Major League Baseball's offseason remains in its infancy (the winter meetings won't begin until Dec. 9), but free-agent starting pitchers and their agents should rejoice. All signs to date point to this being a bull market, with teams ready, willing, and able to fork over big money to anyone capable of slotting into at least the middle of a rotation.
Consider that both Nick Martinez and Nick Pivetta were tendered the one-year qualifying offer, valued this offseason at $21 million. Each has their merits and their flaws. Martinez has averaged fewer than 12 starts per pop since returning from overseas three years ago; Pivetta, meanwhile, enters the winter with a career 92 ERA+ that lines up almost exactly with a league-average starter. Martinez accepted his QO to remain with the Reds, while Pivetta rejected his.
Simultaneously, Frankie Montas, he of the 89 ERA+, turned down his part of a mutual option that would have paid him $20 million in 2025.
That teams were OK ponying up for Martinez and Pivetta, and that Montas was willing to walk away from such money before the offseason shifted into gear says something about how front offices and agents expected the rest of the winter to play out with respect to the pitching market -- specifically, they anticipated things getting wild.
Sure enough, those suspicions were validated on Monday -- at least to some extent -- when the Los Angeles Angels reportedly reached a three-year agreement with lefty Yusei Kikuchi worth $63 million. There are reasons to believe Kikuchi has achieved a new level of production by altering his pitch mix and leaning into his strengths. Still, he's a 33-year-old with a career 91 ERA+ who has underachieved in MLB more often than not. If he's getting both term and wage, that suggests some of the winter's superior mid-rotation starters have to be salivating at what's to come.
To be clear, we're not talking about Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell, or Max Fried -- they're more properly labeled as front-of-the-rotation types. We're also not talking about Roki Sasaki, the Japanese wunderkind whose earning potential is restricted by his amateur free-agent designation. We're talking about the following pitchers who occupied the space ahead of or around the likes of Kikuchi (No. 20), Pivetta (28), and Martinez (37) on our ranking of the top 50 free agents available this winter. The likes of Jack Flaherty, Sean Manaea, Nathan Eovaldi, Luis Severino, and even Walker Buehler, who could find himself in-demand despite a rough regular season.
Perhaps the early winter trend shouldn't come as a surprise. There are only so many worthwhile starting pitchers available at a given time, leading multiple clubs (including the champion Los Angeles Dodgers) to turn to bullpen games during the postseason. Of course, that strategy is easier to deploy in October, where off days are more readily available, than during the regular season. That means that first, and perhaps foremost, someone has to make 25 to 30 starts during the spring and summer before any fall plans can be hatched. You get the point.
And, should the trend hold, soon enough those aforementioned pitchers will get the paper.