidate was a monster addition to the roster. I still like Luke Weaver, but appears the Cardinals picked the right young starting pitcher to send to Arizona.

And despite the setbacks to Miller and Hicks, the bullpen was a real plus for the team in 2019. Martinez may not have made it back to the rotation, but he stayed healthy after his May return and earned his 2.86 FIP. Giovanny Gallegos — one of ZiPS’s favorite little-known pitchers entering the season, who was projected for a 137 ERA+ (24th among all pitchers in baseball) — actually beat that lofty forecast. Fringe prospect Tommy Edman came up midseason, hit .304/.350/.500 while playing multiple positions, and finished the year worth more wins than Goldschmidt, Marcell Ozuna, or Carpenter.

The Cardinals rode into the playoffs and advanced to the NLCS after beating the Braves in an exciting five-game series, capped off with a 13-1 shellacking in Game 5 so forceful it might have knocked Atlanta out of the 2020 playoffs as well. But what the team did to poor Mike Foltynewicz didn’t continue against the Nationals, as the offense was shut down by Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer, and Anibal Sanchez.

What Comes Next?

It has been an exciting winter around baseball so far, but a very quiet one in St. Louis. The team extended a qualifying offer to Ozuna, but they don’t appear to be among the leaders bidders for his services. The team’s luxury tax number is around $179 million, and they have shown little inclination to push towards the $208 million limit. It’s likely the Cardinals will make a few lower-key free agent signings in the next two months — their signing on Tuesday of Korean left-handed pitcher Kwang-Hyun Kim is a start — but with the club having few gaping holes, it’s unlikely there will be any serious upgrades among those.

While that sounds like horrible news for the Cardinals and their fans, it’s unlikely they’ll will be punished for not being more financially aggressive. The Brewers, two games behind the Cardinals in 2019, have shown no movement towards a big-spending winter. And if the Cards and Brewers are being thrifty, the Cubs are being an unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge, focusing less on how to get more outfield offense and more on finding trade partners for Kris Bryant. Pittsburgh is rebuilding, and while the Reds will likely improve to relevance — and have the best pitching staff in the division — the lineup is still a work in progress. Even treading water, St. Louis still looks to have one of the fastest boats in the division.

2020 ZiPS Projection – Jack Flaherty

How about some good ol’ fashioned fan service? If the season had lasted two months longer, it might have been Flaherty who ended up with the Cy Young award. He was a monster after the All-Star break, putting up a comically low 0.91 ERA and 2.22 FIP in the second half. Much of St. Louis’s late-season surge was due to the fact that Flaherty didn’t have a single bad game after early July. His improvement was largely the result of him developing a better feel for the rest of his repertoire. As he threw fewer fastballs, he saw both an uptick in velocity and an greater ability to get hitters to offer at pitches out of the zone. Being less fastball-reliant made Flaherty the best version of himself.



My colleague Craig Edwards went into greater detail the change in Flaherty’s approach that helped him get into baseball’s elite tier.

ZiPS Projection – Jack Flaherty

Year	W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WAR
2020	13	7	3.13	33	33	189.7	146	23	54	236	131	4.4
2021	13	7	3.04	34	34	192.7	146	23	54	240	136	4.7
2022	13	7	3.02	33	33	187.7	141	22	52	236	136	4.6
2023	12	6	3.03	30	30	172.3	129	21	47	217	136	4.2
2024	11	6	2.95	29	29	167.7	124	20	46	215	139	4.2
2025	11	6	2.96	28	28	161.3	118	20	44	210	139	4.1

As far as regressions go, that’s a fairly mild one. 4.4 WAR is within a win of both Jacob deGrom and Scherzer, both pitchers who are rumored to be at least adequate at this baseball stuff. Jack Flaherty is a legitimate ace, even when his career .254 BABIP inevitably rises.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Like Mark McGwire, his rival in the great 1998 home run chase, Sammy Sosa was hailed at the height of his popularity as a hero, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, and a great international ambassador for baseball. In the same year that McGwire set a new single-season record with 70 home runs, Sosa hit 66 and took home the National League MVP award. Three times in a four-year stretch from 1998 to 2001, he surpassed Roger Maris‘ previously unbreakable mark of 61 homers, and he hit more homers over a five- or 10-year stretch than any player in history. In 2007, he became just the fifth player to reach the 600-home-run milestone after Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds.

As with McGwire, the meaning of Sosa’s home runs changed once baseball began to crack down on performance-enhancing drugs, with suspicions mounting about his achievements. He was called to testify before Congress in 2005, along with McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and several other players. Sosa denied using PEDs, but while he never tested positive once Major League Baseball began instituting penalties for usage, The New York Times reported in 2009 that he was one of more than 100 players who had done so during the supposedly anonymous survey tests six years prior. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a few years ago, Wade Miley was a free agent without many teams interested in his services. He had struggled through two seasons in Seattle and Baltimore, compiling an ugly 5.48 ERA and a 4.85 FIP across more than 300 innings in 2016 and 2017. He eventually signed a minor-league contract with Milwaukee in February of 2018 and completely reinvented himself under the tutelage of Derek Johnson, the Brewers pitching coach at the time. Across 16 starts, he cut his ERA in half and dropped his FIP to 3.59. After a season in Houston, Miley will reunite with Johnson, now the pitching coach for the Reds. It’s a two-year, $15 million pact with a $10 million club option for 2022 and a few performance bonuses. Miley ranked 32nd on our Top 50 Free Agents list, with Kiley McDaniel expecting a one-year, $9 million deal; the crowd came much closer to his actual contract, projecting two years and $16 million.

The biggest change Miley made with the Brewers was scraping his slow, looping slider for a hard cutter. He actually made the change at the nadir of his season in Baltimore back in 2017, but Johnson helped him hone the pitch and encouraged him to make it a major part of his repertoire. In a 2018 interview with Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Miley described the moment he decided to make the change to his repertoire:

“Just made it up in the middle of the game [on July 25, 2017]. Swear to God. I was getting crushed a little bit. Welington Castillo was catching and I just said, ‘Hey, look, when (Evan) Longoria comes back up to bat, I’m throwing all cutters.’ He just kind of looked at me and laughed. So we did, struck him out and then he grounded out his next at-bat. So I kind of ran with it.”

Read the rest of this entry »

If one organization is repeatedly making headlines during the months of October, November, and December, it’s generally a safe assumption that there is a positive reason for that. Those are the months in which teams are either winning titles, adding major talent, or both. The reasons the Houston Astros have stayed in the news, however, have been consistently terrible. Their assistant GM belittled female reporters. The players cheated. Their world-beating ace left to join the their ALCS opponent. And they’ve considered trading their franchise shortstop in an effort to — stop me if you’ve heard this before — gain payroll flexibility. Since the offseason began, there’s been a lot to talk about when it comes to the Astros, but most of it had nothing to do with actual roster moves that usually get a team attention in the winter.

On Monday, Houston finally changed that. The Astros signed 35-year-old right-hander Joe Smith to a two-year, $8-million contract, giving him a little more than half of the deal they gave him this time two years ago. It’s just the second contract handed out by the team this winter, the other being a six-figure commitment to backup catcher Dustin Garneau. Smith, a 13-year veteran, has pitched for Houston since signing that two-year, $15-million contract with them before the 2018 season. He’s one of four relievers to reach free agency after finishing 2019 with the Astros, along with Will Harris, Collin McHugh, and Hector Rondon. Read the rest of this entry »