With the offseason back in full swing after the holidays, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world today:
1. Giants 40-man roster move incoming:
Yesterday, the Giants reportedly brought future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander into the fold on a one-year deal. The club is rolling the dice on a return to form for Verlander after the first truly poor season of the right-hander’s career; Verlander mustered only a 5.48 ERA with a 4.78 FIP across 17 starts with the Astros last year. There’s certainly risk involved in expecting Verlander, who is more than four years older than San Francisco’s new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, to turn back the clock even by just a year or two. However, the 2022 AL Cy Young Award winner pitched like a starter that belonged in the front half of a playoff rotation as recently as 2023, and it’s hard to bet against Verlander’s pedigree.
Before Verlander can get to work with San Francisco, he’ll need to be officially added to the 40-man roster. That could happen as soon as today, and when it does the Giants will need to clear a roster spot. The most common way for clubs to do this is by simply designating a player for assignment, though occasionally clubs will work out a trade to clear that 40-man spot.
2. Are more extensions on the way?
Yesterday, the Rays hammered out an extension with right-hander Drew Rasmussen. The deal, which guarantees Rasmussen $8.5MM, covers his final two years of arbitration and includes a club option for the 2027 season — what would’ve been his first free-agent season. It’s a deal that was surely helped along by the impending deadline for players and teams to exchange figures ahead of arbitration hearings. The majority of arbitration-level players typically agree to deals before that deadline in order to a hearing, which makes the days leading up to that deadline a natural time for clubs to discuss longer-term extensions with players. With that deadline set to arrive tomorrow, it’s possible — if not likely — that we’ll see other extensions over the next day and a half. At the very least, there should be some early one-year agreements today.
3. Players in DFA Limbo:
We’re officially one week into 2025, which means that players who were designated for assignment while the MLB league offices were closed for the holidays will finally reach their long-awaited conclusion. It’s a situation that currently applies to two players: infielder Braden Shewmake, who was DFA’d by the White Sox on New Year’s Day, and left-hander Bailey Horn, was was DFA’d by the Tigers over the holidays to make room for the Gleyber Torres signing. At this point, the window for either player to be traded appears to have passed. Both figure to have already been exposed to waivers. The next step in the process for Shewmake and Horn is to either clear waivers, providing their clubs the opportunity to outright them to the minors as non-roster depth, or be claimed by a new club and retain a 40-man roster spot in another organization.
