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Latest On Kris Bryant

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Kris Bryant’s status with the Rockies remains up in the air, at best. The former NL Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player signed a seven-year free agent contract four offseasons ago but has thus far managed to play in only 170 games due to a cascade of injuries — the most notable among them being a degenerative lumbar condition in his lower back that continues to cause him pain. The Rox already placed Bryant on the 60-day injured list (upon signing right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano shortly after camp opened), and Bryant told the team’s beat he’s unsure as to when or whether he’ll be able to resume playing (video links via Kevin Henry of the Denver Gazette).

Bryant noted that he’s been “waking up in pain every day” and been unable to progress beyond relatively minor physical activity, let alone baseball activities. The 34-year-old acknowledged that even jogging “is giving me a big problem right now.”

There’s no timetable for Bryant’s return at present. He played in only 11 games last season and 37 the year prior. He’s reached 200 plate appearances only once in his four seasons with Colorado. Asked whether it was worth it for him to continue trying to put his body through the rigors of rehabbing, Bryant replied (via Thomas Harding of MLB.com):

“I honestly try not to let myself get there, just because, when you’re going through it every single day, you just try to make it day to day. I think people out there with chronic pain, you don’t want to think about so far in the future, because you’re trying to get through the day. So I haven’t let myself get there.”

Bryant’s physical decline has been ongoing for some time, but it came about in abrupt fashion. In 2021, he played 144 games between the Cubs and Giants, turning in a combined .265/.353/.481 slash (24% better than league average) with 25 home runs in 586 plate appearances. His debut season with the Rockies was shortened by a monthlong absence due to a lower back strain, but it was a bout of plantar fasciitis that really limited his time on the field. He appeared in only 42 games but was at least excellent when healthy, hitting .306/.376/.475 in 181 plate appearances.

Since that time, Bryant has been placed on the IL due to a heel injury, a broken finger and a ribcage injury. He’s now had four IL stints (including the current one) due to lower back troubles dating back to Opening Day 2024. Last year’s IL placement on April 14 proved to be season-ending in nature.

On a purely baseball level, Bryant’s repeated injury struggles are understandably maddening for Rockies fans, who see the albatross contract as emblematic of a former leadership regime that far too often put the Rockies on a negative trajectory.

From a purely human level, it’s unfortunate to see anyone’s career so aggressively derailed by a chronic, degenerative condition that could have lasting implications for Bryant well beyond his playing days. To already be facing such a debilitating physical condition at a young age — Bryant turned 34 on Jan. 7 — must be grueling from a mental and emotional standpoint, particularly for someone whose career began with such promise. Regardless of what happens with Bryant’s baseball career, one would hope that doctors are able to find a means to simply allow him to live his life in a a state of relative comfort — which does not sound to have been the case for quite some time now.

Happ, Suzuki: No Recent Extension Talks With Cubs

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It’s common for baseball teams to spend the winter focusing on new acquisitions and then pivot to extensions during spring training. Nothing seems urgent with a couple of Cubs, as outfielders Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki both tell Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times that they have not yet heard from the club on the extension front.

It’s possible that a big pivot is coming up in the club’s position player mix. Kyle Tucker just departed via free agency. After the 2026 season, the Cubs are slated to see Happ, Suzuki and second baseman Nico Hoerner hit the open market. Carson Kelly’s deal has a 2027 mutual option but those provisions are almost never picked up by both sides, so he should be considered an impending free agent as well.

That gives the Cubs a good amount of future spending capacity. Dansby Swanson and Alex Bregman are the only players guaranteed more than $6MM next year. RosterResource projects them for just $76.25MM in spending next year. That number will come up with arbitration-eligible and pre-arb players but there’s a big gap between that figure and the $231MM they’re spending on the 2026 squad.

The flipside is that there are holes. The outfield has a lot of long-term uncertainty with Happ and Suzuki slated to depart. Pete Crow-Armstrong should be a fixture in center field since he remains under club control through 2030 but the corners would need to be addressed.

That could happen internally, in theory. Matt Shaw could get some outfield work this year and could be a potential factor. His most logical long-term fit would be second base, with Hoerner’s potential departure, though a Hoerner extension is another thing the Cubs could consider. Owen Caissie once looked like a long-term outfield solution but he was dealt to the Marlins in the Edward Cabrera trade. Kevin Alcántara is still in the mix but has struck out in almost 30% of his Triple-A plate appearances thus far, lowering his stock a bit. Justin Dean is on the roster but profiles more as a speed-and-defense depth outfielder. James Triantos and Pedro Ramírez are on the 40-man and have some minor league outfield experience but have mostly played the infield and neither has cracked the majors yet.

If the Cubs don’t believe in that internal group, there would be sense in pursuing extension talks with Happ or Suzuki. They already got one extension done with Happ. Back in 2023, Happ and the Cubs agreed to a three-year deal worth $61MM. That was a bit of a surprising deal at the time, with Happ just a few months from hitting free agency as a 29-year-old. Instead, he locked in some guaranteed money and is now slated to hit the open market shortly after his 32nd birthday in August.

The switch-hitter has been remarkably consistent at the plate. He has appeared in nine big league seasons now. In the seven campaigns where he played at least 60 games, his wRC+ finished between 105 and 122. He’s generally good for 15 to 25 home runs with solid on-base marks thanks to strong walk rates. The defensive grades have been mixed but he can steal a few bags and FanGraphs has considered him to basically be worth three-to-four wins above replacement in recent years.

Suzuki has been more of a bat-first player. He has a .269/.346/.472 line and 127 wRC+ over his four seasons with the Cubs. Defensive metrics have considered him to be subpar in the field and he saw a lot of time as the designated hitter last year. Tucker’s departure seemingly opens the door for him to be a more regular outfielder, with Moisés Ballesteros perhaps taking up a decent chunk of the DH at-bats.

External solutions could also be considered, as always. Next year’s free agent class doesn’t have a superstar outfielder. Happ and Suzuki should be two of the top options, alongside guys like Randy Arozarena, Daulton Varsho, Trent Grisham and others. The Cubs could perhaps wait and issue qualifying offers to Happ and/or Suzuki and try to lure them back that way, a situation which recently played out with left-hander Shota Imanaga. There could also be trade opportunities that develop in the next year or so.

The fact that no talks have taken place doesn’t mean they won’t in the future, so it will be interesting to see if the Cubs pick up the phone in the coming weeks or if they’d prefer to play the waiting game. As mentioned, the club has long-term spending capacity, meaning they could get something done now if they wanted to. The two players are in the same boat age-wise, as they were born within a week of each other in 1994, Happ on August 12th and Suzuki on August 18th.

Photo courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images

Orioles Hire Robinson Chirinos As Special Assistant

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Former player Robinson Chirinos will return to the Orioles but in a new role. The club announced that he will be working as a special assistant in the baseball operations and player development department. Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com was among those to relay the news, adding that Chirinos will “support players, coaches, and staff across our lower levels, providing leadership, mentorship, and reinforcement of organizational philosophies.”

Chirinos, 41, played in the majors from 2011 to 2022. He announced his retirement as a player in May of 2023. He quickly pivoted to the next stage of his career, getting hired as Baltimore’s bench coach in November of 2024, working under skipper Brandon Hyde.

His first year as a coach turned out to be a tumultuous one. The Orioles fell short of expectations in 2025, which led to a shake-up in the dugout, as Hyde was fired in the middle of May. When a manager is fired mid-season, the bench coach will sometimes takes over, but Chirinos was only a few months into his coaching career at that point. The Orioles instead went with third base coach Tony Mansolino, who had a few more years of coaching experience, as interim manager.

Mansolino held the job through the end of the 2025 season but the O’s made further changes after the campaign. Craig Albernaz was hired as the new skipper in late October. A new manager often leads to some coaching changes and it was reported a few days after Albernaz’s hiring that Chirinos would not be back in the bench coach role. Donnie Ecker was hired for that job a few weeks later.

Chirinos took a few months to pursue other opportunities but will now return to the Orioles in this player development role. He won’t be back in the dugout but it seems he will still be able to impact the franchise by working with younger prospects who will hopefully make it to the majors in the years to come.

Photo courtesy of Mitch Stringer, Imagn Images

Tony Clark To Step Down As MLBPA Executive Director

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2:41pm: Passan further reports that Clark’s resignation is due to an internal investigation discovering that he had an “inappropriate” relationship with his sister-in-law, who was hired to work for the player’s union back in 2023.

12:50pm: Both the piece from The Athletic and an article from Jeff Passan and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN suggest Meyer is the most likely choice to take over for Clark. The Athletic notes that Meyer recently helped Tarik Skubal in his arbitration case where he defeated the Tigers and has been working the phones today to firm up his support among the players. The union leaders have a meeting planned for 3:30 Central today to discuss the situation.

10:07am: Angels lefty Brent Suter, another member of the eight-player MLBPA executive subcommittee, tells The Athletic’s Sam Blum that the union has an interim director in mind and is not planning to commence an external search at this time. “We’re going to have an interim [director] and keep everything as stable as we can this year,” says Suter.

8:23am: Tony Clark is preparing to announce his resignation as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, per a report from Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Andy McCullough of The Athletic. Clark has been in his current position since 2013.

The 53-year-old Clark and the union have been under investigation since last summer due to purported improprieties regarding the usage of licensing money. Specifically, Clark has previously been alleged to have given himself equity in OneTeam Partners — a joint venture between the MLBPA and NFLPA — and failed to have sufficiently disclosed the level of resources being dedicated to Players Way, an MLBPA-owned youth baseball initiative that is under federal investigation.

Clark had been scheduled to begin a tour of spring visits to the game’s 30 teams just this morning, but the first of those meetings (with the Guardians) was abruptly canceled. A statement is expected at some point today, per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman.

SNY’s Chelsea Janes reports that MLBPA executive subcommittee member Marcus Semien told reporters that his understanding of  the resignation is that it’s related to the Eastern District of New York’s investigation into the usage of licensing money. Semien noted that the subcommittee has not yet convened in the wake of the announcement, and he thus does not have a definitive answer as to when a new director will be appointed or whether deputy director Bruce Meyer will continue on as the union’s lead negotiator.

The timing of the move is of particular note. Major League Baseball’s current collective bargaining agreement expires in just over nine months. The last wave of collective bargaining talks between the Clark-led union and the Rob Manfred-led league/owners collective was contentious enough to result in a 99-day offseason lockout and transaction freeze.

An even more vitriolic battle is expected by many this time around, with several owners publicly digging in their heels regarding their belief that the sport needs to adopt a salary cap. Any sort of cap — even if accompanied by a salary floor — has been a nonstarter for every previous iteration of the players association; Clark has made no secret of his adamant anti-cap stance at virtually every given opportunity, and Meyer has been in lockstep with that mentality as the union’s lead negotiator and No. 2 executive.

Padres Designate Tirso Ornelas For Assignment

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The Padres announced that outfield Tirso Ornelas has been designated for assignment. That’s the corresponding 40-man roster move for right-hander Griffin Canning, whose signing is now official.

Ornelas, 26 next month, has been on San Diego’s roster since July of 2024. He got to make a brief major league debut in 2025, putting up a .071/.188/.071 batting line in 16 plate appearances over seven games.

He has generally been a pretty good hitter in his minor league career. Over the past three years, he has stepped to the plate 1,471 times on the farm, mostly at the Triple-A level. His 11.3% walk rate and 17% strikeout rate in that span are both good numbers, with 48 home runs to boot. However, since that production came in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, his .285/.371/.452 line isn’t as impressive as it initially appears. That translates to a 108 wRC+, indicating he was 8% better than average for that league.

That’s still solid hitting but Ornelas really needs to crush to provide value. He has some center field experience but is mostly a corner guy who isn’t considered a strong defender, nor is he a burner on the basepaths. The Friars have Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ramón Laureano in their outfield corners with Jackson Merrill up the middle. The roster also features other guys who could factor into the outfield mix, such as Gavin Sheets, Nick Castellanos, Miguel Andujar, Sung Mun Song and Bryce Johnson.

The overall picture has pushed Ornelas off the roster and into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Friars could take five days to field trade interest. He still has one minor league option remaining, so he could appeal to a club looking for some extra outfield depth, especially one that needs another lefty bat. Despite his flaws, Baseball America recently ranked him the #28 prospect in the system.

If he were to pass through waivers unclaimed, he would not have the right to elect free agency since he has less than three years of big league service time and does not have a previous career outright.

Photo courtesy of Chadd Cady, Imagn Images

Padres Sign Griffin Canning

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February 17th: The Padres made it official today, announcing that they have signed Canning to a one-year deal with a mutual option for 2027. Mutual options are almost never picked up by both sides, so that provision is likely just to allow the Padres to kick part of the payment into the future in the form of a buyout. The full financial details of Canning’s deal still haven’t been reported. Outfielder Tirso Ornelas has been designated for assignment as the corresponding move.

February 14th: The Padres have signed right-hander Griffin Canning, as initially reported overnight by the Divine Sports Gospel.  Canning’s deal will be official once he passes a physical, according to FanSided’s Robert Murray.  San Diego has a full 40-man roster in the wake of the Nick Castellanos signing, so the Padres will have to make another move to open up 40-man space for Canning, who is represented by Wasserman.

It’s something of a SoCal homecoming for Canning, who was born in Mission Viejo and played his college ball at UCLA.  The 29-year-old also spent his first first Major League seasons with the Angels, posting a 4.78 ERA over 508 innings (starting 94 of 99 games).  This was less than was expected of a pitcher who was once viewed as a top-100 prospect, and the Angels parted ways with Canning via a trade with the Braves last offseason for Jorge Soler.  Atlanta then chose to non-tender Canning, since the Braves’ chief goal of the trade was to unload Soler’s contract.

Canning then signed a one-year, $4.25MM contract with the Mets that initially looked like it was going to be a steal, as the righty posted a 2.47 ERA over his first nine starts in New York.  Some struggles over his next seven outings boosted his ERA to 3.77, yet that’s unfortunately where Canning’s story ended, as he suffered a season-ending ruptured Achilles tendon in late June.

Reports from earlier this offseason suggested that Canning is hoping to be ready for Opening Day, or at least relatively early in April.  He was feeling good enough to throw for scouts in a showcase last week, and his velocity was up to 93mph even at this relatively early stage in the preseason ramp-up process.  The Mets, Cardinals, and White Sox were all linked to Canning earlier this winter, but he’ll now be part of San Diego’s rotation mix.

The Padres’ starting pitching situation has been a key issue for the team all winter, as Dylan Cease left for the Blue Jays in free agency and Yu Darvish will miss all of 2026 while recovering from an internal brace procedure.  Re-signing Michael King helped the Padres restore some stability, and Canning joins a list of arms that consists of King, Nick Pivetta, Randy Vasquez, JP Sears, and Joe Musgrove in his return from Tommy John surgery.  Assuming everyone is healthy, Canning will probably push Vasquez or Sears into a relief or depth role once Canning is ready to pitch.

While 76 1/3 innings isn’t the largest of sample sizes, Canning’s 2025 season saw him post a 50.9% grounder rate, in a marked change for a pitcher who had only a 39.5% groundball rate during his time in Anaheim.  Keeping the ball out of the air helped somewhat counter-act all of the hard contact Canning was allowing, as his 45.7% hard-hit ball rate was only in the 11th percentile of all pitchers.  Canning’s 10.7% walk rate was the highest of his career, and his 21.3% strikeout rate was nothing special.

Pivetta’s breakout in 2025 is evidence that the Padres can help pitchers unlock their potential, but for now, Canning projects as a back-end starter with some upside.  How Canning responds to his Achilles injury is another x-factor, and his health history also includes a stress fracture in his back that cost him the entire 2022 season.

Terms of Canning’s deal aren’t yet known, though it is fair to assume he’ll earn something close to the $4.5MM he received from New York in 2025.  The price tag was surely attractive to the Padres, who have been operating within a seemingly limited budget this offseason.  Not counting Canning’s deal, San Diego is projected (by RosterResource) for roughly a $220.9MM payroll and a $265.48MM luxury tax number — both are slightly up from 2025, when the Padres had a $211.1MM payroll in 2025 and a $263MM tax number.  The addition of Canning’s contract now puts San Diego over the second tier ($264MM) of tax penalization.

MLBTR Chat Transcript

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Steve Adams

  • Good afternoon! I’ll get going in a few minutes, but opening the queue now to let people start asking questions.
  • Let’s begin!

Bernie Brewer

  • Luis Rengifo signed with the brewers the other day. How do you view this fit?

Steve Adams

  • I think the fit is fine. I’d have liked to have seen a bigger swing via the trade market, but I have little doubt that the Brewers will find a way to get Rengifo back to decent-ish form. There aren’t many guys who’ve gone there recently and gotten worse, and they’ve helped plenty of players restore their stock in recent years.It’s a cheap deal, and Rengifo was a solid 1.5 to 2 WAR guy for a few years until this past season. They’re probably a win or so better, maybe two, with improved depth and without spending much.

Jays Fan

  • Jays could use a righty bat. Mountcastle rumoured to be on the block. Rare inter-division trade perhaps?

Steve Adams

  • Don’t know that I’d feel all that confident that he’d outperform Davis Schneider, who has more defensive utility. Plus, Mountcastle would cost Toronto more than $12MM after the luxury tax. I don’t think it’s a great fit.

Mayo

  • Would you be willing to trade a prospect like Mayo for an injured prospect with more of a track record? Like Jones from the Pirates

Steve Adams

  • I’m a Jared Jones guy and not as bullish on Mayo as a lot of people in general, so I would absolutely give Mayo up to get Jones.I wouldn’t make that swap if I were the Pirates unless they have some reason to think the stuff won’t come all the way back or that Jones is just going to be constantly injured.

Bounty

  • QO for Happ after 2026? Suzuki? Both? Neither? I can see an extension for Happ and the Cubs let Suzuki go for the QO

Steve Adams

  • Both are easy QO guys for me if their 2026 season looks like their past few years have

James

  • Why woild the Dodgers risk losing both Ibánez and Rortvedt while keeping a player like Ward who they wouldnt even give a cup of coffee to last yr when they had injuries? Seems like they dont trust him.

Steve Adams

  • The Dodgers only ever wanted Ibanez/Rortvedt to try to pass them through waivers. Signing them both to one-year deals worth just over $1MM apiece was designed expressly to help each guy pass through waivers, knowing he wouldn’t reject an outright assignment upon clearing because doing so would mean forfeiting the guaranteed salary.
  • Ward has options and is thus seen as flexible depth, which they don’t want to give up

Cute Lady

  • But is Rengfio really that much better than Durbin?

Steve Adams

  • He might be worse, but that’s not the point. Milwaukee clearly wanted to get its hands on Harrison and/or Drohan (and probably feels Hamilton’s floor isn’t that far removed from what they expect from Durbin after some ’26 regression)

Bob Casey

  • Does the UCL injury to Pablo Lopez get the Twins to make a move and sign pitcher?

Read more

Pablo López Diagnosed With UCL Tear

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The Twins received brutal injury news this morning, as right-hander Pablo López has been diagnosed with tearing in his right elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament, general manager Jeremy Zoll announced to reporters (via Dan Hayes of The Athletic). He’s going for a second opinion, but season-ending surgery is on the table for López.

López felt some elbow discomfort following a recent bullpen session. The Twins sent him for imaging but framed that as a precautionary measure. The situation has obviously taken a dramatic turn for the worse. The vast majority of UCL tears require surgical repair, whether it’s an internal brace to repair/strengthen the existing ligament or a full reconstruction (“Tommy John”) procedure. Either situation would end López’s season before it begins.

The 29-year-old López missed considerable time with injury in 2025, making it into only 14 games and pitching 75 2/3 innings. A Grade 2 strain of López’s teres major muscle was the primary issue, but he finished the 2025 campaign on the shelf due to a forearm strain. He was excellent when on the field, working to a 2.74 ERA with a 23.4% strikeout rate and 6.4% walk rate in 75 2/3 frames.

Now-former president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said early in the offseason that López could have kept pitching through what the team described as a mild forearm strain had the club been in postseason contention. The veteran righty, who’ll be 30 early next month, had a normal offseason. It seems the UCL tear is a new injury that popped up in camp (although even if there was a quiet inkling of a UCL issue late last season, the timing would remain largely unchanged; López would’ve been expected to miss the 2026 season regardless).

López’s injury is a gut-punch to an already thin Twins roster. Starting pitching depth is an organizational strength, but many of the options in camp are well-regarded young hurlers who’ve not yet established themselves in the big leagues. The López injury puts righty Joe Ryan in line as Minnesota’s Opening Day starter. He’ll be followed by bounceback hopeful Bailey Ober (who was hobbled by a hip injury last year) and out-of-options righty Simeon Woods Richardson — a former top prospect who had a nice 14-start finish to his 2025 season after being optioned earlier in the year.

The Twins are deep in rotation upside beyond that trio. Right-handers David Festa, Zebby Matthews, Taj Bradley (acquired at the deadline for Griffin Jax) and Mick Abel (acquired at the deadline for Jhoan Duran) ranked as top-100 prospects prior to their big league debuts. Left-hander Connor Prielipp is currently on a handful of top-100 lists himself. Righty Andrew Morris (the Twins’ fourth-rounder in 2022) and southpaw Kendry Rojas (the headliner in the Twins’ trade of Louis Varland) are both well-regarded arms who rank among the top 15 or so of the team’s prospects and aren’t terribly far from MLB readiness.

Any of those younger arms could step up as a contributor in one of the final two spots in Minnesota’s rotation, but it’s unlikely any of the bunch can replace what a healthy López would bring to the table. The right-hander has a solid 3.61 ERA over his past 141 major league starts (795 innings) and has fanned 26% of opponents against a 6.3% walk rate in that time. López’s blend of plus strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates with the Twins has led to slightly better marks from metrics like SIERA (3.41) and FIP (3.44). The 2023 All-Star hasn’t put everything together for a truly dominant ace-caliber season yet, but most fans and pundits believed him to be capable of doing so; he finished seventh in AL Cy Young voting during that ’23 campaign.

The Twins signed López to a four-year, $73.5MM extension shortly after acquiring him. That deal covered the 2024-27 seasons. López is signed for 2026 and 2027 at $21.75MM apiece, making him the highest-paid player on a stripped-down Twins roster that traded 11 players at last year’s deadline and has only made modest (at best) additions to the roster this winter. The Twins have signed Josh Bell, Victor Caratini and Taylor Rogers to big league deals and also added relievers Anthony Banda and Eric Orze via trade. They have a long list of recognizable veterans in camp on non-roster deals: Gio Urshela, Orlando Arcia, Andrew Chafin, Liam Hendriks, Dan Altavilla, Matt Bowman and Julian Merryweather.

Newly installed executive chair Tom Pohlad, who took over for his younger brother Joe earlier in the winter, has recently spoken openly about the Twins’ ability to further add to the payroll. He recently confirmed to The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman that his club took a late run at Framber Valdez after the lefty lingered on the market and put forth a multi-year offer that was outbid by the division-favorite Tigers.

That certainly doesn’t mean the Twins will go out and make an external addition, but there are still some options if they hope to do so. Right-handers Lucas Giolito and former Twin Zack Littell are among the more notable names who do not yet have a home for the upcoming 2026 season. The Twins are deep in lefty-swinging outfielders and could try to strike up a deal with an Astros club that has long been trying to acquire just that, and there’s a handful of other veteran starters whose names have at least loosely surfaced in trade chatter throughout the winter (e.g. Brady Singer, Patrick Sandoval).

It’s not clear how high the newest Pohlad family member holding the executive chair position is willing to bump the team’s payroll, but the late run at Valdez at least suggests some openness. That should only be natural, however, as the Twins’ payroll is down more than $30MM from last season and more than $50MM from its 2023 peak, when they approached $160MM. There ought to be room to add someone like Giolito, Littell, Sandoval, etc. without breaking the bank. If the team doesn’t stay afloat in the standings through the first few months, that player could be marketed ahead of the trade deadline alongside other veteran trade options.

Braves, Dominic Smith Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Braves have agreed to a minor league deal with first baseman Dominic Smith, per Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Roc Nation client will be a non-roster invitee in big league camp.

A former first-round pick and top prospect, Smith looked to be breaking out in 2019-20, when he slashed a combined .299/.366/.571 with 21 homers in only 396 plate appearances for the Mets. He tried to play through a small tear in his right shoulder’s labrum the following season and saw his numbers unsurprisingly crater. In 2024, Smith suffered a broken hamate bone in his right hand that required surgical repair, and surgeons suggested at the time that he may have had a stress reaction in that hand for several seasons, based on the way things looked in the aftermath of the injury.

From 2021-24, Smith tallied 1538 major league plate appearances but hit only .241/.311/.360 — nowhere close to that 2019-20 peak. Some degree of regression always seemed likely, but a decline so precipitous was nonetheless a bit surprising. Knowing with the benefit of hindsight that Smith was playing through multiple injuries of note help to explain that yearslong dip.

The 2025 season wasn’t back to peak levels, but Smith took 225 plate appearances with the Giants and posted an above-average .284/.333/.417 batting line (111 wRC+). He was heavily shielded from lefties and hit only .200/.259/.280 in 27 plate appearances versus southpaws, but Smith tagged righties at a stout .296/.343/.436 clip. He also posted a respectable .255/.333/.448 line in 45 games with the Yankees’ Triple-A club before landing in San Francisco.

There’s no obvious path to regular playing time in Atlanta for Smith — not with Matt Olson entrenched at first base and a rotation of four veterans to split time between the outfield and designated hitter (Jurickson Profar, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mike Yastrzemski and Michael Harris II). Smith gives Atlanta some depth at first base in the event of an Olson injury, however, and he could step into a more prominent DH role if there’s an injury to any of those four outfielders.

The Braves’ bench is also pretty light on offense, with utilityman Brett Wisely and fourth outfielder Eli White penciled into roles at present due to both being out of minor league options. Smith isn’t your quintessential big lefty bat off the bench, but he’s coming off an above-average season at the plate (particularly against righties) and at least has some minimal experience in left field in addition to his large sample of work at first base.

The Braves only just reacquired Wisely last week (for cash) and as such certainly are not fully committed to giving him a roster spot. White can handle all three outfield positions while Jorge Mateo and Mauricio Dubon (who’ll start at shortstop while Ha-Seong Kim is on the injured list) give the Braves plenty of defensive versatility if they want to carry a more limited lefty bat like Smith on the bench to begin the season.

The Opener: Full Squad Workouts, Lopez, Extensions

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On the heels of one early-morning bombshell, here are three other things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world today:

1. Full squad workouts:

Most teams have fully begun Spring Training at this point, but a small handful of clubs will be having their first full-squad workout today as position players report to camp. The lone Grapefruit League team to which this applies is the Rays, but the Cactus League in Arizona will see the Guardians, Rockies, Brewers, and Mariners all host their first full-squad workouts today. Cedric Mullins (Rays), Jake McCarthy (Rockies), and Brendan Donovan (Mariners) are among the new faces that will be showing up in camp for clubs today, while the Mariners will also be welcoming first baseman Josh Naylor back into the fold after re-signing him back in November.

2. Lopez headed for MRI:

Twins right-hander Pablo Lopez is headed for imaging due to soreness in his elbow. Lopez is one of the most important cogs in the Twins’ rotation but struggled to stay healthy last year, missing time with a Grade 2 strain of the teres major and a late-season forearm strain. The talented 29-year-old now appears to be starting this year’s Spring Training off on the wrong foot as well. More information about Lopez’s status and his potential timeline for a return to throwing should be available in the coming days. If Lopez winds up missing significant time, it will be worth keeping an eye on the Twins to see if they become players for one of the remaining starters on the market like Lucas Giolito or old friend Zack Littell. Minnesota made a late play for Framber Valdez before he signed with the division-rival Tigers.

3. Extension season:

There are only a few notable free agents left on the market, and major trades become increasingly rare as Spring Training gets underway. With many teams having more or less put a bow on their external additions, will teams start turning their attention towards extensions? It would certainly make sense, and in some corners of the league that process has already begun. The Dodgers signed Max Muncy to the fourth extension of his career earlier this month. The Padres turned to their front office and locked up president of baseball operations A.J. Preller on a multi-year deal. Neither of those moves were exactly shocking, but perhaps teams like the Cubs (Nico Hoerner, Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki) and Mariners (J.P. Crawford, Randy Arozarena) could look to discuss keeping some of their top players around beyond the final year of their contract. And as the A’s have already reminded us with their Jacob Wilson deal, spring is the most common time for pre-arbitration players to sign extensions as well.

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