[jksander]

December 20, 2024: We picked up two players in the Rule 5 draft: reliever Cory Abbott from Seattle and catcher Will Banfield from the Marlins. Porter Hodge was taken from us by the Diamondbacks in the first round, an oversight on my part, so obviously he’s no longer in our development program. Abbott will begin work on his pitching defense, which is already above average, to ready himself for the regular season.

December 27, 2024: After weeks of negotiations, we’ve won the battle for left fielder and power hitter Juan Soto in free agency! His deal is worth $425 million over eight seasons, starting at $34.8M in the upcoming 2025 season and building to a $59M player option in 2032, when he’ll be 33. Tom Ricketts wants this team in the World Series, and we’re making moves to get there -- and our fan support skyrocketed when the news hit the national media.
 
December 28, 2024: Ricketts had made upgrading our catcher situation a top priority, and we’ve signed Danny Jansen to a deal worth $114.8 million, starting at $21.6M this year through a player option in 2029 worth $24.4M.

January 14, 2025: We’ve made our final free agency signing, nabbing three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw on a one year deal worth $20,400,000. It’s been a busy offseason, but whether we’ve made enough (or the right) moves to get us into the World Series will remain to be seen. But Ricketts has been impressed, and bumped our budget up by $16 million.

January 17, 2025: We’ve signed our main IFA target today, 17-year-old lefty starter Juan Olmo, who hails from Venezuela and has a potential four pitch arsenal including a fastball, changeup, sinker and knuckle curve. He’s one of the best raw prospects I’ve seen in a long time, and if he develops right, he’ll be the kind of player you build a pitching rotation around, well worth the $4,750,000 signing bonus investment.

January 19, 2025: Aiden Harris successfully completed his base-stealing program, though his overall confidence in the area will only show when he’s actually in some in-game situations and we see how he reacts. His stealing aggressiveness rating has graded slightly upward, though looking at his overall profile I still don’t expect him to steal frequently.

January 24, 2025: Cory Abbott completed his training on pitching defense, but though he performed well, our scout has not graded him with any official improvement. That happens sometimes, but he continues to work hard at it. He is going to stay at the training complex and work on his bunting, while Will Banfield, our other Rule 5 acquisition, is going to spend the next four to five weeks working on his defense at catcher.

Today also saw the reveal of the Hall of Fame results -- Todd Helton (84.5%) and Adrian Beltre (78.0%) got in, Beltre in his first year of eligibility! Billy Wagner dropped out of consideration with only 62.5% of the vote in his final year of eligibility.