“Opening Day, right now, is an ’if.’  Let’s see what happens,” Cora said.  “[Crawford is] not feeling well.  He’s behind. We’ve got to make sure the knee is good so the shoulder doesn’t suffer.”

Unfortunately for the Sox, Crawford isn’t the only pitcher facing uncertainty early in camp, as Brayan Bello has been dealing with shoulder soreness since the start of spring camp.  Cora said Bello will undergo a strength test tomorrow, as the Red Sox continue to evaluate the right-hander’s status.  To date, Bello has been throwing, but the team has been taking it relatively slowly with this progression, and Cora said Bello hasn’t thrown any bullpens.  Between the two starters, Crawford seems to be more of a question mark than Bello, as Cora said that “with Kutter, that’s the one it looks like is going to be long.”

With over a month before Opening Day, there is plenty of time for either pitcher to still get healthy for the season in general, even if the Red Sox could be cautious in placing Crawford and/or Bello on the 15-day injured list just to provide more ramp-up time.  In theory, Boston has a good deal of pitching depth on hand in the form of Cooper Criswell, Richard Fitts, Quinn Priester and Michael Fulmer, so any of these arms could fill in for Crawford, Bello, or Lucas Giolito, who is still working through his rehab from an internal brace surgery from last March.

Only five proper starters will be needed in the early going, as Cora confirmed that Boston will be using a five-man rotation.  Reports in January indicated that the Sox were at least thinking about a six-man staff in order to best utilize and manage its starting depth, but Cora said “we haven’t talked about a six-man.  You guys have talked about it.  If we go that route, it’s for a reason.  For right now, we’re taking the best five and using the bullpen.”

This lines the staff up as Garrett Crochet, Tanner Houck, Walker Buehler, Giolito if healthy enough for Opening Day, and then potentially one of the depth starters if Bello and Crawford indeed aren’t available.  Plans could certainly change given Boston’s busy early schedule, as both Cotillo and Cora noted that the team plays on 19 of the regular season’s first 20 days.

The injury bug is also impacting Boston’s position players, as Wilyer Abreu has yet to start workouts due to a gastrointestinal virus.  A team spokesperson told Cotillo and other reporters that Abreu received “some abnormal labs” on his illness, but the “labs have been getting better, and he’s feeling better, but they’re waiting for those to get back to a normal range before baseball activity.”

More testing is coming on Monday, Cora said, and Abreu will sit through the weekend.  A timeline isn’t in place for how much time Abreu could still miss, or whether or not this absence could cost him any time on the injured list at the start of the season.  Abreu is slated for another heavy role in Boston’s outfield this season, as the Gold Glover looks to build on a very successful rookie year.

The internal brace is generally a less invasive operation than a full Tommy John surgery. That can shave a few months off the projected recovery timeline. Giolito underwent his surgery in the middle of March. With Spring Training opening one year later, the right-hander expects to be on the mound in exhibition play.

“I’m going to be ready for a full Spring Training and a full season,” Giolito told WEEI’s Rob Bradford on the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast. “I find it funny when I see stuff online saying that I’ll be coming back in June. I don’t know where that came from. I have no idea. … Everything’s going great. I look forward to a full year.”

Giolito said he is towards the tail end of his rehab process at the team’s complex in Fort Myers. He indicated he expects to progress to throwing off a mound soon. Giolito added that teammate Garrett Whitlock, who underwent the same procedure in late May, is at a similar stage in his own rehab work.

Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow spoke with reporters (including Alex Speier of the Boston Globe) this morning. Breslow wasn’t as firm as Giolito had been about the pitcher being ready for the start of exhibition play, but he said that the team indeed expects to have both Giolito and Whitlock available for “the bulk of 2025 if not all of it.” Breslow added that reliever Liam Hendriks, who’ll be a year and a half removed from August ’23 Tommy John surgery, will be a full go for Spring Training. That’s the expected outcome, as Hendriks had a chance to return at the end of this past season before minor arm discomfort led the Sox to shut him down in September.

Giolito conceded that he may need to compete for a rotation spot in what is shaping up as a new-look pitching staff. The Sox have added Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler this offseason. They’re likely to lose Nick Pivetta, who remains unsigned after rejecting a qualifying offer. Crochet and Buehler join Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford in the projected starting five. If Boston prefers to open the year with a five-man rotation, Giolito (assuming he’s indeed on track for Opening Day) may compete with Crawford for the #5 job. Crawford has experience working out of the bullpen but took all 33 turns through the rotation this year.

In any case, the Sox will likely need to rely on all six pitchers to start games over the course of a 162-game schedule. Whitlock, who has yet to reach 80 MLB innings in a season, could be a candidate to head back to the bullpen. Boston moved Whitlock into the rotation to start the ’24 campaign, but he went on the injured list with an oblique strain after four appearances. He injured his elbow during a minor league rehab assignment. Given the durability questions, a return to a two- or three-inning relief role may be appropriate.

Giolito will play next season on a $19MM player option. The Red Sox hold a $14MM club option for the 2026 season. Giolito would convert that to a mutual option valued at $19MM if he’s able to log 140 innings next year. If he opens the year on the active roster, that’s a reasonable target even though he didn’t pitch this past season. Durability had been one of the righty’s biggest pluses coming into this year. Giolito had made 29+ starts in each of the preceding five full schedules. He tossed a career-high 184 1/3 innings with a combined 4.88 earned run average between the White Sox, Angels and Guardians in 2023.

MLBTR readers who want a full refresher on the situation can check out these posts from March. The 2023-2024 offseason was miserable for players, as various teams dialed back spending, often citing declining TV revenue as the reason. Several players signed contracts that were far below initial expectations, most prominently the “Boras Four” of Blake Snell, Matt Chapman, Jordan Montgomery and Cody Bellinger.

On the heels of that winter, frustration boiled up within the players and they eventually appeared to be split into two camps. One camp attempted to replace deputy director Bruce Meyer with Harry Marino, and it was suggested by some that executive director Tony Clark also would have been ousted in the event Meyer was replaced. Ultimately, those efforts stalled out and the Clark/Meyer duo stayed atop the union’s leadership structure.

Marino had previously been the head of Advocates For Minor Leaguers, the group that unionized minor league players. The minor leaguers were placed under the MLBPA umbrella, with Marino and Meyer then negotiating with MLB the first ever collective bargaining agreement for minor league players. Minor leaguers received 34 of the 72 seats on the MLBPA executive board, but Marino and Meyer reportedly did not get along, with Marino leaving the union at some point.

Though Marino was out of the union, it seems he was well liked enough in some circles that this attempt was made to install him into a very prominent position. Despite the frustrating winter for players, Meyer had made some notable gains for players in the 2022 CBA, his first in this role. The competitive balance tax tiers all went up, though a fourth tier was added. The minimum salaries were also raised in notable fashion, and a bonus pool for pre-arbitration players was created, among other advancements for players.

Regardless, the frustration was real and significant enough to threaten Meyer and perhaps Clark in the leadership structure, though they ultimately survived. Back in March, Flaherty seemed to express regret about the way things played out, though he also seemed surprised by the way Marino proceeded.

“There was one phone call that went on that I put Tony in a bad position in, where Harry tried to push his way through,” Flaherty told Ken Rosenthal at the time. “He tried to pressure Tony, and Tony stood strong, said this is not going to happen. Tony has done nothing but stand strong in all of this. That was something I would love to take back. I never wanted Harry to be in Bruce’s position.” Flaherty repeated that he was not trying to replace Meyer. “I said he’s not somebody to replace Bruce, but if you guys want to listen to him, we can continue this conversation. Things got way out of hand after that.” Flaherty then went on to compliment Meyer for the job he had done with the recent CBA.

The MLBPA votes on those subcommittee spots every two years. The union announced this week a new subcommittee consisting of Chris Bassitt, Jake Cronenworth, Pete Fairbanks, Cedric Mullins, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Marcus Semien and Brent Suter. Semien and Suter are the lone holdovers from the previous subcommittee.

As noted by Drellich, the subcommittee is significant because key matters are often settled with a 38-person vote. Each of the 30 teams have a representative with one vote, and the eight subcommittee members get the remaining eight votes. Those 30 team reps vote on the eight subcommittee members. The eight players selected this week will have their positions for the next two years, which aligns with the end of the current CBA, as that agreement goes until Dec. 2, 2026.

All relations between MLB and the MLBPA have appeared to be contentious in recent years, from CBA negotiations to the COVID-related shutdown to on-field rule changes. The most recent CBA involved a lockout of more than three months and came perilously close to canceling games. On the other hand, the two sides agreed in the middle of the 2024 campaign to redirect some CBT money towards teams that had lost broadcast revenue, a fairly rare instance of a notable financial decision made outside normal CBA talks.

With another round of collective bargaining due two years from now, the possibility of another lockout is also on the horizon. The league and the union will have plenty to work out, including the ongoing broadcast uncertainty, the international draft and other big-picture issues along with the typical bargaining topics like salaries, taxes and revenue sharing. As such, the developments within the union will have notable ramifications for the baseball world.

Last winter, Giolito was Boston’s big winter signing. It was a two-year deal with a $38.5MM guarantee, with the righty having the ability to opt-out after the first season.

He had a down year in 2023 and was surely hoping for a bounceback in 2024, which could allow him to return to the open market with more earning power. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow during spring training, as well as a flexor strain, ultimately undergoing internal brace surgery.

After missing the entire 2024 campaign, there was little drama about this decision. Rather than return to free agency, he’ll lock in his $19MM player option and be a part of Boston’s rotation mix for 2025. He might not be ready by Opening Day but should get back on the mound at some point.

The Sox are now losing Nick Pivetta to free agency, leaving them with a rotation core of Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford. They also have guys like Richard Fitts, Cooper Criswell, Quinn Priester and others for the back end. They will likely pursue offseason upgrades but Giolito will be a midseason addition at some point. As will Garrett Whitlock and Chris Murphy, who also underwent elbow surgery early in the ’24 season.

When Giolito returns will be of importance for him and the club, as his deal with the Sox also includes a option for 2026. If he throws fewer than 140 innings in 2025, it’s a $14MM club option. But if he gets over that threshold, it’s a $19MM mutual option. Either way, the buyout is $1.5MM.

If Giolito has a strong bounceback, he will want to get over that line and return to free agency, but he’ll need to stay fairly healthy after his current rehab is over. If he has a decent season but falls shy of the line, he could be a relatively cheap rotation option for the Sox in ’26.

Giolito allowed a massive 41 home runs in 2024, bumping his ERA up to 4.88 even though his 25.7% strikeout rate was still strong and his 9.2% walk rate close to average. From 2019 to 2023, he had a 4.11 ERA, 28.3% strikeout rate and 8.5% walk rate in almost 800 innings.

That’s particularly true for players who can opt out of their current contracts. Player ages are for the 2025 season.

• Cody Bellinger (29): Can opt out of final two years and $52.5MM on three-year guarantee

Bellinger didn’t find the $200MM+ offer he was seeking last winter. As with a few other high-profile Boras Corporation clients (more on them in a minute), he pivoted to a short-term deal that allowed him to return to free agency next winter. Bellinger is arguably out to the best start of the bunch and seems on track to head back to the open market. He can earn a salary of $27.5MM in 2025 or take a $2.5MM buyout. If he decides to stay with the Cubs, he’ll then get to choose between a $25MM salary for 2026 or a $5MM buyout.

The lefty-hitting center fielder has a .265/.325/.459 line with eight homers over 203 plate appearances. His 15.8% strikeout rate and 7.9% walk percentage are on par with last year’s levels. Bellinger is again succeeding despite a below-average 33.8% hard contact rate. He’s not performing at quite the same pace he did in 2023, but the overall profile remains the same: good contact skills with the ability to play center field and mediocre batted ball metrics.

It could set up another winter where Bellinger’s exit velocities are the subject of plenty of debate. Perhaps his camp will need to lower their asking price in the early stages of his free agency, but the initial decision to opt out would be a straightforward one if he continues at this pace. He’d still be fairly young for a free agent at 29. Now two seasons removed from his dismal 2021-22 production, he also wouldn’t be saddled with a qualifying offer. Bellinger received the QO last winter, so he cannot receive another in his career.

• Matt Chapman (32): Can opt out of final two years and $36MM on three-year guarantee

Chapman also settled for a short-term deal after a tough finish to the 2023 season. The defensive stalwart inked a three-year, $54MM contract with the Giants early in Spring Training. He has a $17MM player option for next season and an $18MM player option for the ’26 campaign if he doesn’t take the first opt-out. There’s a $1MM buyout on a mutual option for 2027 as well.

Over 60 games in San Francisco, he’s hitting .238/.307/.411 with eight home runs. That’s slightly better than average production in this season’s diminished run environment. By measure of wRC+, Chapman has been nine percentage points better than average at the plate — right in line with his usual level. He’s putting the ball in play more than he ever had before, but he’s sacrificing a few walks and some of his typically huge exit velocities to do so. While this would probably be enough for Chapman to head back to free agency in search of a three- or four-year deal, it’s not likely to result in the nine-figure contract that seemingly wasn’t on the table last offseason.

• Gerrit Cole (34): Can opt out of final four years and $144MM on nine-year guarantee; team can override by exercising a $36MM option for 2029 if Cole declines his end

As recently as a few months ago, this decision looked preordained. Cole, coming off a Cy Young win and probably the best pitcher in baseball, would trigger the opt-out — only for the Yankees to override it by exercising a $36MM option for 2029. Boras suggested as much in a chat with USA Today’s Bob Nightengale in December.

His status has at least been somewhat complicated by elbow inflammation that arose during Spring Training. Cole has spent the entire season on the 60-day injured list; he’ll begin a minor league rehab stint tonight. If he looks like his typical self in the second half, this’ll probably be an easy call for Cole and the Yankees alike. If he struggles or, more worryingly, battles any other elbow concerns, he’d need to more seriously consider hanging onto the final four years and $144MM on his record free agent deal.

• Nathan Eovaldi (35): Conditional $20MM option if Eovaldi reaches 156 innings pitched or based on Cy Young/All-Star results

Eovaldi’s $34MM deal with the Rangers contained a conditional option for 2025 that went into effect if he threw at least 300 innings in the first two seasons. He logged 144 frames a year ago, meaning he needed 156 this season. Eovaldi lost three weeks to a groin strain. He has made nine starts and thrown 50 innings so far, leaving him 106 shy of the vesting threshold. With another 18-20 turns through the rotation, it’s still doable, but any other injuries would essentially rule it out.

He could also kick in the option with a top-five finish in Cy Young balloting or a top seven Cy Young finish and an All-Star selection. While he’s pitching very well, the Cy Young provision only comes into play if he falls short of 156 innings. Placing that high without reaching 156 frames is a tall task.

Even if he were to vest the option, Eovaldi may well prefer to head back to free agency in search of a multi-year deal. While he’ll be 35, he still looks the part of an upper mid-rotation starter. Eovaldi has followed up a 3.63 ERA during his first season in Arlington with a 2.70 mark to this point. His fastball is sitting around 96 MPH and he has punched out more than 26% of opposing hitters with a ground-ball rate north of 50%. There’ll always be lingering durability questions given his age and two previous Tommy John surgeries, yet on talent, Eovaldi is one of the better pitchers who could be available.

• Wilmer Flores (33): $3.5MM player option; team can override by exercising an $8.5MM option if Flores declines his end

In September 2022, the Giants signed Flores to a $16.5MM extension. He has a $3.5MM option for next season; if he declines, the Giants could keep him around by picking up an $8.5MM salary. Flores had arguably the best year of his career in 2023, drilling a personal-high 23 homers with a .284/.355/.509 slash line. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction this season. He has only one longball with a .207/.276/.283 mark in 163 trips to the plate. Flores’ strikeout and walk profile haven’t changed, but his contact quality has plummeted.

A full season of replacement level production would make it likely that Flores takes the $3.5MM salary. There’s still time for him to find his power stroke, though.

• Lucas Giolito (30): $19MM player option

Giolito is likely to take a $19MM salary from the Red Sox next year. The typically durable right-hander suffered a UCL injury during his second Spring Training appearance with Boston. He underwent an internal brace procedure and will miss the entire season. While he could be ready for the start of next season, he’d be hard-pressed to match a $19MM salary coming off the elbow procedure.

Opting in would trigger a conditional team/mutual option for the 2026 season, though. If Giolito doesn’t top 140 innings next year, the Sox would have a $14MM option (with a $1.5MM buyout) for ’26. Giolito would convert that to a $19MM mutual option by reaching the 140-inning plateau.

• Mitch Haniger (34): Can opt out of final year and $15.5MM on three-year guarantee

The Giants signed Haniger to a three-year, $43.5MM free agent deal two winters back. That allowed him to opt out of the final season’s $15.5MM salary. Haniger’s time in the Bay Area was a disappointment. A broken arm limited him to 61 games and he didn’t hit well when healthy. San Francisco dealt him back to the Mariners last offseason in a change-of-scenery swap involving Robbie Ray and Anthony DeSclafani.

Haniger is the only member of that trio who has played in 2024. (Ray is still recovering from Tommy John surgery, while DeSclafani was flipped to the Twins and ultimately required elbow surgery himself.) The veteran outfielder hasn’t hit in his return to the Pacific Northwest. He carries a .221/.282/.349 line with six homers and a strikeout rate approaching 28% in 213 plate appearances. He’s trending towards sticking around.

• Rhys Hoskins (32): Can opt out of final year and $18MM on two-year guarantee

Hoskins inked a two-year, $34MM deal with the Brewers after losing all of 2023 to an ACL tear. He landed in a favorable hitting environment in Milwaukee with a chance to prove he was back to his typical offensive form. Hoskins has done just that over the season’s first two months, connecting on 10 homers with a .243/.345/.486 line through 168 trips. He’s well on his way to opting out and would be one of the top offensive players in next year’s free agent class. The Brewers could make him a qualifying offer.

• Clayton Kershaw (37): $5MM+ player option

The Dodgers brought back the future Hall of Famer, who is rehabbing from an offseason shoulder procedure. His deal contains a 2025 player option with a $5MM base value and significant escalators. It’d jump to $7MM if he makes six starts this season, $3MM apiece for each of his seventh through ninth start, and another $4MM if he starts 10 games. Performance bonuses could push his 2025 salary as high as $25MM.

It’s likely Kershaw will exercise the option regardless of where the specific value winds up. He has been throwing but has yet to begin a rehab stint. A return relatively early in the season’s second half — which would give him a chance to get to 10 starts — is still in play.

• Sean Manaea (33): $13.5MM player option

Manaea opted out of a $12.5MM salary last winter and landed a two-year, $28MM pact from the Mets. He’s been a rare bright spot in a dismal season in Queens. Over 11 starts, the southpaw has tossed 57 innings of 3.63 ERA ball. He has a solid 23.2% strikeout rate behind an 11.2% swinging strike percentage. Manaea’s 9.9% walk rate is a personal high, but he’s looked the part of a decent mid-rotation starter.

If he continues at this pace, he’d likely forego next year’s $13.5MM salary and hit the market for a third straight winter. Manaea will be heading into his age-33 campaign and could look for a two- or three-year pact (potentially the final multi-year deal of his career). Even if wouldn’t dramatically improve on his annual salary, pitchers like Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha have gotten multi-year deals in their mid-30s for mid-rotation work.

• Nick Martinez (34): $12MM player option

Cincinnati guaranteed Martinez $26MM over two seasons — $14MM this year with a $12MM option for 2025. That investment made it appear the Reds would give him an extended look in the rotation. They’ve instead kept him in the swing role which he played for most of his time with the Padres. Martinez has started five of 13 games, posting a 4.20 ERA across 49 1/3 innings. He has a microscopic 0.76 ERA from the bullpen but has been rocked for a 7.36 mark out of the rotation.

On the surface, Martinez’s production doesn’t seem all that eye-catching. It’s not too dissimilar to Manaea’s work in a swing role with the Giants in 2023, though. Manaea turned in a 4.44 ERA while starting 10 of 37 games with San Francisco. He declined a $12.5MM player option and found a multi-year deal with a team willing to give him a rotation spot. Martinez (like Manaea, a Boras Corp. client) has opted out of multi-year commitments from San Diego in each of the last two offseasons. He’d probably do the same next winter if his performance doesn’t dramatically turn.

• Jordan Montgomery (32): Conditional $20MM option if Montgomery reaches 10 starts

Montgomery agreed to terms with the Diamondbacks just days before the start of the regular season. He landed a $25MM salary for this year and a conditional player option for 2025. The condition — making 10 MLB starts — would only not come into play if the southpaw suffered a significant injury. Montgomery is already two starts away from vesting the option. Its value would escalate to $25MM if he gets to 23 starts.

The 31-year-old certainly anticipated declining that option and trying his hand again in free agency. He’s been hit hard through his first eight starts in the desert, though. Montgomery has been tagged for a 5.48 earned run average across 44 1/3 innings. While he’s still showing good control, his strikeout rate has plummeted seven points to a poor 14.4% rate. His four-seam and sinker are each averaging less than 92 MPH after sitting around 93.5 MPH last season. Perhaps Montgomery is still shaking off rust related to his delayed start to the year, yet his early performance could make the option decision tougher than he expected.

• Emilio Pagán (34): $8MM player option ($250K buyout)

The Reds signed Pagán to a two-year, $16MM contract with the ability to collect a $250K buyout in lieu of an $8MM salary next season. It was an odd fit considering Cincinnati’s hitter-friendly home park and Pagán’s longstanding trouble with the longball. His first 21 appearances as a Red have been fine. He owns a 4.19 ERA across 19 1/3 innings. The righty has a customarily strong 30.5% strikeout rate against an 8.5% walk percentage. He has surrendered four homers.

Pagán, who is currently on the 15-day injured list with triceps tightness, has performed about as the Reds probably anticipated. This one can still go either way, but an $8MM salary for his age-34 season feels about right for his market value.

• Wandy Peralta (33): Can opt out of final three years and $12.65MM on four-year guarantee

The Padres surprisingly signed Peralta to a four-year deal as a means of reducing the contract’s luxury tax hit. The veteran southpaw has been effective, turning in a 2.66 ERA across 23 2/3 innings. Peralta doesn’t miss many bats, but he’s an excellent ground-ball specialist (55.6% this season, 53.1% for his career). Even though he’s pitching well, it’d be somewhat surprising to see him walk away from another three years and almost $13MM covering his age 33-35 seasons.

• Robbie Ray (33): Can opt out of final two years and $50MM on five-year guarantee

Ray’s five-year, $115MM contract with the Mariners allowed him to bypass the final two seasons valued at $25MM annually. Ray had a solid, if not overwhelming, first season in Seattle. His elbow gave out after one start in year two. Ray underwent Tommy John surgery in May 2023. The Mariners offloaded the final three years of his contract in the Haniger trade with the Giants.

The former AL Cy Young winner is targeting a return around the All-Star Break. He has been throwing from a mound and could head on a rehab stint in the coming days. Odds are against an opt-out right now, but a dominant second half could change the calculus.

• Hunter Renfroe (33): $7.5MM player option ($1MM buyout)

The Royals signed Renfroe to a surprisingly strong two-year, $13MM deal. The righty-hitting outfielder was coming off a middling .233/.297/.416 showing between the Angels and Reds a year ago. He has had a very rough start to his Kansas City tenure, hitting .178/.256/.309 with only four homers in 168 plate appearances. It’d take a major reversal in the season’s final few months for him to forego a $7.5MM salary.

• Blake Snell (32): $30MM player option

The Giants jumped in late on Chapman and even later to grab the defending NL Cy Young winner. Snell signed a two-year, $62MM guarantee two weeks before Opening Day. The hope for everyone involved was that he’d collect the first $32MM and pitch well enough to pass on next season’s $30MM option.

Snell’s first two months in the Bay Area couldn’t have gone much worse. He has battled groin issues throughout the season. Snell lost around a month with an adductor (groin) strain between April and May. He went back on the 15-day IL last night. He has taken the ball six times and been rocked for a 9.51 ERA over 23 2/3 innings. Needless to say, he’ll need a much better final four months to go back to free agency.

• Chris Stratton (34): $4.5MM player option ($500K buyout)

The Renfroe deal wasn’t the only surprising two-year pact with an opt-out that the Royals signed last winter. They signed Stratton, a generally solid middle reliever, to an $8MM deal containing a $4.5MM option for next season. The right-hander was coming off a 3.92 ERA performance across 82 2/3 innings out of the St. Louis and Texas bullpens.

He hasn’t been as effective for the Royals, allowing 5.76 earned runs per nine through 25 frames. Stratton’s strikeout rate is down a few points to 21.7%, but the much bigger issue is an uncharacteristic inability to find the zone. He has walked almost 16% of batters faced, more than doubling last season’s rate.

• Justin Verlander (42): Conditional $35MM option if Verlander reaches 140 innings pitched

Verlander would unlock a $35MM player option if he throws 140 innings this season. While he was delayed to start the year by shoulder discomfort, he has logged 52 innings in nine starts since his return. Barring another injury, he’ll throw more than 88 innings over the season’s final four months.

At 41, Verlander is still pitching well — a 3.63 ERA with a 22.2% strikeout rate — but he’s not operating at Cy Young form. If he continues at this pace all season, matching a $35MM salary on the open market is unlikely. Verlander seems comfortable in Houston and would probably prefer to stick with the Astros, though that may depend on whether the team plays better before the deadline. Verlander approved a trade from the Mets back to Houston last summer when it became clear that New York wasn’t going to be a legitimate World Series contender during his contract. At 27-34, the Astros need to turn things around quickly to put themselves in position for an eighth straight trip to the ALCS.

• Michael Wacha (33): $16MM player option

Wacha landed in Kansas City on a two-year commitment with matching $16MM salaries and the opportunity to head back to free agency after year one. The veteran righty is pitching well enough to make that a consideration. He owns a 4.24 ERA across 12 starts and 68 innings. That’s a run higher than his ERA of the past two seasons, but the general profile remains the same.

He throws strikes with slightly below-average whiff rates. He has thrown between 120-140 innings in each of the last three seasons and looks on his way to matching or surpassing that in 2024. Opting out in search of another two-year deal in the $30MM range is plausible.

March 24, 9:38am: The Red Sox have made their deal with Anderson official, per a club announcement. Right-hander Lucas Giolito was transferred to the 60-day injured list in the corresponding move. Giolito’s placement on the IL is hardly a surprise, given he’s expected to miss the entire 2024 season after undergoing an internal brace procedure on his right elbow.

March 23: The Red Sox have signed right-hander Chase Anderson to a Major League deal, according to MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo (X link).  It was a very short stint in free agency for Anderson, who was only officially released from his minors deal with the Pirates earlier today.

Yesterday was the deadline for Anderson and other Article XX(B) free agents to decide whether or not to exercise the opt-out clauses in their minor league contracts, unless their teams had already agreed to include them on the 26-man active roster.  Since it seems like the Pirates preferred other options for their starting rotation, Anderson was prepared to opt out, and then quickly landed with Boston after he returned to the open market.

Assuming Anderson appears in a big league game, the Red Sox will be the eighth different team Anderson has pitched for during his 10 MLB seasons.  The right-hander posted some solid numbers with the Diamondbacks and Brewers from 2014-19, but he has struggled mightily ever since, with a 6.19 ERA over 192 innings since the start of the 2020 season.

Anderson has subsequently bounced around to seven different teams (including two stints with the Rays) in the last four-plus years, seeing action at the big league level with the Blue Jays, Phillies, Reds, Rays, and Rockies.  Anderson had a 5.75 ERA over 17 starts and 81 1/3 innings last season for a Rockies team that was desperate to fill innings within an injury-riddled rotation.  Boston’s pitching situation isn’t in quite such a dire state, though there is some definite uncertainty within the projected starting five of Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford, Garrett Whitlock, and Tanner Houck.

Lucas Giolito’s season-ending elbow surgery thinned out a rotation that was already lacking in depth, so Anderson can now fill a swingman role who can step in for a spot start if necessary.  The fact that Anderson landed a guaranteed big league deal might speak to how urgently the Red Sox wanted to add pitching help prior to Opening Day, though it is safe to assume that Anderson’s deal isn’t overly pricey.

“If you have great ideas, and you want those ideas to be promulgated in a manner that is beneficial to the union and the players they represent, you go to Tony Clark with your plan,” Boras said. “You discuss it with him first, and the many lawyers in the union. If you have issues with the union and you want to be involved with the union, you take your ideas to them. You do not take them publicly, you do not create this coup d’etat and create really a disruption inside the union. If your goal is to help players, it should never be done this way.”

Marino also provided comment: “The players who sought me out want a union that represents the will of the majority. Scott Boras is rich because he makes — or used to make — the richest players in the game richer. That he is running to the defense of Tony Clark and Bruce Meyer this morning is genuinely alarming.”

It’s understandable why there is frustration among the players right now, as the offseason has clearly not been kind to them. Many notable free agents remained unsigned into Spring Training and some are even languishing on the open market right now. Various teams are claiming to be at their respective spending limits, often due to uncertainty around TV revenue or competitive balance tax concerns.

Players like Jordan Montgomery, J.D. Martinez, Michael Lorenzen, Brandon Belt, Donovan Solano, Tommy Pham, Robbie Grossman and many others are currently unattached. In recent weeks, players like Michael A. Taylor, Adam Duvall, Tim Anderson, Gio Urshela, Amed Rosario, Randal Grichuk and others have signed for $5MM or less. Players like Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman were predicted for nine-figure deals at the start of the offseason but had to recently pivot to short-term, opt-out laden pacts.

On top of that, the players seem to have been rankled by the peculiar situation involving J.D. Davis and the Giants. He and the club went to an arbitration hearing, which he won, as the arbiters awarded him a $6.9MM salary for this year instead of the $6.5MM figure the club sought. Arbitration salaries are guaranteed if the sides avoid a hearing but not if they go to one. After the Giants signed Chapman and no longer needed Davis as their third baseman, they released him, only owing him 30 days’ termination pay of $1.11MM. He later signed with the Athletics for a $2.5MM guarantee and $1MM of incentives. Even if he unlocks all those bonuses, he’s still wind up losing more than $2MM by this series of events.

Casey Mize, the Tigers’ MLBPA player rep, spoke to Drellich about the various issues causing the upset. “I think if you went around the room and asked, I think everybody would give you a different answer,” Mize said. “Coming off the heels of this free agency is a pretty glaring one. But there’s tons of details. You could look at the J.D. Davis situation. You could look at free agency. I think you could look at the taxes of the CBT (competitive balance tax) stuff. So many guys are going to give you different answers, whether it’s service time or whatever. I don’t want to get into details of what frustrates me or what I heard last night, but in general, we’re just looking for ways to get better. Those are discussions we have all the time, and yeah, we had one last night.”

Drellich reports that this winter’s frustration has “banded together some agents and players” who have had past dissatisfaction with the union but without being spurred into action until now. The earlier reporting had suggested there was a “strained” relationship between Marino and Meyer, and Drellich depicts a split in the MLBPA between a Marino camp and a Meyer camp. The report adds that the fates of Clark and Meyer are tied, so that both would depart the MLBPA if Marino has enough support to be put into a leadership position. A scenario where Marino effectively replaces Meyer and works alongside Clark is seen as unlikely at this point.

Though it’s plain to see why the players may not be thrilled with the developments of this offseason, it’s surprising from a distance to see such animosity bubbling out into the public, as this isn’t the first time the players have faced difficulties with the economics of baseball. The executive director of the MLBPA has historically been a lawyer or labor leader, but Clark became the first former player to hold the position in 2013. The 2016-21 collective bargaining agreement, this first of his tenure, was widely panned for being a poor result for the players. Meyer was brought aboard in 2018 to help negotiate the next CBA, bringing with him his three decades of experience working with the player unions of the NBA, NHL and NFL.

It was generally perceived that the players made some gains with the current CBA that came out of the 2021-22 lockout. The minimum salary went up from $570K to $700K in 2022, and would continue to have annual increases, set to be $740K in the upcoming season. A pre-arbitration bonus pool was created to get more money to younger players. Salaries for arbitration-eligible players, which were previously not guaranteed for any of them, became guaranteed for those that avoided a hearing. A draft lottery was implemented with the hope of disincentivizing tanking.

The competitive balance tax lines also moved up noticeably, with the base threshold going from $210MM in 2021 to $230MM in 2022, further increasing annually with that threshold at $237MM this year. The other two thresholds holds moved up by comparable amounts. Though the current CBA did feature the addition of the fourth line, whereas there had previously only been three.

Harry Marino, meanwhile, led the effort to unionize minor leaguers. The MLBPA eventually became the collective bargaining arm of minor league players, which led to the first ever CBA for minor leaguers. Marino left the MLBPA after that, with Drellich reporting that his relationship with Meyer “soured significantly” during their time working together on that, but Marino appears to have resurfaced as the attempts to push out Meyer and/or Clark have gained momentum.

The exact nature of those disagreements isn’t clear but it seems that the frustrating offseason has brought them back to the surface and divided the players corps. It appears Marino and those in his camp are accusing Clark and Meyer of being too aligned with Boras. This is a charge that has arisen before, with Meyer calling it “absurd” back in 2021.

Drellich points out that Boras was upset when the players accepted the current CBA, believing they should have held out for more, particularly in terms of pushing the CBT. Though he also adds that many other players and agents viewed things from the opposite side. Based on the wording of Marino’s statement above, it appears his argument stems from the accusation that the union focuses too much on the “richest” players to the harm of others.

The MLBPA has an executive board that consists of 72 members and it was reported earlier today that 38 of those are major leaguers and 34 are minor leaguers. This report from Drellich specially mentions Jack Flaherty, Lucas Giolito and Ian Happ as players that are both on the board and also Marino supporters.

How Marino would do things differently to the Clark/Meyer leadership is unclear. Per Drellich, Marino’s supporters have been circulating a PowerPoint presentation consisting of eight slides. The full details of this aren’t clear but it apparently questions some of the MLBPA’s own spending decisions, in addition to the recent CBA negotiations.

Supporters of the Clark/Meyer camp, on the other hand, are pointing to track record. Meyer, as mentioned, has three decades of experience working with player unions in other sports. He has only been with the MLBPA since 2018 but has already gone toe-to-toe with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and deputy commissioner Dan Halem, enduring a lockout that lasted more than three months and saw the players make some of the aforementioned gains. The Davis situation, though understandably frustrating, was possible with all arbitration-eligible players until this current CBA. While the new deal didn’t close that loop completely, it at least made arbitration salaries guaranteed for those who avoid a hearing. The CBT impacting league spending is also understandably annoying, but those thresholds moved up considerably with this CBA.

Marino, meanwhile, is just 33 years old and has far less on his résumé. Drellich relays that MLB found Meyer difficult to deal with and would be happy to see him go, something his defenders point to as a positive. As Drellich also points out, the league is naturally happy with any discord between the players as it will only help them in negotiating future CBAs.

Per today’s reporting, it seems the outcome is a binary, where the union will either stay the course with Clark/Meyer or make a significant pivot by going with a largely unknown quantity in Marino, a decision that could have ramifications for the players for years to come. The current CBA runs through the 2026 season.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

• Injuries to pitchers such as Gerrit Cole of the Yankees and Lucas Giolito of the Red Sox and the potential ripple effects (1:45)
• Red Sox sign Brayan Bello to an extension (7:10)
• Dodgers moving Mookie Betts to shortstop (10:40)
• Giants release J.D. Davis (16:10)
• Noelvi Marté of the Reds suspended for PEDs (22:50)

Plus, we answer your questions, including…

• Who had the worst offseason and why is it the Angels? (25:15)
• Fact or Fiction? The Red Sox are going to trade Masataka Yoshida. (28:50)
• Considering the amount of effort the Tigers front office has put into fielding a major league team in the past 10 years, should Tiger fans feel slighted? “They can wait” seems to be the attitude. Should Tiger fans just stop buying Little Caesars pizza and encourage their friends to buy their pizzas elsewhere? I am sure franchise owners enjoy being associated with a cheap loser. (31:20)

Check out our past episodes!

• The Giants Sign Matt Chapman, Zack Wheeler’s Extension, And Blake Snell And Jordan Montgomery Remain – listen here
• How Cody Bellinger’s Deal Affects The Other Free Agents And Why The Offseason Played Out Like This – listen here
• Finding Fits For The “Boras Four,” Which Teams Could Still Spend? And Rob Manfred In His Last Term – listen here

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

March 11: Red Sox right-hander Lucas Giolito will undergo surgery on his right elbow tomorrow afternoon, per Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe and Sean McAdam of MassLive. It’s still unknown whether he will require a full Tommy John surgery or a brace procedure, but he’s ticketed for an extended absence either way.

It was reported last week that Giolito has a partial tear in his ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm as well as a strain of his flexor tendon. A decision had not yet been made on the path forward, with the club sending Giolito for a second opinion. After gathering further information, it now seems that it will be necessary for him to go under the knife. Giolito previously underwent Tommy John surgery as a prospect back in 2012.

It seems that some of the details of the procedure will be worked out on the operating table, as the medical team will assess the level of damage in his elbow once they get in there and then decide on the best path forward. Either way, Giolito seems slated to miss the entirety of the 2024 season. A brace procedure is a relatively new alternative to Tommy John that can come with shorter recovery times, but even those rehab windows are in the ballpark of a year.

It’s a devastating blow for both Giolito and the Red Sox. The righty posted excellent results from 2019 to 2021 with the White Sox, with a 3.47 earned run average in that time. He struggled in 2022, with his ERA bumping to 4.90, but seemed to be bouncing back in the first half of last year.

He had a 3.79 ERA through 21 starts as he approached the open market and seemed to be trending towards being one of the top free agents of the 2023-24 offseason. He was traded to the Angels but then saw his performance dip again. He had a 6.89 ERA in six starts for the Halos as that club fell out of contention and put him on waivers. The Guardians put in a claim but then Giolito had a 7.04 ERA in six starts for that club.

As recently as last summer, he seemed to be trending towards a nine-figure mega deal but instead limped into free agency with little momentum behind him. He settled for a two-year, “prove it” deal with the Red Sox, netting a guarantee of $38.5MM. He also secured an opt-out in that deal so that he could return to free agency if he posted better results in 2024.

That now won’t happen and Giolito will stay on Boston’s books through 2025. The club came into this winter looking to bolster their rotation but ended up being fairly inactive in that department. They did sign Giolito but also flipped Chris Sale to Atlanta for Vaughn Grissom, making it a sort of neutral set of moves for the rotation, depending on how the Sale/Giolito swapped was viewed.

With Giolito now set for an extended absence, the rotation is now the same as last year but without Sale. It’s possible that steps forward from their incumbent options of Nick Pivetta, Brayan Bello, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford or Garrett Whitlock could make that up somewhat, but it’s nonetheless unideal for the club’s big offseason splash to miss the entire season.

The club has been operating with a bit less spending capacity than in the past. Club president Sam Kennedy said last month that new chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has payroll “parameters” that he is operating under. RosterResource pegs this year’s payroll at $180MM, whereas the data at Cot’s Baseball Contracts shows the club has been as high as $236MM in the past. It appears the club doesn’t look favorably on its chances of competing in a competitive American League East and isn’t willing to spend gobs of money to chance a chance at contention that may be narrow.

Free agency still features big names like Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery. The Sox have been frequently connected to the latter but without anything seeming close, at least partially due to those apparent budgetary concerns. If the club has interest in a more affordable option for eating some innings, guys like Michael Lorenzen, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard remain unsigned.

For Giolito, he will be focused on his rehab for the foreseeable future. He will turn 30 years old in July and will turn 31 before his deal with the Sox expires and he returns to the open market after 2025.

March 5: Red Sox right-hander Lucas Giolito experienced discomfort in his right elbow after his most recent throwing session, manager Alex Cora announced Tuesday morning (X link via Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic). He’ll undergo additional testing, but ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the initial diagnosis is a partial tear of the right ulnar collateral ligament and a flexor strain. A determination on treatment won’t be made until Giolito receives additional opinions, but season-ending surgery is obviously now on the table.

It’s a brutal blow for the Red Sox, who signed Giolito to a two-year, $38.5MM contract that allows the right-hander to opt out following the 2024 campaign. Assuming additional opinions confirm the team’s initial diagnosis, Giolito’s decision on next year’s $19MM player option will be rendered a foregone conclusion before the season even begins. If he indeed picks up that player option, the team would be granted a $14MM club option for the 2026 season. Giolito could then convert that into a mutual option by pitching 140 innings in 2025.

Giolito, 29, signed his current deal in hopes of putting a rough couple years behind him and reentering the market in a stronger position. From 2022-23, the right-hander logged 346 innings but pitched to an ineffective 4.89 ERA between the White Sox, Angels and Guardians. A spike in Giolito’s home run rate contributed heavily to the downturn in performance, but he maintained a better-than-average 25.5% strikeout rate against a slightly higher-than-average 9% walk rate in that span.

The primary culprit in Giolito’s struggles was a spike in home run rate; metrics like xFIP (4.08) and SIERA (4.01) felt he was better over the past two seasons than his earned run average would indicate — but also still worse than he was in 2019-21 peak, when he fanned nearly 31% of his opponents against a stronger 8% walk rate.

Now, with Giolito’s entire season in doubt, any chances of rebounding could well be placed on hold for a year or more. At the very least, he’s in for a lengthy IL stint and will be absent to begin the season. That leaves Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford and Garrett Whitlock as the likeliest options to open the season in Boston’s rotation. Others on the 40-man roster include Brandon Walter, Chris Murphy and Cooper Criswell. The Sox have not yet added much in the way of veteran arms on non-roster deals to compete for jobs this spring, and they traded lefty Chris Sale to the Braves in the swap that brought second baseman Vaughn Grissom back to Boston.

A major injury to Giolito will undoubtedly fuel speculation regarding the top remaining arms on the market. Red Sox fans have clamored for Jordan Montgomery for much of the offseason. The team has spoken to him and shown interest at multiple points, including just prior to the start of spring training. The Boston connection for Montgomery is particularly strong, as his wife is doing her medical residency in the city. To this point, ownership and/or the front office have resisted meeting the 31-year-old’s asking price, but pressure to make some kind of move will only increase.

While fellow Boras Corporation clients Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman and (reportedly) Blake Snell shifted from seeking long-term deals and instead pursued opt-out laden short-term deals, all indications regarding Montgomery to this point have been that he’s still seeking a long-term deal. The Red Sox will need to weigh that ask while determining whether they want to throw more resources at a team that appears poorly positioned to contend for a postseason spot.

Montgomery wouldn’t cost the Sox a draft pick or international money, as he didn’t receive a qualifying offer, and the Sox are about $35MM from the luxury tax threshold, so Montgomery wouldn’t push them to that point either. Snell did reject a QO and would thus cost the Sox their second-best draft pick and $1MM of space in next year’s bonus pool for international amateur free agency. There are, of course, alternative options who’ve also not yet signed. Michael Lorenzen and Mike Clevinger, for instance, are both still available and both performed reasonably well in the majors just last season.

Duvall had a solid, if volatile, 2023 season. Signed to a one-year, $7MM contract over the offseason, he was arguably the best hitter in MLB for the first couple weeks. Duvall ran a .455/.514/1.030 line over his first 37 plate appearances before fracturing a bone in his left wrist while diving for a fly ball. The injury cost him two months.

He was mired in an extended slump upon coming off the injured list, limping to a .175/.253/.313 showing through the All-Star Break. Duvall found his stride again coming out of the Break, raking at a .293/.349/.654 clip through the end of August. The year ended on a dismal note, as he struck out in over 40% of his plate appearances while hitting .149/.177/.324 from September 1 on.

Despite the extreme peaks and valleys, Duvall’s overall offensive production was well better than average. He hit 21 homers with a .247/.303/.531 slash in 353 plate appearances. Boston’s decision to give him nearly 500 innings in center field predictably didn’t work out well, as he rated between three and five runs below average by Statcast and Defensive Runs Saved. Duvall has been a plus defender in left field throughout the course of his career though. Between the strong corner outfield defense and 30-homer upside, he’s a valuable player despite high strikeout totals and subpar on-base marks.

The Angels are the only other team that has been publicly linked to Duvall this offseason. At age 35, it seems likely he’ll sign another one-year pact, although there’s an outside chance he lands a second guaranteed season.

Breslow wasn’t with the Sox when they signed Duvall last January. Yet the front office has sought right-handed power in the outfield throughout his first offseason at the helm. Boston already swung a trade for Tyler O’Neill. They were linked to Teoscar Hernández before he signed a one-year, $23.5MM pillow contract with the Dodgers. Duvall would be significantly cheaper.

Even as the Sox pursued Hernández, they’d pointed to the rotation as their biggest priority. Boston took a rebound flier on Lucas Giolito. Not long thereafter, they subtracted Chris Sale in the trade to add Vaughn Grissom from the Braves. While Giolito seems a safer bet than Sale to log a full workload, the pair of moves leaves the Sox with the same number of starters they had at the beginning of the winter.

Breslow told Abraham the current rotation consists of four pitchers: Giolito, Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford and Nick Pivetta. That’d leave Garrett Whitlock, Tanner Houck and Josh Winckowski competing for the final spot. Offseason acquisitions Cooper Criswell and Max Castillo are among the depth options on the 40-man roster.

Of course, that’s not necessarily the mix they’ll take to Spring Training. Breslow conceded their efforts to add rotation help have thus far “been a challenge” but said they’re “still engaged in conversations with free agents and teams via trade.” The Sox have been loosely tied to top arms Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery (more so the latter) during the offseason, but more recent reports indicated they were looking at the next tiers down. With mid-level arms like Shota Imanaga and Marcus Stroman recently coming off the board, the free agent supply is dwindling beyond Snell and Montgomery.

That hints at payroll questions that have hung over the offseason. The Sox opened the 2023 season with a player payroll in the $181MM range, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. That ranked 12th in the majors, their first time outside the top 10 this century. Roster Resource projects their 2024 payroll in a similar range, a little under $178MM. They’re almost $40MM away from next year’s base luxury tax threshold.

An offseason headlined by Giolito and trade pickups of Grissom and O’Neill presumably isn’t what many in the fanbase envisioned. That’s especially true after team chairman Tom Werner vowed in early November the organization would go “full throttle” to put their two straight last place finishes behind them.

Werner walked that phrasing back in a conversation with Sean McAdam of MassLive this afternoon. “Maybe that wasn’t the most artful way of saying what I wanted to say, which is that we’re going to be pressing all levers to improve the team,” he said. “In the end, nobody’s happy with our performance the last few years. Some years, we go after somebody who is about to be a free agent, or was a free agent, as it pertains to Trevor Story or Raffy Devers.”

After noting the organization made an unsuccessful run at Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Werner added the Sox “certainly aren’t happy with the current roster as it was at the end of last year, so if I was going to say it again, I would say that we’re going to be pressing all levers and weren’t going to be happy with just one (method) — that includes free agency, trades or talent from Triple and Double A. … In the end, we don’t have a line in terms of our payroll that we look at as much as trusting that Craig is going to deliver on his assurance that we’re going to be competitive.“

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

• The Dodgers signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto and what’s next for the teams that missed (0:55)
• Red Sox agreed to terms with Lucas Giolito and then traded Chris Sale to the Braves for Vaughn Grissom (7:50)
• The Royals spreading money around to various players (16:10)
• The Blue Jays sign Kevin Kiermaier and Isiah Kiner-Falefa (20:25)
• Mariners sign Mitch Garver (26:05)
• Reds sign Frankie Montas (28:35)

Check out our past episodes!

• Tyler Glasnow, Jung Hoo Lee, D-Backs’ Signings and the Braves’ Confusing Moves – listen here
• Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto and Deferred Money – listen here
• Winter Meetings, Ohtani Secrecy, and the Mariners Shedding Salary – listen here

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

If he doesn’t opt out next winter, a conditional option kicks in covering the 2026 campaign. Were Giolito to throw fewer than 140 innings in 2025, the Sox would have a $14MM club option. If he reaches or tops 140 frames, he’d convert that provision to a $19MM mutual option. Regardless of the option value, there’d be a $1.5MM buyout. The deal also contains $1MM in performance bonuses in each of the next two seasons.

It’s a modified pillow contract for the 29-year-old. That reflects a dismal final few months of last season. Giolito looked on track for a nine-figure deal early in the summer. Over his first 21 starts with the White Sox, he carried a 3.79 ERA while striking out more than a quarter of batters faced. Chicago’s fall out of contention made him one of the top starters available at the deadline.

A trade sending Giolito alongside reliever Reynaldo López to the Angels looked like a boost to his market value. Joining a fringe contender gave him an outside shot at a playoff berth. More meaningfully for his free agency, it took the qualifying offer off the table, as players who change teams midseason can’t be issued the QO.

That’s not how things played out. Giolito was one of the worst pitchers in MLB from the deadline onwards. He made only six starts for the Halos before they placed him on waivers, dumping the remainder of his salary after the team fell from contention to help limbo underneath the luxury tax line. Giolito was hit hard for both Los Angeles and the Guardians, who snagged him off the waiver wire at the end of August.

Over his final 12 appearances, he was tagged for a 6.96 ERA through 63 1/3 innings. He was staggeringly prone to the longball, allowing 21 homers (nearly one in every three innings) over that stretch. His walk rate also spiked. He handed out free passes to nearly 11% of opponents after issuing walks at a manageable 8.3% clip in Chicago.

Short of a major injury, it’d be hard to draw up a more frustrating final two months before free agency. That said, there’s a lot in his career résumé that made him arguably the top reclamation target in the rotation class. Giolito turned in upper mid-rotation results between 2019-21, combining for a 3.47 ERA with an excellent 30.7% strikeout percentage despite the hitter-friendly nature of Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field.

He has allowed nearly five earned runs per nine in each of the past two seasons, albeit for different reasons. His 4.90 mark in 2022 was attributable largely to a .340 average on balls in play, by far the highest rate of his career. That dropped to .274 last season, and his early-season results again painted the picture of a solid #3 starter. Then came the late-season homer barrage that left him with a 4.88 ERA at year’s end.

The longball has always been a bit of a problem for Giolito, but his second-half home run rate is unsustainably high. Boston is betting on positive regression in that department, hoping that’ll result in mid-rotation results. While Giolito’s whiffs are down from his 2019-21 peak, he still misses bats at an above-average level. Opposing hitters have swung through 12.2% of his offerings in each of the last two years, which tops the 10.8% league mark for starting pitchers. His fastball sits around 93 MPH and he misses a decent number of bats with both his changeup and slider.

Giolito’s performance has varied over the past few seasons. His durability has not. The 6’6″ hurler has taken the ball almost every fifth day for the last six years. He hasn’t had an injured list stint longer than two weeks at any point in his MLB career. He hasn’t had any arm-related absences as a big leaguer. Giolito has started 29 or more games in each of the past five full schedules and took the full slate of 12 rotation turns during the shortened season. Only Aaron Nola, Gerrit Cole, José Berríos and Patrick Corbin have started more games over that stretch. He’s eighth in the majors in innings pitched since 2018.

A source of volume innings is a sensible addition to a talented but volatile Boston pitching staff. Chris Sale, Nick Pivetta, Brayan Bello, Tanner Houck, Garrett Whitlock and Kutter Crawford are among the in-house options for the Opening Day rotation. Sale has battled various injuries over the past few seasons. Pivetta, Houck, Whitlock and Crawford have all worked out of the bullpen at times. Aside from Crawford, that group has generally found more success in long relief than out of the rotation. Bello’s rotation spot isn’t in jeopardy, but his production dipped at the end of his first full major league season.

That made adding a starter an offseason priority for chief baseball officer Craig Breslow. The Sox were on the periphery of the Yoshinobu Yamamoto market before he signed with the Dodgers. They’d been tied to Jordan Montgomery as well, although recent reporting suggested they were pivoting towards the second tier. Giolito becomes Breslow’s first significant free agent acquisition as Boston’s front office leader. The Sox could still explore the rotation market — they’ve recently been tied to NPB left-hander Shota Imanaga and old friend James Paxton — but this signing may lead them to turn their main focus to another area of need like second base.

The contract falls in line with MLBTR’s prediction of two years and $44MM from the start of the offseason, when we ranked him this winter’s #17 free agent. The two-year guarantee with an opt-out after the first season has become more commonplace in recent years for priority rebound candidates. It affords the player more security than would a straight one-year pact while allowing him to get back to the market after one season if he bounces back.

Giolito turns 30 in July, so he’d be well-positioned for a lofty multi-year pact next winter if he gets on track. Since he was ineligible for the qualifying offer, the signing doesn’t cost Boston any draft compensation. If he pitches well enough to opt out a year from now, the Red Sox would likely make him the QO, allowing them to recoup a draft choice if he only spends one year in Massachusetts.

The Red Sox’s 2024 payroll projection now sits around $187MM, according to Roster Resource. They’re just shy of $200MM from a luxury tax perspective, keeping them $37MM below next year’s lowest threshold. Boston opened last season with a player payroll in the $181MM range after topping $206MM the prior season. They did not exceed the luxury tax threshold in 2023.

Jeff Passan of ESPN first reported the Red Sox were signing Giolito to a two-year, $38.5MM guarantee with an opt-out; Passan was also first with the salary structure and the 2026 option specifics. Chris Cotillo of MassLive first reported the $1MM in annual incentives and specified that the buyout applied regardless of the option scenario.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

The Red Sox have been linked to Jordan Montgomery and, to a lesser extent, defending NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell at points this offseason. While there’s no indication they’re out of the market for either player, Alex Speier of the Boston Globe wrote over the weekend they appeared more engaged with the next tier of free agents.

Speier indicates the Sox remain involved on Shota Imanaga and Lucas Giolito on the rotation front while showing interest in outfielder Teoscar Hernández — all of whom have previously been reported as targets. Of that group, Imanaga figures to have the highest price tag. The #2 pitcher moving from Japan this offseason, he’s coming off a 2.80 ERA with an NPB-leading 174 strikeouts over 148 innings.

Imanaga doesn’t have the ceiling that Yamamoto possesses, but he’s generally viewed as a likely mid-rotation starter. As with Yamamoto, Imanaga is available via the posting system. The Yokohama BayStars formally posted him on November 27. That opened a 45-day window for the southpaw to sign with a major league club. He’ll land with an MLB team by January 11 at the latest. Speier reports that Imanaga will travel to the U.S. shortly after the New Year to meet with interested teams. The Giants, Cubs and Yankees are among the others linked to Imanaga within the past month.

While Imanaga figures to secure four or five guaranteed years, a reunion with James Paxton would be a much shorter commitment. WEEI’s Rob Bradford recently reported the Sox were interested in bringing the southpaw back. Chris Cotillo of MassLive wrote this evening that the team has maintained contact with Paxton throughout the offseason, although there’s no indication a deal is imminent.

Paxton, 35, pitched to a 4.50 ERA over 19 starts last season. He struck out almost a quarter of opponents while inducing swinging strikes on 12.7% of his offerings. Paxton is still capable of missing a decent number of bats behind a fastball that sits in the mid-90s, but he hasn’t been able to shoulder many innings. He made only six appearances between 2020-22, missing most of that stretch to Tommy John surgery and a pair of lat strains. Paxton had a pair of injured list stints last season, landing on the shelf early with a hamstring strain before knee inflammation ended his year in early September.

Giolito, 29, is one of the hardest free agents to value. From 2019 to 2021, he made 72 starts and tossed 427 2/3 innings with a 3.47 earned run average. He struck out 30.7% of batters faced in that time while walking just 8%. His 11.3 wins above replacement in that stretch, per FanGraphs, was seventh among all pitchers in the league.

Things took a bit of a downturn in 2022, at least in terms of results. His ERA jumped to 4.90 and his strikeouts dropped a bit, though his 25.4% rate was still above league average. His .340 batting average on balls in play that year stands out as a clear outlier, as he’s never had that figure finish higher than .274 in any other season. His 4.06 FIP and 3.79 SIERA both suggested he was actually more in line with his previous track record than the ERA would indicate.

He seemed to be back on track in the first half of 2023, making 21 starts for the White Sox with a 3.79 ERA. But things went downhill for him after he was traded to the Angels prior to the deadline. He took the ball six times for the Halos, posting an ERA of 6.89 in those. As that club fell out of contention, he was put on waivers and claimed by the Guardians. Six more starts with that club yielded an even worse ERA of 7.04. His walk rate jumped to 10.8% in the 12 starts after being traded and he also allowed 20 home runs in just 63 1/3 innings.

That poor stretch of play represents such a small sample in a career that now includes over 1,000 big leagues innings, but was unfortunately timed right before his first trip to free agency. MLBTR predicted he would get a two-year, $44MM with an opt-out that lets him potentially return to free agency with a stronger platform.

Each of the four clubs now connected to him are sensible fits since they each are known to need pitching. The Diamondbacks have Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly in two rotation spots with Brandon Pfaadt likely to be somewhere behind them, but there’s not much certainty beyond that. General manager Mike Hazen has been open about the club’s desire to upgrade the rotation this offseason.

The Mets have added Luis Severino to a rotation that also features Kodai Senga and Jose Quintana, but there are question marks for the back end and even Severino is no guarantee after his poor 2023 campaign.

The Red Sox have plenty of options but none of them concrete. Chris Sale should be in one spot but he hasn’t reached 105 innings pitched in a season since 2019 due to various injuries. Brayan Bello had a decent 2023 season overall but faded later in the year with a 5.49 ERA in the second half. Each of Nick Pivetta, Tanner Houck, Garrett Whitlock and Kutter Crawford have oscillated between the rotation and bullpen without permanently cementing a spot. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said at the Winter Meetings that the club would be “aggressive” in pursuing upgrades.

The Royals have plenty of questions in their rotation. Cole Ragans had a strong finish after coming over in the Aroldis Chapman trade but Brady Singer and Jordan Lyles each had disappointing seasons. General manager J.J. Picollo said this week that the club has about $30MM to spend and adding a starter is one thing on their to-do list. Signing someone like Giolito would likely eat up a decent chunk of that budget and leave little for bullpen upgrades, but it’s at least feasible that they could dedicate more of their resources to the rotation.