Free agent Alex Bregman has a new home after agreeing to a three-year, $120 million deal with the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night, sources told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.

The $40 million annual salary is $10 million-plus more per year than other teams were offering, sources said. The deal includes two opt-outs and deferred money.

Bregman, who was the biggest free agent remaining on the market, is expected to play second base for Boston, sources said, after primarily playing third for the Houston Astros since 2020. He gives the Red Sox another big bat to go with a retooled pitching staff after the team acquired Garrett Crochet via trade and signed Walker Buehler and Aroldis Chapman via free agency earlier this offseason.

Boston manager Alex Cora wanted Bregman badly, having previously coached him in Houston. And with the contract, the Red Sox made a big-money splash after guaranteeing only $52.3 million to free agents this winter, leading to significant frustration from a fan base of a team that hasn’t been to the postseason since 2021.

Bregman, who previously played all nine seasons with the Astros, had received interest from several teams, with the Detroit Tigers, Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago Cubs most heavily linked to him, along with Boston and Houston. The Tigers offered him a six-year, $171 million deal, and the Astros were around six years, $156 million, sources said.

Bregman’s right-handed bat has a track record of success at Fenway Park. In 21 career games there, he has a .375 batting average with seven home runs and 15 RBIs. His career 1.240 OPS at Fenway is the best in major league history among players with at least 90 plate appearances.

After slumping mightily at the start of the 2024 season, Bregman’s bat began to come around in June and the rest of the team followed, as the Astros ultimately jumped the Seattle Mariners to claim their seventh AL West title in eight years.

Bregman, who will turn 31 on March 30, finished the season with a .260 batting average, 26 home runs and 75 RBIs in 145 games. Houston lost back-to-back AL Wild Card Series games to the Tigers.

The two-time All-Star had surgery after the season to remove a bone chip from his right elbow, and agent Scott Boras said Bregman, who has exclusively played third base since 2020, was willing to move to second base if needed.

The Red Sox already have star Rafael Devers at third, so Bregman’s expected move to second would allow him to stay there. And while Bregman has logged only 32 innings at second in his major league career, Cora referred to him last month as someone he envisioned as “a Gold Glove second baseman” when the two were together in Houston.

Bregman, who is coming off a five-year, $100 million contract, slashed .275/.376/.488 with 157 home runs and 554 RBIs from 2017 to 2023, compiling 34.2 FanGraphs wins above replacement, eighth most among all position players. Overall, he has a .272 career batting average with 191 home runs and 663 RBIs.

He rejected a one-year, $21.05 million qualifying offer by the Astros on Nov. 19, meaning Houston will receive a compensatory pick after the fourth round of this year’s MLB draft. Boston will lose its second-highest pick for signing him and will forfeit $500,000 of international signing bonus pool allocation.

Bregman’s ascension directly correlates with the Astros’ run of dominance, as his first full season came in 2017, when the franchise won its first championship — a title later tainted by the sign-stealing scandal that led to the firing of general manager Jeff Luhnow and field manager A.J. Hinch.

The Astros went on to make seven consecutive appearances in the AL Championship Series and won another World Series, during which Bregman established himself as one of the game’s best third basemen and became, along with Jose Altuve, one of the team’s core leaders.

Bregman was originally drafted by the Red Sox out of high school in 2012, but he opted to go to college at LSU. Houston then selected him second overall in the 2015 draft.

The Red Sox will hold their first full-squad workout Monday in Fort Myers, Florida. They host the Astros in the regular season Aug. 1-3, then visit Houston Aug. 11-13.

News of Bregman’s deal with Boston was first reported by The Athletic.

Information from ESPN’s Jeff Passan, Buster Olney and Alden Gonzalez was used in this report.

TAMPA — Nearly a year after suffering an elbow injury that pushed his season debut back to June, New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole said he is “in a really good spot” compared with recent years after starting his offseason throwing program earlier than in previous winters.

The right-hander posted a 3.41 ERA in 17 regular-season starts in 2024 before recording a 2.17 ERA in five postseason outings, including a seven-inning gem in Game 4 of an American League Division Series to close out the Kansas City Royals.

Now, two years removed from winning the AL Cy Young Award and entering his age-34 season, Cole expects to regain his place among baseball’s best hurlers.

“My expectations are the same,” Cole said after the Yankees’ first official spring training workout.

For 48 hours in early November, just days after the World Series ended, it appeared as though there was a chance Cole’s days as a Yankee could’ve been over. The star right-hander opted out of his contract — a nine-year, $324 million pact that registered as the largest contract ever for a pitcher when he signed before the 2020 season — with four years and $144 million remaining, giving the Yankees two days to void the opt-out with a one-year, $36 million extension.

The Yankees chose not to, giving Cole a path to free agency. Instead, after discussions between the two sides, Cole chose to remain with the organization on the four-year, $144 million contract he opted out of, as if he had not exercised the clause.

“The intention wasn’t to do anything other than stay,” Cole said Wednesday. “I was happy to be where my feet were, back in Yankee Stadium.”

Manager Aaron Boone said he thought there was a chance Cole could hit the open market where he would surely garner another rich long-term contract. As for potential awkwardness after the brief tango between the two sides, Boone said Cole immediately expunged any.

“He had a good way about it,” Boone said. “He came in, just talked about it openly after the fact when he came back in. So he kind of put us at ease a little bit, and [had] a laugh. And certainly, obviously, I’m excited that he came back.”

Cole’s return was the Yankees’ first transaction in what became an active offseason. Within a week, the Yankees exercised the 2025 option on Boone’s contract. A month after that, Juan Soto spurned them to sign a record-breaking deal with the New York Mets, spurring the club to quickly make a series of moves to improve the roster by the new year.

Max Fried was signed to an eight-year contract atop the starting rotation alongside Cole. Closer Devin Williams and outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger were acquired in trades. Paul Goldschmidt signed a one-year deal to play first base. Reliever Fernando Cruz came over in a trade with the Cincinnati Reds for backup catcher Jose Trevino. The result is a roster that is very different from the group that advanced to the franchise’s first World Series in 15 years, but one that is expected to compete for another AL pennant nonetheless.

“He’s a tremendous player,” Cole said of Soto. “He was extremely impactful for us, and a joy to watch and a joy to be around. So, Juan will be missed for a certain extent. But the beauty of the Yankees is the ability to go out and fill the roster and fill the spots with the goal of getting back to the World Series and winning the World Series again.”

Cole was in the middle of the Yankees’ fifth-inning meltdown against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the deciding Game 5 of the World Series, which led a few members of the winning club to bluntly criticize New York’s shortcomings. While Boone said he would like his team “to handle things with a little more class” if the Yankees find themselves in that position, Cole said he didn’t pay much attention to the comments.

“It’s a good push for us,” Cole said of falling short in the World Series. “We’re really proud of what we did. At the same time, we walked away from the season with a bitter taste in our mouths and just a real terrible feeling.”

Other notes from Yankees camp:

• Right-hander Eric Reyzelman, a non-roster invitee to spring training, suffered an allergic reaction before Wednesday’s workout and was admitted to a local hospital, where he was slated to stay overnight, according to a team spokesperson. Reyzelman, 23, was a fifth-round pick out of LSU in 2022. He recorded a 1.16 ERA in 31 games (one start) across three minor league levels last season, culminating with 23 appearances in Double-A.

• Boone said that Ben Rice is “definitely” in contention for the team’s backup catcher job but that the club doesn’t view him as solely a catcher. Rice, 25 and a catcher by trade, made his major league debut last season, appearing in 50 games but logging just one inning at catcher. He started 41 games at first base, batting .171 with seven home runs and a .613 OPS in 178 plate appearances as a rookie.

The San Diego Padres filled a clear need in their starting rotation Wednesday, agreeing to terms on a four-year, $55 million contract with veteran right-hander Nick Pivetta, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Pivetta’s deal, still pending the completion of a physical exam, includes opt-outs after the second and third seasons and is heavily backloaded. The contract will pay him a $3 million signing bonus and only a $1 million salary in 2025, then calls for salaries of $19 million, $14 million and $18 million from 2026 to 2028, sources told Passan.

The structure helps a Padres team that is trying to keep costs down for a second straight offseason and was already running a 2025 payroll of about $194 million, roughly a $30 million increase from where they were on Opening Day last year.

Pivetta, who will celebrate his 32nd birthday Friday, will likely slot in behind the Padres’ incumbent trio of Dylan Cease, Yu Darvish and Michael King, leaving Matt Waldron and Randy Vasquez, among others, to compete for the fifth spot.

One of few reliable starting pitchers remaining on the free agent market, Pivetta has been lauded for his durability, extension and propensity for missing bats.

With the Boston Red Sox over the past four seasons, he averaged 156 innings, posted a 4.33 ERA and struck out 26.9% of hitters. Last year, while posting a 4.14 ERA in 145⅔ innings, Pivetta finished with the lowest walk rate of his career at 6.1%.

Padres general manager A.J. Preller has navigated through a conservative, relatively quiet offseason since watching his team lose to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series.

Preller didn’t make an addition to his major league roster until bringing back catcher Elias Diaz at the end of January. Days ago, the team agreed to $1 million deals with Connor Joe and Jason Heyward, who will make up a left-field platoon.

The Pivetta deal, occurring at the start of spring training, represents the first big move of the Padres’ offseason. Given the absence of front-line starter Joe Musgrove, who will spend the year recovering from Tommy John surgery, it’s an important one.