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Kyle Schwarber Declines Mutual Option

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Red Sox outfielder Kyle Schwarber declined his half of an $11.5MM mutual option and is now a free agent, per the Associated Press. Schwarber signed a one-year, $10MM contract with the Nationals last winter — a deal that guaranteed him a $7MM salary in 2021 plus a $3MM buyout on the option he’s now declined. The Red Sox will not be able to issue a qualifying offer, as he’s ineligible to receive one after being traded from Washington to Boston midseason.

Kyle Schwarber | Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

It was a season to remember for the 28-year-old Schwarber, who opened the year with a rather pedestrian two-month stretch in D.C. before embarking on one of the great hot streaks in the history of Major League Baseball. The former No. 4 overall draft pick carried a .218/.312/.404 batting line through his first 215 plate appearances in Washington, making the Cubs’ decision to non-tender him the prior winter look at least somewhat justified. From that point forth, however, Schwarber found another gear and delivered the best production of his career.

On June 12, Schwarber went 1-for-3 with a solo homer in the first game of a doubleheader. An inauspicious game in and of itself, that kicked off a prodigious stretch that saw Schwarber blast a near-unfathomable 16 home runs in a span of 18 games — a total of just 77 plate appearances. From June 12 through July 2, Schwarber posted a Herculean .338/.409/.974 batting line. It looked as though no pitcher could stop Schwarber at that point, but unfortunately for both him and the Nats, an injury could. A hamstring strain landed Schwarber on the injured list on July 3, and during his absence, a free-falling Nats club engineered a rare (for them) fire sale that saw an injured Schwarber traded to the Red Sox.

The Sox knew full well that Schwarber wouldn’t be ready for a bit at the time of his acquisition, but his activation on Aug. 13 was rather surprising. The Sox, facing some dire needs in the lineup, reinstated Schwarber from the injured list after a six-week layoff without even sending him out on a minor league rehab assignment. And yet, despite being dropped cold into the throes of the AL East, Schwarber immediately resumed his juggernaut status at the plate.

In 168 plate appearances down the stretch with the Sox, Schwarber mashed at a .291/.435/.522 clip with seven home runs and 10 doubles. The hot streak carried on into the postseason, where Schwarber opened with a 9-for-32 showing with three home runs — including an epic Game 3 ALCS grand slam. That proved to finally be the stopping point for Schwarber, however, as he was held hitless in his next 16 plate appearances as the Astros came back to topple the Sox and end their season.

Schwarber played in just 113 regular season games but nevertheless belted 32 home runs while slashing a stout .266/.374/.554 with a 13.6% walk rate and a 27.0% strikeout rate. He won’t win any awards for his glovework in the outfield, and his brief foray at first base wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. However, the the likely advent of the designated hitter in the National League and a mammoth showing at the plate, Schwarber should see a robust market for his services this winter.

Teams may still have some questions about Schwarber’s ability to handle lefties. He hit .268/.389/.398 against them in 2021, albeit with a .377 average on balls in play and in only 149 plate appearances. In 435 prior plate appearances against southpaws, from 2015-20, Schwarber managed only a .197/.301/.348 output. He did cut his strikeout rate and improve his walk rate against southpaws in 2021, however, so the gains weren’t solely BABIP-driven. The extent to which he can sustain (or build upon) those improvements against lefties will be pivotal to Schwarber’s market, but regardless, he’s positioned himself as one of the top bats of the offseason.

Nick Castellanos To Exercise Opt-Out Clause

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Reds right fielder Nick Castellanos has exercised the opt-out clause in his contract and will reenter the free agent market, reports MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (Twitter link). The Scott Boras client had two years and $34MM remaining on his contract but will seek a lengthier contract (and a heftier annual value) on the open market. The Reds can, and surely will, extend an $18.4MM qualifying offer to Castellanos — which he’s a lock to reject.

Nick Castellanos | David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

Castellanos, 30 in March, has been a near-lock to opt out of this contract for months now. While he decided to forgo the first opt-out provision in his deal last winter after a slumping through the pandemic-shortened season’s final weeks, he’s been one of the best hitters in the National League throughout the 2021 season. Had the microfracture in his wrist suffered back in late July proven to sideline him for a longer period or weigh down his production in the final two months, perhaps it’d have been another story, but Castellanos finished the season on a blistering tear at the plate.

On the whole, Castellanos batted .309/.362/.576 this season, complementing a career-high 34 home runs with 38 doubles and a triple en route to a stout 140 wRC+ on the season. That includes a .294/.335/.606 slash and 14 round-trippers in his final 176 plate appearances, which surely allayed any concern that the July wrist injury would linger and impact his production at the dish.

On the defensive end of the equation, Castellanos once again had his share of struggles. Virtually any defensive metric will paint him as below average in right field, and that’s been an issue for him dating back to his days as a third baseman in Detroit. Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average both pegged Castellanos at -7 in 2021 — which is actually an improvement over recent seasons — and he checked in with a -1.5 Ultimate Zone Rating. Some may be surprised to see that Castellanos actually has above-average sprint speed (65th percentile among MLB position players), but Statcast also puts him in just the seventh percentile in terms of his outfield jumps.

Overall, the lack of defensive value shouldn’t matter too much. Castellanos has been a consistently above-average hitter since a breakout 2016 campaign with the Tigers, and he enjoyed the best season of his career this past season. With the widely expected advent of the designated hitter in the National League, it’s possible that he’ll be more valuable than ever before in 2022. Full-time (or even semi-regular) DH work was never an option for Castellanos in Detroit thanks to the presence of Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez, and he’s spent his two and a half seasons away from the Motor City in the National League. Even if he doesn’t immediately slide into full-time DH territory, Castellanos at the very least could see fewer innings in the outfield than he has in the past.

While it’s likely that Castellanos’ mind has been made up on this matter for some time, last night’s comments from Cincinnati general manager Nick Krall surely didn’t create any second thoughts. Krall didn’t outright say that the Reds are going to further slash payroll, but that was the overwhelmingly clear implication as the GM voiced a need to “align our payroll with our resources” and stressed the importance of “scouting and developing young talent from within our system.”

The Reds dumped Raisel Iglesias’ $9.125MM salary on the Angels last offseason and surprisingly non-tendered Archie Bradley just three months after trading for him. Krall’s Wednesday comments — and, to a lesser extent, yesterday’s trade of stalwart catcher Tucker Barnhart — suggest that there’s more of the same in store this winter. In fairness to the Reds, they have a ready-made, offensively superior 2022 option at catcher in Tyler Stephenson, and Barnhart’s salary was steeper than most any team would pay for a backup catcher. How the Reds handle their $10MM club option on southpaw Wade Miley will be more telling.

Suffice it to say, it seems difficult to imagine the Reds pushing to re-sign Castellanos to a new contract that figures to include both a raise on his annual value and at least double the years he previously had remaining. Castellanos is arguably (although not definitively) the best hitter on the free-agent market this winter, and if the designated hitter indeed comes to the National League, he’ll have a vast market of teams bidding on his services. A contract of at least four years in length seems certain, and it’s quite possible that even with a qualifying offer in tow, bidding could push into the five-year range.

Rockies Notes: Gray, Owings, Rodgers

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Jon Gray is a few days away from fielding offers around the league, after the 29-year-old rejected a three-year extension offer from the Rockies that reportedly landed in the $35-40MM range. It’s widely expected the Rox will issue him an $18.4MM qualifying offer before Sunday’s deadline, thereby at least entitling themselves draft pick compensation were he to sign elsewhere.

General manager Bill Schmidt has yet to formally announce the club’s intentions on a Gray QO, but he acknowledged to Thomas Harding of MLB.com the front office is “discussing” whether to do so. With the Rockies already willing to offer Gray $12-13MM annually over a three-year term, it’d be surprising if they weren’t willing to risk him accepting a one-year deal for just $5-6MM more.

Harding suggests in a separate piece that Colorado still hopes to eventually work out a deal with Gray, writing that the Rockies “believe they value Gray more than other teams.” Given that he’s shown himself capable of finding success in Coors Field, that’d certainly be plenty reasonable. Still, the pitcher and his representatives evidently believe there’s a chance they’ll find an offer that tops the Rockies’ proposal on the open market.

Retaining Gray would require a significant investment on Colorado’s part, but it’d be far easier to keep another of their free agents — Chris Owings — in the fold. Owings has spent the past two seasons with the Rockies, joining the organization on minor league deals in both instances. Colorado would like to bring Owings back in 2022, Harding hears. It’s possible that’d come via another minors pact, as the utilityman was limited to just 50 plate appearances this past season (albeit with a highly productive .326/.420/.628 line) by a pair of injuries to his left thumb.

One free agent who almost definitely will not be returning is Trevor Story. A lock to receive and reject a qualifying offer, Story is all but certain to sign a significant multi-year deal elsewhere. The Rockies will have to address one middle infield spot this winter, then, and Harding writes they’re expected to target shortstop help. Brendan Rodgers came up as a shortstop prospect before moving to second base in deference to Story. It’s not out of the question Colorado could bump Rodgers back to short and add an external option at second base, but Harding hears the front office would prefer to keep the 25-year-old Rodgers at the keystone moving forward.

Nick Martinez Expected To Draw Big League Interest This Winter

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This year’s free agent market features a number of starters who could deepen a Major League team’s rotation. Beyond the abundance of former Cy Young Award winners and All-Stars, however, is a recently dominant but much less heralded name: Nick Martinez. Martinez, who has spent the past four seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, is slated to reach free agency next month and could draw major league interest, notes Jon Heyman of the MLB Network.

Martinez was an 18th-round pick by the Rangers in the 2011 draft who exceeded expectations by posting solid run prevention numbers up and down his minor league career. The starting pitcher’s steady production led to a 2014 Major League promotion that looked a lot like the ensuing three seasons of his Rangers tenure. Throughout his time in Texas, the right-hander followed this trend: average-ish ground-ball, walk and fly-ball rates, not nearly enough strikeouts, and too many home runs. Thanks to the sheer amount of contact Martinez allowed, opponents were able to hit a hearty .277/.343/.476 off him.

After a 2017 season that saw his ERA climb to new heights, Martinez was non-tendered by Texas. Several teams must’ve been dreaming on the chance to tap into Martinez’s upside, however, as the starting pitcher rebuffed multiple Major League offers and signed overseas with the NPB’s Nippon-Ham Fighters for a guaranteed $2.2MM. While his career abroad started promisingly, his next two seasons with the team saw his ERA and walk rates trend in the wrong direction.

This all leads us to the 2021 season where Martinez latched on with the SoftBank Hawks, also of NPB. The veteran’s performance for his third organization was, in a word, incredible. Across 149 innings, he stymied hitters, producing a 1.62 ERA, significantly slashing his home run rate, and striking out nearly a batter per inning. His 2021 performance was further bolstered on the world stage when he twirled 11 equally dominant innings with Team USA’s Olympic team. That success in NPB and international play should put the 31-year-old on some MLB teams’ radars, although Heyman hears that the Hawks are unsurprisingly expected to make an effort to keep him in Fukuoka.

Blue Jays Notes: Pearson, Grichuk, Moreno

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Toronto’s top decision-makers talked with reporters to discuss a number of ways they hope to improve upon a 91-win club that came incredibly close to a playoff berth. While a good deal of attention has been paid to who the Blue Jays stand to lose this offseason, executives are rightfully pointing to improvement from within as a reason for optimism.

Chief among those internal improvements is getting a healthy season out of highly touted right-hander Nate Pearson. First he’ll have to recover from offseason surgery to repair a sports hernia that plagued the 25-year-old’s most recent season. Fortunately, GM Ross Atkins expects the surgery to be a blip in the pitcher’s offseason routine and won’t impact his Spring Training availability, stating “He should be fine — he should not be disrupted at all” (per Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling).

Anything resembling a full return to health for Pearson will surely be a welcome sight for Toronto brass, as the talented pitcher has tossed just 33 innings at the highest level owing to groin and elbow injuries. These recurring maladies very well may have contributed to what’s been a rough Major League tenure so far, as evidenced by a career 5.18 ERA and bloated 16.5% walk rate. Toronto will accordingly proceed with some caution, though Atkins reiterated his hope for Pearson to build his strength back up as a starter and provide “the impact of someone that can punch people out and pitch deeper and deeper into games.”

Other improvements, Atkins notes (via Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi), can come in the form of simply giving left-handed batters more playing time. For context, Toronto lefties stepped to the plate less than any other team last season, combining to produce a .653 OPS that ranked 28th in baseball. While both Atkins and president Mark Shapiro were tight-lipped about players who could help strike a better lineup balance, the latter did speak to the ability of trades that could “take an addition by subtraction.”

Speculatively, any left-handed addition could come from the trade of oft-rumored trade candidates Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Randal Grichuk, both of whom hit from the right side. While Grichuk’s underperformance this past season (.241/.281/.423 through 149 games) — to say nothing of the remaining two years and $20.7MM on his contract — hampers his value, Davidi does note the outfielder drew interest at the most recent trade deadline. Achieving more left-handed opportunities in the lineup might not stem directly from a return in any hypothetical Grichuk trade but may be done so by simply freeing up the at-bats of a previously entrenched right-handed hitter.

The Jays also boast an enviable crop of Major League-ready catchers in their system and could subtract from this group to achieve Shapiro’s aforementioned addition. Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk provided strong offensive production from the position last year, posting nearly identical OPS marks of .772 and .764 from the right side. But either could prove expendable given the similar production of the other.

Further crowding the catching picture is the presence of prospect Gabriel Moreno, who had a huge showing in limited action at Double-A this year and continues to mash in the Arizona Fall League. Then again, farm director Gil Kim notes Moreno has done “a lot of work at third base at the Player Development Complex. While that’s not his primary position, it is an option that maybe down the road will be in play. Right now we’re focused on catching but as we’ve seen, maximizing versatility is huge.” With Moreno also batting from the right side, it’s possible his presence affects the status of other righties around the infield, like breakout infielder Santiago Espinal. Whatever transactions are made to address the Jays’ perceived lack of lineup balance and desire to build on last year’s record, the front office surely has room to maneuver with both Major League trade chips and payroll space at their disposal.

Guardians Expected To Hire Chris Valaika As Hitting Coach

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The Guardians are expected to hire Chris Valaika as their new hitting coach, reports the MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. Valaika had been serving as the assistant hitting coach for the Cubs.

A former infielder, Valaika appeared in the big leagues with the Reds, Marlins and Cubs from 2010-14. (His younger brother Pat Valaika still plays in the majors and spent the 2020-21 seasons with the Orioles). Chris Valaika wrapped up his playing career after 2015 and moved into an administrative role with the Cubs not long after. He spent a few seasons as the team’s minor league hitting coordinator before becoming Chicago’s assistant hitting coach over the 2020-21 offseason.

After just one season on a big league staff, Valaika looks set to land the Guardians’ hitting coach position. Should a deal ultimately come to fruition, he’d replace Ty Van Burkleo, who served as Cleveland hitting coach from 2013-21 but was let go last month.

Brett Gardner, Darren O’Day Reach Free Agency

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The Yankees announced this evening that both outfielder Brett Gardner and reliever Darren O’Day have reached free agency. Both players had contracts with player options that they each declined. Their respective deals allowed the Yankees to bring back either player by then exercising a pricier club option, but the team decided not to do so in either case.

It’s the second consecutive offseason in which the Yankees have declined an option on Gardner. Last winter, the club opted to buy the veteran out rather than bring him back for $10MM. After a few months on the open market, the career-long Yankee returned to the Bronx on a complex deal that paid him a $2.85MM salary in 2021. The contract contained a $2.3MM player option for 2022. Were Gardner to decline, the Yankees were left to decide between exercising a $7.15MM club option or buying him out for $1.15MM.

Both sides have chosen to decline their end, meaning Gardner will collect the buyout figure and hit the open market. This again raises the possibility that Gardner could land elsewhere after spending the past fourteen seasons in a Yankee uniform. It’s certainly still possible New York and Gardner’s reps at Meister Sports Management look to hammer out a new agreement that lands somewhere in between the respective values of the player and club options, but he’ll now be free to explore opportunities with other teams as well.

The 2021 campaign was something of a mixed bag for Gardner, who likely wound up thrust into a bigger role than the team had envisioned. With Aaron Hicks suffering a season-ending injury in May, the 38-year-old Gardner stepped in as the Yankees’ primary center fielder. Both Statcast’s Outs Above Average and Defensive Runs Saved tabbed him as a roughly average center fielder, no small feat for a player his age.

Gardner’s production on the other side of the ball dipped, though, as he posted his worst hitting numbers since 2018. Over 461 plate appearances, the left-handed batter put up a .222/.327/.362 line with 10 homers. Gardner still walked in a fantastic 13% of his trips and struck out less often than average, but he’s posted low batting averages on balls in play for the last few seasons and the 28 homers he popped in 2019 looks like an outlier after back-to-back down power years.

While Gardner has spent his entire career in pinstripes, O’Day’s time in the Bronx might last just one season. The veteran submariner signed a free agent deal with a similar structure as Gardner’s last winter, albeit at a lesser sum. His contract paid a $1.75MM salary in 2021 and came with a $1.4MM player option for 2022. Once O’Day declined his end, the Yankees were left to decide whether to bring him back for $3.15MM or buy him out for $700K.

O’Day’s time with the Yankees didn’t go according to plan, as he was limited to 10 2/3 innings by injuries, including a left hamstring strain that ended his season in early July. Now 39 years old and coming off an injury-wrecked season, O’Day is looking at another low-cost deal this winter. Still, he seems likely to top the $700K gap between his buyout figure and the player option salary, so he’ll hit the open market in search of other opportunities. When healthy, O’Day has consistently been productive, posting a sub-4.00 ERA in every year since 2011.

Astros To Exercise 2022 Option On Yuli Gurriel

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The Astros are set to exercise their $8MM club option to bring Yuli Gurriel back for 2022, the first baseman himself announced on Twitter. That’s hardly an unexpected development, as that option has looked like a mere formality for months given how well Gurriel played in 2021.

Gurriel returns for what’ll be a seventh season in Houston. A productive hitter over his first few seasons, he scuffled through an uncharacteristically poor 2020 campaign. Despite those struggles, the Astros struck early to keep him from reaching free agency last winter, signing him for a guaranteed $7.5MM in September with the 2022 option. It seemed a bit of a puzzling move at the time, but it turned out to be a fantastic decision by general manager James Click and his staff.

Not only did Gurriel return to form this past season, he posted a career year. Over 605 plate appearances, the right-handed hitter put up a .319/.383/.462 line with 15 home runs. That .319 mark won Gurriel his first batting title, and his overall offensive output was 34 percentage points above the league average by measure of wRC+. While he doesn’t hit for the kind of power typically found at the position, Gurriel is one of the game’s hardest players to strike out and walked in a career-high 9.8% of his plate appearances this past season.

With Gurriel’s option taken care of, he’ll return to again assume the everyday first base job. The move brings the Astros’ guaranteed 2022 commitments just north of $114MM, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. An arbitration class collectively projected to earn around $14.5MM will push that total near $130MM before considering outside additions. That’s about $60MM shy of their season-opening outlay in 2021, so Click and his staff should have some flexibility in trying to retain or replace a free agent group that includes Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander,Kendall Graveman and Zack Greinke.

Zack Greinke Not Expected To Re-Sign With Astros

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The Astros have one of the more significant crop of free agents around the league, as the team is facing the potential departures of Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander, Kendall Graveman and Zack Greinke, among others. Houston may make an effort to retain some of that group, but Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports (on Twitter) that Greinke is not expected to return to the Astros this winter.

Assuming he indeed signs elsewhere, Greinke will wrap up his Astros tenure after two and a half seasons. Acquired from the D-Backs in a surprise 2019 deadline day blockbuster, the six-time All-Star worked 62 2/3 innings with a pristine 3.02 ERA down the stretch. While he was knocked around in one start during the Division Series, Greinke had strong showings in both the AL Championship Series and World Series that year.

Over the past two seasons, Greinke has offered more steady mid-rotation production than the ace-caliber numbers he consistently posted for the bulk of his career. He worked 67 frames of 4.03 ERA ball in 2020, and put up a similar 4.16 mark over 171 innings this past season. His underlying numbers this year took a worrying downturn, though, which contributed to the team curtailing his postseason workload. Greinke’s strikeout rate dropped from 24.5% in 2020 to 17.2% this past season, while his home run rate doubled. During this year’s run to the World Series, skipper Dusty Baker relied more heavily on the team’s younger arms, with Greinke working just 6 1/3 innings of two-run ball in three playoff outings.

The dip in swing-and-miss should have some impact on Greinke’s offseason market, but the 38-year-old will no doubt still find plenty of interest. His 4.16 ERA, while his highest mark since 2016, was nevertheless a bit better than the leaguewide 4.34 showing for starting pitchers. Greinke remains one of the sport’s preeminent control artists, with this year’s 5.2% walk percentage checking in 11th-lowest among the 129 hurlers with 100+ innings. And that’s before considering the intangible value teams could expect from the 18-year big league veteran, who is regarded as one of the league’s most cerebral pitchers.

Nightengale suggests Greinke would prefer an opportunity with a National League team. That’s something of an odd distinction on the surface, since it’s widely expected that this offseason’s collective bargaining talks could result in the introduction of the designated hitter to the NL (thereby removing the biggest differentiator between the two leagues). Still, it’s possible Greinke — who played the bulk of the 2011-19 seasons playing for NL clubs — might broadly prefer the accommodations or ballparks in the NL to those of the American League.

Buster Posey Announces Retirement

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After 12 Major League seasons, Buster Posey has called it a career.  Alongside his wife Kristen, the longtime Giants catcher announced his retirement in a press conference Thursday afternoon.

Going into the offseason, the only question surrounding Posey seemed to be whether the Giants would simply exercise their $22MM club option on the catcher for next season, or if the two sides would work out a longer-term extension.  Posey hit .304/.390/.499 with 18 home runs in 454 plate appearances in 2021, rebounding to prime form after opting out of the 2020 season, and struggling through a 2019 season in the aftermath of hip surgery.

Buster Posey verticalInstead, Posey will now hang up his cleats, ending an outstanding run as a Bay Area icon.  Drafted with the fifth overall pick of the 2008 draft, Posey made his big league debut in 2009 and then won Rookie Of The Year honors in 2010, helping lead the Giants to their first World Series title since 1954.

That was the first of three championship rings for Posey, as he became the face of this era of Giants baseball.  Posey’s long list of achievements includes the 2012 NL MVP Award, seven All-Star selections, four Silver Slugger Awards, and a Gold Glove in 2016.  He retires with 158 home runs and a career slash line of .302/.372/.460 over 5607 plate appearances, and is likely heading for a Hall Of Fame induction in five years’ time.

While Posey’s outstanding 2021 leaves the impression that he has plenty left in the tank, it shouldn’t be ignored that at this time last year, a retirement following the 2021 campaign seemed quite plausible, or even likely.  The hip surgery was the latest in a series of notable injuries for Posey throughout his career, including leg and ankle injuries suffered in a collision with Scott Cousins in 2011 (the impetus for MLB changing its rules about baserunners can make contact with catchers while trying to score).  Most troubling, Posey also suffered multiple concussions over the course of his 12 years, and there was long speculation that the Giants would eventually move him over to a semi-permanent first base role.

Posey is only 34 years old, but with all of his accumulated wear-and-tear, it could be that he simply preferred to leave on the high note of a great personal season and the Giants’ 107-win campaign.  Posey and his wife are also the parents of four children, including adopted twin girls born prematurely last summer (which Posey said factored into his decision to opt out of the 2020 season).  There is certainly nothing left to prove for Posey, and he can now enjoy a well-deserved retirement and more time with his family.

While Posey’s role in Giants history can’t truly be replaced, the team hopes it already has a worthy heir apparent in Joey Bart, the second overall pick of the 2018 draft.  Posey’s return to form created some questions about how exactly San Francisco would juggle playing time behind the plate, yet now the catching situation looks like it will consist of Bart and incumbent veteran Curt Casali.  The Giants could quite possibly target another veteran to compete with Casali in Spring Training and provide more backing in case Bart (who has played in only 35 Major League games) needs more time to get acclimated.

San Francisco also now has at least $22MM in extra payroll space next season, not that the team didn’t already have plenty of spending capacity.  The Giants’ surprising 107-win year has left the team well ahead of schedule in their rebuild, and the focus will squarely be on contending for a World Series title in 2022.  While truly big expenditures haven’t been part of the strategy thus far for president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, he will have every avenue open to him this winter, whether it be major free agent signings, big-ticket trade acquisitions, re-signing notable in-house free agents like Brandon Belt, or all of the above.

Andrew Baggarly of the Athletic first reported Posey’s decision to retire.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

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