This month shouldn't be eventful as the last one as I pretty much have the roster where I want it with an exception or two.
January 1: Happy New Year! It's a happy one for Josh Bell, who signed a 6-year, $176M deal with the Dodgers. Guess they weren't sold on Daniel Murphy going forward. In other ex-Rays news, the Braves signed Manuel Margot to a minor league deal.
January 2: Poor Josh Lowe. He bides his time behind Kiermaier in our minor league system waiting for his contract to end, and then gets surpassed by Brandon Marsh. So I do him a favor and trade him to the Mets where they could use a bona fide CF. So what do the Mets do? They sign Kiermaier! For 3 years at $14.8M/year no less. Good luck with that, Mets! Now I can look forward to seeing his name in the list whenever I do "shop a player" for the next few seasons. The arms (or bats) race continues in the NL East as the Phillies, who already splurged for Jake deGrom and Ken Giles, got perhaps the biggest prize of the FA class with Francisco Lindor, who had opted out of his Cleveland deal coming off a a career .337-44-144 year. He'll get $141M over 7 years. Also the Twins signed Trevor Gott to a 1-year $2.28M deal.
January 5: Chris Archer comes full circle to the team that traded him to the Rays back in 2011 as a prospect in the Matt Garza deal as he signs a 1-year $1.12M deal with the Cubs.
January 6: Nice try Blue Jays, offering me Simeon Woods Richardson for Brandon Marsh. Trevor Rosenthal is back with the Dodgers on a 1-year, $1.86M deal.
January 7: After testing the free agent waters, Andrew Benintendi went back to Minnesota on a 4-year, $39.2M deal. He was coming off a career-best 31 HR, 109 RBI season. Speaking of career highs in HRs I have gone back to 2018 offensive settings for next season as I've had it with what Keith Law calls the "happy fun ball". We'll see if it works. Meanwhile the Jays have picked up lefty reliever Amir Garrett from the Pirates for pitching prospect Garrett Crochet, and the Twins opened a 40-man spot for Benintendi by waiving former Rays farmhand Lucius Fox.
January 8: OK, here's some big Rays news:
We're gettin' jiggy with it over here at Rays HQ adding Will Smith to our pen. He'll be our new Brad Hand, the veteran lefty closer who gets it done. And points to Smith for not jerking me around making me increase my offer like Hand did the last two winters. My only concern is that he isn't scarred from his Game 7 meltdown in the NLCS. Otherwise the money is reasonable and now the pen is set with Ashby, Alvarado, McClanahan and Smith from the left side and Anderson, Barlow, Gallegos and Dany Jimenez from the right. Me gusta.
Need to open a 40-man spot for him, though. The candidate to go is pseudo-prospect Luke Heyer who finally has slipped out of the BNN Top 100 prospects after inexplicably being #1 at one point. He didn't hit a whole lot at Durham or Montgomery last year (250-260 with occasional power) even though the editor thinks he can hit .287 with 25 HR in the big leagues. Nevertheless I can't get anyone to offer me a prospect when I shop him, although I imagine he gets claimed if/when I put him on waivers.
January 10: In more ex-Rays news (there are a lot more of them since I took over), Oliver Drake inked a 1-year, $2.84M deal with St. Louis. Also the Phillies traded Andrew McCutchen to the Cubs for a couple of minor leaguers.
Placed 3B Luke Heyer on waivers, added P Will Smith to the active and 40-man rosters.
How radioactive is Heyer on the trade market? Aside from the fact I can't get a single team to offer me a prospect, I tried shopping him to various teams just trying to even get a 1/2 star guy that didn't have to go on the 40-man. Got nothing but "this offer is an insult" and "you've got to be kidding" and when I clicked on "make it work" I was asked for one of my top players or prospects. It's as if Heyer has
negative value. Now watch someone claim him on waivers.
January 13: Yep, the Mariners claimed Heyer on waivers. Now watch him hit .287 with 25 HRs for them, which wouldn't shock me after they turned Mike Brosseau into a near all-star. The Dodgers signed former Twins reliever Tyler Duffey to a 1-year deal. I only note this because Duffey killed the Rays in a couple of games last year so I'm glad not to have to see him (although we may yet as I believe we're due for games against the NL West this season). Also in the guys-possibly-coming-back-to-haunt-us department, the Jays signed Chaz Roe to a 1-year, $1.18M deal.
January 17: The Jays signed SP Rick Porcello to a 2-year, $12M deal. I suppose he's not much better or worse than the non-Pearson starters they've been trotting out recently, but boy I don't know about Porcello in the AL East. The Phillies also swung a deal with Baltimore to acquire former Ray Peter Fairbanks.
January 18: The Hall of Fame voting is in, and let the hue and cry go out across the land as nobody was elected. First-year nominee Carlos Beltran came closest with 70.6% of the vote but undoubtedly some negative feelings about his role in the sign-stealing scandals kept him out on the first ballot. Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez were next closest, distantly back at around 40% each.
January 20: Wow. Matt Wisler has become a decent SP over the last few years for the Twins with ERAs ranging from 4.13 to 5.00 but I didn't realize how much he could command on the FA market as he signed a 7-year, $115.5M deal with Kansas City. He's had a good 237/800 K/BB ratio in 900 career innings but I guess the dearth of good SPs on the FA market (Clevenger was the only one who appealed to me when I looked at the list) allowed him to cash in. I guess Wisler's mother will be proud of her son. Elsewhere, Atlanta made out pretty well dealing Austin Riley, expendable due to the Jose Ramirez acquisition, to offense-starved Miami for lefty starter Trevor Rogers who put up a 3.08 ERA in 158 IP last season with a 66/145 K/BB ratio. His numbers will probably go up a bit pitching outside of the humidor known as Marlins Park but that's still a great acquisition for Atlanta as he'll take Tyler Anderson's spot in the rotation.
January 27: Things have really slowed down as the only news of note is that Boston acquired Niko Goodrum from Detroit for a minor leaguer.
Going to keep this post going for February since there really isn't enough news to warrant a new one.
February 7: Longtime A's 1B Matt Olson signs a 2-year, $20M deal with Minnesota. Guess Sano becomes the DH since Olson is a 75 at 1B.
February 8: The Marlins, who need all the offense they can get, signed veteran 35-year-old OF David Peralta to a 2-year deal for $21.6M. Peralta's usually good for a .290-.300 average and about 20 HR so that probably makes him their #3 hitter.
February 9: Man, the Mets pulled off another heist of a deal. I'm still not over the Luis Guillorme-for-Joey Bart deal from 2021, and now they trade Billy McKinney to the Angels for excellent young starter Griffin Canning. Yes, the 28-year-old McKinney had a career year last year as the likes of Nimmo and Conforto were in and out of the lineup, going .301-29-105 but he's two years removed from being a quadruple-A player, while Canning is 26 coming off a 4.2 WAR season in which he had a 3.72 ERA with 215 K's and only 52 walks in 200 innings with 4 65+ pitches. He'll join Blake Snell and holdover Sandy Alcantara as their top 3 starters with Syndergaard and deGrom gone.
February 12: Ji-Man!! He signs a 1-year deal for $6.8M with - you guessed it - Rays North a/k/a the Chicago Cubs. Cafecito was pretty awful for them last year, hitting about .250 with moderate power and Ian Happ ended up playing a lot there and having a good season. Ironically to make room for him on the 40-man they waived former Rays prospect Simon Rosenblum-Larson, whom I think we traded them for Kyle Schwarber in 2021 (I've had so many deals with the Cubs I can't remember for sure). Not going to claim him even though his 2022 #s looked good as trying to get on our 40-man roster is as tough as getting into Studio 54 during the height of disco.
February 21: Nelson Cruz gets a job about a month earlier than he got one last year when we signed him just before the season started. He's reunited with the Texas Rangers on a 1-year, $8.1M deal which is also about a million more than we gave them last year. Somewhere Seth Beer breathes a sigh of relief.