The start of the 2025 Winter Meetings may have been quieter than most people would’ve liked, but the stove got so hot it exploded on Tuesday morning!

Before today, the biggest deals so far had been the new contracts handed out to Mike Soroka (Arizona Diamondbacks) and Steven Matz (Tampa Bay Rays). No disrespect to them, but much bigger fish have captured the headlines this time around.

First, Kyle Schwarber, one of baseball’s premier power hitters, finally came off the board. The designated hitter is returning to the Philadelphia Phillies on a shiny new five-year contract, as first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Just minutes later, Edwin Díaz, easily the best-available relief pitcher on the open market, signed a three-year deal with the defending World Series champs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, as first reported by Will Sammon of The Athletic.

Having two of these deals go down in the same day is awesome, but having them go down within a few minutes of each other?! Sign us up.

Kyle Schwarber Signs 5-Year, $150 Million Deal With Phillies

There was never really much of a doubt that Schwarber was heading back to the Phillies where he belongs. The 32-year-old has spent the past four seasons in the heart of this team’s lineup and has a pair of All-Star Game selections and MVP votes in each year under his belt.

In 2025 specifically, he finished second-place in the NL MVP race after leading the league in home runs (56) and RBI (132). Oh, and he also played in all 162 regular-season games and had a .928 OPS. The man is an absolute machine, and he’s getting paid for it.

Schwarber’s new contract will see him earn an even $30 million per year over the next five seasons. This is a huge deal for a player as defensively limited as he is, but when your bat is as powerful as his, the money will come regardless.

In Just Baseball’s latest round of contract predictions, we had Schwarber returning to the Phillies on a four-year, $128 million contract with a $32 million AAV. Turns out, we weren’t that far off.

For the Phillies specifically, this was a deal that simply needed to happen. Schwarber has been such a massive run-producer for them and replacing him would’ve been too tall a task.

Unless the club could’ve guaranteed that they’d land someone like Pete Alonso in the event that Schwarber signed elsewhere, no other scenario made more sense than bringing “Schwarbs” himself back into the fold.

The Phillies entered the offseason with many key contributors of theirs hitting the open market, including Schwarber, catcher J.T. Realmuto, starting pitcher Ranger Suárez, and a handful of relief pitchers. If the club wanted to seriously make another run at a ring, it’s been clear all along that multiple players from this group needed to come back.

Schwarber slotting back into the lineup is a damned good start.

Edwin Díaz Signs 3-Year, $69 Million Deal With Dodgers

While the baseball world was trying to recover from the Schwarber news, the Dodgers swooped in and addressed a major roster need of their own.

Díaz, 31, is one of the best relief pitchers of this generation and is now going to close out games for the defending World Series champs for the next three years.

Brought in on a three-year contract worth $69 million, Díaz will help shore up a Dodgers bullpen that at times appeared to lack depth during this past postseason. It’s true that the Boys in Blue won it all, but the Toronto Blue Jays definitely made them earn it.

With Díaz holding down the 9th inning from here on out, the Dodgers can have Tanner Scott (who struggled mightily in his first year on the team) fill more of a setup role, and postseason closer Roki Sasaki can ease back into a starting role.

Having a pitcher of Díaz’s caliber at the back-end will go a long way to putting another championship-ready team on the field in 2026.

Díaz now joins a new team after spending the past six years as the Mets’ primary closer. The right-hander posted a combined 2.93 ERA and 2.56 FIP across 332 games for the Mets, earning 144 saves along the way and striking out nearly 15 batters per nine innings in that timeframe.

“Dominant” isn’t a strong enough word to describe Díaz when he’s on his A-game. He lost 2023 to injuries and returned in 2024 looking a bit more human (although he was still great), but his 2025 bounce-back went a long way to earning him his new deal on the Dodgers that will now see him get the highest AAV for a relief pitcher ever.

Funnily enough, Díaz is breaking his own record that he set a few years back when he signed a deal with a $20.4 million AAV.

Díaz was our 10th-ranked free agent in the latest round of contract predictions, and we had him returning to the Mets on a four-year, $80 million contract. While we weren’t as close with this one as we were with Schwarber’s, at least we were in the right ballpark on AAV!

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