The MLB offseason has been going on for now over a month, and while many big moves are yet to be made, there are a few signings that are worthy of taking note of.
- The Phillies re-signed their star pitcher Aaron Nola, for a 7 year deal and paid him 172 million dollars.
- The Mets signed former Yankees pitcher Luis Severino to a 1 year, $13 million dollar deal.
- The Reds signed two pitchers, Nick Martinez and Emilio Pagan, both to two year deals. Martinez is getting paid $26 million and Pagan is getting paid $16 million.
- The Brewers re-signed their pitcher Wade Miley to a 1 year, $7 million dollar deal.
- The Reds made two signings of pitchers to further solidify their staff, Sonny Gray and Kyle Gibson. Gray has a 3 year, $75 million contract and Gibson has a 1 year, $12 million dollar contract.
- The Tigers have signed a 2 year, $24 million contract with pitcher Kenta Maeda.
- The Dodgers have traded for former Rays SP Tyler Glasnow, and Rays OF Manuel Margot in exchange for pitcher Ryan Pepiot and Jonny Deluca.
- The Reds signed 1B/3B Jeimer Candelario to a 3 year, 45 million dollar deal.
- The Royals have signed RHP Michael Wacha, power-hitting outfielder Hunter Renfroe, LHP Will Smith, and RHP Seth Lugo.
- Most notably, however, the Dodgers paid star SP/DH Shohei Ohtani a record-breaking 10 yr, 700 million dollar contract. This is the largest contract in MLB history. Ohtani will defer collecting what would be his annual 70 million dollars a year for only 2 million a year, in order to free up budget space for the Dodgers to make additional acquisitions. He will collect the remaining 680 million dollars in his final season (at age 39).
So far, all big deals have been for pitchers, as they are very sought after by many teams. And on top of that, most of these signings were made by NL teams. That said, there is still a lot of time left and lots of good players still to be signed.
Some of those players include Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto (favorites to sign are the Mets or Yankees), Blake Snell, a pitcher who was formerly on the Padres (favorites to sign are the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, or Phillies), Cody Bellinger, a former Dodgers and Cubs outfielder and first baseman (favorites to sign are Giants or the Yankees), and third baseman Matt Chapman, who was formerly on the Athletics and Blue Jays (Yankees, Giants or Mets).
