As first reported by Jon Heyman of MLB Network, the New York Yankees have signed Gerrit Cole to a nine-year, $324 million contract. That’s $36 million per season, making it both the most money and the highest average annual value a pitcher has ever earned, eclipsing the $35 million AAV contract Stephen Strasburg inked yesterday.

Cole’s deal fits a pattern we’ve seen this offseason where free agents — particularly big ticket signees — have earned more money than we anticipated at the outset of the winter. As has been the case for most contracts signed by players on our Top 50 Free Agents list, Cole signed for both more years and more money than we projected. Kiley McDaniel forecast that he’d sign a seven-year deal for $242 million ($34.5 million AAV), while our crowdsourcing effort estimated seven years and $224 million ($32 million AAV).

If any pitcher could command that kind of deal, it’s Cole, who is the consensus best pitcher in baseball. Though he narrowly lost out on the Cy Young to former teammate Justin Verlander, the 29-year-old’s dominant performance down the stretch and in October established him as a unique force to be reckoned with throughout the playoffs, and ensured he’d be the top free agent on the market this winter.

Cole’s ascension from talented-but-inconsistent starter to bona fide ace is familiar by now to most readers: After leaning heavily on his sinker throughout his time in Pittsburgh, the Astros tweaked his repertoire after acquiring him in advance of the 2018 season. He started throwing his four-seam fastball more often, and also increasingly leaned on his slider and curve. His numbers ticked up immediately:

If anything, those statistics understate how dominant Cole became by the end of his tenure in Houston. Across 121 innings over his last 18 regular season starts, Cole struck out 186 hitters while posting a 1.63 ERA; batters hit just .174/.222/.313 over that stretch. One can only wonder how much lower those numbers would have been in a year without such a homer-happy ball, as for all his success, he did allow 29 dingers last season, some of which pretty clearly would not have left the yard in previous years. It’s scary to think that Cole may yet have another gear in him, but if he can miss bats like he has in recent seasons while also allowing fewer dingers, the Yankees are poised to reap the benefits from a historic campaign.

For the Yankees, the affect of the signing is profound. They’ve added an ace to go along with Luis Severino at the top of the rotation, an injection of impact talent at a position of (relative) weakness. With J.A. Happ out of favor and Domingo Germán in a different kind of limbo after being placed on administrative leave in the wake of a reported violation of the Joint MLB-MLBPA Domestic Violence Policy, the Yankees rotation appeared thin at the outset of the winter. It now looks a whole lot stronger, and the addition of Cole solidifies New York’s position as the overwhelming preseason favorite to win the AL East, and perhaps makes them the team to beat in the American League.

It also ends an era in which the Yankees were unusually quiet on the free agent market: New York hadn’t signed a nine-figure free agent since inking Jacoby Ellsbury and Masahiro Tanaka back in 2014, though they did absorb more than $200 million on Giancarlo Stanton’s contract. While this doesn’t necessarily signal a return to the days in which the wage bill for the Bronx Bombers dwarfed that of their competitors, it’s a familiar financial flex for fans who grew up watching the dominant Yankee teams of the aughts and late-90s. Last season, the rotation was a weak point. With Cole in tow, in 2020 it won’t be.