The Yankees and Giants will open the 2026 MLB season on March 25. We’ll be counting down to that date with our annual preview series, with each story looking ahead to the coming season by breaking down a particular topic, division by division.
Today: The biggest offseason addition in each division
They’re no longer loading up the trucks with equipment: They’re unloading them. You can smell the freshly cut grass. Players are stretching. Mitts are popping. Fans are lined up for autographs. Pitchers and catchers are reporting. It’s Spring Training. It’s here.
With baseball, at last, cracking its neck and getting ready to get moving, and almost all of the major roster moves made (with a few stragglers out there of course), it’s time to take a look at the biggest offseason addition from each division.
These races will have their own shapes and contours that will become apparent as the season goes along, but there are big names in every division who could make a substantial difference from the get-go. And, at the very least: These are the new jerseys for fans to invest in this spring.
But the clearest sign that the Orioles meant business this winter was bringing in Alonso, who is the veteran power bat that the Orioles have needed to support their roster full of young hitters. You can argue about Alonso’s defense if you want, but he plays every day, he’ll hit a bunch of homers and he’ll be a force for the rest of the lineup to rally around. In a tough division, the Orioles need to win in 2026 to reverse a two-year slide and give their fans some faith and hope. They need to be serious. Signing Alonso is something a serious team does.
No one saw this coming, did they? Valdez was the last top-shelf starting pitcher remaining — one the Orioles very much had their eyes on, for what it’s worth — and one who ended up signing right as the Tigers were going through a rather high-profile arbitration case with their ace (and two-time Cy Young winner) Tarik Skubal. When the dust settled, the Tigers are paying an awful lot of money for their No. 1 and No. 2 starters … but what starters they are!
In a division in which most teams spent the offseason idling, the Tigers kept the best pitcher in the AL (despite simmering trade rumors) and added perhaps the best free-agent pitcher on the market. This team now looks like the clear favorite in the AL Central. Bringing in Valdez is a big reason why.
Donovan, despite the fact that he has made an All-Star team and won a Gold Glove Award, is perpetually the sort of guy who gets overlooked. He has no signature highlight skill that makes your jaw drop, he was not a hyped prospect and he doesn’t put up eye-popping numbers. But he’s a guy who makes whatever team he’s on better and does whatever is needed to win games.
The Mariners happened to need a player exactly like Donovan: a left-handed hitter who gets on base, can play anywhere on defense and grind out at-bats ahead of power hitters like Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez. Donovan is basically a perfect fit for what the Mariners are trying to do, which is to take what they did in 2025 and build on it. He makes them better. He may end up making them great.
It should be said that Bichette was not inherently a perfect fit for the Mets when they signed him. He was an infielder on a team that had plenty of infielders (but not many outfielders), he’s not a proven defensive upgrade for a team that had spoken explicitly about upgrading its defense and he was not Kyle Tucker, a player many felt the Mets would go all out to sign.
But once the Dodgers signed Tucker, the Mets pivoted accordingly. Not only did they pounce on Bichette, they also swung trades for Luis Robert Jr. to man center field and Freddy Peralta to top the rotation. Mets fans went through some agita at points this offseason, but they ended up adding a lot of guys, from Peralta to Robert to Devin Williams to Luke Weaver to Luis Garcia to Marcus Semien and Jorge Polanco. But no one was bigger than Bichette, who slides into Alonso’s place in the lineup and should form a stellar trio at the top with Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto.
It seems strange to think of the Cubs as winners of the offseason, considering they lost Tucker, the best free agent on the market. But it really never quite worked out for Tucker and the Cubs the way either side wanted it to, with his hot start derailed by injuries, and the team falling short against the Brewers in the division race and the NLDS.
One suspects that Bregman — who has been beloved wherever he has played, including when he was teammates with Tucker in Houston — might become more of a fan favorite. He’s an ideal fit for a team that needs on-base percentage and right-handed power. He’ll also be a steadying influence for a team that is talented but has some young players still figuring things out. The left side of that infield, with Bregman and Dansby Swanson, is as steady as any you’ll find in the National League. They’ll love him at Wrigley.
Lost in the consternation that the Dodgers had landed yet another top-shelf free agent is that Tucker was anything but a luxury item: The Dodgers very much needed to improve their outfield, which produced in the bottom half of baseball last year. There was no better way to do so — no more efficient use of whatever financial advantages they may have — than to go after Tucker, who fits them perfectly, and vice versa.
He can lock down right field, and he can do so without having to be the showcase star on his team, a role that wasn’t quite a fit in Chicago. (He had a tendency to blend into the background in Houston, which suited him better.) While we’re all looking at Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, Tucker just gets to quietly be one of baseball’s best players. For, of course, one of its best teams.
