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The Opener: Kershaw, AL West, Alonso

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Here are three things to keep an eye on around baseball this weekend…

1. Kershaw’s Dodger Stadium farewell:

Future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw is officially calling it a career after the 2025 season, and Friday evening marks what will be the final home start of his storied career. In somewhat fitting fashion, it’ll come against the Dodgers’ archrivals from San Francisco — and not only that, but against another former Cy Young winner. The Giants will send left-hander Robbie Ray to the mound opposite Kershaw as the two teams clash in a series that carries major playoff implications. Kershaw and the Dodgers hold a three-game lead on the Padres for the NL West lead, while Ray and the Giants are clinging to the faint hope of closing a three-game deficit (and leapfrogging two other teams)  in the NL Wild Card chase with nine games left to play.

Of course, Kershaw could and very likely will take the ball at home for the Dodgers at some point during the postseason, but tonight’s game currently stands as the final scheduled appearance for the three-time Cy Young winner, five-time NL ERA leader, 11-time All-Star and 2014 NL MVP. Fans will surely greet him with a hero’s welcome and send him off with overwhelming adulation befitting of a genuine franchise icon.

2. Aces clash in a battle for the AL West:

The American League West is the most tightly contested division in baseball. Yesterday’s Mariners win bumped them to 84-69 on the season — the same mark held by the Astros. The M’s now travel to Houston for a three-game series that could very well determine the winner of the division, and it kicks off with a must-see matchup between each club’s best starter of the 2025 season. Seattle sends righty Bryan Woo (3.02 ERA, 26.8 K%, 4.9 BB%, 181 2/3 innings pitched) to the mound against Houston righty Hunter Brown (2.27 ERA, 28.2 K%, 7.8 BB%, 174 1/3 innings pitched). Brown was practically invincible at home in the season’s first three months, but he’s yielded four or more runs in three of his past seven starts at Daikin Park. Woo has been much better at home (2.44 ERA) than on the road (3.58 ERA) — but he also hasn’t surrendered more than three runs in a start since before the trade deadline.

The series will continue with another pair of high-profile starters Saturday, when Mariners righty George Kirby tangles with Astros lefty Framber Valdez. Sunday’s finale will pit Mariners righty Logan Gilbert against journeyman right-hander Jason Alexander, whose stunning 2.76 ERA in 11 starts for the Astros has been a season-saving godsend in the wake of injuries to Ronel Blanco, Spencer Arrighetti and Hayden Wesneski.

3. A red-hot … Polar Bear?

There’s something mildly amusing about one of the hottest hitters in baseball being nicknamed after an arctic animal, but the Mets’ recent opponents probably haven’t been laughing much. Pete Alonso is doing his best to singlehandedly stave off the Mets’ late-season collapse, homering in four consecutive games — three of which were Mets victories. It’s not just the past four games where the Polar Bear has been on a tear, however. Over his past 98 trips to the plate, Alonso is slashing a ridiculous .333/.367/.656 with eight home runs and five doubles. It’s a Herculean finish to a resurgent season for a player who’s been the National League’s most prodigious slugger dating back to his 2019 debut.

Alonso’s mammoth finish only further ensures that he’ll opt out of his two-year contract at season’s end. He’ll return to the open market on the heels of a much better season than his 2024 campaign — and do so without the encumbrance of a qualifying offer, as players can only receive one QO in their career. Alonso and the Mets currently hold a two-game lead over the Reds and D-backs (three games over the Giants) in the NL Wild Card race. They’ll host a home series against the last-place Nationals before heading to Chicago and Miami to close out the year with three game sets versus the Cubs and Marlins.

Clayton Kershaw To Retire After 2025 Season

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Left-hander Clayton Kershaw is going to retire as a player after the current campaign, per an announcement from the Dodgers. His final regular season start at Dodger Stadium will be on Friday.

“On behalf of the Dodgers, I congratulate Clayton on a fabulous career and thank him for the many moments he gave to Dodger fans and baseball fans everywhere, as well as for all of his profound charitable endeavors,” said Mark Walter, owner and chairman of the Dodgers, in a club press release. “His is a truly legendary career, one that we know will lead to his induction in the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

In the next few weeks, Kershaw will be wrapping up a surefire Hall-of-Fame career. He will have spent the entirety of that span with one club, an increasingly rare phenomenon in today’s game. The Dodgers selected him with the seventh overall pick back in 2006 and he’s never been a part of any other franchise.

Kershaw was up in the majors by 2008 and he had a solid enough debut season. He tossed 107 2/3 innings for the Dodgers that year, allowing 4.26 earned runs per nine. He took a big step forward the following year, with a 2.79 ERA in 171 frames. There was another step forward in terms of workload in 2010, as he got up to 204 1/3 innings, with a 2.91 ERA.

From there, he kicked off the strongest stretch of his career and one of the best of any pitcher in the modern era. From 2011 to 2015, he tossed at least 227 innings in four of those five campaigns. The lone exception was 2014, where a shoulder strain limited him to 198 1/3 innings. For that five-year span, he tossed 1,128 innings with a 2.11 ERA, 28.6% strikeout rate, 5.6% walk rate and 47.4% ground ball rate. FanGraphs credited with 37.1 wins above replacement for that span, more than seven wins per season. That was easily the most in the majors for that stretch. Félix Hernández was second with 26.2 fWAR.

From there, injuries limited Kershaw’s production in terms of quantity, but the quality was still there. He never again hit 180 innings in a season, with back problems being a recurring theme, but still kept his ERA in the 2.00 to 3.00 range most of the time. Though it was a step down from his peak, he tossed 140-180 frames in each season from 2016 to 2019, never finishing with an ERA higher than 3.03. He made ten starts with a 2.16 ERA in the shortened 2020 season.

Kershaw’s run as one of the best pitchers alive, often the very best, coincided with a golden age for the franchise. It’s hard to believe now, as the Dodgers have been so consistently good lately, but they were spinning their wheels for a while in the earlier parts of this millenium. They didn’t make the playoff in the 1997 to 2003 seasons, mostly hovering around .500. Things improved a bit from there but still weren’t amazing. They made the playoffs in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009, but then missed in three straight years from 2010 to 2012.

But they made the playoffs in 2013 and have continued to do so in every season since then. Assuming they eventually clinch a spot here in 2025, it will be 13 seasons in a row. There was a lot of playoff heartbreak in there but the Dodgers did win it all in 2020 and again in 2024.

More recently, Kershaw’s injury absences have become more pronounced as he has pushed into his late-30s. He was limited to 120-130 innings in the 2021 to 2023 campaigns, though still with good results on a rate basis. He only made seven starts last year, initially held back by offseason shoulder surgery before later having his season finished by dual surgeries on his toe and knee to repair a ruptured plantar plate and a torn meniscus.

He’s been able to get back to health here in 2025 and go out on a decent note. His strikeout rate is way down to 17% but he has managed to post a 3.53 ERA in 102 innings. As mentioned, he’ll be making another start tomorrow and could perhaps take the ball once more as the Dodgers finish the season with a six-game road trip.

Kershaw became a free agent a few times and occasionally seemed to flirt with the idea of signing with his hometown Rangers, but he always ended up back with the Dodgers. His first significant payday was back in 2014, when he and the Dodgers agreed to a seven-year, $215MM extension. That’s still the largest guarantee given to a pitcher on an extension. Only six free agent deals for pitchers (Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Max Fried, David Price) have surpassed that guarantee.

That deal allowed Kershaw to opt out after 2018, which he did, but he and the Dodgers agreed to a new pact. A three-year, $91MM deal covering the 2019 to 2021 seasons kept him in Los Angeles and was the first time a pitcher hit the $30MM mark in terms of average annual value. His subsequent deals were more modest one- or two-year pacts as he seemed to go year-to-year with deciding whether or not he wanted to keep going.

Kershaw’s career numbers aren’t final yet because he still has at least one more game to go. As of today, he has 2,844 2/3 innings under this belt with a 2.54 ERA, 27.1% strikeout rate, 6.3% walk rate and 46.7% ground ball rate. He has tallied 222 wins and 96 losses, 25 complete games, 15 shutouts and 3,039 total punchouts. FanGraphs credits him with 78.7 WAR with Baseball Reference at 80.4. He also tossed 194 1/3 postseasons innings, though with a 4.49 ERA.

He made 11 All-Star teams and won three Cy Young awards. He was the National League Most Valuable Player in 2014, a rare feat for a pitcher. He also tossed a no-hitter that year. He won the World Series in 2020 and 2024, though he was on the injured list during the second of those titles. MLBTR salutes Kershaw on an excellent career and wishes him the best for his post-playing days.

Photos courtesy of Wendell Cruz, Neville E. Guard, Imagn Images

A’s Notes: Estes, Lopez, Harris, Newcomb

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A’s right-hander Joey Estes has undergone surgery to address a herniated disc in his lower back, according to the MLB.com injury tracker. That obviously ends his season a month after he landed on the 15-day injured list. Estes had just been recalled from Triple-A Las Vegas a few days before suffering the injury. He tossed four scoreless innings out of the bullpen against the Mariners on August 24.

That’ll go down as Estes’ only MLB appearance since April. The 23-year-old opened the season in Mark Kotsay’s rotation. Estes was tagged for six runs in each of his first two starts and immediately lost his active roster spot. The A’s optioned him and he spent the majority of the season in Vegas. Estes took the ball 17 times in the Pacific Coast League. He surrendered 5.51 earned runs per nine across 80 innings in that difficult setting.

A 16th-round pick by the Braves in 2019, Estes signed for an overslot $500K out of high school. Atlanta traded him to the A’s as arguably the fourth piece of the Matt Olson return shortly after the ’22 lockout. Shea Langeliers is the only player from that group who has panned out. Cristian Pache and Ryan Cusick have been cut loose.

Estes has occupied a 40-man roster spot since being called up at the tail end of 2023. He took the ball 25 times and logged 127 2/3 innings last year, but he posted an ERA above 5.00 with a modest 17% strikeout rate. Estes still has one minor league option year remaining. He’s not a lock to hold his 40-man spot throughout the winter. If he does, the A’s could send him back to Las Vegas as rotation depth.

Jacob Lopez has a much better chance of securing an Opening Day rotation spot. The 27-year-old southpaw has had a solid first season in Sacramento. The A’s acquired Lopez as part of the offseason deal that sent hard-throwing righty Joe Boyle to Tampa Bay. Lopez has fanned 28.3% of batters faced through 92 2/3 innings. While his 4.08 earned run average doesn’t jump off the page, he carried a 3.28 mark into his most recent start on August 24. Lopez was blasted for nine runs in two innings that day and landed on the injured list with a flexor strain thereafter. It’s fair to conclude he wasn’t pitching at anything close to full strength.

Unlike Estes, Lopez may be able to get back on the mound before the end of the season. The injury tracker notes that the rookie lefty threw a bullpen session yesterday while traveling with the team to Boston. The A’s are keeping open the possibility that Lopez makes an appearance during their final series against the Royals next weekend. That’d probably be a relief outing or very abbreviated start but would allow Lopez to enter the offseason with some positive momentum rather than finishing the year with a season-ending forearm injury.

The A’s are playing out their fourth consecutive losing season (barring a 9-0 finish to get to .500). Yet for the second straight year, they’ve had an encouraging second half. The A’s have had a winning record in each of the past three months. They’re 31-24 with a +66 run differential since the All-Star Break. Most of the credit goes to a talented offensive core. That’s not the entire explanation, as the A’s have quietly gotten excellent work out of a patchwork bullpen despite trading Mason Miller.

Since the deadline, the A’s have an MLB-best 2.81 earned run average from their relief group. They’re middle of the pack in strikeouts, walk rate, and whiffs. They’ve certainly benefited from an MLB-low .247 average on balls in play, but it’s still impressive production from an inexperienced group. Only Sean Newcomb, a journeyman brought in from Boston in a late May DFA trade, has even two years of service time among A’s relievers.

As MLB.com’s Theo DeRosa wrote this week, the A’s have found that success without many set roles. They haven’t had a designated closer since the Miller trade. Hogan Harris has picked up his first four career saves to lead the team over that stretch. He’s one of five relievers — Newcomb, Michael Kelly, Tyler Ferguson and Osvaldo Bido being the others — to record at least one save. (Bido’s was of the three-inning variety in a blowout victory.)

Harris, a pure reliever this season for the first time in his career, has become Kotsay’s most trusted leverage arm. He carries a 3.30 ERA with a solid 23.3% strikeout rate across 60 innings. Harris’ command comes and goes, but he looks like a solid bullpen piece whom the A’s have under club control for another five seasons.

Meanwhile, Newcomb has turned back the clock with his best season since at least 2019. The former first-round pick owns a 1.75 ERA while striking out a quarter of opponents over 51 1/3 innings since the A’s reacquired him. His 7% walk rate is the best of his career, and he has been lights out (0.96 ERA in 28 frames) in the second half. Newcomb will be a free agent and has certainly pitched his way to a major league deal after settling for a non-roster contract with the Red Sox last winter.

Blue Jays Outright Ryan Borucki

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The Blue Jays announced that lefty reliever Ryan Borucki has been outrighted to Triple-A Buffalo. He went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment on Monday.

Borucki had sufficient service time to decline a minor league assignment. He probably would’ve remained unsigned for the rest of the season had he chosen free agency. Manager John Schneider said Monday that Borucki was hoping to stick with the organization (relayed by Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet). That’ll come to fruition after he accepted the outright assignment.

Toronto signed Borucki to a minor league contract late last month after he was released by the Pirates. The Jays selected his contract a little over a week later. Borucki managed 4 1/3 scoreless frames across four appearances, though he walked four of the 19 hitters he faced. The southpaw tossed 30 2/3 innings for the Bucs earlier in the season, working to a 5.28 earned run average. He had middling strikeout and walk numbers but got ground-balls at a 55% clip.

The Jays are familiar with Borucki, whom they drafted out of high school more than a decade ago. That came under a previous front office, but he spent his first four and a half MLB seasons with Toronto under the current regime. Brendon Little and Eric Lauer are the two southpaws in John Schneider’s bullpen. Mason Fluharty, Justin Bruihl and Easton Lucas are on the 40-man roster and on optional assignment. Borucki no longer carries a 40-man spot but that’s largely because he could not be optioned. The Jays might still view him as their third-best lefty reliever and could bring him back if Little or Lauer suffer an injury.

Dodgers Re-Sign Matt Sauer To Minor League Deal

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The Dodgers re-signed Matt Sauer to a minor league contract, per the MLB.com transaction log. He has been assigned to Triple-A Oklahoma City.

Sauer was on the Dodgers’ 40-man roster last week. Los Angeles designated him for assignment and released him on September 10. It’s not entirely clear why they opted for a release rather than an outright. Speculatively speaking, it’s possible that Sauer was nursing some kind of minor injury that made him ineligible to be placed on outright waivers. It’s immaterial now, as he’s back in the system without holding a spot on the 40-man roster.

The 26-year-old Sauer signed an offseason minor league contract and cracked L.A.’s roster for the season-opening Tokyo Series. Sauer has made 10 appearances in a long relief role. He owns a 6.37 ERA with an 18.6% strikeout rate through 29 2/3 innings. A former second-round pick of the Yankees, Sauer has worked out of the rotation in Triple-A. He has allowed just under six earned runs per nine despite serviceable strikeout and walk numbers over 18 appearances.

Unless this is a two-year contract, Sauer will return to minor league free agency at the beginning of the offseason if the Dodgers don’t add him back to the 40-man roster. He could provide relief depth for the final week of the regular season.

The Dodgers hold a 2.5 game lead on the Padres in the NL West. They’re very unlikely to catch the Brewers or Phillies for a top two seed in the National League. That means they’ll need to play in the Wild Card series even if they lock up the division.

It’s possible they secure the #3 spot with a few games remaining on the regular season schedule. There’s only one off day before the Wild Card series begin. That means the Dodgers would probably use lower-leverage arms for their final regular season series in Seattle to have their pitching staff as fresh as possible going into the postseason. That could open an opportunity for a multi-inning arm like Sauer to log some work in the final game or two.

Angels Place Jose Soriano On Injured List With Forearm Contusion

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The season is over for Angels starter José Soriano. The Halos placed the righty on the 15-day injured list with a right forearm contusion. Lefty Sam Aldegheri was recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake in a corresponding move.

Soriano was struck in the arm by a comebacker from Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers last night. The ball came off the bat at 107.4 MPH. Soriano immediately exited the game. X-rays did not reveal any fractures, but the injury was significant enough that he won’t be able to make his final two starts. That won’t mean much to an Angels team that is officially resigned to a 10th consecutive losing season.

The only potential impact on the standings is that it takes Soriano out of consideration to start against the Astros in the final weekend. The hard-throwing sinkerballer would have lined up to start Tuesday’s series opener against the Royals. That would have put him on schedule for the finale against the Astros next Sunday. That game may be relevant with Houston currently tied with the Mariners for the top spot in the American League West.

Soriano’s season concludes with a 4.26 earned run average in 31 starts. He’s second on the team behind Yusei Kikuchi with 169 innings. Soriano and Kikuchi have been the Halos’ two best starting pitchers overall, though they’ve each had rough second halves after stronger starts. Soriano is the sport’s top ground-ball specialist, at least among starting pitchers. His 97 MPH sinker has led to a massive 65.3% grounder rate. That’s almost six percentage points above the second-highest mark in MLB (minimum 100 innings).

The 26-year-old fell 11 days shy of qualifying for arbitration as a Super Two player last offseason. He’ll earn his first significant pay raise next winter and is under club control for three more seasons. Soriano should be assured of a rotation spot going into next year. That’d also be true of Kikuchi barring an unlikely trade that allows the Angels to shed the remaining two years and $42MM on his contract. The Angels will probably need to make three acquisitions over the winter.

Kyle Hendricks and Tyler Anderson are impending free agents. Jack Kochanowicz was one of the least effective starters in the majors. The Halos have given a handful of starts to each of Victor Mederos, Caden Dana and Mitch Farris. They’ll be in the mix for back-end or relief jobs but shouldn’t be in the projected starting five. That’s also true of the 24-year-old Aldegheri, who’ll probably make his first two MLB starts of the season next week. Aldegheri has been shelled in a pair of big league relief appearances but turned in a 3.72 ERA over 23 Double-A starts this year.

Diamondbacks Release Anthony DeSclafani

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The D-Backs released veteran righty Anthony DeSclafani, according to the MLB.com transaction tracker. He’d been designated for assignment on Monday. DeSclafani had more than enough service time to refuse a minor league assignment, so a release was inevitable.

DeSclafani was pitching in Triple-A with the Yankees when Arizona signed him to a big league contract in the middle of June. He initially worked out of long relief and was promoted to the rotation when the Snakes traded Merrill Kelly at the deadline. That lasted only three starts, as DeSclafani suffered a thumb injury in the middle of August and was sent to the injured list. He missed a month and was pushed back to the bullpen since returning. Nabil Crismatt has stepped into the fifth starter job.

The 35-year-old DeSclafani pitched twice after coming back from injury. He gave up five home runs (six runs overall) in 5 2/3 frames over those two outings. He carries a 5.12 ERA across 38 2/3 innings on the season overall. While his strikeout and walk numbers are serviceable, the recent home run barrage led the Snakes to make a change.

At this point, there’s no real reason for DeScalfani to look for another landing spot in 2025. He’ll be limited to minor league offers over the winter if he intends to continue pitching.

Twins Make Cuts To Scouting Department

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The Twins have eliminated four of the five jobs on their pro scouting staff, reports Dan Hayes of The Athletic. Ken Compton, John Manuel, Keith Stohr and Jose Marzan will not have their contracts renewed at the end of the current season. That will leave Wesley Wright as the club’s lone remaining pro scout.

As Hayes mentions in the article, cutting down on pro scouts is a league-wide trend. He uses the Cubs as an example, linking to a November 2024 article from Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney of The Athletic detailing that club’s move to more analytics and less reliance on traditional scouting. Hayes writes that the Twins, like the Cubs, have been relying more on video in recent years with far less travel for in-person scouting.

However, even in that example, the Cubs dropped their pro scouting department to seven employees. That’s more than the five the Twins had this year, before dropping down to just one individual going forward.

The decision to rely more on analytics and less on scouting is one that is often debated in baseball circles, going back at least to the Moneyball days and surely even beyond that. However, Hayes says the Twins scaling back the department is about cutting costs, which is potentially ominous for the club’s future.

Money has been hovering around the Twins in many ways recently. The club’s regional sports network deal with Diamond Sports Group, now known as Main Street Sports, was not renewed after 2024. That left Major League Baseball in charge of the club’s broadcasting in 2025. Those league-run arrangements are believed to give clubs less revenue than a healthy RSN agreement.

Regardless, the club came into 2025 hoping to contend and they did so for a while. The Twins were in the playoff race for the early months of the current season but fell out of the race as the trade deadline approached. Many expected that the club would trade impending free agents with the goal of contending again in 2026 but the sell-off ended up being more notable than anticipated. In addition to the impending free agents, they also sold controllable players like Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax.

From a financial point of view, the most notable trade was the one sending Carlos Correa to the Astros. Though the Twins ate some money in the swap, they moved the majority of his contract off the long-term books. He was owed approximately $103.4MM through 2028 at the time of that trade, with the Twins staying on the hook for $33MM of that. There were more marginal financial notes as well. For instance, the Twins included Randy Dobnak in the deal sending Chris Paddack to the Tigers, which was seemingly to save them the roughly $2MM still owed to Dobnak.

A couple of weeks after the deadline was another notable development. The Pohlad family, which had been pursuing a sale of the franchise, decided to take the club off the market. They were looking for about $1.7 billion, though reportedly were carrying over $425MM in debt. They didn’t seem to find anyone willing to meet their asking price and instead sold minority stakes to a pair of new parties. The infusion of cash from selling those stakes to the new partners will reportedly help pay down the debt somewhat, though it’s unclear to what degree. Hayes notes that the new owners haven’t yet been officially approved by Major League Baseball.

Going into the winter, it’s not confirmed which direction the club will go for the 2026 season. They did target a lot of MLB-ready talent at the deadline, including players like James Outman, Alan Roden, Mick Abel and Taj Bradley. That arguably points to the club hoping to remain relevant next year but the continued penny pinching doesn’t bode well.

If further cost-cutting is a priority, that presumably increases the chances of players like Pablo López or Joe Ryan being made available this winter. López is making $21.5MM annually through 2027. Trading him could be big savings for the Twins but would still have plenty of appeal for other clubs. Ryan is even more of a bargain as he’s still in his arbitration years. He is making just $3MM this year and will be owed a raise in the two coming campaigns before he’s slated to reach free agency after 2027.

Players like Ryan Jeffers, Bailey Ober, Trevor Larnach and Royce Lewis are also in their arb years and could be candidates for cost-cutting moves if that’s the road the Twins go down. Byron Buxton is the club’s other significant salary commitment, next to López, though he has a no-trade clause and has said he would like to remain a Twin for life.

Photo courtesy of Brad Rempel, Imagn Images

Braves Claim Brett Wisely

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The Braves announced Thursday that they’ve claimed infielder Brett Wisely off waivers from the Giants and optioned him to Triple-A Gwinnett. Lefty Aaron Bummer was transferred from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL in order to create space on the 40-man roster. San Francisco designated Wisely for assignment earlier in the week.

Wisely, 26, was a 15th-round pick by the Rays back in 2019. He landed with the Giants in a 2022 swap that sent outfield prospect Tristan Peters back to Tampa Bay. Neither player has made a huge impact with the team to which he was traded, but Wisely has spent far more time in the majors than the 25-year-old Peters, who made his MLB debut last month and went hitless in four games before being optioned back to Triple-A.

Wisely has logged major league time in each of the past three seasons, appearing in 164 games for the Giants. He’s tallied 457 plate appearances and posted a tepid .217/.263/.324 slash with seven homers, 22 doubles, a triple, five steals, a 25.2% strikeout rate and a 5.7% walk rate.

It’s clearly not an impressive batting line — wRC+ measures him 36% worse than a league-average offensive performer — but Wisely has provided the Giants with both versatile and skilled defensive play. He’s spent the bulk of his time at second base (682 innings) but also has ample experience at shortstop (269 innings) with cameos at third base and in center field. He’s graded out positively at every position he’s played in the eyes of both Defensive Runs Saved and Statcast’s Outs Above Average. And while Wisely isn’t a prolific thief on the basepaths, he does possess slightly above-average speed, sitting in the 55th percentile of big leaguers, per Statcast (and the 62nd percentile last year).

This is the last of three minor league option years for Wisely. He’s controllable all the way through 2030 but will have to stick on an Opening Day roster next season or else be designated for assignment and exposed to waivers prior to being sent to the minors. He’s far from a lock to last all the way into next year’s spring training on the 40-man roster with Atlanta, but if he does stick around that long, he’ll vie for a bench spot in what’s currently a wide-open competition.

The Braves claimed Ha-Seong Kim off waivers at the end of August, taking on the veteran shortstop’s $16MM player option in doing so. If Kim picks up that option, he’ll be the everyday shortstop in 2026. If not, Atlanta will enter the offseason with Nick Allen — a defensive standout but one of MLB’s lightest hitters — atop the depth chart at short. Atlanta would almost certainly be in the market for an upgrade, potentially pushing Allen into a bench role. Other candidates for reserve spots with the Braves would include Nacho Alvarez Jr. and former top prospect Vidal Brujan. Both Allen and Brujan are out of minor league options as well.

Suffice it to say, there’ll likely be a fair bit of turnover among that group, but for the time being, Wisely provides some depth at multiple positions and a versatile defender with slightly more bat than either Allen or Brujan can offer. In parts of four Triple-A seasons, Wisely is a .274/.371/.433 hitter.

MLB Orders Winter Scouting Moratorium For Draft-Eligible Players

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Major League Baseball has ordered a new policy, the Amateur Recovery Period Policy, which adds some new rules applying to the scouting of amateur players over the winter. Reports from Jeff Passan of ESPN and J.J. Cooper of Baseball America provide the details.

There are plenty of complicated nuances involved, but the gist of the new policy is that no team employee is to scout amateur players, either with their own eyes or video/data-tracking equipment, for a period of the winter. This is to encourage players to rest, rather than staying in top game shape for showcases. This applies only to domestic, draft-eligible players. It doesn’t apply to international players or undrafted free agents.

The moratorium covers a period from October 15th to January 15th for high school players. There is a slightly narrower window for college players, going from November 15th to January 15th. During those windows, MLB team personnel are not allowed to see any draft-eligible player in a baseball setting. That includes games, showcases, training sessions “and any other activities related to throwing, hitting, catching or fielding.” They are also not allowed to procure video or data-tracking info on players. If any player submits unsolicited video to a team, the club must notify MLB within 24 hours. Cooper notes that the NCAA also has a quiet period for off-campus recruiting of baseball players from October 13th to February 28th, which also gives players less incentive to stay in game shape during the winter.

All baseball fans are surely aware that arm injuries have become increasingly common in the modern era. Major elbow and shoulder surgeries that require absences of more than a year — particularly for pitchers — are a regular occurrence nowadays. The amateur ranks have not been spared this trend, as the frequency of injuries has also impacted high school and college players.

Both articles cited above mention a December 2024 study from MLB which looked into this problem. Cooper cites an American Sports Institute study which found that pitchers were five times more likely to require surgery if they did not have an offseason rest period. Under these new rules, players can still work out if they choose to, but the hope is that the lack of scouting opportunities will encourage them to take a break and create a “dead period” of scouting.

There are some exceptions. Employees are allowed to watch players in a non-baseball setting, which includes playing other sports such as basketball. Cooper notes that there are four fall ball games scheduled on November 15th, which are grandfathered in. Additionally, scheduled regular-season games played before January 15th are eligible to be scouted. Team personnel can also watch their own children play baseball but only in a non-professional setting, meaning no data can be collected for a team’s database. Scouts can also visit players at their homes as long as no baseball activity is involved.

As mentioned, this policy does not apply internationally. Only players from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico are eligible for the MLB draft. Players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico and other countries are part of the international signing bonus system. The policy also does not cover agents, who are regulated by the MLB Players Association and not the league.

Any employee who violates the rules could face individual punishment, such as fines or suspensions. Their team could potentially face penalties in terms of sanctions in the draft or in the amateur signing system.

MLB’s memo, sent to all 30 teams, states that the hope is to “reduce the incentive for amateur players to perform at maximum effort year-round by designating a period in the calendar, during which time clubs are prohibited from evaluating amateur players, to ensure appropriate rest, recovery and development for players.” Cooper notes that all 30 amateur scouting directors were consulted, along with coaches and medical experts. The policy also has the support of the MLB Owners Competition Committee.

Photo courtesy of Greg Derr, Imagn Images

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