MLBTR Chat Transcript
Steve Adams
- Good morning! We’ll get going around 1pm CT, give or take a couple minutes. Feel free to submit questions ahead of time, as always.
Astros71
- Jake Meyers is staying, right?
Steve Adams
- At this point that’s my assumption, yeah. The Astros are already short in the outfield. I guess in theory they could try to swap him out for a less-proven LHH center field option, but I don’t know that such a scenario is really out there. Feel like he’s more or less locked in there by now.
Littell
- Why did I sign with the nationals? I could have gone anywhere else!
Steve Adams
- If it were true that he could have gone “anywhere else” for that same money or more, he probably would have. The market for Littell clearly wasn’t anywhere near what he and his camp set out hoping to find early in the season. I’m sure there are more competitive clubs that would’ve given him $7MM back in November/December. Probably a fair bit more than that on a one-year deal. But Littell was surely seeking two- and likely three-year deals at that point and wasn’t going to be open to something like 1/12 at that time, even if it was on the table.
- Littell has pitched a bunch of innings the past two seasons, but he’s a low-90s guy with his velo and had one of the lowest strikeout rates in the majors last year.I think he was worth more than this and definitely like it for the Nationals, but I’m not entirely surprised that the market just didn’t show up for him
MarioSoto
- Honest thoughts on the Reds?
Steve Adams
- Had one of the five best rotations in baseball prior to the Greene news. That drops them down a ways (though obviously there’s a lot of upside if it gets someone like Lowder into the rotation).I don’t love the bullpen. Their fixation on dedicating a significant portion of their limited payroll to one of the most homer-prone relievers in baseball and having him close games in their bandbox park is weird, but Emilio Pagan posted decent numbers last year (with the help of a few game-saving home run robberies).
Offense should be improved with Geno there, possible full seasons of Stewart, Stephenson, Friedl … better health from Elly
- I think they’re probably behind Chicago and Milwaukee for me in the NL Central, but not by so much that a few breakouts for the Reds and/or a key injury or two elsewhere can’t make it a tight race. They should be in Wild Card contention at least.
Big Time
- Other than Giolito, what other free agents are out there that you are surprised don’t have a contract in hand right now?
Steve Adams
- Michael Kopech is probably the biggest one. Danny Coulombe, to a lesser extent.
Jesus Luzardo
- Thoughts on my new deal?
Steve Adams
- I’d have pegged him for something like Carlos Rodon money (6/156) in free agency (with an outside chance at seven years, depending how his 2026 goes), so getting him for five years seems like a nice win for the Phillies. But at the same time, Luzardo has had plenty of injuries throughout his career, and he was offered a pretty hearty nine-figure deal that spares him all the uncertainty surrounding the labor staredown and everything … I get it.
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.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Steve Adams
- Good morning! We’ll get going at 1pm CT, but feel free to ask questions ahead of time, as always.
- Hello there! Let’s get going
Card fan from FL
- cardinals getting 3 prospects and two draft picks for Donavan . What’s your take on the trade
M
- How do you think the Mariners stack up against the rest of the AL now that they’ve added Donovan?
Bloomer
- Where will the Cardinals offense come from Steve? This is gonna be a painful long season …..
Steve Adams
- Not surprisingly, probably 50+ questions queued up on yesterday’s trade haha. I’ll spare you publishing them all and offer some thoughts (while also noting that Darragh and I broke this trade down for about 15 minutes on the episode of the podcast we recorded this morning, so keep an eye/ear out for that tomorrow morning!)
- Donovan is an ideal fit for a Mariners team that has holes at 2B/3B/one corner OF spot and young options at each. He furthers their goal of cutting back on strikeouts/improving contact, and he does so while maintaining the flexibility/agility needed should any of Colt Emerson, Cole Young, Dom Canzone, etc. really show they need everyday ABs early in the season.
- I think the Cards did well. They didn’t get a massive, marquee prospect but landed a top-100-ish guy (Cijntje), two recent top-100 draft picks (Peete, Ledbetter) and a pair of top-75 picks in the upcoming draft.Tai Peete (contact) and Colton Ledbetter (lack of any one true standout tool) both have some red flags but are solid additions to the middle tiers of the system. The picks are nice both for adding talent and giving them the flexibility to be creative if a first-round talent slides due to signability concerns.
- The Rays’ side of this is the strangest to me, but I’ve come around on it. Williamson is a high-floor defender with decent contact skills who can back up at multiple positions. He has multiple minor league options remaining.Rays gave up a Comp pick for three years of a solid middle reliever (Bryan Baker) last July and another for a glove-first utility guy with decent contact skills this offseason. If you could guarantee a team an immediately usable RP or utility guy at the No. 70 pick, that guy would absolutely be scooped up.
- It’s boring to say it works for everyone, but … I don’t have an immediately negative reaction to any angle of the deal.
Dana Brown
- Donovan got that much. What could Paredes get?
Steve Adams
- Probably less. He’s more expensive with no real defensive home and such an extreme pull-side, fly-ball approach that team with more spacious left field setups wouldn’t find him as valuable as the Astros and Rays did, for instance.Good player, don’t get me wrong, but I think Donovan had more trade value.
Logan and Robbie
- Having Framber behind us makes a ton of sense, right? Right???
Steve Adams
- Framber makes plenty of sense for the Giants. They’ve also signaled that they don’t want to sign a SP long-term this winter — their owner said as much publicly — and they also already signed a pair of (much lower upside) veterans in Houser and Mahle.I will say, the fit was better before the Giants signed Arraez to play 2B. That’s going to be a rough defensive left side of the infield for Logan Webb and any other ground-ball pitchers (like Valdez)
- Speaking of which!
Confused Giant
- Arraez and Devers on one side of the infield has to be one of the worst defensive pairings in baseball. How many grounders through the infield and missed double plays before Logan Webb asks for a trade? I have to believe he’s not getting to 200 innings with the Arraez-Devers defense extending innings. After working to improve the SF defense, is it surprising to see Buster Posey punt on one side of the infield?
Luis Arraez Weighing Multiple Offers, Wants To Play Second Base
With Spring Training set to begin in just a couple of weeks, three-time batting champion Luis Arraez continues to linger on the market. Having played out his final arbitration year with the Padres, Arraez always figured to be an interesting case in free agency. His high contact and low strikeout rates earn him plenty of old-school fans. On the flip side, his lack of power, low walk rates, and defensive limitations make his value questionable from an analytics standpoint.
The rumor mill has been extremely quiet on Arraez outside of the Padres’ reported interest in a reunion back in November. Early last week, 75.17% of MLBTR readers predicted that he would settle for a one-year deal rather than hold out for a multi-year pact. Now, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reports that Arraez is weighing one-year and multi-year offers from clubs, with a priority of returning to playing second base.
The 28-year-old has played at every infield spot since debuting with the Twins in 2019. Second and first base account for the overwhelming majority of those innings. Defensive metrics have been largely negative on his glove at second. In 2,793 defensive innings there, Arraez has been worth -6 Defensive Runs Saved and -35 Outs Above Average. His most recent year as a regular second baseman was 2023 with the Marlins. In 1,124 innings that year, he was worth 4 DRS but -11 OAA. His glovework at the keystone was last seen positively by both metrics in 2022 (3 DRS and 1 OAA), but that was in just 277 2/3 innings.
Statcast considers Arraez’s range and arm strength well-below-average, both of which limit his value. Perhaps recognizing that, the Padres shifted him to first base after acquiring him in May 2024. From 2024-25 with San Diego, Arraez played 1,517 2/3 innings at first base compared to just 140 innings at the keystone. That move didn’t necessarily improve his defensive value. DRS painted him as an average first baseman in that span (0 DRS), while OAA remained negative in their outlook (-11 OAA). His -6 OAA in 2025 tied with the Athletics’ Nick Kurtz for third-worst among qualified first basemen.
From that track record, it’s not unreasonable that teams might want to limit his time in the field. Of course, that raises the issue of whether Arraez’s offense is enough for a full-time DH role. In 2025, designated hitters posted a 110 wRC+ with a .188 isolated power output. Arraez’s 107 wRC+ since the start of 2024 is comparable to that, but his .089 ISO is less than half the usual mark for the position. Feinsand’s post doesn’t specify the interested teams or the terms of their offers, so it’s still not clear how the market values Arraez overall. In any case, the fact that he is prioritizing a return to second base could limit his earning power, especially on a multi-year deal.
The one-year route may be his best option. Arraez turns 29 in April and has several prime years remaining, so if he performs well in 2026, he could return to the market still young enough for a multi-year deal. He’ll never become a Gold Glover, but a pillow contract could at least allow him to improve his offense relative to his walk year this time around. His .292/.327/.392 slash line in 2025 amounted to a 104 wRC+. Though above-average, it was underwhelming production at first base, a position with 9% better-than-average offense by wRC+ this year. In contrast, second basemen were 10% below average as hitters, though with much better defense than first basemen.
From that lens, the question is which version of Arraez the market values more. He doesn’t hit as well as the average first baseman, but poor defense isn’t unusual for that position anyway. As a second baseman, Arraez’s offense plays up, but his defense becomes a much bigger liability. He has reportedly been working on his defense at second base during the offseason (link via Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El Extrabase), though it remains to be seen how much that matters to the teams alluded to by Feinsand.
Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images
Max Scherzer Could Wait To Sign After Opening Day
Future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer came within a few outs of winning his third career World Series ring before his Blue Jays fell to the Dodgers back in November, and with the end of the 2025 season came Scherzer’s third foray into free agency over the past five years. Now 41 and staring down his 42nd birthday this coming July, Scherzer is no longer the superstar ace he once was. Even so, the right-hander still believes he can help a team in the right circumstances. The right-hander told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic recently that, while he’s healthy and ready to sign if the right situation comes along, he would be willing to sit out the beginning of the season and sign after Opening Day if it meant finding his way onto a preferred team.
Rosenthal made clear that Scherzer did not reveal what teams he would prefer to play for, but it’s easy to imagine that Scherzer will prioritize playing for a team that he believes has a legitimate shot to win a World Series this year as he enters the twilight of his career. While waiting to sign is always risky, Scherzer could make himself a valuable asset to contending teams in need of depth at some point this year in the event that he does remain unsigned after Opening Day. Rosenthal compares Roger Clemens‘s final season in the majors, when he famously held off on signing until he was able to land a deal with the Yankees in early May. A more recent player who took a similar approach was righty reliever David Robertson, who was entering his age-40 season last year and held off on signing anywhere until the second half, when he landed with the Phillies and made 20 appearances down the stretch to solidify their bullpen.
Both of those comparisons demonstrate what teams should expect from Scherzer at this point. Clemens threw 99 innings for the Yankees in his age-44 campaign, pitching to a 4.18 ERA with a 4.14 FIP. That was the fifth-highest ERA of his storied, 24-year career. Likewise, Robertson turned in a decent but unspectacular 4.08 ERA and 4.95 FIP in his time with Philadelphia last season. In Scherzer’s case, the righty is coming off 17 starts for the Blue Jays where he at times looked like his typical dominant self and in other moments looked like one would expect a pitcher in his early 40s with nearly 3000 innings of mileage on his arm to look. That all added up to a 5.17 ERA and a 4.99 FIP, though he managed to turn things up a notch in the playoffs and muster a 3.77 ERA across three starts against the Mariners and Dodgers.
While Scherzer has indicated a willingness to hold out for the right fit, that doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t be able to find a match before Spring Training begins next month. Looking exclusively at teams that made the playoffs last year, the Brewers just traded Freddy Peralta and surely wouldn’t mind a veteran innings eater to pair with Brandon Woodruff as a leader for their young staff. The Padres could certainly squeeze Scherzer into their rotation and push JP Sears into a depth role. The Phillies figure to start the season with both swing man Taijuan Walker and prospect Andrew Painter in the rotation. The Tigers are reportedly looking for a back-end starter and could represent a fun homecoming for Scherzer, who won his first Cy Young award with the club. Other teams like the Marlins and Athletics could also surely benefit from adding Scherzer, but those clubs might not be clear enough contenders on paper to intrigue the veteran hurler.
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John Means Suffers Achilles Rupture
Free agent left-hander John Means suffered an Achilles rupture while working out this week, he announced on social media. He underwent successful surgery yesterday. Means didn’t specify a recovery timeline but seems likely to miss the entire 2026 season.
It’s another devastating injury for a former All-Star whose career has been sidetracked by health issues. Means has made a total of 10 MLB appearances since the end of the 2021 season. He required Tommy John surgery early in ’22 and was sidelined until the following September. Means made it back for four regular season starts but missed the postseason because of renewed elbow soreness. That was an unfortunate precursor to a second elbow surgery, which he underwent after four starts in 2024.
Means has not appeared in the big leagues since then. He signed a $1MM contract with the Guardians last offseason. That came with a $6MM club option that gave Cleveland some upside if Means progressed well late in the season. He did make it onto the mound as part of a minor league rehab assignment but showed some understandable rust. Cleveland passed on the option and sent him back to free agency.
Making matters worse, Means said in his announcement that he was closing in on a contract with an unnamed team. That’s not going to go through now, though it’s possible his camp could look for a two-year minor league deal with an eye towards battling for a roster spot in Spring Training 2027. He’ll be approaching his 34th birthday by then and six years removed from his last mostly healthy season — a ’21 campaign in which he pitched to a 3.62 ERA across 26 starts for the Orioles.
MLB Mailbag: Gore, Pivetta, Phillies, Santander
As the Winter Meetings start to pick up, this week's subscriber mailbag gets into MacKenzie Gore trade proposals, more trade ideas involving this year's Cy Young winners, the trade value of Nick Pivetta and Anthony Santander, and much more.
Steve asks:
Assuming that MacKenzie Gore has not been traded as I write this, would either of these two deals be likely to work for the teams involved?
1. Gore and Luis Garcia, Jr. to the Giants for Bryce Eldridge and Carson Whisenhunt? or
2. Gore to the Red Sox for Triston Casas and Connelly Early?
Your thoughts?
Gustav asks:
Who’d say no in a Gore & Abrams for Sheehan, Freeland, Ferris & Hope?
Gore, 27 in February, has two more years of team control remaining. He's had a couple of 3-WAR type seasons in 2024 and '25, but they came with extreme volatility.
The lefty made 32 starts in 2024. He had a 14-start stretch in the middle where he posted a 6.18 ERA, 19.8 K%, and 11.4 BB%. That 8.3 K-BB% was the fourth-worst in baseball among qualified starters during that June 3rd-August 17th period. Before and after that, Gore pitched like an ace. His velocity was up early in the season, spiking to 96.6 miles per hour from the beginning of the year through July 1st. It was a full mile per hour slower from that point on.
Similarly, Gore entered a July 20th start against the Padres this year with a 3.02 ERA, 30.5 K%, and 7.7 BB%. His was back in ace form, and earned his first All-Star nod. From that point forward, though, Gore posted a 6.75 ERA, 20.7 K%, and 12.8 BB% over his final 11 starts. This stretch was a bit more concentrated into three or four blow-ups. Gore's velocity was back down to 95.3 this year, but was relatively consistent game-to-game.
A run through Gore's injury history:
- 2018: IL time with blisters and fingernail issues
- August 2019: rested for 26 days to manage workload
- 2020: no minor league season; pitched at Padres' alternate site
- 2021: Started year at Triple-A; moved to Padres' alternate site in June after struggling with blisters; remained there to work on his delivery. Finished the year with two Double-A starts.
- 2022: Made MLB debut in April when Blake Snell got injured. July 26th: landed on IL with elbow soreness. August 2nd: traded to Nationals. Made four minor league rehab starts for the Nats.
- 2023: Exited July start with a blister; made the following one. Removed from August 16th start due to a blister; returned a week later. September 9th: season ended due to blisters.
- 2024: Avoided IL and known blister issues.
- 2025: Exited May start due to leg tightness; made his next one. August 30th: went on IL for shoulder inflammation; ended up going 16 days between starts.
The blister issues didn't seem to pop up after 2023. Gore has never undergone Tommy John surgery. His 2022 elbow soreness and his 2025 shoulder inflammation seemed minor.
So Gore's injury history is not bad, but he's been a pitcher of extremes the last two years. It's difficult to value that, but I'm sure just about every organization would like to bring him in and try to smooth things out.
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Tommy Pham Aiming To Play Several More Years
Free agent outfielder Tommy Pham struggled early in 2025 with the Pirates before a torrid stretch over the season’s final few months. He’ll turn 38 next March, but Pham is fully intent on playing in 2026 and appears to be eyeing multiple more seasons in his big league career. The well-traveled outfielder tells Katie Woo, Will Sammon and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that he hopes to cross both the 200-homer and 200-steal threshold before retiring. He’s currently 51 homers and 69 steals away from reaching those lofty goals.
Notably, Pham tells The Athletic that he has played through plantar fasciitis dating back to late in the 2023 season. That, Pham contends, has hindered him on the basepaths. He’s swiped just 12 bags total over the past two seasons but stole 22 times in 2023. He’s gone through stem cell treatment to address his plantar fasciitis and now feels confident he can get back to being more of a threat on the bases.
Overall, Pham’s 2025 season in Pittsburgh was pedestrian. He finished out the year with a tepid .245/.330/.370 batting line — about six percent worse than league-average offense, by measure of wRC+. Defensive Runs Saved pegged him as a strong left fielder (+5), while Statcast’s Outs Above Average was more bearish and had him slightly worse than average (-2) in 925 innings.
It bears mentioning, however, that Pham’s modest batting line includes a middling stretch of two-plus months to begin the year. Over the final three months of the 2025 campaign, Pham came to the plate 273 times and turned in a hefty .278/.363/.468 slash (128 wRC+) with 10 home runs, 13 doubles, a triple, an 11.7% walk rate and just a 17% strikeout rate. He averaged 92.7 mph off the bat and turned in a huge 51.8% hard-hit rate in that time. Any team would love to have that type of output in its outfield mix.
If Pham can continue anywhere close to that pace, he’ll have a chance to get to the 200-homer threshold with another three seasons in the majors. Reaching 200 steals feels like a loftier goal, but Pham quipped that he’s “seeing all these guys that can’t run like me steal 30 and 40 bases now” and feels that with better health in his feet he can get back to running at higher levels. Both Josh Naylor and Juan Soto topped 30 steals in 2025 despite ranking in the second and 13th percentile of average sprint speed among big leaguers, per Statcast. Pham was in the 45th percentile even with his plantar fasciitis issues; back in 2023, he sat in the 61st percentile.
Working in Pham’s favor is that it’s a thin market for teams seeking outfield help in free agency this winter — particularly from the right side of the plate. Harrison Bader, Miguel Andujar and Austin Hays are all coming off productive seasons. There are a couple of notable rebound candidates in Lane Thomas and Adolis Garcia, the latter of whom was non-tendered by the Rangers last week. But most of the market’s top outfield options this offseason swing from the left side of the dish, and even in that regard, the supply of established veterans coming off healthy, productive seasons is limited. Clubs like the Guardians, Twins, Reds, Brewers, Marlins, A’s and Rockies all have fairly left-handed outfield groups and could look to balance things out with a righty, speculatively speaking.
There’s also one oddball record at least loosely in play for Pham, who in 2025 suited up for the tenth team of his major league career. He’s still four teams shy of the record 14 that’s jointly held by Rich Hill and Edwin Jackson, but Pham has added five teams to his list in the past three seasons alone. That’s probably not a consideration for the veteran corner bat, but those 200 milestones clearly are. “I don’t have an All-Star appearance or anything like that,” Pham tells The Athletic. “But getting to that number, I could look back at my career, and me, personally, I can be proud of myself.”
Erasmo Ramirez Plans To Pitch Next Season
Veteran swingman Erasmo Ramirez wants to pitch in 2026, reports Bobby Nightengale of the Minnesota Star Tribune. The right-hander tossed 11 innings for the Twins last season. Nightengale relays that Ramirez is training as a starter.
Minnesota marked the seventh stop in Ramirez’s 14-year career. The 34-year-old was called up from Triple-A St. Paul in August after the Twins’ bullpen was gutted at the trade deadline. Ramirez notched a two-out save in his first game with the club. He posted a 2.45 ERA across nine outings and closed his Minnesota tenure with five straight scoreless appearances. Ramirez was designated for assignment in late August. He elected free agency shortly after the season ended.
Ramirez has plenty of starting experience, with 96 MLB starts under his belt. It’s been a while since he’s worked extensively in that capacity, though. Ramirez made a career-high 27 starts with Tampa Bay in 2015. After pitching almost exclusively as a reliever in 2016, he made 19 starts in 2017 between the Rays and Mariners. A shoulder strain cost Ramirez the majority of the first half of 2018, but he returned to make 10 starts with Seattle.
Boston grabbed Ramirez on a minor league deal ahead of the 2019 season. He’s been mostly a reliever since then. Ramirez has made 144 big-league appearances over the past seven seasons, and only four of them have been starts.
Ramirez has a 4.34 ERA over 860 MLB innings. He entered the league with a fastball sitting in the low-90s, and he’s unsurprisingly lost a few ticks over the years. Ramirez has gone mostly cutter/sinker this decade, but he hasn’t been afraid to expand his arsenal. He threw seven different pitches as recently as 2023. He’s since ditched the slider and sweeper, relying on his curveball as his lone breaking ball the past two seasons.
As an aging soft-tosser relying on veteran guile, Ramirez is likely best suited for a swingman role, covering multiple innings as needed. His last two MLB starts came during his second stint with the Rays in 2023. While neither outing reached four innings, both of them were on short rest and resulted in Tampa Bay wins. That kind of flexibility could have value for a team in need of reliable innings.
Photo courtesy of Matt Krohn, Imagn Images