January 2: Shane McClanahan continues to hang on, signing a 1-year, $960K deal with the Dodgers.
January 3: A couple more signings of significance as former Rays catcher Ryan Jeffers signs a 2/26 deal with the Phillies, and slugger Parks Harber gets a huge 5/111 contract from Houston to hit in the middle of their order. Harber's hit 215 homers over the last 6 seasons with Milwaukee and the White Sox.
The Hall of Fame voting is in:
January 15: Seattle traded All-Star catcher albeit brief Rays flop Adley Rustchman to Milwaukee for five minor leaguers.
January 30: Former Ray lefty reliever Evan Godwin has bounced around quite a bit over the last few years becoming a starter and he's now landed in Washington on a 1-year, $3.36M deal.
February 4: The White Sox got their replacement 1B after losing Parks Harber to free agency by trading with Arizona for Ryan Mountcastle, who has hit exactly 24 HR and 86 RBI each of the last two seasons. Joe Long, a pretty good reliever, and Steve Blair, a starting pitching prospect who was offered to me when shopping some of the guys I traded this offseason, go the other way.
We have a "minor" trade:
Carter is an MLB reliever but a victim of our numbers game, and is out of options. I wasn't ready to commit a roster spot to him, so I dealt him for another live arm in Reece, Columbus's 2nd round pick last season. A look under the hood at Reece:
With 65 stamina, he could be tried as a starter as well and could be something else if can handle that role; at worst, his ceiling is elite reliever. Baxter was a 1/2-1-star throw-in.
March 10: One of the few significant free agents left, Danny Pena, signed a 3/70.2 with the Yankees. The lefty starter was 13-5, 3.08 with the Angels last season.
March 12: Dane Ayers was non-tendered by St. Louis despite trading a minor league to us for him, and he sat out there until the Blue Jays signed him to a minor league deal. Also, long-ago former Ray and longtime Phillies slugger Nate Lowe, who has 391 career HR, signed a 1-year, $2.9M deal with Milwaukee, and speaking of former Rays, Rafael Devers (whom we had in 23 and 24) came full circle by signing a minor league deal with his original team the Red Sox.
March 15: More contract news for former Rays: At one end of the spectrum Judson Fabian had to settle for a minor league deal with the Red Sox; at the other, the Cardinals handed out huge extensions to Jasson Dominguez (4/145.5) and Nate Clark (5/192.5), good on them for getting paid.
March 24: Who says you can't go home again? We signed Triston Casas to a minor-league deal where he's going to play 1B for Durham. Having traded Rivas and minor leaguer Dave Bagwell (who was in line to play at Durham), we actually needed a little depth at the position even though we're more than covered at the position at the MLB level (Centeno, Jimenez, de Jesus).
March 27: Big blow to the Dodgers who have lost Fernando Tatis Jr. for 5 months with a broken kneecap.
March 28: Well Spring Training has concluded and we went 16-1 and the loss came in extra innings, which is insane. And that's only with playing the regulars every other day. Also we didn't have any injuries, not even a minor one. This probably means we get off to a slow start.