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Rays, Shane McClanahan Avoid Arbitration

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The Rays announced that they’ve signed left-hander Shane McClanahan, who’d been arbitration-eligible, to a contract for the 2026 season. The new deal avoids an arbitration hearing for the two parties. He’ll be paid $3.6MM, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.

McClanahan, 28, hasn’t pitched in either of the past two seasons due to injury but was one of the game’s brightest young arms prior to undergoing Tommy John surgery in Aug. 2023. The former first-rounder carries a career 3.02 ERA, 28% strikeout rate and 7.1% walk rate in 404 2/3 innings. His 2022 campaign, in particular, was dominant. McClanahan was on a Cy Young trajectory, with a 2.20 ERA and a strikeout rate north of 30% through 24 starts before missing four starts due to a shoulder impingement. He returned to allow 11 runs in his final 19 frames, bumping his ERA up to 2.54. That injury layoff and rocky finish caused him to “fall” to sixth in the voting. (Justin Verlander won that year’s AL Cy Young Award.)

McClanahan had hoped to return from that 2023 UCL procedure this past season, but a nerve injury in his pitching arm halted his minor league rehab assignment over the summer. There was originally hope that he could still make it back to the mound late in the season, but in August it was announced that he’d require season-ending surgery.

Players who miss an entire season due to injury typically just repeat the prior season’s salary in arbitration. The Rays bought out the first of McClanahan’s four arbitration seasons (he’s a Super Two player) on a two-year, $7.2MM deal that paid him $3.6MM annually. Accordingly, MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected a $3.6MM salary for the upcoming 2026 season.

The obvious hope will be that following a two-year layoff, Tampa Bay will have its top starter back in the rotation for Opening Day 2026. The Rays still haven’t given a firm timetable for the southpaw’s recovery, though they also haven’t indicated that Opening Day is in jeopardy, either. McClanahan will surely be on some kind of limited workload in 2026 even if he’s able to make it back to the mound. The Rays control the left-hander through the 2027 season.

MLB Mailbag: Tucker, Rays, Mariners, Tigers, Dustin May

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This week's mailbag gets into whether Kyle Tucker will sign a shorter-term deal, options for the Rays at catcher, the trade value of controllable Mariners starters, the Tigers' offseason thus far, Dustin May's potential impact with the Cardinals, and much more.

Dave asks:

At this point do you think Kyle Tucker will take a high AAV deal — example: 5 years $250 million with opt outs after years 2 and 4?

I'm writing this on December 17th, and I don't think we're at that point with Tucker.  It's true that long-term free agent deals usually happen in December.  The last free agent deal of 8+ years that didn't happen in December was Bryce Harper in March 2019, with his 13-year deal coming a few weeks after Manny Machado's ten-year pact.

Eric Hosmer got an eight-year deal in February 2018, and Prince Fielder signed for nine years in January 2012.

That's about it, though, so if we get to the new year without a Tucker deal, the odds start shifting toward a shorter term.

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Orioles Designate Maverick Handley For Assignment

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December 17th: The Orioles announced today that Handley has cleared waivers and been assigned to Triple-A Norfolk. Romo was claimed by the Mets earlier today.

December 11th: The Orioles announced that catcher Maverick Handley has been designated for assignment. That’s the corresponding move for their signing of first baseman Pete Alonso, which has now been made official.

Handley, 28 in March, got to make his major league debut in 2025. The O’s began the season with Adley Rutschman and Gary Sánchez as their catching duo but both of those two suffered a few injuries during the campaign. Baltimore had to dip into some depth, which led to Handley getting 47 plate appearances across 16 games, but he struck out in 38.3% of those while walking just 4.3% of the time and put up a .073/.133/.073 line.

The O’s called up catching prospect Samuel Basallo late in the season and signed him to an extension. Rutschman can still be retained via arbitration through 2027. Those two should be the primary backstops in Baltimore for the time being. As of a few days ago, Handley and Drew Romo were on the 40-man as optionable depth. However, Romo was designated for assignment yesterday, so the O’s now have just two catchers on the roster and two potential depth guys in DFA limbo.

Handley does not have a previous career outright, nor does he have three years of big league service time. That means he would not have the right to elect free agency if he were passed through waivers unclaimed. The same is true of Romo. If one or both clear waivers, the O’s might be content with their catching depth situation. If they lose one or both, that should increase the chances of Baltimore looking for extra depth via the waiver wire or minor league deals.

For now, they have a week of DFA limbo to figure out what’s next for Handley. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so they could take five days to talk trades with other clubs. His big league track record thus far is obviously unimpressive but in a tiny sample size. Dating back to the start of 2023, he stepped to the plate 765 times in the minors with solid 14% walk rate but only nine home runs. His .227/.352/.323 line led to a wRC+ of 87, which is not bad for a backup/depth catcher. If he lands with another club, he still has options and less than a year of service time.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Kucin Jr., Imagn Images

Giants Still In The Market For Pitching

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The Giants made a couple of additions to the pitching staff this week. They signed reliever Jason Foley and reportedly have an agreement in place with starter Adrian Houser. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Giants are still in the market for pitching additions, both in the rotation and the bullpen.

That’s not especially surprising. Foley is recovering from shoulder surgery and is expected to start the season on the injured list. The bullpen was a strength for San Francisco in 2025 but they traded Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers at the deadline. Randy Rodríguez required Tommy John surgery in September. Joey Lucchesi was non-tendered last month. The Giants have subsequently signed Sam Hentges and Foley but that’s not going to make up for what they’ve lost.

In the rotation, Justin Verlander became a free agent at season’s end. The Houser signing will make up for that loss to some degree but the Giants will understandably want to do more. The club’s rotation had a collective 4.10 ERA this year, putting them 17th among big league teams. As of now, Logan Webb and Robbie Ray are the front two. Houser and Landen Roupp should have two more spots spoken for.

That leaves one spot for a group consisting of Kai-Wei Teng, Carson Whisenhunt, Blade Tidwell, Trevor McDonald, Carson Seymour, Hayden Birdsong and Keaton Winn. That’s a lot of arms and they all have their varying levels of appeal but no one in that group is fully established as a viable big leaguer. Each of them has less than 108 big league innings and they can all still be optioned to the minors.

The club might want to leave a path open for one guy in that group to separate himself from the pack but that should happen anyway. No team gets through a full season these days without a few notable injuries on the pitching staff. Even if the Giants start the season with those guys all blocked from a rotation gig, there will be opportunities throughout the campaign.

The question will be how aggressive they plan on being in upgrading the rotation. Chairman/owner Greg Johnson and general manager Zack Minasian have both suggested the Giants would prefer to avoid long-term deals for pitchers.

The top end of the free agent pitching market is one area that has moved fairly slowly. Dylan Cease was quickly snapped up by the Blue Jays but Tatsuya Imai, Framber Valdez, Ranger Suárez, Zac Gallen and Michael King are all still available. Despite the club’s apparent preference to avoid lengthy deals, they have nonetheless been connected to Valdez and Gallen, so perhaps there is a scenario where they get involved there. If they go for another signing in line with their Houser deal, guys like Zack Littell, Chris Bassitt and Nick Martinez are out there.

There is also the trade market to consider. If the Giants want to avoid lengthy free agent deals, they could pursue guys like MacKenzie Gore of the Nationals, Kris Bubic of the Royals, Edward Cabrera of the Marlins, Kodai Senga of the Mets, Mitch Keller of the Pirates or many others.

Those guys have varying degrees of trade value. For instance, Bubic shouldn’t be too costly since he is a rental and finished 2025 on the injured list. Gore, on the other hand, pitched like an ace for much of this year and is still cheaply controlled for two seasons. The Giants are reportedly willing to consider trading prospect Bryce Eldridge. That doesn’t mean that they will actually move him but perhaps a notable trade is possible.

RosterResource currently pegs the Giants for a payroll of $180MM and a competitive balance tax figure of $203MM next year. It’s unclear where they want to end up but they are more than $40MM shy of the base threshold of the tax, which will be $244MM next year.

They are also on the lookout for upgrades at second base and the outfield. Whatever spending capacity they do have, they probably won’t dedicate all of it to pitching, but they could also address some of their other targets via the trade market. They are reportedly one of the frontrunners for the Cardinals’ Brendan Donovan, alongside the Mariners.

Photo courtesy of Robert Edwards, Imagn Images

Mets Claim Drew Romo, Designate Brandon Waddell

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The Mets have claimed catcher Drew Romo off waivers from the Orioles and, in a corresponding move, designated left-hander Brandon Waddell for assignment, per a team announcement. Baltimore designated Romo for assignment last week.

The 24-year-old Romo was the No. 35 overall draft pick by the Rockies back in 2020 and previously ranked not only as one of Colorado’s best prospects but one of the top 100 prospects in Major League Baseball. He’s a well-regarded defender with a cannon of an arm, but Romo’s bat stalled out after a solid 2023 season split mostly between High-A and Double-A. His offensive output has declined in consecutive seasons. After a league-average offensive showing at Triple-A in 2024, his bat dwindled in 2025 as his strikeout rate ballooned from 17.8% to 25.8%.

Romo has gotten some brief looks in the majors with the Rox but has just 56 plate appearances under his belt. He’s a .167/.196/.222 hitter with a 37.5% strikeout rate in that minuscule sample. Romo carries a solid-looking .286/.337/.466 slash in parts of three Triple-A seasons, but that’s propped up a bit by his stronger 2024 performance. In 2025, he hit .264/.329/.409 with the Rockies’ top affiliate. Again, that looks solid on the surface, but given the immensely hitter-friendly environments in the Pacific Coast League — Albuquerque, in particular — Romo was actually 25% worse than a league-average hitter, by measure of wRC+.

Romo still has a pair of minor league option years remaining, so he’ll give the Mets some flexible depth behind the plate. He has a long way to go in terms of offensive development, but a good defender with a plus arm is a nice third or fourth catcher to be able to stash in Triple-A alongside Hayden Senger. Francisco Alvarez, of course, is the starter in Queens and is slated to be backed up by journeyman Luis Torrens in 2026.

Waddell, 31, tossed 31 1/3 innings with the Mets in 2025 — his first big league look since 2021. That came on the back of a three-year stint with the Doosan Bears of the Korea Baseball Organization, where he generally pitched well out of the Bears’ rotation. Waddell’s MLB return produced a nice 3.45 ERA, though his poor strikeout rate (16.4%), good-not-great command (8.2% walk rate) and good fortune in terms of both strand rate (82%) and balls in play (.260 BABIP) caused metrics like SIERA (4.64) and FIP (4.54) to take a more bearish outlook.

Waddell is out of minor league options. He sat 90.7 mph with his four-seamer last year and coupled the pitch with a sinker of comparable velocity and a changeup and slider in the low 80s. The former fifth-rounder out of the University of Virginia tossed 244 2/3 innings of 2.98 ERA ball during his time in the KBO and also had a nice 12-start run in Taiwan’s CPBL in 2023. He’s spent parts of five seasons pitching in Triple-A and has an ERA north of 5.00 there, although that was skewed by a 2019 season in which he yielded 59 runs in 61 frames. He’s posted a 4.22 ERA at the Triple-A level since.

Waddell will be traded to another club or placed on outright waivers within the next five days. Waivers are a 48-hour process. His DFA will be resolved within a week’s time.

Poll: Should The Mets Trade Mark Vientos?

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After losing Pete Alonso to the Orioles in free agency and trading Brandon Nimmo to the Rangers, the Mets will need to reconfigure their lineup in a big way this winter. They’ve already added some of the pieces with which they’ll try to do that, bringing in Marcus Semien as the return for Nimmo and following that up by signing Jorge Polanco, but there’s clearly more work to do. It’s with that backdrop that reporting yesterday indicated the Mets could look to trade infielder Mark Vientos this winter, perhaps while eyeing the addition of a big bat to the lineup.

Trading Vientos certainly has some merit. The 26-year-old was a merely league average hitter by the numbers this year, with a 97 wRC+ thanks to his 40 extra-base hits (including 17 homers) propping up a paltry .289 on-base percentage. That sort of production won’t cut it for a poor defensive third baseman who figures to get the majority of his playing time at first base or DH next year, but his youth and power potential could still be enough to catch the eye of some teams in need of right-handed pop in their lineup, with the Mets perhaps getting some pitching back in return.

With that being said, trading Vientos wouldn’t come without risk. Still in his mid-20s, Vientos has already demonstrated the ability to potentially be an All-Star caliber bat. In 2024, he slashed .266/.322/.516 (132 wRC+) with 27 homers in 111 games. It was a strong enough performance to play as a regular at first base or overlook his defensive deficiencies at the hot corner. If the youngster can rediscover that form, he would offer the Mets a major boost. After all, the Mets themselves need additional righty pop in the lineup after losing Alonso. Letting their veteran slugger walk was already tough for fans to stomach and it would surely get even worse if Alonso’s heir apparent was traded away and broke out somewhere else.

How likely is a return to form for Vientos? The underlying metrics are mixed. Vientos didn’t live up to his expected numbers last year, which could be a sign that some positive regression is on the way. He actually lowered his strikeout rate substantially, dropping from 29.7% in 2024 to just 24.8% this year. Those are good signs and his .277 BABIP this season seems likely to improve going forward. With all of that being said, however, there are certainly some red flags. While his BABIP is likely to improve from last year, it’s unlikely to reach the level of his .324 mark from 2024. While his strikeout rate dropped by nearly five points, his once-elite barrel rate dropped by nearly three. In all likelihood, his true talent level lies somewhere between his weak 2025 and his impressive 2024.

The question then becomes about which side of the spectrum Vientos is more likely to fall on. If he figures to offer a bat with a wRC+ of 120 or greater on a consistent basis going forward, that would be hard to part with for a team in need of right-handed power like the Mets. With that said, if Vientos is more likely to be just a touch better than league average this year, it would be fair to wonder if the Mets would be better off focusing on adding a more impactful player like Kazuma Okamoto and Munetaka Murakami to the first base/DH mix.

Perhaps going with a free agent hitter in Vientos’s place and turning Vientos into a trade chip for pitching would be a smart call. Despite his uneven performance, other clubs would surely be interested in him, especially since he’s cheap. He has not yet qualified for arbitration and can be controlled for four full seasons before he’s slated for free agency.

With that said, it’s also worth considering how a more expensive addition like Okamoto or Murakami could impact the Mets’ ability to pursue an impactful outfielder. Cody Bellinger has been tied to the Mets frequently this winter, and while the rumors connecting the club to Kyle Tucker haven’t been nearly as ubiquitous, the possibility of a deal there is worth considering given the club’s need for outfield help and the small numbers of teams that could realistically meet his rumored asking price. If sticking with Vientos gave the Mets a better shot to land a big outfield bat, then perhaps the club would be better off keeping Vientos in the fold and trying to deal other young players and prospects for pitching help.

How do MLBTR readers think the Mets should proceed with Vientos? Should they keep him, risking an underwhelming 2026 season in order to keep their focus on improving the outfield in free agency? Or should they trade him and risk a breakout elsewhere in order to add more certainty to the lineup? Have your say in the poll below:

Mets To Sign Luke Weaver

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The Mets are working to finalize a two-year, $22MM deal with free agent reliever Luke Weaver, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post. The two sides have an agreement in place, per Will Sammon of The Athletic. The deal is pending a physical. Weaver is repped by Excel Sports Management. The Mets have a full 40-man roster and will need a corresponding move to make this deal official.

The two-year, $22MM terms are the exact same ones as the just-agreed-upon deal between the division-rival Phillies and righty Brad Keller. Like Keller, Weaver is a starter-turned-reliever who’s found notable success pitching near the back of a big-market contender’s bullpen.

Weaver, 32, has spent the past two-plus seasons as a key late-inning arm over in the Bronx. A rocky finish to the 2025 season inflated his earned run average to 3.62 but since signing with the Yankees late in the 2023 campaign, Weaver touts a 3.22 ERA, 29.4% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate in 162 innings of relief. He saved a dozen games and picked up 43 holds along the way, blowing only four other opportunities in that time. It’s presumably just coincidence, but the Mets now employ Weaver, Devin Williams and Clay Holmes (who’s moved into the rotation) — the Yankees’ three highest-leverage arms for the bulk of the 2024-25 seasons.

A first-round pick by the Cardinals back in 2014, Weaver debuted in the St. Louis rotation in 2016 and showed some promise as a starter there in 2017-18. The Cards flipped him to the D-backs as part of the return for star first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, and Weaver looked to be on the cusp of a full-fledged breakout in 2019. He started a dozen games and pitched to a 2.94 ERA with plus strikeout and walk rates before a forearm strain ended his season. Subsequent shoulder and elbow injuries doomed the rest of Weaver’s D-backs tenure; from 2020-23, he pitched to a 5.95 ERA while bouncing between five clubs.

The last of those five stops, however, was in the Bronx. He made enough of an impression in three late-season starts to sign a $2.5MM big league deal in the offseason — one that contained a 2025 club option. It proved to be a raucous bargain for the team and a career-saving deal for Weaver, who rebuilt himself into a coveted bullpen arm and now lands the largest payday of his 12-year professional career. Despite that strong run in the Bronx and some reported interest in a reunion, the Yanks were not in the bidding for Weaver, per Sherman.

Back in September, Weaver expressed some openness to returning to a starting role if a team gave him a chance, but that doesn’t seem to be at play here. Anthony DiComo of MLB.com writes that Weaver will slot into the bullpen. It’s unclear if that’s sourced reporting or deduction but there hasn’t been anything to suggest the Mets plan on giving Weaver a rotation gig. The price of Weaver’s deal is right around expectations. At the beginning of the offseason, MLBTR predicted him for an $18MM guarantee over two years, an estimate that he has marginally beaten.

New York had a middling bullpen in 2025. Their collective 3.93 ERA was 15th in the majors. It was even worse later in the year as the season slipped away from the club. Over August and September, the relief corps had a collective 4.18 ERA. At season’s end, Edwin Díaz, Tyler Rogers, Gregory Soto, Ryan Helsley and others hit free agency, further thinning out the group. Those four have already signed with other clubs.

The Mets have signed Williams and now Weaver to fortify the group. They will slot in among incumbent arms like A.J. Minter, Brooks Raley, Huascar Brazobán and others. Presumably, there are still more bullpen moves to come.

RosterResource, assuming an equal distribution of Weaver’s guarantee over two years, now projects the Mets for a $305MM payroll and a $307MM competitive balance tax figure. Since they have paid the tax in at least three straight years, they face compounding taxation rates. The top tier of the tax in 2026 is $304MM, so this deal pushes them over. That means they will pay a 110% tax on any further spending, though that’s nothing new for them.

There are still several items on the to-do list for the Mets this winter. Sammon wrote earlier this week that the club is still looking for a front-of-rotation starter and an offensive upgrade. That could come via free agency but there have also been plenty of trade rumors surrounding Jeff McNeil, Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Mark Vientos, Ronny Mauricio and Luisangel Acuña. For now, Weaver upgrades the bullpen at market price.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Curry, Brad Penner, Imagn Images

Tigers Sign Kenley Jansen

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December 17th: The Tigers officially announced Jansen’s signing today. It’s a $9MM salary with a $2MM buyout on a $12MM club option for 2027.

December 13th: The Tigers have agreed to a one-year contract with veteran closer Kenley Jansen, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports.  The deal pays Jansen $11MM, as per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, and The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen adds that the contract contains a club option on Jansen’s services for the 2027 season.  Earlier today, MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo reported that the two sides were “deep in talks” and heading towards the final stages of a deal.  Jansen is represented by the Wasserman Agency.

Will Vest is coming off a strong season as Detroit’s primary saves candidate, but Vest will now move back into a high-leverage setup role to accommodate one of baseball’s most experienced closers.  Jansen has 476 career saves, and is just three saves away from passing Lee Smith for third place on the all-time list.  It certainly seems possible that Jansen can reach the 500-save plateau this season, though catching Trevor Hoffman (601 saves) for the second-highest total in history doesn’t seem possible unless Jansen reaches his goal of pitching until at least through the 2029 season.

For now, however, the 38-year-old Jansen has a one-year commitment from Detroit, with the 2027 option representing a possible continuation into the right-hander’s age-39 campaign.  The Tigers entered the offseason looking to reinforce their bullpen, and the team has signed Jansen and re-signed Kyle Finnegan just within the last week.  Jansen’s deal probably takes the Tigers out of the running for another target in former Rays closer Pete Fairbanks.

Even after 16 Major League seasons, Jansen still has some gas in the tank, as evidenced by his 2.59 ERA over 59 innings with the Angels in 2025.  However, his secondary metrics left something to be desired, as Jansen’s 24.4% strikeout rate and 44.6% hard-hit ball rate were both easily the worst of his career.  A .195 BABIP and 85.2% strand rate helped Jansen’s bottom-line numbers remain in check, though his 3.94 SIERA was much higher than his actual ERA.

Jansen did post better numbers as the 2025 season went on, and the Tigers themselves were responsible for a big chunk of the damage on the righty’s ERA.  (Of the 17 earned runs charged to Jansen in 2025, Detroit scored six of them in an ugly meltdown for Jansen back on May 2 in a 9-1 Tigers win over the Angels.)  The stronger finish to the season provides some hope that Jansen can more fully get on track next year, and he might also be energized by again pitching for a contender after a year with the struggling Halos.

For a team that has thrived on “bullpen chaos” over the last couple of seasons, the Tigers will now move in a different direction by installing a true closer in place for the ninth inning.  If Jansen can come close to his 2025 production, that’s a nice plus for the team, as Vest’s move to a set-up role will strengthen things all the way down the depth chart.

More bullpen moves may still be coming, as between Finnegan and Jansen’s 2025 numbers, the Tigers still haven’t solved their primary goal of adding more punchout power to their bullpen.  Detroit had the second-lowest bullpen strikeout rate (20.1%) of any team in baseball in 2025, ahead of only the lowly Rockies.

The Best Fits For Munetaka Murakami

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Munetaka Murakami will make his decision within the next five days. Japan's premier slugger is expected to sign with an MLB team after being posted by the Yakult Swallows. The 45-day process began on November 8, meaning Murakami has until December 22 to put pen to paper.

Murakami's camp has played things very close to the vest. While they've undoubtedly spent the past month speaking with teams, there hasn't been any reporting about which clubs are involved. It's inherently more difficult from the outside to project the market for players without any major league track record. A lot depends on individual teams' scouting evaluations.

That's particularly true in Murakami's case. Scouts are unanimous in praising his monster power potential. The lefty hitter drilled 56 home runs in his age-22 season a few years back. That's an outlier but he has another four seasons with between 31 and 39 longballs. That doesn't include this year, in which oblique injuries limited him to 69 games. Murakami connected on 24 homers while hitting .286/.392/.659 across 263 plate appearances -- which would have put him on a 55-60 homer pace over a full season. His exit velocities are off the charts. There's a chance he's in the Kyle Schwarber or Shohei Ohtani tier in terms of left-handed raw power.

As is often the case, the bigger question is whether he'll make enough contact to be an impact bat in MLB. Murakami has fanned a near-26% rate in his NPB career. That was up to 28.6% this year and closer to 30% in his last full season in 2024. Hitters can thrive while striking out that often -- Schwarber has gone down on strikes at a 28.8% rate over the last four years -- but Murakami's strikeout rate seems likely to climb against big league competition.

The average pitcher quality and velocity is higher in MLB than it is at the NPB level. Should Murakami be expected to strike out more than 30% of the time in the majors? Do teams expect him to punch out more than a third of the time? Scouts could have differing evaluations on Murakami's pure hitting ability.

There's little doubt that the bat needs to drive the profile. Listed at 6'2" and 213 pounds, Murakami isn't viewed as an especially rangy third baseman. He's likely to end up at first base before the end of his contract. Some teams might project him to the position on day one. Others could feel he'd be a passable third baseman in the short term, but his defense isn't likely to improve with age.

Murakami turns 26 in February. He's younger than essentially any top-tier domestic free agent, who'd need to play six full seasons in the big leagues before they can hit the market. This is a chance to add a potential prime-age superstar, but there's also massive downside given the swing-and-miss and defensive questions. It's likely that whatever deal he signs will come with one or more opt-out chances that allow Murakami to get back to free agency a few years from now if he has proven he can hit MLB pitching.

MLBTR predicted an eight-year, $180MM deal in ranking him the offseason's #4 free agent. That's admittedly without a huge amount of confidence given the challenges of projecting this profile. Let's take a look at which teams are best positioned to make this move.

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Phillies To Sign Brad Keller

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The Phillies and right-handed reliever Brad Keller are in agreement on a two-year, $22MM contract, reports ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. The deal is pending a physical. Fansided’s Robert Murray first reported that the two parties were nearing an agreement. Keller, who is represented by Excel Sports Management, received some interest as a starter but will be used as a reliever in Philadelphia, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post.

Keller, 30, was a solid starter with the Royals early in his career after being picked up from the D-backs in the 2017 Rule 5 Draft. After a nice run of three seasons, his numbers took a sharp decline, due largely to the complete erosion of his command.

Keller walked a staggering 45 batters in 45 1/3 innings in 2023 and was subsequently diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome. He underwent surgery to alleviate the issue. A comeback effort in 2024 didn’t pan out well, as he pitched to a 5.44 ERA in 41 1/3 frames between the Red Sox and White Sox, but Keller completely remade himself as a high-end bullpen weapon with the Cubs in 2025 after signing a minor league contract.

In 69 2/3 innings this past season, Keller was dominant. His 2.07 ERA tied him for 13th-best among 147 qualified relievers. The 6’5″, 255-pound righty set down 27.2% of his opponents on strikes and notched a sharp 8% walk rate. Keller had sat 92-94 mph as a starter and even in bullpen work with the White Sox and Red Sox in ’24, but his sinker averaged a career-best 96.7 mph in 2025 and his four-seamer clocked in even higher at 97.2 mph. His 56.1% ground-ball rate was a career-best mark, and opponents had an extremely rough time squaring up any of his pitches. His 86.7 mph average exit velocity and 30.6% hard-hit rate were far and away the lowest marks of his career.

There are at least some modest red flags with regard to Keller. His 10.8% swinging-strike is actually below the league average and doesn’t support his well above-average strikeout rate. The quality of his stuff clearly improved, just as the quality of his opponents’ contact deteriorated, but it’s still unlikely that he’ll sustain a .243 average on balls in play over the course of a full season. However, even with some regression in terms of BABIP and strikeout rate, Keller still looks the part of a quality bullpen arm who’ll support an improved late-inning relief contingent for the next two seasons.

Keller should operate as a setup man to deadline acquisition Jhoan Duran, who came over from Minnesota in exchange for top prospects Eduardo Tait and Mick Abel. He’ll join righty Orion Kerkering and southpaws Jose Alvarado, Matt Strahm and Tanner Banks in what should be a formidable setup corps for manager Rob Thomson. There’s still room for the Phils to add another reliever if a deal to their liking presents itself, but they’re six-deep in largely established relief arms with Keller now in the fold.

The $11MM annual value of the contract pushes the Phillies from the third tier of luxury tax penalization to the fourth and final bracket, per RosterResource’s projections. They were already paying a 95% tax on subsequent additions and were about $7MM from the top tier. Keller places them about $4MM over that line. They’ll pay about $22MM for him this season (assuming an even $11MM per year distribution) rather than that $11MM surface value. Any subsequent additions to the payroll at this point will be taxed at the maximum 110% rate.

The Phillies have done a fair bit of offseason work already. They added outfielder Adolis Garcia on a one-year contract just yesterday and, prior to that, re-signed slugger Kyle Schwarber on a huge five-year, $150MM contract. The Phils could still poke around the bullpen market or look for a complementary right-handed bat to pair with Brandon Marsh in left field. Rotation depth could be an issue as well, depending on Zack Wheeler’s recovery from his own thoracic outlet procedure, so some modest depth adds could be on the horizon. The most notable issue for the club, however, is at catcher, where they’re still hoping to retain longtime backstop J.T. Realmuto. That’ll be top of mind until Realmuto signs, be it in Philadelphia or elsewhere.

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