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Mariners Acquire Miles Mastrobuoni, Designate Nick Raposo

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The Mariners announced that they have acquired infielder/outfielder Miles Mastrobuoni from the Cubs. The latter club had designated him for assignment last week and now receives cash considerations for his departure. Seattle designated catcher Nick Raposo for assignment to open a roster spot.

Mastrobuoni, 29, has been a part-time big leaguer over the past few years. Over the past three seasons, he has appeared in 119 games and taken 272 plate appearances, mostly with the Cubs but also with the Rays. He has a tepid .219/.279/.263 batting line in that time but has stolen 16 bases in 17 tries while providing defensive versatility. He has spent time at the three infield positions to the left of first base as well as the outfield corners.

As is often the case with a depth player like this, the minor league performance has been better. Over the past three years, he’s had 982 Triple-A plate appearances with 22 home runs, an 18.1% strikeout rate, 12.8% walk rate, .278/.371/.434 slash line and 114 wRC+.

The Mariners have been looking for infield upgrades this winter. They lost Justin Turner to free agency, turned down an option on Jorge Polanco and non-tendered Josh Rojas. That left them with J.P. Crawford at shortstop and no clear answers for the other positions. They have various possible solutions on the roster, including Luke Raley, Dylan Moore, Ryan Bliss, Austin Shenton and others, though strengthening the group has clearly been a goal this winter. The club signed Donovan Solano this week but shouldn’t be done.

Mastrobuoni won’t fix everything but he’s a solid addition to that cluster of potential contributors. He can bounce around to multiple positions and steal a few bases at least. The offense in the majors hasn’t been good yet but the minor league numbers have been better, perhaps suggesting there’s potential for more there. He also has an option remaining, meaning he doesn’t need to be given an active roster spot and can be shuttled between the minors and majors with relative ease.

Raposo, 27 in June, was just claimed off waivers from the Blue Jays last month. He hasn’t yet made his major league debut. He first got a 40-man roster spot from the Cardinals last summer, when both Iván Herrera and Willson Contreras were injured, but never got into a game. He went from the red birds to the blue birds in August when the Jays claimed him off waivers, though Toronto lost him to Seattle a few months later.

In his four years of minor league experience, he has a .241/.321/.387 line and 85 wRC+ in 808 plate appearances. Baseball Prospectus has given him solid marks for his blocking and throwing in the minors. He still has a couple of options and just a handful of days of service time.

The M’s will now have a week to figure out what’s next for Raposo. That could be a trade or Raposo could be put on waivers again. The waiver process takes 48 hours so any trade talks would need to happen in the next five days.

Dodgers, Padres, Blue Jays Reportedly Finalists For Roki Sasaki

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The Roki Sasaki frenzy is nearing its completion. Several teams have reportedly been told that they won’t be signing the right-hander and now Jeff Passan of ESPN reports that the Dodgers, Padres and Blue Jays are the three finalists. The Cubs are no longer in the running, according to Mike Rodriguez, with Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic adding that the Cubs have been informed of their status.

It seems that today was the day that Sasaki and his reps started informing teams that had been eliminated from the running. Earlier today, various reports indicated that the Giants, Yankees, Mets, Rangers and Diamondbacks would not be signing Sasaki. The Mariners were vaguely connected to Sasaki at times and hadn’t been expressly eliminated, but it seems they didn’t make it to the podium as one of the top three.

Sasaki’s decision has been one of the biggest wild cards hanging over the offseason. Since he’s coming over to the big leagues before his 25th birthday, he’s considered an amateur under MLB rules and is therefore subject to the international bonus pool system. As such, no club could be initially ruled out just based on economics, as is usually the case with other free agents.

Each team gets an annual pool of money that they are allowed to spend on international amateurs. This year’s pools are in the $5-8MM range, with the smaller-market clubs mostly having the slightly larger ones. Teams can trade for more pool space but they can’t increase their initial allotment by more than 60%. A posting fee will also be owed to the Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki’s former club in Japan, though that will only add 20% of the bonus. As such, each team has roughly the same ability to pay Sasaki a few million bucks.

Sasaki is likely therefore to decide based on factors beyond money. After all, if money was his top priority, he probably would have waited until he turned 25. That’s what Yoshinobu Yamamoto did, which led to a $325MM deal from the Dodgers.

No one can say for sure what Sasaki is prioritizing, though the Dodgers and Padres have been seen as logical suitors for a while now. Both clubs are on the West Coast, which is closer to Japan, perhaps a favorable factor when considering the flights for Sasaki and his family members. The Dodgers also have a strong reputation as a whole, having made the postseason in each year going back to 2013, with a fresh World Series victory in 2024. The Padres don’t have quite the same track record of success but have been good in recent years.

Both clubs also have Japanese players on the roster, with the Dodgers having Yamamoto and Ohtani, while the Padres have Yu Darvish. Some reports have suggested Sasaki and Darvish have an especially close relationship.

The Jays have been floated as a landing spot for Sasaki far less than the Dodgers or Padres, which is sensible. They are not on the West Coast. They had a strong run of contention from 2020 to 2023 but are coming off a down season. They had Yusei Kikuchi until last year’s trade deadline but don’t currently have a Japanese player on the roster.

In April of 2023, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote that “Some Japanese players are uncomfortable being major-league teammates with other Japanese players because of the importance of seniority in Japan’s hierarchical culture, major-league executives and agents say.” That piece was examining the possibility of Ohtani singing with the Mets when they already had Kodai Senga on the roster. Sasaki’s agent Joel Wolfe has downplayed the importance of a club having Japanese players on its roster, either positively or negatively. “That was never a topic of discussion,” Wolfe said last month, per Alden Gonzalez of ESPN.

It’s possible that Sasaki will be attracted to playing in another country for other reasons. Wolfe has suggested that the Japanese media was often unkind to Sasaki, which could perhaps make it preferable for him to be in a smaller market. Toronto isn’t exactly a small market but it would be further away from the American media spotlight. The Blue Jays are also owned by Rogers Communications, the media company that broadcasts the club’s games on television and radio. Perhaps that would allow the Jays to promise Sasaki a more guarded environment in terms of media access. Toronto is also a city with a reputation for its diversity and relatively low crime rates.

Those are all speculative arguments, but the same could be said about the arguments for Sasaki preferring Los Angeles or San Diego. Sasaki and Wolfe have given very few clues about what will be used to make the final decision, leaving the baseball world to mostly guess.

Whatever he decides will likely have ripple effects into the rest of the offseason. The Padres have a tight budget and needs all over their roster. Trading Dylan Cease is reportedly one potential solution to their situation, which would perhaps become more likely if they sign Sasaki. The Dodgers already have lots of rotation options and might consider a trade of their own if they add Sasaki. That’s perhaps less likely with the Jays, who have been trying to add a starting pitcher all winter without success thus far.

There will also be domino effects elsewhere. Whichever team signs Sasaki will likely have to walk away from verbal commitments to teenagers in Latin America, as they will need to redirect bonus money to Sasaki. That will lead to those players then looking for other clubs. Some of this has seemingly already started to happen, as the Pirates are reportedly going to sign Darell Morel, a Dominican shortstop that had previously been committed to the Dodgers.

It won’t take long for all of these knock-on effects to really ramp up. Sasaki’s posting window closes on January 23, meaning resolution will be coming in less than a week. He can’t officially sign until January 15, when the new international signing period begins, though it’s possible an agreement could be reported before then.

Orioles Designate Blake Hunt For Assignment

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The Orioles announced that catcher Blake Hunt has been designated for assignment. The move opens a roster spot for right-hander Andrew Kittredge, who has now been officially signed to a one-year deal.

Hunt, 26, still hasn’t made his major league debut. Drafted by the Padres in 2017, he went to the Rays as part of the December 2020 trade that brought Blake Snell to San Diego. He had emerged as an intriguing prospect prior to that deal but his stock dropped after joining the Rays. In November of 2023, rather than add him to the roster to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft, the Rays traded him to the Mariners. The M’s gave him a roster spot but flipped him to the Orioles in May for Mike Baumann and Michael Pérez.

Around all those transactions, Hunt has generally produced middling offensive numbers in the minors. Over the past four years, he has a combined batting line of .231/.302/.395, which translates to an 82 WRC+. That includes a rough .218/.273/.364 line and 60 wRC+ in 2024.

After that performance, Hunt has lost his roster spot. The Orioles will now have a week to figure out what’s next for him, whether that’s a trade or a fate on the waiver wire. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so any trade would need to come together in the next five days.

Despite his down season at the plate, it’s possible some club takes a shot on him based on past prospect pedigree. Going into 2021, FanGraphs listed him just outside the top 100 on that year’s top prospects list. His stock has fallen since then but he still has a couple of option years, meaning he could be an intriguing depth option for a club with a roster spot and a plan for getting him back on track.

Mariners Sign Donovan Solano

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The Mariners announced that they have signed infielder Donovan Solano to a one-year contract. Robert Murray of FanSided reports that the ACES client will make $3.5MM this year, with $1MM in performance bonuses also available to him. Left-hander Austin Kitchen was designated for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot.

Solano, 37, has somewhat quietly been one of the better utility players in the league in recent years. Earlier in his career, he spent time with the Marlins and Yankees but didn’t hit enough at the major league level. He languished in the minors in 2017 and 2018 but got back to the big leagues in 2019 and has been hitting almost non-stop since then.

Over the past six years, Solano has played for the Giants, Reds, Twins and Padres. He got into 546 games over that stretch, stepping to the plate 1,838 times. He has managed to produce a batting line of .294/.353/.413 in that time, which translates to a wRC+ of 112, indicating he’s been 12% above league average overall.

For those years, he has a combined .360 batting average on balls in play. That would normally be a concern, since the league average is usually below .300, but he’s been maintaining high BABIPs for several years now. Of the six most recent seasons, his BABIP bottomed out at .321 in 2021. He was at .346 or higher in the other five seasons. That suggests the numbers are more a reflection of his swing than mere luck.

Solano won’t provide huge power, with last year’s eight home runs actually marking a career high. His walk rates aren’t especially strong either. However, his style of offense could be a good fit for Seattle, as that club has been wary of its strikeout problems for a while now.

Going back to the 2023 club, guys like Mike Ford, Jarred Kelenic, Teoscar Hernández, Eugenio Suárez and Tom Murphy were not brought back after posting strikeout rates north of 27%. But Seattle didn’t find the improvements it was looking for in that category last year, with guys like Luis Urías, Mitch Garver, Mitch Haniger, Jorge Polanco and Randy Arozarena striking out more than 28% of the time after being brought aboard. Solano has a career strikeout rate of 18.9% and has never had that number finish higher than 22.2% in any individual season.

The Mariners have clearly been looking for infield help this winter. Justin Turner hit free agency. Josh Rojas was non-tendered. The M’s turned down a club option on Polanco. That left them with J.P. Crawford at shortstop and question marks elsewhere.

Solano has played all four infield spots in his career but hasn’t played shortstop since 2021. He has more experience at second base than anywhere else but has spent more time at the corners in recent years.

That flexibility gives the Mariners some options in terms of how Solano is deployed. Reporting this winter has suggested the club may feel it has enough in-house options to cover second base, with Dylan Moore and Ryan Bliss potentially covering there until prospect Cole Young seizes the job. Luke Raley is an option to be the strong side of a platoon at first, since he’s a lefty swinger with notable splits. Guys like Austin Shenton, Tyler Locklear, Samad Taylor and Leo Rivas are also capable of playing various infield positions and on the 40-man roster.

The M’s are likely not done adding to that group, so Solano’s role could well be determined by what other moves are forthcoming. He could take some playing time at second or third, while his right-handed bat could also allow him to shield Raley from lefties at first base. Solano has fairly neutral platoon splits for his entire career, with a 101 wRC+ against lefties and 98 wRC+ otherwise. However, he’s been a bit more extreme in his recent resurgence. Over the past six years, he has slashed .310/.361/.444 against lefties for a 122 wRC+, compared to a .285/.349/.395 line and 107 wRC+ against righties.

It has been reported this offseason that the M’s were working with about $15-16MM of payroll space. Solano will use up a small portion of that while strengthening the infield group. That still leaves with them with some powder dry for another infield addition. It was previously reported that they were interested in bringing back Turner, though it’s possible the Solano signing makes that harder to put together.

It’s also possible that the M’s make a bold move to totally remake the picture, as there have been rumors they could trade Luis Castillo as a means of freeing up some spending capacity. Whether they go that route or simply find another modest infield addition remains to be seen. Pitchers and catchers will be reporting to spring training in about a month.

Kitchen, 28 next month, has limited big league experience. A prospect in the Rockies’ system, he was selected to the big league roster in June but was designated for assignment the next day without getting into a game. He went to the Marlins via waivers and made four appearances for that club, allowing 11 earned runs in seven innings. A second DFA in September put him back on waivers, which led the Mariners to put in a claim.

Though Kitchen has an ugly 14.14 earned run average, it’s a tiny sample of major league work. His minor league track record has generally been solid, with the lefty keeping the ball on the ground. In 2024, pitching for three organizations, he logged 52 1/3 innings in the minors. In that time, he had a 3.78 ERA, 15.1% strikeout rate, 6.8% walk rate and 55.1% ground ball rate.

The M’s will now have a week to figure out what’s next for Kitchen, whether that’s a trade or another trip to the waiver wire. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so any trades would have to come together in the next five days. Kitchen still has a couple of option years and minimal service time, so a club willing to give him a roster spot could keep him as cheap depth for the foreseeable future.

Roki Sasaki Reportedly Informs Several Teams They Are Out Of Running

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3:10pm: The Rangers have also been informed that they are out of the running, reports Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. The Diamondbacks never got a meeting with Sasaki and won’t be the destination either, per John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Phoenix.

2:56pm: The Mets have also been informed that they are out of the running, per Joel Sherman of The New York Post.

2:35pm: The Yankees have been told that right-hander Roki Sasaki will not be signing with them, reports Jack Curry of Yes Network. That’s the second team that is reportedly out, with the Giants having also been told that they won’t be Sasaki’s destination. Andy Martino of SNY adds that the Mets aren’t expected to sign him either, though it’s unclear if they have been given a clear denial like the Giants and Yankees. As for teams that are still in the mix, Sasaki reportedly met with the Padres in San Diego recently, per a report from Dennis Lin, Will Sammon and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. This was after his recent meeting with the Blue Jays in Toronto.

Sasaki has been on the radar of MLB clubs for years, but his situation became very interesting once it became clear that he would be coming over to North America this winter. Since he is not yet 25 years old, he is considered an amateur under MLB’s international signing rules. That makes a massive difference in his earning power and opens him up to potentially sign with any club.

Per the international bonus pool system, each club has a limit on how much signing bonus money they can give to international amateurs, with this year’s pools ranging from $5-8MM. Broadly speaking, the large-market clubs have the smaller pools and vice versa. Teams can trade for more pool money but can’t add more than 60% of their initial pool allotment.

The Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki’s Nippon Professional Baseball club, will also be owed a posting fee. However, the value of that fee will be a percentage of his signing bonus and won’t be a large number either. Per the NPB posting rules, the fee is 20% of a deal’s first $25MM, 17.5% of the next $25MM, and 15% of further spending. Since Sasaki will be capped by the pool system, his deal will lead to a modest bonus, with the posting fee adding 20%.

Had Sasaki waited until he turned 25, he would have been considered a professional and could have signed a deal for any amount. That’s the route Yoshinobu Yamamoto took, eventually securing a $325MM deal from the Dodgers.

It can be debated as to who is the better pitcher between Yamamoto and Sasaki, but the point is that there’s tremendous upside in getting Sasaki aboard for such a small investment. Teams that normally don’t sign top free agents can become theoretical fits, while the larger clubs have big payrolls and competitive balance tax concerns, making them very interested as well.

By coming to North America now, Sasaki has seemingly illustrated that maximizing his short-term earnings is not his top priority. Since each club has roughly the same ability to offer him a bonus now, he should be focused on non-financial criteria for making his decision. It could come down to geography, a club’s reputation developing pitching or perhaps a team’s long-term competitive outlook. His agent, Joel Wolfe, said the plan was for teams to make pitches before the holidays. Sasaki would then travel to visit the home cities of certain clubs after the holidays.

A decision needs to come soon. Sasaki can’t officially sign until January 15 when the new pool year starts, but he also has to be signed by January 23, when his posting window closes. Now that there’s only a handful of days left, it seems he is narrowing the field.

The Yankees and Mets both reportedly met with Sasaki in December but it seems that he won’t be coming to New York to join either club. Both teams already have plenty of rotation options, though they surely would have welcomed the problem of adding Sasaki into the mix and further crowding things. The Yankees are already feel good enough about their pitching depth that they are reportedly shopping Marcus Stroman.

Perhaps signing Sasaki wouldn’t have added too much to the urgency to trade Stroman. MLB teams often use six-man rotations when folding in a Japanese pitcher, as the NPB usually sees starters throw once a week as opposed to the five-day rotation in North America. It’s a moot point now but the Yanks still project to start the year with a strong group that includes Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt, which is why Stroman’s available.

The Mets have more uncertainty in their rotation but still have plenty of arms to potentially fill out their rotation. Sean Manaea, Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Frankie Montas, Clay Holmes, Paul Blackburn, Griffin Canning and Tylor Megill are all possibilities. There are question marks with many of those names but that’s eight viable candidates of varying degrees for five rotation spots.

Many observers have considered the Dodgers and the Padres to be the two most likely landing spots, so it’s not especially surprising that San Diego is still in the mix. No one can be sure what Sasaki’s priorities are, but it’s been suggested that the club’s West Coast location and strong performance in recent years are points in their favor, as well as Sasaki’s friendship with Yu Darvish.

As pointed out by The Athletic and others, the Padres could probably use Sasaki more than any other club. They have known financial constraints but plenty of holes to fill, which is why players like Luis Arráez, Dylan Cease, Jake Cronenworth and Robert Suarez have been in trade rumors this winter. Adding a pitcher of Sasaki’s caliber at such a discounted rate would be tremendously helpful for them.

As of right now, the rotation projects to include Darvish, Cease and Michael King, with plenty of question marks beyond that. Adding Sasaki would give the Padres a very strong front four, but it could also perhaps increase the chances of the Friars trading Cease for players that are cheaper and more controllable but less proven.

It’s still anyone’s guess what team will be chosen by Sasaki and why. As mentioned, the Jays are still a possibility, based on Sasaki’s recent trip to Toronto. The Padres are obviously in there as well. The Athletic mentions the Dodgers, Rangers, Cubs and Mariners are clubs that are thought to be in the mix. It’s unknown if Sasaki will visit with any of those other clubs but resolution is coming soon, with more information perhaps trickling out in the coming days.

Braves Walked Away From Jeff Hoffman Deal Due To Physical

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1:50pm: Bowman further reports that the Braves’ offer to Hoffman was a five-year pact valued between $45-48MM total. The idea would have been for Hoffman to get an opportunity to pitch out of the rotation in the season’s first few years before a potential move to the ’pen down the road. The lengthy nature of the pact suggests that part of the aim was to tamp down the annual value of the contract and thus reduce the luxury hit.

1:25pm: Right-hander Jeff Hoffman signed with the Blue Jays on Friday, a three-year deal with a $33MM guarantee. Shortly after the Jays announced that signing, it was reported that the Orioles had agreed to give Hoffman $40MM over three years but backed out after flagging a shoulder issue in his physical. The saga continues today, as Mark Bowman of MLB.com reports that the Braves also walked away from a deal with Hoffman.

There are no details on Hoffman’s agreement with Atlanta. It’s unclear if this was before or after the agreement with Baltimore. It’s also not publicly known what sort of financials details were worked out between Atlanta and Hoffman. Bowman doesn’t specifically mention what issue Atlanta found in the physical, though it’s presumably the same shoulder problem that the O’s flagged.

It’s a notable development on a couple of fronts. For fans of the Jays, this will perhaps add to the level of concern that already developed out of the report about the deal with the O’s. All teams have different thresholds for what is or is not a concern during a physical, but the fact that two clubs were scared away from Hoffman will understandably be a bit nerve-wracking for fans of the club he is now a member of.

It bears repeating that the Orioles didn’t want to walk away from Hoffman completely. Per last week’s reporting, Baltimore continued negotiating with Hoffman after nixing the $40MM agreement. That suggests that whatever they found in his shoulder wasn’t a dealbreaker, but rather something that lowered the amount of money they were willing to commit to him. It’s unknown how much the shoulder issue knocked off of their offer, but it presumably dropped below the $33MM figure that Hoffman got from Toronto.

Time will tell if the shoulder becomes a problem for Hoffman during the next three years, but it’s a situation that has precedents. Carlos Correa is the most notable recent example, as he originally had a 13-year, $350MM agreement with the Giants before they flagged an ankle issue in his physical. That led to a 12-year, $315MM agreement with the Mets, though that was also quashed by the ankle issue. That led Correa back to the Twins on a six-year, $200MM guarantee with four vesting options that can eventually lead to Correa earning $270MM over ten years. Since then, Correa’s results have been mixed. He got into 135 games in 2o23 with tepid offense, followed by excellent numbers in 2024 but in just 86 games, heading to the injured list due to a right oblique strain and plantar fasciitis in his right foot.

There have been other examples of disagreements about health lately. The Yankees reportedly had a deal in place to acquire Jack Flaherty at last year’s deadline but walked away due to concerns about his back in the medical reports. The Dodgers seemingly had less concern, as they swooped in to get him. Flaherty went on to stay healthy, forming a key part of the club’s rotation down the stretch and through the playoffs as the Dodgers won the World Series.

This Hoffman situation also has some parallels to Toronto’s signing of Kirby Yates a few years ago. Going into 2021, the Jays gave Yates a $5.5MM guarantee with performance bonuses but he required Tommy John surgery and missed the entire season. In the wake of that surgery, it was reported that Atlanta had walked away from giving Yates a $9MM deal while the Jays also reduced their guarantee from $8.5MM, both due to concerns with the physical.

The Jays reportedly believed that Yates’s upside was worth the risk on that modest investment, which didn’t work out. In this instance, it’s unclear if the concern is as high as it was with Yates, though the investment is far larger. Though as mentioned, the O’s were still willing to make some kind of investment in Hoffman as well, to an unknown degree.

For Atlanta, while the details of their engagement with Hoffman aren’t known, this can perhaps tell us a bit about what’s next for them. If they had an agreement with Hoffman, it was likely somewhere in the $35-45MM range. That suggests both that they have some money to spend and a willingness to use it on upgrading the pitching staff.

Hoffman reportedly got some interest as a starting pitching earlier in the offseason. It’s unknown which role Atlanta had in mind, though they did do the reliever-to-starter conversion thing with Reynaldo López last year. They signed López to a three-year, $30MM deal and then moved him to the rotation for the 2024 season. That has worked out very well so far, as López posted a 1.99 earned run average in his 25 starts last year.

A rotation addition seems to be on the to-do list for Atlanta again this winter. They lost Max Fried and Charlie Morton to other clubs via free agency and were connected to Nathan Eovaldi earlier this winter, though he later re-signed with the Rangers. On the other hand, the bullpen lost A.J. Minter, Jesse Chavez and others to free agency, while knee surgery is going to possibly keep Joe Jiménez on the IL for the whole 2025 season.

Atlanta has been fairly quiet this winter, mostly making cost-cutting moves. That includes jettisoning Jorge Soler’s contract, non-tendering Ramón Laureano, turning down an option on Travis d’Arnaud and restructuring the deals for López and Aaron Bummer. It’s unclear exactly where they want the payroll to be but RosterResource currently projects it at $201MM, about $22MM below last year’s $223MM Opening Day figure listed at Cot’s Baseball Contracts. RR also has Atlanta’s competitive balance tax number at $217MM, which is $24MM shy of the $241MM base threshold of the tax.

Atlanta has paid the tax in each of the past two years. Back in December, president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos suggested the club could pay the tax again in 2025, though without firmly declaring that they would do so. Given the wiggle room they currently have, it’s possible for them to make a notable investment or two while still staying south of the line.

Hoffman could have been a part of their plans, either for the rotation or the bullpen, though they will now have the chance to redirect that money to someone else. The free agent market still features starters like Flaherty, Nick Pivetta and others, as well as relievers including Tanner Scott, Kenley Jansen, David Robertson and more. The trade market may feature names like Dylan Cease and Luis Castillo as rotation options, while Ryan Pressly and Erick Fedde are some relievers who could be available in trade talks.

Cubs Sign Colin Rea

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Jan. 13: The Cubs have announced Rea’s signing.

Jan. 10: The Cubs are in agreement with Colin Rea on a one-year, $5MM guarantee. Rea receives a $4.25MM salary for the upcoming season and is guaranteed a $750K buyout on a $6MM club option for 2026. The right-hander is represented by Joe Speed. The Cubs have a full 40-man roster and will need to open a spot in order for this deal to become official.

Rea, 34, is coming off a solid two-year run with the Brewers. Over the 2023 and 2024 seasons, he tossed 292 1/3 innings for Milwaukee, making 49 starts and nine relief appearances. He allowed 4.40 earned runs per nine. His 19.9% strikeout rate was a bit below league average, but he showed strong control with a 6.6% walk rate.

The Brewers could have retained Rea for 2025 via a modest $5.5MM club option, but they somewhat surprisingly put him on waivers to see if any other club wanted him at that price point. No team ended up claiming him, so the Brewers simply went for the $1MM buyout instead. By getting $5MM from the Cubs on top of that $1MM buyout, Rea will come out marginally better financially than if the Brewers had simply picked up the option.

By joining the Cubs, Rea will be reunited with manager Craig Counsell, who was the skipper in Milwaukee before coming to Chicago a year ago. Rea was also with the Brewers in 2021, though he only got to pitch six innings in the majors that year. He then headed to Japan for the 2022 season, parlaying his decent performance over there into a return to the Brewers two years ago.

Rea doesn’t overpower hitters, averaging around 93 miles per hour on his fastball over the past two years, but he can keep them off balance with a diverse mix of six pitches. Per Statcast, he also threw a sinker, cutter, sweeper, splitter and curveball. He also didn’t lean on any one pitch too often, topping out with his sinker in each of the past two seasons, around 30% of the time in each year. That’s helped him have fairly neutral splits, with lefties hitting .257/.308/.465 against him last year and righties at .258/.315/.429.

For the Cubs, Rea is likely to slot into a similar swing role to the one he served with the Brewers. Chicago signed Matthew Boyd earlier this winter, adding him to a rotation mix that already had Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga and Jameson Taillon. Rea and Javier Assad have somewhat similar numbers over the past two years and could perhaps compete for the fifth spot in the rotation if everyone is healthy, with the other perhaps getting a long relief role in the bullpen.

Of course, rotations shift over the course of a season. Injuries are inevitable and some players will perform better or worse than expectations. The Cubs have guys like Jordan Wicks, Caleb Kilian, Ben Brown and Cody Poteet also on the 40-man roster, though they all still have options and are fairly lacking in experience. Prospect Cade Horton is not yet on the roster but could force his way into the mix during the upcoming season.

It’s also possible that the Cubs will make further moves to change the rotation plan. Since acquiring Boyd and trading Wesneski, they have been connected to free agent Jack Flaherty and trade candidates like Luis Castillo and Jesús Luzardo. The latter was already traded from the Marlins to the Phillies but another rotation acquisition of some kind is not off the table.

Rea’s role figures to be determined by those moves as well as the health and performance of everyone on the roster, including his own. He improves the depth of the pitching staff at a fairly low cost, relatively speaking. The starting pitching market has been aggressive this winter, as guys like Justin Verlander and Alex Cobb got $15MM guarantees despite being relatively older veterans coming off injury-marred seasons. Rea doesn’t have the same track record or ceiling as those guys but has been healthy and performing well lately, with just one third the salary commitment.

RosterResource now has the Cubs at a payroll of $181MM and a competitive balance tax number of $198MM. Last year, they eventually got to a $228MM payroll and went narrowly over the tax line. It’s unclear if they want to get to the same levels in 2025, but even if they want to avoid the tax, they can still add about $40MM to their CBT number while doing so. This year’s base CBT threshold is $241MM.

MLBTR’s Steve Adams first reported that the Cubs and Rea had agreed to a one-year, $5MM deal. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reported the presence of a ’26 club option. MLBTR reported the option terms.

Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast

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On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.

Pitchers and catchers will be reporting to spring training in about a month, but there’s still plenty of offseason business to attend to. If you have a question about a past transaction, a look ahead to the rest of the winter or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.

Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.

In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

White Sox Sign Omar Narváez To Minor League Deal

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The White Sox announced that they have signed catcher Omar Narváez to a minor league deal with an invite to major league spring training. The veteran backstop is represented by ISE Baseball.

Narváez, 33 next month, has had a fairly unusual career. Once a bat-first catcher with defensive question marks, he later flipped that profile and became a solid defender with a tepid bat. Last year, he didn’t succeed in either category and ended up spending most of the season in the minors.

From 2016 to 2019, with the White Sox and Mariners, he slashed .276/.361/.411 for a 113 wRC+. But thanks to his poor defensive metrics, he was worth only 3.1 wins above replacement in 353 games over that stretch, per the calculations of FanGraphs. He then spent 2020 to 2022 with the Brewers, hitting .233/.318/.350 for an 84 wRC+ but producing 4.6 fWAR in 247 games thanks to his superior work behind the plate.

The Mets signed him to a two-year, $15MM deal going into 2023, which turned into a bust. A significant left calf strain put him on the shelf early in the first year of that deal and he only played 49 games on the season, hitting just .211/.283/.297. Early in 2024, he produced a dismal line of .154/.191/.185 in 69 plate appearances. He was released by early June and signed a minor league deal with the Astros, then hitting .196/.325/.304 in 169 Triple-A appearances.

It’s obviously been a rough patch for Narváez but he has a track record of past major league success, both offensively and defensively, though usually not at the same time. He’s a sensible flier for the Sox, who had little proven behind the plate. They currently have two catchers on the 40-man roster: Korey Lee and Matt Thaiss. Lee is a former prospect who could still break out but has hit .188/.227/.313 in his career thus far. Thaiss, picked up in a cash deal last month, is a bit better at the plate but isn’t considered a strong defender.

The club’s future probably lies in Edgar Quero or Kyle Teel or both. Quero was acquired from the Angels in the Lucas Giolito/Reynaldo López trade and Teel from the Red Sox in the Garrett Crochet deal. Both are consensus top 100 prospects but they may not be immediate solutions. Neither is on the 40-man roster yet. Quero has just 26 games at the Triple-A level while Teel has 28. Getting to the majors this year is certainly possible for both of them but there are no guarantees that they will immediately succeed even if they get there. Narváez gives the club an experienced backstop that they could lean on if their younger options get injured or hit speed bumps.

Free Agent Profile: Yasmani Grandal

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This winter’s free agent market has been hot in some ways but there are still plenty of intriguing names out there for most positions. One area that moved fairly quickly was the catching market, with many of the top names off the board.

It wasn’t an amazing class to begin with but the top free agent backstops this winter were Danny Jansen, Carson Kelly and Kyle Higashioka. All three of them signed about a month ago. Gary Sánchez, Travis d’Arnaud, Jacob Stallings and Austin Hedges have also been locked up.

For teams still looking for help behind the plate, their options are now more limited. Former All-Star Game MVP Elias Díaz is still out there, though he’s coming off a season in which his struggles were pronounced enough that he was released by the Rockies, finishing out the year as Higashioka’s backup in San Diego. Christian Bethancourt had some good results with the Cubs last year but was nonetheless outrighted, perhaps due to how inconsistent he’s been in recent years. James McCann has had passable offense at times but his work behind the plate hasn’t been well regarded.

One intriguing guy still available is Yasmani Grandal. His numbers were rough in 2022 and 2023 but there are some ways in which last year was a bounceback. The Pirates gave a lot of time behind the plate to Joey Bart, who engineered a nice breakout season, as well as former top overall pick Henry Davis. But Grandal was somewhat quietly in the mix next to those guys and managed to get into 72 games and step to the plate 243 times, as well as crouching behind the dish for 560 1/3 innings.

Offensively, he had a cromulent performance. His 18.9% strikeout rate was his best apart from his part-time work over a decade ago, before he was established as a big leaguer. His 9.9% walk rate was a bit below some of his previous work but still above league average. He also popped nine home runs in that limited role. His .228/.304/.400 batting line translated to a 95 wRC+, below average overall but above par for a catcher.

Grandal has been a solid defender in his career, particularly in the framing department, and that continued last year. Among guys with at least 550 innings caught in 2024, Grandal ranked seventh on the FanGraphs leaderboard for framing. The six guys ahead of him on that list each had more than 700 innings behind the plate. Patrick Bailey was the only backstop significantly ahead of the pack on a rate basis. Statcast had Grandal 11th on their framing leaderboard. Of the 10 guys ahead of him, only Hedges caught fewer pitches than Grandal.

The strong framing contributed to a solid overall defensive profile. When combined with a decent year at the plate, he actually provided some sneaky value, depending on which measure of wins above replacement you trust most. Baseball Reference only gave him 0.6 WAR on the year but FanGraphs had him at 1.4 and Baseball Prospectus at 1.8. That’s likely due to those outlets having different weights for catcher defense or framing specifically.

Grandal hasn’t gotten any attention this offseason. He hasn’t been tagged at MLBTR since early May, when he was activated from the injured list, having started the season on the IL due to plantar fasciitis in his left foot.

He isn’t going to help sell season tickets, but for clubs who still want upgrades behind the plate, perhaps he’s the best bet. He isn’t likely to cost much either. He only got $2.5MM plus incentives from the Bucs a year ago. Perhaps his solid season can get him a bump, but he’s also now 36 years old and still unsigned, which doesn’t give him a lot of negotiating leverage. Even if he does earn a raise, it surely won’t be massive.

Going back to Pittsburgh is probably not an option. Bart surely earned himself some run after his strong season, while the club still has Davis. There’s also Endy Rodríguez, who seemed to be emerging as the club’s catcher of the future in 2023, but then spent 2024 recovering from surgery on his ulnar collateral ligament and flexor tendon in his throwing arm. Jason Delay is on the 40-man roster as well.

Teams like the Red Sox, Nationals, Padres, Phillies, Atlanta, Blue Jays, Mariners and others could arguably do with improving their catching depth. Some of those clubs have strong starting options but most clubs avoid leaning on one catcher too much these days. Cal Raleigh led the league with 125 starts last year, meaning every team had a backup/secondary catcher in the starting lineup at least 37 times, often far more.

There’s obviously some risk with signing a 36-year-old catcher but he arguably has a decent floor, depending on how one values his framing. While he struggled offensively in 2022 and 2023, BR considered him to be well below replacement level, but FG had him just barely below, while BP gave him 2.3 WAR for that two-year period.

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