January 1: Veteran Ketel Marte signed a 3/45 deal with the Giants, who continue to flash the cash.
January 2: Busy day for free agent signings with Pete Alonso headed to Milwaukee on a 4/34 contract, 37-year-old Nolan Arenado hooking up with Cleveland for 1/3.2, Jarren Duran to the Royals for 1/1.8 and 36-year-old Kris Bryant inking a minor league deal with San Diego.
January 3: After 15 seasons in Cleveland, club legend 36-year-old Jose Ramirez signed with (who else?) San Francisco for 1 year at $4.7M.
January 6: Richard Lovelady, in our pen the last couple of years, joined the White Sox on a $1.2M one-year deal.
January 10: And there he goes - long-time Rays OF fixture Josh Lowe joins former namesake teammate Brandon in Seattle on a 4/79 deal, and the Mariners also added 37-year-old former NL MVP Christian Yelich for 3/28. Lowe wasn't the also free agent we lost today - reliever Manuel Rodriguez signed a one-year-deal for an even $1M with Kansas City while veteran Alex Bregman inked a minor league pact with Toronto.
January 12: Closers are fetching top dollar (and I mean top dollar) as our stopper of recent vintage Felix Bautista joined Houston for 2 years at just under $30M(!) a season. This was a guy coming off an 0.1 WAR season! Also the Giants shipped Josh Naylor to Boston for a prospect.
January 16: Both of our catchers from last year find new homes as Luis Campusano, off a brilliant season for us, goes to Cleveland on a lengthy 7/108 deal, a long tenure for a 30-year-old catcher, while Jonah Heim joins the Cardinals for 2/8.5. Meanwhile the Cubs dealt 2B Nico Hoerner to the Athletics for prospects.
January 17: A big day for the Hall of Fame as the voting is in and four players are enshrined:
Close calls for A-Rod, Yadi and Mauer as well with the former running out of time. Quite a dropoff after the top seven.
January 24: Well after waving goodbye to one player after another we finally said hello to someone:
We now have our closer as Klein has saved 80 games for the Angels the last two seasons and boasts 70 stuff with 65 movement (albeit with 35 control).
And we also signed someone to dream on, one of the top amateur international free agents:
January 30: Time for some whopping free-agent deals:
Gabriel Moreno (NYM), 7/321
Riley Greene (COL), 5/209
Jacob deGrom (NYM), 2/86 (he's back!)
CJ Abrams (WAS) 5/168 (he's back as well after a year w/PHI)
Garrett Whitlock (SF), 5/69 (them again)
Also the Rangers signed Japanese import SP Wakaki Hatanaka to a 5/138 deal.
And in some personal news Stu Sternberg bumped up the payroll $6M. Right now we still have way more than we can spend, unless we want to sign some ridiculous contracts on guys who wouldn't be a big upgrade on what we already have.
February 4: More free agent news. First the last of our big free agents from last year, Oneil Cruz, signed with Arizona for 4/72. Jin-Man Kim, the star catcher coming over from South Korea whom we were in on until his demands went over $20M/year, ended up getting 5/132 from the Angels. And we made a small signing adding free agent C
Agustin Ramirez, who had been in the Yankees system, to a minor-league deal with a $1.5M MLB option. Ramirez is a 55-rated catcher, with 50 contact, 50 power and a 50 eye and will battle with
Ike Irish and
Dom Keegan for a spot. It's also possible we use one of them as the DH vs LHP.
February 9: SP Matt Brash signed with Washington for 2/27.
February 28: We made a minor trade:
Hennen is a veteran lefty and Jacob Lopez was the only one we had in the pen. He's more of a control type so he'll take the Richard Lovelady role.
Time to head into the preseason schedule.