Evan Phillips Signs With the Braves: Three Years, $35 Million, the First Big Deal of the Offseason

ATLANTA - The Atlanta Braves made the first significant transaction of the Major League Baseball offseason on Thursday, signing free-agent reliever Evan Phillips to a three-year, $35 million contract, the team announced. USA TODAY, reporting the club's announcement, said Phillips will earn $11 million in 2027, $11 million in 2028 and $13 million in 2029, and that he will donate 1 percent of his salary to the Atlanta Braves Foundation.

Phillips, 32, returns to the organization that drafted him in the 17th round in 2015 and with which he debuted in 2018. He built his value with the Los Angeles Dodgers: in 2026, back from Tommy John surgery, he posted a 3.46 earned run average with a 1.08 WHIP and 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings over 31 appearances, with 33 strikeouts against six walks in 26 innings, according to TheScore and NBC Sports' reports. Before the injury, he had saved 24 and 18 games in back-to-back seasons for Los Angeles.

The signing is the biggest deal of the winter so far, and it landed on the day's search charts within hours: "Evan Phillips" stood at No. 18 on the U.S. trending list Thursday afternoon, at 5,000 or more searches since 20:00 UTC. For Atlanta, the move adds a late-inning arm to a bullpen the reports describe as already one of the best in baseball - and it sets the first price of the reliever market every other club now has to negotiate against.

For the Dodgers, the departure closes a five-year run in which a 2021 waiver claim from Tampa Bay became a closer. Phillips' deal runs through 2029, and his first Atlanta season opens in 2027 - the salary structure, back-loaded to $13 million in the final year, is the club's own published breakdown, carried here exactly as announced.