Tigers, Tarik Skubal Avoid Arbitration
The Tigers agreed to a one-year, $10.15MM deal with reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. It’s a massive, nearly 300% raise on top of last year’s $2.65MM salary for the 28-year-old, handily topping the $8MM projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz. Skubal, who’s under club control through the 2026 season, will be arb-eligible one more time next winter.
Skubal unanimously won American League Cy Young honors after a dominant breakout showing in which he paced the AL in wins (18), ERA (2.39), strikeout rate (30.3%), K-BB% (25.6%) and virtually every form of wins above replacement (6.3 bWAR, 5.9 fWAR, 6.5 RA9-WAR). The left-hander tossed 192 innings, punched out 228 opponents against just 35 walks and held opponents to only 15 homers. Skubal completed at least six innings in 25 of his 31 starts and held opponents to two or fewer runs on 24 of his 31 trips to the bump. He was as consistently dominant an arm as the sport had to offer, registering an ERA no worse than 3.05 in any individual month of the season.
That dominant performance from Skubal played a major role in Detroit’s surprise run to the postseason — and in the team’s upset win over the Astros in the American League Wild Card series. Skubal was flat-out dominant in the first two playoff starts of his career, tossing a combined 13 shutout innings with 14 strikeouts, one walk and just seven hits allowed in gems over Houston and Cleveland. He took the mound for the decisive Game 5 in the intra-division ALDS showdown against the Guardians and cruised through most of his start until being tagged for a backbreaking grand slam off the bat of Guards outfielder Lane Thomas.
It was a sour note on which to end an otherwise storybook season for both player and team, but Skubal has nevertheless entrenched himself among the game’s elite arms. The Tigers and their fan base would surely love to extend the star southpaw, though as a 28-year-old Scott Boars-represented ace who’s just two seasons away from reaching free agency and a potential $200MM+ payday — perhaps more, depending on how the next two seasons play out — Skubal seems decidedly unlikely to sign a long-term pact.
Looking ahead to the 2025 season, Skubal will get the Opening Day nod and front a staff also including Reese Olson and free-agent pickup Alex Cobb. Presumably, top prospect Jackson Jobe, who debuted late in the 2024 campaign, will have the inside track on a job as well, though at just 22 years old and with minimal experience above the Double-A level, he won’t simply be handed the spot. He’ll need to earn it in spring training.
Former No. 1 pick Casey Mize, rebound hopeful Kenta Maeda, right-hander Keider Montero and former top first-rounders Matt Manning, Alex Faedo and Ty Madden will all be in the mix for rotation work as well — at least as things currently stand. It’s still plenty feasible, whether by free agency or trade, that the upstart Tigers add to the rotation in a meaningful way between now and Opening Day.
Mariners, Randy Arozarena Avoid Arbitration
The Mariners have avoided arbitration with Randy Arozarena, as first reported by Francys Romero. The left fielder will earn $11.3MM in 2025, slightly less than his projected $11.7MM salary (per MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz). He will be eligible for arbitration once more ahead of the 2026 campaign.
Arozarena, 30 in February, is coming off the least productive season of his MLB career. Entering the 2024 campaign, the former AL Rookie of the Year had a career .802 OPS and 127 wRC+ in just over 2000 trips to the plate. In 2024, his OPS dropped to a career-worst .720, while his wRC+ fell to a career-worst 114. Those are still above-average numbers, to be clear, but a step back from his All-Star-caliber performances of the past.
On the bright side, Arozarena hit significantly better after a deadline trade from the Rays to the Mariners, raising his wRC+ from 109 to 122. Interestingly, the biggest difference between his numbers with Tampa Bay and Seattle was his batting average on balls in play (BABIP). He actually struck out more often and hit for less power with the Mariners, but his BABIP increased from .249 to .323. That could be good news for Arozarena, who came into the year with a career .331 BABIP, far higher than his overall .275 BABIP in 2024. If more of his batted balls drop for hits in 2025, he could get back to being a far more productive hitter once again.
Even in a down year, Arozarena hit 20 home runs and stole 20 bases, achieving his fourth straight 20/20 season. He also ranked among the top five qualified AL batters with an 11.3% walk rate. On top of that, he reached 600 plate appearances for the fourth year in a row. Since his debut in 2019, his only two stints on the injured list have been due to COVID-19 protocols. An outfielder who can play every day while offering a rare combination of power, speed, and plate discipline is a valuable player indeed; he’d command far more than $11.3MM on the open market. He will certainly be valuable to the Mariners, who need as much offense as they can get. Seattle’s pitching staff is among the best in the league, but the bats failed to support the arms last season. That’s precisely why the M’s brought Arozarena in at the deadline. They’ll be counting on him to continue producing at the plate in 2025.
Diamondbacks Avoid Arbitration With Zac Gallen, Josh Naylor
The Diamondbacks avoided arbitration with right-hander Zac Gallen and first baseman Josh Naylor, according to reports from Mark Feinsand of MLB.com and Robert Murray of FanSided. Gallen will earn $13.5MM, while Naylor will command $10.9MM. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz had projected Gallen at $14.1MM and Naylor at $10.9MM. It’s the final year of club control for both players.
Gallen, 29, pitched 148 innings of 3.65 ERA ball last season, representing his lowest innings total and highest ERA of the past three seasons. The right-hander missed roughly a month with a hamstring strain, limiting his time on the mound and perhaps also impacting his performance.
At his best, Gallen is an All-Star and Cy Young-caliber arm. He finished in the top five of NL Cy Young balloting in both 2022 and 2023, earning his lone career All-Star nod in the latter of those two seasons. Across those two years, Gallen pitched to a 3.04 ERA in 394 innings. Since making his big league debut with the Marlins in 2019 — Miami flipped him to Arizona that summer for Jazz Chisholm Jr. — Gallen touts a 3.29 ERA, 26.6% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate in 815 1/3 innings.
Gallen has long been the ace of Arizona’s staff, but he’ll at least nominally be bumped into the No. 2 spot of a potential powerhouse rotation in the wake of the D-backs’ shock signing of Corbin Burnes to a six-year, $210MM deal. Burnes, Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez, Ryne Nelson, Brandon Pfaadt and rebound hopeful/trade candidate Jordan Montgomery give the Diamondbacks a wealth of rotation talent to lean on in the coming season.
Naylor, 27, came to Arizona last month in a trade that sent righty Slade Cecconi and a competitive balance draft pick back to the Guardians. Cleveland immediately pivoted and signed Carlos Santana to a one-year, $12MM deal that mirrored the projection for Naylor. Cleveland will end up with the pricier of the two options at first base in the end, though they also added a controllable 25-year-old swingman and a pick in the high 60s of the 2025 draft.
The 2025 season will be Arizona’s lone year of control over Naylor, who’s coming off a career-best 31 home runs. He turned in a .243/.320/.456 batting line in 2024, clocking in about 18% better than league-average, by measure of wRC+. His bat faded a bit in the season’s second half, but only relative to the huge first-half numbers Naylor posted (particularly in April and in June). He was an above-average hitter in five of the season’s six months, per wRC+, with the lone exception being May, when he was just 3% under par.
Put more succinctly, Naylor is a consistent slugger who’ll bolster the middle of the D-backs’ lineup in place of Christian Walker, who signed a three-year, $60MM deal in Houston as a free agent (netting the Snakes a compensatory draft pick after the first round in the process). Naylor walked at a career-best 9.2% clip in 2024 and fanned at a 16.6% pace that’s considerably lower than league average.
Both Gallen and Naylor are candidates to receive a qualifying offer from the D-backs at season’s end, positioning Arizona to net compensation in the 2026 draft for their potential departure. Gallen, in particular, is a veritable lock so long as he’s healthy. Naylor would be a very strong QO candidate as well if he replicates or approximates the .267/.330/.465 form he’s turned in over the past three seasons, as he’d reach the market at just 28 years of age.
Tyler Nevin To Sign With NPB’S Seibu Lions
Infielder/outfielder Tyler Nevin is heading overseas to sign with the Seibu Lions of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, per multiple reports out of Japan. Salary figures have not been publicly reported.
Players that head to foreign leagues often have strong numbers in the minors but less so in the majors, a category that Nevin certainly falls into. He has received 591 plate appearances at the major league level over the past four years, suiting up for the Orioles, Tigers and Athletics. He produced a line of .204/.299/.315 in those, which translates to an 81 wRC+, indicating he was 19% below league average.
Over the past three years, he stepped to the plate 639 times at the Triple-A level. His 10.2% walk rate and 17.2% strikeout rate in that time were both solid numbers and he also hit 26 home runs, helping him produce a combined .313/.391/.536 line and 135 wRC+.
Those minor league numbers got Nevin some big league chances but he couldn’t take advantage of them and exhausted his final option year in 2023, which left him struggling to hold a roster spot in 2024.
This year, Nevin likely would have been ticketed for more of the same if he had stayed in North American ball, probably settling for a minor league deal and maybe the occasional major league opportunity. Instead, by heading to Japan, he will likely earn himself a bit more of a financial guarantee and perhaps a decent chance at lengthy playing time at a high level.
Nevin is capable of playing all four corner spots and could slot into any of those for the Lions. If he has a nice season, perhaps he could parlay that into a return to North America down the line, or a bump to a higher salary level while staying in Asia.
Padres, Luis Arraez Avoid Arbitration
The Padres have avoided arbitration with three-time batting champion Luis Arraez, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Arraez will earn $14MM in 2025, his final year of arbitration eligibility. A $14MM payday represents a nice raise for the infielder, who made $10.6MM in 2024, though it’s slightly less than his projected $14.6MM salary (per MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz).
The Padres acquired Arraez in a trade with the Marlins last May. Although he represented San Diego at the All-Star Game this past summer and finished the season with an NL-best .314 batting average, the 2024 season was a down year for Arraez. His .739 OPS and 109 wRC+ were well below his .829 OPS and 130 wRC+ from 2022-23. In addition, his defensive numbers were worse than ever. He managed to accrue -3 DRS and -6 OAA at first base and -3 DRS and -7 OAA and second base. Thus, the Padres ended up using him as their DH a good amount of the time, which only further decreased his overall value.
If Arraez can shore up his defense and get back to hitting like he did in 2022 and ’23, he will still be a bargain for San Diego at a $14MM salary. However, the Padres are thought to be trying to cut payroll this winter. According to RosterResource, their projected payroll for the 2025 season is $39MM higher than their final payroll at the end of 2024. President of baseball operations A.J. Preller is reportedly trying to bring the payroll down to somewhere in between its current projected figure and last year’s final tally. If Preller plans to reduce payroll and still make any additions this winter, he will almost certainly have to trade some of his more expensive veterans. Thus, Arraez’s name has popped up in trade rumors.
About a month ago, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the Padres had engaged in internal discussions about trading Arraez. It’s not hard to see why. His contract is more tradeable than the longer-term deals belonging to Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth, Joe Musgrove, or Yu Darvish. Dylan Cease surely has more trade value than Arraez, but for the same reasons, the Padres might be more likely to want to keep him around. Cease is projected to earn $13.7MM in arbitration, a similar number to Arraez’s $14MM salary. So, trading Cease would free up a similar amount of payroll as trading Arraez, but it would mean giving up a far more productive player.
Yet, the only team to be formally linked to Arraez this winter is the Yankees, and it’s unclear how interested New York really is. ESPN’s Jeff Passan recently wrote that the Yankees have “continued to discuss” Arraez with the Padres, but the New York Post’s Jon Heyman and SNY’s Andy Martino have pushed back on that connection. Martino reports that the Yankees “briefly” checked in on Arraez in November and “have not engaged with the Padres” on the subject since.
To further complicate matters, Bob Nightengale of USA Today is now reporting that the Padres “plan to keep” Arraez after all. That’s somewhat surprising if the team is still serious about trimming payroll, but perhaps the Padres decided teams around the league were undervaluing Arraez after his down year in 2024. That might be the right decision. After all, if he can get back to being the hitter he was from 2022-23, the Padres would have a hard time replacing that kind of production for less than $14MM.
Dodgers Trade Diego Cartaya To Twins
The Twins have acquired former top catching prospect Diego Cartaya from the Dodgers in exchange for minor league right-hander Jose Vasquez, per announcements from both clubs. Cartaya was designated for assignment earlier in the week. Minnesota had an open 40-man roster spot, and their roster is now full.
As recently as two years ago, Cartaya was a consensus top-20 prospect in the entire sport. He’s still just 23 years old, but the Venezuelan-born backstop’s offensive development has stalled out in the upper minors. Back in 2022, Cartaya slashed a combined .254/.389/.503 with 22 homers and a 14.3% walk rate across two Class-A levels. He’s followed that with lackluster performances in both Double-A (.204/.303/.379 in two seasons) and Triple-A (.208/.293/.350 in 208 plate appearances last year).
Though his bat hasn’t progressed, scouting reports in recent seasons have praised improved glovework from the 6’3″, 219-pound Cartaya. Both Baseball America and MLB.com noted in their 2024 midseason reports on Cartaya that he made notable gains with his framing, receiving and blocking. He’d already been touted for plus arm strength, though shaky accuracy has led to a roughly average 20% caught-stealing rate in his five minor league seasons.
If nothing else, the tools are there for Cartaya to be a solid defender behind the plate and a patient, OBP-focused hitter in the batter’s box. He did turn in a solid .247/.370/.377 slash against lefties last year, though that came in just 92 plate appearances and he struggled immensely versus southpaws in a similar sample a year prior. Cartaya still has one minor league option year remaining, so the Twins can send him to Triple-A to begin the season without needing to pass him through waivers.
The Twins already have an above-average starter in Ryan Jeffers and a pricey, glove-first backup in Christian Vazquez. Catcher Jair Camargo and catcher/first baseman Mickey Gasper (acquired from the Red Sox last month) are both on the 40-man roster as well. Minnesota has been hopeful of trading Vazquez and a portion of his $10MM salary as they seek to scale back payroll. There could well be a market if they’re willing to eat around half that sum, and the addition of Cartaya creates some further depth in the event that they do indeed move Vazquez (or, more surprisingly, listen to offers on Jeffers).
In return for Cartaya, the Dodgers will pick up a project right-hander. Vasquez, listed at 6’4″ and a 200 pounds, signed with the Twins out of the Dominican Republic as part of their 2022 international class. He’s spent the past two years — his age-18 and age-19 seasons — pitching for Minnesota’s affiliate in the Dominican Summer League. The bottom-line results aren’t much to look at, as Vasquez has been tagged for a 8.05 ERA in 57 innings. Part of that was a sky-high ERA north of 11.00 in 2023, however. He pitched to a more palatable 4.99 mark in 30 2/3 frames this past season.
Command was a major issue for Vasquez in ’23, evidenced by a ghastly 21.9% walk rate. He made major strides in 2024, however, cutting that mark in half (10.7%) while nearly doubling his strikeout rate from 17.8% to 32.1%. He was a bit older than the average DSL player last year and figures to head to one of the Dodgers’ full-season affiliates in 2025. There’s some obvious bat-missing potential for the lanky right-hander, but he’ll need to make further gains with his command and find a way to get left-handed opponents out. Vasquez held righties to an awful .203/.309/.290 output in 2024 but was scorched for a .314/.407/.392 line against southpaws.
D-backs, Pavin Smith Avoid Arbitration
The Diamondbacks avoided arbitration with first baseman/outfielder Pavin Smith by agreeing to a one-year, $1.5MM deal, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. He’d been projected for a $1.6MM salary by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz.
Smith, 29 next month, was selected with the No. 7 pick by Arizona back in 2017. He’s not lived up to that lofty billing but did enjoy a breakout showing in the big leagues this past season, mashing at a .270/.348/.547 clip. That stout production came in a fairly small sample of 158 trips to the plate, but it was supported by career-best batted ball metrics; Smith averaged a hearty 90.2 mph off the bat and put 44% off his batted balls in play at 95 mph or more.
Smith also drew a free pass in an excellent 11.4% of his plate appearances and fanned in a lower-than-average 19.4% of his trips to the plate. As with his quality of contact, that plate discipline holds up with a look under the hood. Only seven percent of hitters in baseball (min. 150 plate appearances) chased pitches off the plate at a lower rate than Smith last season (20.1%). Only 14% of players in that same set made contact at a better rate than Smith’s 90.5% when swinging at pitches within the strike zone. Put more simply, Smith showed keen knowledge of the strike zone and very, very rarely missed when attacking a ball over the plate. That type of discipline and bat-to-ball prowess is hard to fluke your way into over even a sample as limited as his 2024 showing.
This marks Smith’s first offseason of arbitration eligibility and his first time earning noticeably north of the league minimum. He’s out of minor league options, so Smith is a veritable lock to make the Opening Day roster, barring injury.
Smith won’t be entrusted with regular time at first base even after the Snakes lost Christian Walker to free agency, as Arizona quickly pivoted and acquired Josh Naylor to man the position. However, he should log ample time at designated hitter now that Joc Pederson has also left the club for a two-year deal in Texas, and he’d presumably be the primary alternative at first base should Naylor incur an injury or simply require a breather. Smith can also rotate into either left or right field in the event of an injury or day off for Corbin Carroll, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and/or Jake McCarthy. Smith is a career .226/.289/.310 hitter against lefties and thus isn’t likely to see much action against southpaws, but he’s a .249/.333/.427 hitter against righties — including a huge .282/.356/.564 showing this past season. He’s controllable through the 2027 season.
Angels, Brock Burke Avoid Arbitration
The Angels avoided arbitration with lefty reliever Brock Burke on a $1.15MM deal, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Burke had been projected at $1.2MM by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz.
Los Angeles grabbed the 28-year-old southpaw off waivers from Texas in August. Burke pitched well down the stretch, working to a 3.54 ERA while striking out more than 30% of opponents across 20 1/3 innings. It was a dramatic turnaround. Burke had allowed more than a run per inning over 13 appearances with the Rangers earlier in the year.
The terrible early-season production left Burke with a middling 5.82 earned run average on the year. He showed enough in his six weeks with the Angels to get another opportunity. Burke is arguably the top lefty in a bullpen that should also include José Quijada and potentially Rule 5 pick Garrett McDaniels. He’ll be eligible for arbitration once more next offseason.
A’s Sign Brent Rooker To Five-Year Extension
The A’s have officially announced a five-year contract extension with designated hitter Brent Rooker. The deal includes a club/vesting option for 2030. Rooker, a client of The Bledsoe Agency, is reportedly guaranteed $60MM. The option’s base value is $22MM and could push as high as $30MM based on his MVP finishes. Rooker had been under arbitration control for three seasons, so the deal buys out at least two free agent years.
Rooker receives a $10MM signing bonus and a $2MM salary for the upcoming season. He’ll make $6MM in 2026, $12MM in ’27, $13MM in ’28 and $17MM in ’29. The $22MM option would vest if Rooker reaches 500 plate appearances in 2029 or combines for 900 PAs between 2028-29. He’d also unlock the option with two top 10 MVP finishes between 2027-29. Finishing in the top 10 in MVP balloting in any of the next five years could escalate the option value.
It’s another significant investment in what has been a huge offseason by A’s standards. As shown on MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, Rooker becomes the first A’s player to sign a five-year deal since the club extended starting pitcher Trevor Cahill for $30.5MM in 2011. It’s the team’s second investment for $60MM+ this winter. Last month, they added Luis Severino on a three-year, $67MM free agent deal that represented the largest contract in franchise history.
Rooker securing such a contract would have been impossible to envision two years ago. He landed with the A’s on a waiver claim early in the 2022-23 offseason. Rooker was a 28-year-old DH/corner outfielder who had bounced between the Twins, Padres and Royals without getting much of a look at any stop. As a former top 35 overall draft pick who had hit well in the minors, he was a sensible waiver target. The A’s certainly didn’t envision it working out this well, though.
The righty-swinging Rooker has become not only one of the most successful waiver claims in recent memory but one of baseball’s best hitters. He popped 30 home runs in 526 plate appearances to earn an All-Star selection in 2023. While he was snubbed from the Midsummer Classic last season, Rooker took another major step forward. He connected on 39 homers, 26 doubles and a pair of triples with a massive .293/.365/.562 batting line across 614 plate appearances.
Rooker finished tied for fifth (alongside José Ramírez and Marcell Ozuna) in home runs. Only Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Santander and Juan Soto hit more. Among hitters with at least 500 PAs, Rooker ranked in the top 20 in all three slash stats. He finished sixth in slugging — trailing Judge, Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., Soto, and Yordan Alvarez.
It’s now two seasons of borderline elite offensive production. Rooker has a .272/.348/.528 slash through more than 1100 plate appearances in an A’s uniform. He’s in the top 15 in slugging percentage and ranks ninth in homers since the start of the ’23 campaign. He’s a middle-of-the-order presence.
There is a decent amount of swing-and-miss to his game. Rooker has fanned in more than 30% of his plate appearances with the A’s. Last year’s production was driven in part by a .362 average on balls in play that’ll be difficult to maintain. Rooker makes a ton of hard contact, though, so he’s probably in line for a modest BABIP regression rather than a huge drop-off.
The ball-in-play normalization happened at the end of last season. Rooker carried an unsustainable .390 BABIP into the All-Star Break. That dropped to .333 in the second half. To his credit, Rooker compensated by cutting his strikeout rate to a much more manageable 24.1% clip during that stretch. It remains to be seen whether he’ll maintain that level of contact, but it’s an encouraging development that presumably affirmed the front office’s confidence in his hitting acumen.
Even if he doesn’t hit .290 while pushing 40 home runs on an annual basis, Rooker should remain an impact bat. The A’s have made clear they envisioned him as the long-term anchor of their lineup. The team reportedly took him off the market in advance of last summer’s trade deadline. They had no interest in allowing trade rumors to rekindle during the offseason. GM David Forst declared within a week of the offseason beginning that the A’s weren’t dealing Rooker. They’re doubling down by committing to him through at least the 2029 season.
Rooker surpassed three years of major league service last season. He was entering his first of three arbitration seasons. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz had projected a $5.1MM salary for next year. Rooker will reportedly receive $30MM over what would have been his arbitration window. That leaves an average of $15MM annually for the two free agent seasons. It’s not quite a front-loaded contract, but it appears Rooker will make a little more in the next couple years than he would have had he gone through the arbitration process.
The team makes that tradeoff for the chance to keep him at below-market rates during the 2028-29 seasons — which are scheduled to be their first two years in Las Vegas. The A’s didn’t have any money guaranteed beyond 2027. Severino and recent trade pickup Jeffrey Springs were their only players signed past next season.
The A’s revenue sharing status has been a significant storyline this offseason. Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported last month that the team could need to push its competitive balance tax payroll to roughly $105MM to avoid an MLBPA grievance. Teams are required to spend revenue sharing money on the on-field product.
Extending Rooker will push their tax number up, though it’s not by a huge amount. The contract comes with a $12MM average annual value. The AAV is the number used for tax purposes, so it wouldn’t matter how the salaries are distributed. Rooker had already been expected to make around $5MM next season. This adds roughly $7MM to the team’s tax number, which will check in around $97MM (as calculated by RosterResource).
The tax number isn’t finalized until the end of the year, so the remainder of the A’s offseason and in-season activity can push that further. Tax considerations are relevant but are far from the only reason for the A’s to make this deal. If they were solely concerned about pushing next season’s CBT number, they could have signed a handful of mid-tier free agents to one-year contracts.
Rooker turned 30 in November. A five-year commitment runs through his age-34 season. There’s some risk in a five-year deal for a player in his 30s who doesn’t provide much defensive value. Yet if Rooker continues hitting at anywhere near this level, his arbitration price tag would have climbed quickly anyhow. He could have put himself in position for an AAV in the $20-25MM range once he hit free agency, a number that the A’s may have been disinclined to match.
At the same time, it’s easy to see the appeal for Rooker of locking in the security. It wasn’t that long ago that he looked like a fringe roster player. He wouldn’t have gotten to free agency until his age-33 season, when a three- or four-year deal might’ve been the ceiling. Sacrificing a little bit of long-term earning upside to avoid injury risk over the next couple seasons is understandable.
This should also solidify Rooker’s spot in what looks to be an up-and-coming A’s lineup. Lawrence Butler, Jacob Wilson, Tyler Soderstrom, Shea Langeliers, JJ Bleday and rebound candidate Zack Gelof have promise as an offensive core. Last summer’s fourth overall pick Nick Kurtz could move quickly as a polished college hitter. The A’s still need a lot to break right to contend in 2025, but things are starting to come into focus. Soderstrom and Kurtz fit best at first base, so perhaps there’ll be a logjam down the line with Rooker locked in at designated hitter. That’d be a good problem to have if both young first basemen reach their offensive ceilings and Rooker continues to hit at an All-Star level.
Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic first reported that the A’s and Rooker were in agreement on a five-year, $60MM deal with a vesting option that could get to $30MM. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that the option’s base was $22MM and that Rooker would make $30MM over the first three seasons. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported the salary breakdown and the vesting provisions.
Image courtesy of Imagn.
Astros, Luis Garcia Avoid Arbitration
The Astros and right-hander Luis Garcia have avoided arbitration, per the Associated Press. The righty will make a salary of $1.875MM in 2025. That’s the same salary he made in 2024, a year he missed while recovering from Tommy John surgery.
The arbitration system operates in such a way that salaries almost never go down. As such, it’s fairly common for a player to miss an entire season and then see his salary hold steady into the next year.
Tomorrow is the deadline for players and teams to exchange salary figures, so a large number of arb-eligible players should have their salaries finalized in the next 24 hours or so. Those who don’t reach agreements will be slated for arbitration hearings in the coming weeks. With Garcia now settled, the Astros still have an arb class consisting of Framber Valdez, Mauricio Dubón, Bryan Abreu, Chas McCormick, Isaac Paredes, Jake Meyers and Jeremy Pena.
Garcia has a career earned run average of 3.61 in his 352 innings, mostly as a starter, though he has been on ice for quite a while now. He had his surgery in May of 2023 and attempted to return to the mound last summer, though he had some trouble recovering between outings during his rehab assignment and was eventually shut down. In a recent mailbag, Chandler Rome of The Athletic suggested it may not be likely that he’s ready for Opening Day of 2025.
As spring training ramps up next month, it’s possible that there will be more clarity on his status, though the Astros have a notorious reputation for obfuscating when it comes to the health of their players. Whenever Garcia gets back on the mound, he should slot into a rotation mix alongside Valdez, Hunter Brown, Ronel Blanco, Spencer Arrighetti and Hayden Wesneski. Like Garcia, pitchers like Lance McCullers Jr., J.P. France and Cristian Javier will be looking to come back from surgeries this year.