2022-23 MLB offseason grades – free agency and trade analysis

The 2022-23 MLB offseason is underway, and we’ve got you covered with grades and analysis for every major signing and trade this winter.

Whether it’s a nine-figure free agent deal that changes the course of your team’s future or a blockbuster trade that has the whole league buzzing, we’ll weigh in with what the deal means for all involved for 2023 and beyond.

Follow along as our experts evaluate and grade each move, with the most recent grades at the top. This piece will continue to be updated, so turn back for the freshest analysis from the beginning of the hot stove season through the start of spring training.

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Clayton Kershaw staying with Dodgers on 1-year deal

The deal: one year, approximately $17 million

Grade: B+

Moving quickly to keep Kershaw in the fold preempts a lot of potential headaches for the Los Angeles Dodgers in terms of media inquiry. With Kershaw’s hometown Texas Rangers in the market to spend and again looking to solidify their rotation, there would have been plenty of speculation — but the notion of Kershaw donning anything but a Dodgers uniform has always seemed kind of unthinkable.

That’s not why the Dodgers get good marks, however. They get good marks because even if they are treading water with this slot on their roster, they are doing so in the most fashionable way possible, retaining one of the best left-handed pitchers who ever lived. Kershaw can’t be counted on for big innings at this point, but on a per-frame basis, he hasn’t lost a beat, posting a 2.28 ERA with a 2.57 FIP in 2022, going 12-3 over 22 starts and 126⅓ innings.

The price tag — believed to be in the range of the $17 million that Kershaw earned in 2022 — is less than the cost of an accepted qualifying offer. It’s a bargain for a pitcher who has averaged 2.9 bWAR over the past two seasons even with his late-career lack of durability, and because you just aren’t going to find a one-year rotation option of Kershaw’s caliber on the open market, the opportunity cost is nil.

For all of the hullabaloo about Kershaw’s velocity drop several years ago, the reinvented Kershaw has proven to be remarkably steady in terms of his stuff. The underlying metrics on his arsenal in terms of velocity and spin rate just haven’t changed much over the past few years. And until they do, there’s no reason to think that the 2.28-ERA Kershaw that we saw in 2022 won’t be back, dealing at the same level next season.

These one-year deals for Kershaw are becoming like an annual rite, and they are a nice little gift to baseball fans, even those who don’t bleed Dodger blue. Even Rangers fans and those who root for the Dodgers’ chief rivals have to agree: When No. 22 takes the hill at Dodger Stadium, all feels right in the world. — Bradford Doolittle

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Padres agree to deal with reliever Robert Suarez

The deal: five years, $46 million (Suarez can reportedly opt out after three years)

Grade: C-

Under lead exec AJ Preller, the San Diego Padres have long had a penchant for the bold maneuver. Signing Suarez to a five-year contract at more than $9 million per season certainly qualifies as that.

Since Suarez didn’t reach the open market for more than a few minutes, we don’t really know if these numbers mirror what he might have gotten if he had shopped his services. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel projected that Suarez would get two years, $17 million. So it’s not the average annual value that gives pause — it’s the length of the contract.

First off, this signing screams, “Recency bias!” Suarez was smoking hot down the stretch, making 13 appearances after Labor Day without giving up a single run. He carried that torrid pitching into the playoffs, teaming with Josh Hader to give the Padres a devastating one-two punch out of the bullpen. He tacked on five more scoreless appearances in the playoffs before getting touched up for a solo homer by Philadelphia’s Rhys Hoskins in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

That was, in fact, the first run Suarez gave up at Petco Park all season. Then Suarez gave up Bryce Harper’s stunning go-ahead, pennant-winning, two-run homer in Game 5 at Philadelphia.

The reason this signing seems somewhat bonkers isn’t because Suarez faltered at the end after so much dominance. That would be recency bias. We drop in bonkers as a descriptor because, entering this season, Suarez was a 31-year-old rookie with no big league track record. His journey from the Mexican League to the Pacific Rim to the minors to the NLCS is inspiring, to be sure. But inspiration isn’t worth five years, $46 million, especially for a team that is going to be side-stepping luxury tax landmines for years to come.

Hader will be a free agent after the 2023 season, and the presumption has to be that Suarez will be able to slot in as Hader’s replacement as closer, doing so at a friendlier price tag than it would take to re-sign Hader. If that’s the thinking and that’s how it plays out and Suarez proves to be a contention-worthy closer for at least two or three years, the Padres will come out all roses on this deal.

Teams do give five-year deals to star-level closers, but those pitchers tend to have names like Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman, who have the track record to match the name recognition. For anyone else, if teams give a favorite reliever that many seasons, it tends to be for a much lower annual value.

A good comparison is the extension the Guardians gave closer Emmanuel Clase in April, which was five years, $20 million, with two team options tacked on at the end. Clase entered the season with a short track record (still longer and more dominant than that of Suarez, although he’s about seven years younger). Over the life of their respective deals, Suarez will be making $25 million more than Clase. This is just a lot to give to such an unproven player of that age.

For context, consider that Suarez this season posted a 2.27 ERA over 47⅔ innings. That’s his career track record. To compare those numbers, forget five years ago, just consider three years ago.

In 2019, there were 11 relievers who threw at least that many innings with an ERA at least that low. (A 12th, Julio Urias of the Dodgers, is now a starter and a Cy Young finalist.) Four of those 11 were out of baseball by last season. Five more combined to throw an average of 14⅔ innings this season while combining for a 3.67 ERA. The two success stories are Liam Hendriks and Adam Ottavino, who are both still rolling, but they had considerably longer track records by 2019 than what Suarez has right now.

That was just three years ago. That’s just the nature of relief pitching. The turnover is constant. Pitchers who seem unhittable today are gone tomorrow. And the shorter the track record, the bigger the question because so few relievers are able to display any kind of lasting sustainability. That’s what makes this signing such a risk, but that’s kind of what the Padres are all about, right?

San Diego knows Suarez better than anyone and they have seen enough to think he’s the right reliever to buck the frightening scale of volatility endemic to big league relief pitching. It’s a bold assessment, to say the least. — Doolittle

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RHP Edwin Diaz re-signs with the Mets

The deal: Five years, $102 million

Grade: B

No doubt the trumpets were blaring around Queens when the New York Mets signed Diaz in the exclusive five-day window before he became a free agent. Not that any team was going to beat that offer. The deal includes a team option that could turn into a six-year, $122 million deal, and Diaz becomes the first reliever to break the $20 million barrier in annual average value, topping Liam Hendriks’ $18 million he received in his three-year deal with the Chicago White Sox. The deal does include $5.5 million in deferred money per season, so Diaz’s tax number is calculated at a mere $18.6 million per season (he also gets an opt out after 2025).

Diaz is coming off a ridiculously dominant season, going 3-1 with a 1.31 ERA and 32 saves, but it’s the strikeout rate that stands out: 118 in 62 innings. He struck out just over half the batters he faced at 50.2.%, a total topped only by Chapman in 2014 and matched by Craig Kimbrel in 2012. Obviously, the Mets needed Diaz back, especially since relievers Seth Lugo, Adam Ottavino and Trevor May are all free agents.

So why not an A? Well, that’s still a lot of money for a reliever and the Mets still have a lot of holes to fill in the bullpen — not that owner Steve Cohen doesn’t have money to sign a couple of more key relievers. As good as Diaz was in 2022, he’s also been inconsistent in his Mets tenure, especially that horrid 2019 season when he had a 5.59 ERA. OK, that’s three seasons in the rearview mirror, but even in 2021 he had a 3.45 ERA, a more modest 34% strikeout rate and six blown saves, so he’s only one season removed from being a middle-of-the-pack closer.

Aside from that, there is the general volatility of all closers — even great ones. Hader has been up and down. Kimbrel went overnight from the most dominant closer in the game to a guy you couldn’t always trust. Chapman was lights out — until he wasn’t. Diaz has never had the run of consistent success that Kimbrel had from 2011 to 2018 or that Chapman had for a long period of time as well. At his best, like this past season or with the Seattle Mariners in 2018, he’s at that elite level as one of the top guys in the game. We’ll see how many seasons in the next five are at that level. — David Schoenfield