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Super Two Cutoff Expected To Be Around 2.140 Years Of Service

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This offseason’s cutoff for Super Two arbitration eligibility is likely to land around two years and 139 or 140 days of service time, MLBTR has learned. MLB should finalize the cutoff within the next few weeks.

The Super Two this year should be a slight increase from last offseason, when the cutoff was 2.132 service years. Players automatically qualify for arbitration when they reach three years of service time and don’t already have a guaranteed contract. The top 22% of players in service between two and three years also qualify (so long as they spent at least 86 days of the preceding season on the active roster or MLB injured list).

Qualifying for early arbitration is a nice boost for a player’s earning potential. He gets to earn a salary above the MLB minimum a year earlier than most other players in the 2-3 year bracket. Arbitration salaries are also designed to escalate as a player builds service, so there are compounding benefits in future years from working off a bigger platform.

Here are the official thresholds from prior offseasons:

  • 2024: 2.132
  • 2023: 2.118
  • 2022: 2.128
  • 2021: 2.116
  • 2020: 2.125
  • 2019: 2.115
  • 2018: 2.134
  • 2017: 2.123
  • 2016: 2.131
  • 2015: 2.130
  • 2014: 2.133
  • 2013: 2.122
  • 2012: 2.140
  • 2011: 2.146
  • 2010: 2.122
  • 2009: 2.139

Matt McLain is the only player in MLB who ended the year with exactly two years and 140 days of service. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects the Cincinnati second baseman for a $2.6MM salary. Next year’s league minimum is $780K, so it’s likely McLain will earn close to an extra $2MM by a matter of days (to say nothing of the escalating benefit if the Reds tender him contracts in future years).

There are three pitchers at 2.139 service years: Cincinnati starter Brandon Williamson, Seattle reliever Jackson Kowar, and Tampa Bay reliever Manuel Rodríguez. Their status won’t be known until MLB finalizes the cutoff, but none of those players are going to command much more than the league minimum regardless. They all spent most of this past season (all of it, in Williamson’s case) on the injured list.

No one in MLB has exactly 2.138 or 2.137 service years. It thus appears that the three players at 2.136 years — Lucas Erceg, Patrick Bailey, and Ryan Walker — will be the closest misses. They were each projected between $1.9MM and $2.5MM had they been eligible for arbitration. That’d be a nice development for the Giants, who would save around $4MM from an already light arbitration class if Bailey and Walker indeed are in for another season around the minimum.

Blake Perkins, Kody Clemens, Bryan Hoeing and Zack Kelly are the other players who would’ve qualified for Super Two at last year’s cutoff but are likely to fall short with the slightly higher threshold. Grayson Rodriguez (2.129), Reese Olson (2.123), Bryan Woo (2.121), Andrew Abbott (2.119) and Elly De La Cruz (2.118) are among the notable players who came up a couple weeks short.

Notable players who did qualify for Super Two status beyond McLain include Zach Neto (2.170), Maikel Garcia (2.168), Mason Miller (2.166), Brice Turang (2.165) and Francisco Alvarez (2.164). MLBTR’s projections for all arbitration-eligible players are available here.

Astros Promote Connor Huff To Assistant GM

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The Astros are promoting vice-president of business and baseball operations Connor Huff to the role of assistant general manager, reports Brian McTaggart of MLB.com. He will work under general manager Dana Brown, replacing the departing Andrew Ball.

The Astros are coming off their most disappointing season in years. They faded down the stretch and ended up 87-75, missing the postseason for the first time since 2016. To get back on track next year, there is going to be some shake-up.

Brown and manager Joe Espada are staying but it was reported a few weeks ago that several other changes are being made. Hitting coaches Alex Cintrón and Troy Snitker, catching coach Michael Collins, head athletic trainer Jeremiah Randall and Ball are not coming back. In recent days, pitching coach Bill Murphy was poached away by the Pirates.

There will be challenges in upgrading the club for next year. Per RosterResource, the club’s competitive balance tax number is about $20MM shy of the tax line, even before making any offseason moves. The Astros have crossed the line at times but are generally reluctant to do so. Turning to the trade market will also be tough since Houston’s farm system is considered one of the worst in the league. Huff will step up to see if he can help Brown navigate the choppy waters.

Photo courtesy of Troy Taormina, Imagn Images

Offseason Outlook: Houston Astros

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The Astros missed the postseason for the first time in a decade, and now they'll enter the offseason in the unfamiliar position of underdogs in the AL West.

Guaranteed Contracts

Option Decisions

  • None

Total 2026 commitments: $155.85MM
Total future commitments: $407.35MM

Arbitration-Eligible Players (service time in parentheses; salary projections via MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz)

Non-Tender Candidates: Dubon, Garcia, Urias, De Los Santos, McCormick, Sanchez, Trammell

Free Agents

The Astros finished the season with an 87-75 record and missed out on the final AL Wild Card spot after losing the season series tiebreaker to the Tigers. As far as seasons that don't end in a postseason berth go, Houston's year certainly could've been worse. Yet there's plenty of work for GM Dana Brown and the rest of the front office to do this winter.

The elephant in the room is the impending departure of southpaw Framber Valdez. It's a safe bet that he will be pitching elsewhere come Opening Day, as Houston has rarely made a full-scale effort to retain their free agents over the years. Alex Bregman walked in free agency last winter, and Kyle Tucker was traded before his final year under team control so that he wouldn't do the same. Gerrit Cole previously left for New York after reaching free agency after the 2019 season. Justin Verlander and Carlos Correa both signed elsewhere on two separate occasions, though both did return to Houston in trades after their respective departures.

Jose Altuve is the only one of the club's stars they've managed to keep in town consistently, and comments from Brown haven't offered much reason to expect Valdez's free agency to reverse that trend. Brown said that he expected to have "some conversations" with Valdez's camp, but otherwise largely focused on the emergence of Hunter Brown as a legitimate ace and the club's other internal options when asked about the possibility of a reunion. Valdez is sure to be well outside the club's typical comfort zone even as he enters free agency marketing his age-32 season, and Brown has suggested that the club could look to the trade market in any efforts to bolster its rotation.

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Poll: Will The Rays Trade Brandon Lowe This Winter?

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It’s no secret that the Rays operate differently from virtually every other team in baseball. They trade from and reshape their roster aggressively at virtually every opportunity in order to keep the team from ever needing to rebuild, and it’s a system that’s worked for quite some time at this point. From Willy Adames to Tyler Glasnow to Randy Arozarena, most players don’t stay in Tampa for long and get traded before they’d actually have a chance to sniff free agency and walk away for nothing.

The conventional wisdom for quite some time has been that as a Rays star nears free agency, a trade is inevitable. That would seemingly spell the end of Brandon Lowe’s time with the team. He can be retained via a $11.5MM club option in 2026 but is set to reach free agency after that. Tampa is coming off an 85-loss season in 2025, a worrying sign for a team that hasn’t lost more games than that since 2007. For most clubs, that would further reinforce the need to trade Lowe and focus on the future. With that being said, the Rays aren’t most clubs. Could they continue to zag where other teams would zig and view a tough 2025 season as all the more reason to keep Lowe in the fold?

The 31-year-old is coming off his second All-Star appearance but had a fairly typical season by his standards. In 134 games this year, Lowe slashed .256/.307/.477 with 31 homers and 19 doubles. That performance was good for a wRC+ of 114, and he’s typically been around 15 to 25% better than league average by that measure throughout his career. Pretty much any team that doesn’t employ Ketel Marte would happily take that sort of offensive production from the keystone, but Lowe’s offense is especially important for Tampa given that he was one of just four above-average hitters on the roster in 2025 alongside Jonathan Aranda, Junior Caminero, and Yandy Diaz.

That left the Rays as a below average offensive club despite banner seasons from both Aranda and Caminero, with a collective wRC+ of 98 as a team. They also ranked in the bottom half of the league in home runs this year, with the aforementioned four players accounting for 115 of the club’s 182 bombs. Tampa’s offense is one in need of addition rather than subtraction, and it’s hard to imagine the Rays getting more production out of the second base position by trading Lowe away.

Perhaps if the Rays had an elite option waiting in the wings to take over, as they did when they traded Paredes to clear the deck for Caminero, trading Lowe would be an easy call. But it’s more difficult to stick to the typical Tampa playbook when internal options to replace him are somewhat lackluster. Christopher Morel hasn’t panned out since being acquired in the Isaac Paredes trade, and while Carson Williams is a top prospect with a chance to impact the club in 2026, the Rays would be better served allowing him to push Taylor Walls back into a bench role than moving Lowe to make room for him at the keystone. Richie Palacios could be an interesting solution, but moving him to second would only further weaken an outfield that already needs reinforcements.

While the arguments for keeping Lowe in the fold are clear, there is reason to at least consider trading him despite those concerns. Lowe is arguably on the downswing at the moment. His .307 on-base percentage this year was the worst of his career. After walking at a reliable 10%+ clip throughout the majority of his career, he’s now seen his walk rate drop precipitously in back-to-back seasons. He went from 11.5% in 2023 to 7.8% and 6.9% in the two most recent campaigns.

This year was his worst defensive season at second base, and an infield with Williams at second base and Walls at shortstop would be a massive improvement defensively. While that combination wouldn’t hit as well as Lowe and Williams, an outfield that generated a paltry 85 wRC+ this year would be relatively easy to improve and make up for the loss of Lowe’s bat.

Looking at the team’s situation more broadly, Aranda and Caminero are under team control through 2029 and 2030 respectively while Williams figures to be controlled through 2031. That’s an exciting core of young talent, but they’ll need reinforcements as players like Lowe, Pete Fairbanks, Diaz, Shane McClanahan, and Drew Rasmussen depart the organization over the next two seasons. Letting Lowe walk for nothing would be a big risk for the team’s long-term competitive future, especially if the team’s new ownership group isn’t interested in escalating a bottom-of-the-barrel payroll.

On the other hand, Lowe’s apparent decline might make potential suitors hesitant to give up significant value for him. Installing Lowe in an outfield corner, where he already has 50 career appearances, would be an alternative way to both mitigate the concerns about his defensive ability on the infield while also getting more offensive production from the outfield next year. However, Lowe hasn’t played on the grass since 2022.

The Rays also don’t find themselves hurting for payroll flexibility this offseason as much as they do most years after offloading Ha-Seong Kim, Danny Jansen, and Zack Littell from their books during the season. They could even still recoup value for Lowe at the deadline if they find themselves in position to sell for the third year in a row.

How do MLBTR readers think the Rays will handle Lowe this offseason? Will he still be with the team come Opening Day, or will they trade him before then? Have your say in the poll below:

MLBPA-Owned Company Under Federal Investigation

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This morning, ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Don Van Natta Jr. reported that Players Way, a company owned by the Major League Baseball Players Association, is under federal investigation. The MLBPA is already under investigation for its association with OneTeam Partners, which Passan and Van Natta reported on back in May.

Players Way is a youth baseball company founded in 2019. The Union purports to have spent $3.9MM on the venture, though Passan and Van Natta cite multiple sources who have pegged the figures closer to $10MM. “I don’t think any of us realized it cost as much as it did,” one anonymous player told ESPN.

An anonymous whistleblower complaint from November 2024 cited Players Way, which led to a criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. The complaint lodges multiple accusations against MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, including nepotism related to hiring decisions involving Players Way.

“Any suggestion that Players Way has not been supported by our elected Player representatives and broader membership is patently false,” Clark said in a statement to ESPN. “Players Way has been front and center at every annual meeting of the MLBPA Executive Board in recent memory, and our dialogue with Players regarding youth development continues throughout the calendar.”

Readers are encouraged to check out Passan and Van Natta’s full story on the investigation, which contains more info on Players Way and MLBPA’s connection to it. Details include the company headquarters being a mailbox at a UPS Store in Florida and a YouTube channel with one subscriber. Allegations against Clark include abuse of power and improper usage of the union’s resources.

OneTeam Partners is a joint venture between the MLBPA and the NFL Players Association, along with a private equity firm, focused on player-related issues outside the collective bargaining agreement. That investigation stemmed from an anonymous complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board that included accusations against Clark regarding “improperly (giving) himself and other executives equity” in OneTeam, according to the May report from ESPN, cited above.

Clark has led the MLBPA since 2013. He had previously been the organization’s director of player relations, beginning in 2010. Clark faced internal pressure to replace deputy director Bruce Meyer back in March of last year, a change that could’ve also resulted in his own departure. Clark and Meyer ultimately survived the attempted ousting.

The allegations surrounding the MLBPA come at a crucial time for the players and the league, with the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire in December 2026. The CBA and a potential lockout will be hot topics over the coming 13 months.

Tigers Agree To New Minor League Deal With Tomas Nido

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4:00pm: Nido will make $1.5MM if he makes the major league roster, per Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press.

1:56pm: Tomas Nido is heading back to Detroit on a minor league deal, according to the MiLB transactions log. Nido was outrighted to Triple-A Toledo in May. He elected free agency in mid-October, but will stick with the Detroit organization. Nido is represented by ACES.

Nido first joined the Tigers on a minor league deal in September 2024 after getting released by the Cubs. He elected minor league free agency at the end of the 2024 season, but reupped with Detroit in January 2025. This offseason played out similarly for the two sides.

Jake Rogers went down with an oblique injury in April, leading to an early call-up for Nido. He hit .343 in 11 games with the big-league club. All 12 of Nido’s hits were singles. He also struck out at a 27% clip. Rogers returned in May, bumping Nido back to Toledo.

The 31-year-old Nido has spent parts of the past nine seasons with four MLB teams. The majority of his professional career has been spent in the Mets organization. He was drafted by New York in 2012.

Nido handled backup catcher duties for the Mets in varying stints from 2017 to 2024. His most active year was 2022, when he appeared in 98 games and reached 313 plate appearances. Nido scuffled to a .600 OPS that season. His tenure with the Mets ended in June of 2024. The Cubs quickly scooped up Nido after his release from the Mets. He made 17 appearances with Chicago before they moved on from him.

Defense has always been Nido’s calling card. Statcast’s Fielding Run Value grades him as a positive contributor in each season going back to 2018. Nido exceeded double-figures in fielding run value in both 2021 and 2022.

Dillon Dingler emerged as a strong option behind the plate for Detroit this past season, slashing .278/.327/.425 as the primary starter. Rogers remains in the fold as a reliable backup. Nido would likely need an injury to one of those two options in order to return to the MLB squad. Detroit also has catching prospects Josue Briceno and Thayron Liranzo looming in the minors. MLB.com ranks both Briceno and Liranzo as top 5 prospects in the organization.

Orioles, Rico Garcia Agree To Terms On 2026 Salary

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The Orioles announced that they have agreed to terms with right-hander Rico Garcia on a one-year split deal for the 2026 season. The club didn’t announce salary figures but Josh Tolentino and Matt Weyrich of The Baltimore Sun report that the righty will get a $900K salary while he’s in the majors. He’d make $225K for time spent in the minors, according to The Associated Press.

It’s an unusual deal. Garcia, 32 in January, was already on the Baltimore roster, having been claimed off waivers from the Mets in August. He has less than two years of service time. That means he hasn’t yet qualified for arbitration. The O’s could have set his salary around the league minimum, which will be $780K next year. Bumping up to $900K is obviously attractive to Garcia but the O’s also expect some kind of benefit from it as well.

It’s likely the first step in a plan to have Garcia serve as non-roster depth. The O’s could put him on waivers and hope that the slightly elevated salary dissuades the other 29 clubs from putting in a claim. If Garcia passed through waivers unclaimed, he would have the right to elect free agency since he has a previous career outright. However, since he has less than five years of service time, he would have to walk away from his remaining salary commitments in exercising that right. Since Garcia is out of options, this potentially gives the O’s a way to move him to Norfolk and back, while getting around his out-of-options status.

The O’s have tried similar things before, usually with arbitration-eligible players. They agreed to a $1MM salary with infielder Emmanuel Rivera for the 2025 season. He was outrighted off the roster before the season began. During the season, he was added back to the roster and then outrighted again on three further occasions, giving the O’s an extra depth option. It doesn’t always work this way, however. The O’s and Jake Cave avoided arbitration in November of 2022, agreeing to a $950K salary for 2023. About a month later, they tried to pass him through waivers but the Phillies claimed him.

Garcia has seen limited action in five big league seasons but 2025 was his largest workload and his best performance. He tossed 34 1/3 innings for three different clubs, allowing 3.15 earned runs per nine. His 26.8% strikeout rate, 7% walk rate and 48.4% ground ball rate were all above average. Since he’s out of options, he bounced around the waiver wire, pitching for the Mets, Yankees and O’s last year. Perhaps the increased salary will help the O’s keep him as an up-and-down arm but it’s also possible some other club claims him and he gets paid his slightly elevated salary somewhere else.

Photo courtesy of James A. Pittman, Imagn Images

Bryce Miller Expected To Avoid Elbow Surgery

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Seattle right-hander Bryce Miller is not expected to need elbow surgery this offseason, reports Adam Jude of the Seattle Times. Miller had multiple stints on the injured list this past season due to elbow inflammation. He returned for the final six weeks of the regular season and made three starts in the playoffs. “I finished the year the best I felt all year — three good starts, I felt like,” Miller told Jude. “My body and my arm feel good, so just get better, get fully healthy and be ready to go from Day 1 next year.”

Miller was diagnosed with a bone spur in his elbow and received a PRP injection in early June. He relayed to Jude that he has an upcoming appointment to determine the next steps in treatment. Miller said the likely route is a gel cortisone injection early this offseason, and potentially another one at the start of spring training. “Now that we know how to deal with the bone spur, we can figure out what we need to do exactly with it and go from there,” Miller told Jude. He added that he’d be “surprised” if the appointment led to an invasive procedure.

The elbow injury seemed to derail the early portion of Miller’s 2025 campaign. He struggled to a 5.22 ERA through his first eight starts. The control was the biggest red flag. After posting a solid 6.4% walk rate in 2024, Miller nearly doubled that mark to 12.1% over his first 39 2/3 innings. He hit the IL on May 14, though it was a minimum stint. Miller returned at the end of May, but only lasted two starts. He was hammered for eight earned runs over nine innings and headed back to the IL.

The results following Miller’s second absence weren’t much better. He closed the regular season with a 5.62 ERA over eight starts, but there were encouraging signs heading into the playoffs. Miller’s fastball velocity improved by nearly one mph. He cut his walk rate to 6.3%. Miller was mostly done in by a massive 24.5% home run to fly ball rate, which should be expected to regress over a larger sample.

Miller put everything together in the postseason. He limited the Tigers to two runs over 4 1/3 innings in Game 4 of the ALDS. Miller then came through with six dominant innings in a win over Toronto to kick off the ALCS. He returned in Game 5 with four innings of one-run ball, though Toronto’s bullpen couldn’t hold a late lead. Miller’s fastball velocity topped out at 98.1 mph in his second start against the Mariners.

The uneven 2025 season was a disappointing follow-up to a tremendous 2024 for Miller. He built on a solid rookie year, putting together 180 1/3 innings of a sub-3.00 ERA and nearly a strikeout per inning last season. Miller’s 3.85 xFIP and 3.80 SIERA suggested he might not have been as good as his 2.94 ERA, but he looked like a fixture in a talented rotation.

After a remarkably healthy 2024, Seattle’s starters were hampered by injuries this past season. Logan Gilbert spent all of May and part of June on the IL with an elbow flexor strain. George Kirby missed the first two months of the season with shoulder inflammation. Bryan Woo went down with a pectoral injury in September. He was available for just 4 1/3 innings in the playoffs.

Seattle’s rotation led the league in ERA in 2024. The staff slipped to 13th this past season. With Miller managing his elbow injury without surgery, and an offseason for Woo to get back to full health, the rotation should once again be among the best in the league next season. The unit will be key in getting the team back to the postseason in 2026.

Twins Hire Derek Shelton As Manager

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October 30: The Twins officially announced Shelton as their new manager this morning. The team will introduce Shelton at a press conference on November 4.

“Derek brings a tremendous amount of experience from his many years coaching and managing at the Major League level,” Derek Falvey, Twins president of baseball operations, said in a statement. “He cares deeply about this community and our fans, and he’s genuinely driven to take on the challenge of bringing winning baseball back to Minnesota.

“We’ve seen firsthand the trust and respect he earns from players and how he helps them reach their best,” Falvey’s statement reads. “His journey, through both the successes and the tough stretches, has given him real perspective as a leader. That balance and his connection to what this place means to people will serve our players and staff well as we work to build something lasting for our fans and for Minnesota.”

October 29: The Twins are hiring Derek Shelton as their new manager, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. The team will not announce the hire tonight, as MLB discourages clubs from revealing personnel news on playoff game days. Dan Hayes of The Athletic reports that Shelton will be officially introduced sometime next week.

Shelton returns to the Twin Cities, where he previously spent two seasons as bench coach. He held that role between 2018-19, working one season apiece under Paul Molitor and Rocco Baldelli. His familiarity with the front office surely gave him a boost in the managerial search. Shelton was a finalist during the 2018 hiring process that led to Baldelli. While he didn’t get the job at that point, he only needed to wait one more year before he got a managerial opportunity. Shelton landed the top job with the Pirates going into 2020.

Pittsburgh was coming off a 69-93 season that had led ownership to fire manager Clint Hurdle and GM Neal Huntington. They brought in Ben Cherington to run the front office and Shelton to oversee a rebuilding roster. Pittsburgh went 19-41 in the shortened season, then posted consecutive 100-loss records in 2021-22.

Things appeared to be trending up by 2023. The Bucs improved to a 76-86 record. The next season, they hovered around .500 for a while and were very soft deadline buyers. Pittsburgh finished with a 21-33 performance in the final two months, leaving them 10 games under .500 for the second straight year.

The poor finish carried into the ’25 season. The Bucs began the year with a 12-26 record and were more or less locks for another last place showing when they fired Shelton in the second week of May. Pittsburgh played .500 ball under Don Kelly the rest of the way, so they’re sticking with a Cherington/Kelly tandem going into 2026.

Overall, Shelton holds a 306-440 career record. That’s heavily weighed down by the first three seasons in which no manager stood a chance of posting good results with such a poor roster. The Bucs stalled before they ever pulled out of the rebuild, however.

Pittsburgh especially struggled to develop young hitters. Highly-touted talents like Ke’Bryan Hayes, Henry Davis, Endy Rodríguez, Nick Gonzales and to a lesser extent Oneil Cruz did not click the way the organization needed. That’s not entirely the fault of any one coach or manager, of course, but Shelton came up as a hitting coordinator in Cleveland and spent parts of seven seasons as an MLB hitting coach with the Rays before getting the bench coach position in Minnesota.

Shelton’s experience working with a rebuilding roster should come in handy with the Twins. They’re amidst at least a retooling effort after trading Carlos Correa and essentially their entire bullpen at the deadline. The Pohlad family ownership group has pulled back spending since the Twins won 87 games and an AL Central title in 2023. They’re coming off a 70-92 showing that had them above only the White Sox in the American League. That resulted in them firing Baldelli after seven seasons. Any or all of Joe Ryan, Pablo López and Ryan Jeffers could be traded this offseason.

The Twins landed a couple upper level starting pitchers (Taj Bradley and Mick Abel) at the deadline, and they have some interesting young hitters to build around Byron Buxton. Maybe there’s a path back to competitiveness by 2027, but this is likely to be one of the worst teams in the AL next year. They need to overhaul the bullpen and have too many holes in the bottom half of the lineup to fix in an offseason that is likely to be more about which players they trade away than the ones they bring in.

Shelton was reportedly one of four finalists for the Minnesota job. Yankees hitting coach James Rowson (another former Twins staffer), Cubs bench coach Ryan Flaherty, and Padres special assistant Scott Servais were the others. There are now four teams still searching for a new skipper: the Padres, Braves, Rockies and Nationals.

Flaherty and Servais have each been floated as potential candidates for the San Diego position, which is expected to be filled by the end of the week. Rowson has only publicly been linked to the Twins position. Atlanta and Washington have played their searches close to the vest. (Baldelli is reportedly of interest to the Nats.) Colorado has yet to even get the process underway as they focus on hiring a new GM. It’s possible that any of the three other finalists gets a look from one of those teams.

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images.

Nationals To Hire Blake Butera As Manager

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The Nationals are expected to hire Blake Butera as their new manager, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Butera had been the Rays’ Senior Director of Player Development for the past two seasons. He spent four years as a minor league manager with Tampa Bay.

As Passan points out, the 33-year-old Butera will be the youngest manager since Frank Quilici in 1972. It’s been a theme for the former Rays’ farmhand. After a couple of seasons as an infielder in the low minors, he moved to the coaching side, taking over as skipper of High-A Hudson Valley in 2018. At 25 years old, Butera was the youngest manager in organized baseball that season, per Baseball Reference.

After two seasons with Hudson Valley, Butera became the manager of Single-A Charleston. After winning a league title in 2021, he was named Low-A East Manager of the Year. Tampa Bay promoted Butera to Minor League Assistant Field Coordinator in 2023.

Butera also has coaching experience at the international level. He worked for the Perth Heat in the Australian Baseball League from 2019 to 2020. He served as a quality control coach with Leones del Escogido in the Dominican League in 2021. Butera was also a bench coach for Italy in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

Washington fired manager Davey Martinez in July. He had been at the helm since 2018. Martinez won a World Series with the team in 2019, but the team had struggled since then. The Nationals had lost 90+ games in four straight seasons heading into 2025. They were 37-53 when Martinez was dismissed.

Bench coach Miguel Cairo took over as interim manager. He was a candidate to take over full-time in 2026, but was removed from consideration earlier this week. Cairo, Brandon Hyde, and Craig Albernaz were the only three candidates known to have interviewed for Washington’s vacancy. Albernaz ended up landing the Baltimore job.

Washington also moved on from longtime president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo during the season. Assistant general manager Mike DeBartolo took over as interim general manager to close the year. The Nationals then hired former Red Sox assistant general manager Paul Toboni as their president of baseball operations in late September. As Passan notes, the 35-year-old Toboni is the youngest head of baseball operations in the league.

Once Butera is confirmed as the new head man in Washington, there will be three managerial vacancies remaining. Colorado, San Diego, and Atlanta are still in the market. Minnesota, Baltimore, San Francisco, Texas, and the Angels have all filled the position this offseason.

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