Each winter, there are hundreds of moves meant to bolster rosters both for the upcoming season and for many years down the road. We'll chronicle the most important ones here, in reverse chronological order.

Feb. 1, 2024: Brewers trade RHP Corbin Burnes to Orioles for INF Joey Ortiz and LHP DL Hall
Brewers also receive a 2024 Competitive Balance Pick

“C’mon, Orioles, Do Something” pleaded FanGraphs’s Ben Clemens two weeks ago, pleading for a team coming off a surprise 101-win season to strike while the iron was hot. Consider that “something” done, capping off a wild 48-hour span that started with the unexpected news the team would be sold. At 29 years old, Burnes, the 2021 NL Cy Young, is one of the few true aces in the sport, posting a 2.86 ERA over the last four years with a 31% strikeout rate. He ranks second among all pitchers in WAR.

That status remains secure even with a 2023 that, on the surface, seems somewhat less dominant. His 3.39 ERA and 25% strikeout rate, while both strong, were the weakest since his 2020 breakout, but after a series of early season tweaks to his pitch shapes – including turning his slider into a sweeper, even though he doesn’t call it as such – Burnes had a 2.72 ERA over his final 16 starts. From June 1 on, only four regular starters were more difficult to reach base against than Burnes, and one of them, Gerrit Cole, was the unanimous AL Cy Young.

But the truly interesting thing here is that one of the other three better names on that list was Kyle Bradish, Burnes’s new teammate, who had a breakout 2023, and young Grayson Rodriguez was in the top 20 there after a midseason demotion to Triple-A. The 2023 Orioles rotation was middle of the pack, no matter how you sliced it. The 2024 Orioles rotation could be something fantastic. Yes, Burnes is signed for just one more year, but the cost was an infielder they had no room for and a pitcher who may or may not be a reliever – in exchange for a year of something like a top-five pitcher in baseball.

As for Milwaukee, this seems like a light return on the surface, but Burnes had only one more year of control left, and we’ve learned repeatedly over the years that such players don’t bring back huge hauls. Hall has a huge arm from the left side, but control issues sidelined his starting ambitions; a 2023 conversion to the bullpen brought back positive early returns. Ortiz, 25, has a reputation as a glove-first shortstop. The question here is more about the direction than the return, because Milwaukee still seemed to be the favorite in a weak NL Central, and just recently added Rhys Hoskins to supplement their offense. Trading Burnes always seemed likely; what does it mean for what’s next? – Mike Petriello

Jan. 30, 2024: Twins trade 2B Jorge Polanco to Mariners for RHP Justin Topa, RHP Anthony DeSclafani, Minor League RHP Darren Bowen, Minor League OF Gabriel Gonzalez and $8 million

Polanco had been a Twin for so long that in his debut, he shared a field with Joe Mauer, who’s now a Hall of Famer, so consider this the end of some kind of an era. Given the surplus of young infielders the Twins have, with Royce Lewis and Edouard Julien ready for full-time roles, plus a need to reinforce their pitching staff, trading away the 30-year-old Polanco and the arbitration salaries due him always seemed obvious, even if it took a little longer than expected. They’ll lose an above-average hitter (117 OPS+ over the last five seasons) but a below-average defender (-19 OAA the last three years) who has regularly missed time with various leg injuries.

By opening up a roster spot and some salary room, the Twins get a late bloomer reliever in Topa, 33 in March, who had something of a breakout season in 2023 with his sinker/slider/cutter trio and a 2.61 ERA; he’ll replace and potentially improve upon what was lost with the departure of Emilio Pagán. DeSclafani, 34, won’t replace the quality lost when Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda left, but if healthy, he should be able to eat some back-end innings. The key here might be in Gonzalez, MLB Pipeline’s No. 79 prospect, though the real impact on the 2024 club might be in whether the savings here allows it to make another move – as Derek Falvey indicated it might.

As for the Mariners, it would have been hard not to improve over their 2023 second basemen, who gave the third-weakest OPS in the Majors. Their staff can live without Topa and DeSclafani, who was himself only acquired a few weeks ago in the Robbie Ray deal, and while Polanco’s health will always be a concern, suddenly they’ve turned a disaster position into a potentially above-average one. We’ll call that a win/win. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 24, 2024: Brewers sign 1B Rhys Hoskins
Two years, $34 million (with an opt-out after 2024)

We’d say that the Brewers needed an offensive infusion at first base – and they did, since last year’s group had the third-weakest offensive performance in the game – except they seemingly always need an offensive infusion at first base. (Over the last five seasons, they’ve had the fifth-weakest hitting first basemen.) They weren’t really going to go all year long with Jake Bauers and Owen White at first, and so getting the underrated Hoskins for merely two years is something of a coup. While Hoskins isn’t a strong defender, and he’s obviously coming off a serious knee injury, he’s also a reliable bat who is consistently good for 25-30 homers and 20-30% above average performance; he’s projected as the third-best bat on the 2024 Brewers. The last time the Brewers had a capable bat at first, it was 2018. Jesús Aguilar, a proto-Hoskins, hit 35 homers. Milwaukee won 96 games. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 23, 2024: Angels sign RHP Robert Stephenson
Three years, $33 million

For the first 229 games of his career, dating back to 2016, Stephenson was a first-round pick who never figured out how to make it work, posting a 4.91 ERA for the Reds, Rockies and Pirates. On June 2, 2023, he was dealt to the Rays in a little-noticed deal, immediately tightened up his slider into something more like a cutter, and became a fire-breathing relief beast: In 42 games for Tampa Bay, he allowed a .139/.187/.300 line against, striking out 60 against eight walks. During his time with the Rays, he had the second-best whiff rate in baseball.

Given all that, the Angels – who also brought back Matt Moore on a one-year deal – are betting that the magic can travel to Anaheim, and that’s not a risk-free gamble. (Remember that the Dodgers turned journeyman Tyler Anderson into a 2022 All-Star; he then signed with the Angels and promptly had a 5.43 ERA.) Stephenson reportedly wanted to play on the West Coast, and there’s the potential for a decent bullpen here between Stephenson, Moore, José Soriano, Carlos Estévez and Ben Joyce. That’s not a bad group; they’ll need them to be strong given the relatively thin starting rotation. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 19, 2024: Astros sign LHP Josh Hader
Five years, $95 million

The Houston bullpen might have seemed like it didn’t need a high-profile add, but a peak under the hood shows that’s not quite the case. Long-time relief ace Ryan Pressly is 35 and entering the final year of his contract, coming off his lowest strikeout rate since 2017. Last year’s high-profile signing, Rafael Montero, had a 5.08 ERA (though he was noticeably better in the second half). Phil Maton, Ryne Stanek, and Hector Neris are all free agents, and just last week, Kendall Graveman underwent season-ending shoulder surgery.

So yes, the Astros needed relief help, and it’s hard to find anyone more helpful than Hader, briefly a Houston farmhand in 2014-’15, who merely owns the highest strikeout rate (42.2%) in Major League history, among anyone with even 50 innings thrown. More importantly, he proved that his 5.22 ERA in 2022 was the fluke it seemed at the time, coming as it did nearly entirely in the span of six bad weeks around the surprising trade that took him from Milwaukee to San Diego; Hader posted a 1.28 ERA in 2023, and in his last 78 games – including the 2022 postseason – he’s allowed 9 ER. It’s true that he’s likely somewhat post-peak, in that striking out 37% of batters last year is down from his wild 46% in 2021, but it’s also 37%. It’s a badly-needed add, though not one without risk; five-year deals for relievers with Qualifying Offers rarely end well. If anything, this proves this is an extremely differently-run Astros team than the one you’d become accustomed to. -- Mike Petriello

Jan. 12, 2024: Blue Jays sign RHP Yariel Rodríguez
Four years, $32 million

The Blue Jays badly need bats to help turn around an offense that didn’t perform as expected. They already have what’s considered one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. So why are they spending their money on Rodríguez, 27 in March, who has pitched in Cuba and Japan, yet hasn’t thrown a competitive pitch in nearly a year?

Because there’s never such a thing as too much pitching, that’s why, and because the bats market is underwhelming at best. José Berríos and Yusei Kikuchi each posted ERA north of 5.00 in 2022 before successful 2023s, and Alek Manoah’s status is anyone’s guess after a disastrous 2023. Rodríguez may end up being more of a swingman than a true starter, but innings are innings, and $8 million annually for his age 27-30 seasons is a reasonable bet for someone who posted a 1.15 ERA in 54 2/3 innings for Chunichi in 2022, his most recent full season. If he were more of a sure thing, the contract would be much higher. If he was less interesting, then we wouldn’t have heard so many teams involved in acquiring him. This deal won’t stop the Blue Jays from getting the bats they still need. The bats they still need shouldn’t be preventing pitching adds, either. There’s never too much pitching. Ever. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 12, 2024: Giants sign RHP Jordan Hicks
Four years, $44 million

The baseball industry has learned a ton about how important fastball shape is over the last decade or so, which is how someone who averages 101.8 MPH on his four-seam fastball ends up being more of a ground-ball artist than a bat-misser -- despite how hard Hicks throws, it’s generally been straight, or sinking. That changed somewhat in 2023, as his new sweeper (which had an elite 60% swing-and-miss rate) helped him miss more bats early in the year, though that strikeout rate declined as the sweeper use did when he was traded to Toronto.

All that said, Hicks is a youthful (27) pitcher with an enormous arm, and he’s coming off the best and healthiest season of his career, so even if four years is a little surprising, $11 million per year is not, and it only covers his age 27-30 seasons. For a Giants team that had the third-softest four-seamer/sinkers last year, adding a different look in terms of huge velocity is welcome, especially if they can help him improve as they have with others. The real question here is in his role, where he’ll reportedly be given the chance to start. That seems unlikely, given that a previous experiment (8 starts in 2022) did not go well, but what does “starting” mean anyway? It’s 2024. Starters aren’t asked to go deep. If he’s a multi-inning reliever who just happens to be the first pitcher of the day, it’s still a nice add for the Giants. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 12, 2024: Yankees sign RHP Marcus Stroman
Two years, $37 million (with 2026 vesting option w/ 140 IP in 2025)

That the Yankees signed an above-average pitcher for a mere two years and $37 million, below the most conservative estimate of Stroman’s market, can either be read as a great move for the team -- a good pitcher for less than you thought he’d cost! -- or a concerning sign of what the industry thinks he can offer right now, because the other way to view this is: He’s getting barely more per year than Frankie Montas is. While Stroman was an All-Star in 2023, he also posted an 8.63 ERA in the second half, making just eight appearances around a hip injury.

As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Stroman will be 33 in May, and he missed a month in 2022 with shoulder trouble. As an older ground ball pitcher, the ceiling here is relatively low, but the floor should be high, because while you might not expect more than 160 innings or so, you can safely assume those innings will be something like a 3.50 ERA and 2-3ish WAR. That profile, again, depends on how you read it: On one hand, reliability is an absolute must for a Yankee rotation that can’t possibly know what to expect from Nestor Cortes Jr. or Carlos Rodón and sent Michael King to San Diego in the Juan Soto trade. On the other hand, this isn’t really a needle-mover for a team that badly needs to maximize the remaining prime years of Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole.

All that aside, a quality veteran pitcher at this price is a no-brainer. (No, we’re not worried about the past comments each side has made about one another.) But if the smaller-than-expected outlay does anything for the Yankees, it might be in that it easily leaves them room to add the higher-upside starter they still clearly need. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 11, 2024: Cubs sign LHP Shōta Imanaga
Four years, $54 million (with team options that could become five years, $80 million)

A shockingly quiet winter for the Cubs finally comes to life with the signing of Imanaga, a 30-year-old lefty who started the gold medal game of the World Baseball Classic for Team Japan. While he doesn’t have either the upside or the youth of Yoshinobu Yamamoto -- which is why his contract isn’t anywhere near what Yamamoto got with the Dodgers -- Imanaga should be a decent mid-rotation starter for a Cubs staff that saw Marcus Stroman opt out and hadn’t made a move to replace him. In 148 innings for Yokohama last year, Imanaga had a 2.80 ERA with 178 strikeouts.

Based on what we know about Imanaga’s repertoire, thanks largely to the pitch data accumulated in the Classic, he should have a sneaky-good fastball -- the velocity isn’t elite, but the low release point and outstanding vertical break make it play up -- and a good slider too, though there’s more than a little concern about how his sky-high fly-ball rate might play in Wrigley when the wind is blowing out. (It also means he may benefit less from the one indisputable Cubs strength, which is stellar infield defense.) So there are questions, to be sure, but the contract reflects that the industry views him as a third or fourth starter. The Cubs could use that, to go with veterans Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon and Kyle Hendricks. They could use an ace, too, even still. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 8, 2024: Dodgers sign OF Teoscar Hernández
One year, $23.5 million

If you thought the Dodgers were done, then you haven’t been paying attention. With Mookie Betts now a full-time second baseman, the need for a right-handed outfielder had been clear for months, because James Outman and Jason Heyward both hit lefty (as do Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Gavin Lux and Max Muncy) and righty outfielder Manuel Margot (who came in the Tyler Glasnow trade) is a decent bench piece but not really the lefty-mashing righty hitter that the lineup so badly needed.

Hernández, meanwhile, is, or at least he has been. His lone season in Seattle was mildly disappointing, with a mere 106 OPS+, but in the three previous seasons (all with Toronto), he put up a 133 OPS+; more importantly, his career OPS against lefties is outstanding (.887) while his mark against righties is good enough (.772). Presumably, the Dodgers are noting how terribly he hit in Seattle’s pitcher-friendly park, where he had a .643 OPS against an .830 road mark, and they aren’t worrying too much about the seemingly down season. Does he strike out too much? Absolutely; 211 times last season. Is he a great defender? No; metrics consider him average to below. But if you want someone who can mash lefties as the Dodgers clearly do, that’s the price you pay, and in this case, the price was “slightly more than the qualifying offer that Seattle declined to extend him.” A good winter for Los Angeles keeps getting better. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 8, 2024: Mets sign LHP Sean Manaea
Two years, $28 million (with opt-out after 2024)

Manaea made only 10 starts last year with a 4.44 ERA, and he’s now headed to his fourth team in four seasons, so you might be tempted to wonder exactly what the Mets are thinking here. “It’s a short-term obligation meant to fill out the rotation with a back-end starter” is the obvious and perhaps correct interpretation, but New York is also hoping it's about to unlock some of what made Manaea feel a little different last year. His four-seam velocity jumped from 91.3 mph to 93.6 mph; he introduced a new sweeper; he returned to the rotation for four September starts in which he allowed only six earned runs.

What Manaea always does is pitch, because aside from a 2019 interrupted by a shoulder injury and the 2020 that counts for no one, he’s thrown 140 innings or more in five of his six full seasons. If he’s merely pitching average innings, that’s something the Mets need. If there’s a small glimmer of upside remaining, that’s more than can be said for a lot of veteran starters who would sign for two years. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 5, 2024: Mariners trade LHP Robbie Ray to Giants for OF Mitch Haniger, RHP Anthony DeSclafani, and cash

Ray won the Cy Young in 2021 with Toronto, then signed a five-year deal with Seattle that saw him pitch fewer than 200 total innings with the Mariners before he underwent Tommy John surgery and, now, finds himself on the move to San Francisco. To say the deal didn’t work out is an understatement, and the trade is as much about the Mariners freeing themselves of the remaining three years on the deal as it is about adding old friend Haniger (who hit 107 homers in his first stint with Seattle before a disappointing year in San Francisco) and depth starter DeSclafani.

The appeal here for the Giants is obvious, because they had more outfielders than they knew what to do with, and once Ray returns around midseason, there’s the potential for adding a star-level pitcher on a team that badly needs stars. But for Seattle, the question is entirely about what’s next. Given their talented young rotation they didn’t need Ray, necessarily. On the other hand, Haniger doesn’t really solve the ongoing questions in the lineup. There’s a lot of offseason left; did this shuffle the pieces around to set up something else? – Mike Petriello

Jan. 5, 2024: Mariners trade IF José Caballero to Rays for OF/1B Luke Raley

Of course, the Ray trade wasn’t the only, well, Ray trade that the Mariners made on Friday. (Sorry.) With Taylor Walls coming off hip surgery and Wander Franco still working his way through the legal process in the Dominican after the allegations against him, Tampa Bay needed to find infield depth. As a rookie last year, Caballero had somewhat below average offense (90 OPS+) paired with 26 steals and fantastic defense (+8 Outs Above Average), though most of that came at second base. As things stand, he seems likely to get the bulk of playing time at shortstop in 2024.

It came at the cost of Raley, the former Dodger and Twin who had a breakout season in 2023, hitting 19 homers with a 126 OPS+, though the addition of Jonny DeLuca and (in a smaller deal with St. Louis on Friday) Richie Palacios made it harder to find room for him. Raley and Haniger could potentially start in the outfield corners, though given their respective large platoon splits, they might be best off sharing one of them. – Mike Petriello

Jan. 3, 2024: Padres sign RHP Woo-Suk Go
Two years, $4.5 million

One of the Padres' top priorities entering this offseason was rebuilding a bullpen that was set to lose Josh Hader, Nick Martinez, Tim Hill and Luis García via free agency. The club has done that as Go represents another new face in the back end of San Diego's 'pen. About two weeks after signing Japanese closer Yuki Matsui to a five-year contract, the Padres landed Go, who posted a 3.18 ERA over seven seasons with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization. He racked up 401 strikeouts and 139 saves across 368 1/3 innings. His 354 appearances in the KBO all came in relief.

The 25-year-old Go brings a fastball that can touch 98 mph, and he complements that heater with multiple breaking balls. He struck out 29.3% of batters over the past five seasons and topped 30% in each of the previous two years. However, his walk rate reached double digits in four of his seven KBO campaigns, including 11.6% last year.

Go joins Matsui and Robert Suarez as the Padres' top high-leverage relievers. All three could see save opportunities in 2024. -- Brian Murphy

Dec. 30, 2023: Red Sox trade LHP Chris Sale to Braves for INF Vaughn Grissom
Boston also sends $17 million to Atlanta

The Red Sox badly need starting pitching, so on the surface this one might be confounding, but they also desperately needed some help at second base, so trading the final year of the oft-injured Sale’s contract to Atlanta for the young and well-regarded Grissom – who turns 23 on Jan. 5 and hit .320/.407/.477 in parts of four Minor League seasons – makes sense enough. Last year, the Red Sox had the weakest second basemen in the American League, but Grissom was blocked at second base by Ozzie Albies, and his glove is probably too stretched to play short, to the point that he was expected to play some left field in 2024. In Boston, that’s not an issue. He can play second base, every day. Grissom and Trevor Story might make for an interesting combo; at the least, they'll all but certainly be an improvement on the club's 2023 middle infield.

For the Braves' part, they’re not really trading for Sale with the expectation that he’s going to be the elite ace who garnered Cy Young votes for seven consecutive seasons between 2012 and '18. After a poor 2019, he’s thrown only 151 innings over the last four years due to a variety of injuries, though he did manage to make 20 starts last season, and even if Sale totaled only 102 innings, those innings did still come with an excellent 29% strikeout rate. The point, again, isn’t really that he takes 32 starts in the regular season. It’s to have a higher-octane arm than Bryce Elder to start a playoff game. It’s to have another lefty to throw against Bryce Harper or Shohei Ohtani in the playoffs, even if in relief. It will cost them only a player they didn’t have a spot for and $500,000 out of pocket in 2024 to find out. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 29, 2023: Red Sox sign RHP Lucas Giolito
Two years, $38.5 million, with opt-out after 2024

Boston’s clear need this winter was pitching; Craig Breslow said as much the day he was hired as the team's chief baseball officer. It’s not hard to see why, since the rotation was both ineffective and leaving too much work for the relievers to clean up. No Boston starter managed to throw even 160 innings, a mark that Giolito has topped in each of the last five full seasons. At his peak, from 2019-21, he had a 3.47 ERA with a no-hitter to his name and Cy Young support in each season.

Giolito wasn’t good in 2023, but it wasn’t exactly a year where he was set up to succeed, either, being passed around from the White Sox to the Angels to the Guardians. He had a 3.45 ERA in the first half, and Chicago was one of baseball’s weakest defensive teams. That’s not to hand-wave away some real issues; his fastball is 1 mph slower than in his breakout 2019, and his trademark changeup isn’t working like it once did. Of course, if he was coming off a great season, he’d have cost five times this amount. Even if the Red Sox can get him back to “average,” this is a deal worth making, especially since he's still only 29. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 28, 2023: Blue Jays sign CF Kevin Kiermaier and sign UT Isiah Kiner-Falefa
One year, $10.5 million for Kiermaier; two years, $15 million for Kiner-Falefa

Toronto had to replace four bats who reached free agency, and while they still don’t know who replaces Matt Chapman at third or Brandon Belt at DH, they’ve replaced utilityman Whit Merrifield with Kiner-Falefa and simply brought back Kiermaier, who had a typical Kiermaier year in 2023, pairing league-average offense with fantastic center field defense. (Last summer, we argued he’s one of the best to ever play the position.) The Kiner-Falefa fit is less clear, since the Jays are deep in position player depth, and his bat is well below-average, but he can play at least five spots and catch in an emergency.

The larger question, though, is how this all fits into whatever the Toronto offseason will be. They didn’t get Shohei Ohtani. They didn’t get Juan Soto. This pair of moves makes it less likely they’ll get Cody Bellinger. The lineup isn’t good enough, and it’s not clear how it will be. If there’s a plan in all of this, it hasn’t revealed itself yet. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 28, 2023: Mariners sign C/DH Mitch Garver
Two years, $24 million, with mutual option for 2026

Seattle’s offense already hadn’t been strong enough, and that was before they spent the early part of the winter shedding bats. Enter Garver, a surprise hero of the Texas championship run, who remains a dangerous bat even if he’s now more of a DH who can spot at catcher than he is a catcher who starts at DH every now and then. (He started behind the plate for Texas just once in September, and not at all in October.)

That’s probably still true for the Mariners, where newly acquired Seby Zavala probably gets as much or more time backing up Cal Raleigh than Garver does, but that’s not why he’s here. If you set aside the shortened 2020, Garver has posted an .877 OPS over the last four full seasons, which isn’t good so much as it is borderline great, given that (min 1,000 plate appearances in that time) it’s one of the 25 best bats in the game – with a particular skill at slaughtering four-seamers, where almost no one, no one, is better.

Of course, the trick there is injuries, as he’s never taken even 360 plate appearances in a season. Perhaps even less catching time will keep him healthier. Seattle will take as much of his bat as they can get. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 22, 2022: Dodgers sign P Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Twelve years, $325 million

Even after the Dodgers went out and signed Shohei Ohtani, you knew more had to come, because Ohtani can’t pitch in 2024, and the team’s rotation was, for lack of a better term, decimated, due to injury and departures. As we wrote on Nov. 8, “even if it does get Ohtani ... it’s easy to see a big free-agent signing and a trade, for, say, Tyler Glasnow or Dylan Cease.”

Well, they did get Ohtani, and then trade for Glasnow, and now the big free-agent signing has arrived in Yamamoto, who is the three-time defending recipient of the Eiji Sawamura Award -- Japan’s version of the Cy Young -- during which time he posted a 1.44 ERA. While there’s potentially some risk that goes into his relatively slight 5-foot-10 frame, the Statcast data collected during the World Baseball Classic (in addition, obviously, to the years of performance in Japan) gives the Dodgers a ton of confidence that his stuff is real, right now. He might be one of the 10 best starting pitchers in the Majors, right now.

He’s also young, which is not to be forgotten here. Yamamoto will be 25 on Opening Day next year, making him younger than Kyle Hurt, Landon Knack, James Outman and Michael Grove, also known as “members of the Dodgers you consider to be extremely young,” and that’s an important consideration given how fragile Glasnow has been, how inexperienced Bobby Miller has been and how much you can push Walker Buehler coming off Tommy John before he reaches free agency himself. It’s a huge, huge coup for the Dodgers, now and for the future. They might still need a back-end starter. That’s how much work had to be done this winter. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 18, 2023: D-Backs sign OF Lourdes Gurriel, Jr.
Three years, $42 million (team option for a fourth year, player opt-out after first year)

Gurriel made his first All-Star team in his first year with Arizona, though that perhaps oversells it a little, because he had a wildly up-and-down year that included a 1.130 OPS in May, a .480 OPS in July, and ultimately ended with the same kind of “roughly 10% above average” season he’s good for most years. Still, with solid enough defense and at just 30 years old, Gurriel is a good fit on a team that absolutely desperately needed a right-handed bat, and probably still does, even with the addition of Eugenio Suarez and the return of Gurriel. He profiles as an average player, but it’s a good reminder that “average” is a good thing, not a bad thing. You can’t win with only average players. You can’t win with below-average ones, either. A good winter for Arizona gets a little better. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 15, 2023: Rays trade RHP Tyler Glasnow and OF Manuel Margot to Dodgers for RHP Ryan Pepiot and OF Jonny DeLuca

Even with the signing of Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers still desperately needed starting pitching, and, to be honest, still do. What they’re getting in Glasnow is clear, in that he’s A) one of the truly elite pitchers in baseball when he’s healthy, and B) rarely healthy. To the first part, over his last 16 starts, Glasnow allowed a mere .255 OBP, one of the five lowest among starters in that span. To the second, despite being in the Majors for parts of eight seasons, the 120 innings he pitched last year represented a career high. He does not provide the innings this team badly needs, but that’s also not the point, really. He’s there to be an ace-level starter in October. What he does along the way is almost a bonus.

The cost was Pepiot, a very intriguing young arm who has a deadly changeup and a 2.76 ERA in 78.1 innings that is not at all backed up by advanced metrics; DeLuca, who showed elite speed (and very weak hard-hitting) in a late-season cameo and, because he pulls the ball in the air so much, is clearly someone the Rays are targeting as their next Isaac Paredes; and taking on the remaining $12 million due Margot. (The Rays will be sending $4 million to cover part of what Glasnow and Margot are making.) Margot was once an elite defender, but he’s slid down to good as his speed has taken a step back, and while he’s likely to fill the right-handed platoon outfielder role the team needs, he’s not exactly a prototypical lefty-masher, either. It’s not clear at all he’s better than DeLuca in 2024, and it’s easier to view this as a 3-for-1 deal than a 2-for-2, with the Rays viewing moving Margot as part of the cost to get Glasnow.

Of course, the Dodgers wouldn’t do this for one year of an oft-injured pitcher. The trade was contingent on Glasnow signing an extension, which will reportedly be for five years and $135 million, with both sides holding options on a fifth year for different prices, depending on which side chooses to exercise it. What they’re doing is getting ahead of next year’s pitching need, with Walker Buehler about to be a free agent. What they’re doing is taking advantage of the flexibility Ohtani’s creative deal offered. This one is risky, but is there a team better positioned right now to take on that risk? We argue there is not. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 12, 2023: Giants agree to deal with OF Jung Hoo Lee
Six years, $113 million, with an opt out after four years

The Giants absolutely could not let another offseason go by without a splash, and while Lee, the 2022 KBO MVP, might not quite make the same headlines that adding Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani would have, he’s a considerable add to a lineup that desperately needed to get younger, more athletic, and more interesting.

Lee is all of those things at just 25 years old, and while you can’t directly translate KBO stats to MLB on a 1:1 basis, it’s hard to look past that over the last five seasons, he’s struck out a mere 6% of the time, which is top-of-the-scale contact ability. While the cost here is more than most projected, at a certain point, the Giants couldn’t keep finishing second, and the hope is that because Lee is so young that they’re buying into his prime, not his decline.

It’s not a slam dunk, though. He’s reportedly more of a good-enough center fielder than a great one, and he hit more than 15 homers in Korea exactly once, which puts a ton of pressure on all that contact. If he’s Luis Arraez with the ability to man center, the Giants will be thrilled. If he’s Andrew Benintendi, this could look like an overpay from a team that needed – still needs – to add talent at any cost. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 12, 2023: Royals sign RHP Seth Lugo
Three years, $45 million, with an opt-out after 2025

Only three teams had a higher rotation ERA than the 5.12 of the Royals last year, and while they weren’t without bright spots -- notably Cole Ragans and his 2.64 ERA in a dozen starts after being acquired from Texas -- their projected 2024 rotation still looks to contain Jordan Lyles (6.28 ERA) and Brady Singer (5.52), with reports that Zack Grienke (5.06) may want to keep pitching.

Needless to say, they were going to need help to support a surprisingly interesting young lineup, and while Lugo isn’t exactly in the Yoshinobu Yamamoto end of the free-agent pool, he’s a clear, reasonably priced upgrade. After parts of seven seasons spent mostly in the Mets' bullpen, Lugo bet on himself as a starter last winter with San Diego, and offered 146 innings of 3.57 ERA ball, which is to say average-to-slightly-above performance. Don’t take that as a slight; he’s immediately the second-best Kansas City starter, and the most proven. For a team that usually doesn’t wade into free-agent waters (Lugo is their fourth-largest free-agent signing ever), this is a nice and needed upgrade, even if Lugo by himself doesn’t move their contention needle. -- Mike Petriello

Dec. 9, 2023: Dodgers sign DH/P Shohei Ohtani
10 years, $700 million, with $680 million deferred and no opt-outs

This is it. This is The Big One. After all the secrecy demanded by Ohtani and his agent, after all the opera singers and flight tracking, after all the certainty that he was going to Toronto right until he wasn’t, the biggest free agent ever went … exactly where we always thought he would go. What we didn’t expect was the size of the contract to be this large, because this isn’t just baseball’s biggest contract. This is the biggest contract in sports, ever, and might be for quite some time. (It’s complicated: Some large amount of his salary, reportedly the majority of it, will be deferred, and while the details will matter here, the actual value won’t really be $70 million per year. No one will consider this. It will always be “wow! $700 million dollars!” Understandably.)

Yet even if Ohtani doesn’t massively change the 2024 Dodger outlook – they needed, and need, pitching a whole lot more than they needed a DH – that’s not really the point. You get a top-5 bat in the game for the next decade. You get a top three that consists of Mookie Betts, Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman, every night, not just in the All-Star Game. You assume you get an above-average-to-ace-level pitcher as well for some portion of that, though obviously there’s a lot riding on his health after a second major elbow surgery, this one keeping him out for all of 2024.

But to just talk about him in baseball terms sort of misses the point. The Dodgers aren’t paying $700 million for a baseball player. They’re paying that for a worldwide brand, for all of the advertising dollars that will flow towards baseball’s must-watch team, for how often the Dodgers will be seen on televisions across Japan for years to come, for how much this story transcends baseball, for how much other players may want to be on Team Shohei now. It’s hard to know how much, exactly, that’s all worth – some estimates on the low end are tens of millions per year. It’s not hard to see them earning back what they spent on the contract and coming out ahead on it, really, to say nothing of what he does to boost their on-field performance.

Last winter, the Dodgers were criticized in some quarters for having a quiet winter, for pulling back in anticipation of this moment, because it was never a guarantee they’d get Ohtani. (They won 100 games anyway.) This is what they’ve been looking forward to for a year, for a decade, really. It’s finally happened. The most incredible player in baseball goes right where we long thought he would. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 9, 2023: Angels trade IF David Fletcher and C Max Stassi to Braves for 1B Evan White and LHP Tyler Thomas
Braves then trade Stassi to White Sox for player to be named

The Braves keep working around the edges of the roster, flipping a pair of players they’d acquired within the last week (White in the Jarred Kelenic trade, Thomas in the Rule 5 draft) in exchange for a pair of players who might also not fit. It was clear Stassi wasn’t going to stay in Atlanta, not with Sean Murphy and Travis d’Arnaud around, and he was quickly sent to the White Sox, who are hoping they get the version who had a 111 OPS+ over 2020-’21 with excellent framing, before a very poor 2022 and a 2023 season missed entirely due to family health concerns. 

The Angels save $6 million and two 40-man roster spots in the deal, while the Braves add some infield depth in Fletcher, who had a flukishly good 2020 that earned him a five-year, $26 million deal which still found him spending most of 2023 in the Minor Leagues, because while he’s an elite contact hitter (only Luis Arraez has a lower strikeout rate since 2020), it’s all weak contact (no one has a lower hard-hit rate since 2020). Still, he’s a plus glove at multiple infield spots, and ultimately, this series of moves means the Braves get Kelenic without hanging onto all of the two contracts they had to take with him in White and Marco Gonzales. It’s not exactly trading a paper clip for a house, but it’s something in that direction. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 8, 2023: Cardinals trade OF Tyler O’Neill to Red Sox
Cardinals receive: RHP Nick Robertson, RHP Victor Santos

Given how left-handed the Red Sox outfield was last year, and how porous the Boston defense was across the board, the addition of a right-handed outfielder with a good glove was one of the more predictable moves of the winter at Fenway – almost as predictable as the Cardinals trading away O’Neill, as they’ve been telegraphing it for most of the last year. 

That being the case, these two sides coming together makes all the sense in the world, even if it’s not entirely clear what kind of player O’Neill is right now. In 2021, he looked like a superstar, finishing 8th in the NL MVP voting by hitting 34 homers with a 148 OPS+ and Gold Glove defense, but he’s hit only .229/.310/.397 across the last two years, dealing with both injuries (shoulder, hamstring, back, and foot) and the crowded St. Louis outfield situation. He’s lost some speed and base running value because of those injuries, but he’s generally competent against righties and excellent against lefties, and at 29 next year, he’s hardly too old to rebound if healthy. That’s an enormous if, of course, but for two depth arms, it’s worth the gamble. For St. Louis, they clear out some outfield roster space, while crossing their fingers it’s not another Randy Arozarena or Adolis Garcia situation. – Mike Petriello.

Dec. 7, 2023: D-backs sign LHP Eduardo Rodriguez
Four years, $80 million, with a vesting option for a fifth year

There might not have been a better fit of player, team and need than the D-backs adding a strong veteran starting pitcher, given that their run to the pennant showed they had a fun lineup and a handful of good arms, but they still had to resort to throwing openers at the wall in the World Series simply because they didn’t have any other starters. That wasn’t going to all resolve itself internally; in 2024, Merrill Kelly is 35, Zac Gallen has to bounce back from 243 2/3 total innings and Brandon Pfaadt has to prove that all of those late-season changes he made are for real.

Enter Rodriguez, 31 next year, who opted out of the remaining three years of his contract with Detroit to test the market and was paid as the mid-rotation starter he seems to be. That’s not faint praise; it’s just the truth that an 82-53 record somewhat overstates the career 4.03 ERA and 3.85 FIP, numbers that are more good than great. Still, they come with some semblance of reliability, as Rodriguez has made 20 or more starts in each of his seven full seasons, and the one non-2020 time he didn’t came in 2022, which was due to family issues as opposed to injury. This is exactly the right situation where he can make the most impact, because he might not move the needle that much on a team that already had elite starting pitching. But on a young team, desperate to add reliable veteran depth to a rotation that couldn’t even find five arms to fill it out? It’s a perfect fit on a reasonable deal. -- Mike Petriello

Dec. 7, 2023: Reds sign 3B/1B Jeimer Candelario
Three years, $45 million, with team option for 2027 ($15 million)

The Reds, of all teams, signing an infielder is more than a little confusing on the surface; after all, they’re overflowing with young infielders and have real needs on the mound and in the outfield. Then again, Spencer Steer’s impressive rookie year with the bat (23 homers, 119 OPS+) came with defense weak enough that his future is probably in the outfield or at DH. And it had already seemed likely they might trade Jonathan India for an arm, and Joey Votto has to be replaced, and it’s not like Noelvi Marte or Christian Encarnacion-Strand are proven must-play veterans -- and really sometimes it comes down to: Did they add a good player? The answer seems to be yes. The rest usually works it self out.

Candelario, to his credit, had a rebound year in 2023, departing Detroit after a disappointing 2022 and then hitting 22 homers with a 119 OPS+ between the Nationals and Cubs. As a switch-hitter who can play first or third, as well as DH, it’s not that hard to find a way to get him into the lineup. They can’t, after all, all be first- or second-year players, especially if India departs. -- Mike Petriello

Dec. 6, 2023: Padres trade OF Juan Soto and OF Trent Grisham to Yankees
Padres receive RHPs Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Randy Vásquez, Johny Brito and C Kyle Higashioka

What can you say about Soto that hasn’t already been said, many times, over many years? He is, through age 24, one of the all-time greatest hitters in the modern history of the sport. He’s projected to be the second-best hitter in the Majors in 2024. He keeps getting compared to Ted Williams. Put it this way: He just hit 35 homers with a .930 OPS, and it wasn’t even considered a standout season by his standards. He’s that good, he’s that young, and he’s joining a Yankees lineup that was all but punchless (no, really; their OPS was similar to Kansas City’s) outside of Aaron Judge, and desperately needed a strong left-handed bat. They did better than strong; they got, essentially, the best.

Now: Is his defense strong? No, it’s poor. Is he guaranteed to remain with the Yankees beyond 2024, his final year before free agency? No, he’s not. But Judge will be 32 in April, and Gerrit Cole is 33, and there are only so many more years left with them at or near their peak. Even if Soto remains just for the one year, it’s a year absolutely worth maximizing, not to mention the value of selling him on your franchise. (While Grisham will be largely overlooked here due to his weak bat, he’s one of the game’s truly elite defensive outfielders, which is about to be an important consideration if the starting trio is Soto in a corner, Judge in center and Alex Verdugo in another corner.) They did give up three Major League pitchers and a top pitching prospect, but it’s a good market for free agent pitchers, and also, you don’t expect to get Soto for nothing, do you?

From San Diego’s point of view, they absolve themselves of the will-they-or-won’t-they about Soto’s status all of next year, though they’ve somewhat traded one problem for another. With a huge portion of their pitching staff off to free agency, they just added an enormous boost on the mound, in particular the next two years of King (who had a 1.88 ERA in eight late-season starts, though most didn’t go past five innings) and Thorpe, the Minor League pitcher of the year. Brito and Vásquez are ready-now arms who got into 36 games between them last year, and they should slot right into the San Diego staff. But now, the Padres outfield consists of Fernando Tatis Jr. and maybe not much else. This makes them a competitive team for 2024, still. It's just a far less exciting and interesting one. – Mike Petriello

Dec. 5, 2023: Red Sox trade OF Alex Verdugo to Yankees for RHPs Greg Weissert, Richard Fitts and Nicholas Judice

When the immediate reaction to news that the Yankees have acquired a veteran bat is "how quickly is he going to be flipped in another move," then you know this isn't exactly the lefty batter that fans were expecting. Verdugo isn't Juan Soto, and he's not Cody Bellinger; what he is is a league-average bat with inconsistent defensive metrics, who ends up being a league average player. (He's put up 9.2 WAR over the last five seasons, and 2 WAR is considered "average.")

It's here where we point out that "average" isn't bad, and can in fact be useful, especially because the New York outfield wasn't anywhere near average last year. Even with Aaron Judge, the Yankee outfield posted 2.9 WAR, the sixth-weakest in the game. They needed a lefty; they value contact; Verdugo is a lefty who makes contact. There's not a ceiling here like Bellinger's, but the underlying metrics are surprisingly similar, and the cost was minimal.

There's a version of this where they trade for Soto to play left, put Judge in center field until Jasson Domínguez is healthy, have Verdugo in right, and worry about the fit when it needs to be worried about. There's another version of this where Verdugo is a Yankee for only as long as it takes to send him to San Diego as part of a Soto deal. It's a minor upgrade, even if it doesn't feel that way. It might also be a trivia question about those few hours that Verdugo was in pinstripes. At least there's evidence in a team social media post. -- Mike Petriello

Dec. 5, 2023: White Sox sign RHP Erick Fedde
Two years, $15 million

You see Fedde's career 5.41 ERA and that the Nationals non-tendered him just a year ago, and you're not impressed. Then again, maybe you didn't notice what happened in 2023 when Fedde went off to Korea and merely won the KBO Most Valuable Player Award, striking out 30% of batters after getting a mere 16% in his final season in Washington in 2022.

Was that merely a result of lesser (if still good) hitting quality? Perhaps, but there's quite a bit more to it than that. As detailed in the Washington Post in September, Fedde spent the time after the Nats let him go working in a pitch lab for the first time, improving his health and the shapes of his pitches. New White Sox pitching advisor Brian Bannister confirmed that Fedde has a pair of new pitches -- a sweeper and a split-change -- just like Logan Webb, an offseason workout partner of Fedde's.

Chicago is clearly hoping he can be the next Merrill Kelly, finding success back home after a stint in Korea. He'll get plenty of opportunity to find out, given how thin the White Sox rotation might be. -- Mike Petriello

Dec. 4, 2023: Mariners trade OF Jarred Kelenic, LHP Marco Gonzales, 1B Evan White, and cash to Braves for RHP Jackson Kowar and Minor League RHP Cole Phillips

If you barely know the names the Braves just shipped out here, you wouldn't be alone; Kowar had been in the organization for barely two weeks, and Phillips, a 2022 Draft pick, has yet to throw a professional pitch due to injuries. They're still young; they're still talented; they still could have productive careers. They're just very far away from any of that, and now the Braves have a platoon option in left (Kelenic, still only 24) and a fifth-starter/swingman veteran type (Gonzales, 32, recovering from arm surgery). For the cost of a little money and very little in prospect capital, baseball's best team got a little deeper -- and in a way that doesn't prevent them from adding the top starter we all expect they still will. Even if Kelenic never learns to hit a breaking ball, it's a worthwhile gamble.

The Mariners, meanwhile, are up to something. They'd have to be, having already removed Eugenio Suárez and Teoscar Hernández from a lineup that was already not good enough, and each move seems a lot more about payroll than it does about the roster. Yet Jerry Dipoto clearly stated "our payroll is very likely to be higher than it was a year ago," and it seems less likely than ever that Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto ends up in the Northwest. Given the desperate need for bats, and the lack of them on the market, does that mean something like a signing of hometown hero Blake Snell and then flipping a young starter or three for bats? We don't yet know, but it'd better be big. -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 30, 2023: Reds sign RHP Nick Martinez & Emilio Pagán
Two years with an opt-out after 2024 for each ($26 million for Martinez, $16 million for Pagán)

The Reds needed pitching. Full stop. The Reds still need pitching, preferably in the form of a top-end ace-like starting pitcher, but this is at least a start, because the staff was thin enough that no single pitcher was going to add enough depth. Last year’s Reds had the sixth-highest ERA and fourth-highest FIP, and even if it feels like you should get the best pitcher you’re going to get first and work down from there, the timing of it all doesn’t really matter. If they needed five or so new pitchers, here are two of them.

Combined, Martinez and Pagán, each entering their age-33 season, tossed 179 2/3 innings of 3.26 ERA ball for the Padres and Twins, respectively, though how they got there is extremely different. Martinez is an average bat-misser, but his 54% ground-ball rate is outstanding, in the 90th percentile. Pagán can and has been an excellent bat-misser, but he’s an extreme fly-ball pitcher, and his 2023 success was primarily about the fact that for the first time in his career, he wasn’t allowing homers at an above-average rate. It’s difficult to think that persists in Great American Ball Park, the most homer-friendly stadium in the Majors. But for a relatively limited outlay, the Reds got a pair of competent, useful, veteran pitchers who can soak up 180 innings or so. It’s much more valuable than it sounds. -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 27, 2023: Cardinals sign RHP Sonny Gray
Three years, $75 million

The Cardinals made it so clear they wanted three starters, and three starters they now have, adding Gray, who finished second in the AL Cy Young ballot, to back-end arms Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. Gray, 34, posted a 2.79 ERA for the Twins in 2023, and he's had a 3.22 ERA over the last five seasons for Cincinnati and Minnesota. He provides innings, good innings, for a team that desperately needed them, and even if $25 million per year seems high to you, realize that not having to guarantee more than 3 years to a pitcher who is already 34 is a win, too. They're much better than they were two weeks ago.

But Gray, for all of his skills, is not an elite bat-misser. (Last year, his largest strength was an elite ability to prevent home runs.) Part of the St. Louis issue in 2023 was not only that its starters didn't miss bats -- they did not, with the second-weakest strikeout rate in baseball -- but also that the defense faltered behind them. It feels like there's another move to be made here, even with three new starters. Including incumbents Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz, it's a pitch-to-contact rotation that averages 35 years old. If this isn't a situation to trade some position player excess for a high-risk, high-upside starter like Dylan Cease or Tyler Glasnow, what is? -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 26, 2023: Tigers sign RHP Kenta Maeda
Two years, $24 million

It's somewhat popular to view Detroit as an up-and-coming roster, but it was never going to happen without some outside help, and that had to begin in the rotation, which has to replace free agent Eduardo Rodriguez from a group that wasn't quite good enough outside of Tarik Skubal. Maeda, 36 in April, is not the long-term answer, and he's not even someone you can reliably expect 32 starts out of, considering he's done that just once, way back in 2016.

But Maeda, despite a fastball that averaged just 91 mph last year, offers reliable competency, with the hope for something slightly more. After missing all of 2022 with Tommy John surgery, his 2023 return was a success -- he posted a 4.23 ERA and a 27% strikeout rate that was comfortably above the 23% Major League average. That actually undersells him to some extent; after a rough re-entry (9.00 ERA in his first four starts), he was outstanding (3.36 ERA in 17 more games). One hundred and thirty or so solid-to-good innings may not be the stuff of movies, but it's incredibly valuable for a young team, at an extremely reasonable price. -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 22, 2023: Mariners trade 3B Eugenio Suárez to D-backs for catcher Seby Zavala and RHP Carlos Vargas

Consider this an easy win from Arizona's point of view, because its 2023 third base situation was something of a black hole (only three teams got less offensively from the hot corner), and 38-year-old Evan Longoria is a free agent anyway. Suárez, 32, strikes out way too much (214 times last year), but he's got eight straight seasons of at least a 20-homer pace, and he graded as one of the best defensive third basemen in the sport. Though he was just an average hitter overall (101 OPS+), that plus a good glove is considerably better than what they had for 2024.

For Seattle's side, Zavala is just a depth catcher, while Vargas (acquired last fall in a Minor League trade from Cleveland) has a huge arm -- he averaged 99.4 mph on his four-seamer -- but got into only five games for Arizona due to strike-throwing issues. He's only 24, and it's not that hard to imagine Seattle turning him around, as they have for other recent relief arms. But the goal here was about clearing a big-strikeout bat from a big-strikeout team, and saving the $11 million-plus he'd be owed in 2024 for other uses -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 21, 2023: Cardinals sign RHP Lance Lynn and RHP Kyle Gibson
One year with a team option for each

The Cardinals had been clear for months that they would need at least three starting pitchers; here's John Mozeliak way back in August saying exactly that. As expected, they were aggressive in adding some arms, but these might not be the arms Cardinals fans were expecting. Lynn, 37 next year, pitched for the Cardinals from 2011-17, and allowed 44 homers last year, the most in baseball. Gibson, 36 next year and twice before a Lynn teammate, posted a 4.73 ERA for Baltimore in 2023.

There's an obvious appeal to both veterans, and that's that they simply show up. Gibson made 33 starts last year and has made at least 25 in every full season back to 2014. He and Lynn are fifth and eighth, respectively, on the list of "most games started since 2017." Given that the St. Louis rotation had essentially been only Miles Mikolas (35 years old) and Steven Matz (who hasn't been able to stick repeatedly as a starter), you can see the appeal of arms, of depth, of the simple competency of No. 4 or No. 5 starters. But neither of these two do anything to resolve the absolutely desperate need for bat-missing in the rotation (they were 29th last year), which means the real reaction to this can only be: fine, but who's next? It needs to be a star. -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 20, 2023: Braves sign RHP Reynaldo López
Three years, $30 million

Baseball's best team doesn't really need a whole lot -- a left field upgrade here, a rotation boost there -- and so they've focused their early efforts on boosting what was already a solid bullpen group. López, 30 in January, was once a highly regarded starting prospect with the Nationals and White Sox, but in recent years had settled into something of a flame-throwing relief weapon, as you can see from the velocity chart here:

The Braves are reportedly going to let López stretch out to compete for a starting role in camp, which seems surprising, given his splits of "4.73 ERA, 20% strikeout rate as a starter" vs "3.01 ERA, 27% strikeout rate as a reliever," but it ultimately may not matter. If he pitches well enough to win a rotation job, wonderful. If they manage to acquire enough quality starters this winter to make him a multi-inning relief weapon instead, then that's great too. López is something of a luxury item for baseball's luxury roster. They'll be happy to have him come next October. -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 19, 2023: Phillies sign RHP Aaron Nola
Seven years, $172 million

Philadelphia played at a 100-win pace for the final four months of the 2023 season, and really only had one major member of that roster able to depart via free agency -- that being Nola, who has spent the last nine seasons in the Phillies' rotation. That meant they either had to retain him or find someone to replace him, and Dave Dombrowski just couldn't have been clearer about his interest, saying earlier in November that "We love him ... we hope to retain him ... so, yes, it’s either Aaron or somebody else.”

Given that the Phillies couldn't be certain that they'd win the Blake Snell or Yoshinobu Yamamoto sweepstakes, moving to lock up a key piece of their franchise early in the offseason makes sense. That they had to sign up for his age 31-37 seasons coming off a 4.46 ERA might offer slight pause, though the underlying metrics liked him better than that, and it's worth noting that no organization could possibly know Nola better than the Phillies, and they were willing to bet that his run of five consecutive (full-season) years of 32 or more starts will continue for at least the next few years. It's hard to find durable workhorses, as you may have noticed. The Phillies are better in 2024 with him back, and he's now set up to be a franchise legend, believe it or not. -- Mike Petriello

Nov. 16, 2023: White Sox trade LHP Aaron Bummer to Braves
White Sox receive RHP Michael Soroka, LHP Jared Shuster, INF Nicky Lopez, INF Braden Shewmake and RHP Riley Gowens

The Braves were in need of some bullpen help with Kirby Yates, Collin McHugh, Brad Hand and Jesse Chavez all reaching free agency, and Bummer fits the bill. The lefty finished 2023 with a 6.79 ERA over 61 appearances, but his underlying metrics -- including a 3.58 FIP and a 3.53 expected ERA -- were much more palatable. While a five-player package may seem steep for one reliever, several of the players Atlanta sent to Chicago in the deal were not expected to be tendered contracts by the Nov. 17 deadline. The White Sox have a lot of work to do to address a talent-deficient roster, and this deal allows the club to take a chance on some young players with potential, including three former first-round Draft picks (Soroka, Shuster, Shewmake).

The most notable player in Chicago’s haul is Soroka, who is looking to get back on track after numerous injury-related setbacks, including two tears of his right Achilles tendon. The 26-year-old right-hander finished second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2019. -- Thomas Harrigan

Nov. 5, 2023: Brewers trade OF Mark Canha to Tigers
Brewers receive Minor League P Blake Holub

Only the A’s and White Sox scored fewer runs than the Tigers did in 2023, so even though Canha (who turns 35 in February) isn’t by himself a game-changer, one player alone isn’t going to fix what’s been ailing the Detroit offense. They’re going to need to add a handful of bats, and Canha, who has had a 120 OPS+ over the last five years as well as in his time with Milwaukee last summer, qualifies as an upgrade simply by being an average-to-above-average veteran piece. Given how left-handed the young Tigers outfield is, the fit here is obvious, as well as the possibility that nine months from now, they might just flip him at the 2024 Deadline for a prospect. Maybe even one like Blake Holub! – Mike Petriello