Pirates open to adding middle infielder in effort to foster competition

The Royals signed veteran infielder Matt Duffy to a minor league contract Friday, per a team announcement. The TWC Sports client will be invited to Major League Spring Training and compete for a roster spot. Duffy, 32, spent the 2022 season with the Angels, where he played three different spots...

The Yankees have been in contact with free agent outfielder David Peralta this offseason, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. It isn’t clear whether talks are ongoing, as Heyman suggests the Yankees look likelier to roll with their in-house options in left field. That position has been...

The Red Sox are discussing a deal with free-agent catcher Roberto Perez, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com (Twitter link). Boston already added Jorge Alfaro on a minor league deal this winter and also picked up Caleb Hamilton off waivers from the Twins in October (later passing him through outright waivers as well), but the front office is still exploring other potential options behind the dish.

The Cardinals announced Friday that they’ve signed lefty Andrew Suarez to a minor league contract and invited him to Spring Training. He’ll provide some left-handed depth and a potential bullpen option after spending the past two seasons pitching in the Korea Baseball Organization (2021) and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (2022).

The Rays and infielder Yandy Diaz are close to finalizing a contract extension, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reports. The deal is a three-year, $24M pact that contains a club option for the 2026, according to Feinsand and his MLB.com colleague Juan Toribio. Diaz is represented by ACES. The extension would...

The Astros remain without a general manager less than a month from the start of Spring Training. Owner Jim Crane dismissed former GM James Click at the start of the offseason once Click declined a one-year extension offer on the heels of a World Series win. That came after months of reported friction between owner and GM, leaving Houston’s front office in a state of uncertainty.

The Rangers announced they have signed left-hander Danny Duffy and outfielders Clint Frazier* and Travis Jankowski to minor league deals with non-roster invitations to big league camp. Texas also confirmed previously reported minor league deals for Reyes Moronta and Ian Kennedy. Duffy is the most notable addition as a 12-year...

Michael Wacha, the top remaining free agent starting pitcher, is seeking a two-year deal, per Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Wacha is the last remaining starter from MLBTR’s Top 50 list, where he was predicted to take home a two-year, $16M deal. So far only the Twins...

The Red Sox have finalized a pair of up-the-middle pickups this week, formally adding Adam Duvall on a one-year free agent deal to play center field and acquiring infielder Adalberto Mondesi from the Royals Tuesday. Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom met with reporters after announcing the trade with Kansas City...

The Mariners announced that left-hander Justus Sheffield has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Tacoma. Sheffield, 27 in May, was a first round draft pick and was previously considered one of the top prospects in baseball. Selected 31st overall by Cleveland in 2014, went to the Yankees in 2016 as part of the Andrew Miller trade and then went to Seattle in the 2018 James Paxton deal. Baseball America placed him on their top 100 list for four straight years beginning in 2016, including placing Sheffield in the top 50 for the latter two years of that stretch.

The Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball have signed right-hander Hirokazu Sawamura, according to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe. Sawamura pitched with the Red Sox in 2021 and '22 and was reportedly looking to sign on with another MLB team earlier this offseason, but he’ll now head back to Japan instead.

The Nationals have signed veteran reliever Alex Colome to a minor league contract and invited him to major league spring training. Colome is represented by Wasserman. According to Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post, Colome has long been on the Nationals’ radar. Colome, 34, pitched for the Rockies last...

The Dodgers have signed reliever Wander Suero to a minor league deal, as relayed by Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. Pitcher Kevin Gowdy and catcher Hamlet Marte have also signed non-roster pacts with L.A. Suero, 31, is the only member of that group with big league experience. The righty was...

DJ LeMahieu continues to make progress in his recovery from a foot fracture, and based on the infielder’s offseason workouts, “it looks like there was never a problem,” Yankees hitting coach Dillon Lawson said. Although LeMahieu has yet to face live pitching, Lawson told the New York Post’s Dan Martin that the infielder is “able to do everything he needs to do, whether [the pitch] is inside, outside, up or down.” When LeMahieu was battling his injury late last season, “sometimes when he came out there for batting practice, he’d have to come off his back side and couldn’t really rotate into the ball.”

A handful of free agent hurlers threw for scouts this afternoon in Arlington, tweets Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Cole Hamels, Derek Holland and Kyle Crick each worked out for clubs in search of an opportunity. Hamels, who turned 39 last month, is obviously the highest-profile of the...

The Orioles have acquired left-handed pitcher Cole Irvin in a trade with the Athletics, per announcements from both clubs. Right-handed pitching prospect Kyle Virbitsky will also head to Baltimore while infield prospect Darell Hernaiz is heading to the A’s. On one hand, this move comes as a surprise, since...

The Diamondbacks have signed righties Austin Adams and Eric Yardley and left-hander Jesse Biddle to minor league contracts, per Baseball America’s Chris Hilburn-Trenkle. Adams, 31, has spent the past three seasons with the division-rival Padres, at times looking like a potential late-inning weapon. Injuries and command issues, however, have undercut the righty’s enormous strikeout numbers. Adams has appeared in 108 games and tallied 97 innings at the MLB level (mostly with the Padres), working to a solid 3.90 ERA along the way. He’s punched out a massive 34.2% of his opponents in the big leagues, walked 15.5% of them and, remarkably, plunked 6% of his opponents as well.

Reports surfaced last week that the Blue Jays’ renovations to Rogers Centre would involve some changes to the playing field, and those changes were confirmed yesterday when the team officially announced the dimensions of the newly-reconfigured outfield. Rogers Centre had previously had uniform dimensions in terms of wall size and relative distances from home plate, but now many aspects of the outfield will play a bit differently in 2023. (MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson has a visual aid of the new dimensions within his piece on the outfield changes.)

The Rangers are re-signing Ian Kennedy, the veteran reliever announced on Instagram this afternoon. Presumably, it’ll be a minor league deal for the Boras Corporation client. Kennedy spent the first half of the 2021 season in Arlington. Those months were among the best of his past four seasons as...

The Braves announced Friday they’ve signed manager Brian Snitker to an extension through the 2025 season. He’d been headed into the final guaranteed year of his contract, which also contained an option for 2024. Atlanta has preemptively triggered that option and tacked on an additional season for the Illinois native.