Cardinals Sign Phil Maton
The Cardinals announced this morning that they’ve signed right-hander Phil Maton to a one-year deal. The Paragon Sports International client will reportedly make $2MM. Left-hander Bailey Horn was designated for assignment to make room for Maton on the club’s 40-man roster.
Maton, 32 later this month, was among the better relief arms still available on the free agent market at this late point in the calendar. Drafted in the 20th round by the Padres back in 2015, Maton will suit up with the Cardinals for his ninth MLB season and hope to continue a stretch of quality work that began with the Astros back in 2022. The first five seasons of Maton’s career saw him struggle despite solid peripherals, with a subpar 4.76 ERA in 215 1/3 innings of work across 209 appearances. He struck out 26.4% of opponents during that time while walking 9.2%. Those numbers were decent enough to keep Maton rostered with San Diego and Cleveland over the years, but he eventually wound up in Houston late in the 2021 season.
The righty’s middling results continued with the Astros through the end of 2021, but by the start of the 2022 season a switch seemed to have flipped. His 25.2% strikeout rate and 8.2% walk rate over the past three seasons aren’t markedly different than what they were earlier in his career, but the veteran’s results have improved drastically as he’s posted a 3.50 ERA with a 4.11 FIP in 195 2/3 innings of work across 206 games.
After hitting free agency for the first time in his career prior to the 2024 season, Maton signed on with the Rays but struggled with a 4.58 ERA in 40 appearances for them last year. Fortunately for the right-hander, he was traded to the Mets for the stretch run and turned a corner, dominating to the tune of a 2.51 ERA across his final 31 appearances of the regular season.
Now, Maton is headed to St. Louis as the first and perhaps only major-league free agent signing the club will make this offseason. The Cardinals’ plans for the winter were largely hamstrung by an inability to find a trade partner for veteran third baseman Nolan Arenado, resulting in an extremely quiet offseason that was defined most by the departures of key veterans like Paul Goldschmidt in free agency.
Despite the Cardinals’ lack of activity this offseason, they’ve long been known to want a veteran relief arm who could fill the role Andrew Kittredge played last year and create a bridge between closer Ryan Helsley and the rest of a relatively young late-inning mix. They now appear to have found that player in Maton, who has just five career saves but has recorded 42 holds over the past three seasons.
Making room for Maton on the 40-man roster is Horn, a fifth-round pick by the White Sox in the 2020 draft. The 27-year-old lefty was traded to the Cubs in exchange for Ryan Tepera at the 2021 trade deadline and was eventually added to his new club’s 40-man roster, but did not make his big league debut in Chicago. He was traded back to the White Sox last February in order to clear a 40-man roster spot for the return of Cody Bellinger, but was then designated for assignment and traded to Boston in April. He made his big league debut for the Red Sox last June but struggled badly with a 6.50 ERA and 7.00 FIP in 18 innings of work.
During the offseason, Horn was designated for assignment by the Red Sox but picked up off waivers by the Tigers in November. He lasted on Detroit’s 40-man roster for just a month and was claimed off waivers by St. Louis in early January. He’ll now likely return to the waiver wire for the fourth time in the last 11 months. The Cardinals will have one week to either trade Horn or put him through waivers, where he can be claimed by any club willing to offer him a spot on their 40-man roster.
If Horn clears waivers, the Cardinals will get the opportunity to outright him to the minors as a non-roster depth option. That said, Horn is an optionable left-handed reliever who averages 95 mph with his heater and has a track record of missing bats in the upper minors. He could make him an attractive candidate for a waiver claim despite his lackluster results in the majors last year.
Katie Woo of The Athletic was first on the terms.
Reds Return Rule 5 Selection Cooper Bowman To Athletics
The Reds have returned Rule 5 draft selection Cooper Bowman to the Athletics, per announcements from both clubs. Cincinnati’s 40-man roster count drops to 39. Bowman does not need to go onto the 40-man roster with the A’s.
Bowman, 25, was initially drafted by the Yankees but was one of four players who came to the A’s via the August 2022 trade that sent Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Bronx. After that deal, he posted some decent Double-A numbers but struggled in his first taste of Triple-A.
He appeared in 152 minor league games from the start of 2023 through July 28 of 2024, mostly at Double-A but with four Complex League games in there as well. In his 705 plate appearances during that stretch, he walked at an 11.8% clip and kept his strikeouts down to a decent 20.9% pace. His combined .272/.369/.450 batting line led to a 125 wRC+. He also stole 73 bases in 81 tries and lined up defensively mostly at second base but with stints at third base, shortstop and center field.
He was promoted to Triple-A for the final few weeks of the 2024 season and struggled, hitting just .218/.284/.308 in a 38-game sample. But with the speed, defensive versatility and the decent offense at Double-A, the Reds perhaps saw enough for Bowman to carve out a utility role at the big league level, so they nabbed him in the Rule 5 draft.
That gave him a chance to break camp and make his major league debut but Bowman hit .120/.267/.120 in his 30 plate appearances this spring. That’s a small sample size but was apparently enough for the Reds to change course. Per Rule 5 regulations, the Reds would have had to keep Bowman on the big league roster all year or else put him on waivers. Any claiming club would have been bound by the same rules as the Reds, so it appears no other club was willing to give him a 40-man spot. Bowman will instead return to the A’s and give them some extra non-roster depth.
Blue Jays Re-Sign Dillon Tate
March 12: The Jays officially announced their signing of Tate today. Bastardo was transferred to the 60-day IL as the corresponding move. Shi Davidi and Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet report report that Tate’s deal is a split contract that pays him at a $1.4MM rate in the majors and includes bonuses of $50K for reaching 45 and 50 games pitched.
Since Tate is on a split deal and has a minor league option remaining, he can be sent to Triple-A Buffalo without first needing to clear waivers — at least for the time being. He’s at 4.144 years of major league service, placing him just 28 days away from the five-year mark. Once players reach five years of MLB service time, they can’t be optioned without their consent.
March 10: The Blue Jays and right-hander Dillon Tate have agreed to a major league deal, pending a physical, reports Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet. The details of the deal for the CAA Sports client have not yet been publicly reported. The Jays will have to open a 40-man roster spot but could easily do so by moving Alek Manoah or Angel Bastardo, who both had Tommy John surgery last June, to the 60-day injured list.
Tate, 31 in May, was with Toronto briefly at the end of last year. The Jays claimed him off waivers from the Orioles on the first day of September. They optioned him to Triple-A, recalling him to the majors on September 18. He made four appearances with the big league club as the season was winding down. The Jays could have retained him via arbitration, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting a $1.9MM salary, but the club non-tendered him instead.
Prior to that brief stint with the Jays, Tate’s journey had many ups and downs. One of the top names going into the 2015 draft, the Rangers took him with the fourth overall pick. Initially a top prospect, his stock wobbled a bit with some health woes. The Rangers flipped him to the Yankees in the August 2016 trade that sent Carlos Beltrán to Texas. He posted some decent numbers in the Yankees’ system but also missed time with shoulder troubles. He was then traded to the Orioles as part of the July 2018 trade that sent Zack Britton to the Yankees.
Tate was with the Orioles for the six-plus years from that Britton trade to being claimed off waivers by the Jays. Though he had been a starting pitching prospect, the O’s moved him to a relief role, perhaps in response to the injuries he had already been battling. Since then, he has occasionally shown flashes of potential as a reliever but the health woes have continued to get in the way.
From 2019 to 2022, Tate logged 179 innings out of the Baltimore bullpen. His 19.4% strikeout rate in that time was subpar but he limited walks to a 7.2% rate and also got ground balls at an excellent 58.1% clip. Among pitchers with at least 170 innings in that time frame, only Clay Holmes, Framber Valdez, Richard Bleier and Josh Fleming kept the ball on the ground at a better rate.
However, a forearm/flexor strain kept Tate on the IL for the entire 2023 season. He returned to the mound last season with his results backing up a bit. He tossed 36 2/3 innings between the orange and blue birds, with a 4.66 ERA. His strikeout rate and ground ball rate fell to 16.5% and 49.6% respectively. His fastball velocity, which averaged as high as 95.5 miles per hour in 2021, was down to just 92.6 mph last year.
Amid those struggles, both the Orioles and Jays sent him to the minors at times. He had better results down there, tossing 21 2/3 Triple-A innings with a 2.08 ERA, 23% strikeout rate and 4.6% walk rate, though his 41.4% ground ball rate still wasn’t up to his usual standards.
For the Jays, it’s a fairly low-risk deal. The cost hasn’t yet been reported but is likely something barely above the league minimum and might even be a split deal of some kind. Tate still has an option remaining, so he can be kept in Triple-A as bullpen depth, at least for a little while. His service time count is at four years and 144 days. That puts him 28 days shy of the five-year mark, at which point he would have the right to refuse an optional assignment.
The Toronto bullpen may be taking a hit this spring, with Erik Swanson getting tested for some elbow discomfort. Assuming Swanson starts the season on the IL, the Jays project to have a bullpen core of Jeff Hoffman, Yimi García, Chad Green and Nick Sandlin, leaving four spots potentially available. It’s possible that Yariel Rodríguez could end up in a relief role if Bowden Francis takes the final rotation spot. The Jays likely want a lefty in there, which could be Brendon Little, Josh Walker or Easton Lucas. Guys like Tommy Nance, Zach Pop and Ryan Burr are out of options, though Burr has been delayed by a shoulder injury.
Nick Robertson is also on the 40-man but has options. Adding Tate to the roster gives the Jays another optionable righty for the time being. His past prospect pedigree and strong big league results from 2019-22 give him a bit more intrigue than many optionable depth arms. If Tate can stick on the roster all year, he will be shy of six years of service, meaning the Jays could then retain him for 2026 via arbitration.
Rangers Sign Hunter Strickland To Minor League Deal
The Rangers announced Wednesday that they’ve signed veteran right-handed reliever Hunter Strickland to a minor league deal with an invitation to big league camp. The All Bases Covered client will be reunited with his first big league skipper, Bruce Bochy, who managed him as a rookie with the 2014 Giants.
Strickland, 36, has had a rollercoaster run in terms of year-to-year performance recently, but he’s coming off a strong season with the Angels. Last year, the right-hander tossed a career-high 73 1/3 innings for the Halos and recorded a tidy 3.31 earned run average in that time.
Strickland’s 19.4% strikeout rate was lower than average and the 22.2% mark he carried into the 2024 campaign, but he turned in a solid 8.2% walk rate and did a nice job avoiding hard contact. Opponents averaged 88.9 mph off the bat against him and logged a 35.5% hard-hit rate. Strickland has long been adept at inducing harmless infield flies, and that continued in 2024 when 16% of his fly-balls were of the infield variety. That’s a good bit higher than the league-average 10% and generally tracks with Strickland’s career rate dating back to 2017 (15.7%).
While Strickland has had some rough seasons throughout his career, he’s been good far more often than he’s been ineffective. He touts a 3.40 ERA in his career and a 3.61 mark across the past three seasons. His heater has dropped a good bit from the 98 mph he averaged early in his career, sitting at 94.5 mph in Anaheim last year, but Strickland has generally remained a solid middle relief arm.
The Rangers have completely overhauled their bullpen this offseason, bidding farewell to Kirby Yates, Jose Leclerc, Andrew Chafin and, presumably, David Robertson. While Robertson remains unsigned, the Rangers are about $4.5MM shy of the luxury tax threshold, per RosterResource, and ownership appears loath to cross that mark once again.
In place of that departed quartet, Texas has acquired Robert Garcia from the Nationals (in exchange for Nate Lowe) and signed free agents Chris Martin, Hoby Milner, Shawn Armstrong, Jacob Webb and Luke Jackson to small big league deals ranging from $5.5MM guaranteed (Martin) to $1.25MM (Webb, Armstrong).
Strickland will compete with fellow non-roster vets like Jesse Chavez and JT Chargois as he vies for a spot in Bochy’s bullpen. He’s an Article XX(b) free agent (i.e. six years of service, finished the prior season on a major league roster/injured list), meaning that his minor league deal will have three uniform opt-out dates included by default: five days before Opening Day (March 22), May 1 and June 1.
White Sox Sign Travis Jankowski To Minor League Deal
The White Sox announced this morning that they’ve signed veteran outfielder Travis Jankowski to a minor league contract. The Excel Sports client will head straight to big league camp. He’d been with the Cubs on a minor league pact for the early portion of spring training. While the Cubs didn’t make any formal announcement about Jankowski’s release or him opting out of that deal, he’s clearly parted ways with Chicago’s north-side squad as they travel to Tokyo for next week’s series against the Dodgers.
Jankowski, 33, had a solid year with the Rangers in 2023 as the fourth outfielder on their World Series-winning roster. He appeared in 107 games, tallied 287 turns at the plate and delivered a respectable .263/.357/.332 batting line (97 wRC+) to go along with quality baserunning and glovework. He wasn’t able to follow up on that in a return effort with Texas in 2024; Jankowski played in 104 games last year but hit just .200/.266/.242 in 207 plate appearances.
Dating back to his 2015 MLB debut in San Diego, Jankowski has appeared in parts of ten straight big league seasons, suiting up for the Padres, Reds, Phillies, Mets, Mariners and Rangers along the way. He’s a lifetime .236/.319/.305 hitter with good speed who can handle all three spots in the outfield.
Jankowski will give the White Sox some outfield depth at a time when at least two members of their expected Opening Day roster are now slated for the injured list. Left fielder Andrew Benintendi suffered a broken hand when he was hit by a pitch earlier in Cactus League play. That injury will keep him off the field through at least the end of camp and possibly into mid-April. He’ll then need a rehab assignment. Reserve outfielder Austin Slater, who inked a one-year deal in free agency, is dealing with an oblique strain suffered last week. The Sox estimated he’d be out of game action for two to three weeks, leaving a season-opening IL placement a real possibility.
Jankowski is a known commodity for new White Sox skipper Will Venable, who was on the Rangers’ coaching staff for each of the past two seasons. He’ll compete for at-bats in left field or off the bench. Luis Robert Jr. is slated to man center field, with offseason signee Mike Tauchman in right. The ChiSox also signed Michael A. Taylor as a glove-first option off the bench. Other outfielders on the 40-man roster include Dominic Fletcher and Oscar Colas. Joey Gallo, Corey Julks and Cal Mitchell are among the other non-roster outfielders in camp.
Willie Calhoun, Carl Edwards Jr. Sign In Mexican League
The Tigers de Quintana Roo in the Mexican League have recently added a pair of former big leaguers. Designated hitter Willie Calhoun signed with the team tonight, according to an MiLB.com article. The team also announced on social media last night they’re bringing in reliever Carl Edwards Jr.
Calhoun and Edwards each appeared in the majors last season. The lefty-hitting Calhoun played in 68 games for the Angels. He hit .245/.315/.380 with five homers through 254 plate appearances. That brings his career batting line to .241/.303/.399 in more than 1300 trips to the dish. That’s underwhelming for a player whose game is built entirely around his bat. Calhoun can occasionally play at first base or in the corner outfield, but he’s close to a full-time DH.
Edwards, a 33-year-old reliever, pitched in one game for the Padres last year. He issued two walks and allowed a hit without recording an out. That qualified for the lanky righty’s 10th consecutive season getting some big league action. Edwards turned in decent results in middle relief with the Cubs and Nationals earlier in his career. He owns a 3.54 ERA across 280 big league innings. Edwards spent most of last season in the minors, where he combined for a 4.11 ERA in 70 innings between the Cubs’ and Padres’ systems.
Nick Senzel Signs With Mexican League’s Tecolotes De Los Dos Laredos
Infielder/outfielder Nick Senzel has signed with the Tecolotes De Los Dos Laredos of the Mexican League, reports Daniel Álvarez-Montes of El Extrabase. Senzel is represented by the Boras Corporation.
Senzel, 30 in June, was once a notable prospect but he wasn’t able to take advantage of his major league opportunities. The Reds selected him with the second overall pick in the 2016 draft and he posted huge numbers in the minors, slashing .314/.390/.513 over the 2016-18 seasons. Baseball America ranked him as Cincinnati’s top prospect and one of the ten best league-wide from 2017 to 2019.
That got him plenty of big league chances, which he never was able to capitalize on. The Reds gave him fairly regular playing time from 2019 through 2023. Injuries limited him to just 23 games in 2020 and 36 in 2021 but he got into at least 104 contests in the other three seasons of that stretch.
By the end of the 2023 campaign, he had 1,366 big league plate appearances but just 33 home runs, a 7.6% walk rate and a .239/.302/.369 slash line. His 76 wRC+ in that span indicates he was 24% worse than league average on the whole. An infielder as a prospect, the Reds had moved him around and given him some outfield time to improve his versatility, but it didn’t matter much with that lackluster offensive performance and he didn’t get strong defensive grades anywhere either.
Going into 2024, the Reds moved on. They declined to tender him a contract for that season, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting a $3MM salary, sending Senzel to free agency instead. He signed a $2MM deal with the Nationals with the plan of Senzel taking over as the everyday third baseman in Washington.
Unfortunately, he broke his thumb prior to the game on Opening Day and missed the first couple of weeks. He returned in mid-April and then slashed .209/.303/.359 in 64 games as a Nat. He was designated for assignment in early July. He then signed with the White Sox but hit just .100/.129/.133 in ten games for them. He was designated for assignment and back in free agency before the end of August. He remained unsigned until now.
It seems as though Senzel didn’t get a major league offer from any club, which isn’t surprising based on his numbers. He’ll instead head to Mexico to join the Tecolotes and see if he can turn things around. Based on his past prospect pedigree, teams will surely keep an eye on him to see if his results improve. If that comes to pass, perhaps he could return to affiliated ball down the line.
Reds Option Noelvi Marté
The Reds announced a series of camp cuts today, the most notable being that infielder Noelvi Marté has been optioned to Triple-A Louisville. They also optioned right-handers Yosver Zulueta and Connor Phillips as well as infielder/outfielder Tyler Callihan ad outfielder Rece Hinds.
The news isn’t especially surprising but highlights how far Marté’s stock has fallen in the past year. He had been a top 100 prospect for years as he ascended the minor leagues and then had a torrid start to his big league career. The Reds, who acquired the prospect as part of the July 2022 trade that sent Luis Castillo to Seattle, first promoted Marté in the middle of August 2023. He took 123 plate appearances as that season was winding down, hitting .316/.366/.456.
That was inflated by a .384 batting average on balls in play that didn’t make it seem wholly sustainable, but Marté was only 21 years old at the time and had a lengthy track record of hitting in the minors. While some regression may have been expected, it was nonetheless hoped that he could take the third base job in Cincinnati and run with it.
Unfortunately, it’s been all downhill since then. Marté was hit with an 80-game suspension just over a year ago, on March 8 of 2024, after testing positive for the performance-enhancing substance Boldenone. He was reinstated in late June last year but hit a dismal .210/.248/.301 for the Reds after that. His 3.7% walk rate and 31% strikeout rate last year were both awful numbers. He has received 22 plate appearances this spring, striking out in 36.4% of those while only walking at a 4.5% clip, leading to a .150/.182/.400 line.
The Reds understandably don’t feel they can rely on Marté to face big league pitching right now, so he’ll head to minors and try to get back on track. For what it’s worth, the strikeout and walk profile was far better until recently. From 2019 to 2023, he stepped to the plate 1,729 times in the minors. He walked in 11% of those and was only punched out at a 20.2% clip. In the majors in 2023, his 6.5% walk rate was a bit below average but his 20.3% strikeout rate was solid.
It’s only been since the PED suspension that Marté has had such pronounced struggles at the plate. While it’s clearly been a rough year, he is still young, having just turned 23 in October. Perhaps being away from the big-league spotlight can help him get right again. In terms of service time, he didn’t collect any while suspended and is currently at 139 days, a bit shy of the one-year mark. He’ll get over that one-year line if he is recalled for at least 33 days during the 2025 season.
As for the third base job in Cincinnati, MLBTR recently took a look at some of the options. It’s possible that Jeimer Candelario ends up taking the bulk of the playing time there, but he could also be at first base or in the designated hitter slot. That could allow for players like Gavin Lux, Christian Encarnacion-Strand or Santiago Espinal to get some time there as well.
A’s Sign Lawrence Butler To Seven-Year Extension
March 10: The A’s made it official today, announcing they have signed Butler to a seven-year extension plus a club option for 2032.
March 7: Butler’s deal will pay him a $3MM signing bonus and $2.25MM in 2025, Evan Drellich of The Athletic reports. He’ll then earn salaries of $3.25MM, $5MM, $8MM, $10MM, $14MM and $16MM from 2026-31. The Athletics’ option checks in at $20MM and comes with a $4MM buyout. The contract also contains escalators that can push the option value north to $26MM, per the report. In all, Butler can max out at $87.5MM over eight years if he hits all those escalators and the option is picked up.
March 6: The A’s are in agreement with right fielder Lawrence Butler on a seven-year, $65.5MM extension, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. There’s a club option for an eighth season. The contract buys out at least two free agent seasons, while the option covers a third would-be free agent year. The team has yet to announce the signing, which is pending a physical. Butler is represented by CAA Sports.
A sixth-round pick out of high school in 2018, Butler struggled over his first couple minor league seasons. Things clicked for him in Low-A in 2021, and he continued to hit his way up the ladder. The lefty hitter reached the majors in 2023 and hit .211 over his first 42 games. While he got out to another relatively slow start last year, a monster second half demonstrated his potential.
Butler raked at a .300/.345/.553 clip with 13 homers and 32 extra-base hits after the All-Star Break. Among qualified hitters, he ranked 10th in wRC+ over that stretch. The nine more productive batters in the second half are stars: Aaron Judge, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bobby Witt Jr., Yordan Alvarez, Juan Soto, Shohei Ohtani, Francisco Lindor, Jackson Merrill, and teammate Brent Rooker.
It’s impressive company, though it’s worth noting that Eugenio Suárez and Gavin Lux were among those closely behind Butler in second-half production. Three months is still a relatively small sample size. Butler went into last year’s All-Star Break as a career .205/.260/.337 hitter. He had fanned in almost 30% of his plate appearances to that point. He sliced the strikeouts to a tidy 19.8% clip in the second half. The whiffs began to creep back up in September, though he still managed a .280/.330/.409 in the season’s final month.
The A’s believe he’ll build off that strong finish. Butler ended the season with a .262/.317/.490 slash across 451 plate appearances. He hit 22 homers and went a perfect 18-18 on stolen base attempts. While most of his playing time came against right-handed pitching, he more than held his own in unfavorable platoon settings. Butler hit .291 with five homers in 89 plate appearances against southpaws.
Butler led off for Mark Kotsay throughout the second half. He has sufficient on-base skills to hit atop the lineup or the power to slot into the order’s middle third. He’s an effective baserunner who’ll play every day in right field. Statcast and Defensive Runs Saved each graded him as a league average defender over 955 1/3 innings. Butler has solid speed and arm strength, so he probably has the tools to be an above-average corner outfield defender. He started 32 games in center field as a rookie, but he only played four MLB innings there last season. JJ Bleday will play up the middle on most days.
The A’s had Butler under club control for five seasons. He wasn’t on track to reach arbitration for another two years. There have been a few recent extensions for hitters in that 1-2 year service bucket. The Pirates inked third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes to an eight-year, $70MM guarantee in 2022. The Rockies signed a seven-year, $63.5MM extension with shortstop Ezequiel Tovar last spring. The Nationals hammered out an eight-year, $50MM agreement with catcher Keibert Ruiz two seasons ago.
Butler has shown a higher offensive ceiling than all those players had at the time of their deals. They’d each been top prospects and played more valuable positions, though. Tovar and Hayes were already plus defenders. Butler’s deal puts him alongside the Hayes and Tovar contracts. That’s a reasonable landing spot. Butler locks in a significant sum that hedges against injury or regression. The A’s buy into his breakout relatively early. If they’d waited until next offseason, another strong season would probably have pushed Butler’s asking price beyond nine figures.
The A’s have now signed three of the four largest contracts in franchise history over the past few months. Their three-year, $67MM free agent deal with Luis Severino stands as their biggest ever. They signed Rooker to a five-year, $60MM extension with a sixth-year club option. As shown on MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, this is the first time the A’s have extended a pre-arbitration player since their $10MM deal with Sean Doolittle in April 2014.
The spike in spending has coincided with the franchise’s three-year move to Sacramento. They’ve reportedly needed to get their competitive balance tax number to $105MM in order to avoid a grievance from the MLB Players Association regarding their use of revenue sharing funds. They’d already achieved that between deals for Severino, Rooker, and reliever José Leclerc, as well as the trade for starter Jeffrey Springs.
Butler joins Rooker as the only players under contract through at least 2028, the scheduled opening of their Las Vegas ballpark. The option extends their control window through 2032. Butler would hit free agency after his age-31 season if they exercise the option.
It’s possible this is the first of a handful of spring deals for the A’s. General manager David Forst told Evan Drellich of The Athletic last month that the team had opened talks with multiple players. MLBTR highlighted a few of their extension candidates in a post for Front Office subscribers last week.
Image courtesy of Imagn.
Tigers Sign José Urquidy
The Tigers have signed free agent right-hander José Urquidy to a one-year, $1MM contract for 2025, the team announced. The deal comes with a $4MM team option for 2026. That team option also includes escalators that could increase Urquidy’s salary by up to $3MM. He will earn an additional $150K for reaching each of four and seven starts; $300K for reaching each of 10, 13, 16, and 19 starts; and $500K for reaching each of 22, 25, and 28 starts.
To free up space for Urquidy on the 40-man roster, the Tigers placed fellow right-hander Sawyer Gipson-Long on the 60-day injured list while he continues to recover from left hip labral repair and Tommy John surgery. The team has also placed Urquidy on the 60-day IL; he is recovering from Tommy John surgery of his own.
Urquidy spent the first six years of his MLB career with the Astros. While he looked like a solid mid-rotation starter in 2021 and ’22 (3.81 ERA, 4.22 SIERA in 49 games), the righty had a rough year in 2023. He struggled out of the gate in April before landing on the IL with shoulder troubles. His struggles continued upon his return in August, and he soon lost his spot in the starting rotation.
Unfortunately, Urquidy’s troubles only got worse in 2024. He opened the season on the injured list and eventually required UCL surgery in June. After clearing waivers in November, he elected free agency.
Urquidy will not be ready to return to action until midseason at the earliest, so he will not factor into the ongoing rotation battle in Tigers camp. Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, and Reese Olson are locks for the Opening Day rotation, and top prospect Jackson Jobe has the inside track on the number four spot, according to Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press. However, with Alex Cobb expected to miss the beginning of the season, one spot at the back end is still up for grabs. Casey Mize, Kenta Maeda, and Keider Montero are the primary candidates to win that job.
Meanwhile, Urquidy will continue his rehab in the Tigers organization. Once he is ready to get back on the field, he can provide depth as a back-end starter or long reliever. In a best-case scenario, Urquidy returns and looks like his old self, which would make his club option for 2026 a bargain. Meanwhile, the worst possible outcome for the Tigers is that they pay him $1MM to rehab in 2025 and cut their losses at the end of the year if he struggles or fails to get back on the mound.
Ari Alexander of KPRC 2 was the first to report the agreement between Urquidy and the Tigers. Chris McCosky of the Detroit News confirmed that it was a major league deal.