The Detroit Tigers may not be up to anything, but that doesn’t mean the rest of baseball is dormant. This time, it was the Washington Nationals making waves; they agreed to a six-year contract with free agent lefthander Patrick Corbin on Tuesday, according to reports from the usual big-name reporters on Baseball Twitter. Corbin’s deal is worth $140 million, but the yearly breakdown — including the inevitable amount of deferred money from surprisingly stingy Nats ownership — is still unknown.
Surprisingly, the biggest storylines to come out of this deal aren’t about Corbin’s fit with the Nationals, but rather how his contract impacts the rest of baseball.