The Twins announced they’ve traded infielder Vidal Bruján to the Mets for cash. Minnesota designated him for assignment yesterday when they acquired a different utility player, Tristan Gray, in a trade with Boston. The Mets have not announced the move and will need to designate someone themselves to clear a spot on the 40-man roster.
More to come.
The White Sox are in agreement with first baseman/corner outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. on a minor league contract, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. A client of Covenant Sports Group, Wade will be in MLB camp as a non-roster invitee.
Wade is a veteran of parts of seven MLB seasons. He has spent most of the past few seasons as the Giants’ primary first baseman, at least against right-handed pitching. Wade was an above-average hitter as recently as 2024, when he put up a .260/.380/.381 slash line across 401 plate appearances. It was his second consecutive season with excellent on-base marks in a platoon role. Wade combined to hit .258/.376/.401 between 2023-24. Among hitters with 800+ trips to the plate, he ranked 11th in on-base percentage.
Everything went off the rails last year. Wade hit .167 with a .275 OBP over 50 games for San Francisco. They traded for Rafael Devers at designated hitter and eventually signed Dominic Smith to play first base. Wade was designated for assignment as the corresponding move for the Smith acquisition.
The Angels rolled the dice on a change of scenery, acquiring Wade out of DFA limbo in a small trade. They got him into 30 games over two months, but he hit .169/.260/.215 and was released in August. That ended his season with a .167/.271/.254 slash over 242 plate appearances. That kind of production obviously isn’t going to cut it, but there’s minimal risk for the Sox in giving him a look during camp to see if an offseason gets him back on track.
Munetaka Murakami will get everyday work at first base. The designated hitter spot will probably be divided between young catchers Kyle Teel and Edgar Quero. A rebuilding team isn’t going to press the 32-year-old Wade into the lineup over their younger hitters, but he could earn a spot as a left-handed bat on a bench that skews heavily to the right side. There’s also a wide open competition for playing time in right field, though GM Chris Getz left the door open to an outfield pickup after trading Luis Robert Jr. on Tuesday.
The Nationals announced that catcher Riley Adams has been designated for assignment. That’s the corresponding move for their claim of right-hander Gus Varland, which was previously reported.
Adams, 30 in June, has been with the Nats for the past four-plus years. Originally drafted by the Blue Jays, he came to Washington in the 2021 deadline deal which sent lefty Brad Hand to Toronto.
He was mostly an up-and-down guy through the end of 2024, never appearing in more than 48 games in any individual campaign. He exhausted his final option in 2024 but stuck on the roster through the 2025 season. Overall, he has appeared in 263 big league games with 849 plate appearances. He has shown a bit of pop by hitting 21 home runs but also struck out at a 32.5% clip. He has a .211/.287/.354 line and 78 wRC+. Outlets such as FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Statcast have all graded him as a poor defender.
The Nats acquired catcher Harry Ford from the Mariners in the Jose A. Ferrer deal last month. Ford should share the bulk of the big league playing time behind the plate with Keibert Ruiz. Even if Ford needs more time in the minors, the Nats also have Drew Millas and Mickey Gasper on the 40-man roster. Millas and Gasper have options, so perhaps that led to Adams getting squeezed out.
Back in November, Adams and the Nationals avoided arbitration by agreeing to a split deal which would pay him $1MM in the majors and $500K in the minors. Since his service time is at least three years but below five, he would have the right to reject an outright assignment but would have to walk away from that money in exercising that right. It seems there’s a decent chance he’ll end up sticking with the Nats as non-roster depth after clearing waivers.
Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images
The Cubs are signing free agent outfielder Chas McCormick to a minor league contract and inviting him to major league camp this spring, reports Chandler Rome of The Athletic. The Covenant Sports client was outrighted by the Astros following the 2025 season and became a free agent.
McCormick, 31, had a few good years with the Astros but is coming off a couple of poor seasons. He got into 342 games for Houston from 2021 to 2023, stepping to the plate 1,184 times. His 27.6% strikeout rate in that time was high but his 9.4% walk rate was good and he popped 50 home runs. That led to a combined .259/.336/.449 slash line and 120 wRC+.
His 2023 season was particularly good. He hit 22 home runs and stole 19 bases. He slashed .273/.353/.489 for a 132 wRC+. He got strong grades at all three outfield spots, spending most of his time in center. FanGraphs credited him with 3.3 wins above replacement for the year.
He’s been in quite a trough since then, unfortunately. Dating back to the start of 2024, he has a dismal .211/.273/.301 line. He hit just six home runs in his 386 plate appearances and also only drew walks at a 6.8% clip. As mentioned, he was passed through waivers and elected free agency at the end of the 2025 season.
For the Cubs, there’s no harm in bringing him aboard in a non-roster capacity for some extra outfield depth. They have let Kyle Tucker depart in free agency, which has opened the door for Seiya Suzuki to move from the designated hitter spot to right field. He’ll be next to center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and left fielder Ian Happ.
They will need a fourth outfielder and have some candidates. Kevin Alcántara and Justin Dean are currently on the 40-man roster. Matt Shaw also might get some outfield playing time in a utility capacity, now that Alex Bregman has been signed to play third base.
McCormick gives the club another name to throw into the mix there. His righty bat could give him a leg up in the competition for a bench spot. He has a career .280/.353/.493 line and 137 wRC+ against lefties. Crow-Armstrong had a breakout season last year but put up a rough .188/.217/.376 line against southpaws.
Alcántara is also right-handed but the Cubs might prefer to have him getting regular playing time in the minors. He has used three options but may qualify for a fourth, so perhaps the Cubs will be able to send him down. Dean also swings from the right side but doesn’t have McCormick’s track record of major league success. He also has options and could be sent down alongside Alcantara.
McCormick would also have options if added to the roster, though with a catch. His service time count is at four years and 161 days. With 11 more days in the majors, he would get to five years and earn the right to not be optioned without his consent.
Ultimately, McCormick will still have to earn a job, but he’s a nice fit for Chicago’s current group. If things go well and he has a roster spot at season’s end, he can be retained for 2027 via arbitration.
Photo courtesy of Troy Taormina, Imagn Images
The Nationals have sent left-hander MacKenzie Gore to the Rangers for a package of five prospects, per announcements from both clubs. The five players are shortstop Gavin Fien, right-hander Alejandro Rosario, first baseman/outfielder Abimelec Ortiz, infielder Devin Fitz-Gerald and outfielder Yeremy Cabrera. Gore and Ortiz were the only players with 40-man spots, so the deal is 40-man neutral and no corresponding moves were required.
Gore, 27, has been one of the more obvious trade candidates of this offseason. Back at the start of November, MLBTR’s list of the top trade candidates of the winter had him in the #1 spot. That was partly due to Gore’s appeal as a potential budding ace and also the team’s situation.
The Nationals have been stuck in a rebuild for quite a while now. They won the World Series in 2019 but haven’t finished above .500 since then. They traded players like Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto in 2021 and 2022. It was hoped that Washington could be back to relevance by now but the rebuild stalled out. Things dragged to such a degree that heads rolled. President of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez were both fired during last season.
Paul Toboni, previously an assistant general manager with Boston, was hired to replace Rizzo as the front office leader. The general expectation in the industry is that he will get some time to turn the ship around and get the Nats into contention again, as opposed to having the pressure of trying to win immediately. Gore is only two years away from free agency, making him a trade candidate in those circumstances. As a Boras Corporation client, a contract extension was probably going to be hard to put together.
On top of all that, there’s Gore’s track record and affordability. He was once a top prospect, getting selected third overall by the Pades in 2017. He was flipped to the Nats as part of the aforementioned Soto trade. Gore hasn’t quite lived up to his potential yet, with a 4.19 earned run average in 532 1/3 innings. However, he looked on the verge of a huge breakout for most of 2025.
Last year, Gore made 19 starts for the Nats through the All-Star break. He logged 110 1/3 innings in those with a 3.02 ERA. His 7.7% walk rate was a bit better than average and his 30.5% strikeout rate was quite strong. That strikeout rate was behind just four other qualified pitchers in baseball at that time. Tarik Skubal led the pack at 33.4%, followed by Zack Wheeler, Garrett Crochet and Hunter Brown.
Unfortunately, Gore wasn’t able to stick the landing. He went on the injured list at the end of August due to shoulder inflammation. He was reinstated about two weeks later but then returned to the IL late in September due to a right ankle impingement. Around those IL stints, he tossed 49 1/3 innings with a 6.75 ERA. That bumped his season-long ERA to 4.17.
Despite the poor finish, Gore remained an enticing player. The strong run to the All-Star break showed his ceiling and it’s an appealing arsenal. He averaged over 95 miles per hour with his four-seamer last year while mixing in a curveball, slider, cutter and changeup. He’s also quite affordable. He’s going into his second of three arbitration seasons and will be making $5.6MM this year. He’ll be due another raise in 2027 before he’s slated to reach free agency.
The trade market for starting pitching has been robust this winter. The Orioles sent four prospects and a draft pick to the Rays for three years of Shane Baz. The Cubs sent three players, including their top prospect, to the Marlins for three years of Edward Cabrera. Last night, the Mets sent two of their top prospects to the Brewers for one year of Freddy Peralta.
Gore’s track record of success isn’t quite as long as Peralta’s but Gore offers an extra year of control. Baz and Cabrera offered one extra year compared to Gore but haven’t shown the same kind of ace upside and both have checkered injury histories. Given the difficulty in evaluating the future outcomes of prospects, it’s impossible to say which package will provide the most long-term value.
For the Rangers, it’s understandable that they would prefer the trade route to free agency this winter, as there have been signs that money is tight. The team and manager Bruce Bochy parted ways at the end of last year with the club’s financial uncertainty cited as playing a role in that break-up. Pitching coach Mike Maddux departed for the Angels, with some suggestion that may have been financially motivated as well.
In terms of the roster, the Rangers traded three years of Marcus Semien to get five years of Brandon Nimmo, with Nimmo making less annually. Various reports from December suggested that the club couldn’t even afford mid-market free agents like J.T. Realmuto or Luis Arráez.
But upgrading the rotation was still on the to-do list. The club saw Merrill Kelly, Jon Gray, Patrick Corbin and Tyler Mahle all depart via free agency at season’s end. They went into the winter with a strong one-two of Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi, but a drop-off after that. Jack Leiter seemed to earn himself a rotation job with a 3.86 ERA last year but his strikeout and walk rates were only average-ish. Jacob Latz had a good season in a swing role but hasn’t been a full-time big league starter yet. Kumar Rocker is a former top prospect but hasn’t put it together in the majors yet.
Gore immediately upgrades the group, especially if he can get back to his first-half performance from 2025. He slots into the front three with deGrom and Eovaldi, bumps Leiter to a back-end role for now and perhaps creates a competition for a fifth spot between Latz, Rocker and others. There is a cliff over the horizon as Eovaldi and Gore are both slated for free agency after 2027. deGrom’s deal has a club option for 2028, with the value conditional on Cy Young voting and inning tallies, though he’ll be 40 by then. But for the next two years, the rotation has a strong core three.
To get that rotation upgrade while avoiding the free agent market, the Rangers have had to part with a notable pile of prospects. Fien appears to be the headliner here. The Rangers just took him 12th overall in the 2025 draft. They gave him a $4.8MM bonus to get him to forgo a commitment to the University of Texas. Still just 18, turning 19 in March, he’s a long-term play.
Baseball America lists him as the #3 prospect in the Texas system. He gets high praise for his offense but with bigger questions about his defense. Most evaluators expect him to be moved off shortstop in the long run, with third base or the outfield corners potential outcomes.
Kiley McDaniel of ESPN writes that the Red Sox really wanted Fien in last year’s draft but they didn’t pick until 15th, three spots behind Texas. Toboni was running Boston’s draft as assistant general manager at the time. Now that he is running his own front office, he apparently made Fien a priority and has used Gore as a means of getting his guy.
Fitz-Gerald, Rosario and Cabrera are a few spots behind Fien on BA’s list, coming in at #8, #13 and #14 respectively. Fitz-Gerald is a 20-year-old infielder who was drafted in the fifth round in 2024. He got into 41 games between the Complex League and Single-A last year, slashing .302/.428/.482. A left shoulder strain prevented him from taking on a bigger workload. He seems to do a decent amount of stuff well without a standout tool. BA suggests a future as a multi-positional player with a bit of pop and speed.
Rosario, 24, was a fifth-round pick in 2023. He had a strong season in 2024, posting a 2.24 ERA between Single-A and High-A, but has been on the shelf since then. He missed 2025 due to an elbow injury but only underwent Tommy John surgery recently, so he’ll miss the entire 2026 season as well. His strong 2024 campaign made him a top 100 prospect, with BA having him at #49 going into 2025, but he’ll be a long-term question mark after two entirely missed seasons. He’ll be Rule 5 eligible this coming December.
Cabrera, 20, was an international signing out of the Dominican Republic. He spent last year in Single-A with a strong walk and strikeout profile but only eight home runs. He’s considered a strong defender in the outfield and he stole 43 bases last year.
Ortiz, 24 next month, has the least prospect hype of this group but is the one closest to impacting the major league club. He split last year between Double-A and Triple-A, hitting 25 home runs and walking in 11.7% of his plate appearances. He had a combined line of .257/.356/.479 and a 124 wRC+. He was added to the Texas 40-man roster a couple of months ago to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft.
Though his numbers in the minors look good on the surface, he has a propensity to chase breaking balls. Evaluators fear that will limit him to being a platoon bat in the majors. He’s also not a strong defender or baserunner, so he needs to hit to carry the profile. Washington has a pretty wide open first base/designated hitter mix, so he can force his way in there if he hits. He also has three option years and can be kept in the minors if he doesn’t.
With four of the five players being long-term plays, it would appear that Washington is just trying to grab whichever players it considers the most talented, as opposed to trying to rush a move towards contending in the near term. Perhaps that was isolated to this deal of their biggest trade chip but it could perhaps indicate that the club is generally operating with a long lens. For the Rangers, losing most of these players won’t hurt them in the short term but it does cut into the system more broadly. As of August, BA ranked them 26th in the league in terms of overall system talent.
CJ Abrams has also been floated as a trade candidate for Washington but with less certainty than Gore as he has three years of club control remaining. The Nats could now pivot to marketing him but his stock is also down a bit due to a poor finish to his most recent season, and in 2024 as well. Perhaps they will hold him for another season to see if he can raise his trade value.
It is clearly an offseason about loading up on future talent for the Nats. They also traded reliever Jose A. Ferrer to the Mariners for catcher Harry Ford and right-hander Isaac Lyon. This deal adds five more intriguing young players to the pipeline.
It also opens up more rotation chances for their other pitchers. As of now, they project to have Cade Cavalli, Foster Griffin, Josiah Gray, Brad Lord, Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker in the mix for starts. Arms like Jake Eder, Luis Perales, Riley Cornelio and Andrew Alvarez will be looking to push in there as well. Perhaps the Gore deal with be followed by the Nats signing a veteran to eat some innings but they could also leave space for the guys in that group.
Due to Gore’s appeal, he reportedly drew interest from half the teams in the league. Some of those clubs moved on to other trade candidates or signed free agents. For those still on the hunt for starting pitching, the market is drying up but they may still have options. As mentioned, a lot of the trade candidates have already changed hands. The Red Sox may have enough depth after their Ranger Suárez signing to flip someone else. The Royals may be willing to part with someone. Free agency still has Framber Valdez, Zac Gallen, Chris Bassitt and a few others.
Jon Heyman of The New York Post first reported Gore was headed to Texas. Jeff Passan of ESPN first laid out the five-for-one framework. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News first reported Fien’s inclusion. Spencer Nusbaum of The Washington Post first mentioned Rosario. Grant then reported Ortiz and Fitz-Gerald, followed by Andrew Golden of The Washington Post adding Cabrera.
Photos courtesy of Brett Davis, Eric Hartline, Kevin Jairaj, Joe Camporeale, Imagn Images
The Phillies have re-signed veteran lefty Tim Mayza to a minor league contract, reports Matt Gelb of The Athletic. He’ll be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee next month. Mayza is represented by Covenant Sports Group.
A veteran of eight big league seasons, Mayza finished the 2025 campaign with Philadelphia after coming over in a trade from the Pirates. He spent the bulk of the 2025 season on the injured list but appeared in 15 games between the two clubs and logged a 3.78 ERA in 16 1/3 frames. Dating back to 2021, the southpaw carries a 3.49 earned run average, 22.2% strikeout rate, 6.7% walk rate and 55% ground-ball rate in 214 1/3 major league innings.
Mayza, who turned 34 last week, still stands as something of a rebound candidate — despite that solid track record. In addition to missing the bulk of the 2025 season due to a lat strain, the longtime Blue Jays southpaw was roughed up for a 6.33 ERA in 42 2/3 innings between Toronto and the Bronx in 2024. His last full, healthy and productive season came with Toronto in 2023, when he turned in 53 1/3 innings with a tiny 1.52 ERA, a 24.7% strikeout rate, a 7% walk rate and a huge 58.2% ground-ball rate.
Mayza typically sits 93-94 mph with a sinker he throws more than two-thirds of the time. (He averaged 93.6 mph on the pitch in 2025.) He’s a two-pitch lefty, complementing that worm-burning two-seamer with a slider that generally sits 86-87 mph (87.1 mph in ’25). Right-handed batters have typically had little trouble handling Mayza, evidenced by a career .281/.350/.474 batting line against him. Conversely, left-handers probably wonder why they even bother when he’s on the mound; Mayza has held same-handed opponents to an awful .214/.266/.304 batting line in his career.
Philadelphia has a pair of quality left-handers — Jose Alvarado and Tanner Banks — in what should be a terrific bullpen overall. Beyond those two southpaws, the Phils boast a contingent of righties including Jhoan Duran, Brad Keller and Orion Kerkering. The final few spots in the ’pen are somewhat up for grabs. Rule 5 pick Zach McCambley and journeyman Zach Pop (who signed a split major league deal this winter) feel particularly vulnerable if someone like Mayza or another in-house candidate enjoys a big spring performance.
3:15pm: Julks does indeed get an invite to big league camp, per Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press, and will make $875K if he cracks the roster.
11:51am: The Tigers have agreed to a minor league contract with free agent outfielder Corey Julks, per the team’s transaction log at MLB.com. He’ll presumably be in big league camp as a non-roster player.
Julks, 30 next month, has seen big league time in three consecutive seasons — albeit just 13 plate appearances with the White Sox this past season. He’s played roughly the equivalent of one full major league season, appearing in 165 games and tallying 565 plate appearances as a big leaguer. In that time, he’s slashed .234/.288/.337 with nine homers, 23 doubles, 20 steals (in 25 tries), a 7% walk rate and a 24.4% strikeout rate. Julks became a free agent after the White Sox passed him through outright waivers following the 2025 season.
It’s middling big league production, but Julks has a long history of producing at the Triple-A level, where he’s spent parts of four seasons and slashed .279/.365/.486. Julks belted 31 homers and swiped 22 bags with the Astros’ Triple-A affiliate back in 2022, and by measure of wRC+, he’s been at least 18% better than average at the plate in all four of his Triple-A campaigns.
Julks doesn’t have a significant platoon split in his fairly limited MLB time — he’s been below average against both lefties and righties — but he’s a right-handed bat who’s pummeled lefties in recent minor league seasons. He slashed .301/.377/.484 against southpaws this past season and hit them at a .297/.381/.424 clip the year prior.
Defensively, Julks has experience at all three outfield spots but has primarily played the corners. He was credited with above-average sprint speed and arm strength in 2023-24 but below-average range in the outfield. He’s also played 415 innings at third base and another 28 at second base in the minors, but he’s primarily a corner outfielder who at best can make an emergency cameo at another spot on the diamond.
The Yankees have claimed outfielder Marco Luciano off waivers from the Orioles, according to announcements from both clubs. Baltimore designated him for assignment a week ago. The Yankees technically have a 40-man spot open for this claim, but their agreement to re-sign Cody Bellinger is not yet official. This moves fills up the 40-man, so a corresponding move will now be required for Bellinger.
It’s possible that corresponding move could involve Luciano himself. The once-vaunted prospect is pinballing around the league this offseason, going from the Giants, to the Pirates, to the Orioles and now the Yankees.
Luciano, 24, was originally signed by the Giants as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic. He spent five seasons residing on Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list, topping out as their No. 12 prospect following the 2020 season. Luciano was productive throughout his run in the lower minors but has yet to hit beyond Double-A.
Through 1017 plate appearances in Triple-A, Luciano is a .227//.351/.401 hitter with a glaring 29.6% strikeout rate. Those tepid rate stats come despite an overwhelmingly hitter-friendly environment in the Pacific Coast League — and specifically in West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park (currently the temporary home of the A’s.)
At one point, Luciano was considered the Giants’ shortstop of the future. His status as Brandon Crawford’s heir wilted as he stumbled in the upper minors, however, and in 2024 the Giants began moving him to other positions. Their signing of Willy Adames on a seven-year deal sealed the fact that if Luciano was going to be a key piece in San Francisco, it’d need to be at another position. The Giants tried him in the outfield as well, but without much luck.
In addition to his Triple-A struggles, Luciano has seen 126 plate appearances in the majors and posted a .217/.286/.304 slash. He’s fanned in 35.7% of his trips to the batter’s box in the majors. There are still plenty of loud tools in his skill set, but Luciano’s jarring swing-and-miss tendencies have proven too prominent to surmount thus far in his career. He’s out of minor league options, so he’ll need to either break camp with the Yankees or be removed from their 40-man roster — most likely via yet another DFA. If it comes to that, the Yankees can try to slip him through waivers in hopes of keeping him Scranton as a depth option in the event that he clears.
The Marlins have acquired minor league catcher Carlos Martinez from the Giants, according to announcements from both clubs. The Giants receive international bonus pool space in return. The amount of pool space changing hands wasn’t specified. No corresponding move is necessary since Martinez wasn’t on the 40-man roster.
Under the international bonus pool system, each team has a finite amount they can spend on international amateurs each year. Broadly speaking, the bigger-market teams get smaller pools and vice versa, in the name of competitive balance. Teams are allowed to trade pool space in increments of $250K but no team can increase its initial pool size by more than 60%.
Per Ben Badler of Baseball America, Miami started with a relatively larger pool of about $7.3571MM. The Giants began with the smallest pool of $5.44MM, tied with three other clubs. That was because they paid the competitive balance tax in 2024 and then signed Willy Adames, who had rejected a qualifying offer from the Brewers, ahead of the 2025 season.
The Giants gave out the biggest bonus for any individual player in this class when they signed Venezuelan shortstop Luis Hernandez for $5MM, using up the vast majority of their pool. This deal gives them a bit more wiggle room for other signings, though it’s unclear exactly how much. Conversely, the Marlins don’t appear to have given any one player more than $1MM, at least with the deals Badler has tracked at BA.
The amount traded isn’t likely to be huge, as Martinez isn’t a top prospect. The 18-year-old was just signed by the Giants as part of last year’s international class and was given a modest bonus of $47.5K. He slashed .143/.259/.242 in 27 games in the Dominican Summer League last year.
It’s the second year in a row that these two clubs have lined up on a swap of this nature. Last year’s deal featured a player much closer to the majors, as the Giants sent right-hander William Kempner to Miami for pool space. Kempner was going into his age-24 season and pitched well enough in the minors last year to get a spot on Miami’s 40-man roster in November.
Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images
The Twins are bringing old friend Taylor Rogers back on a one-year, $2MM contract, per Ken Rosenthal and Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic. Rogers, who’s represented by Frontline Athlete Management, spent the 2016-21 seasons in Minnesota, spending the latter three as their closer and earning an All-Star nod in 2021. Minnesota has a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding move to create space for Rogers (and another one for recently signed catcher Victor Caratini).
A reunion with the 35-year-old Rogers makes sense for a Twins club that’s in dire need of steady arms in the bullpen. While the left-hander isn’t close to the peak form he showed late in his original run with Minnesota, he pitched to a solid 3.38 ERA with an above-average 24% strikeout rate in 50 2/3 innings between the Reds and Cubs in 2025. Rogers’ 10.4% walk rate was the second-highest of his lengthy career and more than double the 4.3% mark he posted over his best three seasons as a Twin (2019-21), but he was a useful middle relief arm in both Cincinnati and Chicago this past season.
Beyond the decline in command, Rogers has seen a fundamental decline in the strength of his repertoire. He averaged 95.7 mph on his sinker and 84 mph on his slider back in 2021. In 2025, those pitches were carried respective average velocities of 92.7 mph and 78.4 mph. Accordingly, Rogers has seen a notable drop in his swinging-strike rate and significant upticks in his opponents’ contact rate.
Rogers was traded from the Twins to the Padres just prior to Opening Day in 2022 — a deal that brought Chris Paddack and Emilio Pagan back to Minnesota. (Brent Rooker was also shipped to San Diego in that deal, but he was cut loose by both the Friars and Royals before breaking out with the A’s.) He went on to sign a three-year, $33MM deal with the Giants, who traded him to the Reds late last offseason.
The Giants seemed to quickly sour on using Rogers in high-leverage spots. He collected a dozen holds and a pair of saves while pitching decently in year one of his contract but was moved to a middle-relief capacity the following season. In terms of leverage index, Rogers has worked primarily in low-leverage spots over the past two seasons. On the whole, the results over the life of that three-year contract were sound (3.16 ERA), but Rogers’ rate stats have faded steadily.
Even a lesser version of Rogers than the one remembered and beloved by many Twins fans will be an improvement to a Minnesota bullpen that was gutted at last year’s trade deadline. The Twins traded five relievers — Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Louis Varland, Danny Coulombe, Brock Stewart — as part of a fire sale that netted a combination of MLB-ready young players (e.g. Mick Abel, Taj Bradley, Alan Roden) and well-regarded prospects (e.g. Eduardo Tait, Kendry Rojas). That slate of trades decimated what had been one of the best bullpens in the sport; Twins relievers posted the fourth-worst ERA in the sport following last year’s deadline.
There’s virtually no certainty in the Twins’ bullpen at present. Rogers immediately becomes the most experienced member of the group and, for now anyway, could be an option for high-leverage spots or even save opportunities. He’ll join Justin Topa, Cole Sands and Kody Funderburk (who excelled down the stretch following last year’s fire sale) as the only current members of the bullpen with even one full year of major league service time.
The Twins have a deep collection of young starters, several of whom could end up in the ’pen over the long run, but there’s clearly room to add another veteran arm here — if not multiple arms. Rogers’ modest $2MM guarantee bumps Minnesota’s payroll to just under $109MM, per RosterResource’s estimates.
That’s around $25MM lower than last year’s mark, so even with ownership scaling back payroll, the front office should still have sufficient resources to bring in another arm. Hard-throwing righty Seranthony Dominguez is among the relievers to whom the Twins have reportedly spoken, while other yet-unsigned relief options of note include Michael Kopech, Nick Martinez, Tommy Kahnle, Paul Sewald and Coulombe.
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