When a veteran player joins a new team, sometimes there is an exchange that happens that can be quite beneficial for one lucky member of the signee's new club. Jersey numbers can be worth quite a bit of money to professional athletes, and in baseball, number exchanges can land a player a new car, or an expensive watch.
Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani gifted relief pitcher Joe Kelly's wife a Porsche when he arrived in L.A., and former New York Yankees pitcher Luis Severino followed suit, gifting A's starter Mitch Spence a Rolex GMT-Master II.
New A’s pitcher Luis Severino gifted Mitch Spence a Rolex GMT-Master II in exchange for jersey No. 40, which Severino has worn his entire career.
According to a quick Google search, this watch starts at around $10,000, with some sites listing them for as much as twice that. While it's not quite a Porsche, this is still an incredibly kind gesture, and the watch, meant in part to be a conversation piece, comes with a story attached to it.
Severino signed with the A's this offseason for three-years and $67 million, while the A's selected Mitch Spence from the Yankees in the Rule 5 Draft last offseason. At Severino's introductory press conference, the jersey he put on already had Spence's number 40 on it, so for him to get a gift of this magnitude is pretty special.
Even though Spence just completed his rookie season and Severino just signed the biggest deal in franchise history, the veteran right-hander still sought out Spence on the first day of camp, according to Martín Gallegos of MLB.com. According to Gallegos, Severino told Spence, "I owe you something. What do you like?"
Two days after he told Severino what he'd been eyeing, the watch was waiting at Spence's locker.
There will be little debate over who will be the A's Opening Day starter, as GM David Forst said the day he signed that it would be Severino. The 31-year-old is coming off his first season away from the Yankees, while sticking around in New York with the Mets. He held a 3.91 ERA (4.21 FIP) across 182 innings last season.
Both the results, and the innings total, are why the A's targeted him in free agency. The Athletics have a lot of young up-and-coming arms that they can mix and match in the rotation, but they needed that innings-eater atop the starting five. Severino represents that staff ace for the club heading into 2025.
Spence had a solid rookie campaign himself, beginning the year pitching in long relief, before being thrust into the rotation as injuries began to mount in May. The 26-year-old finished with a 4.58 ERA (4.21 FIP) in 151.1 innings, making 35 appearances (24 starts).
The fact that Spence finished with the same FIP as Severino last season could speak to some of the optimism surrounding the club as spring games get underway. The reason that Spence's ERA was higher than his FIP is that he held a 48.4% ground ball rate, and the A's also had the worst defense in baseball last year.
The A's gloves finished with -46 Outs Above Average in 2024, while the New York Mets were ranked No. 13 with a +8 OAA.
As we sit here with one week left in February, Severino is projected to be at the top of the starting five, and Spence is projected to make the club as the fifth starter, rounding out the rotation. With spring games starting for the club today, lefty Brady Basso and righty J.T. Ginn are scheduled to kick things off.
