Thank God the hustle and bustle of Christmas is behind us. There are only a couple of more days until 2025. January 1st always brings new hope for a better year ahead.
In the sports world, you may be hoping for a long playoff run for your football team or hope for a good draft to make a run in 2025. In the NBA and NHL, you’re in the heart of your seasons and hope your teams stay healthy, and your GMs make the moves necessary to hoist The Stanley Cup…and whatever the NBA trophy is called…LOL.
In MLB, you hope your team can field a group of players to make a run at the World Series. And with the turn of the calendar into the new year, we are coming out of the Hot Stove season and into Spring Training, which is just a little over a month away.
This week, another couple of big free agents were signed. The Yankees came up short in the Juan Soto sweepstakes and quickly pivoted to Max Fried on an 8yr/$218M deal. This week, they let Gleyber Torres find greener pastures in Detroit. The Tigers signed him to a 1yr/$15M deal. To not re-sign him to that kind of deal makes it abundantly clear that they wanted to move on from him.
Putting together a baseball team can be a game of jenga and dominoes. By letting Torres walk, they may have designs to move Jazz Chisholm back to his natural position of 2B. He’s arbitration-eligible and stands to make about $6M this season. If this is their thought process, that creates a hole at 3B for them. They still have DJ Lemahieu under contract for the next two seasons at $15M per year, but they desperately want an upgrade and have been linked to Alex Bregman and Nolan Arenado. If they can snag one of them, their infield of recently acquired Paul Goldschmidt at 1B, Chisholm at 2B, and Anthony Volpe at SS will be among the best in baseball.
The biggest shoe to drop this week was the biggest remaining piece on the board, Corbin Burnes. The 30yr old right-hander signed a 6yr/$210M deal, ($35M AAV), with teh Arizona Diamondbacks. He had been linked to the San Fransisco Giants. This is yet another high-profile free agent that they’ve lost out on. I’m being a tad unfair to them; they did sign Willy Adames to a 7-year, $182M deal earlier in this offseason. But Burnes was the jewel they were after.
This is a great signing for the Diamondbacks. Burnes is only 30, and they only have him through his age-36 season. In his seven seasons, he has only missed 30 starts once. In 2021, he “only” made 28 starts. During the COVID season of 2020, he made all of his 12 starts. This is a durable guy.
He’s 60-36 for his career with a 3.19 ERA and 1.06 WHIP. And he strikes out over a batter per inning, with 10.57 Ks per 9IP. His $35M AAV is actually a bit of a bargain. It seems that inflation is everywhere except in pitchers’ salaries. His annual salary only comes in eighth all-time. Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and Zack Wheeler have had $40M-plus annual salaries. Gerrit Cole’s contract is $114M more than what Burnes just received in overall value. Burnes is every bit as solid as Cole. I repeat, this is a great signing for the Diamondbacks, and they got him at a bargain.
