D’Backs Exercise Option On Kelly, Decline Option On McGough; Pederson Declines Mutual Option
The Diamondbacks will be exercising their $7MM club option on Merrill Kelly for the 2025 season, according to Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. The team will also be declining their end of a $4MM mutual option on right-hander Scott McGough, as McGough will head into free agency with a $750K buyout. He’ll be joined by Joc Pederson, who took a $3MM buyout after declining his end of a $14MM mutual option for the 2025 campaign.
All three decisions were expected, even with Kelly missing over half of the season due to a teres major strain. The right-hander was limited to 73 2/3 innings over 13 starts, with a 4.03 ERA and some pretty unimpressive Statcast numbers, save for a solid 6.3% walk rate.
Assuming good health for Kelly next year, however, the $6MM decision (there was a $1MM buyout attached) was still an easy one for Arizona to make, given how well he has generally pitched over his six seasons in a Diamondbacks uniform. Kelly didn’t make his MLB debut until age 30, after the D’Backs signed him to return to North America after a successful four-season run in the KBO League. Over the course of two separate contracts with Arizona, Kelly has now earned $37.5MM over a seven-year span since returning from South Korea.
The D’Backs were hoping for more reclamation success when they signed McGough to a two-year, $6.25MM deal in the 2022-23 offseason, as McGough had pitched well over four seasons with the Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball. Unfortunately, McGough posted a 4.73 ERA in 70 1/3 innings out of Arizona’s bullpen in 2023, and then a 7.44 ERA in 32 2/3 frames this season. The right-hander’s home run and walk rates were constant issues, while McGough’s strikeout rate also plummeted from 28.6% in 2023 to just 16.7% this season.
Pederson almost exclusively faced right-handed pitching this season, and was utilized only as a designated hitter. Albeit within this limited scope, Pederson enjoyed a monster year, hitting .275/.393/.515 with 23 homers over 449 plate appearances. Among all position-player free agents, only six posted a higher fWAR than Pederson’s 3.0 mark in 2024, and only Juan Soto had a higher wRC+ than Pederson’s 151.
While Pederson resisted being a full-time platoon player or DH earlier in his career, embracing his specialist role has obvious upside, and could lead to another nice payday as he enters his age-33 season. No shortage of teams could use Pederson’s power, and a return to the D’Backs is certainly a possibility given how well the veteran slugger performed in his first season in Arizona. Randal Grichuk also declined his end of a mutual option, leaving the Diamondbacks without both pieces of their unofficial lefty-righty platoon. Depending on the asking prices, the D’Backs could perhaps look to re-sign one of Pederson or Grichuk, and then look another complementary bat to fill the other side of the virtual platoon.
Cubs Decline Option On Drew Smyly
The Cubs have declined their end of a $10MM mutual option on left-hander Drew Smyly, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. He’ll be paid a $2.5MM buyout and return to the free agent market.
Smyly, 35, pitched to a 3.84 ERA in 58 2/3 innings over 50 relief appearances with the Cubs this past season, but that solid earned run average was accompanied by more worrying rate stats. The southpaw’s strikeout rate dipped to 21.8% while his walk rate spiked to a 9.7% mark that stands as the second-worst of his career. He also yielded an average of 1.53 homers per nine innings pitched and surrendered his highest hard-hit rate (38.2%) and average exit velocity (89.2 mph) since 2020. His 11.3% swinging-strike rate was his lowest since 2019.
When the Cubs signed Smyly, they did so with an eye toward a potential rotation spot. He indeed started 23 games for them in 2023, the first season of his two-year $19MM pact, but he didn’t make a single appearance out of the rotation in 2024. Chicago’s rotation mix includes Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon, Javier Assad, Ben Brown, Hayden Wesneski and Jordan Wicks, with promising prospect Cade Horton on the horizon. Allocating $10MM to a swingman coming off diminished strikeout/walk rates and with ongoing home run issues wasn’t something on which the team was keen, clearly.
Be that as it may, Smyly should find another big league deal in free agency. He has extensive experience both as a starter and reliever, so a club with some uncertainty in the fourth or fifth spot of the rotation could look to Smyly as an affordable early-season rotation piece who could move to the ‘pen if younger arms force the issue. Other teams might simply view Smyly as an intriguing option in a market light on quality left-handed relievers.
Orioles Decline Club Option On Eloy Jiménez
The Orioles announced that they have declined their club option on outfielder/designated hitter Eloy Jiménez. They could have retained him for 2025 with a salary of $16.5MM but will instead give him a $3MM buyout and send him to free agency. The Sox are covering half of that buyout as part of the trade that sent him to Baltimore this summer.
The decision is an unsurprising one. Jiménez has occasionally been a potent slugger but the injuries have piled up in recent years and he just wrapped up the worst season of his career. The Orioles acquired him from the White Sox at the deadline, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with a buy-low move but it didn’t pan out. He finished the year with a .238/.289/.336 batting line and 78 wRC+.
Jiménez is one of the slower players in the league and doesn’t provide defensive value. He only spent eight innings in the field this year, none with the Orioles. Given the limited profile, he really needs to be producing at the plate in order to be useful.
That has been the case before. Through the end of 2022, he was sporting a career line of .276/.327/.504 and a 123 wRC+. He was often injured during that time but clearly a productive hitter when on the field. The Sox had given him a $43MM extension before he even made his major league debut and he seemed to be making good on that investment for a while.
In 2023, he stayed healthy enough to get into 120 games, just two shy of his career high. But the results dipped, as his .272/.317/.441 line led to a 105 wRC+. As mentioned, his performance fell even further this year. As the Sox were playing out their historically bad season this year, they flipped him to the O’s at the deadline for minor league reliever Trey McGough, covering most of the money left on the contract in order to get the deal done.
Now a free agent, some club will undoubtedly take a chance on Jiménez based on his past performance. But his poor health track record and recent struggles will limit him to a modest base salary, perhaps with incentives for him to potentially unlock if he’s able to stay healthy and return to form. He is still fairly young, turning 28 later this month, so a bounceback isn’t totally out of the question.
Yankees Decline Club Option On Anthony Rizzo
The Yankees announced that they have declined their 2025 club option on Anthony Rizzo, and the veteran first baseman is now a free agent. It was an $11MM decision for the team, as Rizzo will receive a $6MM buyout instead of the $17MM salary he would’ve received if the option had been exercised.
The move probably ends Rizzo’s tenure of three-plus seasons in the Bronx, which began after he was a trade deadline pickup from the Cubs in July 2021. He hit well enough that the Yankees re-signed him to a two-year, $32MM deal that winter, and since that deal contained an opt-out clause after the first season, Rizzo parlayed that opt-out into another two-year, $40MM pact the following offseason.
Rizzo’s 2022 season was easily his best in New York, as he hit .224/.338/.480 with 32 homers over 548 plate appearances. He was also off to a hot start in the first two months of the 2023 campaign before his career was altered by a collision at first base with Fernando Tatis Jr. on May 28, 2023. Rizzo picked up what was deemed as a neck injury on the play and returned to action after sitting out a few games, yet he then went into a brutal slump over the next two-plus months until finally going on the IL at the start of August. Rizzo was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, which naturally led to quite a bit of controversy over how Rizzo was both misdiagnosed in the first place, and why his head-related injury went seemingly unnoticed for so long.
That IL placement ended Rizzo’s 2023 season, and he returned to more bad injury luck this year when he fractured his right forearm after another awkward collision at first base in June. Rizzo went on the 60-day injured list and didn’t return until the start of September, and he then suffered further injury when he had two fingers broken by a Ryan Borucki pitch near the end of the regular season. The broken fingers kept Rizzo out of the Yankees’ ALDS matchup with the Royals, though he returned to hit a respectable .267/.421/.300 over 38 PA in the ALCS and World Series.
Since Opening Day 2023, Rizzo has hit only .237/.315/.358 over 796 regular-season plate appearances, over 191 of 324 games. His translates to 0.6 fWAR and a below-average 91 wRC+, and since Rizzo turned 35 last August, it made for a pretty easy call for the Yankees in declining the option.
The health question is clearly paramount for Rizzo as he returns to the open market, as possible suitors will surely have concerns of what Rizzo still has in the tank after 14 Major League seasons. His track record and respected locker room presence probably means that he should be able to land some kind of big league contract for a low guaranteed salary, if likely as a platoon bat rather than a regular at first base. A return to the Yankees at a lower salary seems possible, but the likelier scenario is that New York either fortifies the lineup with a bigger bat at first base, or perhaps rotates DJ LeMahieu and others through the position.
Sean Manaea To Opt Out Of Mets Contract
Left-hander Sean Manaea is planning to opt out of the second year of his contract with the Mets, MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo writes (X link). Manaea signed a two-year, $28MM free agent deal with New York last winter that contained the player option for the 2025 season, and he’ll now leave $13.5MM on the table in search of a longer and more lucrative guarantee this offseason. He’s a virtual lock to receive a $21.05MM qualifying offer but is overwhelmingly likely to decline that in his pursuit of a longer-term pact.
Manaea’s decision comes as little surprise. The two-year pact he inked in Queens came in his second free agency foray. Since first reaching the open market on the heels of the 2022 season, he’s signed a pair of two-year contracts with opt-outs after year one, showing willingness to bet on himself and the confidence that he’ll eventually land a longer-term contract. Given the strength of his 2024 campaign, he’s now likely to find a guarantee of at least three years in free agency.
Entering the 2024 season, Manaea was viewed as something of a veteran stabilizer for the Mets’ rotation. New York’s president of baseball operations, David Stearns, made a series of short-term acquisitions in the rotation — Luis Severino also inked a one-year deal, and Adrian Houser was acquired from the Brewers — in an effort to patch things over in what most expected to be a transitional year for the Mets. Instead, the Amazins romped through the season’s final four months as the sport’s hottest team and rode that momentum all the way to the NLCS.
Manaea’s success was a huge part of that run. The 6’5″, 245-pound southpaw pitched a career-high 181 2/3 innings in the regular season and worked to a sharp 3.47 ERA. He fanned one quarter of his opponents, issued walks at a solid 8.5% clip and deftly avoided home runs (1.04 HR/9). Solid as the year-long numbers were, it was the second half where Manaea truly took off. Manaea altered his throwing motion midseason — closely resembling the delivery of likely NL Cy Young winner Chris Sale — and at the suggestion of pitching coach Jeremy Hefner began a unique pregame workout wherein he throws to the opposite mound in the bullpen while warming (X link, with video, via Steve Gelbs of SNY).
The transformation was nearly immediate. Over the final two-plus months of the year, Manaea pitched to a 3.09 ERA with an improved 28.5% strikeout rate against a 6.2% walk rate. He ditched his cutter entirely and eventually ditched his four-seamer as well, all in the name of throwing more sinkers and sliders. Opponents had averaged 89.2 mph off the bat against him prior to the changes and posted a 40.8% hard-hit rate, per Statcast. Down the stretch, those numbers plummeted to 87.5 mph and 32.4%, respectively. Manaea’s excellence carried on through three postseason starts, but he finally ran into a wall in the Mets’ final game of the year, surrendering five runs in just two innings in the decisive Game 6 loss to the eventual World Champion Dodgers.
In free agency, Manaea will market not only a career-high workload (200-plus innings, including the postseason) but also newly altered mechanics and a tweaked repertoire that led to his late-season surge. He’ll turn 33 in February, which will make anything longer than a four-year deal extraordinarily unlikely, but a three- or four-year pact at a strong annual value should be on the table. The Mets are in the market for multiple starting pitchers and will surely have interest in retaining the big lefty, but Manaea will command interest from a broad range of suitors. He’s one of the top starters on the market this time around, but his age will prevent him from landing the type of long-term deal from which many clubs shy away.
Emilio Pagan Exercises Player Option With Reds
The Reds announced that right-hander Emilio Pagan has exercised his $8MM player option for the 2025 season. Pagan inked a two-year, $16MM contract with Cincinnati last winter that included an opt-out clause after the first season, and the reliever has chosen to forego a $250K buyout and a return trip to free agency.
There wasn’t much suspense in Pagan’s decision, as he missed just short of three months of the 2024 season due to a lat strain. The injury limited to Pagan to 38 innings in as many appearances, marking the lowest career total in either category for Pagan during any of his seven regulation-length MLB seasons (Pagan tossed 22 innings in 22 games during the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign).
Pagan’s first season in Cincinnati saw him post a 4.50 ERA, but a much more impressive 3.19 SIERA. An inflated .351 BABIP undermined some solidly above-average strikeout (28.1%) and walk (7%) rates, though Pagan did allow a lot of hard contact. Even with this favorable set of advanced metrics, it makes a lot of sense that the 33-year-old Pagan would prefer to lock in $7.75MM of extra guaranteed salary rather than test the market on the heels of what he surely views as a middling platform year.
Pagan’s bottom-line results haven’t always been consistent, though he isn’t far removed from a strong 2023 campaign (with the Twins) that helped him land that $16MM deal in the first place. It isn’t a coincidence that Pagan’s 2023 season included by far the lowest home run rate (5.3%) of his career, as the righty has long had difficulty in keeping the ball in the park. Those issues returned with a 12.5% homer rate in 2024, just slightly bettering his 12.8% career mark.
With Pagan returning and Brent Suter signed to a new contract, the Reds’ bullpen will have some familiar faces back, even if Buck Farmer and swingmen Nick Martinez and Jakob Junis are now all heading for free agency. Getting Alexis Diaz back on track is surely the Reds’ top bullpen concern heading into 2025, though having Pagan stay healthy and deliver his usual type of innings-eating season will surely also help.
Blake Snell Opts Out Of Deal With Giants
Left-hander Blake Snell has exercised the opt-out provision in his contract and is now a free agent. Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic was among those to relay the news on X.
The news is not at all surprising. Snell was a free agent a year ago and didn’t find the contract he was seeking, despite the fact that he was coming off a Cy Young campaign in 2023.
He eventually signed with the Giants on a two-year pact with a $62MM guarantee. That came in the form of a $15MM salary and $17MM signing bonus for 2024, with a $30MM salary for 2025 if Snell stayed.
The opt-out after the first year was clearly there to give Snell a chance to take another shot at free agency if he could stay healthy and engineer another strong season in 2024.
For a while, it seemed like that wasn’t going to come to pass. Perhaps due to the fact that he didn’t sign until the middle of March and had a delayed spring training, he stumbled out of the gate in 2024 and also suffered a few injuries. At the end of June, he was on the injured list for the second time, the first one labeled as a left adductor strain and the second as a left groin strain. He had a 9.51 earned run average in the six starts he was able to make.
But he came back shortly after that and was completely dominant the rest of the way. He posted a 1.23 ERA in his final 14 starts of the year. His 10% walk rate was a tad high but he struck out 38.1% of batters faced.
Snell has had a few injury absences over the years but has continually demonstrated himself to be one of the best pitchers on the planet when on the mound. From 2018 until the present day, he has a 3.03 ERA and 32.1% strikeout rate, both of which are top ten numbers among qualified starters for that stretch. Among pitchers with at least 250 innings pitched over the past two years, only Tarik Skubal has a lower ERA than Snell’s 2.57 mark. Snell’s 32.7% strikeout rate in that time is also second best, a hair below Tyler Glasnow‘s 32.8% rate.
Given that elite performance, it was widely expected that Snell would return to free agency in the hopes of a finding a more robust market this time around. He will be one of the top starting pitchers available alongside Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty. Snell is leaving $30MM on the table but should be able to blow past that with a nine-figure deal of some kind.
Giants Outright Donovan Walton
The Giants outrighted infielder Donovan Walton off their 40-man roster, tweets Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area. The utilityman has multiple career outrights and has the right to elect free agency.
San Francisco called Walton up as a stopgap utility player in September. He appeared in nine games, hitting .136 with one homer. The left-handed hitter has been a depth option in San Francisco for three seasons. The Giants initially acquired Walton in a small trade with Seattle in May 2022. They’ve shuttled him through waivers and continued to bring him back on minor league contracts over that stretch.
A former 5th-round pick by the Mariners, Walton has 70 MLB appearances over parts of five seasons. He’s a .174/.227/.305 hitter over 205 career plate appearances. Walton had a nice year in Triple-A Sacramento, running a .306/.380/.441 slash with nearly as many walks as strikeouts over 99 games. He has a solid offensive track record in parts of four Triple-A campaigns. Walton can play throughout the infield and should find another minor league contract if he elects free agency.
Guardians Outright Myles Straw
The Guardians sent outfielder Myles Straw outright to Triple-A Columbus, according to the MLB.com transaction log. Cleveland successfully ran him through waivers once the offseason got underway, removing him from the 40-man roster.
Straw was a lock to go unclaimed because of his contract. A team would’ve needed to assume the remaining $14.75MM in guaranteed money. Straw has cleared waivers twice this year. Cleveland outrighted him just before Opening Day. He spent almost the entire season in Triple-A. The Guards reselected his contract in mid-September but presumably always planned to take him back off the roster at year’s end.
Cleveland inked Straw to that deal early in the 2022 season. He’d posted a solid year in ’21, hitting .271/.349/.348 while stealing 30 bases and playing plus defense in center field. The Guardians reasoned that his speed and glove gave him a solid floor despite minimal power. His bat completely cratered over the next two seasons. Straw combined for only one home run with a .229/.296/.284 line from 2022-23. He didn’t hit in Triple-A this year, either, running a .240/.321/.329 mark against upper minors pitching.
As a player with less than five years of major league service, Straw would forfeit his contract to test free agency. He’s obviously not going to do that, so the Guards can keep him in Triple-A as a depth option. He only made seven MLB appearances this year, collecting one hit in four at-bats. He stole two bases in as many attempts.
D-Backs To Exercise Option On Eugenio Suarez
The Diamondbacks are picking up their $15MM option on Eugenio Suárez, reports Jesse Rogers of ESPN (on X). The deal would have come with a $2MM buyout, effectively rendering it a $13MM decision.
Just a few months ago, the Diamondbacks wouldn’t have envisioned making this decision. Suárez got out to a terrible start to the season, his first in the desert after an offseason trade with the Mariners. He went into the All-Star Break with a .216/.302/.366 slash while striking out in nearly 29% of his plate appearances. Arizona considered bumping him out of the starting lineup in deference to rookie infielder Blaze Alexander.
A monster second half not only salvaged his starting job but locked in that extra $13MM. Suárez was one of the game’s hottest hitters after the Break. He mashed at a .307/.341/.602 clip with 20 homers in his final 65 games. He cut his strikeout rate by a few percentage points while running a three-month power barrage. By the end of the season, he’d pushed his numbers to a .256/.319/.469 line with 30 homers across 640 plate appearances. After accounting for the difference in his home park, that’s not far off the cumulative .234/.327/.423 showing he posted over his final two seasons in Seattle.
Suárez essentially played at the level Arizona expected, albeit in extremely streaky fashion. It would’ve been surprising for the Diamondbacks to cut him loose on the heels of that monster finish. He’s a potential offseason trade candidate, though. Bringing Suárez back blocks the clearest path to playing time for top prospect Jordan Lawlar. The Snakes have Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte locked into the middle infield.
The 22-year-old Lawlar lost most of this year to injury. He only appeared in 23 minor league games and didn’t see any MLB action despite making his big league debut late in the ’23 season. Lawlar still has minor league options remaining, so the Snakes could keep him in Triple-A for another year. If they feel he’ll be ready for an extended audition early next season, shopping Suárez could allow them to reallocate salary while recouping value they wouldn’t have received if they’d bought out the option.
Option decisions on Jordan Montgomery and Suárez push Arizona’s projected payroll to roughly $137MM, as calculated by RosterResource. An easy option call to retain Merrill Kelly will add another $6MM. Arizona opened this past season with a franchise-record payroll in the $163MM range. If they’re willing to replicate that, they’ll have some leeway to replace free agents Christian Walker and Joc Pederson. Trades of Montgomery and/or Suárez could clear a good bit more money if ownership doesn’t want to match this year’s spending. They won’t find a taker for the entirety of Montgomery’s $22.5MM deal, but teams like the Yankees, Blue Jays or Astros could be willing to give up talent while taking Suárez’s salary off the books.
Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network.