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The Winter Meetings start in a week. Blake Snell jumped the gun and signed before they started. Will Juan Soto be next? Plus: Ken on the Orioles’ search for starting pitching and Walker Buehler’s likely goodbye in Los Angeles. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!
Big Deals: Snell signs with Dodgers
Last year, Blake Snell’s free agency lasted into March. He and agent Scott Boras didn’t make the same mistake two years in a row. After opting out of his contract with the Giants, Snell signed a five-year deal with the Dodgers last week. His paycheck? $182 million.
If you tack on what amounted to a one-year deal for $32 million last year with the Giants, you’re looking at a six-year, $214 million total — or an average annual income of $35.67 million (though some of Snell’s Dodgers contract is deferred, and $52 million of it comes in the form of a signing bonus).
Snell started slow last season after signing so late, but bounced back to form, pitching his first career no-hitter, and finishing the season with a 5-3 record and a 3.12 ERA (5-0, 1.23 in 14 starts from July onward).
For the Dodgers, well … *flings arms out, letting them slap against my thighs as I sigh* … I mean, your team could be doing something similar.
After losing a lot of pitchers to injury last year and relying on bullpen games en route to winning the World Series, the Dodgers are also likely losing Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler to free agency. Signing Snell makes sense. It should help L.A. cobble together a rotation out of this, and uhh … actually, they have a lot of depth.
Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Snell, Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, Landon Knack, Bobby Miller and — at some point when they return from UCL surgeries — Emmet Sheehan and maybe River Ryan. Of note: Nick Frasso, Justin Wrobleski and Ben Casparius should also serve as depth, and Clayton Kershaw (still a free agent) is expected to return to the Dodgers.
Surely that will be enough to get them through 162 games and a postseason, even with the injury concerns.
More Snell: Eno Sarris says the book is a little wrong on Snell.
Ken’s Notebook: Baltimore, Buehler and the starting pitching market
From my latest notes column:
The Baltimore Orioles were in on free-agent left-handers Blake Snell and Yusei Kikuchi, pitchers who were particularly attractive to them because they were not tied to qualifying offers and could be signed without losing a draft pick.
Nathan Eovaldi and Jack Flaherty fall into the same category. Max Fried, Sean Manaea, Luis Severino and Nick Pivetta, all of whom received (and rejected) qualifying offers, do not. Signing any of them would cost the Orioles their third-highest draft pick, which is no small consideration.
The Orioles, who already hold the No. 19 selection, stand to gain two picks in the 30s if Corbin Burnes and Anthony Santander depart and each of their free-agent contracts exceeds $50 million. Three picks in the top 40 would be quite a coup for a team that has drafted well under general manager Mike Elias. Then again, the Orioles could lose one and still have two in the top 40.
In a perfect world, Baltimore would re-sign Burnes. But even under new ownership, it seems doubtful the Orioles will outbid the Soto also-rans, all of whom will be itching to spend. So, Baltimore has been active on other fronts, extending offers to multiple free-agent starting pitchers.
It’s conceivable the Orioles could land two starters, each at average annual values of more than $10 million. But such an outcome is not particularly likely. The market for starters is highly competitive and the Orioles also are looking to add a right-handed hitting outfielder and backup catcher.
With all the money the Dodgers are spending, why didn’t they just extend a qualifying offer to free-agent right-hander Walker Buehler? In part, because Buehler likely would have said yes to the one-year, $21.05 million arrangement — and perhaps not all that happily.
Clubs generally operate under the principle that there is no such thing as a bad one-year contract, even at an inflated salary. But the Dodgers did not want to force the issue with Buehler, who had a 5.38 ERA in 16 starts in the regular season before completing the playoffs with 10 scoreless innings.
The qualifying offer would have damaged Buehler in the market, leaving him with almost no choice but to accept. The Dodgers, as a team that will pay the luxury tax, only would have received a pick after the fourth round if he rejected. This way, Buehler can negotiate a multiyear deal with the team of his choosing. Conceivably, that team could be the Dodgers. But other teams might value Buehler more.
More here.
Primers: Winter Meetings next week
By this time next week, the baseball world will have descended upon Dallas for this year’s week-long flash mob of free agents, trades and “considering all of our options.”
- The biggest story remains the biggest story: Where will Juan Soto sign? Brendan Kuty wrote last week that the process will undergo multiple “rounds,” and Soto’s camp “… could be looking toward deciding on a team sometime around the Winter Meetings.” So far, the Red Sox, Mets, Dodgers, Blue Jays and (of course) the Yankees are believed to be in the running.
- Speaking of the Red Sox, they’re expected to be very aggressive this offseason. Jim Bowden calls them “the most intriguing team to watch this winter.” Jen McCaffrey has a roundup on where they stand before the winter meetings.
- With Jordan Romano a non-tender casualty, the Blue Jays are on the hunt for a new closer. Kaitlyn McGrath has a list of potential candidates, from free agents to potential trade targets. Incumbent Chad Green is one option.
- As the Cardinals turn their focus to the future (and youth), one pressing question is the possibility of trading third baseman Nolan Arenado, who will turn 34 in April. The talks, according to Katie Woo, are preliminary in nature, but ownership has apparently approached Arenado about the possibility. My guess: We’ll see who signs Alex Bregman before we get any movement on this.
- The Cubs are not alone in looking for starting pitching, but they are the only team with Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney writing about it.
Pop Quiz: When big contracts go bad
I want to preface this section by saying that I tend to fall into the “pay the players” camp. Team values have gone through the gold-plated ceiling over the last couple of decades, and teams are constantly finding new ways to increase revenue to stratospheric levels. If that’s what baseball is worth, then the players should take a significant portion of that value.
But that doesn’t mean every big contract is a good one. As we enter Big Contract™️ season, Cody Stavenhagen has compiled the sport’s worst big contracts as of right this minute. I won’t spoil the whole thing, but I got curious about which teams ended up on the list the most.
Including the honorable mentions, there are 17 players listed in Stavenhagen’s article. Three teams ended up on the list more than once:
It’s a fun game to see if you can guess which players are represented in the above numbers. The Angels are beginner-level easy, the Yankees are the intermediate-level quiz and the Giants — with both players in the honorable mentions — feature one player I forgot about and one I actually disagree with, so there’s your expert-level quiz.
Click on over and see if you’re right.
Handshakes and High Fives
Here’s an idea I can’t decide if I love or hate: the “Golden At-Bat,” which would give teams the ability to “pinch hit” any hitter in their lineup in a high-leverage situation once a game. Jayson Stark explains, speaking with big-leaguers, front-office members and the like to get their reactions.
Wondering who your team will sign this year? Andy McCullough played matchmaker to come up with a Black Friday deal for each of the 30 teams. And if you’re looking for a bargain, Eno Sarris has five free agents who could come at a discount this winter.
Late last night, news broke that the Mets are signing RHP Frankie Montas, who split last year between the Reds and Brewers.
Yusei Kikuchi to the Angels broke just a couple of hours before our last edition. Since then, we’ve gotten some more analysis on the signing — and what might be next for the Angels.
Jared Porter was the GM of the Mets for 37 days before being fired when a story broke about inappropriate texts to a journalist. He has spoken publicly for the first time since the firing.
Matt Gelb has a touching story about how the baseball world rallied around Phillies assistant manager Ned Rice when his daughter was diagnosed with cancer.
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(Top photo: Stan Szeto / Imagn Images)
