MLB free agency news (2024)

Major League Baseball's offseason is upon us. Follow along with The Athletic's MLB staff for news and analysis of all the signings and trades as they happen.

• Top 50 free agents
• Coaching and front office changes

(Photo: Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The Chicago Cubs have agreed to a one-year deal with free-agent outfielder Cody Bellinger, major league sources tell The Athletic. Here’s what you need to know:

• The Dodgers declined to tender a contract to Bellinger last month. He had been with the organization since being drafted in 2013.
• Bellinger won the National League MVP award along with a Gold Glove Award and Silver Slugger Award in 2019.
• The 27-year-old has dealt with ongoing injuries and hitting slumps in the past two seasons.
• The one-year deal is worth $17.5 million, according to multiple reports.

Read more here.

Free-agent first baseman/designated hitter Josh Bell is headed to Cleveland on a two-year contract worth $33 million, a league source confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday. Here’s what you need to know:

• The deal includes an opt-out clause after 2023, the league source said.
• Bell slashed .266/.362/.422 with 29 doubles, 17 home runs and 71 RBIs combined for the Nationals and Padres last season.
• He was part of the blockbuster trade that sent Juan Soto to San Diego in August.
• Bell is a true switch hitter, averaging .262 with 10 home runs from the left side and .276 with seven home runs from the right side.

Read more here.

SAN DIEGO — Day 1 of the Winter Meetings saw a free-agent shortstop sign a $300 million mega-contract, but it wasn’t Carlos Correa. And it wasn’t with the Twins.

Trea Turner left the Dodgers for an 11-year, $300 million deal with the Phillies, leaving Correa as the unquestioned No. 1 free-agent shortstop on the market as the Twins continue their efforts to re-sign their reigning team MVP.

Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said Monday that the team’s conversations with Correa and agent Scott Boras have been “very open, very candid, very clear about our interest in Carlos.”

The talks include what Twins manager Rocco Baldelli described as a “very nice dinner with Carlos” on Saturday night, before the Winter Meetings got underway.

“We’re very comfortable with each other,” Baldelli said. “He’s a guy we obviously want and care a lot about and think can be an enormous factor for us for a long time, playing at shortstop and leading.”

Read more here.

(Photo: Erik Williams / USA Today)

The Athletics are seeking major leaguers rather than prospects for Sean Murphy, and telling interested clubs they will keep the catcher if they do not receive a satisfactory trade offer. A’s officials, despite reports of a Murphy trade being close, say no team has separated itself in the discussions.

The A’s do not need to move Murphy, 28, for financial reasons — MLB Trade Rumors projects him to earn a relatively low salary, $3.5 million, in arbitration. So, they can wait until they get the value they perceive as fair, as they did last offseason with first baseman Matt Olson and pitcher Frankie Montas.

Murphy has three years of club control remaining. The A’s traded Olson with two years remaining, sending him to the Braves only after the lockout ended, leading Freddie Freeman to sign with the Dodgers. They held Montas until the trade deadline, when he had one-plus years remaining, packaging him with Lou Trivino to the Yankees.

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Darren Yamash*ta / USA Today)

SAN DIEGO — John Middleton spent Sunday afternoon where he spends many Sunday afternoons in the fall. He sat with his wife, Leigh, alongside Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie in the executive suite at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. As the Eagles imposed their will upon the Tennessee Titans, those in the stands near Middleton and Lurie noticed something. There were a few loud fans who had a message. They conveyed it whenever there was a break in the action.

“Sign Trea Turner!” they yelled at Middleton again and again.

No one knew the Phillies were 24 hours from agreeing to an 11-year, $300 million deal with the star shortstop. Few knew, as Middleton watched the Eagles, that the Phillies and Turner’s camp had already exchanged offers over the weekend. A small circle within the Phillies organization had contemplated this moment for months — well before the team captured the attention of the entire baseball world.

Turner was the shortstop they wanted.

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Peter Aiken / USA Today)

SAN DIEGO — Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer and manager David Ross visited with Carlos Correa and his wife Daniella on Monday at the Southern California resort that agent Scott Boras is using as a base to connect teams and clients during the Winter Meetings, sources told The Athletic.

Cubs officials traveled to that off-site location near the Boras Corp. headquarters in Newport Beach as part of their comprehensive approach to a free-agent market that rapidly escalated as the Philadelphia Phillies reached an agreement with Trea Turner on an 11-year, $300 million contract that will take the All-Star shortstop beyond his 40th birthday. That news breaking on the first day of the first Winter Meetings in three years appeared to signal how aggressively certain teams will operate with the security of a new labor deal, the possibilities from an expanded playoff field and a potential return to pre-pandemic spending levels.

The Cubs are doing their due diligence as they try to rebuild their up-the-middle defense, support their pitching staff and adjust to the coming restrictions on defensive shifts, which will reinforce the importance of athletic infielders. Correa, in particular, also represents a level of star power that the big-market franchise has been noticeably lacking while simultaneously shedding players from the 2016 World Series team and making investments in a new TV network and real estate around Wrigley Field.

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Rick Osentoski / USA Today)

The Phillies struck first in the star-studded free-agent shortstop market, reaching an agreement with Trea Turner on a $300 million, 11-year contract, major-league sources confirmed to The Athletic on Monday. The deal includes a full no-trade clause, sources said.

So what does this mean for the Phillies, the Dodgers and the three remaining elite free-agent shortstops? And how will the contract age? Our panel of writers weighs in.

What does signing Turner mean for the Phillies in the short term and long term?

In Trea Turner, the Phillies have filled two holes with a premium athlete. They have secured their shortstop and leadoff hitter for the foreseeable future. They paid a steep price for it, but Turner was always the Phillies’ priority. He has a strong relationship with Kevin Long, the veteran hitting coach who has wielded influence over the Phillies’ acquisition strategies. He has played with Bryce Harper, who had lobbied for Turner to join him. Turner wanted to be on the East Coast and, by agreeing to an 11-year deal with a full no-trade clause, he committed to finishing his career with the Phillies. — Matt Gelb

What will the Dodgers do now at shortstop?

The Dodgers have a bevy of options at shortstop, most of which just got much more expensive with Trea Turner jump-starting the market and getting $300 million. The Dodgers already missed out on landing Justin Verlander and have starting pitching needs, all while they consider staying under the $233 million luxury-tax threshold. So although the Dodgers will certainly come up in discussions for the remaining big free-agent shortstops — Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts and Dansby Swanson — they’ll also be willing to seek out shortstop help via trade, with names such as Milwaukee’s Willy Adames, Chicago’s Tim Anderson or Cleveland’s Amed Rosario making some sense. The Dodgers also have expressed some confidence in Gavin Lux sliding over and being an everyday shortstop, but there are alternatives they’ll seek out. — Fabian Ardaya

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)

SAN DIEGO — Luis Arraez could be traded this offseason, but only in the right deal, according to sources familiar with the team’s thinking.

Unlike most recent winters, the Twins already feel prepared for next season as it pertains to their starting rotation. But with three veteran starters headed for free agency next offseason, the team’s confidence only extends through October.

Unless they’re signed long-term, Sonny Gray, Kenta Maeda and Tyler Mahle could be gone by 2024.

The club’s future rotation instability currently leaves members of the Twins front office in an unenviable position where they have discussed the possibility of trading the 2022 American League batting champion. With few, if any, untouchables on the 40-man roster, some in the organization believe the Twins would deal Arraez if it helped bring back a top-tier starting pitcher.

The Twins would prefer not to trade Arraez, one of the toughest at-bats in baseball. But after seeing the Texas Rangers pay Jacob deGrom $185 million over five years, the soaring cost of top-tier pitching has the Twins re-thinking who may or may not be available in a trade.

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Bruce Kluckhohn / USA Today)

Free-agent shortstop Trea Turner and the Philadelphia Phillies have agreed to an 11-year, $300 million deal with a full no-trade clause, league sources confirmed to The Athletic on Monday. ESPN first reported the news. Here’s what you need to know:

• Turner ranks as No. 5 on The Athletic’s Jim Bowden’s list of top 25 free agents.
• Turner batted .298 with 194 hits and 100 RBIs in 160 regular-season games with the Dodgers in 2022.
• He slashed .333/.333/.778 and tallied six hits in four games in the National League Division Series, which the Dodgers lost to the Padres.

Read more here.

(Photo: Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)

SAN DIEGO — In the hours after Jacob deGrom’s stunning departure for Texas on Friday, Mets officials spread a message far and wide across the free-agent landscape, according to people familiar with the situation: All that money that Steve Cohen had allocated toward deGrom was now effectively burning a hole in the owner’s pocket. It did not take long for the Mets to find someone to solve Cohen’s problem — and for the franchise to soothe the sting wrought by losing deGrom.

In Justin Verlander — who has agreed to a two-year, $86-million contract with the Mets, major-league sources told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal — the club identified a player unlikely to feel cowed by the prospect of replacing deGrom. Verlander, who will turn 40 in February, turned in one of his finest seasons in 2022. He won his third American League Cy Young award and his second World Series with Houston. He returned to his typical sterling form after missing almost all of the previous two seasons as he recovered from elbow reconstruction.

Under Cohen’s watch, Mets general manager Billy Eppler is unlikely to cease spending this winter. But Eppler has completed two prominent goals thus far, bringing back closer Edwin Diaz on a five-year, $102 million contract and then finding a top-shelf starter to pair with Max Scherzer. That could have been deGrom — until Texas made an overwhelming offer, which included an option that could make the deal worth $222 million. The Mets had also conducted meetings with free-agent starters like Carlos Rodón and Kodai Senga.

But Verlander represents a different class of pitcher than Rodón or Senga, a first-ballot Hall of Famer who has expressed a desire to pitch into his mid-40s. His final campaign of his 30s was one of his best. As his fastball velocity has dimmed ever so slightly, he has continued to confound hitters with the deployment of his curveball and his sliders, a pair of offspeed offerings which evaluators continue to praise. A survey of executives suggested that while deGrom may crest to a higher ceiling than Verlander, a two-year commitment to Verlander carries far less risk than a five-year deal with deGrom.

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Thomas Shea / USA Today)

Carlos Santana hit .061 on pulled groundballs to the right side last season. Ji-Man Choi batted .085 on those same groundballs. You probably didn’t notice.

Well, you know who did? Those ever-attentive Pittsburgh Pirates. Obviously.

So the Pirates have already jumped out there this offseason and acquired both of those guys — Santana on a one-year free-agent deal, Choi in a trade with Tampa Bay. And unless you spend a lot of time hanging out at PNC Park, you’re probably not looking at those blockbusters as your two most fascinating moves of November 2022.

But if you’re not, you’re also missing something. So allow us to connect those dots.

Santana and Choi rank way up there on the list of hitters most impacted by the shift in 2022 when batting from the left side. And why is that relevant? Because guess what hit-gobbling defensive alignment is going away in 2023? Right. That would be the shift.

So it was no accident that when the Pirates announced the Santana signing last week, general manager Ben Cherington dropped a quick mention that he was one of the players teams have identified as a candidate to see “some benefit from the shift rules.”

But of course, the shift is only one of the new rules that are about to transform the sport in 2023. And let’s just say that all 30 teams have caught on. So as the Winter Meetings get rocking this week, we’re already beginning to see signs that the potential impact of those rules has affected how organizations will build their teams this offseason.

And what are those signs? What are those impacts? And how might it change roster construction? I’ve spent time looking into that, with fascinating input from front offices, coaching staffs and agents. So here’s a look at how the new rules are shaping the 2022-23 offseason.

Read the full story here.

This is a bet. The biggest of bets. Five years, $185 million for Jacob deGrom. The second-highest average annual value in major-league history, for a pitcher who turns 35 in June and has worked only 156 1/3 regular-season innings the past two seasons.

It’s nuts. These deals often look nuts, often turn out badly. But teams that award monster contracts always employ a certain rationale, always present a reasonable case, at least at the beginning. The Rangers, under a different ownership, did it with Alex Rodríguez. They did it last offseason with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. And with deGrom, they’re doing it again.

More than 200 major league relievers threw at least 40 innings last season, and only three of them had at least seven strikeouts for every walk. That’s elite.

Chris Martin had nearly 15 strikeouts for every walk.

Such a combination of potency and control has been largely missing from the Red Sox bullpen in recent years, but the team added it on Friday by reportedly signing Martin to a two-year, $17.5-million deal. ESPN reported the agreement, but the Red Sox did not immediately confirm. The deal might not be finalized for a few days.