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Offseason In Review: Kansas City Royals

By | at March 10, 2026 2:01pm CDT

Improving the offense (and in particular the outfield) was the key focus of the Royals’ offseason, and there was plenty of speculation that K.C. would again look to move an arm for a bat.  Instead, the Royals hung onto their rotation depth and made some moves that still leave the lineup with a few question marks.

Major League Signings

2026 spending: $7.15MM
Total spending: $7.15MM

Trades And Claims

Option Decisions

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

Notable Losses

After reaching the playoffs in 2024, the Royals hoped to significantly upgrade their lineup last winter, except the trade that brought Jonathan India to Kansas City from Cincinnati (with Brady Singer going to the Reds) ended up being the Royals’ biggest offensive addition.  General manager J.J. Picollo was open with his frustration, telling Jaylon Thompson of the Kansas City Star in February 2025 that “that’s probably the one area in the two years we haven’t been able to reach our goal of getting that [offensive bat].  It’s a little disappointing, but we can’t force teams to make trades they don’t want to make.  We were active in the free-agent market; we just weren’t able to land the guys.”

Thirteen months and another offseason later, an argument can be made that the Royals have again had to settle for a half-measures approach.  To be clear, the additions of Isaac Collins, Starling Marte, and Lane Thomas should help the outfield, although that’s in part because there was really nowhere to go but up.  The Royals’ outfield combined for a dismal -1.7 bWAR in 2025, so even if Collins and Marte just replicate their combined 3.1 bWAR from last season, that’s already a substantial step forward.

That said, Royals fans were surely hoping that the team’s biggest free agent expenditure of the offseason would be on a player who didn’t also have a sub-replacement year.  Thomas played in only 39 games with the Guardians due to a bone bruise in his right wrist, and then multiple IL stints due to plantar fasciitis that eventually led to foot surgery in late September.  Over 142 plate appearances for Cleveland, Thomas hit only .160/.246/.272, translating to -0.6 bWAR and just a total wash of a year for the 30-year-old.

Thomas isn’t far removed from a 23-homer, 109 wRC+ 2023 season with the Nationals, and he was still hitting well before his bat cratered following a trade to the Guards at the 2024 deadline.  It could be that a change of scenery to another AL Central team will help Thomas get his career on track, but he can’t be counted on as a sure thing for 2026.  For a Royals club working within a limited budget, committing $5.25MM to Thomas carries some extra risk, especially since he might end up being just a part-time player.

Kyle Isbel will continue to get regular work in center field, as his excellent defense makes up for the lack of punch from his left-handed bat.  Thomas (a right-handed hitter) could end up platooning with Isbel in center, or take platoon duties or even everyday duties in right field depending on Jac Caglianone‘s development.  The Royals would like nothing more than to see Caglianone start to live up to his top-prospect potential, though his first 232 plate appearances in the majors resulted in a measly .157/.237/.295 slash line.  Given Caglianone’s bigger-picture importance to the organization, the Royals would have no problem relegating Thomas to platoon duty if it means Caglianone has a sophomore breakout.

Collins is expected to hold down the everyday left field job in 2026 and potentially for years to come.  Kansas City’s most notable trade of the winter saw Collins and righty reliever Nick Mears acquired from the Brewers in exchange for left-hander Angel Zerpa.  Milwaukee may yet explore moving Zerpa back into a starting role, but on paper, the Royals were able to land a controllable (through 2030) outfielder as well as some more bullpen help without dealing from their rotation depth.

The trade made some sense for both teams, beyond just the Royals’ outfield need and the Brewers’ surplus on the grass.  From the Brewers’ perspective, they may have felt they were selling high on a late bloomer (Collins turns 29 in July) who didn’t make much hard contact in 2025 and may have benefited from a .326 BABIP.  Teams may have figured Collins out a bit, given how his numbers cooled off drastically over the season’s last six weeks.  For the Royals, Collins brings a switch-hitting bat, good left field defense, very strong walk and chase rates, and room to grow after his fourth-place finish in NL Rookie of the Year voting.  Milwaukee has plenty of outfield depth, and Zerpa has an extra year of control over Mears, who like Collins struggled down the stretch (5.89 ERA in his final 20 appearances).

Marte signed with K.C. two weeks into Spring Training, bringing another notable name into the position-player mix.  Nobody expects Marte to return to his old All-Star form at age 37, and he’ll likely spend most of his time at DH with only a handful of outfield appearances.  But, Marte hit a respectable .269/.331/.398 with 16 homers over 699 plate appearances for the Mets in 2024-25 working in this same part-time capacity.  The Royals will happily take those numbers for the low cost of $1MM and some incentive bonuses.

Kameron Misner was also acquired from the Rays in an early-offseason trade.  Between Misner, John Rave, Drew Waters, and utility types Tyler Tolbert and Michael Massey, the Royals have depth on hand as they try to finally establish some stability in their outfield mix.

Marte may end up sharing DH at-bats with either Salvador Perez or Carter Jensen.  The Royals will want to try to give Jensen at-bats beyond just a backup catching role, and also give Perez a fair amount of rest days (which opens the door for Jensen to get more reps behind the plate).  The rest of the infield picture is set, with Maikel Garcia at third base, Bobby Witt Jr. at shortstop, India at second base, and Vinnie Pasquantino at first base.

India’s return is the only surprising element of the otherwise stable K.C. infield.  The Royals opted to give India another chance by signing him to an arbitration-avoiding one-year, $8MM contract, rather than simply non-tendering the veteran second baseman.

While it seems like the team simply believes India can bounce back in his second year in Kansas City, committing $8MM to this belief is another matter.  Owner John Sherman indicated in October that the Royals would be spending at roughly the same levels as their $138MM payroll from last year, and as per RosterResource, K.C. has around $148.6MM on the books for 2026.  India and Thomas combine for $13.5MM of that number, and one has to wonder whether the Royals could’ve done more with that money than investing in two players who simply weren’t productive in 2025.

Letting India go would’ve created another hole to address at second base, though since Collins has some experience there, the Royals could’ve still acquired him and toggled him between both the keystone and left field.  Even after agreeing to India’s contract, the Royals were still linked to a couple of prominent infield trade targets.  Kansas City was among the many teams who had interest in Brendan Donovan, though the utilityman might well have seen more time in the Royals’ outfield than the infield.  The Royals’ interest in the Nationals’ CJ Abrams indicated a scenario of Abrams moving to second base (since Witt obviously wouldn’t be moved off shortstop) and India then perhaps dealt back to Washington or dealt elsewhere.

Abrams and Donovan were just two of the many players linked to the Royals in hot stove chatter.  On the free agent front, K.C. had some interest in re-signing old friends Mike Yastrzemski and Adam Frazier, and other outfielders like Harrison Bader, Adolis Garcia, Austin Hays, and JJ Bleday were all reportedly on the radar.  Most of this group ended up signing one-year deals on modest salaries, though Yaz (two years, $23MM from the Braves) and Bader (two years, $20.5MM from the Giants) might have been beyond Kansas City’s preferred price range.

Without much to spend in free agency, the Royals featured in several trade rumors over the winter.  Apart from exploring MacKenzie Gore‘s availability as part of their talks with the Nats, most of the Royals’ reported targets were outfielders, including Boston’s Jarren Duran, Houston’s Jake Meyers, and the Dodgers’ Teoscar Hernandez.

Since there are still more than two weeks before Opening Day, we can’t entirely rule out the possibility of a late-spring swap involving any of the outfield trade candidates.  Hernandez is the least-likely of the group due to his hefty remaining salary.  Meyers is the most established player within the Astros’ own shaky outfield, so it could be tricky for Houston and Kansas City to line up on a deal that addresses both teams’ needs.  The Red Sox and Royals, meanwhile, seemed like logical trade partners for most of the winter due to Boston’s outfield glut.  No deal came together between the two sides, perhaps because the Royals weren’t interested in moving Cole Ragans.

It isn’t known exactly what players or offers were bandied about during all of these negotiations, but to return to Picollo’s words from last winter, “we can’t force teams to make trades they don’t want to make.”  This naturally doesn’t absolve the front office of their responsibility to improve the team, but in relation to the 2025-26 offseason, perhaps the Royals’ rotation depth wasn’t quite as enticing as it seemed in terms of trade talks.

Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha weren’t going anywhere after being recently signed to extensions, so the trade speculations focused around the likes of Ragans, Kris Bubic, Noah Cameron, Ryan Bergert, and Stephen Kolek.  There didn’t seem to be much chance that K.C. would move Ragans in the wake of an injury-shortened down year, which is only natural given that he looked like an ace when healthy in 2024.

Bubic showed some front-of-the-rotation ability in 2025 before a rotator cuff strain ended his season early, and while Bubic drew some trade buzz, the combination of his health status and his impending free agency after the 2026 season may have limited his trade value.  For Cameron, Bergert, or Kolek, maybe the offers for any of these more back-end rotation types didn’t meet Kansas City’s expectations, if the plan was to bring back an everyday outfielder.

Again, it’s not out of the question that the Royals could still trade a starter in what remains of the offseason.  Or, perhaps crucially, the Royals might be more open to moving a starter closer to the deadline, once the team has a better sense of its rotation mix.  The 2025 rotation was hit with a number of injuries, so it makes sense that Kansas City wouldn’t want to trade away any starters unless the return was too good to ignore, or if the club was more confident in its starting pitching depth.

Turning to the relief corps, the Royals had to fill some gaps in the bullpen after Hunter Harvey signed with the Cubs, Taylor Clarke was non-tendered, and Zerpa was traded.  Mears hasn’t shown much consistency over his six MLB seasons, but 2025 was his best year yet, with a 3.49 ERA and a 5.9% walk rate over 56 2/3 relief innings for Milwaukee.  Alex Lange was another inexpensive free agent signing, with the Royals spending $900K to see what the righty can do after a lat surgery sidelined him for almost all of the 2024-25 seasons.

Zerpa’s role as the top southpaw relief option was filled by Matt Strahm, who broke into the majors with the Royals in 2016.  Kansas City’s late-game trio of closer Carlos Estevez and set-up men Strahm and Lucas Erceg looks to be a strong group, as Strahm looks to continue his excellent recent track record as a workhorse reliever.  He posted a 2.71 ERA, 30.5% strikeout rate, and a 6.2% walk rate over 212 2/3 innings for the Phillies during the 2023-25 seasons.

The Phillies were open to moving Strahm for a few reasons — some tension existed between Strahm and the coaching staff, and Philadelphia has other lefties in their pen, so the Royals’ offer of righty Jonathan Bowlan was a fit for both sides.  Kansas City was also willing to absorb the $7.5MM owed to Strahm in the final year of his contract, which represents the Royals’ largest investment in new talent this offseason.

Three extensions represented the Royals’ biggest overall spends of the winter, including a deal with Pasquantino covering two of his arbitration-eligible years.  The biggest investment was a long-term extension with Garcia that will pay the All-Star at least $57.5MM through 2030, with a club option for 2031.  The Royals gain cost certainty through Garcia’s extended (as a Super Two player) arbitration years, and control over what would’ve been Garcia’s first two free agent-years.  It’s a nice deal that reflects Garcia’s emergence as both an offensive and defensive force, and his breakout was of massive import to a team in need of hitting.

It was a foregone conclusion that the team was planning to at least exercise its $13.5MM club option on Perez for 2026, and the Royals took it a step further with a two-year, $25MM extension covering the 2026-27 seasons.  The deal includes $12MM in deferred money, freeing up some shorter-term savings for the Royals and giving Perez a soft landing for what could potentially be the final two seasons of his big league career.  Moving on from Perez and entrusting the catching job to Jensen and (further down the road) top prospect Blake Mitchell might’ve made sense from a pure logic standpoint, but there’s also obvious value for the Royals in retaining Perez, one of the most beloved players in franchise history.

Manager Matt Quatraro also got in on the extension action, as the skipper’s new contract keeps him in Kansas City through at least the 2029 campaign.  The 2026 season was the final year of Quatraro’s previous deal, and there was little doubt the Royals were going to keep a skipper who has delivered consecutive winning seasons (and a playoff appearance in 2024) to bring the team out of a rebuild period.

Perhaps the most interesting wrinkle of the Royals’ offseason came not exactly off the field, but to Kauffman Stadium’s field itself.  The team is slightly reducing the dimensions of the spacious outfield and lowering the wall from 10 feet to around 8.5 feet, all in the name of making the notoriously pitcher-friendly ballpark more conducive to power hitters.  As Picollo told MLB.com’s Anne Rogers and other reporters, the aim is “a very fair ballpark. We don’t want it to turn into a bandbox and every ball up in the air turns into a home run. We just want hitters to be rewarded when they hit the ball well, particularly in the gaps.”

Maybe there’s a metaphor here for the Royals’ offseason, as the team is also hoping that some minor adjustments to its roster can yield larger results.  After winning 82 games in 2025, a return to the playoffs certainly seems plausible if the Royals can get more offense and the pitching stays healthy.  Kansas City’s chances are helped by playing in the relatively weak AL Central.  Giving Witt and Garcia more established lineup support would’ve been helpful, but the Royals are hoping that Caglianone and/or Jensen can deliver as much or more than the new additions.

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2025-26 Offseason In Review Kansas City Royals MLBTR Originals

Offseason In Review: New York Mets

By | at March 9, 2026 8:42pm CDT

The Mets responded to a disappointing 2025 season by undergoing a major roster overhaul for 2026, all while sticking to the front office’s preference of avoiding long-term commitments.

Major League Signings

2026 spending (not including Melendez): $86.75MM
Total spending (not including Melendez): $240.75MM

Trades and Claims

Option Decisions

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None

Notable Losses

The 2025 season was a huge disappointment for the Mets. They had just gone to the NLCS the year before. They added Juan Soto in the offseason. They had every expectation of being one of the best teams in the league and got out to a good start. On June 12th, they had a 5.5 game lead over the Phillies in the National League East. It was all downhill from there. They scuffled through the end of the season, going 21-32 in August and September. They finished 83-79, the same record as the Reds. Cincinnati got the final N.L. Wild Card spot via tiebreaker.

In the clubhouse after the final game of the regular season, just minutes after being eliminated, first baseman Pete Alonso told members of the press he would be opting out of his contract. He had almost departed the prior offseason, only returning after lingering unsigned into February. Edwin Díaz would undoubtedly be opting out as well. A few days after Alonso’s forthright comments, it was reported that the Mets were planning a big shakeup of the coaching staff. Rumors of clubhouse discord would eventually seep out.

It seemed like big changes were possible as the club looked to get in position for a better campaign in 2026. It didn’t take long for the dominoes to fall. There were early offseason trade rumors surrounding longtime Mets like Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil. It wasn’t immediately clear how to take those rumors, especially since Nimmo had been with the club since 2011 and had a full no-trade clause on his deal.

Just three weeks into the offseason, Nimmo was traded to the Rangers for Marcus Semien in a rare one-for-one swap of veterans on big contracts. Nimmo would later say he approved the trade essentially because it seemed like the Rangers wanted him more than the Mets did.

For the Mets, the trade checked a few boxes. On the financial side of things, they actually took on more money in the short term. Nimmo is making $20.25MM in each season of the rest of his deal, Semien $26MM for the next two years and then $20MM in the final season. But Nimmo’s deal still has five years left on it, compared to Semien’s three.

Under president of baseball operations David Stearns, the Mets have shown a preference for higher average annual values on shorter deals. Apart from the Soto pact, which was a special case due to his youth, Stearns hasn’t signed anyone to a deal longer than three years since taking over as the club’s front office leader. That preference was clearly at play in the 2025-26 offseason, with the Nimmo/Semien swap fitting the pattern.

It also shored up the club’s defense, something that was a stated goal. Nimmo was once a center fielder but had largely been in left field in 2024 and 2025, reducing some of his value. Semien, despite being his mid-30s, continues to be a reliably above average second baseman in terms of his defense.

More changes came the following month. On December 1st, it was reported that the Mets would be signing reliever Devin Williams to a three-year, $51MM deal. Many felt that was a lot of money for a guy who’d just posted a 4.79 earned run average, but it’s actually somewhat of a buy-low situation.

Williams was one of the most dominant relievers in baseball prior to his 2025 season in the Bronx. He went into that campaign with a career ERA of 1.83. The ERA spike with the Yanks seemed fluky since his stuff appeared to be the same and he still racked up strikeouts and ground balls. His 55.2% strand rate on the year was bizarrely low, more than 20 percentage points below the rest of his career. ERA estimators like his 2.68 FIP and 2.67 SIERA thought he was pretty close to his previous self. Stearns, who was familiar with Williams from their time together in Milwaukee, is betting that 2025 was indeed a fluke.

That didn’t necessarily close the door on a Díaz reunion. The Mets have almost no real budgetary limitations and certainly had room in the bullpen for two elite relievers. However, it was reported on December 9th that Díaz would be signing with the Dodgers.

That seemed to be a bit of an unusual situation. The three-year, $69MM sticker price was a bit below expectations. The Mets had offered him $66MM over three years, which was arguably a better offer because it reportedly had less deferred money compared to the Dodger deal. Some reports said the Mets were willing to go higher but were a bit caught off-guard when he quickly accepted the offer from Los Angeles. Later reports also said Atlanta put a five-year offer out to Díaz. The dollar value of that offer was not revealed but perhaps Díaz just wanted to join the World Series champs and jumped at the chance.

Regardless of the reasons, the Mets were down another longtime franchise staple. He would not be the last. The very next day, on December 10th, it was reported that Alonso would be joining the Orioles on a five-year, $155MM deal. The Mets never seemed to interested in making a long-term investment in their franchise home run leader. It appeared they didn’t want to sign him to anything longer than three years, so he moved on.

Part of the reason the Mets seemed fine with letting Alonso walk is that, as mentioned, improving their defense was a priority this winter. Alonso has never received especially strong grades for his first base defense. Now that he’s 31 years old, he’s more likely to get worse over time than to suddenly improve.

That’s a sensible enough logic in a vacuum, but things got a little strange a few days later when the Mets pivoted to Jorge Polanco on a two-year, $40MM deal. The plan seems to be for Polanco to play a decent amount of first base, though he could also serve as the designated hitter and occasionally play second or third.

Polanco technically has experience playing first base in the big leagues but in the most limited way possible. On April 6th of 2025, Mariners right fielder Víctor Robles injured himself on a catch, recording the second out in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 4-4 game against the Giants. The Mariners removed Robles and shuffled their defenders around, putting Polanco at first. The Giants walked it off on the next pitch with a single to the outfield. That’s the extent of Polanco’s big league experience as a first baseman: one pitch, without having to make a play.

Polanco is coming off a great season at the plate, having hit 26 home runs with a .265/.326/.495 batting line, but there’s some risk. Recurring knee problems have been an issue for him in recent years. He played fewer than 120 games in each season from 2022 to 2024. His offense was below par in the final of those three, which allowed the Mariners to re-sign him for just one guaranteed year and $7.75MM. While he bounced back at the plate, he was almost exclusively a designated hitter in the first half. He gradually played more second base as the season went along but still served as the DH quite a bit.

Though Alonso’s defense was never ideal, his availability was incredible. He never started fewer than 133 games at first in any full season with the Mets. Suddenly pivoting to a guy with almost no experience at the position and notable injury concerns is a curious choice. Polanco can probably handle it, but it speaks to the club’s commitment to their desire for avoiding long-term contractual pitfalls.

Adding Polanco also pushed McNeil further out the door. He had already been in trade rumors, and the Semien acquisition blocked him from the position at which he has spent the most time. He was flipped to the Athletics just before the holidays in what was essentially a salary dump deal. Even though the Mets ate some money in the swap, the A’s took on $10MM of what McNeil is owed this year. Considering the Mets pay a 110% tax rate, that saved them more than $20MM.

Around the same time, they also made another bullpen addition, getting Luke Weaver for $22MM over two years. Weaver’s 2025 didn’t end in strong fashion, but he’s nonetheless coming off a strong two-year run with the Yankees. Over 2024 and 2025, he posted a 3.21 ERA over 148 2/3 innings, striking out 29.5% of opponents and walking just 7.8%. He’s not a replacement for Díaz, but he can pair with Williams for a strong one-two punch at the back of the bullpen.

Going into the holidays, the Mets had been busy but were also left in a weird spot, having seemingly made more subtractions than additions. At second base, they had effectively swapped in Semien for McNeil, with Polanco replacing Alonso at first. But trading Nimmo left a hole in the outfield which had not been filled.

In early January, there were still options. The top two free agent outfielders, Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger, remained unsigned. The Mets were connected to both. They made a strong run at Tucker, once again in alignment with the preference for staying short term. They reportedly offered him a huge $220MM deal over four years, with a couple of opt-outs. The massive $55MM average annual value would have led to a tax bill of over $60.5MM for the Mets, meaning they were willing to shell out almost $120MM annually to get Tucker aboard.

Unfortunately, the Dodgers had similar thinking and went to $240MM over four, so he slipped through the Mets’ fingers. The Mets could have then pivoted to Bellinger but went in a different direction. They found another player willing to opt for a short-term deal with a juiced AAV, giving Bo Bichette a three-year deal worth $126MM, or $42MM per year. Factoring in the tax bill, that’s almost $90MM annually the Mets are sending out. There are opt-outs after each season, so perhaps Bichette will only be around for one year, but it’s a big commitment.

Bichette has been a shortstop for the majority of his career but seems unlikely to spend much more time there going forward. His defensive grades have never been terribly strong. Late in 2025, a knee injury put him on the shelf for the end of the season and the beginning of the playoffs. He was back with the Blue Jays for the World Series but clearly not still 100% healthy. He spent some time as the DH and also limped out to second base a few times.

The Mets had already committed themselves to a middle infield of Francisco Lindor at short and Semien at second. The plan is to move Bichette to third, a position where he has no experience and will have to learn it on the fly. That’s a gamble the Mets are willing to take in order to get Bichette’s bat into the lineup.

That will seemingly push Brett Baty into a super utility role where he bounces around the infield and maybe the outfield corners as well. Mark Vientos is in a somewhat similar spot but his 2025 struggles should put him a bit lower on the depth chart. He’ll be trying to hit his way back into the mix, though he has a narrower path since he’s only really capable of playing the infield corners. The Mets don’t really have a strict DH, so it’s possible for Baty or Vientos to earn more at-bats, perhaps with Polanco moving more towards a full-time DH role.

The Bichette addition still left them with their outfield unaddressed but they quickly checked that box. Just a few days later, they pulled the trigger on a trade for Luis Robert Jr.. To get him to Queens, they took on the entirety of his $20MM salary and will have to pay taxes on that as well. They also parted with some talent, sending utility player Luisangel Acuña and prospect Truman Pauley to the White Sox. Acuña has shown the potential to be a solid bench piece, but the additions of Semien, Polanco and Bichette to the infield made him less necessary. He’s also out of options and surely wouldn’t have gotten through waivers unclaimed.

Robert has the potential to be an excellent upgrade to the Mets outfield but is nowhere near a guarantee. He showed a huge ceiling in 2023, hitting 38 home runs and stealing 20 bases while providing strong center field defense. But in 2024 and 2025, he was on and off the injured list, being capped at 100 games in the former and 110 in the latter. His offense was subpar in both campaigns. The speed and defense give him a nice floor, in a sense, but he has to be on the field to provide that floor.

With Nimmo gone, Soto will be moving from right field to left field. Robert will take over in center. In right field, the Mets wanted to leave a path open for prospect Carson Benge but brought in some contingency plans. They already had Tyrone Taylor on the roster. Late in the winter, they added MJ Melendez on a split deal and Mike Tauchman on a minor league pact. If Benge doesn’t look ready by the end of spring, they have some ways to pivot.

Amid all of this shuffling on the position player side and in the bullpen, the rotation had largely been ignored for most of the winter. The Mets went into the offseason with a starting group consisting of Nolan McLean, Sean Manaea, Clay Holmes, Kodai Senga and David Peterson. Just behind that group were optionable minor leaguers like Brandon Sproat, Jonah Tong and Christian Scott.

It was a good group but one perhaps lacking an ace-like arm at the front. McLean showed the potential for that late in 2025 but he was only able to make eight starts before the winter arrived. The Mets were reportedly looking for an upgrade but (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) wanted to avoid long-term free agent deals.

They were connected to some of those free agents, like Framber Valdez and Ranger Suárez, but always seemed more likely to make a big splash on the trade market. Rumors linked them to Joe Ryan, Nick Pivetta, and Edward Cabrera but they were able to land Freddy Peralta from the Brewers. They sent Sproat and prospect Jett Williams to Milwaukee to get Peralta and Tobias Myers.

Peralta is a very sensible fit for the Mets. Stearns is plenty familiar with him; he already acquired Peralta and extended him when he was running the Brewers. Peralta’s one year of club control and $8MM salary are appealing for any club, but they fit well for the Mets and their tax situation.

What remains to be seen is if Stearns can sign Peralta to another extension. He has access to bigger payrolls with the Mets than he did with the Brewers but has really tried to limit the length of deals. Peralta is well positioned to cash in as a free agent next winter and is seemingly angling for the kind of long-term deal the Mets don’t like.

It was a busy offseason for the Mets. They overhauled the roster, bringing in a lot of new faces while letting some of the familiar ones go. The lineup and rotation look really strong. But by sticking to his preferences in terms of contract length, Stearns has been forced to make some compromises. The Mets wanted to improve the defense but are going into the season projecting to have third and first base manned by guys with effectively no experience there. They’ve added an injury-prone center fielder and a 35-year-old second baseman. They made some bullpen additions but may not have really improved it since they lost one of the best closers in the league.

Does it all add up to a better team or have they mostly just shuffled the deck? Give your ranking of the offseason in the poll below.

How would you grade the Mets' offseason?

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Photo courtesy of Jim Rassol, Imagn Images

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2025-26 Offseason In Review MLBTR Originals New York Mets

Make Or Break Year: Alec Bohm

By | at March 8, 2026 10:19pm CDT

Players highlighted in the “Make Or Break” feature normally fall into one of a few familiar categories.  Sometimes it’s a former star prospect running out of chances to prove they belong in the majors, or perhaps it’s an established star trying to bounce back after a down year or two, or maybe it’s a veteran trying to get their career on track after an extended injury absence.

Alec Bohm doesn’t exactly fit any of these models.  In fact, one could argue Bohm has already been “made” in the sense that he was an All-Star in 2024, and is coming off four seasons as the Phillies’ top choice at third base (as well as a part-time first baseman), with 8.0 fWAR to show for his 560 games and 2352 plate appearances from 2022-25.  He has an above-average 105 wRC+ at the plate over those four seasons, and Bohm’s third base glovework has improved from terrible to at least palatable, and even pretty good depending on the metric of choice.

This is the track record of a solid, Major League-caliber player, and it’s a resume that Bohm is rightfully proud of achieving.  “You look at it in the grand scheme of things, out of all the players, a very small number that have ever played in the big leagues, there’s not a lot of them that get to arbitration,” Bohm recently told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.  “Then the list gets even smaller of those who get to arbitration, get to free agency.  Then the list gets even smaller when you talk about guys who get to 10 years and beyond.”

“When you kind of zoom out and look at it from a different perspective, I’ve done a lot of great things.  I’ve had a pretty good career for myself, made it a lot further than a lot of people can say.  I’m definitely proud of that, and want to keep building on it.”

Bohm’s issue, in some ways, is a matter of framing.  Bohm can be described as a decent or okay player…or as “just a” decent or okay player.  The Phillies haven’t really been hurt by having Bohm take a regular spot in their lineup, nor is he at fault for the team’s inability to get over the hump for a World Series championship.  (Bohm’s .225/.327/.333 slash line over 150 postseason plate appearances isn’t good, but he is far from the only Philadelphia hitter to struggle in the playoffs.)

Because Bohm’s production has always evened out to roughly average, however, it creates the sense that the Phillies could do better at the hot corner.  It also doesn’t help that Bohm’s perception that he was a top prospect and the third overall pick in the 2018 draft.  Though Rosenthal notes that Bohm’s production has bettered a lot of other prominent names from that draft class, the infielder is (rightly or wrongly) a victim of the high expectations that come with being a top draft choice.  In a sense, Bohm represents a larger issue clouding this otherwise successful run of Phillies baseball — the team hasn’t gotten much from its farm system, as the roster has been built most around free agents and trades.

Along these same lines, Bohm has been the subject of trade rumors for the better part of two years.  Bohm’s 3.4 fWAR season in 2024 was the best of his career, as he had a 113 wRC+ from hitting .280/.332/.448 with 15 homers over 606 PA, and he also delivered +4 Outs Above Average as a third baseman.  The down side of his career year was that Bohm slumped badly after the All-Star break, and the Phillies’ response to this breakout campaign was to shop Bohm to address other needs.

Such teams as the Athletics, Mariners, Royals, Angels, and White Sox were all linked to Bohm-related rumors in the 2024-25 offseason, with the idea being that the Phils would move Bohm and then sign one of Alex Bregman or Willy Adames to play third base.  Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski was at least aiming high in shopping Bohm offers, and perhaps too high — reports indicated that George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Mason Miller, and Garrett Crochet were some of the players the Phillies wanted in return for trade packages involving Bohm.

There weren’t as many public reports about Bohm’s market this offseason, maybe in part because Bohm’s production dropped to a 105 wRC+ (.287/.331/.409 with 11 homers over 464 PA) and he was limited to 120 games due to a left rib fracture and shoulder inflammation.  Philadelphia was again looking to upgrade at third base, coming just short of signing Bo Bichette in a scenario that would’ve turned Bohm into an obvious trade chip for the remainder of the winter.

Going forward, top prospect Aidan Miller is expected to make his MLB debut at some point in 2026, and then step into an everyday role at either second or third base in 2027.  This puts pressure on second baseman Bryson Stott for one, but it’s a more direct threat to Bohm since he is slated to become a free agent next offseason.  As Rosenthal puts it, “at this point, perhaps even more than before, Bohm is playing for the other 29 teams.”  There’s even a non-zero chance Bohm could be dealt in-season depending on how the Phillies feel about Miller’s ability to immediately contribute in the majors.

For his part, Bohm hasn’t been worried about the trade speculation or his impending free agency, saying he is just concerned about playing.  “I don’t really take any of it personally, think too far into it. It’s all out of my control. I can’t do anything to prevent it….I don’t stew over it.  It’s just part of the business side of it,” Bohm said.

A midseason trade would make Bohm ineligible for the qualifying offer, so that would remove any draft compensation from his free agent case.  Assuming Bohm remains a Phillie throughout 2026, a qualifying offer could be a moot point anyway, as it would probably take a huge jump in production for Philadelphia to even consider issuing Bohm a QO.  If Bohm delivers his usual type of season, there’s a decent chance he’d just accept the offer and take a big one-year payday (this year’s QO was worth $22.025MM) rather than deal with both the vagaries of his own market, plus the added uncertainty of how the inevitable lockout will interrupt the 2026-27 offseason.  Adding a $22MM-ish salary to an already hefty payroll likely isn’t in the Phillies’ interest, when Miller could just take over at third base for a minimum salary.

Qualifying offer aside, Bohm is the type of mid-tier free agent we’ve seen get squeezed by the market in the past.  Teams without much payroll room might feel they can more or less replicate Bohm’s production with a cheaper veteran or maybe two platoon options.  Bigger-spending teams could take the Phillies’ approach and seek for more prominent names at third base, with Bohm then becoming a fallback option at most.  Between the lockout and potential changes made in a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, teams may not be likely to make an early commitment to a mid-level player like Bohm until they know exactly how baseball’s business structure will change.

The easiest way for Bohm to change the narrative, of course, is to have a terrific 2026 season.  He needs to hit better against right-handed pitching and keep more consistent over the course of a full year, and while this is naturally easier said that done, we’ve seen flashes of how good Bohm can be when he’s been in the midst of one of his hot streaks.  Again, it isn’t as if Bohm is a bad player — his hard-hit ball rates are solid, and he is borderline excellent at making contact and avoiding strikeouts.  Bumping his walk and barrel rates even up to average levels would make Bohm a more dangerous threat at the plate.

Bohm turns 30 in August, and he could benefit from a fairly thin class of free agent third basemen next winter.  Teams have shown they’ll pay for star-level production or even star-level potential, but it’s a trickier free agent environment for players like Bohm who have a decently high floor but a seemingly limited ceiling.  A two-year deal (maybe three years max) of roughly $10MM in average annual value seems plausible for the 2024 version of Bohm, so he’ll need to at least top those numbers to avoid fielding a slate of one-year, prove-it type of offers next winter.

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MLBTR Originals Make Or Break Year Philadelphia Phillies

Poll: How Should The Blue Jays Manage Trey Yesavage’s Workload In 2026?

By | at March 7, 2026 7:25pm CDT

Trey Yesavage had a whirlwind season in 2025. After the Blue Jays drafted him in the first round in 2024, Yesavage opened 2025 at Single-A and immediately impressed with a 2.43 ERA in 33 1/3 innings. He continued that dominance in a brief stop at High-A and reached Double-A in mid-June, striking out 38.0% of hitters against a 9.0% walk rate at that level. Yesavage then held his own at Triple-A, not allowing a home run in 17 1/3 innings and continuing to post a high strikeout rate. His rapid ascent culminated in three appearances with the big-league club in September, followed by six more in the postseason, including two starts and a Game 7 relief appearance in the World Series.

Altogether, Yesavage threw 139 2/3 innings between the regular season and the playoffs, a marked increase over the 93 1/3 innings he threw at East Carolina University in 2024. Coming off his success last year, he will feature prominently in a rotation mix that also includes Dylan Cease, Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Cody Ponce, Max Scherzer, and Shane Bieber (when he returns from an expected stint on the injured list). However, considering Yesavage’s youth and rapidly escalating workload, it is reasonable to expect some kind of innings limit in 2026.

At this point in Spring Training, Yesavage is built up to one inning and has not yet appeared in a game, according to Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet. That is hardly unexpected, as even established starters are built up gradually to a full workload by the end of camp. Manager John Schneider confirmed that Yesavage’s slow build-up is intentional, with the plan being for him to get one more live batting practice session before joining games. Notably, Schneider downplayed the possibility of Yesavage starting the season as a reliever to limit his innings.

“Right now we still view him as a starter,” Schneider said. “And we want to keep that pretty regular. Last year was a year of disrupting a young guy’s routine as much as we could, so we want to be pretty regular with him.” Schneider’s comments bode well for Yesavage’s chance of being a starter for the full season. That said, it would not be surprising for the club to manage the rookie’s workload conservatively in the early going, especially if Berrios, Ponce, and Scherzer start the year healthy behind Cease and Gausman.

Per Schneider’s comments, the club wants to keep Yesavage on a regular schedule. That would seemingly put him in the rotation for the entire season, though with the question of how many innings he’ll be able to handle. Yesavage averaged less than five innings per start during the regular season and just over five in the postseason. At five innings per start, a full season of 33 starts would put him around 165 innings – yet another big increase in workload. A target of 140 innings could make more sense.

In that scenario, Yesavage could piggyback off Berrios or Ponce for the first month or so. That would give him the benefit of making shorter appearances while sticking to a starter’s routine and gradually building up. Of Berrios and Ponce, the former makes more sense partnering with Yesavage in a piggyback role. Berrios made 32 starts per season from 2021-24 but seemed to run out of gas as the 2025 season went on. His first-half ERA of 3.75 was solid, but that rose to 5.15 in 50 2/3 innings in the second half. He was demoted to the bullpen in late September and ended up not appearing in the postseason.

Piggybacking Yesavage and Berrios could help manage the former’s innings while allowing the latter to re-establish himself after his poor conclusion to 2025. In contrast, Ponce came over this offseason on a three-year, $30MM deal after a successful stint in the Korea Baseball Organization. He pitched 180 2/3 innings over 29 starts for the Hanwha Eagles in 2025, posting an excellent 1.89 ERA, a 30.3% K-BB rate, and ultimately winning that league’s MVP award. That recent track record and the magnitude of his contract make a hybrid role unlikely, though Ponce made three relief appearances in Japan last year and was mostly a reliever in his last MLB experience in 2021.

If the team prefers to keep Yesavage as a traditional starter, they might consider having him skip a few starts in the middle of the season. While that would be at least a temporary disruption to his routine, it might make the most sense from a roster management perspective. Six-man rotations are becoming more common as a way to manage workloads throughout the season, but they come with the challenge of having one less reliever. In lieu of giving him five days of regular rest, skipping a few of Yesavage’s starts (ideally around scheduled off days) could be a good compromise that keeps him fresh for the stretch run.

Another (less likely) option is to keep him as a starter for the regular season, then transition him to the bullpen if Toronto makes the postseason. Cease and Gausman are guaranteed spots in a playoff rotation, while Bieber makes a solid No. 3 and Max Scherzer comes with a wealth of postseason experience. Though Yesavage performed admirably as a starter this postseason, using him in a fireman role out of the bullpen could help the team get the most out of him while protecting his long-term health.

How do MLBTR readers think the Blue Jays should manage Yesavage’s workload in 2026? Be sure to let us know in the poll below:

How should the Blue Jays manage Trey Yesavage's workload in 2026?

  • Piggyback him with Berrios, Ponce, or Eric Lauer to start the season 50% (1,229)
  • Have him skip a few starts in the middle of the season 39% (944)
  • Starter for the regular season, reliever for the playoffs 11% (264)

Total votes: 2,437

Photo courtesy of Kevin Sousa, Imagn Images

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MLBTR Originals MLBTR Polls Toronto Blue Jays

Offseason In Review: Los Angeles Dodgers

By | at March 7, 2026 8:24am CDT

The reigning champions weren’t the busiest team this winter but the moves they made were impactful and addressed their relative weak spots. They go into 2026 looking for the elusive three-peat, something not seen in MLB since the 1998-2000 Yankees.

Major League Signings

2026 spending (not including Ibáñez): $90MM
Total spending (not including Ibáñez): $325.5MM

Trades and Claims

Option Decisions

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

Notable Losses

The Dodgers went into the offseason in a great spot. The roster was strong enough to win the World Series for a second straight year. Their free agent class mostly consisted of relievers and role players, so no major holes were opening up.

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman addressed that situation in December, speaking to Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. He acknowledged that the club had less “heavy lifting” to do than in previous offseasons.

He pointed to the outfield and bullpen as places they could add but also said they were cognizant of the fact that the roster is getting older, with many of their stars being well into their 30s. They were actually the oldest club in the league in 2025. Going forward, it would make sense to sign fewer long-term deals and incorporate more young prospects. But at the same time, winning with their legendary core is a short-term priority.

Though the Dodgers did emerge victorious in 2025, they were not perfect and were almost eliminated a few times. Manager Dave Roberts seemed to have almost no trust in the relief corps, so he relied more and more on his starting pitchers as the postseason went along.

The outfield was also a bit wobbly. Teoscar Hernández has often out-hit his defensive shortcomings but was around league average offensively in 2025. Andy Pages had a good year but went ice cold in the playoffs. Michael Conforto was enough of a bust to be left off the postseason roster. Tommy Edman was fighting an ankle injury that would eventually require surgery.

On the bullpen pursuit, there were a number of high-profile relievers available in free agency. The Dodgers were connected to guys like Devin Williams, Pete Fairbanks, Raisel Iglesias and Robert Suarez. In the end, they somewhat surprisingly landed the top guy on the market, getting Edwin Díaz via a three-year deal worth $69MM.

Diaz is about to turn 32 and isn’t quite as dominant as he was a few years ago, but he’s still one of the best relievers in the game. He posted a 1.63 earned run average for the Mets in 2025, striking out 38% of batters faced.

Many expected Díaz to stay in Queens, since the Mets also needed to address their bullpen and are one of the few clubs with roughly the same spending power as the Dodgers. It would later come out that the Mets had offered him a three-year, $66MM deal. Considering the modest deferrals in the deal Díaz accepted from the Dodgers, the two offers were pretty close to identical. Some reports said the Mets were willing to go higher but were caught off-guard when he quickly agreed with the Dodgers before they could.

Diaz also reportedly received a five-year offer from Atlanta, though the dollar value of that wasn’t revealed. Presumably, it would have been a lower average annual value than the three-year offers he was getting from the Dodgers and Mets.

Maybe he wanted to break his own AAV record for a reliever, which was $20.4MM on his previous deal. The Dodgers deal, even factoring in the deferrals, is worth about $21.1MM annually. Maybe he just wanted to join baseball’s premier organization. At Edwin’s introductory press conference, he mentioned that his brother Alexis spoke fondly of the Dodgers after spending some brief time with them in 2025, per Sonja Chen of MLB.com.

Whatever the reasoning, the Dodgers added an elite closer to their already-strong club, just before the holiday break. Later in the winter, they would also bring back Evan Phillips on a much more modest deal worth $6.5MM. He is recovering from Tommy John surgery and won’t be available until the second half, but he could give the Dodgers another bullpen boost for the stretch run and playoffs.

As the calendar flipped to 2026, the outfield market hadn’t moved much. The top two free agents, Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger, were both still out there in January. As the holidays ended and teams got back to business in January, the Tucker market quickly picked up steam.

Tucker seemed to have some clear, distinct choices. The Blue Jays were offering a more traditional long-term deal that would essentially cover the remainder of Tucker’s career. They reportedly went as high as $350MM over ten years. That was a pretty close match for MLBTR’s 11-year, $400MM prediction and would have been one of the ten highest guarantees in MLB history.

The Mets and Dodgers were again bidding against each other and offering Tucker a different path. Both clubs were eager to avoid that kind of length and were willing to jack up the short-term spending. Taking this path would mean Tucker secures less overall but could earn a large amount of money in the next few years, with a chance to return to free agency to make more in the long run.

Players like Matt Chapman, Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso and others had taken this approach in free agency before but Tucker was being offered a super-charged version of it. The Mets reportedly went to $220MM over four years, with opt-outs after the second and third years. The Dodgers went slightly higher to $240MM over the same four-year term, also with opt-outs after year two and year three. That got it done.

There are some deferrals in the Tucker deal, but also a huge signing bonus. The sticker price comes with a $60MM average annual value. The deferrals knock the AAV down but only a little, as it is reportedly considered to be about $57.1MM in terms of the competitive balance tax.

For all intents and purposes that was easily a new record. Shohei Ohtani‘s ten-year, $700MM deal has a $70MM AAV on the surface, but the infamous deferrals in that deal knock it down to the $46MM range. With that in mind, Juan Soto was effectively the AAV record holder at $51MM before this Tucker deal.

It was a stunning number and could potentially represent many different things to different people. To some, the offers from the Dodgers and Mets represent the unworkable economic imbalances in the modern game. Both clubs repeatedly go into the top bracket of the CBT, meaning they face a 110% tax rate on new deals. The Dodgers will effectively send out $120MM to have Tucker on their team this year. That’s more than the entire player payroll of many clubs.

This had led to increased desire for drastic changes to baseball’s rules, with many fans and team owners clamoring for a salary cap or extreme alterations to the revenue-sharing rules. The Dodgers had already become public enemy number one in the eyes of many baseball fans by dominating on the field and in the offseason. Every new signing increases the outrage and the Tucker deal certainly cranked it up.

From the MLBPA perspective, this is evidence of why there should not be a cap. If multiple teams value Tucker highly enough that they are willing to pay out $120MM annually, it’s a sign that the league is in a strong financial position on the whole. Even under the current rules, Tucker is only going to get about half of the value he is producing on the field. The other half, the tax money, will go the league. Some of it will end up in a central fund, some will be distributed to smaller clubs like the Guardians and Marlins will no real mechanism to make them spend it. In the eyes of many, that lack of urgency from some teams is a bigger problem than the Dodgers’ willingness to invest in a winning team.

It also might just be a perfect alignment of circumstances. By all accounts, the Dodgers are bringing in all kinds of crazy revenue, as one would expect for a successful club. But the star presence of their Japanese players also means they basically have a money faucet running across the Pacific Ocean. As mentioned, they are trying to avoid a pitfall where they overcommit to their current core and suddenly find themselves with an old and creaky roster. They have used their financial might to add Tucker in the way that they wanted.

From his perspective, Tucker is technically leaving money on the table but he will have a good chance to get it back, and then some. In the ideal situation for him financially, he spends his age-29 and age-30 seasons playing for the best team in baseball. He will bank $120MM and could return to free agency looking for another deal ahead of his age-31 campaign. If he can find $230MM from that point on, he will make up the difference of what the Jays offered. If the next collective bargaining agreement looks to have made positive changes for players, he can benefit from that.

There were a few other things of note in the Dodgers’ offseason. There were some trade rumors surrounding Teoscar Hernández and Tyler Glasnow but it never seemed especially likely that either would move. Max Muncy got another year added to his contract. That slightly contradicts the plan to avoid an aging roster, as Muncy will turn 36 this year, but he’s still plenty productive and it’s just one more guaranteed season. Old friends Miguel Rojas and Enrique Hernández were re-signed for bench roles, though Hernández will start the season on the injured list.

The main storyline of the Dodger offseason is straightforward. They were already great in November, with some slight question marks around the bullpen and outfield. They signed the top free agent available for both of those areas. They did so while limiting their long-term commitments, as they wished. They ramped up spending in the short term, with RosterResource projecting them for a $395MM payroll and $405MM CBT number, but they are clearly fine with that.

They go into 2026 as the clear favorites. The Projected Standings at FanGraphs expect 96 wins, putting them eight wins clear of every other club in the majors. The PECOTA Standings at Baseball Prospectus are even more bullish, putting the Dodgers at 104, ten clear of any other team. Anything can happen in baseball’s chaotic postseason but the organization is the jewel of the league right now.

It’s also possible that this offseason will have ripple effects that spread out in ways that can’t be foreseen. Many claim that baseball is “broken” and point to the Dodgers as the perpetrator. The Tucker deal alone didn’t do the deed but some feel it may have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Huge swaths of fans are fed up and want change. The collective bargaining agreement is set to expire after this season. A lockout feels assured and many expect it to get nasty. Some even fear lost games, if not the entire 2027 season.

Time will tell on all of that. For the 2026 Dodgers, they could hardly have drawn it up any better.

How would you grade the Dodgers' offseason?

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Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images

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2025-26 Offseason In Review Los Angeles Dodgers MLBTR Originals

Offseason In Review: New York Yankees

By | at March 6, 2026 11:55pm CDT

The Yankees mostly opted for the status quo, as their 2026 club will look a lot like the 2025 version. A few small differences could take them up a notch.

Major League Signings

2026 spending: $85.525MM
Total spending: $195.525MM

Trades and Claims

Option Decisions

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None to date

Notable Losses

There was a lot to like about the Yankees in 2025, but they came up just a bit short of the ultimate goal. They won 94 games in the regular season, the same as the Blue Jays, with Toronto only taking the division title based on the tiebreaker rules. The Yanks got a Wild Card spot and took out the Red Sox but were felled by the Jays in the Division Series.

Going into the 2025-26 offseason, a lot of the key pieces would be remaining in place. The area with the greatest potential for change was the outfield, which was a strength in 2025. Aaron Judge won his third American League MVP Award. Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham enjoyed productive seasons (a breakout, career-best year in the latter’s case). Grisham and Bellinger both headed to free agency at the start of the offseason, the latter by triggering an opt-out in his previous contract.

Theoretically, the Yankees could have turned to some internal replacements, but there would be big risks there. Jasson Domínguez had an uneven year in 2025. His offense was passable but not too exciting. In 429 plate appearances, he hit just ten home runs. A 9.6% walk rate helped his on-base percentage, leading to a .257/.331/.388 line and 103 wRC+. He stole 23 bases but received awful grades for his left field defense. His minus-7 Defensive Runs Saved and minus-10 Outs Above Average were some of the lowest among big league outfielders.

There’s also Spencer Jones, who crushed 35 home runs on the farm last year, including 19 at Triple-A. However, he posted those homers while striking out in 35.4% of his plate appearances. Presumably, he’d strike out even more frequently against better competition in the big leagues. No qualified major leaguer struck out at a higher rate than 32.3% in 2025.

With some questions about both Domínguez and Jones, and the Yankees always in win-now mode, it seemed like the outfield would be a priority. One spot was quickly filled, as Grisham somewhat surprisingly accepted the qualifying offer. His career had been unimpressive prior to 2025, but the breakout was extreme. He hit 34 home runs and drew walks at a 14.1% clip. Grisham’s .235/.348/.464 line led to a 129 wRC+. His defensive grades slipped, but he was considered a strong fielder in every other season of his career, so it’s possible last year’s downturn was more of an odd, one-year blip than a true decline.

Skeptics could point to Grisham’s larger body of work, with a .191/.298/.353 line over the previous three seasons combined, but there were reasons to believe Grisham could cash in on that strong season. Just one offseason earlier, Jurickson Profar had done precisely that. After years of subpar performances, Profar parlayed his strong 2024 season into a three-year, $42MM deal with Atlanta. Grisham went into free agency younger and with a better defensive reputation, so he had a case to top Profar’s guarantee.

MLBTR predicted Grisham could get $66MM over four years, even with the QO attached, but he decided to return to the Bronx for just one year at $22.025MM. A multi-year deal at that same annual value may not have been there, but a three- or four-year deal at a lighter rate with a larger overall guarantee seems like it would have been feasible. Grisham would be a bargain for the Yankees if he can come anywhere close to last year’s performance, and doing so would position him for a major contract next winter.

With Grisham back in the fold, the Yankees still had one outfield spot to consider. They were connected to various names both in free agency and via trade, including Kyle Tucker, Luis Robert Jr. and others, but a reunion with Bellinger always made a lot of sense. He had thrived in his one year in the Bronx. Bellinger hit .272/.334/.480 for a 125 wRC+ on the year overall but with a massive .302/.365/.544 line and 152 wRC+ when playing in Yankee Stadium with its short porch.

The two seemed a perfect match for each other, but the courting process dragged out nonetheless. Bellinger remained on the open market into January. Reports trickled out indicating that the Yankees had made him an offer, then another. There was reportedly an impasse, with the Yankees offering five years and Bellinger seeking a longer deal, but the two sides finally reached an agreement in late January.

The $162.5MM guarantee and five-year term were within the realm of expectations. MLBTR had predicted five years and a slightly lesser guarantee of $140MM. The Bellinger deal was particularly notable for being frontloaded and having two opt-outs. He’ll get a $20MM signing bonus and big salaries of $32.5MM in the first two years, followed by salaries just under $26MM in the final three. Since he can opt out after 2027 and 2028, it’s possible for him to bank $85MM in the first two years and then return to the open market after his age-31 season. The nature of that deal means that Bellinger’s hit for the competitive balance tax will be higher than usual.

After Bellinger was back in the fold, there was some speculation that Domínguez and/or Jones could end up on the trade block. To this point, however, there hasn’t been any strong indications that the Yankees have considered that route. With Grisham only signed for one more year and Bellinger potentially opting out after 2027, there are future opportunities available for those youngsters.

Though the outfield was the main target, the rotation needed some consideration as well. The Yankees will be getting Gerrit Cole back at some point in 2026, after he spent 2025 recovering from Tommy John surgery, but he still won’t be ready by Opening Day. They will also be without Carlos Rodón to start the season, as he had surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow. Clarke Schmidt had UCL surgery in July of last year and will begin the season on the shelf as well.

The Yanks were connected to some big names over the winter, including Framber Valdez, Edward Cabrera, Michael King, Freddy Peralta, Tatsuya Imai and MacKenzie Gore. Their rotation strike ended up being less splashy than those options. They sent four prospects to the Marlins to acquire lefty Ryan Weathers.

Weathers was once a notable prospect and has shown some flashes of potential in the majors, but not over a long sample size. He had good results with the Marlins in 2024 and 2025 but some injuries limited him in both seasons. He tossed 125 innings over those two campaigns and produced a 3.74 earned run average, 22% strikeout rate, 6.8% walk rate and 45.6% ground ball rate.

A more proven arm could have been preferable, but a nice benefit of Weathers is that he’s controlled for three more years and still has an option remaining. He should get a rotation job alongside Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren and Luis Gil to start the season. Like Weathers, each of Schlittler, Warren and Gil can be optioned. A stint in the minors for someone in that group is possible if everyone is healthy when Rodón and Cole return. In the meantime, the Yanks also brought back Ryan Yarbrough and Paul Blackburn to serve as veteran swingmen.

Paul Goldschmidt became a free agent after the 2025 season, but first base wasn’t a big priority since Ben Rice took over that job. The Yanks were able to bring Goldy back on a modest $4MM deal, seemingly to serve a more complementary role this time. His bat was around league average in 2025, but he still crushed lefties. Since the Yankee lineup skews left-handed, there’s a role for Goldschmidt. Amed Rosario was also brought back for similar reasons and the Yanks also added Randal Grichuk via a minor league deal.

In the bullpen, Devin Williams and Luke Weaver became free agents after 2025, but the Yankees seemingly tried to address those departures proactively. At the 2025 deadline, their three relief additions were David Bednar, Camilo Doval and Jake Bird. Since all three would still be under club control for 2026, the Yanks may have felt less pressure to replace Williams and Weaver this winter.

Their most notable bullpen move was fairly modest, as they acquired Angel Chivilli from the Rockies. He is still unproven, with a 6.18 ERA in 90 1/3 innings. The Yanks will hope that getting him away from Coors Field will help. He has an intriguing arsenal with high-90s velocity and strong ground ball rates. Chivilli isn’t slated for free agency for at least five years and still has an option remaining. The Yanks also took a shot on Cade Winquest in the Rule 5 draft. He had a 3.99 ERA in the minors last year.

There was some chatter around Jazz Chisholm Jr. this offseason. Since he’s slated for free agency after 2026, there were some trade rumors and the possibility of an extension also came up. It never seemed especially likely that the Yanks would move on from him, and he indeed is still on the roster. The Yankees don’t do many extensions and still haven’t done anything with Chisholm, though he has said he’s open the possibility. It’s theoretically possible for momentum to build at any time, but Jon Heyman of The New York Post reported this week that substantive talks have still not occurred.

Ultimately, the roster is going to look very similar to last year’s. Shortstop Anthony Volpe will miss some time due to offseason shoulder surgery but could rejoin the club in April. José Caballero will cover that spot in the interim. Apart from that, the position player group is essentially identical. There’s a bit more change on the pitching side, but the staff is also going to have a lot of continuity.

There’s not really anything wrong with that. The Yankees were one of the best teams in the league last year. Running back mostly the same squad should put them in position to be really good again. It’s also possible they could be a bit better. They will get Cole back at some point, which should give them a boost, and they’ll get a full season from Schlittler, who just debuted last July. If Weathers can stay healthy, he’s another potential bonus. If there are obvious shortcomings on display in the next few months, the Yanks could address those at the deadline, but for now the roster has been tweaked more so than overhauled.

How would you grade the Yankees' offseason?

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2025-26 Offseason In Review MLBTR Originals New York Yankees

Poll: Will Munetaka Murakami Or Tatsuya Imai Have The Better Rookie Year?

By | at March 6, 2026 10:00pm CDT

All around the baseball world, the offseason started with a great deal of hype for the two top talents coming over from Japan to play in MLB: slugger Munetaka Murakami and starter Tatsuya Imai. Both players seemed likely to follow in the footsteps of other recent stars to make the jump from NPB to the majors, including Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Seiya Suzuki, and be among the most coveted free agents on the market. Things did not pan out that way, however, as both players found surprisingly soft markets and wound up taking short-term deals with the hope of returning to the open market after establishing themselves as quality big leaguers.

As they prepare for their respective rookie seasons, Murakami as a member of the White Sox and Imai with the Astros, who is better positioned to do just that? When looking at the contracts the pair got, it’s easy to argue that Imai’s more lucrative deal indicates a greater level of confidence in his ability to succeed. He landed a three-year, $54MM contract with Houston back in January that provides him the opportunity to opt out after either the 2026 or ’27 season. That’s an extra year and $20MM relative to Murakami’s deal in Chicago, not to mention that Murakami doesn’t have an opt-out clause in his deal.

It’s easy to see why teams would’ve had a bit more confidence in Imai than Murakami. Murakami comes with multiple unique questions, including whether his defense will hold up in the majors at either first or third base and whether there’s room for improvement on his extremely low contact rates from his time overseas. Imai doesn’t really come with comparable concerns; his mid-90s velocity and four-pitch mix are strong bets to play in the majors in terms of floor, leaving the Astros less likely to come up completely empty on their investment than the White Sox.

What Murakami lacks in terms of floor, however, it can be argued that he makes up for with exceptional upside. Murakami’s contact rates might be among the lowest in the majors if translated over, but players like Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, and Nick Kurtz are among the most productive hitters in the entire sport despite high strikeout rates and a proclivity for racking up whiffs. It’s easy to see why Murakami’s sensational exit velocities could allow him to compare to those elite sluggers, particularly given that he only just celebrated his 26th birthday.

It’s fair to wonder if Imai has that sort of elite upside to offer. While his velocity is impressive, scouts have suggested that his fastball lacks the movement necessary to be a high-end pitch. That in conjunction with the control issues he’s flashed at various points in his MLB career might cap his ceiling at something closer to the middle of a big league rotation. Murakami, by contrast, could find himself battling with the likes of Judge and Cal Raleigh at the top of the home run leaderboards if he manages to make enough contact to be productive and continues to grow as a player.

If Murakami breaks out the way some both in Japan and the United States have believed he’s capable of doing, it’s hard to imagine Imai being able to hold a candle to that production no matter how close to his own ceiling he gets. With that said, it could be difficult for either to make much noise in Rookie of the Year conversations. The AL figures to feature a stacked class including players like Kevin McGonigle, Samuel Basallo, Dylan Beavers, Trey Yesavage, and Carter Jensen. Even if Murakami or Imai outproduces those players, their status as foreign professionals already in their mid-20s could still hurt them in Rookie of the Year voting, especially against younger players like McGonigle and Basallo.

How to MLBTR readers view the pair headed into their rookie seasons? Who will have the more productive year? Will either one manage to force themselves into conversations for the AL Rookie of the Year award? Have your say in the polls below:

Who will have the better 2026 season?

  • Tatsuya Imai 51% (557)
  • Munetaka Murakami 49% (538)

Total votes: 1,095

Will Murakami and/or Imai receive Rookie of the Year votes?

  • Both will receive Rookie of the Year votes. 57% (641)
  • Neither will receive Rookie of the Year votes. 17% (193)
  • Only Imai will receive Rookie of the Year votes. 16% (176)
  • Only Murakami will receive Rookie of the Year votes. 10% (116)

Total votes: 1,126

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Offseason In Review: Milwaukee Brewers

By | at March 6, 2026 4:29pm CDT

The Brewers retained one of their top starters on the qualifying offer. They traded their other veteran ace as he enters his walk year. Milwaukee was active as ever on the trade market — many of which were forward-looking moves — but they’ll expect to compete for another NL Central title.

Major League Signings

2026 spending: $27.025MM
Total spending: $28.525MM

Trades and Claims

Option Decisions

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None

Notable Losses

The Brewers were MLB’s best regular season team in 2025. They won a league-high 97 games and were comfortably in charge of the NL Central throughout the second half. After defeating the Cubs in the Division Series, they were blanked by the Dodgers in the NLCS. The front office was faced with the usual challenge of maintaining that level of success with a bottom half payroll and their two best pitchers at or nearing free agency.

Milwaukee’s first significant decision was whether to issue a $22.025MM qualifying offer to Brandon Woodruff. The two-time All-Star had an excellent 12-start run in his return from shoulder surgery. His velocity was down a few ticks from pre-surgery levels. Even more alarming is that he suffered a lat strain during a September bullpen session that wound up ending his season.

A qualifying offer would nevertheless have been an easy call for a team running a $200MM+ payroll. Woodruff’s track record is so strong that he’d be great value at that price point if a team knew he’d stay healthy. It’s a much bigger roll of the dice for a club that opened last season with a $115MM payroll. Woodruff could realistically account for 20% of their spending on players.

The Brewers took the upside play and issued the offer. Woodruff accepted and will be back for a ninth season. The Brewers may have been a little surprised that he took a one-year offer, but it certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. The team wouldn’t have issued the QO if they feared it’d cripple them financially.

At the same time, it immediately ramped up speculation about Freddy Peralta’s future. Exercising an $8MM club option was the easiest decision the team made all winter, but that didn’t preclude a trade. (Woodruff, by contrast, couldn’t be traded without his consent until June 15 as a major league free agent signee.) President of baseball operations Matt Arnold initially downplayed the possibility of dealing Peralta, but those conversations would pick up steam in the second half of the offseason.

Milwaukee reportedly discussed Peralta with the Yankees, Astros, Dodgers, Braves, Padres and Twins (presumably among others). The most natural destination, however, always seemed to be the Mets. New York front office leader David Stearns knows Peralta well from his time running baseball operations in Milwaukee. The Mets’ rotation lacked an established headliner alongside touted rookie Nolan McLean. They had a deep enough farm system that it made sense for them to push in some chips below their top prospect tier in a consolidation trade.

The Brewers were probably willing to carry both Woodruff and Peralta on the payroll, but this kind of trade is par for the course. They simply weren’t going to spend what it took to keep Peralta off the open market. They could hold him until free agency and make the qualifying offer, as they did with Willy Adames, but they’d surely get a more valuable trade return than the compensatory draft pick.

The question was whether they were getting enough back that it outweighed the hit they were taking to the 2026 roster in trading one of the National League’s five best pitchers. The Brewers never operate as clear-cut buyers or sellers. They weren’t kicking off a rebuild one year after winning 97 games. As was the case with the Josh Hader, Corbin Burnes and Devin Williams trades, they needed to feel the package itself was too strong to ignore.

Each of those previous three deals netted cost-controlled major league players. That’s a clear priority for a team trying to remain annually competitive. Arnold eventually pulled the trigger on a deal that sent Peralta and swingman Tobias Myers to Queens for rookie starter Brandon Sproat and top infield/outfield prospect Jett Williams.

Sproat is a 6’3″ righty who sits in the 96-97 mph range and has a five-pitch mix. He made his first four MLB starts last September. The command is a work in progress, but he’s around the strike zone enough to project as a starter. He has mid-rotation caliber stuff and is competing for a rotation spot this spring.

Williams, a 5’7″ utility player, is coming off a .261/.363/.465 showing with 17 homers and 34 stolen bases in the upper minors. He’s a plus athlete with good strike zone discipline and more power than one might expect based on his height. There’s some swing-and-miss to his game and questions about his position, but he fits well in a group that emphasizes defensive versatility and aggressiveness on the bases. Williams has yet to reach the majors but should be up this year, perhaps as soon as Opening Day.

The trade almost certainly makes the Brewers worse in 2026. They were never going to get a McLean-level prospect for one year of Peralta. Myers is overshadowed in the bigger picture but had developed into a nice swing option in his own right over the past two seasons.

It’s similar to the 2024 Burnes trade, which also netted two MLB-ready pieces who’d recently been at the back of Top 100 prospect lists (DL Hall and Joey Ortiz). They didn’t get much out of either of those players last season, but Ortiz had a 3-WAR campaign as Milwaukee’s third baseman in 2024. Getting that kind of combined value from Sproat and Williams this year would go a long way toward keeping them competitive while stockpiling long-term value.

Ortiz was the most vulnerable position player in the starting lineup entering the offseason. He moved seamlessly (from a defensive standpoint) to shortstop to replace Adames but didn’t perform offensively. His .230/.276/.317 line was third-worst among hitters who tallied 500 plate appearances. Top prospects Cooper Pratt and Jesús Made figure to eventually push Ortiz off the position, but neither player is likely to get consideration for the Opening Day roster.

Williams has a better chance of taking over shortstop within the first half of the season. If Ortiz bounces back enough offensively to hold the job, they can use Williams as a multi-positional piece. That could include work in the outfield or at third base, where the Brewers made potential sell-high trades on unheralded prospects coming off strong rookie seasons.

That started in mid-December when Milwaukee dealt left fielder Isaac Collins and middle reliever Nick Mears to Kansas City for lefty sinkerballer Angel Zerpa. Collins finished fourth in Rookie of the Year balloting behind a .263/.368/.411 line across 441 plate appearances. He’d been a good Triple-A hitter as well but surprised evaluators with that kind of performance in his age-27 season. His batted ball metrics weren’t as impressive. There’s a decent chance he’s closer to a league average hitter moving forward.

Mears is a power arm who had a career-low 3.49 ERA last season. His strikeout rate was down more than eight percentage points relative to 2024, however, and he’d fallen out of favor as he struggled and battled injuries in the second half.

The Brewers will try to coax more out of Zerpa, who has an ERA right around 4.00 in 177 big league innings. He throws hard and has one of the highest ground-ball rates in MLB. Zerpa doesn’t miss bats at a high level and has gotten knocked around by right-handed opponents (.282/.340/.470 in 488 career plate appearances). Although Milwaukee has left the door open to building him up as a starter, the platoon issues suggest he’s better served in a relief role. He’s pitching out of the bullpen in Spring Training and should replace Mears in that spot.

Collins felt a little superfluous in a Milwaukee outfield that also includes Jackson Chourio, Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell and Christian Yelich on occasion. Blake Perkins, Tyler Black, Brandon Lockridge and offseason signee Akil Baddoo are all depth options on the 40-man roster. (Collins is a more decisive upgrade for a K.C. team that had arguably the worst outfield in the league.)

That wasn’t the case for the other second-year position player whom the Brewers surprisingly traded away. Caleb Durbin would have been Milwaukee’s everyday third baseman. Acquired from the Yankees in last offseason’s Williams trade, the 25-year-old Durbin hit .256/.334/.387 with 11 homers and 18 steals over his first 136 big league games. He placed third in Rookie of the Year voting. Durbin is small and doesn’t hit the ball hard, so he was never a marquee prospect. Yet he commands the strike zone, puts the ball in play, and has the athleticism to play a quality second or third base.

It stands to reason the Brewers didn’t enter the offseason looking to trade Durbin, whom they controlled for six more seasons. With the number of higher-ceiling infield prospects they have coming through the farm system, he’s also not someone they’d refuse to discuss. They wound up working out a deal with the Red Sox — who felt that his right-handed bat could play up at Fenway Park — centered around Durbin and left-hander Kyle Harrison.

There’s a clear parallel between the Durbin trade and last spring’s deal with Boston for Quinn Priester. Harrison is a former top prospect whose stock had seemingly dropped within each of his two previous organizations. The Giants included him as part of the Rafael Devers trade. The Red Sox shied away from calling him up for most of last season even as they navigated rotation injuries and stuck with a struggling Walker Buehler for the majority of the year.

Harrison has a 4.39 ERA with league-average strikeout and walk rates in just under 200 big league innings. He’s 24 and still has a minor league option remaining. He struck out roughly 26% of Triple-A opponents a year ago but has had inconsistent command. The Brewers control him for at least five seasons. It’s not easy to convince teams to trade controllable starting pitching. The Brewers got the higher upside end of the deal but are taking a risk in trading a solid everyday infielder for more of a developmental pitching play.

It wasn’t a direct Durbin/Harrison swap, though they’ll very likely be the players whose careers determine which team got the better end. The teams also exchanged utility infielders. Milwaukee reacquired speedster David Hamilton (a former Brewer draftee who was traded to Boston in the deal for Hunter Renfroe) while sending Andruw Monasterio, Anthony Seigler and the #67 pick in this year’s draft to Boston. Depth starter Shane Drohan, a 27-year-old who has yet to make his MLB debut, also landed in Milwaukee.

The Brewers needed to backfill an infield spot after the Durbin trade. They took a $3.5MM flier on Luis Rengifo, who is coming off a replacement level season for the Angels. Rengifo didn’t hit at all last year but turned in a .273/.323/.431 line in more than 1200 plate appearances between 2022-24. He can move around the infield but won’t provide strong defense anywhere.

Rengifo is the favorite to start at third base on Opening Day. That’s fine as a stopgap, though the Brewers are hoping he’ll be pushed into a utility role by someone from within the farm system (Williams, Pratt, etc.) before long.

The right side of the infield is more settled. Brice Turang is one of the game’s steadiest hands at second base. Andrew Vaughn played his way to the everyday first base job with his monster second half. Milwaukee tendered a $2.7MM arbitration contract to Jake Bauers as a left-handed bench bat, while Black could also hit his way into the mix.

Vaughn’s emergence made it an inevitability that the Brewers were moving on from Rhys Hoskins. They paid him a $4MM buyout on an $18MM mutual option. Milwaukee also bought out veteran starter Jose Quintana and backup catcher Danny Jansen.

William Contreras plays as often as any catcher in MLB. The backup catcher role in Milwaukee isn’t a huge priority. Jansen, who commanded a two-year deal from the Rangers, was overqualified. The Brewers want to allow prospect Jeferson Quero to continue playing regularly in the minors, so they needed to make a cheap depth move behind the plate.

Milwaukee circled back to old friend Gary Sánchez on a $1.75MM contract. He hit 11 homers in 89 games for them two seasons ago. Sánchez commanded $8.5MM from the Orioles the following winter, but his lone year in Baltimore was tanked by wrist and knee injuries. He only got into 29 games. The Brewers have some insurance in the form of minor league signee Reese McGuire.

Aside from the Woodruff qualifying offer, Milwaukee stayed away from the free agent pitching market. Sproat and Harrison will be in the mix, but they’re relying heavily on their collection of talented in-house arms to step up behind Woodruff.

Priester has a rotation spot once healthy, though he’s delayed by a wrist issue this spring and could start the season on the injured list. Manager Pat Murphy said today that right-handers Jacob Misiorowski and Chad Patrick are in the rotation (via MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy). Righty Logan Henderson and lefties Robert Gasser, Aaron Ashby and DL Hall are all in the conversation. The Brewers have a lot of flexibility to shuffle pitchers up and down from the minors. Woodruff is their only starter who can’t be sent down.

There’s a similar level of flexibility in the bullpen, where Rob Zastryzny is their only out-of-options arm. The Brewers already had one of the best relief groups in MLB. Aside from the Mears/Zerpa swap, they didn’t need to do much at the back end.

Milwaukee took calls on closer Trevor Megill, who is down to two seasons of arbitration control, but didn’t find an offer to their liking. He’ll probably be traded next offseason as part of the team’s usual operating procedure. They’ll hold him for now alongside Abner Uribe, Jared Koenig, and Zerpa. Ashby and Hall will be in the bullpen if they’re not starting. Milwaukee’s relief pitching should once again be a strength.

The Brewers also took care of some administrative business at the beginning of Spring Training. Murphy, who was entering the final season of his contract as manager, signed a new three-year deal that guaranteed him nearly $9MM. Murphy’s job security obviously wasn’t in question after consecutive Manager of the Year wins, but he’s now locked in for the foreseeable future.

There hasn’t been any reporting about extension talks with players this spring. It’s likely too late to get anything done with Contreras — as with Megill, he’s a likelier trade candidate headed into his walk year next winter — but the Brewers are happy to lock up pre-arbitration players long term. They’ve done so with Peralta, Chourio and Ashby in recent years.

Chourio’s was a pre-debut extension, and it stands to reason they’ll be open to that possibility with Made soon enough. Speculatively, any of Misiorowski, Frelick or Priester would stand as potential targets. Turang is earning a little over $4MM as a Super Two player and will go through arbitration four times. This spring might be the last one in which an extension could be within Milwaukee’s financial comfort zone.

That would cap off a very Brewers style offseason. They made one big trade that was widely expected and a couple more that almost no one saw coming. They’ll rely on internal development and a few of their upper level trade pickups to try to claim a fourth straight division title.

How would you grade the Brewers' offseason?

  • C 35% (490)
  • B 33% (465)
  • D 16% (228)
  • A 10% (135)
  • F 5% (73)

Total votes: 1,391

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2025-26 Offseason In Review MLBTR Originals Milwaukee Brewers

Offseason In Review: Cleveland Guardians

By | at March 5, 2026 5:44pm CDT

Spring training is here, but it’s not clear the Guardians ever got the memo that the offseason began. Despite winning the AL Central in 2025, they made practically no additions and will enter the year with one of their lowest team payrolls — if not the lowest — in more than a decade.

Major League Free Agent Signings

Total spend: $11.9MM

Option Decisions

Trades and Waiver Claims

Extensions

  • José Ramirez, 3B: Four years, $106MM (on top of preexisting three years, $69MM; contract includes $70MM in deferred money which actually lowers the amount Cleveland owes Ramirez in 2026)

Notable Minor League Signings

Notable Losses

Cleveland went on an improbable run to its third AL Central title in four seasons in 2025, rattling off a blistering 20-7 record in September to edge out Detroit, who’d led the division for much of the summer. Strong play from the Guardians alone wouldn’t have gotten the job done; they needed the Tigers to also collapse in epic fashion. Detroit obliged, going 7-17 in September to squander what been an 11-game division lead as deep into the season as Sept. 4.

Entering the offseason, it was easy to presume that a Cinderella run of this nature, coupled with practically no long-term commitments and one of the lightest slates of 2026 financial obligations of any team in the sport would have emboldened the Guardians to add to what was an anemic offense. Any such presumptions have been proven incorrect.

The Guardians hit .226/.296/.373 as a team last season. The resulting 87 wRC+ (indicating their offense as a whole was 13% worse than average) ranked 28th in the majors. Cleveland ranked 28th in baseball with 643 runs scored and 29th in each of batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Superstar third baseman José Ramirez and and slugging first baseman Kyle Manzardo (who was heavily platooned) were the only members of the roster to manage even a league-average offensive line, by measure of wRC+. Left fielder Steven Kwan was short by the narrowest of margins, at 99. Outfield prospect George Valera hit fairly well but did so in a sample of 48 plate appearances.

Not only was no one else on Cleveland’s roster even a league-average hitter — virtually no one else was even close. First baseman/outfielder C.J. Kayfus hit .220/.292/.415 — good for a 96 wRC+ in 138 plate appearances. No one else on the roster was even within 10% of average. Cleveland gave a total of 2757 plate appearances to Angel Martinez, Gabriel Arias, Daniel Schneemann, Bo Naylor, Nolan Jones, Brayan Rocchio and Hedges. That’s 46% of their team-wide plate appearances. Those seven players combined for a .212/.280/.346 batting line (76 wRC+). They’re all back in 2026.

Cleveland does have some hope for better offense in 2026. They could receive a full year of outfield prospects Valera and Chase DeLauter, but betting on them to this extent is an immense risk. DeLauter was a first-round pick in 2022 and has been a top prospect since. He’s also been regularly injured. Since being taken in the draft three and a half years ago, he’s played all of 138 minor league games. His two playoff games with Cleveland in 2025 marked his big league debut. It’s a similar story with Valera, a former top prospect out of the Dominican Republic who has only once played 100 games in a season despite signing back in 2017. He played 60 regular-season games in 2025 between the big leagues and the minors.

The Guardians also have 2024’s No. 1 overall pick, second baseman Travis Bazzana, very likely to make his big league debut early in the 2026 season. Twenty-four-year-old infielder Juan Brito could also get a look, though he got into only 31 minor league games last season due to injury. Catching prospect Cooper Ingle could make his debut in 2026 as well, and he’d have only the lowest of bars to clear with the bat in order to be an upgrade over the current Naylor/Hedges tandem.

That group unequivocally gives Cleveland some near-term upside, but banking on them as the sole means of offensive improvement is the type of strategy one might see from a rebuilding club or a cost-conscious team whose payroll is already pushing franchise-record territory. Neither is the case in Cleveland. The Guardians are aiming to contend, despite their lack of investment in the club. And while projections will peg their payroll around $80MM or so, that doesn’t include the $10MM of deferred money for Ramirez or the $6MM they won’t be paying to closer Emmanuel Clase while he faces trial for rigging pitches in a gambling scandal that rocked the franchise (and also included starting pitcher Luis Ortiz).

Cleveland’s payroll is going to clock in around $65MM. Their franchise-record mark for Opening Day was about $70MM higher than that, back in 2018. They’ve been between $90-100MM in each of the past three seasons. The last time they trotted out a payroll this low was in 2021, the first year coming off the pandemic-shortened season when they’d just absorbed substantial losses. If we’re willing to set that aside due to unique circumstances, Cleveland hasn’t been this thrifty since 2011-12.

For a team coming off a division title and that type of late-season surge, it’s hard to reconcile. President of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said in a recent appearance on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM that the Guardians need to leave space for young players to step up and that their clearest path to contending involves young hitters like Bazzana, DeLauter and Valera helping to carry the offense. There’s some truth behind those comments, but Antonetti surely didn’t want his priciest offensive addition of the winter to be a reunion with Hedges, either. It’s abundantly clear that this front office had little to no money to work with this winter, and that’s borne out when digging deeper into their slate of moves.

Hedges’ $4MM deal to return to the Guardians was surprising at the time and looks all the more confounding in the wake of an offseason devoid of activity. Cleveland seems to place a higher premium on catcher defense than just about any team in the game. In Naylor and Hedges, they’ll have one of the sport’s top defensive duos but also perhaps the least-productive catching tandem in baseball from an offensive standpoint. That pair is generally keeping the seat warm for the aforementioned Ingle, who slashed .260/.389/.419 with more walks than strikeouts as a 24-year-old in Double-A and Triple-A last season. Ingle should make his debut at some point in 2026.

The only other move to address the lineup was a late non-roster deal with first baseman Rhys Hoskins. The former Phillies standout had two pretty pedestrian seasons in Milwaukee in 2024-25 after returning from an ACL tear that cost him the 2023 season. He hit .223/.314/.418 with 38 homers in 221 games while calling the hitter-friendly American Family Field home. Hoskins was a perennial 30-homer threat in Philadelphia from 2018-22, hitting .241/.350/.483 with 130 round-trippers in 2665 plate appearances. He hasn’t approached that level of output since, which is why the market largely checked out on him this winter. He’ll make just $1.5MM if he cracks Cleveland’s roster. There’s obvious bargain potential there, but the 2024-25 version of Hoskins is more of a league-average bat than the difference-maker sorely lacked by Cleveland.

Whether ownership-driven or a conscientious decision by the baseball operations staff — the former seems much likelier — improvements in the lineup will have to come down to the Guardians’ young players. Beyond Ingle, names to watch include:

  • Travis Bazzana, 2B (No. 1 pick in 2024): .245/.389/.424, 17.6% walk rate, nine homers, 17 doubles, five triples, 12 steals in 84 games between Double-A and Triple-A
  • George Valera, OF (international free agent out of the Dominican): .220/.333/.415 in 48 MLB plate appearances, plus .318/.388/.550 in 170 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A
  • Chase DeLauter, OF (2023 first-rounder): .264/.379/.473 with a matching walk and strikeout rates of 15.8% in 177 minor league plate appearances (mostly in Triple-A)
  • Juan Brito, INF (acquired from Rockies in 2022 Nolan Jones trade): .243/.355/.437, 12.8% walk rate, 23.1% strikeout rate in 125 minor league plate appearances (mostly Triple-A)
  • C.J. Kayfus, 1B/OF (2023 third-rounder): .220/.292/.415 in 138 MLB plate appearances, plus .300/.390/.539 with 14 homers, an 11.9% walk rate and 25.2% strikeout rate in 369 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A

In addition to the lack of big league experience, one thing that stands out among that group is a lack of games played in 2025 — at any level. Valera (60 games in 2025) and DeLauter (42 games) have been consistently hurt throughout their minor league tenures. A pair of oblique strains limited Bazzana to 84 games in his first full season. Brito played 31 games due to thumb and hamstring surgeries. Kayfus logged 130 games — the only one of the bunch close to a full season.

Cleveland needs so much to go right that it’s hard to see this club being even an average MLB offense. DeLauter and Valera seem ticketed for Opening Day outfield roles but need to prove they can both stay healthy and hit big league pitching. The options behind them (Angel Martinez, Nolan Jones, Johnathan Rodriguez, Petey Halpin) don’t inspire much confidence. Bazzana is probably starting the year in Triple-A, meaning the Guardians will go with a combination of Gabriel Arias (.220/.274/.363 in 2025) and Brayan Rocchio (.233/.290/.340) in the middle infield.

The entire Guardians offense hinges on superstar third baseman José Ramirez, so perhaps it’s fitting that he was at the center of the only truly notable transaction Cleveland made this winter. Ramirez signed an extension that guaranteed him four years and $106MM in new money (on top of his preexisting three years). He’s now locked up through age 39. It’s fair to wonder whether this was really necessary. He was already under club control through his age-35 season. If Ramirez slows down and this turns into a Miguel Cabrera/Tigers situation, the Guardians could live to regret the deal.

In the short term, it seemed to pay some dividends. Ramirez agreed to defer $10MM annually over the seven years of his contract. He has a $25MM salary for the upcoming season, but only $15MM will be paid out this year. In theory, that should’ve given Cleveland more room to add to the roster, but that didn’t pan out. As such, the most consequential deal of their offseason actually subtracted from the 2026 payroll.

Ramirez might be the most singularly important player to his roster of any team in Major League Baseball. An injury to him would decimate Cleveland’s entire offense, but there’s no real fallback plan if he gets hurt. They’ve been fortunate to keep him as healthy as they have. Ramirez has missed only four games in each of the past two seasons. Dating back to 2020, he’s played in an incredible 96.5% of Cleveland’s games. He’s a true iron man, but he’s now 33 years old. If he were to incur an injury, the infield would likely include a combination of Brito, Rocchio, Arias and Bazzana to the left of Manzardo.

The Guardians’ pitching staff is in better shape, as is frequently the case, but it’s not as dominant as it was when the Guards were habitually churning out borderline Cy Young candidates. The sextet of Gavin Williams, Tanner Bibee, Logan Allen, Parker Messick, Slade Cecconi and Joey Cantillo gives manager Stephen Vogt six solid options, but no one from the group feels like a true No. 1 starter. Williams’ 3.06 ERA gives him that look on the surface, but he walked more hitters than any qualified pitcher in baseball last year. Metrics like SIERA (4.35) and FIP (4.39) are far more bearish.

There’s some depth, primarily in the form of righty Austin Peterson and lefty Doug Nikhazy. Both are on the 40-man roster. Peterson had a strong showing in the upper minors but has yet to debut at 26 and isn’t an especially touted prospect. Nikhazy struggled in the upper minors and in the majors last year. Non-roster options include Kolby Allard and old friend Pedro Avila. Former top prospect Daniel Espino is finally healthy again, but he’s pitched a total of 19 innings since the 2021 season ended. Anything he contributes will be a bonus, but it’s hard to rely on him given that injury track record.

The one area Cleveland made some small additions is in the bullpen. Veteran Shawn Armstrong is coming off a big year in Texas. His overall body of work since 2020 is strong, but it’s been a roller coaster in terms of year-to-year ERA marks; he’s ranged everywhere from 1.38 in 52 innings with the ’23 Rays to 6.75 in 36 frames with the O’s and Rays in ’21. On a cheap one-year deal, he’s a nice addition — particularly for a club that has a good track record of coaxing strong performances out of unheralded pitchers.

That ability will be pivotal with the Guardians’ other big league signing in the ‘pen, too. Connor Brogdon had a nice run with the Phillies from 2020-23 (3.55 ERA in 142 innings) but has struggled since. He still sat better than 95 mph with his heater and notched an impressive 13.2% swinging-strike rate in 47 innings with the Angels last year, even while limping to a 5.55 earned run average. If the Guardians can help to curb his susceptibility to home runs (2.11 HR/9 with Anaheim), he could be a nice bullpen piece both in 2026 and 2027, as he’d be arbitration-eligible next winter.

Antonetti & Co. also rolled the dice on a $1.5MM guarantee for hard-throwing former Pirates righty Colin Holderman. He can be optioned, so he’s not a clear lock to make the roster, however. The 30-year-old righty, who sits 97.4 mph with his sinker, notched a 3.52 ERA while fanning nearly one-quarter of his opponents in 2023-24. His strikeout rate plummeted in 2025, however, as he was rocked for a 7.01 ERA in 25 2/3 big league frames.

There’s no sugarcoating the fact that this was an immensely disappointing offseason for Cleveland fans. Their 2026 chances rest entirely on Ramirez continuing his iron-man ways and several oft-injured prospects simultaneously staying healthy and breaking out in their first extended looks of major league action. The pitching staff should be solid or better once again, but the depth beyond the top six rotation arms isn’t great.

Cleveland’s blank-slate payroll (aside from Ramirez and Bibee) seemed to set the stage for at least a modest addition or two in the lineup. Instead, their offseason will be remembered more for its inactivity than anything else. It’s a huge bet on in-house improvements, and there’s little to no safety net if those prospects fall to injuries or struggle to adjust to major league pitching.

How do MLBTR readers grade Cleveland’s offseason?

How would you grade the Guardians' offseason?

  • D 37% (646)
  • F 37% (642)
  • C 19% (325)
  • B 5% (78)
  • A 2% (42)

Total votes: 1,733

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2025-26 Offseason In Review Cleveland Guardians MLBTR Originals

Offseason In Review: San Francisco Giants

By | at March 5, 2026 3:10pm CDT

The Giants checked a few boxes this offseason, adding a pair of back-end starting pitchers and everyday players at second base and in the outfield. Their biggest splash might be in the manager’s office, as they stayed away from the top of the free agent market.

Major League Signings

2026 spending: $44.95MM
Total spending: $68.78MM

Trades and Claims

Option Decisions

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None

Notable Losses

Before the offseason got underway, president of baseball operations Buster Posey identified the priority. “Our focus is going to be on pitching, to try to fortify our starting staff. The same goes with the bullpen,” he told Alex Pavlovic and Laura Britt of NBC Sports Bay Area in early October.

Posey had acted decisively in pursuing star players during his first year running baseball operations. He’d signed Willy Adames to a franchise-record contract the previous offseason and made the biggest trade of the 2025 season when he took on the Rafael Devers contract from the Red Sox in June. The Giants were naturally a popular pick to land one of free agency’s top arms — ranging from Dylan Cease, Framber Valdez and Ranger Suárez in the rotation to Edwin Díaz at the back of the bullpen.

That was not to be. Not long after Posey’s comments, high-ranking team personnel began to downplay expectations. General manager Zack Minasian told John Shea of The San Francisco Standard they’d focus more on depth arms. CEO Greg Johnson made similar comments to Susan Slusser of The San Francisco Chronicle, noting that they were wary of making extended free agent commitments. None of that contradicted Posey’s identification of the focus, but it pointed to the more quiet offseason that would follow.

Indeed, one could argue the Giants’ biggest move didn’t involve the roster at all. San Francisco fired manager Bob Melvin at the end of the season. That was at least moderately surprising, as the Giants had exercised their 2026 option on Melvin’s services just three months earlier. The team’s 29-36 record in the second half was apparently the impetus for the change, but the Giants played at the same .500 level they had for most of the season after August despite selling multiple pieces (e.g. Mike Yastrzemski, Trevor Rogers, Camilo Doval) at the deadline.

In any case, the front office felt a change was necessary enough that they ate Melvin’s reported $4MM salary. They’d go on to make one of the boldest managerial hires in recent memory. After considering more traditional candidates like Kurt Suzuki, Nick Hundley, and Vance Wilson, the Giants wooed college baseball’s best coach.

They hired Tony Vitello away from the University of Tennessee, paying a premium to do so. Vitello is reportedly making $3.5MM annually on a three-year contract. The Giants also paid a $3MM buyout to the university. They’re committing $10.5MM to the managerial position this year all told, which is probably the most in MLB. Teams don’t publicly disclose managerial salaries, but Dave Roberts’ extension with the Dodgers pays an $8.1MM average annual value that is believed to be the most in the league.

Vitello built what had been a floundering Tennessee program into a national powerhouse during his eight years in Knoxville. It’s nevertheless a virtually unheard of hire for an MLB team. Vitello made the jump directly to major league managing without any previous experience in pro ball.

That has some precedent in other sports but hasn’t really been done in MLB, where college staffers making the move have usually begun their careers as coaches or in player development roles. He’ll have the advice of some experienced voices. The Giants added Ron Washington to the coaching staff while bringing Bruce Bochy back to the organization as a special advisor (joining Dusty Baker in that regard)

Fascinating as the hire is, Vitello will have more constraints as an MLB manager than he did as a college coach. College coaches are also primarily responsible for putting their rosters together via recruiting and the transfer portal. That’s obviously not the case in MLB, where the front office was tasked with addressing the pitching staff and fixing two obvious holes in the lineup.

As the aforementioned comments from Johnson and Minasian suggested, the front office seemingly didn’t have much long-term payroll flexibility. They’d signed three nine-figure contracts (Jung Hoo Lee, Matt Chapman and Adames) in the previous two offseasons. They took on close to $215MM in future commitments on the Devers deal — including the money saved by attaching Jordan Hicks as a salary offset. They also paid $17MM to division rival Blake Snell in January as a deferred signing bonus from his 2024 free agent deal.

Although the Giants would take aim at a few high-impact trade targets, they limited themselves to the third and fourth tiers in free agency. That began with a two-year, $22MM deal for right-hander Adrian Houser. It’s a hefty price for a pitcher who was playing on a minor league pact as recently as last May. Houser pitched very well in 11 starts for the White Sox but struggled to a near-5.00 ERA over 10 outings following a deadline trade to Tampa Bay. He slots into the back half of the rotation as an innings eating grounder specialist.

The Giants made a similar move with a one-year, $10MM flier for Tyler Mahle. There’s maybe a little more upside with Mahle, who is coming off a 2.18 ERA across 16 starts for the Rangers. That’s driven largely by an elevated strand rate and minimal batting average on balls in play that covered for a mediocre 19.1% strikeout rate.

Mahle missed bats early in his career with the Reds but hasn’t had the same caliber of stuff since then due to injury. He pitched a total of 107 MLB innings from 2023-25. A May ’23 Tommy John surgery was the most significant injury, but he also lost chunks of time in each of the past two seasons to shoulder problems. His average fastball speed has dropped two ticks from a 94 mph high back in 2021. Mahle still has excellent command and enters camp healthy, but he has back-of-the-rotation stuff despite last year’s impressive earned run average.

Signing Houser and Mahle all but ensured the Giants wouldn’t re-sign Justin Verlander, who’d been their only free agent of much note. Verlander pitched well down the stretch, but the Giants evidently preferred the other veteran arms to betting on a player entering his age-43 season. San Francisco also traded away depth arms Mason Black and Kai-Wei Teng in minor deals.

The free agent pickups slot behind Logan Webb and Robbie Ray. Having one of the 10 best pitchers in MLB anchor the group is an excellent start. Ray shows the ability to pitch at a legitimate #2 level at times but can also battle his command and had a rough second half. Landen Roupp is the in-house favorite to round out the starting five. He’s a quality back-end arm.

It’s not a bad group, though it’s lacking the ceiling behind Webb that’d compete with the upper tier of rotations in MLB. That might need to come from an unexpected step forward from an internal arm. The Giants have some intriguing depth pieces on the 40-man roster. Hayden Birdsong, Trevor McDonald, Carson Whisenhunt, Blade Tidwell, and Carson Seymour are all optionable starters with modest big league experience.

Individually, no one from that group projects as a high-end starter. There’s enough volume the Giants can hope someone takes an unexpected step forward with a velocity jump or new pitch. Birdsong has the best raw stuff but disappointed when given a rotation opportunity a year ago. He simply didn’t throw enough strikes.

Although Birdsong enters camp as a starter, the Giants should probably focus him on a relief role this year. They’re likely to need more than one of the rotation depth pieces in the bullpen — which they did puzzlingly little to address over the offseason. They not only stayed away from the Díaz/Devin Williams price range but also opted not to bring in any middle-tier relievers (e.g. Kyle Finnegan, Kenley Jansen).

Free agent bullpen prices were high. The Giants may have simply thought that playing in that area was bad value. However, it leaves them with one of the thinner bullpens of any team that expects to contend. In addition to the Rogers and Doval trades, they lost breakout closer Randy Rodríguez to Tommy John surgery as they were playing out the string.

San Francisco’s only acquisitions were reclamation projects. They signed Jason Foley and Sam Hentges to cheap one-year deals. Both pitchers are coming off shoulder surgery and headed for season-opening injured list stints. Rowan Wick is essentially a 2027 version of the same idea. San Francisco brought him back from Japan for barely more than the league minimum. He’ll miss the entire season after recently undergoing Tommy John surgery but could be kept around via minimal club option next year if he’s recovering smoothly.

An already thin group has taken a couple more hits in camp. Waiver pickup Reiver Sanmartin tweaked his right hip in an exhibition game for Colombia in the World Baseball Classic. Hard-throwing righty Joel Peguero was diagnosed with a Grade 2 hamstring strain just last night.

Ryan Walker feels like the closer by default despite an up-and-down 2025 season. Righties JT Brubaker and José Buttó can’t be optioned and will make the team. Erik Miller and the out-of-options Matt Gage lead an uninspiring group of left-handers. Minor league signees Gregory Santos and Michael Fulmer have a clear path to middle relief spots. Aside from the general difficulty in predicting relief pitching, there’s not much reason for excitement unless someone like Birdsong or McDonald gets a bullpen job and runs with it.

Can the Giants outhit their pitching concerns? This was a league average lineup a year ago, a disappointing result for one that should be better than that on talent. They entered the offseason with two obvious potential problem areas: second base and right field. Tyler Fitzgerald floundered at the former position, leaving Casey Schmitt to hold the job in the second half. He’s a low-end regular who profiles better as a utilityman. Right field was an even bigger issue, as they got nothing out of the position after the Yastrzemski trade.

San Francisco addressed both positions via free agency. They added Harrison Bader on a two-year, $20.5MM contract in their second-biggest investment of the winter. The front office successfully waited out Bader’s push for a third year to add an impact defender coming off a career-best .277/.347/.449 showing. They’ll expect some regression offensively — Bader dramatically outperformed his batted ball metrics thanks to an inflated .359 BABIP — but he’s an ideal fit for the spacious Oracle Park outfield.

Bader will play every day in center field, pushing Lee to right. Lee is coming off a .266/.327/.407 season that’d be fine even with the higher offensive bar to clear in a corner outfield spot. Despite above-average speed and an excellent arm, Lee occasionally had some trouble tracking balls in center field. Bader will be a notable upgrade, while Lee’s athleticism should remain an asset with the amount of ground to cover in the right-center gap.

They’ll be joined in the outfield by Heliot Ramos, a 2024 All-Star who underwhelmed last season. Ramos had a huge May (.347/.407/.600) but had a sub-.720 OPS in every other month. He batted .248/.316/.358 in the second half. Ramos still topped 20 homers with slightly above-average offensive numbers overall, but left field could be a position to monitor at the deadline if his late-season form carries into 2026. Former Guardian Will Brennan could factor in there as a left-handed complement but seems likelier to begin the season in Triple-A after an offseason split deal.

The Giants’ biggest pursuits came at second base. Bay Area native Nico Hoerner would have been an ideal fit, but the Cubs never had much motivation to trade him. The Giants made a run at landing Brendan Donovan from the Cardinals; he wound up traded to Seattle instead. Talks with the Nationals about CJ Abrams reportedly stalled when Washington balked at a prospect package built around shortstop Josuar Gonzalez.

They ended up turning back to free agency. In a weak middle infield class beyond Bo Bichette, they opted to give Luis Arraez another opportunity at second base. It’s difficult to quibble with the price, as the three-time batting champion settled for one year and $12MM. The risk is that comes with the promise of moving Arraez back to the keystone after two years working mostly as a first baseman in San Diego.

Fans are familiar with Arraez’s skillset. He’s the most difficult player in MLB to strike out and one of a handful of hitters who can reasonably be expected to bat .300. The all-contact approach doesn’t leave much room for walks or any kind of power. Last season’s .292/.327/.392 batting line came out to roughly league average overall, by measure of wRC+.

Arraez’s career numbers are better than that (.317/.363/.413), and he should certainly be an offensive upgrade over Schmitt. They’ll probably need to live with well below-average defense in the process despite expressing hope that working with Washington can turn things around. Arraez doesn’t move especially well and has been a below-average defender from the time he reached the majors.

Schmitt is a much better defensive player and should stick around as a utility piece and potential late-game substitute. Schmitt’s name has been floated in trade rumors, but there probably aren’t many teams that view him as a clear everyday player. If most other clubs also see him as a utility piece, he’s more valuable to the Giants as an Arraez complement than netting a fairly modest trade return. Fitzgerald was a non-factor in the second half and doesn’t have much of a path back to playing time in San Francisco. A change of scenery trade for a low-level prospect could make sense.

Chapman and Adames will play almost every game on the left side of the infield. Devers will divide his work between first base and designated hitter. Top first base prospect Bryce Eldridge is trying to break camp after a brief 2025 debut. He’d play regularly alongside Devers if he’s on the roster. If the Giants have him open the season in the minors, that’d increase the odds of an out-of-options Luis Matos or Jerar Encarnación sticking around.

There’s also a camp battle for the backup catcher job. Patrick Bailey is such a good defender that he’ll remain the primary catcher despite providing very little at the plate. Prospect Jesus Rodriguez is competing with Rule 5 selection Daniel Susac and minor league signee Eric Haase for a bench spot.

The Giants hit most of the obvious needs they had entering the offseason — though the bullpen stands as a curious exception. They did so mostly with moves to raise the floor rather than upside plays, seemingly because of payroll restrictions. Did they do enough to jump the Padres and Diamondbacks as the second-best team in the NL West and at least snag a Wild Card berth?

How would you grade the Giants' offseason?

  • C 48% (983)
  • B 27% (556)
  • D 18% (373)
  • F 4% (90)
  • A 3% (59)

Total votes: 2,061

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2025-26 Offseason In Review MLBTR Originals San Francisco Giants
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