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A Tough Call In Next Winter’s Rotation Class

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MLBTR will release our first Power Rankings of the upcoming free agent class in the next few days. Ordering starting pitchers is often the most challenging part of that process. Next winter's class has a few of those tricky calls -- perhaps none closer than Zac Gallen versus Michael King.

Gallen certainly has the longer track record as an above-average starting pitcher. The righty has started all 146 of his major league appearances. He has been consistently effective, working to a 4.30 ERA or better in all six years (not including this year's 5.28 mark over three starts). Gallen has only once allowed four earned runs per nine in a season. He has punched out at least a quarter of opposing hitters in each year. The result is a 3.33 earned run average with a near-27% strikeout rate in more than 800 career innings.

King has spent the majority of his big league career working out of the bullpen. The Yankees kept him in long relief for most of his first four seasons. It wasn't until the waning weeks of the 2023 season that they gave him a rotation spot, largely because of injuries elsewhere on the pitching staff. King shined in nine starts, was the centerpiece of San Diego's return for Juan Soto, and had a fantastic first full season as a starter.

Over 173 2/3 frames, he turned in a 2.95 ERA while striking out 27.7% of opposing hitters. He showed no signs of slowing down as he pushed well beyond his previous career-high workload. King managed a 2.15 ERA across 62 2/3 innings after the All-Star Break. He finished seventh in NL Cy Young balloting.

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Fantasy Baseball: New Gods?

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Hello, friends.

In a sport with as much variance as baseball, there are few highs like those of catching some small-sample lightning early. Whether it's a favorite late-round draft pick currently cashing sleeper checks, or someone you pounced on after they came out of the ether to explode in a way Yoan Moncada only dreams about -- finding early gems is always fun.

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Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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MLBTR's Steve Adams hosted a chat today at 2pm CT, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers.

 

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Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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MLBTR’s Anthony Franco held a live chat today, exclusively for Front Office subscribers.

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Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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MLBTR’s Anthony Franco held a live chat today, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers!

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Fantasy Baseball: (Mostly) Everything You Need to Know

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Hello, friends.

"Welcome back!" he said, staring into a mirror. Apologies for my absence during literally the most inconvenient month of the year; wrist injuries wait for no man. Or, at least, they made this man wait until he could type with less pain. But we're back, baby -- and we're more Nick than ever?

Well, anything interesting happen recently? Ha! That question was a ruse -- in fact, many interesting things have shaken up the fantasy baseball snowglobe of information we were working with all through the draft season. That's the tough thing about early-season fantasy: Is everything noise, or is anything real? What to react to and what to ignore?

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MLB Mailbag: Braves, Twins, Torkelson, Sutter Health Park

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MLBTR is going deep into the bench for this week's mailbag. With Tim Dierkes and Steve Adams each on vacation, I'll step in to answer questions on the Braves' poor start, whether the Twins are a playoff-caliber team, this year's most improved rosters, Sutter Health Park, situational hitting, and much more!

Abner asks:

Even when the biggest concern with the NY Mets has always been their starting rotation, so far the starters have looked pretty good in general and the bullpen has performed almost perfectly. With the problems that have experienced the Atlanta Braves in the opening week (Reynaldo López injury, Jurickson Profar suspended, Ronald Acuña out at least until May, Spencer Strider is out for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the season) do you think that we are about to see a battle between Mets and Phillies the rest of the way?

I had the Phillies and Mets a little ahead of the Braves to begin the season. The past week certainly hasn't increased Atlanta's odds of winning the division. It's way too early to start digging their grave, though. Last year's Astros dropped five of their first six games and seven of nine. They bottomed out at 12 games below .500 in the second week of May; they ended up winning the AL West by 3.5 games. Most teams that dig themselves that big a hole will not make the playoffs, of course, but they also usually don't have as much talent as the Braves do.

Atlanta has started the season against arguably the two best teams in the National League. They're without their best player, one of the league's best pitchers, and their starting catcher. Even if you don't expect much out of Sean Murphy at this point, getting Acuña and Strider back within the next few weeks is massive. They've got 96% of the season remaining to put this behind them.

Losing Profar and López obviously hurts, largely because they're stressing areas where the roster already looked weak. The Jarred Kelenic left field experiment didn't work out in year one. Alex Verdugo could push Kelenic into a fourth outfield role once Acuña comes back, but he was unsigned deep into Spring Training for a reason. The rotation depth behind the top four or five is spotty. Strider, Chris Sale, Spencer Schwellenbach and some combination of AJ Smith-Shawver, Grant Holmes, Bryce Elder and prospect Hurston Waldrep is probably workable. If they lose any of their top three to injury before López is able to return, it's teetering.

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Offseason In Review: Detroit Tigers

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After Detroit surprised the baseball world by sneaking into the playoffs off the back of a late-season surge and wound up making it within a game of the ALCS, the club entered the offseason looking to assert itself as a contender but fell short in many of its most significant pursuits.

Major League Signings

2025 spending: $67.8MM
Total spending: $77.8MM

Option Decisions

Trades and Waiver Claims

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None

Notable Losses

Fans in Detroit and many around the game believed that 2024's surprise success would spur the Tigers to act more aggressively this winter than they had during president of baseball operations Scott Harris's previous seasons at the helm. Those expectations made plenty of sense on paper. After all, Detroit had just made the postseason for the first time since 2014 amid a season where they enjoyed a breakout from superstar southpaw Tarik Skubal. He asserted himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball, winning both the Cy Young award and the Triple Crown in the American League, but now has just two seasons remaining before he's scheduled to reach free agency.

When the final years of team control over a breakout superstar were combined with an excellent season from Riley Greene, positive signs from other foundational youngsters like Colt Keith and Reese Olson, and a barren payroll that featured less than $40MM in guaranteed salary commitments for 2025, it seemed clear that this offseason was as good of an opportunity as the Tigers could expect to push their chips in and build a World Series contender. That's not how the 2024-25 offseason panned out for the club, however. While the Tigers were involved on at least some level with a number of potentially impactful players on the market, the vast majority of those efforts to acquire impact talent did not pan out.

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Offseason In Review: Tampa Bay Rays

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The Rays made some notable trades and signings this offseason but so much focus was on the stadium drama, as hurricanes blew in and threw the entire trajectory of the franchise off course.

Major League Signings

2025 spending: $21.5MM
Total spending: $37.5MM

Option Decisions

Trades and Claims

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

Notable Losses

The Rays played their final game of the 2024 season on September 29. A 3-1 loss to the Red Sox sealed a losing record of 80-82. It was a relative disappointment, the club's first time under .500 since 2017. In typical Rays fashion, they made the most of it. At the deadline, they traded away some players who were getting more expensive and closer to free agency, such as Zach Eflin, Randy Arozarena, Isaac Paredes and Jason Adam.

Going into the winter, there was some decent stuff in place for the future. The long-term payroll was fairly clean and the farm system was in healthy shape. The big league roster seemed to be in decent position to bounce back in 2025, thanks in large part to the return of several pitchers who were injured in 2024.

The club also had a deal in place with local government agencies to fund a new stadium. The plan was to play at Tropicana Field through 2027, with the Trop to be knocked down and replaced by a new ballpark/commercial real estate complex by 2028.

But barely a week later, the whole stadium situation plan was altered. In late September and early October, Hurricanes Helene and Milton both passed through the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. The Trop sustained significant damage, particularly from Milton on October 9. Most notably, the roof was essentially gone. This was a big problem because the Trop had no drainage system in place, making it suddenly unusable.

At that time, it wasn't known exactly what would happen next. But in the following months, the club's short-term and long-term stadium plans would be shifted dramatically. They are going to play their 2025 homes games in a minor league park. They could be back in the Trop next year, but that's not clear. The deal for the new stadium is now dead and relocation talk has retaken a seat at the table.

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Offseason In Review: Boston Red Sox

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After finishing 2024 with an 81-81 record, the Red Sox rose from their lengthy slumber to once again assert themselves as a force in the offseason market with substantial upgrades all around the roster. Will it be enough to get back to the postseason?

Major League Signings

2025 spending: $79.55MM
Total spending: $172.3MM

Option Decisions

Trades and Waiver Claims

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None

Notable Losses

After four straight seasons without a playoff berth, the Red Sox entered the winter with plenty of positive signs. Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, and Richard Fitts looked like an enviable nucleus of young rotation talent under team control, while Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abreu enjoyed breakout seasons in the outfield. With the best young talent, including baseball's #1 prospect Roman Anthony, and three other top-50 talents in Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell, and Kyle Teel knocking on the door, it seemed clear that the time was now for the club to push its chips in and force open a new competitive window.

While there was some skepticism about the club's intentions at the outset of the offseason, particularly after last winter's "full-throttle" comments led to a quiet offseason that brought little new talent into the fold, the club quickly showed itself to be a legitimate threat to spend when it emerged as a surprise finalist for the services of Juan Soto alongside expected contenders like the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, and Blue Jays. The Red Sox ultimately fell short of that pursuit, finishing alongside Toronto ahead of L.A. but behind the two New York teams. Even as Soto landed in Queens, however, Boston's apparent willingness to give out a contract in the range of $700MM made clear they were serious about improving this winter.

In the aftermath of Soto signing elsewhere, the Red Sox had two main priorities to address: adding a big right-handed bat to the lineup, and bringing in an ace (preferably one that throws left-handed) to lead their young but talented pitching staff. Initial attempts to bring in players like Max Fried (who eventually signed in the Bronx) and Teoscar Hernandez (who eventually returned to the Dodgers) fell apart, but the Red Sox didn't let the league's biggest spenders nabbing their top targets stop them from addressing their needs in a big way. During the Winter Meetings, the Red Sox echoed the Chris Sale trade by swinging a blockbuster with the White Sox that saw them surrender a bevy of talented prospects in exchange for an extremely talented southpaw.

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