Astros Designate Ramon Urias For Assignment
The Astros announced they’ve designated infielder Ramón Urías for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to pitching prospect Miguel Ullola, who has been selected to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. Their roster remains at capacity.
Houston acquired Urías from the Orioles at this past summer’s trade deadline. It initially seemed he’d be the fill-in third baseman after the Isaac Paredes injury. The Astros pulled off the shocking Carlos Correa deal a day later, pushing Urías into more of a second/third base hybrid role. He didn’t perform especially well. He hit .223/.267/.372 with 28 strikeouts in 101 trips to the plate after the trade.
That will end up being his only work in an Astros uniform. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected Urías for a $4.4MM salary in his final year of arbitration. Houston wasn’t going to pay that amount coming off the rough finish. They can technically spend the next three days trying to find a trade partner, but it’s likelier they’ll simply non-tender him on Friday. He’d become a free agent at that point.
While his Astros tenure was a disappointment, Urías had been a capable role player for the Orioles for the past few seasons. He won a Gold Glove at third base in 2022, though his defensive grades in every other season have been right around average. Urías was also essentially an average hitter throughout his time in Baltimore. He batted .259/.324/.404 in a little more than 500 games over parts of six seasons with the Orioles. He’s been serviceable against pitchers of either handedness and can play any non-shortstop position on the dirt.
Urías should be able to command a major league contract if he’s non-tendered. It’d surely be a one-year deal but he could find a $3-4MM guarantee to work as a right-handed infielder off the bench. Houston will ideally find a lefty bat to fit that role, as their lineup already skews very heavily to the right side. They’ll need to decide whether to tender righty-hitting utilityman Mauricio Dubón (projected at $5.8MM) or start from scratch with their infield depth.
Ullola appears to be the only prospect whom the Astros were concerned would get taken in next month’s Rule 5 draft. The 23-year-old righty spent the entire ’25 season working out of the Triple-A rotation. He managed a solid 3.88 earned run average across 113 2/3 innings in the Pacific Coast League. Ullola fanned 27% of opponents but walked nearly 16% of batters faced. He has never thrown strikes at a tenable rate in the minors, which presumably points toward a long-term bullpen future. Ullola’s fastball sits around 94 MPH in his work as a starter, so he could be a solid power arm with significant bat-missing upside if the Astros move him to relief.
Nine Players Reject Qualifying Offer
The deadline to accept the qualifying offer has passed. Four players — Trent Grisham, Gleyber Torres, Brandon Woodruff, and Shota Imanaga — chose to accept the one-year, $22.025MM deal and remain with their current clubs. The remaining nine players rejected the deal. They are: Cubs outfielder Kyle Tucker, Phillies DH Kyle Schwarber, Blue Jays infielder Bo Bichette, Astros lefty Framber Valdez, Padres righty Dylan Cease, Phillies lefty Ranger Suarez, Mets closer Edwin Diaz, Diamondbacks righty Zac Gallen, and Padres righty Michael King. All nine are now free agents.
There’s not much surprise in any of the nine players who rejected. Tucker, Schwarber, Bichette, Valdez, Cease, Suarez and Diaz were all locks. Gallen may have given some brief thought to accepting after a rough showing in 2025, but he finished strong and has a track record as a high-end starter who’s garnered multiple top-five finishes in NL Cy Young balloting. King was hobbled by nerve and knee injuries in an odd season but was dominant in 2023-24 and through the first two months of the current season. He was healthy late in the year and fanned three in his lone inning of postseason work. He’ll test the waters in search of a multi-year deal as well.
Now that this nonet has rejected qualifying offers, they’ll all be subject to draft compensation. Interested teams will need to surrender a draft pick (or multiple picks) and, in some cases, space from their bonus pool for international amateurs in order to sign any of this group. The extent of that draft compensation depends on the revenue-sharing and luxury tax status of the new team. MLBTR broke down which pick(s) each club would forfeit by signing a “qualified” free agent last month.
Similarly, the compensation for each player’s former club is dependent on revenue-sharing and luxury tax status — as well as the size of the contract signed by the player in question. MLBTR also ran through the compensation each team would receive if their qualified free agents turned down the offer and signed elsewhere.
Trent Grisham To Accept Qualifying Offer
Outfielder Trent Grisham is accepting his $22.025MM qualifying offer and will return to the Yankees in 2026, reports ESPN’s Jorge Castillo. Players who accept a QO are considered free agent signings and are thus ineligible to be traded prior to the following June 15 unless they consent to the move.
It’s at least a modest surprise, as Grisham is coming off a breakout year at the plate which saw him club a career-high 34 home runs. He slashed .235/.348/.464, thanks in no small part to a career-best 14.1% walk rate and a 23.6% strikeout rate that stood as the second-lowest in his career. Between that production, the fact that Grisham only just turned 29 earlier this month, and a thin outfield market in free agency, the stars seemed to align for him to pursue a weighty multi-year contract this winter.
Instead, Grisham returns to the site of his breakout and will hold down a key role in an outfield that’s also currently slated to include Jasson Dominguez and Aaron Judge. The Yankees are interested in re-signing Cody Bellinger, have been linked to Kyle Tucker and also have DH Giancarlo Stanton at least loosely in the outfield mix. (He played 132 outfield innings in 2025.)
Grisham’s return muddies the waters a bit, but GM Brian Cashman said recently that even if he accepted, it wouldn’t impact the team’s pursuit of a new deal with Bellinger (link via the New York Post’s Greg Joyce). The Yankees wouldn’t have made the QO to Grisham if they believed his acceptance was a roadblock to bringing back Bellinger or signing Tucker. They’re surely glad to have him back. Even though his defensive grades took an unexpected downturn in ’25, he has the best defensive track record in center of the Yankees’ in-house options.
While Grisham could have looked to cash in this winter, he’ll instead take a hefty one-year payday in what amounts to a bet on himself. Though he’s a left-handed bat, his power output was hardly a product of Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch. In fact, Grisham hit just .195/.326/.376 at home this season, compared to .254/.364/.506 on the road. If he can replicate this year’s huge power production, he could hit the market next offseason on the back of consecutive plus seasons at the plate and without the encumbrance of a qualifying offer. A big enough showing this year could realistically position Grisham for a $100MM+ contract — particularly if his defensive grades rebound, too.
The looming potential for a work stoppage is one other wrinkle to consider, but if anything, today’s glut of QO decisions suggests that players aren’t necessarily going to shy away from short-term deals that put them on the open market next year — at least not en masse. Grisham is one of four players to accept the QO, joining Gleyber Torres, Shota Imanaga and Brandon Woodruff in that regard. In a vacuum, any one of the four accepting his QO wouldn’t be considered a major surprise — but all four accepting in the same offseason is downright atypical. This marks the first time since the inception of the qualifying offer that more than three players have accepted a QO.
With Grisham back in the fold, the Yankees’ projected payroll for the upcoming season jumps to about $263MM, per RosterResource. They’ll now have about $286MM of luxury tax obligations, placing them just over the third penalty line. That means that the Yankees’ top pick in the 2027 draft will drop by 10 places, unless they’re able to sneak their luxury count back under $284MM. Given the wide swath of offseason dealings that’s likely still on the table for Cashman & Co., that doesn’t seem to be a very likely outcome. In all likelihood, the Yankees will wind up in the top CBT penalty tier, just as they’ve done in each of the past three seasons.
Turning to the rest of the league, Grisham’s early removal from the free agent market — to a team that didn’t clearly need to retain him, no less — subtracts arguably the top center field option from the market. Bellinger, of course, can still play center but barely did so in 2025. Most teams probably consider him more of a corner outfielder/first baseman who can play occasional center field. Harrison Bader and Cedric Mullins are the two most notable options still on the market, though the former has been more of a part-time player and the latter is looking to bounce back from an awful 2025 showing. The market was light on center fielders to begin with and is even more so now, so teams looking for help at the position might be more inclined to turn to the trade market to address that deficiency.
Gleyber Torres To Accept Qualifying Offer
Infielder Gleyber Torres is going to accept the qualifying offer from the Tigers. Jon Heyman of The New York Post was among those to report the news. Torres will return to Detroit on a one-year deal worth $22.025MM.
Once Torres received the QO, it seemed like there was a decent chance of him accepting it, which is why we predicted he would do so as part of our Top 50 Free Agents list. Torres was a free agent a year ago. He reportedly received some kind of multi-year offer from the Angels but rejected it since he wanted to play for a contending club. The financial details of that offer from the Halos aren’t known. He eventually settled for a one-year, $15MM pact with Detroit.
He didn’t meaningfully increase his earning power during the 2025 season. He slashed .256/.358/.387 for a wRC+ of 113. That was better than his 2024 season, when he hit .257/.330/.378 for a 105 wRC+, but close to his career numbers. He now has a .264/.337/.433 line and 114 wRC+ for his career.
That 2025 production came in lopsided fashion. He had a .281/.387/.425 line in the first half but just a .223/.320/.339 showing in the second, leading to respective wRC+ figures of 131 and 88. He underwent sports hernia surgery after the season and said he had been playing through the injury for months, staying on the field because the club was in a playoff race. Presumably, that accounts for the reduced production.
Theoretically, getting back to full health could perhaps help him return to that first-half form when he was a substantially better hitter, but he’s also going into the offseason hurt. He isn’t expected to be hampered into next season and the Tigers felt good enough about his chances in 2026 to give him a bit of a raise. Perhaps some clubs out there were willing to pay him a bit more but they also would have been subject to penalties on account of the QO. We at MLBTR were considering predicting Torres for something like $40MM over three years before he received the QO.
Torres hasn’t played a position other than second base in over three years, so he’ll return to the keystone in Detroit for another year. Per RosterResource, they are now slated for a payroll of $146MM next year. That’s a bit shy of their year-end payroll in 2025, which was $155MM. It’s unknown how much they are willing to spend next year. They are a speculative fit for third baseman Alex Bregman but seem likely to focus on pitching pursuits.
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images
Shota Imanaga To Accept Cubs’ Qualifying Offer
Shota Imanaga will be returning to the Cubs, as The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney reports that the left-hander has accepted the team’s one-year, $22.025MM qualifying offer. The surprising decision means that Imanaga stays put after his time in Wrigleyville seemed to be over, following a series of declined contract options on the part of the Cubs and Imanaga himself.
The four-year, $53MM deal that Imanaga signed with Chicago in January 2024 guaranteed Imanaga $23MM over the first two seasons, and this offseason presented both sides with decisions. The Cubs had to decide whether or not to exercise a three-year option on Imanaga’s services that would’ve paid him $57.75MM over the 2026-28 seasons, and the team decided to decline. Imanaga then had a $15.25MM player option for just 2026 that he also declined, even though exercising that option would’ve then created a $42.5MM club option for the Cubs for next winter covering the 2027-28 seasons that (if declined) would’ve created a $15.25MM player option for Imanaga for 2027.
The Cubs issued Imanaga the qualifying offer to ensure some compensation if Imanaga signed elsewhere, yet as it turned out, Imanaga will indeed take a one-year pact to remain, with roughly $7MM added beyond the price of his player option. He would’ve locked in at least $30.5MM for himself by exercising his player option and generating that other player option for next winter, so he is currently leaving $8.475MM on the table given how this rather complicated situation turned out.
A 2026 season more in line with Imanaga’s impressive 2024 rookie campaign will easily land a multi-year contract worth far more than $8.475MM next winter, even though the lefty turns 33 in September. He’ll be able to re-enter next year’s free agent market without the QO compensation attached to his services. This removes one obstacle for Imanaga in free agency next winter, but more consistency on the mound will be the deciding factor.
Imanaga posted a 3.73 ERA, 20.6% strikeout rate, and an elite 4.6% walk rate over 144 2/3 innings for Chicago this season. Apart from his great control and the solid bottom-line ERA, the rest of Imanaga’s peripherals were almost all well below the league average. The problems included a lot of hard and high-impact contact, as only three pitchers allowed more home runs than Imanaga’s 31 big flies in 2025.
A hamstring strain cost Imanaga most of May and June, but he still managed a 2.40 ERA over his first 75 innings of the year before things started to turn in the second half. Twenty of Imanaga’s 31 home runs allowed came during his last 69 2/3 innings of the season, resulting in a 5.17 ERA. Things didn’t get any better in the playoffs, as the southpaw posted an 8.10 ERA and gave up three more homers in 6 2/3 frames of postseason work.
These issues with the long ball were also apparent in Imanaga’s 2024 season, if not to the same extreme level. He also allowed less hard contact and had a solid 25.1% strikeout rate, while delivering a 2.91 ERA over 173 1/3 innings. This excellent debut season earned Imanaga a fourth-place finish in NL Rookie of the Year voting, a fifth-place finish in Cy Young Award voting, and his first All-Star nod.
Given how well Imanaga was seemingly adjusting to the big leagues over his first season and a half, it seemed like a lock that the Cubs were going to exercise their options to keep Imanaga in the fold through 2028. However, his rough finish to the season seemingly changed the Cubs’ mind about such a substantial commitment.
Likewise, Imanaga and his reps at Octagon could’ve been concerned over how the market would react to his homer-heavy final 69 2/3 innings. MLB Trade Rumors ranked Imanaga 22nd on our list of the offseason’s top 50 free agents and projected him for a three-year, $45MM deal, but Imanaga and his reps at Octagon might have viewed the qualifying offer as an impediment to an acceptable contract. If Imanaga was going to have to settle for a short-term “prove it” type of deal anyway, accepting the QO allows him to aim for a bounce-back season in a familiar environment, and for a bigger one-year average annual value.
Returning to the Cubs also allows Imanaga to play for a team that should again be playoff contenders. Starting pitching should still continue to be a need for Chicago even with Imanaga back, but at least one box has now been checked off of the team’s rotation plans. Imanaga joins Matthew Boyd, Cade Horton, Jameson Taillon, and Colin Rea in the projected starting five, with Justin Steele theoretically able to return from a UCL revision surgery relatively early in the 2026 campaign. Javier Assad and Ben Brown are also on hand, but the Cubs will want to bolster this group with at least one more reliable starter, given how the team didn’t trust its depth (including Imanaga) during the postseason.
Inset photo courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski — Imagn Images
Brandon Woodruff Accepts Qualifying Offer
Brandon Woodruff has accepted the one-year, $22.025MM qualifying offer from the Brewers. The team confirmed that he’ll back for another season after an excellent but injury-shortened 2025 campaign.
Woodruff is one of four players who’ll opt for the strong one-year salary over exploring the market for a multi-year deal. Trent Grisham, Shota Imanaga and Gleyber Torres also accepted the QO. Woodruff and Grisham are the most surprising, as it was expected that they’d each command multi-year deals despite being attached to draft compensation.
Those players have had the past two weeks to survey the market. Perhaps they didn’t find the level of robust interest for which they’d hoped. It’s also possible that they preferred to stay with their current teams and are hopeful of using the QO as a springboard to hammering out an extension later in the offseason. That could be the case with Woodruff, a career-long Brewer who is headed into the eighth full season of his career.
A two-time All-Star, Woodruff has been among the best pitchers in MLB for most of that time. He has posted a sub-4.00 ERA in each season aside from his eight-start rookie year. Woodruff has allowed 3.10 earned runs per nine in 142 career appearances. He finished top five in Cy Young balloting in 2021 and posted a combined 2.82 ERA in 38 starts between 2022-23.
Woodruff missed a good chunk of the latter season with shoulder inflammation. That proved an unfortunate precursor to a few years of arm woes. Woodruff made it back in the second half of the ’23 season, but he revealed at the end of the year that he was headed for a capsule repair in his throwing shoulder. That immediately wiped out his 2024 campaign.
Milwaukee declined to tender him a one-year arbitration contract with the lost year looming, but the sides circled back on a two-year deal that guaranteed $17.5MM. Woodruff indeed missed the entire first season and started this year on the injured list as well. He had a couple fluky setbacks on his minor league assignment. An ankle tweak in May and a comebacker off his throwing elbow in June kept him off the big league roster until the week before the All-Star Break.
Woodruff made his long awaited return in the second week of July. He could not have pitched much better despite the layoff. He reeled off 64 2/3 innings of 3.20 ERA ball over 12 outings. Woodruff picked up quality starts in half those appearances while striking out 32.3% of opposing hitters against a 5.4% walk rate. Among starters with 50+ innings pitched, he ranked fifth in strikeout percentage and had the fourth-highest difference between his strikeout and walk numbers.
Excellent as that performance was, he didn’t look quite the same as he had before the surgery. His 93 MPH average fastball speed was down a couple ticks from the 95-96 MPH range at which he worked in 2023. It didn’t impact his production but is perhaps a slight red flag. More concerning was the possibility of Woodruff’s shoulder not holding up for the entire season. That came true at the worst possible time, as he was shut down just before the start of the postseason after suffering a moderate lat strain during a between starts bullpen session.
The Brewers made it to the NL Championship Series in his absence. Woodruff was not able to make it back and had reportedly not resumed throwing, so he almost certainly would have been unavailable if they’d gotten to the World Series. The Brewers were confident enough in next season’s health outlook to make the qualifying offer. Woodruff returns as the second-highest paid player on the roster after Christian Yelich, who’ll make $26MM per season ($4MM deferred annually) for another three years.
Under the CBA, accepting the qualifying offer is akin to signing a major league free agent contract. That means Woodruff cannot be traded without his consent until June 15, 2026. The Brewers would not have made the QO if they weren’t willing to have him take up a significant chunk of the payroll, even if the front office believed he’d probably decline and find a multi-year contract elsewhere. Woodruff will be back as one of the top two starters in Pat Murphy’s rotation. He cannot be tagged with another QO in his career and will hit free agency unencumbered by draft compensation after next season, barring an extension. He’ll be entering his age-34 campaign.
While Woodruff isn’t getting traded, this could impact the front office’s decision on Freddy Peralta. He’s headed into the final year of his contract on a bargain $8MM salary. The Brewers would have no shortage of suitors if they made Peralta available. President of baseball operations Matt Arnold said last week that they’ll consider offers out of due diligence but certainly weren’t eager to deal him.
Milwaukee has $68.525MM committed to Yelich, Woodruff, Peralta, Jackson Chourio and Aaron Ashby. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects their arbitration class to cost around $32MM. They’re at roughly $100MM before accounting for another $10-12MM in minimum salaried players to fill out the roster. They opened this season with a player payroll around $115MM, and they paid $16MM in option buyouts for Woodruff, Jose Quintana and Rhys Hoskins at the beginning of the offseason.
The Brewers should have some extra money in the coffers after their NLCS run. It’s hard to imagine they would’ve made the QO if Woodruff accepting would really strain them financially. Still, his return could give them more freedom to entertain offers on Peralta now that they know they’ll have at least one veteran anchor atop the staff either way.
If Peralta stays, he and Woodruff will be co-aces for another season. Quinn Priester and Jacob Misiorowski are going to be in the middle of the rotation. Chad Patrick, Logan Henderson, Tobias Myers and Robert Gasser could battle for spots at the back end. The Brewers tend to add a cheap free agent starter or swingman at the tail end of the offseason, so a smaller depth pickup could still be on the way.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first reported that Woodruff was accepting. Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images.
Rangers Shopping Jonah Heim, Adolis Garcia
The Rangers are shopping catcher Jonah Heim and outfielder Adolis Garcia ahead of the non-tender deadline on November 21st, according to a report from ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Passan adds that both players are candidates to be non-tendered if Texas is unable to work out trades for them.
Both longtime stalwarts of the Texas lineup were featured on MLBTR’s list of the Top 40 Trade Candidates for the 2025-26 offseason. While Heim and Garcia were both key parts of the core that won the 2023 World Series for the Rangers, neither has played especially well since then. Heim was a four-win player and an All-Star in 2023 but since then has slashed just .217/.269/.334 (71 wRC+) in 255 games with sharply declining defensive metrics behind the plate. Garcia has fallen from similar heights, as he garnered MVP votes and won a Gold Glove in 2023 but has hit just .225/.278/.397 (89 wRC+) in 289 games the past two seasons.
Given each player’s past success, it’s not impossible to imagine either one bouncing back to be quality players in 2026. With that being said, the Rangers are facing payroll constraints this winter that will make it difficult for them to roll the dice on either player. That makes the decision to shop them on the trade market an easy one, as they can look to potentially recoup some value for one or both players before they’re forced to either pay the pair hefty arbitration salaries or non-tender them, cutting them from the organization for no return whatsoever.
Of the two, Heim appears to be far more tradable. He’s projected for a salary of just $6MM by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz in 2026 as he heads into his age-31 campaign. That’s not a particularly onerous figure for even teams with real budgetary concerns, and between that light salary and the dearth of quality catching options around the league it would make sense if another club was interested in rolling the dice on Heim. Teams like the Rays, Padres, Astros, and Phillies all could be in the market for catching help this winter and could consider giving Heim a look.
Garcia, by contrast, seems harder to convince a team to take a chance on. He’s entering his age-33 season and is projected for a $12.1MM salary in 2026. While the market for right-handed outfielders is somewhat sparse this winter, players like Austin Hays, Miguel Andujar, and Rob Refsnyder all provided above-average offensive production from a corner outfield spot this past year and would likely be able to be had for much less than Garcia’s arbitration price tag. Teams might even see Garcia as more comparable to a roll of the dice on a player like Randal Grichuk, Lane Thomas, or Starling Marte, any of whom could be had in free agency much more affordably without having to trade anything away.
As for the Rangers, they’ll need to find another complement to Kyle Higashioka behind the plate if they wind up trading or non-tendering Heim. Garcia would be easier to replace internally given the presence of controllable outfielders like Alejandro Osuna and Michael Helman, though the team’s need for more offense could still lead them to peruse external additions to help Wyatt Langford, Josh Smith, and Evan Carter out on the grass as well.
Red Sox Designate Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Winckowski For Assignment
The Red Sox announced that first baseman Nathaniel Lowe has been designated for assignment. Chris Cotillo of MassLive reported the move shortly before the official announcement. That opens a 40-man spot for Tristan Gray, who has been acquired from the Rays. The Sox are also designating right-hander Josh Winckowski for assignment, reports Ari Alexander of 7 News. That will open another 40-man spot, presumably for Boston to add someone ahead of today’s Rule 5 protection deadline.
The moves are effectively early non-tenders. Friday afternoon is the deadline for teams to decide whether or not to tender contracts to their arbitration-eligible and pre-arb players. But as mentioned, today is the deadline for adding players to the 40-man in order to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. By cutting these two players now, the Sox have made space for adding Gray and someone else in the coming hours.
It’s not a surprise that Boston isn’t bringing Lowe back. He was a midseason desperation addition. The Sox lost Triston Casas to injury early in the season, leaving a hole at first base. They had been patching that over with guys like Romy González and Abraham Toro. Lowe became available in August when the Nationals released him. He has a good overall track record but was having a bad season. The Sox were able to grab him for essentially nothing to bolster their first base group down the stretch.
The Sox also could have kept Lowe for 2026 via arbitration but it never seemed likely they would do so. He qualified for Super Two status going into 2023, giving him four arb passes instead of the usual three. He had already raised his salary to $10.3MM in 2025. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected him for a $13.5MM salary in 2026, which will be his age-30 season. The Sox presumably had no intention of paying that after Lowe hit .228/.307/.381 for a 91 wRC+ this year. They have Casas potentially coming back in 2026 and they could also pursue external additions.
Technically, Boston has some time to try to trade Lowe but other teams presumably aren’t keen on him at that $13.5MM price point either. He will likely stay in DFA limbo until Friday and then be non-tendered, becoming a free agent.
Once he’s officially on the open market, he will be an interesting bounceback candidate. As mentioned, his 2025 season wasn’t good, but he was a solid everyday first baseman for the Rangers for many years. From 2021 to 2024, he got into at least 140 games in four straight seasons, including at least 157 in the first three. He launched between 16 and 27 home runs in each of those. He also had a walk rate of 12.5% or higher in three of the four. He had a combined .274/.359/.432 slash line and 124 wRC+ for that span. FanGraphs credited him with 10.8 wins above replacement.
That strong performance helped the Rangers win the 2023 World Series and also pushed Lowe’s salary up into eight-figure territory. Those factors combined with his down year to make him a clear non-tender candidate.
Based on his track record, some club should give Lowe a big deal at some point, though at a lesser price point than his projected arbitration salary. He will jump into a first base market that has already seen Josh Naylor come off the board. Pete Alonso, Ryan O’Hearn, Luis Arráez and others are still out there, while Christian Walker and Willson Contreras are potential trade candidates.
Winckowski, 28 in June, has spent the past few years working in a swing role for the Sox. He has logged 242 1/3 innings over 21 starts and 100 relief appearances, allowing 4.20 earned runs per nine. His 18.2% strikeout rate is subpar but his his 8.3% walk rate is around average and his 51.6% ground ball rate quite strong.
He only logged 11 2/3 innings in the majors in 2025. He spent most of the first half on optional assignment in the minors. In June, the Sox called him up and put him on the big league 60-day injured list due to a a flexor strain in his right elbow. That allowed them to open a 40-man roster spot. Winckowski stayed on the IL for the rest of the year, collecting service time along the way. The IL goes away five days after the World Series, so he retook a 40-man spot at that time.
His current health status is unknown but he was going to be on the roster bubble regardless. He exhausted his final option season in 2025. He also pushed his service time just over the three-year mark, therefore qualifying for arbitration. He is projected for a salary of $800K next year. That’s barely above the league minimum, which will be $780K next year. But for a guy who was hurt for most of 2025 and can’t be easily sent to the minors anymore, the Sox aren’t keen to pay him at that level.
While he’s in DFA limbo, they could try to trade him elsewhere. He can be controlled for another three seasons and is relatively cheap. But it’s also possible he gets non-tendered alongside Lowe on Friday and ends up a free agent.
Photos courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck, Kevin Jairaj, Eric Canha, Imagn Images
Mariners Re-Sign Josh Naylor
The Mariners officially announced they’ve brought back Josh Naylor on a five-year deal. It’s a reported $92.5MM guarantee for the ISE Baseball client. Naylor will get a $6.5MM signing bonus upfront. He’ll make a $10MM salary in 2026, $16MM in ’27, $18MM in ’28, $20MM in ’29 and $22MM in 2030. The deal also includes a full no-trade clause and has no deferred money.
Naylor becomes the first headline name of the 2025-26 free agent class to land a new contract, just two weeks after the World Series concluded. It counts as a surprise to see any major free agent sign their next contract this quickly, even before the players who received qualifying offers have made their decisions. (Naylor was notably not eligible for a QO, since he was traded from the Diamondbacks to the Mariners during the season.)
MLB Trade Rumors ranked Naylor 12th on our list of the offseason’s top 50 free agents, and the five-year term matches our projection that Naylor would receive a five-year, $90MM deal. The five-year length of Naylor’s contract also matches the longest free agent deal the Mariners have given out during Jerry Dipoto’s decade in charge of Seattle’s baseball operations department. The M’s inked Robbie Ray to a five-year, $115MM pact during the 2021-22 offseason, and Ray’s contract and Yusei Kikuchi‘s four-year, $56MM deal in January 2019 were the only free agent deals of the Dipoto era to exceed even two years.
There are multiple reasons behind the lack of big free agent strikes. The Mariners’ infamous 10-year, $240MM deal with Robinson Cano from December 2013 could’ve led to some organizational wariness over blockbuster signings. Since John Stanton’s ownership group bought the team in 2016, the M’s have only once finished a season with a top-10 payroll, and are only moving back into the middle range of spending league-wide. There is also “Trader Jerry’s” own personal preference to build rosters via trades rather than free agents, as Dipoto has become known for being very active in negotiating swaps. Players may have had misgivings about joining a Mariners team that has two just postseason appearances in the last 24 seasons, and hitters in particular weren’t exactly lining up to play in a notoriously pitcher-friendly environment.
With all of this in mind, there was such mutual interest between Naylor and the Mariners that it certainly seemed like the team was very willing to stretch beyond its usual free agent comfort zone. Dipoto was open in telling the media — including Darragh McDonald on the MLBTR Podcast back in September — that re-signing Naylor was a priority for the organization, and Naylor himself was just as effusive in how much he enjoyed playing in Seattle.
Considering how Naylor performed after arriving in the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy to see why both sides moved quickly on a long-term deal. Naylor was already enjoying a strong season with the Diamondbacks, but with Arizona falling out of contention, the D’Backs dealt the slugger a week before the trade deadline, landing rookie left-hander Brandyn Garcia and pitching prospect Ashton Izzi.
Naylor proceeded to hit .299/.341/.490 with nine homers and 19 stolen bases (without a single caught stealing) over 210 regular-season plate appearances for the M’s, and he followed that up with a .340/.392/.574 slash line over 51 postseason PA. Adding this type of pop into the lineup was perhaps the primary reason the Mariners won the AL West, and then outlasted the Tigers in the ALDS before falling just short of the first World Series berth in franchise history in losing the ALCS to the Blue Jays in seven games.
This kind of success made the Mariners want to more or less bring the band back together for 2026, which was no small feat since Naylor, Jorge Polanco, and Eugenio Suarez (among others) were all set for free agency. Re-signing Naylor is the first major domino to fall, and it now remains to be seen if either Polanco or Suarez can also be retained in the wake of the team’s sizeable commitment in Naylor. The M’s entered the offseason with approximately $34MM to spend, according to Dipoto’s statements after the playoff run was over, with more money potentially available at the deadline if more in-season reinforcements were required.
For now, the Mariners and their fans can at least enjoy the idea of Naylor suiting up at T-Mobile Park for the next five seasons. Naylor turns 29 in June, so his contract will run through his age-33 season. There has been some league-wide hesitancy in recent years about giving major contracts to first base-only players (especially as those players enter their 30s), yet Naylor’s production outside of just his stretch run with the Mariners makes him a solid choice for a five-year investment.
Naylor’s 128 wRC+ in 2025 was a career high, narrowly topping the 127 wRC+ he posted with the Guardians in 2023. Since emerging as a regular with Cleveland in 2022, Naylor has hit .275/.336/.464 with 88 home runs, translating to a 123 wRC+ and 9.9 fWAR over the last four seasons. His barrel and hard-hit ball rates are okay but uninspiring, and his walk rate from 2022-25 was below average, so Naylor doesn’t exactly fit the profile of a classic slugging first baseman.
His biggest offensive weapon is his ability to make contact, as Naylor is among the league’s more difficult players to strike out though he is prone to chasing pitches off the plate. There is also the amusing oddity of Naylor’s 30-for-32 record at stealing bases in 2025, which speaks to his skill as an opportunistic baserunner despite being one of the slowest players in baseball. Defensively, public metrics are mixed on his glovework. The Outs Above Average metric has him solidly above average with +12 OAA, while his -6 Defensive Runs Saved paints a less-flattering picture of his work at first base.
Naylor joins Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez as Seattle players locked up through at least the 2029 season, and Rodriguez’s deal could actually extend through 2039 depending on a complicated set of options following the 2029 campaign. These three All-Star position players, veteran righty Luis Castillo, and a core of homegrown starters (George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Bryan Woo, Bryce Miller) have become the building blocks of an AL West title team that looks to remain competitive for at least the rest of the decade.
Though many pundits — including three of us at MLBTR — predicted Naylor would re-sign the Mariners, the fact that he has found a new deal so suddenly creates an interesting ripple effect on the rest of the free agent class. Teams in need of lineup help have one less big bat to consider, and the first base market in particular has now lost a name many teams would’ve considered as perhaps a preferred alternative to Pete Alonso, Munetaka Murakami, or Kazuma Okamoto. Murakami or Okamoto could be deployed at third base and Cody Bellinger could be viewed as a first baseman or outfielder in equal measure, depending on a suitor’s needs.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the Mariners and Naylor were closing in on a five-year deal. Ari Alexander of 7 News Boston had the guarantee landing in the $90-100MM range. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic was first on the $92.5MM figure and the absence of deferred money. Robert Murray of FanSided first noted the $6.5MM bonus and the full no-trade clause. Andrew Destin of The Associated Press had the specific salary breakdown.
Inset photo courtesy of Stephen Brashear — Imagn Images
Yankees Re-Sign Ryan Yarbrough
The Yankees officially re-signed Ryan Yarbrough to a one-year deal. The Excel Sports Management client is reportedly guaranteed $2.5MM with another $250K available in bonuses. He’d unlock $50K apiece for every ten innings pitched between 75 and 115.
Assuming the deal makes it over the finish line, it’ll be a starkly different offseason experience than Yarbrough had last year, when he lingered on the market until February before catching on with the Blue Jays on a minor league deal. He opted out of that deal just before Opening Day, which led him to a major league contract with the Yankees for the 2025 campaign. It was a decent enough year for the lefty in the Bronx, as he pitched to a 4.36 ERA across 64 innings of work split between eight starts and 11 relief appearances.
That’s roughly league average (94 ERA+) production on the surface, and more advanced metrics are something of a mixed bag but generally support that sentiment. His 5.06 FIP is well below par, but much of that has to do with an inflated home run rate. Yarbrough allowed 13 homers in just 64 innings of work despite an entirely manageable 6.9% barrel rate that was largely in line with his career norms. Yarbrough’s work in New York actually tied a career high (20.8%) for strikeout rate and saw him limit walks to a decent 7.2% clip. His 4.14 SIERA clocks in right around league average, as does his 4.30 xFIP.
While the specifics of the contract aren’t yet clear, re-upping for another year certainly seems to make sense for both sides. Signing this early in the offseason offers Yarbrough a level of certainty he wasn’t afforded last year while allowing the Yankees to build some depth into their rotation mix that will surely prove valuable headed into 2026. While the Yankees have a deep group of starting options with Gerrit Cole expected back from Tommy John surgery early next year plus Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Luis Gil, Will Warren and Cam Schlittler, it’s not hard to see why the team could use some additional depth.
Cole and Rodon both won’t be ready for Opening Day, while Clarke Schmidt is unlikely to be a factor until late in the year after his own Tommy John surgery. Gil appears to be healthy but has a lengthy injury history that could make relying on him for 30 starts a tall order as well. With so much uncertainty among that group, the addition of Yarbrough offers a steady veteran to offer roughly average production when filling those gaps. Yarbrough is more than comfortable bouncing between the rotation and bullpen after doing so throughout virtually his entire career, and having him available as a long relief arm could be valuable for a bullpen that figures to be searching for innings help after losing Devin Williams and Luke Weaver.
Whatever the cost of Yarbrough’s contract ends up being, it should serve as no impediment to the Yankees as they look to fill out the rest of their roster. The club has its work cut out for it this winter, as they’ll need to replace Cody Bellinger, Trent Grisham, Paul Goldschmidt, and Amed Rosario (along with Williams and Weaver) as they head into free agency on top of whatever other upgrades the club is interested in making to its roster. Given Schmidt’s injury, perhaps even the addition of another starter could be on the table if the team wants to have young pitching to dangle in trade talks or have the luxury of being patient with Cole as he gets his elbow ready for game action next year.
Robert Murray of FanSided first reported Yarbrough and the Yankees were closing in on a major league deal. Joel Sherman of The New York Post had the $2.5MM guarantee and $250K in bonuses. The Associated Press reported the bonus details.
Image courtesy of Jesse Johnson, Imagn Images.