So time to clear out some of the guys we don't plan to keep before they get their pay bumps in arbitration, and here's the first of those deals:
Not thrilled about helping out a division rival, but they did make the best offer. Bello is a swingman who pitched well with Boston last year (3.54 ERA, 1.18 WHIP in 11 starts and 18 relief appearances over 96 innings). He'll be ticketed for Durham as depth. Decker is a B- prospect who profiles as a fourth outfielder, average-above average defense in the corners and a 250/350/450-25 double-20 homer bat. Tedosio is a package guy who has some pop and plays good corner OF D but is contact-challenged. Really the key was getting something for Mejia and Graveman, who are good players but surplus to our requirements.
Dump trade #2:
Yeah, yeah helping another rival as we trade with the team which knocked us out of the playoffs on their way to an improbable World Series title, but again best offer. The key player in the deal (aside from moving the salaries and opening the 40-man spots) is Diaz, a 3B who is rated 55 power/55 contact and 45 at the position. He's definitely behind Casey Schmitt on our depth charts, but looks like a useful corner IF type. Julien has power but not much contact at 1B, and aside from a great name Willie Joe Garry, Jr. doesn't have much to offer except for some good outfield D.
OK enough of the preliminaries - you're here for the good stuff. And it doesn't get much better than this:
Ladies and gentleman, Juan Soto is a Tampa Bay Ray. Inspired by the fact that the Rays dealt for him at the same time in my Pirates Rebuild, and of course all the trade talk surrounding him IRL, I decided to see what it would take to get perhaps the best offensive player in baseball in a Tampa Bay uniform. Now of course this is just as a rental since Soto is in his final arbitration year, but you never know about an extension (OK probably not). And while it wasn't a bargain the cost was quite manageable (despite what my AGM says, more about that in a bit). We're giving up the #63 prospect in baseball in Florence, whom I discussed in the previous post as someone I was willing to deal, a decent mid-200s prospect in Mercado who could be a 4th/5th finesse/control righty starter, and an established MLB 2B in Cronenworth whom I didn't want to bring back. So no cost at all to the roster as currently configured or projected and I have my RF, although Soto will likely play LF and Arozarena will shift to right. About my AGM: he loved the deal when I had it in a configuration with Shane McClanahan instead of Florence which from a win-now baseball perspective would have been much worse for us. Mac is set to make around $4M this year so we would have saved a few bucks, but c'mon.
Now just feast your eyes, and look at his numbers from the last couple of seasons:
I think I need a cigarette.
November 14: After getting Kendall Graveman from us the Red Sox continue to beef up their pen by acquiring closer Ryan Pressly from Houston.
November 17: Some big news - The Gold Gloves were handed out and Randy Arozarena won one for LF in the AL! Also we avoided arbitration with some key players, including signing Juan Soto for $22M this year. We'll now see what he wants for a real extension, but I know it will be in the neighborhood of $40M/year.
And we may have found our lefty reliever. With Beeks traded and Brooks Raley to be non-tendered, we were down to just Jeffrey Springs but now
we've claimed Tanner Scott on waivers. He's rated 65 stuff/65 movement and 45 control and looks to be decent enough. Last year he walked 17 and fanned 62 in 46 IP with Milwaukee and had a 3.42 ERA.
November 18: More awards!
Congrats to Pete, who was very reliable except for a brief two-week or so stretch where he blew some saves.
November 19: The Silver Sluggers were handed out today and we had two winners, both of whom were in-season acquisitions. Alex Bregman won at 3B and did about 80% of his damage with us while JD Martinez took the nod at DH, doing about 30-40% of his damage with us. And you could say we had a third winner, as Juan Soto won in RF for the NL.
November 20: Texas 3B Josh Jung won the AL Rookie of the Year after a .288-17-64 season with Curtis Mead finishing 4th and Chris Gau 5th. In the NL the award went to Arizona's Nolan Gorman at .274-19-66.
November 22: Shane Bieber was the AL Cy Young winner, he went 19-6, 3.21 with 261 whiffs in 235 IP, beating out Gerrit Cole 20 first place votes to 10. It was Bieber's 2nd Cy after winning in the shortened 2020 season. Brandon Woodruff was the unanimous winner in the NL coming off a great 15-8, 2.47 year with 259 Ks in 222 IP.
November 23: Death, taxes and Mike Trout as AL MVP. The Angel CF won his 5th trophy and second straight, taking 28 of the 30 first-place votes after a .284-35-85-7.5 WAR season. Kyle Tucker took the other two first-place votes and finished 2nd, while our Alex Bregman showed 3rd. Down ballot JD Martinez finished 11th. In the NL the honors went unanimously to Fernando Tatis Jr. who had a season for the ages at .295-53-133 with a whopping 10.9 WAR. Our new boy Juan Soto was a unanimous 2nd after his 314/461/618 35-HR season.
December 1: Yonny Chirinos and Jonathan Loaisiga won their arbitration hearings and as a result we're a combined $1.8M poorer than anticipated. Our payroll now clocks in at $102M per the salary page or $97M per the main front office page. I'm not sure what is causing the discrepancy.
And Juan Soto wants a 9/390 extension, that's an AAV of $43.2M.
December 3: Boston remains active on the trade front, acquiring veteran starter Lance Lynn from Texas coming off a 7-13, 4.71 season.
December 9: First big non-Juan Soto trade of the offseason as the Dodgers sent slugging OF prospect Andy Pages and relief prospect Osvanni Gutierrez (both of whom I've acquired in other saves) to Oakland for SP Frankie Montas.
Also we have a Rays trade:
Lars Nootbaar became kind of a forgotten man in the scheme of things with the OF and 1B acquisitions we made and the prospects who moved ahead of him on our depth charts, so we were willing to risk trading with a division rival to pick up another lefty as we're short on them at the upper levels. Sears pitched well for the Yankees in relief last year and can also start (occasionally as he only has 40 stamina), putting up a 10/49 BB/K ratio in 41 innings with only 25 hits allowed (the catch was 8 HR given up). As a reliever he has 60 stuff and 60 control with 50 movement (potential 55). He'll likely start the year at Durham but could be one of the first guys called up when injuries strike.
December 10: The first big free agent signings took place today with the Mets inking Matt Chapman to a 7/173 deal and Yasmani Grandal going back to the White Sox for 3/70 after spending the last year and a half with the Mets. At the other end of the spectrum former Ray Phoenix Sanders signed a minor league deal with the Yankees.
December 12: The New York tabloids are having a field day as Mets icon Jacob deGrom signed with the crosstown rival Yankees on a 3/98 deal. We'll see how it goes since deGrom is notoriously injury-prone and is currently coming off bone chip surgery. The Yankees meanwhile beefed up their lineup both literally and figuratively by trading for Phillies "OF"/DH Kyle Schwarber, taking on his $20M/year contract for two more seasons and sending Philly a couple of minor leaguers.
December 13: Max Muncy is White-Sox bound for 5/74 and Astros legend Jose Altuve was dealt to the Dodgers for a couple of marginal prospects. Altuve has slipped in recent years and is coming off a 243/315/410 season. St. Louis also dealt for Washington CF Victor Robles.
December 16: Former Rays closer Taylor Rogers is on the move again, going from Arizona to Atlanta in exchange for OF Drew Waters.
December 17: Houston signed longtime St. Louis starter Jack Flaherty to a 6/109 pact, and another Cardinal found a new home as the Yankees improved their CF defense by signing Harrison Bader to a 4/85 deal. Houston also added to their rotation with Sonny Gray on a 4/78 contract. Also former Ray Colin Poche, who languished in our minors the last couple of years, somehow got a 3/12 deal from Atlanta. And speaking of former Rays relievers, Seattle shipped Diego Castillo to the Mets for a prospect.
December 18: We signed a couple of international free agents to minor league contracts. Hisamitsu Kusumoto is a lefty reliever from Japan with marginal stuff (45/50/50) but hey, he's a lefty and he was free. The wonderfully-named Fu-chi Chin is a 22-year-old Taiwanese outfielder with much more promise:
He plays excellent defense, has speed to burn, and if he can get that contact tool up closer to its potential he could be a useful player.
December 19: Eduardo Rodriguez, who opted out of his big deal with Detroit after a big 2023, signed another big deal with Philly for 6/114, while the Cardinals acquired starter Paul Blackburn from Oakland.
December 20: The White Sox dealt star SS Tim Anderson to the champion Twins for a pair of top-100 prospects in P Ricky DeLeon and OF Emmanuel Gutierrez. Anderson is a free agent after 2024. The other Chicago club also wheeled and dealed, sending SP Marcus Stroman to Cleveland for 5 prospects of varying quality as the Winter Meetings heat up.
December 21: The Dodgers, knowing we have a rookie penciled in to play 2B, offered us Rougned Odor for not much. Thanks but no thanks, don't want a guy who will hit .200 and give us occasional homers, I already lived through the Brandon Lowe experience last two seasons. San Diego dealt 2B Ha-seong Kim to the Reds for SP Tyler Mahle. Mahle is coming off a brutal 6-20, 6.88 season and is owed $16+M for each of the next two years while Kim also has a bad contract.
December 23: The Mets found their Yasmani Grandal replacement in the person of Omar Narvaez on a hefty 5/107 deal and a couple of former longtime Dodgers found new homes with Justin Turner off to Detroit for 3/38 and Kenley Jansen Arizona-bound for 2/16. The D-backs also added to their pen with veteran Chad Green on a 3/23 deal.
We put the egg nog down long enough to make another trade:
Because of the late end to the World Series the Rule 5 Draft is now on Boxing Day (the 26th) so here's a deal that was necessitated by that. I'm not going to have room for Austin Shenton on the 40-man, so we dealt him along with Nick Schnell (a personal favorite who panned out as a big leaguer in my previous 2 Rays saves but won't in this one) for Brooks Lee, a name familiar to baseball fans as he was a ballyhooed 1st round pick in 2022:
This profile screams "scrappy middle infielder" and Lee had a good 290/366/408 year with great defense for 4.4 WAR in High-A in his first full pro season. A couple of years ago we were awash in middle infielders with the likes of Vidal Brujan, Xavier Edwards and Greg Jones in the pipeline. But those guys are either gone (Brujan and Edwards were traded for power) or struggling (Jones, waived off the 40-man last summer), so we needed to beef up that part of our depth chart. I still have faith in Jeremiah Jackson but Lee gives us some cover.
December 23: Added Ps John Swanda, JJ Goss, Colby White and Sandy Gaston, 2B Jeremiah Jackson and OF Joshua Mears to the 40-man roster.
All but White (a decent reliever) are top-100 prospects and all were no-brainers.
December 24: Ryan Thompson, another reliever who was up with us for a bit and languished in our minors, signed a 2/2.6 deal with San Diego.
December 26: It's Rule 5 Draft time again. The draft pool features 3 top-100 2B prospects but we're not going to commit to keeping any of them on our roster for a full year and as I said I have faith in Jeremiah Jackson. Also I'm certain we're going to lose someone - our last "cut" for the 40-man was Heriberto Hernandez.
Well Texas took Austin Shenton as LA's AI failed to put him on their 40-man, which feels kind of cheap. The Phillies took former Rays IF Mike Brosseau.....aaaaand Washington took Heriberto, damn. Pittsburgh took one of those 2B prospects, Colorado's Yunior Severino while leaving their own (Maikol Escotto) exposed, and now they have both. The Pirates also took another interesting name, Simeon Woods Richardson, from Minnesota; Richardson was part of the big Jose Berrios trade with Toronto in 2021. In all eight players were taken with the Pirates grabbing three.
So Heriberto kind of turns out to be part of the Juan Soto deal in a strange way. I put odds at 50-50 they end up giving him back to us.
December 27: The Reds signed Jurickson Profar to a 4/53 deal.
December 28: After a disappointing 237/322/427 season with only 14 homers after signing a big free agent deal with the Yankees, Jose Abreu was shipped by New York to Arizona for starting pitching prospect Slade Cecconi, a familiar name to those who have followed my 20 and 21 Rays saves (especially the latter as he's currently on the 2029 staff).
December 29: The first of our rental free agents from last year signed with a new team as Mitch Haniger, who was very good for us (AL PotM in August) is going to hit even more homers in the high altitude of Colorado on a 3/39 deal.
December 30: Former Red Sox star Rafael Devers, who spent his walk year in Cincinnati, stays in the NL Central thanks to a 7/117 pact with the Cubs where he joins his former Yankee rival Aaron Judge.