Every team has reported for spring training, but the Hot Stove has still been roaring over the past few days, with Alex Bregman's arrival in Boston kicking up a minor firestorm and the Toronto Blue Jays proving unable to keep Vladimir Guerrero Jr. from testing free agency next winter. As all 30 teams begin to see what they have for the 2025 season and players meet with the media for the first time after a long offseason, headlines abound, so let's take a lap around the league.
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MLB Rumors: Cubs offer to Alex Bregman shows they're falling woefully behind the NL's elite
The Chicago Cubs' infield picture remains unsettled, with second baseman Nico Hoerner still recovering from offseason surgery and third base relying on top prospect Matt Shaw to hit the ground running (or recent addition Justin Turner winding back the clock to his Los Angeles Dodgers heyday). Alex Bregman would have helped solidify things tremendously for a team ostensibly all-in on making a World Series run in 2025. And yet, Chicago came up short, losing the two-time All-Star to the Boston Red Sox after failing to top the team's offer in either total value or AAV.
In the aftermath of another free-agent debacle, Tom Ricketts and president Jed Hoyer did their best to convince Cubs fans that they really had tried their best in the Bregman sweepstakes. But as more and more details come out, that becomes harder and harder to believe. According to a recent report from North Side Baseball, two key factors doomed Chicago in their pursuit: 1) an unwillingness to cross the luxury-tax threshold for the second straight year, and 2) a "newfound wariness of deferrals" the likes of which the Dodgers, Red Sox and others have utilized in recent years.
Which, if true, doesn't bode well for the franchise's ability to keep up with the Dodgers and New York Mets in the NL pecking order for years to come. Deferrals have become a useful way to satisfy players and agents, allowing to crow over a nice round number that doesn't actually match with financial reality; Bregman's deal with Boston isn't actually worth $40 million a year, no matter what the top line says. And there's simply no excuse for Chicago — which brings in more revenue than all but three or four teams in the sport — to treat the luxury tax as a hard cap. Something's going to have to change here moving forward, or it's hard to see the Cubs ever getting back over the hump.
MLB Rumors: Dodgers' Japanese spending spree paying off in a big way
It's no secret that the Dodgers have been making Japan an organizational priority for years now, investing in scouting and relationship-building in the hopes of building a pipeline of talent to the Majors. That pipeline has borne fruit in a major way over the last couple of offseasons, first with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in 2023 and more recently in the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes this winter.
And the more Japanese talent that goes to (and wins in) L.A., the larger the team's profile across the Pacific, and the more big names who will want to follow suit in the future. Attempting to capitalize on that momentum, the Dodgers launched a Japanese fan club over the weekend, and the results show just how big a deal the franchise has become: According to Full-Count, the club was flooded with applications for membership, with the 1,200 MVP spots — which cost about $490 a year — selling out in just three minutes.
This jives with the first-hand accounts of anyone who's gone to a baseball game in Japan recently, where the Dodgers sometimes have entire merchandise stalls dedicated to Ohtani and Yamamoto jerseys. The team has become appointment viewing thanks to the Japanese stars already in tow, and it seems like a whole generation of future stars are going to grow up imagining following in their heroes' footsteps in Dodger blue. Good luck to the rest of the league.
MLB Rumors: Red Sox add Adam Ottavino as another back-end bullpen option
The Red Sox appear to have more quality position players than they know what to do with at the moment, and offseason acquisitions of Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler have given the starting rotation a major boost. But the one hole left in the team's argument for AL East supremacy was the bullpen, which was questionable entering the winter and had added only a declining Aroldis Chapman to its high-leverage equation.
Craig Breslow tried to address that on Tuesday night, signing veteran righty Adam Ottavino to a Minor League deal. It's Ottavino's second stint in Boston; he previously spent the 2021 season in a Red Sox uniform, pitching to a 4.21 ERA (112 ERA+) across 62 innings in 69 appearances. He then moved on to the New York Mets, where he excelled for two years before coming crashing back down to Earth during a rough 2024 campaign.
Ottavino turned 39 last November, and he's well past his flame-throwing peak. But he's got oodles of big-game experience under his belt, and at this point the Red Sox needed to add as many feasible high-leverage arms as possible. He might be behind the likes of Liam Hendriks in the pecking order right now, but he at least establishes a reasonable-enough floor.