The Offseason Monitor: Weekend Signings & Trades
Jorge Polanco, Isaac Collins, Merrill Kelly, Kenley Jansen, and others change teams
The winter really sucks, man. It’s like 15 degrees, and the streets are sheets of ice in northern Indiana. It’s going to be a long winter, it seems.
So we cling to every slightly meaningful and interesting story in the MLB headlines. And we also hope that my fantasy football teams luck into some wins so the entertainment can keep going for your boy on that front.
Merrill Kelly to Diamondbacks
Sometimes, there’s just a fit that works. Kelly was traded from Arizona to Texas at the 2025 trade deadline, but now he goes right back to Arizona via free agency. And they gave this dude $20 million per year for two years. That’s quite a price tag, but that’s the cost of doing BIDNESS.
Last year:
You see the age there. It’s a really impressive career that Kelly has had. He’ll be making big bucks through his age-38 season, and that was after having to take a mid-career detour to Korea from 2015 to 2018. Shout out to that guy. Here are the advanced marks from last season (from the main dashboard’s pitcher profile page):
We try to put some hard numerical rules in play to make things a bit easier, and the sort of “minimum” K-BB% I’m looking for to call guys relevant for fantasy league is around 15%. He didn’t have a problem clearing that year with his 22% K% and 6% BB%. The ground ball rate is also fine, so his 3.72 JA ERA and 3.59 JA SIERA certainly suggest that he’s a guy who should be making most of the league’s rotations.
Like many other guys who pitch deep into their thirties, Kelly brings the “kitchen sink” approach.
Three pitches above 20% usage, five pitches in double-digits, and six overall. The changeup has been the money pitch, and he took it up to a pitch mix leading 27% usage last year. A 19.8% SwStr% and a 61% GB%. That’s great stuff.
The fastball behind it has never been anything special, but the command is good enough to get him by and set up that changepiece. He will give up some dingers on it with that absurd 22% GB%, and you see the .339 xwOBA and 22% GB%. Those are scary marks, and that by itself will inflate the ERA. Your changeup is often only as good as the fastball that it changes up.
But Kelly can also attack with a cutter or sinker, so he has that trio of fastballs. He makes it work. He’s a good pitcher, and he’s been a strong volume guy, making 27, 33, 30, 13, and 32 starts the last five years.
Where do we rank him? NFBC drafters have him around these names in the SP70 range:
That feels high to me. Remember that these early drafts are draft-and-hold, where oftentimes volume is the key factor for SPs. There’s no chance that Kelly is a huge positive difference-maker on fantasy teams next year, so for standard leagues where you have waivers early on in the year, I really prefer to draft for upside late in the draft rather than these guys I know will give me like a 3.75 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP.
For now, I’ve slotted him in after the injured guys and right around Richard Fitts and Kelly’s new teammate, Mike Soroka.
Remember that these ranks are a work-in-progress; I have not yet even ranked half of the league.
Merrill Kelly Base Projection (does not include the new park factor):
→ 180 IP, 3.93 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 168 SO, 22% K%, 6.6% BB%
Jorge Polanco to Mets
The Mets made a splash on Saturday, paying a heavy AAV to bring Polanco in as part of their Pete Alonso replacement. They said he’ll play first base. So they’re hoping to grab another 25+ bombs and for him to hold his own with the glove.
Polanco conveniently had a late-career breakout season in 2025, right before hitting free agency.
He was an awful hitter in 2024 with a .650 OPS and a 29% K%. Maybe there was some injury stuff going on, and maybe he benefited from some of the park changes they made in Seattle. But a 14-point improvement in K% is striking, and that led to a barrage of homers and a high .495 SLG.
It’s two years and $40 million, which isn’t a huge issue for the Mets, but it could prove to be a pretty bad way to spend that much cheddar. Polanco had a couple of wild swings in production last year. Check out the 15-day rolling wOBA and xwOBA plot:
He looked Judgian in April to mid-May, but then was terrible in the middle of the year before finishing strong and coming up with some big hits in the playoffs.
Which Polanco do the Mets get in 2026? Beats me, bro! But he’s not really someone I’d like to be betting on in the fantasy baseball world. We’ve mostly seen bad production from Polanco in recent years.
Isaac Collins to Royals
This one was a bit surprising. The Brewers shipped Collins, a guy who was getting some Rookie of the Year publicity at times last year, to the Royals for a relief pitcher.
The Brewers are held as a sharp organization, so we’re thinking that they view Collins’ 2025 season as an over-performance, or something like that.
There wouldn’t seem to be enough raw power to play very well in Kansas City, a notoriously hard place to hit homers, but a 104 EV90 and above-average swing speed show some extra-base-ability.
The best part of his game is the plate discipline. He posted an elite chase rate while being relatively aggressive in the strike zone.
A 43% Swing% is about four points below average, but the 18.5% Chase% is ten points below average. So that’s good. The guy can get on base, and maybe that’s just the type of player the Royals like. They could certainly use some help in the outfield. They also recently signed Lane Thomas, so maybe there’s a platoon situation developing in left field.
Kenley Jansen to Tigers
One other fantasy-relevant piece of news from the weekend: the Tigers have a closer again. It’s been a mix-and-match situation closing out games in Detroit the last few years.
Will Vest has been the RP20 in early drafts, but that’s gone now. Jansen is clearly the guy to get the saves, and becomes a top 12 or so closer for saves leagues coming into 2026. The profile from last year:
He’s nowhere near as dominant as in the old days, but the numbers are fine. And he’s not a guy you send to the 7th inning while he’s struggling. He also probably won’t struggle too badly.
You do notice the scary 43% FB and .195 BABIP allowed. He could be a guy giving up some dingers and regressing in ERA/WHIP if the BABIP comes back to his career norms (.260). My guess is that he moves up to RP13, around a 75 ADP in NFBC drafts.
