NL West

Freddie Freeman will reportedly chase another championship on a different team.

After helping lead the Atlanta Braves to the 2021 World Series title, the first baseman and the Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed to terms on a six-year, $162 million contract, per Kiley McDaniel and Jeff Passan of ESPN.

There was a time when Freeman joining any other team could be classified as surprising considering Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported in November ahead of the winter meetings he "couldn't find a soul who believes Freeman won't be returning to Atlanta."

Still, Nightengale pointed out the 32-year-old had rejected the team's five-year, $135 million offer and was looking for something resembling a six-year, $200 million deal.

What's more, ESPN's Buster Olney reported in February that "the industry view has shifted; there is a growing belief that Freeman will land somewhere outside of Atlanta because of the standoff in his negotiations."

The eventual separation seemed even more inevitable when the Braves traded for first baseman Matt Olson.

Freeman must have liked the offer from Los Angeles, which is a major boost for the team's championship aspirations in 2022.

After all, his resume includes the World Series title, the 2020 National League MVP, five All-Star selections, three Silver Sluggers and a Gold Glove. He has finished in the top 10 of NL MVP voting six different times in his career, underscoring his overall consistency since he entered the league in 2010.

He missed a total of seven combined games the last four seasons and slashed .300/.393/.503 with 31 home runs and 83 RBI during the 2021 campaign.

Freeman was also at his best in the biggest moments and slashed .304/.420/.625 with five home runs and 11 RBI in 16 playoff games for the Braves.

The first baseman can impact the game with his glove, ability to hit for average and overall power at the plate, and he played some of the best baseball of his career in the pressure-packed run to his first World Series title.

He should be a natural fit for the Dodgers and immediately bolsters their championship chances as one of the best free-agent signings of the entire offseason.

Los Angeles has plenty of pop on the right side of the plate with Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Justin Turner, among others. It now has one of the best left-handed hitters in the entire league and should terrorize opposing pitching staffs throughout the upcoming season.

San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. suffered a fractured wrist while preparing for the 2022 MLB season.

Padres general manager A.J. Preller announced Monday the shortstop will undergo surgery and could miss up to three months. However, Tatis later said he hadn't made a decision on surgery.

When discussing the injury, Tatis talked about a December motorcycle crash, describing it as "minor scrapes," but Jon Heyman of MLB Network noted that "folks close to the situation wonder whether he suffered the wrist fracture then."

Tatis also said "which one" when asked about his crash, per Jesse Rogers of ESPN, adding that he had fallen off of his bike several times during the offseason.

San Diego opens the season April 7 against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Tatis took his game to another level in 2021, leading the National League in home runs (42) while finishing with a .364 on-base percentage and a .611 slugging percentage.

His production was all the more impressive since he suffered a partial dislocation of his shoulder last April. The shoulder injury lingered throughout the season and landed him on the injured list in July.

After the season ended, Tatis declined to have surgery on his shoulder.

The 23-year-old's defense suffered because of the injury, and the Padres experimented with him in the outfield.

While not a consequence of his shoulder issues, the fractured wrist will add to the questions over his long-term durability. San Diego sent a message when it signed him to a 14-year, $340 million extension in 2021, and the team hinged a lot of its future on his performance.

Clayton Kershaw isn't going anywhere.

The eight-time All-Star agreed to a one-year deal to return to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday, pending a physical according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.

Kershaw's deal is worth $17 million plus incentives, according to MLB Network's Jon Heyman. 

The reported deal came down just one day after the Major League Baseball Players Association and MLB agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement, which ended the lockout.

When healthy, Kershaw continued to pitch like an upper-tier starter in 2021. He went 10-8 with a 3.55 ERA and 3.00 FIP in 22 appearances, per FanGraphs. He also averaged 10.65 strikeouts per nine innings, his best number since 2015.

Injuries were once again a problem for the future Hall of Famer, though. He was placed on the injured list because of inflammation in his left forearm and missed nearly all of July and August.

Kershaw returned to the mound for a 5-1 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sept. 13, but the injury resurfaced and knocked him out for the entire postseason. It was an underwhelming conclusion to another productive year.

Compared to when he won three Cy Young awards over four seasons, the 33-year-old's skills have diminished slightly. What that translates to is a .219 expected batting average and .368 expected slugging percentage, according to Baseball Savant. He also finished in the 94th percentile in whiff rate (34.6 percent).

In terms of his value going forward, Kershaw's age and durability are obvious considerations. He hasn't hit 30-plus starts since 2015, with a series of minor injuries knocking him for brief stretches.

Per Baseball Savant, his sweet-spot (31.7) and hard-hit (37.3) percentages were also his highest since tracking began in 2015.

Kershaw is one of the greatest pitchers of his generation, so he's bound to age more gracefully than many of his peers. His performance over the last few years is a testament to that.

His pitch repertoire should help in that regard, too. He has never relied on overwhelming velocity, and he owns a pair of devastating breaking pitches in his curveball and slider.

Ross Stripling was teammates with Kershaw for four-and-a-half seasons with the Dodgers. He was a guest on an episode of FanGraphs Audio and provided some insight on why the left-hander has been so dominant.

"He has the same intensity and conviction on pitch one and on pitch 110,” Stripling said. “And there's an aura around guys like Clayton. They can instill fear into a lineup because of the success they've had, and from the intensity they bring."

Stripling added that Kershaw's fastball and slider can be almost unhittable when paired together:

The slider is his bread and butter. He'll throw it any time, whereas you never see him throw his curveball when he's behind in the count. His curveball is a put-away pitch almost exclusively. But his slider… especially if you go back to vintage Kershaw—MVP/Cy Young Kershaw—he's going glove-side fastballs, with sliders off of that. That's the one-two combo that he'll eat lefties and righties up with all day.

If Kershaw showed signs of a major decline, then the Dodgers may have had a dilemma on their hands. Sometimes franchise legends have to be jettisoned when a front office is trying to maintain a championship-level roster.

But the ball seemed to firmly be in Kershaw's court. In addition to being one of the best aces in Dodgers history, he's a pitcher who can compile 3.4 WAR despite missing roughly a third of his starts. Sentiment didn't have to figure into the equation to continue penciling him into Los Angeles' rotation in 2022 and beyond.

As collective bargaining agreement discussions continue between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association, the two sides don't appear to be any closer to striking a deal. 

That said, players are beginning to get frustrated, and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler slammed team owners on Thursday night in since-deleted Tweets. 

Buehler's comments came after The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal summarized the ongoing situation on Thursday:

The issues essentially are the same as they were when the lockout began. The proposals creeping back and forth are proposals that could have been exchanged in November. But the owners’ strategy from the start was to squeeze the union until regular-season games were in jeopardy, all the while recoiling in disgust when the player-serfs rejected their crumbs and refused to view them as benevolent despots.

The MLB and MLBPA have agreed to some aspects of a new CBA, but ESPN's Jeff Passan reported Wednesday that the two sides remain far apart on financials, including the competitive balance tax, pre-arbitration bonus pool, minimum salary and the draft lottery. 

MLB has already threatened to cancel games if a new deal is not agreed upon by Monday. The league also said is has no plans to makeup missed games, adding that players would lose game checks. 

The MLBPA reportedly responded to the league's threat, saying it will not endorse an expanded playoff if players don't get paid for a full 162-game season, according to ESPN's Jesse Rogers. 

The lockout began on Dec. 2 and, at this point, it doesn't seem like the season will begin on time. The first games of the 2022 campaign are set for March 31, but with no CBA in place, games will be affected unless both sides can come to an agreement.  

A man was arrested Friday morning for felony vandalism after driving his SUV onto the Petco Park field, home of Major League Baseball's San Diego Padres, San Diego Police said, according to Alex Riggins of the San Diego Union-Tribune. 

The driver of the vehicle tore up the dirt surface before members of the grounds crew blocked his exit, allowing police officers to apprehend him before he could drive away.

Ryan Carlson, who works at the stadium, told Riggins that he saw the driver enter through a tunnel in left field, believing it was a member of the grounds crew. He realized it wasn't when the driver started "doing doughnuts" on the field. 

“After about a minute, he came to a stop, and a bunch of the grounds crew guys made their way to the car and did like a citizens’ arrest,” Carlson said. “It happened peacefully, wasn’t aggressive, at least as far as I saw. They walked him over and sat him down.”

Members of San Diego's grounds crew have begun field preparations for the 2022 MLB season despite the lockout. 

Petco Park, which sits in the heart of the city, is currently slated to host the Padres' 2022 home opener against the San Francisco Giants on Thursday, March 31. However, with the state of negotiations between MLB and the MLB Players Association, it's unclear if that game will be played as scheduled. 

The Padres finished the 2021 season with a disappointing 79-83 record, missing the playoffs for the 14th time in 15 seasons. The franchise fired manager Jayce Tingler in October and replaced him with Bob Melvin in hopes of having a bounce-back 2022 campaign. 

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer won't face criminal charges stemming from allegations of sexual assault, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced Tuesday. 

Bauer issued the following statement in the aftermath of the prosecutors' decision:

A woman obtained a temporary restraining order against Bauer in June 2021 after accusing the 31-year-old of violence during two sexual encounters in April and May. According to Alden Gonzalez of ESPN, the woman said Bauer "choked her unconscious multiple times, sodomized her without consent and punched her all over her body."

Bauer denied the accusations and his lawyer called the encounters "wholly consensual."

The Pasadena Police Department completed its investigation on August 27, turning over the case to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office to determine if it would press charges.

With the police investigation active, Bauer was placed on administrative leave by Major League Baseball in July and it was extended multiple times through the end of the 2021 season.

While the Dodgers reached the NL Championship Series, the pitcher did not appear in a game after June 28 and was away from the team while on administrative leave. He made just 17 starts in 2021 after signing a three-year, $102 million contract the previous offseason.

Even without criminal charges, Bauer could still be disciplined by the league heading into 2022. ESPN's Jeff Passan reported in August MLB is expected to "levy a significant suspension" against the former Cy Young winner after completing its own investigation.

However, the news that he won't be charged still opens the door for a potential return to the baseball field.

The Colorado Rockies are showing faith in Bud Black as their manager going forward. 

Per Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post, Black signed a one-year extension earlier this month that ties him to the Rockies through the 2023 season. 

Black is entering his sixth season with the Rockies after being hired in November 2016 to replace Walt Weiss.

The Rockies signed him to a three-year extension in February 2019 that was set to expire after the 2022 season. 

Black's tenure in Colorado got off to a strong start with back-to-back winning seasons in 2017 and 2018. The Rockies made the playoffs both years, losing to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2017 National League Wild Card Game and Milwaukee Brewers in the 2018 NLDS. 

Since the start of 2019, the Rockies have been among the worst teams in the National League. They have gone 171-212 during that span with three consecutive fourth-place finishes in the NL West. 

A lot of the issues are related to a series of poor trades and reduced payroll that make it difficult to compete in the same division as the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. 

Nolan Arenado, who signed an eight-year, $260 million extension in February 2019, was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals for five players prior to the start of last season. 

The Athletic's Keith Law wrote at the time of the deal that the Rockies "just dumped a contract, failing to acquire any players who seem likely to be part of the core of their next playoff team."

Colorado's payroll went from a franchise-record $145 million in 2019 to $53 million in 2020, per Cot's Baseball Contracts. The payroll was back up over $100 million last season, but they still finished 16 games behind the Cardinals for the second wild-card spot in the NL.     

San Diego Police determined Raquel Wilkins died by suicide and her two-year-old son, Denzel Browning-Wilkins, died of homicide at Petco Park prior to a September baseball game between the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves.

Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today shared the statement from police regarding the deaths of Wilkins and her son after falling from a third-level concourse at the stadium:

The detectives conducted a thorough and comprehensive investigation that included dozens of interviews, reviewing of available video footage, and collecting background information to determine what led to the deaths. In consultation with the San Diego County Medical Examiner, Raquel Wilkins' death has been classified a suicide and Denzel Browning-Wilkins' death has been classified a homicide. The San Diego Police Department will not be making any further comment on the case.

However, attorney Dan Gilleon is representing Wilkins' family and said "The city doesn't want to explain why it concluded that a young mother would kill her only child at an event where witnesses said she was happy."

Gilleon said the family is considering suing the city of San Diego, which owns Petco Park.

He also pointed to accounts that said "she was smiling and having fun" while alleging the city is blaming the victim in this instance.

Both Wilkins and her son were pronounced dead at the scene Sept. 25.       

Los Angeles Dodgers star Mookie Betts didn't let a looming MLB work stoppage get in the way of love.

The five-time All-Star and Brianna Hammonds were married in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on Wednesday, according to TMZ Sports.

Dodgers star Cody Bellinger shared a video from the day of the ceremony while celebrating Chris Taylor's new contract:

Justin Turner, Dave Roberts, Kenley Jansen and Joe Kelly were among the Dodger contingent on hand.

Betts and Hammonds became engaged in January, having known one another since middle school.

"Brianna has been by my side since we were teenagers," he told People's Lindsay Kimble. "Together we've grown mentally, physically, and spiritually. She is my best friend, mother of my child, my lover, and my soon-to-be wife."

In November 2018, Hammonds gave birth to their first child, Kynlee.