Just minutes after Kyle Schwarber’s deal with the Philadelphia Phillies leaked on Tuesday morning, there was news of another banger. The Los Angeles Dodgers addressed their bullpen hole by reaching an agreement with closer Edwin Diaz on a three-year deal that sets a new record.
The right-hander was the top reliever on the free-agent market and his signing, along with Schwarber’s, captivated the baseball world on Tuesday as the second day of the Winter Meetings unfolded in Orlando.
Here’s a closer look:
The deal
Edwin Diaz agrees to a three-year, $69 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to various reports.
The runners-up
The Mets are the main runner-up here, with the club losing its incumbent closer despite offering a similar deal to the one he received from the Dodgers. Joel Sherman of The New York Post reported that the Mets' offer to Diaz was three years and $66 million with “modest deferrals.”
New York signed Devin Williams last week and while the right-hander has plenty of closing experience, pairing him with Diaz would’ve made for a lethal combo at the back end of its bullpen. Instead, the Mets will need to look elsewhere for relief help as they seek to find ways to improve after posting an 83-79 record and missing the playoffs during a disappointing campaign in which they were second in total payroll to the Dodgers.
The player
Diaz was coming off an excellent 2025 season and profiled as the top free-agent reliever after opting out of his deal with the Mets. Ahead of the ’23 campaign, Diaz agreed to a five-year, $102-million contract that was a record for a reliever.
By choosing to head back into free agency, though, Diaz has now secured a deal that will pay him more over the next three seasons than he would’ve made under the previous commitment, which owed him $15 million in each of the ’26 and ’27 campaigns. His new deal features an average annual value of $23 million, which sets a new record among MLB relievers.
Diaz is one of the elite closers in the game. He posted a sparkling 1.63 ERA with 28 saves and 98 strikeouts across 66.1 innings in 2025. Since he entered the league with Seattle in 2016, only Kenley Jansen (334) has recorded more saves than Diaz (253).
The right-hander turns 32 in March and has been able to rack up punchouts by pairing his 97.2-m.p.h. fastball with a devastating slider. It’s a simple mix and Diaz has used it to near perfection, generating a 38 per cent strikeout rate and 41.5 per cent whiff rate that both sat in the 99th percentile in 2025.
The fit
The Dodgers addressed their bullpen last off-season by inking left-hander Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72-million deal. However, he was bothered by an elbow issue and didn’t contribute in the post-season.
Injuries and inconsistency led to the Dodgers posting a 4.27 bullpen ERA during the regular season, ranking 21st in MLB. Though the relief corps was able to cobble things together during the club’s championship title run, there was no defined closer and navigating the late innings wasn’t an easy task for manager Dave Roberts.
He had to rely on his starters to log key bullpen innings at various points in the post-season, most notably in Game 7 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, when four of the six pitchers Roberts deployed were starters.
The addition of Diaz offers certainty at the back end and could result in the club moving promising right-hander Roki Sasaki back to the rotation.
The market
MLB Trade Rumors forecasted a four-year, $82-million deal for Diaz. He did not meet the term or value of that prediction.
The next domino
The relief market has moved swiftly over the past week with Diaz’s signing coming on the heels of the Mets inking Williams and the Orioles landing Ryan Helsley. Right-handers Pete Fairbanks and Robert Suarez figure to go next and there are several teams, including the Toronto Blue Jays, who’ve reportedly been in pursuit of a top-flight bullpen arm.
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