Royals Designate Dairon Blanco For Assignment
The Royals announced they’ve designated outfielder Dairon Blanco for assignment. That’s the necessary 40-man roster move to finalize their one-year deal with Starling Marte, which is official.
Blanco has been a depth outfielder in Kansas City for the past four seasons. He played in nearly half the team’s games between 2023-24 but wasn’t much of a factor last year. Blanco got into nine contests and only took eight plate appearances at the major league level. He went 1-6 with a double while stealing three bases in five attempts.
The 32-year-old (33 in April) missed the first six weeks of the season battling Achilles tendinopathy in his right foot. He returned to health in mid-May and spent the majority of the year on optional assignment. The Cuba native batted .253/.332/.405 with eight homers across 294 plate appearances in Triple-A. He stole 32 bags while getting cut down just three times over 77 games.
A right-handed hitter, Blanco has league average numbers (.257/.312/.416) over 285 MLB plate appearances. The Royals have seemingly been skeptical that’d remain the case over a larger sample. Kansas City outfielders had an MLB-worst .225/.285/.348 batting line last season. Although the outfield has been an issue for the better part of a decade, the Royals never gave Blanco much of a starting opportunity.
They had kept him on the big league roster for the second half of 2023 and all of ’24 as a bench piece. Blanco’s top-of-the-scale wheels made him an asset as a pinch runner. He went 55-67 in stolen base tries over that season and a half. Blanco entered 48 games as a pinch runner. No one else in MLB reached even 20 pinch-running appearances over those two full seasons.
Kansas City has five days to trade Blanco or place him on waivers. He still has a pair of minor league options remaining. He’s on the older side for a player whose game is built so much around his legs, as he didn’t depart his home country until he was 23 and made his MLB debut at 29.
Blue Jays Re-Sign Max Scherzer
The Blue Jays officially announced they’ve re-signed Max Scherzer to a one-year contract. The Boras Corporation client is reportedly guaranteed $3MM and can earn up to $10MM in incentives. He’d earn his first $1MM bonus at 65 innings and reach another $1MM bonus for every tenth inning, up through 155 frames overall. Toronto cleared a 40-man roster spot over the weekend by waiving infielder Ben Cowles, who was claimed by the Cubs.
It’s the future Hall of Famer’s second season in Toronto. The three-time Cy Young winner signed a $15.5MM deal with the Jays during the 2024-25 offseason. He was coming off an abbreviated season in which he’d been limited to nine starts for the Rangers. Scherzer had undergone back surgery the previous offseason, and a nerve issue in his throwing arm limited him once he recovered from the back procedure.
The arm remained problematic last season. Scherzer left his team debut after three innings because of thumb soreness. That had been traced to the nerve issue and ultimately led the Jays to shut Scherzer down for a couple months. He didn’t return to an MLB mound until late June.
Scherzer was able to avoid the injured list after that point but didn’t perform to his usual level. He allowed more than five earned runs per nine innings for the first time in his career. He closed the season with a 5.19 mark over 85 innings. Scherzer only once allowed more than four runs in a start, but he only went beyond five innings on seven occasions. He had six quality starts in 17 appearances.
The 17-year veteran is still capable of missing bats at a league average level. He struck out a slightly above-average 23% of batters faced against a tidy 6.4% walk rate. The issue is the damage hitters have done when they make contact. Scherzer allowed more than two home runs per nine innings for the first time in his career. It was the fourth-highest homer rate in MLB among pitchers who threw 70+ innings.
Scherzer’s fastball averaged 93.6 mph last season. That’s a tick higher than his 2024 mark, reversing a slight downward trend in his velocity during his late 30s. He nevertheless had a tough time getting hitters to chase his breaking pitches outside the strike zone. Scherzer obviously doesn’t have the same caliber of stuff he did at his peak, which makes him more hittable when he’s forced to challenge hitters. He has allowed a higher than average home run rate in three straight seasons.
At age 41, Scherzer profiles as a back-end starter on paper. Yet he has a wealth of big game experience and showed he’s still capable of getting outs on the biggest stage. The Jays left Scherzer off the roster for their Division Series matchup with the Yankees. They brought him back for the AL Championship Series against Seattle and the World Series showdown with the Dodgers.
Scherzer tossed 5 2/3 frames of two-run ball to get the win in ALCS Game 4. He struggled a bit in Game 3 of the World Series before coming back with one run allowed in 4 1/3 innings in Game 7. Scherzer left the mound with a 3-1 lead in a performance that would have been etched into Toronto sports history if the bullpen had held the lead.
They’ll aim to get over the hump in 2026. Assuming Scherzer builds up in time for Opening Day, he’ll probably slot into a six-man rotation to begin the season. Shane Bieber will begin the year on the injured list after experiencing forearm fatigue during the playoff run. Toronto had been slated to open the season with a starting five of Dylan Cease, Kevin Gausman, Trey Yesavage, José Berríos and Cody Ponce.
Yesavage is entering his first full MLB season. Ponce is a bit of a wild card in his return from Korea. Scherzer presumably isn’t going to log 150+ innings at this stage of his career. Opening with a six-man rotation would allow the Jays to take some of the burden off a rotation that shouldered as heavy a load as possible into October.
That comes with a trickle-down impact on the bullpen, however. The 13-pitcher limit means the Jays would be down to a seven-man bullpen if they go this route. That increases the importance of having a quality long reliever like Eric Lauer to handle multiple innings.
At the same time, this makes it less likely that Lauer will have a chance to win a rotation spot. The left-hander is an impending free agent and said he’d prefer a starting opportunity. There hasn’t been any indication that Lauer would seek a trade if the Jays keep him in a relief role, though the southpaw told Mitch Bannon of The Athletic he believes that pitching out of the bullpen last season cost him money in arbitration. Lauer lost his hearing, meaning he’ll make the team’s desired $4.4MM salary rather than his camp’s $5.75MM filing figure.
That could be a situation worth monitoring if everyone remains healthy closer to Opening Day. For now, this looks like the ideal outcome for the Jays and Scherzer alike. The $3MM base salary will push their franchise-record luxury tax payroll to approximately $319MM, according to RosterResource. The Jays are taxed at a 90% rate on spending above $304MM. This signing comes with a $2.7MM base tax. Earned performance bonuses are part of a team’s CBT calculation, so the Jays would also pay that 90% fee on any dollars that Scherzer unlocks by hitting innings milestones throughout the year.
Jon Heyman of The New York Post first reported the agreement. Shi Davidi of Sportsnet had the $3MM base and $10MM in incentives. Heyman reported the incentive structure. Image courtesy of Jay Biggerstaff, Imagn Images.
Royals Sign Starling Marte
March 2: Kansas City has officially announced Marte’s one-year contract. It’s a $1MM guarantee that comes with another $2MM in bonuses, reports Anne Rogers of MLB.com. Half of that money comes with roster bonuses and the other half through incentives.
February 28: Starling Marte and the Royals have agreed to a one-year, Major League contract. Financial terms of the agreement aren’t yet known. The deal will be finalized once Marte passes a physical, and the Royals will have to make another transaction to clear space on their 40-man roster for the Klutch Sports client.
2025 was the last season of Marte’s four-year, $78MM contract with the Mets, and while Marte was hopeful of playing for multiple more years, there hadn’t been any public buzz about his free agent market over the winter. Now, the 37-year-old has landed with a Kansas City club whose interest in the former two-time All-Star dates back to last winter, when the Royals had some talks with the Mets about a possible trade.
Marte’s tenure in New York was defined by injuries, as he played in only 396 games during his four-year stint. Groin problems were the source of most of Marte’s issues, as surgery on both his left and right groin muscles following the 2022 season didn’t entirely correct the problem, as the injury resurfaced in 2023. Marte also missed time due to a neck strain, migraines, and a bone bruise in his right knee, and the Mets responded to Marte’s lower-body injuries by making him essentially a full-time DH in 2025.
Marte still made 12 appearances in the outfield last year, and given the Royals’ need for outfield help, Kansas City could consider giving him slightly more time on the grass in 2026. After acquiring both the switch-hitting Isaac Collins and the right-handed hitting Lane Thomas this winter, the Royals’ primary outfield looks like Collins in left field, defensive specialist Kyle Isbel in center, and Thomas and lefty-swinging Jac Caglianone perhaps in a platoon situation in right field. Salvador Perez and top prospect Carter Jensen will handle the catching duties, and whomever isn’t behind the plate will likely get plenty of DH at-bats.
It would add up to another part-time role for Marte, though there’s value in having a veteran bat on the roster. Caglianone struggled badly in his first exposure to big league pitching in 2025, and Thomas is coming off essentially a lost year due to injuries in 2025. Thomas’ top season was his 28-homer campaign with the Nationals in 2023, but he has posted just a 98 wRC+ over 1900 plate appearances over the last four seasons. Collins is also far from a sure thing, as his impressive 2025 rookie season with the Brewers came despite some hard-contact issues that were perhaps obscured by a .326 BABIP.
Marte hasn’t looked like a true top-tier hitter since 2022, but he still managed a respectable .269/.331/.398 slash line and 16 homers over 699 PA during the 2024-25 seasons, translating to a 108 wRC+. Marte is still making hard contact at an above-average rate, even if his power (and his Statcast metrics on the whole) have fallen off.
Whether or not Marte can maintain even this decent production into his 15th Major League season remains to be seen, of course. It can be argued that Collins, Thomas, and Marte couldn’t help but be upgrades for K.C. given how little the Royals have gotten from their outfield mix in the last few years, plus Caglianone is still a highly-touted prospect with breakout potential.
Marte’s next contract will surely be worth only a few million dollars in guaranteed money, with probably some bonus clauses built in based on plate appearances. The Royals’ payroll currently sits at around $149.2MM (as per RosterResource‘s estimates), which represents a modest increase over their $139.8MM figure from 2025. This tracks with owner John Sherman’s comments from October about the payroll likely staying in the same general range, which naturally left the front office a little limited in what they could do in pursuing needed lineup help.
Reporter Yancen Pujols first broke the news that Marte and the Royals were in contract talks. MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (multiple links) reported that the deal was in place, and that Marte had inked a guaranteed contract.
MLB Announces Spring Breakout Tournament To Begin In 2027
Major League Baseball announced today that the Spring Breakout series will be played as a tournament in 2027 and 2028. It will be a single-elimination style with two champions crowned, one in the Grapefruit League and one in the Cactus League. The tournament is not starting in 2026 so as to not conflict with this year’s World Baseball Classic.
As of a few years ago, it was possible for fans to get a glimpse of top prospects during spring training, but only sporadically. Those players would often be in camp but would mostly be used as occasional substitutes for veteran players late in games.
In December of 2023, the league announced the Spring Breakout series. Each MLB club would field a squad entirely comprised of their top prospects and then play at least one game during spring training against another such squad. These were just exhibition contests but they gave fans a chance to tune into a specific game knowing that the top prospects would be participating.
After a few years, the league will be including this tournament format to add a competitive atmosphere. It will also give fans a chance to watch some prospects in a handful of games, depending on who advances.
The 2026 version of Spring Breakout, still without the tournament style, will take place from March 19th to 22nd. The full schedule can be found here. The full rosters for this year’s games will be announced on March 5th.
Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images
Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript
Anthony Franco
- Good evening, hope you all enjoyed your weekend!
- Steve needed today off so we're flipping chat schedules this week. He'll run one on Friday afternoon, going to keep this one around an hour
Red Wright Hand
- 4/112 million for Freddy Peralta to sign extension with Mets. You think that gets the deal done?
Anthony Franco
- $28M AAV seems reasonable but I think it's a year light. Have a tough time seeing why he's taking less than Ranger Suarez money without at least seeing what's out there
- If he has another season like 2025, I assume he's getting six years and north of $200M
Youk
- Do you think it’s the right move for the Sox to trade an OF? I’d love to lengthen the lineup with an infielder but it’s really hard to find a fair matchup and I would hate to lose any of the four.
Anthony Franco
- Nah I think they're fine with Durbin and giving Mayer some leeway. I'd keep all four
LeagueWide
- Any predictions for a late offseason trade before Opening Day? The FA market is pretty barren, so teams looking for an impact arm or bat don't have many options left.
Anthony Franco
- Hope I'm wrong but I'm not really seeing anything big at this point. Most teams are at least saying they want to compete this year and as you mentioned, there's no real opportunity to backfill in free agency if you're trading away an impact player
- Feels like a Paredes deal before Opening Day is viable but a long shot. If that doesn't happen, it's probably mostly tinkering at the back of rosters for the next couple months
Giant Hopes
- The Giants have a glut of outfielders. The Royals need outfielders. Is there a match there?
-
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Tigers Announce Launch Of Detroit SportsNet
The Tigers announced the launch of Detroit SportsNet, an entity which will broadcast the club’s games this year as well as those of the NHL’s Red Wings starting with the 2026-27 season. Fans can subscribe for $19.99 per month or $189.99 for an entire year, which would allow them to stream both clubs. The games will also be on television in some form but full cable/satellite details aren’t yet available.
Up until recently, the Tigers were one of many MLB clubs to have a deal with Main Street Sports, previously known as Diamond Sports Group. That company, which operated the FanDuel Sports Network channels in 2025, has been going through tough financial times in recent years. They recently missed some payments to some MLB clubs. The nine teams who still had deals with the company, one of which was the Tigers, terminated their deals in January.
Of those nine, six of them quickly pivoted to having Major League Baseball handling their broadcasts. The Tigers, Angels and Braves were the three left up in the air. Atlanta recently launched their own regional sports network (RSN) called BravesVision.
On the surface, this appears to be the Tigers essentially going the MLB route. The club announcement today says that Detroit SportsNet will be “Powered by MLB.” Customers will be able to stream games through the MLB app. The one element that seems to make this a bit more unique is that the Red Wings are involved, a logical pairing since the Ilitch family owns both clubs.
Down the line, it will be interesting to see if this leads to a significant difference in the revenue brought in. Several teams have ended up with MLB after the collapse of an RSN deal. This route can sometimes lead to more viewers as it allows clubs to offer direct-to-customer streaming with no blackouts, but it can also lead to less revenue overall. Travis Sawchik of MLB.com reports that teams in this bucket get about 50% less than before, on average. As of a few years ago, the Tigers were getting about $60MM from their RSN deal. Having the Red Wings and Tigers in the same package could lead to more subscribers but the revenues will also presumably be split.
The Tigers have had a few notable financial developments this winter. In addition to this RSN situation, they also saw Tarik Skubal file an arbitration number far higher than anyone expected. He ended up winning his hearing and will make $32MM this year, $13MM more than the club’s $19MM filing figure.
Despite the uncertainty of the RSN situation and Skubal’s big raise, the team still spent aggressively this winter. They signed a number of free agents, most notably giving a $115MM guarantee to left-hander Framber Valdez. They are projected to set a new franchise record in terms of payroll and the competitive balance tax.
The broadcasts will seemingly be fairly unchanged compared to previous seasons, with the on-air talent expected to return. Details on the specific television channels carrying the games will be revealed in the future. It’s not yet clear which app will be used to access Red Wings games.
Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images
Latest On Mets, Freddy Peralta
The Mets and right-hander Freddy Peralta still haven’t had any serious extension talks, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The report suggests the talks will likely ramp up at some point but the two sides will likely have different priorities. President of baseball operations David Stearns has shown a preference for short-term agreements with pitchers but Peralta tells Rosenthal he would prefer to sign a long-term pact.
Almost as soon as the Mets acquired Peralta in January, speculation began about the club potentially signing him to an extension. Stearns already traded for and extended Peralta once, when he was with the Brewers. Now Peralta is just one season away from that extension ending, as he’s slated for free agency after the 2026 campaign.
Despite the logic, it was quickly reported after the trade that the Mets wouldn’t be rushing anything. They planned to let Peralta get comfortable with his new club for a while. That means it’s not really too surprising that the Mets haven’t yet made a hard push. Some players prefer not to negotiate contracts during the season, though it’s unclear if Peralta has any such preferences.
Whenever talks do get more serious, it’s notable that Peralta and the Mets are potentially starting out with different goals. “I would prefer to go long and make sure I’m going to be in the place where I want to finish my career,” Peralta says to Rosenthal.
That’s in contrast with the general approach of Stearns as a baseball operations leader. As shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, he has avoided long-term deals for pitchers, both during his time with the Brewers and now with the Mets. He did give five-year extensions to Peralta and Aaron Ashby during is time in Milwaukee, but those deals were for pitchers in their mid-20s. Other than those two early-career extensions, he hasn’t signed a pitcher to a deal longer than three years. Even though he’s now working with one of the largest payrolls in the league, Sean Manaea‘s $75MM deal is the largest guarantee Stearns has given to a pitcher. Rosenthal mentions that the Mets did offer a 12-year deal to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but that was a special case since he was only 25 years old at the time.
Peralta will turn 30 in June and will therefore be going into his age-31 season when he is a free agent. Getting a lengthy deal at that age should be possible for Peralta if he has another strong season. Last offseason, Max Fried got an eight-year deal going into his age-31 campaign. The prior winter, Aaron Nola got seven years ahead of his age-31 season. Dylan Cease is going into his age-30 season, so he is a year younger than Peralta will be in that sense, but his birthday is in December. Peralta’s birthday is in June, so it will only really be a difference of about six months.
In terms of the guarantees, Fried got $218MM, Cease got $210MM and Nola got $172MM. Cease’s deal had notable deferrals, putting the net present value in the $180-185MM range. Peralta has an argument to get into that range next winter, especially when comparing him to Cease.
Over the past five seasons, Peralta has thrown 738 1/3 innings with a 3.30 earned run average, 29.6% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate. In that same span, Cease took on a bigger workload of 884 innings but a higher ERA of 3.72. Cease’s 29.7% strikeout rate was a near match for Peralta’s, with Cease having a higher walk rate of 9.7%. Peralta’s 37.7% ground ball rate was marginally higher than Cease’s 37% clip.
If Peralta is looking to get something resembling the Cease deal, Stearns would have to go to new territory to keep him with the Mets. A deal in that range would require Stearns to more than double his previous high water marks, both in terms of length and guarantee. Perhaps he is willing to buck his previous tendencies since he clearly loves Peralta.
Peralta would be taking on some risk in not signing now, as it’s always possible for a pitcher to get hurt. Perhaps there’s some middle ground that could work for both parties now, where Peralta doesn’t fully max out his earnings by going to free agency next winter, but still locks in a really significant guarantee.
Photo courtesy of Reinhold Matay, Imagn Images
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Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners, though it’s been a long time. Due to a busy offseason with lots to talk about, we haven’t asked our listeners for questions since October.
Now that camps have been open for about three weeks, the newsflow has slowed, so it’s time to open up the mailbag for the first time in months. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
Do you have a question about something that happened over the winter? A camp battle? The upcoming season? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
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In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Padres’ Blake Hunt Shut Down Due To Oblique Injury
The Padres recently shut down catcher Blake Hunt due to an oblique injury, as reported by Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Hunt’s exact timeline for return to action isn’t currently known, but he figures to be sidelined for the foreseeable future.
The 27-year-old was a second-round pick by the Padres back in 2017 but was traded to the Rays as part of the Blake Snell deal while he was still in A-ball. In the years since then, Hunt has bounced between the Rays, Orioles, and Mariners organizations. He was called up to the majors for the first time in July of 2024 but has never made an appearance in the big leagues. In 2025, he performed quite well for the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma, slashing .272/.368/.452 (108 wRC+) with eight homers and 15 doubles in just 68 games. Following the 2025 season, Hunt elected minor league free agency and returned to the organization that drafted him on a minor league pact.
Entering Spring Training, Hunt was a non-roster invitee who appeared likely to serve as Luis Campusano‘s primary competition in camp this year. Hunt has long been on the periphery of the majors at this point and is perhaps overdue for a shot at the highest level, and while the out-of-options Campusano entered Spring Training with the advantage of having a 40-man roster spot already, it would’ve been understandable for him to face some pressure head of Opening Day. The 27-year-old appeared in just ten games at the big league level last year and went hitless in those 27 plate appearances. While he did manage to hit an extremely impressive .336/.451/.595 (149 wRC+) at Triple-A last year, he’s a career 88 wRC+ hitter in the majors with lackluster defensive marks behind the plate and has slashed just .211/.276/.336 (75 wRC+) with -0.8 fWAR and -1.1 bWAR when looking at just the last two years.
That lack of production makes it hard to trust Campusano headed into 2026, and his 2-for-12 showing during camp so far hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. Freddy Fermin figures to serve as San Diego’s primary catcher entering the year, but Hunt’s injury could wind up giving Campusano more of a leash as the team’s primary backup. Ethan Salas doesn’t figure to be ready for the majors anytime soon, and the only other catcher in camp at the moment with experience even at Triple-A is 28-year-old Rodolfo Duran. If Hunt’s injury is severe enough to sideline him long-term, it’s plausible that the Padres could look to add some external catching depth to provide further insurance behind their current tandem. Veterans Tom Murphy and Christian Vazquez are still available in free agency, but it’s also possible that veterans on minor league deals in other camps could opt out as Opening Day approaches or that catching depth on the fringes of another organization’s roster could be made available in a minor trade if the Padres were sufficiently motivated to get a deal done.