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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

Out of Left Field: Wrapping up the offseason

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Welcome back to this semester’s edition of Out of Left Field! Since my last column in December, a lot has happened in the world of baseball, from free agent signings to blockbuster trades to retirements. This column is your one-stop shop for recapping what went down these past couple of months.

Free Agency

Yoenis Cespedes is staying with the New York Mets on a new four-year, $110 million deal that carries through his age 34 season. The Mets were able to lock down their left fielder for the foreseeable future, and Cespedes finally got the long term contract he’s been seeking.

Edwin Encarnacion signed a three-year contract with the Cleveland Indians for $60 million. The former Toronto Blue Jays slugger provides a power bat to a lineup that finished 18th in team home runs last season and fell just short of its first World Series title since 1948.

Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen, the two most sought-after relievers in baseball, set records for the first and second highest contracts signed by relief pitchers. Chapman signed with his old team, the New York Yankees, for $86 million over five years and Jansen returned to the Los Angeles Dodgers for $80 million over five years

Trades

The biggest trade of this offseason was the deal between the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox that sent Chris Sale to Boston and Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe and Victor Diaz to the South Side. A Chris Sale trade was years in the making and it seemed almost inevitable that all the trade rumors would amount to nothing. But then I got a notification on my phone with about 20 minutes left in my history class that Sale had finally been traded. I spent the rest of class constantly refreshing Twitter to check the details of the trade and tuning out the history of Libya under the Ottoman Empire.

This trade was preceded by the Red Sox trading Travis Shaw and Mauricio Dubon to the Milwaukee Brewers for reliever Tyler Thornburg. The Red Sox later traded Clay Buchholz for Philadelphia Phillies minor leaguer Josh Tobias.

Other notable trades this offseason included the White Sox improving their farm system by trading Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning. The Cubs replaced Chapman by trading Jorge Soler to the Kansas City Royals for Wade Davis. The Seattle Mariners single-handedly kept the hot stove alive in January by trading Mallex Smith, Carlos Vargas and Ryan Yarbrough to the Tampa Bay Rays for Drew Smyly, trading Seth Smith to the Baltimore Orioles for Yovani Gallardo and trading Nathan Karns to the Royals for Jarrod Dyson.

Retirement

The biggest retirements this year were David Ortiz (please come back) and David Ross. Both guys will be tremendously missed by this Red Sox fan for their on- and off-the-field contributions.

Baseball also mourned the deaths of Yordano Ventura and Andy Marte in separate car accidents in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 22. Profound losses for the baseball community.