MLB offseason awards: Best signings, biggest surprises | Nightengale's Notebook
PHOENIX — It’s rainy, cold and the fields are muddy.
Still, where else can you have hundreds of fans flocking to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spring training camp to get their first looks at baseball’s Hollywood team filled with superstars everywhere you turn.
They have taken center stage as the first team to open their workouts ahead of their season-opener in Seoul, South Korea, where they also happen to be baseball’s most complete team.
Go ahead, try to find a weakness, if you dare.
The Dodgers don’t have to look any further than the New York Mets and San Diego Padres of a year to ago to know that money doesn’t guarantee you a World Series, let alone even a playoff spot.
Then again, considering the talent and depth of the Dodgers, who could blame them for putting playoff tickets on sale next week?
The Dodgers can sit back and watch everyone else still trying to figure out their roster, with other teams engaged in an old-fashioned staredown with agent Scott Boras, who still has Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman and J.D. Martinez unsigned.
While still waiting to see the free-agent market take off, let’s take a look at the 2023-2024 winter awards, before nearly 1,500 players report this week, and we hear they’ve all come into camp in the best shape of their career.
The envelopes, please.
Best offseason
Los Angeles Dodgers: Hey, when you drop $1.2 billion, you better win the winter. This is a team that has averaged 99 victories for the past 10 years, but are still looking for their first World Series title in a full-season since 1988. They did everything possible this winter to assure that streak comes to an end with the signings of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Teoscar Hernandez, and the trade for Tyler Glasnow. Hollywood has come to Chavez Ravine.
Baltimore Orioles. They acquired Cy Young award winner Corbin Burnes from the Milwaukee Brewers and prevented the New York Yankees from getting him. Hey, when you’ve got a chance to dominate the AL East, go for it. They sent a shortstop prospect who had no role on the team, a young reliever, and a draft pick that they will recoup next winter anyway by making Burnes a qualifying offer. They’ve got a chance to be even better than last year’s 101-win team.
Arizona Diamondbacks: They could have rested on their laurels after reaching the World Series a year ago, but instead were aggressive, trading for power-hitting third baseman Eugenio Suarez, signing front-line starter Eduardo Rodriguez to a four-year, $80 million contract, and DH Joc Pederson. They may not return to the World Series, but they should definitely be better than last year’s 84-win team.
Best contracts (for players)
Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers – 10 years, $700 million: Must be nice getting $68 million a year after you turn 40.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodgers – 12 years, $325 million: Just imagine what he could have received if he actually had thrown a pitch in MLB, or even won a Cy Young award.
Emilio Pagan, Cincinnati Reds – 2 years, $16 million: He was a middle reliever for the Minnesota Twins with one save. He was not used in their first round postseason series against Toronto and pitched only two innings in series vs. Houston.
Most team-friendly contracts
Lourdes Gurriel, Arizona Diamondbacks – 3 years, $42 million: Gurriel was supposed to be one-and-done when he came over with Gabriel Moreno from the Toronto Blue Jays in the Daulton Varsho trade. He turned out to be one of their integral pieces of their World Series run, hitting 24 homers with 82 RBI and playing solid defense. The D-backs were skeptical they’d have the money to keep him, but elated when they got him back at just $14 million a year.
Teoscar Hernandez, Los Angeles Dodgers – one year, $23.5 million: When Hernandez hit the free-agent market, there’s not a team in the land who didn’t believe he’d command at least a three-year deal. He has a career .887 OPS against left-handed pitchers and for the Dodgers to land him on only a one-year guarantee, including $8.5 million in deferrals, is a steal.
Adam Ottavino, New York Mets – one year, $4.5 million: The Mets thought he was long gone when he turned down a player option that would have paid him $6.75 million. Ottavino tested the market, and wound up taking a massive paycut, re-signing with the Mets.
Best feel-good signing
Jose Altuve, Houston Astros – 5 years, $125 million
Astros owner Jim Crane vowed that Altuve would spend the rest of his career in an Astros uniform, and delivered on his promise by assuring that Altuve would be playing for them until the age of 39.
“When I got called up for the first time back in 2011," Altuve said, “they told me that it was just something temporary until they found another second baseman."
Altuve, who has 2,047 hits, could reach 3,000 hits if he averages 159 hits through the 2029 season.
Biggest surprise spender
Kansas City Royals: Come on, who in the world thought the Royals, who lost 106 games last season, would be dropping nearly $400 million this season, second-most to only the Los Angeles Dodgers?
They signed shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. to a 11-year, $288.77 million extension, while spending $109.5 million on starters Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, relievers Will Smith, Chris Stratton and Nick Anderson, and position players Hunter Renfroe, Garrett Hampson and Adam Frazier.
The largest contract they had ever given out before Witt was catcher Salvador Perez’s four-year, $82 million extension.
No one could have imagined they would spend more than the combined total of the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox this winter, and have part-owner Patrick Mahomes rave about Witt’s signing at the Super Bowl media day availability.
“I’m glad he’s going to be in Kansas City for the long run,” Mahomes said. “Just knowing the guy and how hard he works, it’s going to do tremendous things for that organization. When you have a leader like that who’s young and really is inspired to make this team great, that’s what you want.”
Best analytics rant
Former New York Mets manager Buck Showalter, taking a page out of Joe Maddon’s playbook that keeps him from landing another managerial gig, blasted the analytic folks and all of their data when they tried to tell Showalter how to rest his players.
“I love when those guys come in about their load management,” Showalter said on the Foul Territory podcast. “We had a guy that hit a triple and two doubles and they came in and said he probably needs a day off cause he ran too much around the bases.
"So, what do you want me to tell him, don’t get any hits, so you can play the next day? I didn’t quite understand that one. I said, ‘Ok, you go out there and tell Brandon Nimmo that he’s not playing today because he did too well last night.’”
Best player to retire
Pitcher Corey Kluber: Now that Clayton Kershaw decided to return to the Dodgers, it leaves Kluber with the prize. He’s a two-time Cy Young award winner and one of the best pitchers in Cleveland history. Kluber, 37, was 116-77 with a 3.44 ERA, and and was the game’s most dominant pitcher for five years. He won the AL Cy Young award in 2014 and 2017, while finishing third in 2016 and 2018.
Biggest scapegoat
Former New York Mets GM Billy Eppler: Eppler was placed on MLB’s ineligible list for the 2024 season for fabricating injuries and manipulating the injured list during the 2022-2023 seasons.
Guess what?
There are 29 other GMs who are guilty of the same thing, but only Eppler, who didn’t have a job in baseball anyway, paid the price.
Tommy Hunter, who pitched for the Mets in 2021-23, says there wasn’t a single GM he played for who didn’t do the same thing during his 16-year career.
“It’s crazy Billy got singled out,’’ Hunter told New York Post. “It’s kind of mind-blowing ... It’s no secret what goes on, so to go after one person seems unfair.
“I feel bad for Billy. … He didn’t do anything different than any other GM I’ve been around.”
Eppler was investigated over 10 fabricated injured-list stints during his Mets’ tenure.
“Why is he the one that got in trouble?’’ former All-Star catcher A.J. Pierznyski said on his Foul Territory podcast. “There are 29 other teams that have all done this."
But Eppler was the only one to pay the price. And now every GM has been fairly warned.
Best media advice
Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said that the best person to talk about Shohei Ohtani this season when Ohtani doesn’t speak will be veteran outfielder Jason Heyward.
Heyward’s response: “Uh, Shohei is the guy to talk about Shohei.’’
Best ballpark promotion
The Detroit Tigers are celebrating Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland on Aug. 3 by giving fans a “Jim Leyland Starter Kit" that includes a baseball cap, fake mustache and sunglasses.
The only thing missing is a cigarette.
Around the basepaths
– The New York Yankees are still open to acquiring Chicago White Sox ace Dylan Cease, but they refuse to part with prized outfield prospect Spencer Jones.
The Yankees also rebuffed the Milwaukee Brewers’ request for Jones before the Brewers sent Corbin Burnes to Baltimore.
– The Houston Astros plan to make All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman a contract offer before he hits free agency, but it’s not expected to come close to the $300 million over 10 years it likely will take to keep him.
No Astros player has ever received a contract longer than six years or more than $150 million.
– The White Sox had their choice between outfielder Jake McCarthy or Dominic Fletcher for Diamondbacks pitching prospect Cristian Mena, before taking Fletcher. Certainly, they relied heavily on the advice of assistant GM Josh Barfield, who was the D-backs' former farm director.
– Phillies president Dave Dombrowski says that outfielder Brandon Marsh’s arthroscopic knee surgery will not create the need to acquire another starting outfielder, such as free agent Cody Bellinger, with Marsh expected to return before opening day.
The Phillies are looking for outfield depth, but not a starting outfielder on the market.
“So far, it really hasn’t even been the dollars as much as a situation where players want a guarantee of playing time," Dombrowski told reporters, “or we haven’t really felt that they’re big upgrades for us."
– MLB does not plan to expand before 2030 with Nashville and Salt Lake City currently the leading candidates.
– Just two months before opening day, and the Cleveland Guardians still can’t inform their season-ticket holders the start time for their April 8 home opener.
All they can say is that it won’t start until at least 5:10 p.m.
You see, there’s a solar eclipse that same day, and Cleveland will be the epicenter of the eclipse.
According to NASA, the eclipse will begin at 1:59 p.m. in Cleveland on April 8, with a totality at 3:13 p.m., ending at 3:19 p.m., and the partial eclipse ending at 4:10 p.m.
Hotel rooms in Cleveland have been sold out for months in anticipation.
– You think people in Houston haven’t noticed the Astros’ aggressiveness this winter signing closer Josh Hader to a five-year, $95 million contract while keeping Altuve with another $125 million?
The Astros have already sold a franchise-record 22,000 season tickets.
In Crane’s first year as an owner in 2012, they averaged 19,849 fans a game.
– The sale of the Baltimore Orioles to David Rubenstein should be approved by the owners before the All-Star break.
– It’s insane to think that the San Francisco Giants haven’t had a 30-home run hitter since Barry Bonds in 2004.
– MLB is seriously considering permitting its major-league players to participate in the 2028 Olympics in a shortened tournament.
The benefit, commissioner Rob Manfred said, would be “the opportunity to make a splash and attract the kind of attention that would be associated with a team, eventually multiple teams I suspect, the best players in Major League Baseball in a short tournament like that.”
– Zack Greinke, 40, still wants to pitch another season after going 2-15 with a 5.06 ERA last season. If he returns, he has a chance to become only the 20th pitcher in history to record 3,000 strikeouts. He has 2,979 career strikeouts.
– Phillies infield coach Bobby Dickerson believes that Bryce Harper, who just began playing first base last summer, can win a Gold Glove after playing only 36 games at first last season.
“I didn’t expect as good as I saw, honestly,” Dickerson told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “although I also knew this is Bryce Harper and the sky’s the limit for this guy. He’s such a talent, and he holds himself in such high expectation that I should’ve knew he was going to be fine. I felt he would be fine, but he was a little better than fine. … I think he could definitely be one of the best there."
Harper, a former MVP winner as an outfielder, could become only the fourth player in history to win an MVP award as an outfielder and infielder, joining Hall of Famers Robin Yount (shortstop, outfield), Stan Musial (outfield, first base), and Hank Greenberg (first base, outfield).
– The Royals are the eighth small- or mid-sized market to give a player at least a $100 million contract since 2021.
Fernando Tatis, San Diego Padres (14 years, $340 million)
Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals (11 years, $288.77 million)
Nolan Arenado, Colorado Rockies (8 years, $260 million)
Julio Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners (12 years, $209.3 million)
Wander Franco, Tampa Bay Rays (11 years, $182 million)
Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians (7 years, $141 million)
Corbin Carroll, Arizona Diamondbacks (8 years, $111 million)
Bryan Reynolds, Pittsburgh Pirates (8 years, $106.75 million)
– The Texas Rangers haven’t had the same pitcher lead the team in saves in consecutive seasons since Joe Nathan in 2012-2013, and the streak will continue with Will Smith now in Kansas City.
– The Padres will open spring training with only two outfielders on their 40-man roster, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jose Azocar. Needless to say, GM A.J. Preller’s phone has been buzzing from agents trying to push their own outfield clients.
– Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa believes the Twins still are the team to beat in the AL Central, despite losing Sonny Gray and Jorge Polanco, particularly if he, Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton stay healthy.
“The talent that we have in our clubhouse right now is insane," Correa told reporters at Twinsfest. “Obviously, we have to be healthy, and we have to perform, but on paper it looks really good."
– Kudos to the San Diego Padres for creating a uniform patch with a gold heart, and the initials PS inside the heart, that will be worn above the heart, to honor late beloved owner Peter Seidler.
The idea originated from Seidler’s children.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB 2024 offseason awards: Best free agent signings, biggest surprises
