Gerrit Cole Going For Imaging On Elbow
March 8: According to MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch, the results of Cole’s initial diagnostic tests have been distributed, and the right-hander is now in the process of seeking a second opinion. While Cole told reporters (including Hoch) that he is “concerned” about his elbow, the 2023 AL Cy Young winner also expressed a bit of optimism. “I’ve still got some hope,” he said. Per Hoch, Cole and the Yankees expect to know more about the status of his elbow in the next few days.
March 7: Gerrit Cole is heading for “diagnostic tests” on his throwing elbow, reports Jon Morosi of the MLB Network. It’s not currently clear whether the Yankees fear a significant injury, or if the testing is more precautionary in nature. In either case, it’s certainly not encouraging news after Cole missed the first couple months of 2024 with elbow inflammation.
It was almost exactly one year ago today that Yankees skipper Aaron Boone revealed that Cole was headed for an MRI. The 2023 Cy Young winner was having difficulty recovering between throwing sessions. Testing didn’t reveal any structural damage, but an inflammation diagnosis necessitated a month-long shutdown. Cole began the season on the 60-day injured list; he didn’t make his season debut until June 19.
Cole stayed healthy for the remainder of the season, aside from one skipped start due to what the team termed general body soreness. He turned in a 3.41 earned run average across 17 starts. While he struggled over his first few outings, Cole was dominant from the beginning of August through the end of the regular season. He turned in a 2.25 ERA with a 26% strikeout rate while holding opponents to a .182/.255/.248 slash line over his final 10 appearances.
The 34-year-old righty took the ball another five times in the postseason. He worked to a 2.17 ERA across 29 playoff innings, but his strikeout rate in October plummeted to a meager 17.7% clip. After the season, he and the Yankees were faced with a decision on his contract. Cole decided to opt out of the remaining four years and $144MM on his nine-year deal. He hoped the Yanks would override that by preemptively triggering a $36MM club option for 2029. The team declined to do so but allowed him to rescind the opt-out and remain with the team on his original contract.
Cole has taken the ball twice during Spring Training. He looked sharp in his first appearance, working 3 1/3 innings of one-run ball with five strikeouts on February 28. The Twins torched him for six runs on five hits (including a pair of homers) over 2 2/3 frames yesterday. That alone isn’t cause for concern — Spring Training results are largely immaterial — but Cole evidently hasn’t felt completely healthy. His fastball has averaged 95.5 MPH during his spring work, according to Brooks Baseball. That’s around where it sat last March, a bit below the 97 MPH velocity he’d shown in previous Spring Trainings.
The Yankees won’t have much to report until they receive the imaging results. Even if there’s no structural damage, it seems likely Cole will begin the season on the injured list. The Yanks already lost 2024 Rookie of the Year Luis Gil to a severe lat strain. GM Brian Cashman said on Thursday that the Yankees anticipate an absence of at least three months for the young right-hander (relayed by Greg Joyce of The New York Post). Depth starter JT Brubaker broke three ribs trying to dodge a comebacker early in camp.
New York signed Max Fried to an eight-year, $218MM free agent deal. He’ll probably get the ball on Opening Day. Clarke Schmidt and Carlos Rodón will follow in the rotation. Marcus Stroman, who entered camp sixth on the depth chart, now projects as the fourth starter. A season-opening IL stint could draw Will Warren or out-of-options righty Yoendrys Gómez into the rotation. New York has Carlos Carrasco and Allan Winans in camp as non-roster invitees.
If Cole winds up missing a decent chunk of time, the Yanks could look to a late free agent acquisition. Veteran innings eater Kyle Gibson remains unsigned; he’s throwing side sessions to stay loose in advance of his age-37 season. Swingman Spencer Turnbull has a spotty injury history but pitched well in 54 1/3 innings for the Phillies last year. Patrick Corbin and former Yankee Lance Lynn are also still free agents.
In a smaller injury development, the Yanks announced this morning that reliever Tyler Matzek sustained a mild right oblique strain (link via Bryan Hoch of MLB.com). The veteran southpaw could resume throwing early next week, but the injury takes him out of consideration for the Opening Day roster. Matzek is in camp as a non-roster invitee. He has tossed one scoreless inning.
Soto: Mets Didn’t Offer The Most Money
The Juan Soto free agency was one of the most anticipated in baseball history. It was expected to deliver historic results and did just that. He signed a massive 15-year, $765MM deal with the Mets. That’s the longest contract ever and the largest guarantee. The $51MM average annual value is also a record if one considers the deferrals in Shohei Ohtani‘s deal with the Dodgers. Ohtani technically got $700MM over ten years for a $70MM AAV but the heavy deferrals bring the net present value down to the $45MM range annually.
Despite all those records, Soto claims he could have got more. Abriendo Sports released a teaser for a Spanish-language interview they did with Soto. The full conversation won’t be released until Sunday but reporter Mike Rodriguez provided an English translation of the teaser. Soto says that the field was narrowed to the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, Blue Jays and Red Sox and that the Mets didn’t offer the most money, with multiple teams offering more.
No other details were provided but it’s potentially an interesting bit of information. The five finalists are not surprising, as they were the clubs most often connected to Soto throughout the winter and towards the end of his free agency. Soto’s claim that the offer from the Mets wasn’t actually the highest doesn’t align with previous reporting. At the time of the agreement with the Mets, it was reported by Jon Heyman of The New York Post that the Yankees topped out at $760MM over 16 years. Sean McAdam of MassLive reported that the Red Sox maxxed out at $700MM over 15. Shi Davidi and Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet reported that the Blue Jays stopped short of $700MM. Patrick Mooney, Will Sammon, Brendan Kuty and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported the Dodgers stopped at $600MM.
All those numbers are under what Soto got from the Mets, so it’s tough to figure which teams could have had a larger offer than $765MM. Andy Martino of SNY reports today that Boston was one of multiple clubs willing to go higher than the top offer if they thought Soto would accept, but he went to the Mets because of the “family-friendly vibe” established by Alex Cohen, wife of Mets owner Steve Cohen. Perhaps the Red Sox had topped out at $700MM in terms of an official offer but had made some sort of verbal indication to Soto and agent Scott Boras that they were willing to keep pushing.
Speculatively speaking, it’s also possible that there was some creative accounting going on. The Dodgers are famous/infamous for their heavy use of deferred money in the contracts they sign with players. Ohtani’s contract is the most extreme example. As mentioned, it came with an advertised sticker price of $700MM but actually had a net present value that the league calculated at just over $460MM while the MLBPA calculated it around $438MM. While the Dodgers reportedly stopped their offer at $600MM, perhaps that was a post-deferral number, while the offer might have had a shinier pre-deferral number.
Or perhaps there was some mystery team willing to throw out wild numbers that Soto never took especially seriously. 11 clubs reportedly reached out to him at the start of free agency. Soto was connected to clubs like the Giants, Phillies, Rays, Royals and even his original Nationals club at various points through the offseason. None of them seemed to get especially close. The Rays reportedly offered Soto some kind of high-AAV deal on a short-term, so it’s also possible that’s what Soto is referring to. Maybe the Rays offered a higher AAV than the Mets but with far fewer years.
Ultimately, it’s all a moot point. Soto has signed with the Mets and that can’t be changed now. Still, it does make for fun hypothetical speculation. Teams generally went nuts for Soto because of his incredible track record at such a young age. Many top prospects don’t debut until their mid-20s but Soto already had 936 big league games under his belt by the end of his age-25 season. And he had hit .285/.421/.532 for a 158 wRC+ in those. To get that player with so many prime years remaining was a very rare alignment that led to an unprecedented bidding war and perhaps we don’t know how high it actually could have gone.
George Kirby Shut Down Due To Shoulder Inflammation, Will Open Season On Injured List
Star Mariners right-hander George Kirby has been shut down from throwing due to shoulder inflammation and will very likely open the 2025 season on the 15-day injured list, general manager Justin Hollander announced to the team’s beat today (video link via Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times). There’s no structural damage at play, and Hollander made clear that Kirby felt he could continue pitching, but the team is understandably taking a cautious approach with such an important member of the pitching staff. Said Hollander:
“George Kirby has not been feeling great after his outings. In the outings, he’s throwing the ball well — same velocity as you would expect. He just hasn’t felt like he’s bouncing back great. We did an MRI — MRI looks great. No structural concerns whatsoever, and I will repeat that: zero structural concerns. There is some inflammation in there that we need to get out, so much to George’s chagrin, we are going to take the ball out of his hands. … This is more like a week-to-week thing than a day-to-day thing. We just want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the big picture of the whole season as opposed to worrying about Opening Day.”
Hollander didn’t paint the issue as one that would require a long-term absence, but it’s nevertheless a cause for concern and a blow to the team’s short-term outlook. Kirby, the 20th overall pick in the 2019 draft, made his big league debut in 2022 and immediately cemented himself as one of the sport’s most promising young pitchers. The now-27-year-old righty has pitched 511 2/3 innings in the major and turned in a 3.43 ERA with a solid 23.3% strikeout rate and a minuscule 3.1% walk rate. He has arguably the best command of any pitcher in MLB and has parlayed that into an All-Star appearance and a top-10 Cy Young finish in his young career.
Kirby has never been on the major league injured list, though Divish notes that he missed a month during the 2021 minor league season due to mild inflammation in his shoulder and also had a bout of inflammation while pitching at the Mariners’ alternate site during the shortened 2020 season. Neither instance proved to be a long-term issue, and the M’s are surely hopeful that’ll be the case this time around as well.
There’s no immediate timetable for Kirby’s return. In his absence, Seattle will still have an outstanding top-four consisting of Logan Gilbert, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo. Righty Emerson Hancock is the most experienced depth option on the 40-man roster, although the former No. 6 overall pick (2020) hasn’t yet lived up to that draft billing. He’s pitched in the majors in each of the past two seasons and delivered 72 1/3 innings with a 4.71 ERA. Hancock’s 7% walk rate is strong, but his 14.3% strikeout rate ranks seventh-lowest among the 449 pitchers with at least 70 combined innings over the past two seasons.
Other depth options in camp include righty Blas Castano, who’s also on the 40-man roster (but has not yet made his MLB debut) and non-roster invitees Logan Evans, Jhonathan Diaz, Luis F. Castillo and Casey Lawrence. Evans is generally ranked within the top 10 of an absolutely stacked Mariners farm system after posting a 3.20 ERA in 107 Double-A innings last year. He’s not far from being MLB-ready. Diaz and Lawrence are journeymen who’ve both had brief stints with the M’s in the past. Castillo made a brief MLB debut with the 2022 Tigers and has since spent two seasons in Japan, pitching to solid results.
For all the accolades heaped on their top-five starters, the Mariners are relatively light on depth options behind that prized quintet. It’s difficult to convince veterans who settle for minor league deals to sign on with a team that pretty clearly lacks a path to the majors, as exemplified by the Mariners and Phillies in recent seasons. The M’s generally need to rely on in-house development for depth. Hancock and Evans are products of that process, but the Mariners have also seen prospects like Taylor Dollard and Sam Carlson derailed by injury and traded others like Adam Macko, Connor Phillips, Brandon Williamson and Levi Stoudt in recent years.
It seems unlikely the Mariners would immediately go outside the organization for any sort of notable addition. Beyond the fact that Kirby doesn’t appear ticketed for a long-term absence, the M’s have scant payroll space, as their bare-bones offseason made abundantly clear. Beyond that, any new arms brought into the fold might not be built up in time to factor into the Opening Day rotation.
One route the team could take would be opportunistically grabbing a rotation arm off waivers if the opportunity presents itself, or scooping up a veteran who’s been in camp with another club but is informed he won’t make that team’s Opening Day roster. There aren’t any immediate options available in that regard, but as teams begin to set their rosters in the weeks ahead, both avenues can become more viable paths for Seattle to bolster its depth.
Guerrero: Asking Price In Extension Talks Was Below $600MM
Extension talks between the Blue Jays and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. didn’t result in a deal before the start of Spring Training. That has been the slugger’s self-imposed deadline. While he left the door ajar to hearing out other offers from Toronto, Guerrero said last month that he expects to test free agency.
The four-time All-Star provided some details on negotiations in a Spanish-language interview with Enrique Rojas and Juan Arturo Recio of ESPN. ESPN has also published a summary of Guerrero’s comments in English. Most notably, he says that his camp’s final offer to the Jays checked in below $600MM, though he did not provide the specific asking price. He pushed back against the suggestion that he was seeking a deal comparable to the $765MM which Juan Soto secured from the Mets.
While Guerrero seemingly wasn’t pursuing an average annual value close to Soto’s $51MM mark, he did seek one of the largest contracts ever. Guerrero indicated he was looking for 14 or 15 years. Soto’s 15-year contract is the longest of all time. Fernando Tatis Jr. inked a 14-year extension, but that began in his age-22 season. Guerrero turns 26 in a few weeks. Even if the extension proposal would have bought out his final arbitration year, a deal of 14-plus years would run through at least age 39.
The Jays were involved in the Soto bidding. They were seemingly among the teams willing to go above $600MM on the superstar outfielder. Ben Nicholson-Smith and Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reported shortly after Soto agreed to his deal with the Mets that Toronto’s last offer landed below $700MM. One could argue they should be willing to make a similar investment for Guerrero, but his track record has been less consistent — which is reflected in the comparably lower asking price.
Guerrero is a career .288/.363/.500 hitter. He’s coming off his second-best season, as he raked at a .323/.396/.544 clip with 30 homers a year ago. Soto has a lifetime .285/.421/.532 batting line; he hit .288/.419/.569 with 41 longballs during his walk year with the Yankees. Guerrero said in December that the Jays had made an offer in the $340MM range prior to the Soto contract. That would have valued him similarly to Rafael Devers, who inked a $313.5MM extension with the Red Sox in 2023. Devers was a career .283/.342/.512 hitter who was entering his age-26 season at the time. While he played a more valuable position, he’s a below-average defender at the hot corner.
It remains to be seen whether the Soto contract will dramatically improve the market for future top free agents. Teams could view him as an outlier, the kind of free agent who might only come along once every few decades. From a net present value perspective, Soto obliterated prior precedent. Shohei Ohtani’s deal was valued around $461MM and $438MM by MLB and the Players Association, respectively. That reflected the massive deferral structure. Either net present value still represented the largest contract in league history at the time. Soto broke that record by more than $300MM.
Guerrero and Kyle Tucker headline next winter’s free agent class. Tucker is coming off a monster .289/.408/.585 showing and plays a solid right field. He’s arguably the better player in the short term, but Guerrero is two years younger. That could give him the greatest earning power in the class, though it’ll obviously be heavily dependent on their respective platform seasons. Guerrero will make $28.5MM in his final year of arbitration.
Dodgers, Dave Roberts Making Progress In Extension Talks
The Dodgers and longtime manager Dave Roberts are making progress on a new contract, reports Joel Sherman of The New York Post. Sherman writes that a deal is expected to be finalized before the team heads to Tokyo next week in preparation for their opening series against the Cubs.
According to Sherman, Roberts is likely to establish a new record for average annual value. That indicates he’ll beat the $8MM salary which Craig Counsell received on his five-year deal with the Cubs last winter. It’s unclear how long Roberts’ next deal will be. He’s currently slated to enter the final season of the three-year extension he signed in March 2022.
A deal has seemed to be a formality for months. The front office has unsurprisingly expressed interest in continuity on the heels of their second World Series within the last five years. Roberts said in early February that negotiations had just gotten underway. He indicated he was hopeful of getting a deal done but added that he wanted “to feel (his) value” on the contract terms. A record-setting deal should do just that.
Roberts has been at the helm in Los Angeles since November 2015. He’s the National League’s longest-tenured active manager. Kevin Cash, who is entering his 11th season in Tampa Bay, narrowly tops him in that regard overall. The Dodgers have made the playoffs in each of Roberts’ nine seasons. Only a 107-win season by the 2021 Giants kept L.A. from winning the NL West every year. Los Angeles had also won the NL West under Don Mattingly in each of the three years preceding Roberts’ hiring.
The 52-year-old Roberts has been fortunate to work with incredible rosters. Still, talent alone doesn’t guarantee success. No other team has made the playoffs in each of the last nine years. Dodger brass was comfortable enough with Roberts’ leadership skills to stick by him despite some criticism about his in-game tactics in the postseason early in his tenure. The veteran skipper adroitly handled a rotation that had been decimated by injury during last year’s World Series run.
Roberts has led the Dodgers to an 851-507 record in the regular season. No other skipper who has managed as many games has bested that 62.7% win percentage. Roberts has helmed the Dodgers to four pennants and a pair of championships. He won the NL Manager of the Year award in 2016.
Athletics Announce Marc Badain As New President
The Athletics announced that Marc Badain will be the club’s new president, per Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Badain is most notable for having previously been president of the NFL’s Raiders, who moved to Las Vegas in his time in that job. He will replace Dave Kaval, who announced his resignation from the position in December. Sandy Dean was named interim president when Kaval stepped down but will now serve as vice chairman.
“We are excited to welcome Marc to the Athletics,” A’s owner John Fisher said in a statement. “His vast experience, particularly his work on the opening of Allegiant Stadium and overseeing the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas, makes him a great addition to our team at this pivotal moment. His leadership, commitment to the community, and ability to oversee transformative projects will be key as we look to build a strong and successful future in Southern Nevada.”
Badain served as president of the Raiders from 2013 to 2021. At the start of that time frame, the Raiders played their home games in Oakland Coliseum, sharing the facility with the Athletics. Looking for a new stadium, the Raiders started to explore the possibility of moving to Las Vegas in 2015. Those plans gradually became reality and the move was approved in 2017, though the Raiders stayed in Oakland through the end of the 2019 NFL season, moving into their new stadium in Vegas in 2020.
Badain then resigned in 2021. Per a report from Daniel Kaplan and Tashan Reed of The Athletic in October of 2021, Raiders owner Mark Davis said that “accounting irregularities” prompted the resignation. He said the team “overpaid our taxes…we paid more than we owe,” a matter that “may have started in Oakland.” Badain has since been working with the Oak View Group, trying to build a hotel and casino complex with a venue capable of hosting an NBA team.
Controversial finish aside, there are some clear parallels between his Raiders tenure and the current state of the Athletics. The A’s are in a similar position to where the Raiders were a few years ago. The baseball club is planning to play out of a new stadium in Vegas starting with the 2028 season. They failed to work out a deal to stay in Oakland beyond the end of their 2024 lease of the Coliseum, so they are going to play out of Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento for the 2025-27 seasons. That is normally the home of the Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the Giants. The A’s and River Cats plan to share the park for the next three years.
The detour to West Sacramento is a notable difference, but the journey of the two franchises is otherwise quite similar. Since Badain has already steered one franchise from the Oakland Coliseum to a new facility in Las Vegas, the A’s seem to be banking on his experience to guide them through the process in the coming years.
“I’m honored to join the Athletics and help guide the team into a new era of success,” Badain said in the news release. “Las Vegas is a city that celebrates innovation and excellence, and I’m excited to work alongside the team, the fans, and the community to create something extraordinary.”
Brewers Sign Jose Quintana
March 5: The Brewers made it official today, announcing that they have signed Quintana to a one-year deal with a mutual option for 2026. DL Hall was placed on the 60-day IL to open a roster spot. Per Jon Heyman of The New York Post, it’s a $2MM salary in 2025 with a deferred $2MM buyout on a $15MM mutual option for 2026 and a $250K roster bonus. The incentives are $125K each for 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24 games started, as well as $100K for 110, 120, 130 and 140 innings pitched.
March 3: The Brewers are making a veteran addition to their rotation. Milwaukee is reportedly in agreement with Jose Quintana on a one-year, $4.25MM deal. That takes the form of a $250K roster bonus and a $4MM base salary for the ACES client. The signing, which has not been made official by the team, also includes incentives. The Brewers have a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding move once the deal is finalized.
Quintana, 36, is one of the top unsigned free agents as the regular season is just over three weeks away at this point. He just finished a two-year, $26MM deal with the Mets that saw him post solid surface-level results, though with the numbers under the hood a bit less impressive.
In 2023, a left rib fracture put him on the injured list at the start of the season and kept him there until the middle of July. He returned in time to make 13 starts down the stretch, allowing 3.57 earned runs per nine innings, though his strikeout rate fell to 18.8%. Last year, he stayed healthy enough to take the ball 31 times for the Mets and logged 170 1/3 innings with a 3.75 ERA. But his strikeout was again a tepid 18.8% and he benefited from .263 batting average on balls in play. His 4.56 FIP and 4.57 SIERA on the year both pointed to him deserving worse results than he actually posted.
Prior to signing with the Mets, Quintana had engineered a strong bounceback season. After struggling with injuries and underperformance in 2020 and 2021, the lefty posted a 2.93 ERA over 32 starts in 2022. In that bounceback year, he had a 20.2% strikeout rate, 6.9% walk rate and 46.4% ground ball rate. Since then, he has a 3.70 ERA over 246 innings but with his 18.8% strikeout rate, 8.4% walk rate and 45.6% ground ball rate each moving slightly in the wrong direction.
Quintana’s isn’t the most exciting profile, but even getting some boring back-of-the-rotation innings could be good for the Brewers, especially for the price. At the start of the winter, MLBTR predicted the lefty to secure a two-year, $20MM contract, alongside other mid-rotation or back-end guys like Frankie Montas, Andrew Heaney or Matthew Boyd.
The pitching market was very aggressive early on, with Montas able to get a two-year, $34MM guarantee plus an opt-out from the Mets. Boyd got two years and $29MM from the Cubs. But the heat died down more recently, which seems to have squeezed out certain guys. Heaney had to settle for a $5.25MM guarantee from the Pirates on a one-year deal. Quintana reportedly turned down a better offer than that Heaney deal from the Bucs but is now joining Milwaukee on a fairly similar arrangement.
The Brewers have clearly been operating with no financial wiggle room this winter. Prior to signing Quintana, their biggest free agent signing was giving a $1MM guarantee to Tyler Alexander. They did add Nestor Cortes in a trade with the Yankees, but that deal was fairly revenue-neutral, with Devin Williams going the other way.
Their rotation mix has a few question marks in it. Robert Gasser required Tommy John surgery in June of last year and will be out of action until the second half of 2025. Brandon Woodruff is working his way back from shoulder surgery which wiped out his 2024 campaign and it’s unclear when he will be a viable option. DL Hall suffered a lat strain a few weeks ago and will start the season on the injured list.
As of now, Freddy Peralta and Cortes have spots alongside Aaron Civale and Tobias Myers. Civale tossed 161 innings last year but that was a personal best for him, having never hit 125 frames in a big league season before. Myers posted an ERA of 3.00 in his first big league action but was a nomadic former prospect prior to that, so it remains to be seen if he can maintain his results or if his 2024 was a fluke.
Other options in the mix include Alexander and Aaron Ashby. Alexander has a 4.55 ERA in his career but mostly in a swing role, oscillating between starting and relieving. This Quintana deal should push him more firmly into that position again. Ashby, who left today’s Spring Training appearance with an oblique injury, has some starting experience but struggled through much of 2024 before finishing strong in a relief role. He is still a starting candidate but he could eventually end up back in the bullpen and also has an option year remaining, which could push him to the Triple-A rotation.
Even if Quintana’s results in 2024 were a bit of a mirage and he ends up with an ERA in the mid-4.00s this year, a steady veteran presence at this price is a logical add for a club with so many rotation question marks and little spending capacity.
For clubs still looking to add starting pitching at this late stage of the offseason, there are still a few unsigned options, including Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn and Spencer Turnbull. The trade market could feature Jordan Montgomery and Taijuan Walker, though their salaries are much larger than what free agents have been settling for in recent weeks.
Robert Murray of FanSided first reported that the Brewers were signing Quintana to a one-year deal. Francys Romero reported that the salary would land in the $4-5MM range and the presence of incentives. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com had the specific $4.25MM guarantee and salary structure.
Orioles, Nationals Announce Resolution Of MASN Dispute
The Orioles and Nationals announced Monday morning that their yearslong dispute regarding television rights fees from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) has reached a final resolution.
Per this morning’s press release, MASN and the Nationals have come to terms on a one-year agreement for the team’s 2025 television broadcasts. The Nats are free to explore alternative broadcast opportunities for the 2026 season and beyond. Further, this morning’s announcement plainly lays out that “all disputes related to past media rights between the Nationals, Orioles, and MASN have been resolved, and all litigation will be dismissed.”
The dispute between the two franchises spans nearly two decades, dating back to the network’s establishment in 2005. While MASN is technically co-owned by the Orioles and Nationals, the Baltimore franchise has had the controlling stake in the network since the network was established in 2005.
As part of the then-Expos’ relocation to Washington D.C., the franchise agreed to tie its television rights to the newly created MASN, with the Orioles controlling the majority stake of the network. That split was gradually set to become more balanced over the years, with the O’s currently holding about a three-to-one stake in the network. The arrangement was brokered as compensation for the Expos/Nationals franchise moving into the Orioles’ geographic territory. The two parties have never seen eye to eye on how rights fees should be divided, leading to multiple rounds of litigation over the past decade-plus. Under the relocation agreement, the Nationals have been barred from selling their broadcast rights to another regional network. That’s no longer the case.
That ugly legal battle and the fiscal uncertainty inherently tied to negotiations loomed large over the sale process for both the Nationals and the Orioles. The Angelos family eventually came to terms on a $1.725 billion sale of the Orioles to a group led by Baltimore native and billionaire David Rubenstein anyhow. The Lerner family, who own the Nationals, explored a sale of the team for more than a year but never came to terms with a potential buyer. Uncertainty regarding the team’s broadcast future was reportedly an impediment in the Lerner family’s sale efforts — understandably so.
The MASN saga has been a constant subplot for both franchises for the better part of two decades. There have been legal battles throughout. The first seven years saw the Nats’ television rights locked in at a fixed rate that they’ve since called heavily favorable to the Orioles. Subsequent rights fees were to be brokered between the two parties in five-year periods. None has proceeded smoothly.
The 2012-16 period was still wrapped up in litigation as recently as 2023. An arbitration panel ruled in favor of the Nationals as they sought unpaid rights fees for those seasons, but various waves of negotiations and an eventual elevation of the case to the New York Court of Appeals continually delayed the process. The two teams also went to court over rights distributions for the 2017-21 seasons. As of this January, the Nats had filed a motion with the Supreme Court of New York asking that the court confirm a ruling from MLB’s Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee that the Orioles owed an additional $320MM in fees for the 2022-26 seasons. In essence, the two teams have been in a standstill over the exact amount of television rights to be paid out for more than a decade.
Today’s announcement serves as a watershed moment for both organizations, as messy and near-interminable legal proceedings will no longer be required to continue in perpetuity. Both will have more direct control over their payroll and more understanding of their long-term financial security. Arguments as to whether the MASN arrangement was “fair” to either party or as to which side ultimately came away in the more favorable position will persist among onlookers — particularly as further details surrounding this resolution come to light — but the end result will be greater autonomy over broadcast revenues for both parties moving forward.
Luis Gil To Be Shut Down For At Least Six Weeks Due To Lat Strain
Yankees manager Aaron Boone informed reporters, including Greg Joyce of The New York Post, that right-hander Luis Gil has a high-grade lat strain. Gil will be shut down from throwing for at least six weeks. Even if he is declared healthy at that point, he would effectively have to restart his spring ramp-up period, so he’s likely out until late May or early June even in a best-case scenario.
It was reported last week that Gil had experienced some shoulder tightness during a bullpen session and would be going for an MRI. It seems that a significant strain was detected which will impact the start of his 2025 season. Bryan Hoch of MLB.com relayed over a minute of Boone’s comments, during which the skipper said there are still some further examinations to be done which could reveal more info but that the six-week no-throw is confirmed.
It’s obviously a frustrating development for both Gil and the Yankees. The young pitcher just won the American League Rookie of the Year award in 2024. He tossed 151 2/3 innings over 29 starts, allowing 3.50 earned runs per nine. His 12.1% walk rate was on the high side but his 26.8% strikeout rate was quite strong.
That excellent season came on the heels of a lengthy injury absence. Gil had a brief major league debut in 2021 before Tommy John surgery wiped out most of his 2022 and 2023 seasons. He returned and posted his aforementioned excellent results last year but now his health is now going to be at the forefront again.
The Yankees will now have to adjust their rotation plans, though the good news is that the solution should be pretty simple. The Yanks made a massive $218MM investment in Max Fried this offseason, which seemed to give them a rotation surplus. The club had an on-paper group of Fried, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Clarke Schmidt and Gil. That seemingly left Marcus Stroman on the outside looking in and the club reportedly tried to find ways to trade Stroman and the remainder of his contract.
No deal came together, so Stroman reported to camp and has been getting stretched out as a starter. With Gil now set to be on the shelf for a significant time, Stroman should be able to step into a rotation spot without issue.
Perhaps the rotation will again be crowded a few months from now if Gil is able to get healthy, though it’s also possible that other injuries will change the situation between now and then. Though the Yanks are still slated to go into the season with a strong front five, the depth has been thinned out a bit this spring. In addition to losing Gil, prospect Chase Hampton required Tommy John surgery. JT Brubaker, who projected to be a long reliever in the bullpen, suffered three fractured ribs trying to evade a comebacker and has an uncertain timeline.
Behind the rotation of Cole, Fried, Rodón, Schmidt and Stroman, perhaps the out-of-options Yoendrys Gómez can make the Opening Day Roster in the long relief role. Will Warren and Brent Headrick are on the roster and have options, perhaps meaning they will be in the Triple-A rotation. Carlos Carrasco is in camp as some veteran non-roster depth.
Espada: Astros Plan For Altuve To Spend “Majority” Of Time In Left Field
The concept of Jose Altuve moving from second base to left field first emerged when the Astros reengaged with Alex Bregman late in the offseason. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported at the time that there were talks of re-signing Bregman, sliding Isaac Paredes from third base to second base and shifting Altuve to the outfield. Many initially took that with a heavy dose of skepticism; Altuve, after all, has played all of six major league innings at a position other than second base — and they were all at shortstop.
As Houston brass continued to paint a Bregman reunion as a long shot, however, they kept getting Altuve work in left field. Both manager Joe Espada and GM Dana Brown spoke about wanting to get some looks at Altuve in left and wanting to reduce Yordan Alvarez‘s time on the outfield grass. Even when Bregman signed in Boston, the Altuve/left field experiment continued to progress.
The position change seems less like an experiment and more like a reality by the day, and Espada’s latest comments only further that shift. Speaking to the Astros beat this morning, Espada left open the door for Altuve to get some playing time at second base but also suggested it will no longer be his primary position (via Matt Kawahara of the Houston Chronicle).
“Right now, the plan is for [Altuve] to play the majority of his games in left field,” Espada stated. “The days that he plays second base opens the door for [Alvarez] maybe getting a start in left field, someone getting a DH day. So this move allows us to be creative and do stuff like that.”
Espada added that frequently shuttling Altuve back-and-forth between the two positions “is something that I am going to avoid.” The second-year manager stopped short of outright proclaiming Altuve the Astros’ new everyday left fielder, but it certainly seems things are trending in that direction.
Altuve is a former Gold Glove winner at second base, but his defense has declined considerably as he’s entered his mid-30s. Defensive Runs Saved has pegged him at -13 or worse in each of the past three seasons. Statcast’s Outs Above Average isn’t as down on Altuve’s glovework during that three-year period but does agree he’s been a negative since 2023, including a particularly rough -8 mark in 2024.
That’s problematic in and of itself, but it’s particularly egregious when Houston has one of the best second base defenders in the sport (statistically speaking) on its roster already. Mauricio Dubon hasn’t even logged a full season’s worth of second base innings in his career, but in 1154 frames at the position he’s been credited with 12 DRS and 8 OAA. The Astros also inked longtime Rockies second baseman Brendan Rodgers, another plus defender at second base, to a minor league deal and invited him to camp.
At the very least, when ground-ball pitchers like Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown are starting games — Valdez is the top ground-ball starter in the sport over the past three seasons — it makes sense to have a superior defender in there. Either Dubon or Rodgers would fit the bill. Espada’s comments make it sound like Altuve is being pushed to left field more frequently than that, however.
Houston’s decidedly lackluster outfield mix is surely a factor as well. Owner Jim Crane seemed determined to dip under the luxury tax threshold after paying the tax in 2024, and as a result the outfield looks thinner than at any point in recent memory. The Astros traded their final season of control over Kyle Tucker to the Cubs in a deal netting new third baseman Isaac Paredes, rotation candidate Hayden Wesneski and new top prospect Cam Smith. With Tucker gone and Alvarez ticketed for more DH time in ’25, Altuve joins a mix of Jake Meyers, Chas McCormick and free agent signee Ben Gamel in the outfield. There are still a handful of interesting free agents out there — David Peralta or Alex Verdugo could fit the ‘Stros — but Crane’s preference is to remain south of the $241MM tax threshold; the Astros are currently at $236.8MM, per RosterResource.
If Altuve’s outfield move yields early dividends, it’s easy enough to see it becoming a permanent arrangement. The nine-time All-Star is entering the first season of a five-year, $125MM extension signed 13 months ago. He’s owed $30MM each year from 2025-27 before his salary greatly reduces to $10MM per season in 2028-29. That extension also came with a $15MM upfront signing bonus that has already been paid out.