Hub World

We’re really starting to heat up now here with a lot of these signings. They keep signing, so I’ll keep rounding them up. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them and want to get caught up, and let’s get into the good stuff.

• Kyle Schwarber: 4 years, $80M to the Phillies. Bryce Harper openly advocated for a guy like this, and the front office rang the bell. The Phils land a big left handed bat in the outfield, who could even slide into the new DH role. Unbiased reaction: this is a good move for the Phillies. Biased reaction: this is an effing great move for the Phillies.
• Seiya Suzuki: 5 years, $85M to the Cubs. Suzuki has 9 years under his belt playing professionally in Japan. He’s a career .309 hitter with 189 bombs, 102 stolen bases, and over 1000 total hits. It remains to be seen how he’ll translate to the MLB, but with the crazy success of Ohtani, it’s not crazy to think that Suzuki can bring some of those skills over for the Cubs.
• Matt Olson: 8 years, $168M to the Braves. The 27 year old lefty power bat secures a bag from a team who wouldn’t give it to their probable future Hall of Fame first baseman Freddie Freeman a year after profiting over $100M on the season, and a World Series. Weird. I guess they had something like this in mind when trading for him a few days ago. Olson had a stellar 2021, hitting 39 jacks and hitting .271 in an All Star year.
• Anthony Rizzo: 2 years, $32M to the Yankees. There are rumors he passed up a longer deal, which makes me predict a trade next year at the deadline if the Yankees can’t make any noise again. Feels like that team is in some kind of limbo, and I don’t really care if they ever get out, personally.
• Odubel Herrera: 1 year to the Phillies. Willing to leave the past in the past for good, the Phils unite with the outfielder once again. Schwarber, Herrera and Harper makes up a solid outfield for the upcoming season.
• Brad Hand: 1 year, $6M to the Phillies. Love to see the Phils making moves, and pretty good ones at that. Hand was one of the last good lefty relievers out there available, which we all know the Phillies were in need of.
• Jake Marisnick: To the Rangers.
• Daniel Vogelbach: 1 year, $1M to the Pirates. Glad to see this guy still getting picked up. He may have a quiet year overall, but I promise we’ll see a few highlights of him hitting bombs into the river.
• Phillip Evans: to the Yankees.
• Chris Martin: 1 year, $2.5M to the Cubs.
• Chad Kuhl: 1 year, $3M to the Rockies.
• Joe Kelly: 2 years, to the White Sox. Kelly still brings the heat and the energy, and should be able to provide a lot of value in that bullpen.
• Andrew Chafin: 2 years, $13M to the Tigers. Chafin has strung together a few decent seasons after a rocky beginning in the majors. He’ll be good out of the pen from the left side, but just about any move from the Tigers feels completely inconsequential. Respectfully.
• Brad Miller: to the Rangers. Another former Phillie I’m sad to see go. We had some good times, and the utility infielder definitely still can provide some value.
• Collin McHugh: 2 years, $10M to the Braves. After opting out of 2020 during the pandemic and only pitching 64 innings last season, it will be interesting to see the kind of success he brings to the Braves this season.
• Heath Hembree: 1 year, $2.25M to the Pirates.
• Chris Owings: Minor league deal with a chance to make the Majors, to the Orioles.

And that’s about all for now. There are still some big names out there, like Freddie Freeman, Trevor Story, Nick Castellanos and Kris Bryant to name a few. Oh, and rumors that the Astros are restructuring their offer to Carlos Correa. The best is yet to come, it seems.

Credit to the signings and numbers to Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman on Twitter.