Dodgers To Acquire Chayce McDermott
The Orioles are trading right-hander Chayce McDermott, whom they designated for assignment last week, to the Dodgers, per Jon Heyman of the New York Post. He’s being optioned to Triple-A Oklahoma City with his new club, Jack Harris of the California Post adds.
McDermott, 25, is only a couple seasons removed from being considered one of Baltimore’s top prospects. He fired 119 frames of 3.10 ERA ball between Double-A and Triple-A and followed that with 100 frames and a 3.78 ERA in Triple-A the following season. McDermott made a brief MLB debut in 2024, tossing four innings, and it looked as though he’d soon emerge as a regular contributor on the Orioles’ staff.
That never happened, however. The 2025 season was a nightmare for the former fourth-rounder. McDermott was shelled for a 6.91 ERA in his first 11 starts at the Triple-A level. Opponents collected 43 hits — six of them homers — and drew 36 walks in just 43 innings across that brutal run of 11 starts. McDermott also hit four batters and was charged with seven wild pitches. In light of those struggles, the O’s moved him to the bullpen. After a rough first outing (five runs in 1 2/3 innings), he settled in to log a 1.76 ERA and 18-to-7 K/BB ratio across his final 15 1/3 innings out of the Triple-A bullpen.
It’s been a struggle for McDermott in 2026. He’s pitched 5 1/3 innings out of the Norfolk bullpen and surrendered four runs on five hits, six walks and a hit-by-pitch. McDermott also pitched three spring innings for Baltimore and was tagged for three solo home runs.
Shaky command has long been McDermott’s biggest flaw, and with the right-hander still struggling in that regard during what’s now his final minor league option year, Baltimore moved on last week. McDermott’s former prospect status was enough to generate some interest in the trade market, and he’ll now see whether he can become the latest change-of-scenery candidate to find new life in the Dodgers organization. Los Angeles has plenty of success stories of this nature, though that’s in part due to the sheer volume of players they pick up in fringe transactions of just this nature. Often, they’ll quickly try to pass said player through waivers themselves, though since McDermott can still be optioned, there’s no urgency to do so in the immediate future.
More to come.
Cardinals Outright Jared Shuster
Left-hander Jared Shuster went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment, the Cardinals announced Thursday. He’s been assigned outright to Triple-A Memphis. As a player who’s previously been outrighted, he’ll have the right to decline that assignment in favor of free agency.
A former first-round pick (Braves, 2020), Shuster signed a minor league contract with the Cardinals this past December. He was selected to the major league roster in early April and appeared in two games, tossing a total of 3 2/3 innings out of the bullpen. Opponents scored a pair of runs on the strength of two hits and two walks in that short span. Shuster fanned only one of the 15 batters he faced.
This marks the fourth season in which the 27-year-old Shuster has logged some big league time. The Wake Forest product has a 5.26 ERA through 145 1/3 innings in the majors, due in large part to sub-par strikeout and walk rates of 15.3% and 10.2%. He’s a fly-ball pitcher who’s never given up much hard contact, but Shuster’s inability to miss bats and penchant for free passes have led to too much traffic on the bases behind him.
Shuster’s run-prevention numbers in Triple-A generally mirror those big league rates. He’s missed a few more bats and walked hitters at a slightly lower rate in the upper minors, as one would expect, but the lefty hasn’t posted quality all-around results since a 2022 season split between Double-A and Triple-A. Shuster sits just over 92 mph with his heater and couples that pitch with a mid-80s slider and low-80s changeup. He tinkered with an upper-80s cutter during his brief look with St. Louis and got good results on the pitch in a minuscule sample.
Shuster is out of minor league options, so if he’s added back to the big league roster at any point, he’ll need to stick in the majors or else go through this DFA cycle again if the Cardinals want to send him down.
Mike Trout Might Be Back
Two ninth-inning collapses by the Angels’ bullpen have overshadowed Mike Trout‘s dominant performance in the Bronx this week. The veteran outfielder has slugged home runs in all three games of the series. He has four long balls in total against the Yankees, including three in consecutive plate appearances from Monday to Tuesday. Trout’s two-run blast in the fifth inning on Wednesday gave the Angels their first lead of the contest. Closer Jordan Romano would ultimately cough it up on a walk-off double by Jose Caballero.
The power is always there for Trout. Even in a “down” 2025 season that saw the three-time MVP post his worst wRC+ since his rookie year, he still socked 26 home runs in 130 games. The home run off Luis Gil yesterday was Trout’s sixth of the season through 18 games. Last year, it only took him 11 games to reach a half dozen dingers. Trout had a .926 OPS at that point in the year. He has a .945 OPS right now.
The main difference between last season’s strong start and this year’s early results is the contact. Trout has cut his strikeout rate to 21.4%. His swinging-strike rate is down to 6.0%. Perhaps most importantly, Trout has an overall 84.4% contact rate and a 93% in-zone contact rate. Those are the best marks of his 16-year career.
It’s a small sample, of course, but those are key indicators for aging hitters as they get deeper into their careers. Getting consistently beaten in the strike zone is usually a clear sign that a hitter can no longer compete against big-league pitching. The 34-year-old Trout has the 27th-best zone contact rate among qualified hitters this season. He had the 25th-worst mark in 2025.
One option for declining veterans is to sacrifice batted-ball quality in exchange for more contact. Trout has not gone that route. His strikeout rate improvements this season have come with an absurd level of impact on the ball. He ranks in the 100th percentile in barrel rate, expected slugging percentage, and expected wOBA. Trout’s 93.5 mph average exit velocity is his best as a pro, outside of the shortened 2020 season. He’s not beating the ball into the ground, either. Trout has a 69.4% air contact rate, right in line with his career mark of 66.6%. His split for that metric has leaned toward fly balls (42.9%) instead of line drives (18.4%), which could partly explain his meager .233 average on balls in play. Trout’s pop-up rate has been in line with career norms.
Trout’s opponent this week offers a pair of interesting comparisons from a career-arc perspective. Giancarlo Stanton and Paul Goldschmidt have taken two different paths as they’ve reached the tail-end of their MLB journeys, but ultimately ended up in a similar place. Trout seemed to be headed in the direction of the 36-year-old Stanton. The Yankees’ slugger delivered one of the more impactful campaigns of his recent New York tenure in 2025, crushing 24 home runs in just 281 plate appearances, but it came with a career-worst 34.2% strikeout rate. Stanton has never been an above-average contact hitter, though a 74.9% zone contact rate is a particularly low output. Rafael Devers was the only qualified hitter below 76% last year.
The 38-year-old Goldschmidt went the other direction. He pushed his contact metrics to career-best levels in New York. The first baseman struck out just 18.7% of the time, while putting the ball in play on more than 80% of his swings. The tradeoff was batted-ball quality. Goldschmidt had just a 7.9% barrel rate, his first year being in the single digits since 2016. The veteran’s 43.7% hard-hit rate was his worst mark since the shortened 2020 season. Goldschmidt got his batting average back up to .274 after it had slipped to .245 in his final year with the Cardinals, but he also managed just 10 home runs. The performance was enough for the Yankees to bring him back this year in a part-time role. Stanton also remains a semi-regular, given his defensive limitations and persistent health concerns.
Health is a factor with Trout as well. The main positive from his 2025 campaign was that he played 130 games, his most since 2019. That year happens to be the last time he brought home AL MVP honors. Trout already had an injury scare this season, though this one wasn’t exactly his fault. He missed a game in the first week of April after getting hit on the hand by a pitch. He’s been back in the lineup every game since.
After spending the majority of 2025 at DH, with the Angels hoping to keep him healthy, Trout is back in his familiar spot in center field this season. He has been around league average with the glove (1 DRS, -1 OAA). More notably from a health outlook, he ranks in the 90th percentile in sprint speed. That’s a huge improvement from last year, when he ranked in the 62nd percentile. It was his first time below the 90th percentile in the Statcast era.
A mid-30s resurgence for Trout would be a massive Angels boon not only for the obvious on-field benefits but also because a substantial portion of the team’s decreased payroll is tied up in Trout’s contract. He’s signed at $35.45MM annually through the 2030 season.
The Angels ran a payroll north of $205MM in 2025 but slashed spending in 2026. After accounting for Anthony Rendon‘s deferred/restructured contract, the Angels’ payroll is in the $150MM vicinity. If last year’s $200MM+ payroll was more of an outlier than the beginning of a new trend, it’ll be all the more critical for Trout to deliver on his contract. His current salary accounts for about 23.5% of the team’s payroll — a substantial hike from last year’s 17% mark.
For now, Trout will look to extend his homer streak against Max Fried on Thursday. It’ll be his first look at the Yankees lefty. Only one of Trout’s home runs has come against southpaws this season. From a bigger-picture vantage point, it’ll be telling to keep an eye on Trout’s contact metrics as the season progresses. He doesn’t need to continue posting career-best contact levels in order to return to true All-Star status, but the fact that he’s even been able to do so through his first 18 games — without sacrificing power — in his age-34 season is both remarkable and a sign of hope for Angels fans.
Photo courtesy of Brad Penner, Imagn Images
Nationals Acquire Richard Lovelady
The Nationals announced Thursday that they’ve acquired left-hander Richard Lovelady from the Mets in exchange for cash. Fellow southpaw Ken Waldichuk, who was recently recommended for Tommy John surgery, moves to the 60-day IL to open a spot on the 40-man roster. The Mets designated Lovelady for assignment over the weekend.
Lovelady was with the Nats in spring training but wound up going back to the Mets for a fourth stint in the past year when New York scooped him off waivers a couple weeks before Opening Day. He wound up making the Mets’ roster and has since pitched 7 1/3 innings of relief, holding opponents to three earned runs (3.68 ERA) on eight hits and four walks with six punchouts.
The 30-year-old Lovelady has now pitched in parts of seven big league seasons. He’s shown glimpses of promise — most notably, his 2021 performance with Kansas City — but has yet to carve out a consistent role in a big league bullpen. The southpaw has a 5.25 ERA in 118 1/3 major league frames with a big 51.9% grounder rate and strikeout and walk rates only a hair worse than average (20.9% and 8.9%, respectively). In parts of seven Triple-A seasons, he has a 2.61 ERA, a 26.9% strikeout rate and a 7% walk rate.
Lack of consistency notwithstanding, Lovelady continues to intrigue major league clubs. Though he hasn’t had a lot of staying power, he’s spent the better part of the past four years shuffling on and off 40-man rosters around the league. That’s underscored by the fact that he has well over three years of big league service time — with a viable path to crossing the four-year mark at some point in 2026 — despite his modest innings count in the majors.
The Nats will be Lovelady’s seventh team in the majors. In addition to the previously mentioned Mets and Royals, he’s also pitched for the A’s, Rays, Cubs and Blue Jays. He’s out of minor league options, so he’ll be added right to the major league roster when he reports to the team. Washington currently has three lefties in the ‘pen: Cionel Pérez, PJ Poulin and the recently recalled Mitchell Parker. Pérez, like Lovelady, is out of minor league options. Both Pérez (8.22 ERA in 7 2/3 innings) and Poulin (4.50 ERA, more walks than strikeouts in eight innings) have struggled this year.
Braves Designate Osvaldo Bido, Select Ian Hamilton
The Braves have designated right-hander Osvaldo Bido for assignment, per a team announcement. Right-hander Ian Hamilton‘s contract has been selected from Triple-A Gwinnett in a corresponding move. Atlanta also optioned southpaw reliever Hayden Harris to Gwinnett. That’ll clear another active roster spot for veteran lefty Martín Pérez. Braves skipper Walt Weiss said last night that Pérez, who quickly re-signed on a minor league deal after being designated for assignment and clearing waivers, will start Friday.
Bido, 30, has become the poster boy for the perpetual DFA carousel that some players ride in today’s game. Since the end of the 2025 season, he’s been on six different 40-man rosters via a series of DFAs and waiver claims. He spent the 2025 season with the A’s and has since bounced to the Braves, Rays, Marlins, Yankees, Angels and back to the Braves. It’s feasible he could now find himself with a seventh organization in the span of about five calendar months.
On the one hand, the parade of DFAs might suggest that teams don’t feel Bido is a big league-caliber arm. On the other, he’s yet to make it through waivers. Twenty percent of the league has rostered Bido since the 2025 Winter Meetings commenced. Clubs clearly think there’s major league potential in the lanky right-hander, but he’s yet to put things together with any real consistency.
Bido pitched 10 innings with Atlanta and was tagged for seven runs on seven hits and five walks. Walking five of the 41 hitters he faced (12.2%) is already problematic, but Bido also plunked a pair of batters and rattled off four wild pitches. Suffice it to say, his command has not been there in 2026.
Command has never been an especially strong point for Bido, but he hasn’t struggled to this extent in the past. He entered the season having walked or hit 12% of the batters he’s faced in the majors. He’d averaged a wild pitch every 10 innings or so. He’s walked/hit 17.1% of his opponents this year and averaged a wild pitch every two and a half innings — certainly not ideal.
Bido has had an up-and-down run in the majors, logging poor numbers in 2023, strong output in 2024 and more struggles in 2025. The 2026 season clearly hasn’t been kind to him. Overall, metrics like SIERA (4.62) and FIP (4.70) view him a bit more favorably than his career 5.13 ERA, but Bido has typically pitched like a swingman or sixth starter. He averages 94.7 mph on his four-seamer and sinker alike. He’s only a bit worse than average in terms of strikeout rate (20.6%) and walk rate (9.7%), but he’s an extreme fly-ball pitcher whose best season was spent pitching home games in the cavernous Oakland Coliseum during the Athletics’ final season there.
Last year’s move to West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, which played like an absolute launching pad, did Bido no favors. He served up 13 big flies in only 44 1/3 home innings, compared to just six on the road (35 1/3 innings). He’s been tagged for one home run in his 10 innings with the Braves.
Bido would ideally land in a more pitcher-friendly home park than he had with either the A’s or Braves. Sutter Health Park was the fifth-most homer-friendly park for left-handed batters in 2025, per Statcast’s Park Factors. Atlanta’s Truist Park was just behind, sitting sixth in MLB. Time will tell whether that happens. The Braves have five days to trade Bido or place him on waivers. Outright waivers are a 48-hour process, so today’s DFA will be resolved in no more than a week’s time.
As for Hamilton, he’ll be suiting up for a seventh major league season. He’s pitched 150 1/3 innings for the White Sox, Twins and Yankees in his career, turning in a sharp 3.59 ERA overall. A terrific 2023 season (2.64 ERA, 58 innings) disproportionately affects that career-long mark; Hamilton had a 4.91 ERA in 14 2/3 innings prior to that season and has a 4.06 earned run average in 77 2/3 frames since.
Hamilton, 30, has fanned just over one quarter of his opponents in the majors but also sports an 11.1% walk rate that’s nearly three percentage points north of average. He’s shown above-average grounder tendencies (45.9%) and has done a nice job of avoiding homers and hard contact in general. His first year with the Braves organization has kicked off nicely, with 6 1/3 innings of two-run ball and a 9-to-1 K/BB ratio in Triple-A Gwinnett.
Like nearly everyone else in the Atlanta bullpen, Hamilton is out of minor league options. At present, southpaw Dylan Lee is the only optionable pitcher — bullpen or rotation — on the Braves’ major league roster. It’s an untenable setup in the modern game, where teams tend to cycle various relievers through the final couple bullpen spots to maintain a stock of fresh arms in support of starters who rarely work deep into games. That’s all the more true given that Lee, while technically optionable, almost certainly isn’t being sent down anytime soon. He’s been one of Atlanta’s most consistently effective relievers dating back to 2024, with an overall 2.65 ERA and a 1.13 mark through his first eight frames in 2026.
The Opener: Mets, Ohtani, Fermin
Here are a few items to track in the baseball world on Thursday:
1. Mets drop eighth straight, head to Chicago
The Mets were in a tight one on Wednesday night against the Dodgers until Dalton Rushing blasted a grand slam in the eighth inning to put the game away. The small silver lining for New York fans is that the Rushing homer meant the game was no longer a save situation, so the Mets avoided being on the other end of Edwin Diaz and his trumpet entrance. The Mets have been held to two runs or fewer in seven of eight games during this losing streak. Their next chance to get into the win column will come on Friday against the Cubs. New York will have to survive one more road series without Juan Soto before his potential return next week.
2. Pitcher-only Ohtani
Shohei Ohtani led the charge in the sweep of the Mets, tossing six innings of one-run ball with 10 strikeouts. He was not in the hitting lineup, though. The two-way superstar pitched but didn’t hit for the first time since 2021. Rushing’s grand slam actually came as the DH in Ohtani’s stead. Manager Dave Roberts said the decision was made after Ohtani was hit by a David Peterson sinker on Monday night. “This one game, it just makes the most sense to give us the best chance to manage the shoulder and back,” Roberts told reporters, including Katie Woo of The Athletic. Ohtani’s next chance to get back in the hitting lineup as a pitcher is slated for Wednesday against the Giants.
3. Fermin leaves after a foul tip to the mask
Padres catcher Freddy Fermin was removed in the third inning of Wednesday’s game against the Mariners after being struck by a foul ball. Manager Craig Stammen told reporters, including AJ Cassavell of MLB.com, that Fermin does not have a concussion following an initial round of testing but will be reevaluated today. Luis Campusano replaced Fermin and is the only other catcher on the 40-man roster. Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune noted that Triple-A catcher Rodolfo Duran was removed from last night’s game in the ninth inning after Fermin’s injury. He’d seem to be a logical replacement if Fermin is forced to the IL.
Tigers Extend Kevin McGonigle
The Tigers announced Wednesday that they’ve agreed to an eight-year, $150MM extension with infielder Kevin McGonigle. The contract begins next season — he’s still on a league-minimum salary in 2026 — and runs through 2034. McGonigle, a client of Vayner Sports, can tack on another $10MM in total via a series of escalators, giving the deal a maximum value of $160MM from 2027-34. Detroit, one of the few teams that publicly discloses contract terms for its players, also provided a year-to-year breakdown of the deal.
McGonigle, 21, takes home a $14MM signing bonus that will be paid up front. He’ll earn a $1MM salary in 2027, $7MM in 2028, $16MM in 2029, $21MM in 2030, $22MM in 2031 and $23MM annually from 2032-34.
The contract locks in what would have been the second through sixth years of McGonigle’s original window of club control and gives the team control over what would have been his first three free agent seasons. There are no options on the contract, but escalators could raise his 2032-34 salaries to $25MM, $26MM and $28MM, respectively. McGonigle’s deal does not include conventional no-trade protection, but he’d be owed a $5MM assignment bonus if he’s traded to another club at any point.
It’s a bit of a departure from the standard way that teams tend to structure contracts; year-to-year salaries tend to reflect what a player might have earned in pre-arbitration and in arbitration. Instead, the Tigers will jump McGonigle to a $7MM salary in a year that he’d otherwise have been earning only a hair over the league minimum. This setup provides a little more balance on the back end of the deal (i.e. his would-be free agent seasons), obviously at the expense of some payroll hikes in the extension’s earlier seasons.
McGonigle entered the season as the game’s consensus No. 2 prospect behind Pirates shortstop Konnor Griffin and has now almost immediately surpassed Griffin’s record-setting extension for a young player with such little big league service. Griffin inked a nine-year, $140MM contract last week. Julio Rodríguez‘s $210MM contract is technically the largest ever for a player with under a year of service, but that contract was signed in late July of his rookie season, when he was already an All-Star and the overwhelming Rookie of the Year front-runner. Griffin and McGonigle may be in the same service class, but the context surrounding their extensions differs quite a bit from that of the Rodríguez deal.
Selected 37th overall in the 2023 draft, McGonigle hit the ground running as an 18-year-old in pro ball. He slashed .315/.452/.411 in 21 games following the draft in 2023 and emphatically rose to elite prospect status in the two subsequent seasons. McGonigle hit .309/.401/.452 with more walks than strikeouts as a 19-year-old across to Class-A levels in 2024. Last year, he utterly dismantled High-A pitching (.372/.462/.648) for 36 games before a promotion to Double-A, where he scarcely skipped a beat. McGonigle was one of the youngest players in Double-A but still turned in a .254/.369/.550 slash in 46 games.
Throughout the offseason, it wasn’t clear whether McGonigle would be seriously considered as an Opening Day roster candidate or whether the organization would send him to Triple-A for some further refinement. A strong spring performance quickly removed any doubt, however. McGonigle hit .250/.411/.477 in 56 plate appearances. As he’d done at virtually every stop in the minors, he walked more often than he struck out. The Tigers carried him on the Opening Day roster to begin the season, and he’s split the first few weeks of the year between third base and shortstop while slashing .311/.417/.492 with 11 walks against just eight strikeouts in 72 plate appearances.
One look at McGonigle’s repeated ability to not only avoid strikeouts but also draw walks at such a high rate highlights why he has such a high floor. Add in above-average speed and plus raw power that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from someone listed at 5’9″ and 187 pounds, and McGonigle has the makings of a perennial All-Star who could draw some MVP consideration during his peak years.
Scouting reports have questioned where his eventual defensive home will be, but he’s worked to improve his shortstop defense and looked solid there both in spring training and in the season’s first few weeks. Whether he settles in at short, third base or even second base, McGonigle’s preternatural feel to hit and robust suite of plus offensive tools should give him more than enough bat to fit anywhere on the diamond.
As is the case with any early-career extension, McGonigle had a path to greater earnings — but going the year-to-year route would have been fraught with risk. He could have reached the open market heading into his age-27 season, potentially setting him up for a contract worth more than half a billion dollars in free agency. However, locking in his first $150MM right now preserves the opportunity to reach the market ahead of McGonigle’s age-30 season, when he could still be in line for a mega-deal. It also eliminates much of the downside of a career-altering injury or a less-impactful-than-expected career trajectory. There are myriad examples of players who rebuffed early extension interest and then simply never lived up to their prospect billing — or of those who accepted long-term offers and never developed into stars or even established big leaguers.
McGonigle now cements his place as the face of a new Tigers core. The team surely hopes it will be able to re-sign reigning two-time AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal in free agency, but that’ll take a record contract of far greater magnitude, given Skubal’s established dominance and proximity to free agency, which he’ll reach following the current season. McGonigle and fellow infielder Colt Keith are now signed through at least 2032, but recent free agent signee Framber Valdez is the only other Tiger guaranteed anything beyond the 2027 season.
Top outfield prospect Max Clark, the No. 3 overall pick in 2023 (34 spots ahead of McGonigle) is also widely considered to be one of the sport’s 10 best prospects and could debut later this season. Looking further down the road, Detroit has some other ballyhooed prospects they’ll hope to add to the group (e.g. shortstop Bryce Rainer, catcher/first baseman Josue Briceño), but they’re probably more 2027-28 considerations.
The timing of McGonigle’s promotion to the majors and extension is also pivotal for the Tigers. Because he’s a consensus top-100 prospect who cracked the Opening Day roster and signed his deal after his MLB debut was already in the books, McGonigle remains eligible to net the Tigers a compensatory draft pick via MLB’s “Prospect Promotion Incentive” program, which was introduced in the 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement.
If McGonigle wins AL Rookie of the Year honors this season or finishes top-3 in AL MVP voting before he would have otherwise reached arbitration, the Tigers will gain an extra pick after the first round of the following season’s draft. For instance, the Royals picked up the No. 28 overall selection in 2025 after Bobby Witt Jr. was an MVP finalist in the preceding season. The Braves (No. 26) and Astros (No. 28) will have bonus picks in the 2026 draft due to Drake Baldwin‘s 2025 Rookie of the Year win and Hunter Brown‘s third-place finish in 2025 AL Cy Young voting.
MLB Mailbag: Cubs, Tatis, Brewers, Yankees
This week's mailbag gets into how the Cubs' recent big contracts will age, Fernando Tatis Jr.'s future at second base, the left side of the Brewers' infield, the Yankees' bullpen, and more.
Alex asks:
How overdramatic of a take is this? Within 2 years, all three of Alex Bregman, Nico Hoerner, and Pete Crow-Armstrong will be upside down on the value of their deals. I've thought the Bregman deal would age like milk from the jump. Hoerner is solid but it's a lot of money to pay a Luis Arraez that can play a good 2b. And PCA's bat has always been suspect. There will a lot of good defense and PCA will steal some bases, but not a ton else.
I agree with your broader point: the Cubs recently committed to a $431MM to a fairly risky trio.
Back in January, I felt Davy Andrews of FanGraphs did a nice job articulating the downside risk of signing Bregman through the age of 36. The key passage: "He’s not starting out with much margin for error, so things could get ugly when his bat speed or his contact skills start to go. And Bregman is already slow and a below-average baserunner. He already has a weak arm. When the first-step quickness goes, the defense could crater pretty quickly too."
Baseball player aging does not happen in a nice, linear, predictable fashion. At some point during this contract, Bregman is going to be pretty bad. The Cubs are betting it'll be the last year or two. It would not be crazy to bet major decline and/or increased missed time due to injury sets in earlier than that.
Bregman had 42.9 Baseball-Reference WAR through the age of 31. That ranks 17th in baseball history for those who played at least 90% of their games at third. Let's make a list of those near Bregman on that list, excluding Harlond Clift and Bill Bradley for playing too long ago. Here's their WAR from age 32-36:
- David Wright: 0.5 WAR age 32-36
- Sal Bando: 15.1 WAR
- Robin Ventura: 9.9 WAR
- Ken Boyer: 17.4 WAR
- Graig Nettles: 18.0 WAR
- Matt Williams: 8.8 WAR
- Troy Glaus: 0.0 WAR
Williams and Glaus were linked to PED use, so we might set them aside. If we do that and assume Bregman will not enter a Wright-level injury spiral, these comps suggests there's actually a decent chance Bregman puts together a 15-WAR Cubs career. That might put him in "Hall of Very Good" Evan Longoria territory. More germane to this question, the Cubs would feel they got their money's worth.
Longoria is actually another cautionary tale, as a third baseman who had a better career than Bregman by age 32 but managed only 6.8 WAR from 32-36. It's also worth considering that Bregman had a 125 wRC+ at age 31; Longo was a league average hitter by that point. It was his early Rays career that had Longoria on a Hall of Fame track through age 30.
If Bregman can manage something around 5.5 WAR for 2026-27, then I probably wouldn't call his contract upside-down at that point. You can read up on some good dollars-per-WAR stuff from Ben Clemens at FanGraphs here, but I'll ballpark the market at $12MM per WAR (per year) for a regular-caliber player based on that. And that's putting aside the insane amount of money big market teams occasionally pay per star player WAR, like the Dodgers with Kyle Tucker.
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Luke Williams Elects Free Agency
Utilityman Luke Williams elected free agency after being designated for assignment by the Braves, relays Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He cleared waivers and has multiple career outright assignments, allowing him to return to the market.
There’s a decent chance that’s just a formality and a precursor to a new minor league contract with Atlanta. Williams has bounced on and off the Braves’ roster for the past three-plus seasons. He received a brief call over the weekend while Michael Harris II was on paternity leave. Williams is out of minor league options and was surely aware he’d be the cut once Harris returned to the team.
The call-up gave Williams a few days of major league pay. He appeared in two games, once as a defense substitute and one as a pinch-hitter. He drew a walk against Kolby Allard in his only plate appearance. Williams has taken 350 trips to the plate in the big leagues. He’s a .212/.272/.280 hitter, though he has stolen 25 bases.
Gerrit Cole To Begin Rehab Assignment
Gerrit Cole is taking a significant step in his return from Tommy John surgery. The two-time ERA champ will kick off a rehab assignment at Double-A Somerset on Friday, skipper Aaron Boone tells reporters (including Jorge Castillo of ESPN).
It’s not quite Cole’s first game action. He was able to get on a mound for a pair of brief starts at the end of Spring Training. Cole has spent the past couple weeks throwing bullpen and live batting practice sessions. Friday’s start will be his first regular season game since 2024. His elbow gave out the following spring, and he went under the knife in March ’25.
Minor league rehab assignments for pitchers generally last up to 30 days. The league frequently grants extensions in 10-day increments for those coming back from Tommy John procedures. Cole is probably still a month-plus away from big league readiness.
Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren, Ryan Weathers and Luis Gil comprise the season-opening rotation. The top three have pitched very well in their first four turns. Weathers has been inconsistent and has only once worked beyond five innings, but he’s getting a lot of strikeouts behind the plus stuff that made him an offseason trade target. Gil was the odd man out to begin the season when the Yankees had enough days off to get by with four starters. He has given up four home runs over his first nine innings.
Carlos Rodón has yet to begin a rehab assignment but may return before Cole does. Rodón, recovering from a postseason procedure to remove loose bodies from his elbow, is throwing live batting practice sessions. The rotation would run at least six deep if everyone’s healthy. There are a few weeks for injuries and/or performance to change that picture before Cole and Rodón are back in the Bronx.
Cole will join shortstop Anthony Volpe at Somerset. The infielder began a rehab stint there on Tuesday. Volpe took two at-bats (both strikeouts against the also rehabbing Zack Wheeler) and played five innings at shortstop in his first game. They gave him a rest day tonight. Volpe is rehabbing from October shoulder surgery and can spend up to 20 days on a rehab stint.
José Caballero has gotten everyday shortstop work with Volpe out of action. Although Caballero hit a walk-off two-run double to beat the Angels tonight, he’s batting .169/.222/.288 on the season overall. He’ll slide into a utility role once Volpe is activated. Backup catcher J.C. Escarra is their only player on the bench with minor league options, meaning someone is likely to be designated for assignment once Volpe returns. Minor league signee Randal Grichuk has started the season 1-16 in a short side platoon role as the final player on the bench.