Winter meetings day 3 recap
Here are the seven biggest moves from day 3 of the winter meetings
Aaron Judge - New York Yankees
Aaron Judge, 30, decided to stay loyal to the team he’s spent his entire big league career with, choosing the Yankees over his childhood favorite San Francisco Giants.
After a tweet made it seem like Aaron Judge was in fact heading to the bay area, and subsequently turned out to be false,
he signed with the Yankees for 9 years, $360 million.
Judge is coming off a MVP season where he broke the American League single-season home run record with 62, and will surely become the next captain of baseball’s most accomplished franchise, with a retired number and stature almost a guarantee as well one day.
Willson Contreras - St. Louis Cardinals
Willson Contreras has joined the other side of one of baseball's biggest rivalries as he leaves the Chicago Cubs to become the next catcher for the Cardinals, replacing the retired, legendary, Yadier Molina.
Contreras plays the game very differently from Molina, a hit first as opposed to glove first catcher. Still though, he is one of the best at his position.
A three-time all-star coming off his best career season with a 128 OPS+, Contreras will now be making $87.5 million over the next five years for the redbirds.
Brooks Raley, Jose Quintana - New York Mets
The Mets made two moves to help their pitching staff.
One of them was a trade for Tampa Bay Rays lefty Brooks Raley who had an impressive 2.68 ERA in 60 outings this past season and was in the 99th percentile in barrel% and 98th percentile in hard-hit rate, a.k.a elite.
In return for Raley, the Rays got lefty pitching prospect Keyshawn Askew who had impressive numbers in the minors across both levels of A-ball as a 22-year-old.
The other move was signing Jose Quintana to a two year, $26 million contract.
Quintana, a lefty, has a career 3.75 career ERA, but the former all-star had a resurgent season last year at 33 years old, posting a 2.93 ERA in 32 starts.
These moves help to round out the Mets roster as they look to compete in a strong division.
Kenley Jansen, Masataka Yoshida - Boston Red Sox
The Red Sox also made two moves, one on the hitting side, and one on the pitching side.
The pitching side move was bringing in veteran right-handed closer Kenley Jansen on a two-year, $32 million deal.
Jansen has 391 career saves and bolsters the Red Sox ‘pen in a tough, tough division.
The bat they brought in was Japanese star Masataka Yoshida by way of the posting system, signing the lefty outfielder on a 5 year, $90 million contract, and paying Yoshida’s Japanese league team, the Orix Buffaloes, a $15.4 million posting fee.
Yoshida was almost always on base last year for the Buffaloes, posting a .447 on-base percentage, and has only struck out 307 times in 3,251 career plate appearances. If Yoshida can carry that over to the MLB he’ll have the second best strikeout percentage in the league.
Xander Bogaerts - San Diego Padres
Despite two great additions, the Red Sox did lose one of the faces of their franchise in shortstop Xander Bogaerts.
Bogaerts, deal with the Padres kind of came out of nowhere, but it made sense considering their pursuits of Trea Turner and Aaron Judge over the past few days.
The deal is for 11 years, and Bogaerts is already 30. The amount of money he’ll be receiving is $280 million, and he will also receive a full no-trade clause in his contract.
According to ESPN, the Red Sox didn’t want to commit to Bogaerts for more than a decade, as “those contracts mostly do not work out well for teams”, a Red Sox front office member explained.
I’m sure Bogaerts will be happy though to join a stacked roster with stars Manny Machado, Juan Soto, and Fernando Tatis Jr in San Diego.
The move almost certainly means Tatis Jr. will move to a corner outfield spot, but he will probably be just fine with that as this move might just make the Padres favorites to win their first ever World Series in 2023, depending on how the rest of this offseason goes.
