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This year’s remaining awards were handed out, the World Baseball Classic roster is growing, the WPBL draft is this week and Ken has notes on qualifying offers. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!
Back to Back: Judge, Ohtani repeat as MVPs
It wasn’t just the Dodgers; it’s just the year of the repeat.
After Tarik Skubal (AL Cy Young), Stephen Vogt and Pat Murphy (Managers of the Year), we got two more repeats with Friday’s MVP awards: Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers, NL) and Aaron Judge (Yankees, AL)
Ohtani has now won MVP in four of the last five seasons, losing only in 2022 — when Judge won it after hitting 62 home runs.
Judge’s 2025 season was a source of debate. He garnered 17 first-place votes, finishing with 355 points, while Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh got 13 first-place votes, finishing with 335 points.
Nearly every MVP voter I talked to this year said something similar: Both guys deserved it; there wasn’t a wrong answer. Some of those voters are on our team at The Athletic — they explain their decisions here.
MLB also handed out a few awards of its own, including the All-MLB team. You can read about all of those here.
Ken’s Notebook: Potential lockout implications
From my latest “What we’re hearing” column, with Will Sammon and Katie Woo:
One executive predicts all 13 free agents who received one-year qualifying offers will reject them, reasoning that no player will want to hit the open market next offseason with a lockout looming. Perhaps that is true, but each case is different. The value of the qualifying offer, $22.025 million, is tempting.
The draft-pick compensation attached to free agents who reject qualifying offers frequently hurts those who are not elite. Certain players in this group fit that description:
2B Gleyber Torres: His .812 OPS with the Tigers before the All-Star Game earned him his third All-Star selection. His .659 OPS after it was partly the result of a sports hernia that required him to undergo surgery on Oct. 25. While Torres — who joined the Tigers last offseason on a one-year, $15 million free-agent contract and turns 29 next month — is expected to recover by spring training, the fact he is currently less than 100 percent might give some teams pause.
CF Trent Grisham: A year ago, the Yankees weren’t even certain they would offer Grisham a contract. They did, but Grisham, 29, accepted a pay cut from $5.5 million to $5 million — and then responded with 34 homers, double his previous best, and a career-high .811 OPS.
RHP Brandon Woodruff and LHP Shota Imanaga: While their circumstances are completely different, they’re both starting pitchers, occupying the segment of the market that often generates the most heated interest.
Woodruff, 32, missed all of 2024 coming off shoulder surgery and made only 12 starts for the Brewers in ‘25. Still, he produced a 3.20 ERA and a strikeout-to-walk rate that was the best of his career, albeit in a limited sample.
Imanaga, 32, wasn’t as good in his second season with the Cubs as he was in his first, and missed nearly two months with a strained left hamstring. The Cubs declined his three-year, $57.75 million club option. Imanaga, in turn, rejected a potential $30.5 million guarantee over two years. The Cubs then made him the qualifying offer.
Joining Judge?: World Baseball Classic roster growing
Back in April, we learned that Judge would make his WBC debut in 2026, serving as captain of Team USA. Since then, Bobby Witt Jr. (SS, Royals), Paul Skenes (SP, Pirates) and Cal Raleigh (C, Mariners) were also confirmed.
The most recent additions: the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong and Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll.
A few notes:
- Baseball Savant’s Outs Above Average leaderboard has two players tied for best in the league last year with 24: Witt Jr. and Crow-Armstrong. (Carroll is tied for 21st, with 10.)
- On the Sprint Speed leaderboard, Witt Jr. tied for second-fastest (30.2 feet per second), Carroll tied for 11th (29.8) and Crow-Armstrong tied for 21st (29.5).
- Between just Raleigh (60) and Judge (53), they’ll add 113 regular-season home runs to the roster. Add in the other three position players we know, and that number jumps to 198, from just five players.
- I think my picks for the remaining open lineup positions — 1B, 2B, 3B, DH — would be Nick Kurtz (sorry Pete Alonso and Matt Olson), Ketel Marte (sorry Nico Hoerner), Manny Machado (sorry Alex Bregman and Matt Chapman) and Schwarber (sorry to nobody, this is a no-brainer).
One player who won’t be participating (the dates are March 6-17) is Kiké Hernández, who recently underwent surgery on his left elbow.
New League: WBPL 2026 venue announced
The Women’s Pro Baseball League’s inaugural season is scheduled to start just after the Women’s Baseball World Cup (July 22-26, 2026). While the four original teams do represent cities — New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco — the first season will be played at a neutral site, at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill.
The WPBL’s first draft will take place Thursday. Some of the more recognizable names eligible to be drafted include:
- Kelsie Whitmore (27, RHP): In 2022, Whitmore became the first woman to play in an MLB-partnered league, signing with the Staten Island Ferryhawks of the Atlantic League. In 2024, she became the first woman to start a Pioneer League game, pitching for the Oakland Ballers.
- Mo’ne Davis (24, RHP, CF): The world learned Davis’ name in 2014, when — at 13 years old — she was throwing 70 mph in the Little League World Series. She played softball at Hampton University, then went on to pursue graduate studies at Columbia.
- Ayami Sato (35, RHP): Sato led Japan to five World Cup championships. According to this 2018 article from The Week, her fastball approaches 80 mph, and her curveball comes in at 2,583 RPM. That spin rate would tie her with Sonny Gray for the 35th-most spin in MLB last year.
You can read more about the players who are expected to be drafted early Thursday from this story on the WPBL official website.
Handshakes and High Fives
The first big free-agent domino to fall: Josh Naylor, who is going back to Seattle on a five-year deal (the financial terms were not yet disclosed). Naylor was No. 14 on our free agency Big Board.
As expected, Emmanuel Clase was arrested and arraigned in New York on Thursday, pleading not guilty to all charges. Zack Meisel has a great story on the elite closer who has been an enigma, even to his teammates.
Speaking of which: From our anonymous player surveys this year, here are stories of how legalized gambling has impacted players — not just in baseball, but in every sport.
On the pods: “Rates & Barrels” ranks the free agents.
Most-clicked in Monday’s newsletter: Our staff’s tiers of potential Kyle Tucker destinations.
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