Free agent outfielder Tommy Pham is in agreement with the Pittsburgh Pirates on a 1-year, $4 million contract, sources confirmed to ESPN on Thursday.

Pham is joining his 10th different organization as he enters the 12th year of his career. He split time between the White Sox, Cardinals and Royals last season, batting .248 with nine home runs.

Pham has a career .773 OPS and 139 home runs.

Pham, 36, adds depth to a Pittsburgh outfield that includes Bryan Reynolds, Andrew McCutchen and Oneil Cruz and also provides veteran leadership to a young club.

Pham has been on clubs that reached the postseason five times over the course of his career, including the past two seasons -- first with Arizona and then Kansas City.

Pham has found a home late in the offseason but still earlier than last winter, when he signed a minor league deal with the White Sox in April.

The Athletic was first to report the agreement.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred says he is getting emails from fans concerned over the sport's lack of a salary cap following an offseason spending spree by the Los Angeles Dodgers that sparked increased attention over the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement in December 2026.

"This is an issue that we need to be vigilant on," Manfred said Thursday following the end of an owners' meeting. "We need to pay attention to it and need to determine whether there are things that can be done to allay those kinds of concerns and make sure we have a competitive and healthy game going forward."

Baseball's biggest spender in 2024 won the World Series: The Dodgers had a $353 million luxury tax payroll and had to pay a $103 million tax. The Athletics had the lowest luxury tax payroll at just under $84 million.

"The Dodgers are a really well-run, successful organization," Manfred said. "Everything that they do and have done is consistent with our rules. They're trying to give their fans the best possible product. Those are all positives. I recognize, however, and my emails certainly reflect that there are fans in other markets who are concerned about their team's ability to compete. And we always have to be concerned when our fans are concerned about something. But pinning it on the Dodgers, I'm not in that camp."

The American League champion Yankees -- one of baseball's biggest spenders for decades -- even have concerns about where the game is going on the financial front, and how it's challenging to match the way the Dodgers can spend.

"It's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things that they're doing. We'll see if it pays off," Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner said in an interview that aired last week on the YES Network. "They still have to have a season relatively injury-free for it to work out for them. It's a long season as you know, and once you get to the postseason anything can happen. We've seen that time and time again."

Players oppose a salary cap and fought off a proposal with a 7-month strike in 1994-95, leading to the cancellation of the World Series.

"I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do, and maybe eventually we will, but we don't have that now," new Orioles owner David Rubenstein told Yahoo Finance at last month's World Economic Forum. "I suspect we'll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there's no guarantee of that."

Bargaining is expected to start in the spring of 2026. U.S. sports leagues have preferred offseason lockouts to determine the timing of work stoppages rather than risk in-season strikes.

"We're still two years away even if you're thinking you want to bargain early," Manfred said. "We do have things going on in terms of the economics of the game, local media being the principal one, that the longer we wait, the more it evolves, the better decisions we're going to make."

Manfred says umpire's firing speaks to improved monitoring of sports betting

Manfred was questioned about the firing of umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing his legal sports gambling accounts with a friend who bet on baseball games and for intentionally deleting electronic messages pertinent to the league's investigation.

MLB opened the investigation in February 2024 when it was brought to its attention by the sportsbook, and Hoberg did not umpire last season. MLB said the investigation did not uncover evidence Hoberg personally bet on baseball or manipulated games, but MLB senior vice president of on-field operations Michael Hill recommended on May 24 that Hoberg be fired.

"I think that we have a much greater ability to monitor what's going on and determine if there's something that's going on that shouldn't be going on today than we did when, you know, gambling was all, you know, in backrooms and illegal," Manfred said. "It's always a threat. We spend a lot of time and money, get a lot more information, just have access to a lot more information now that it's legal."

Manfred said he has the same stance as NBA commissioner Adam Silver, that one set of rules across the country for sports wagering would make more sense than the current state-by-state model.

"I do think that I may be a federalist in the broadest sense of the word," Manfred said. "I've always believed that a single set of rules is probably better than going state by state."

Manfred hopes to keep the Rays in the Tampa Bay area

The Rays are playing this season at the spring training home of the Yankees, 11,000-seat Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, following damage caused to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, where Hurricane Milton ripped the roof off on Oct. 9. Rays owner Stuart Sternberg and government officials have not been able to close a deal for a new ballpark.

"It's important the way I say this: I am spending a ton of time with Stu," Manfred said. "I think he's confronted with an extraordinarily difficult situation and we're trying to work that situation through."

The Rays have until March 31 to commit to their stadium deal with the city of St. Petersburg. The team has voiced concern that the planned ballpark would not open until 2029 and the team doesn't want to be responsible for higher costs.

"We are always and have always been prepared to adapt, adjust and move forward if the Rays walk away from this partnership," St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said this week in his state of the city address.

MLB's values 'unchanged' despite Trump's pressure against DEI

MLB is taking notice of a changed attitude toward diversity programs by the federal government since Donald Trump became president.

"Our values, particularly our values and diversity, remain unchanged," he said. "But another value that is pretty important to us is we always try to comply with what the law is. There seems to be an evolution going on here. We're following that very carefully. Obviously, when things get a little more settled, we'll examine each of our programs and make sure that while the values remain the same, that we're also consistent with what the law requires."

Changes to MLB's executive council

Mets chairman Steve Cohen and Athletics managing partner John Fisher were voted to the eight-man executive council, replacing Phillies managing partner John Middleton and Royals chairman John Sherman.

The council also includes Diamondbacks managing general partner Ken Kendrick and Mariners chairman John Stanton (whose terms expire in 2026), Giants chairman Greg Johnson and Guardians chairman Paul Dolan (2027) and Marlins chairman Bruce Sherman and Angels owner Arte Moreno (2028).

PECOTA, the popular projection system by Baseball Prospectus, released its estimated win totals for the 2025 season earlier this week. And though you probably won't be surprised to learn which team sits on top, it's important to note by how much.

The Los Angeles Dodgers project for a whopping 104 victories in 2025, according to PECOTA, 12 more than the second-place Atlanta Braves. In thousands of simulated seasons, the Dodgers made the playoffs 99.6% of the time. Their chances of winning the World Series -- and becoming the first repeat champions in more than 20 years -- sit at 21.5%, nearly three times more than anybody else's. And if you're waiting for this run of dominance to subside, have some patience -- ESPN's Kiley McDaniel has ranked the Dodgers' farm system first in the industry heading into the season.

"It's a great time to be a Dodger," Mookie Betts said during the team's annual fan event at Dodger Stadium last weekend, attended by a capacity crowd of 25,000.

It's also a busy time.

The Dodgers played into late October while defeating the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series and will begin the season more than a week early, opening up against the Chicago Cubs in Japan on March 18. Their spring training is nigh. Dodgers pitchers and catchers will undergo their physical exams in Glendale, Arizona, on Monday. The first official workout will follow the next morning, at which point throngs of fans, both domestic and international, will crowd the backfields of Camelback Ranch to catch an up-close look at one of the most talented teams in baseball history.

The Dodgers, division champs 11 out of the past 12 years, are about as certain to make the playoffs as any team has ever been. But they face some fascinating questions heading into the start of camp.

Below is a look through the five most compelling.

1. What will Shohei Ohtani's return to hitting and pitching look like?

It's important to remember what Ohtani is setting out to do this season. It's not merely that he'll return to being the second two-way star in baseball history -- and the first since Babe Ruth, who didn't juggle pitching and hitting for as long as Ohtani already has. It's that he will be doing so coming off an entire season spent rehabbing a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament, and mere months removed from surgery to his non-throwing shoulder after sustaining a torn labrum during the World Series.

At a time when the sport is more specialized, more skilled and more difficult than ever, what Ohtani is attempting is virtually impossible for everybody on the planet except him. Trying to project how his 2025 season will play out, then, seems foolish. And yet Ohtani has defied expectations so often, the sentiment among his teammates is that he will be just as great as he always is.

"I think Shohei's going to be Shohei," Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said last weekend. "I just don't see how he's not."

Freeman recalled the World Series workout at Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of Oct. 27. A day earlier, Ohtani had suffered a gruesome left shoulder injury while attempting to steal a base. And yet he was able to reach his ailing arm over his head, which Freeman never recalled someone having the strength to do after popping a shoulder out of place. "How is this man doing this?" Freeman thought.

Ohtani went on to play in the next three games, helping lead the Dodgers to their first full-season championship in four decades. Three weeks later, he won his third unanimous MVP in four years -- after the first 50/50 season. Then he began preparing as both a pitcher and a hitter again.

Ohtani is already hitting, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has seen videos of him producing exit velocities in the triple digits. He has also been playing catch for the better part of two months, but the Dodgers won't get a true sense for his pitching timeline until spring training begins and bullpen sessions follow.

Ohtani is expected to hit at the start of the season, but in all likelihood he won't be part of the rotation until May. The Dodgers want him peaking as a pitcher by season's end and don't want to have to shut him down at midseason to get him there. So far, Ohtani said Saturday, "things are pretty smooth." But there's no telling how this will actually go. This is unprecedented territory, riddled with unique quirks (an example: Ohtani can't venture out on a rehab assignment to face hitters in April, as any other rehabbing pitcher would, because he's too valuable to the Dodgers' lineup).

And yet greatness is expected nonetheless.

"I don't know about 50/50 because I truly don't know how he's going to go about stealing bases while he's pitching," Freeman said. "But maybe he steals 50 bases before he starts pitching in May or whenever. I wouldn't put anything past him."

2. How will Betts handle shortstop?

Yes, the Dodgers are planning on Betts being their every-day shortstop this season. No, there really isn't any precedent for something like this. Not for a player of this caliber. Not for moving to shortstop, the most demanding position outside of catcher, in the back half of one's career. But Betts, like Ohtani, is an unprecedented athlete, and the Dodgers have expressed confidence that he can make an incredibly challenging transition if given an entire offseason to work at it.

And Betts sure has worked. He has communicated on a near-daily basis with Chris Woodward, the former Texas Rangers manager and new Dodgers infield coach, at times recruiting him to take ground balls on random fields throughout Los Angeles because Dodger Stadium is undergoing a major renovation. Shortly after the fan event last weekend, he reported to the team's spring training facility, nearly two weeks before he was scheduled to arrive.

Said Betts: "I feel like I'm just a completely new person over there."

Betts, a six-time Gold Glove Award winner in right field, has longed to return to his roots in the middle infield basically since he joined the Dodgers. Second base seemed like the natural fit, until Gavin Lux's throwing issues last spring prompted a last-minute pivot to shortstop. Betts started 61 games there before a broken wrist kept him out nearly two months and pushed him back to right field upon his return. At season's end, Betts and the Dodgers sat down and determined he'd make another run at it.

Betts committed nine errors at shortstop last season, though eight were the result of errant throws. Dodgers coaches said he mastered aspects they believe to be the most difficult at the position -- getting off the ball, exhibiting range and fielding tough hops. The problem was getting his elite arm to translate from the outfield to the infield, most of which is a matter of footwork and (basically) reps, of which he will now get plenty.

If Betts' shortstop transition doesn't go well, the Dodgers can pivot to Tommy Edman, Miguel Rojas or the newly signed Hyeseong Kim, moving Betts to second base. But they're going to give him every chance to stick at the position, at least in 2025.

"He is very confident about it," Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said earlier this offseason. "And I will happily take the side of betting on Mookie and let any fool that wants to take the other side."

3. How will Roki Sasaki's transition to MLB work?

Friedman referred to the dynamic with Sasaki, the pitching phenom he'd spent years chasing, as a "partnership." The Dodgers have pledged to do whatever it takes to help Sasaki achieve his goal of becoming the first Japanese-born pitcher to win a Cy Young Award and, most importantly, stay healthy.

Sasaki, 23, is already an elite pitcher with an exceedingly high ceiling. But evaluators throughout baseball have expressed workload concerns, especially coming off a season in which his fastball exhibited a drop in velocity. Sasaki totaled just 202 innings with the Chiba Lotte Marines over the past two years. He is supremely athletic, but he is also wiry, and he has been throwing in the triple digits since high school. His right arm is special, but it is also vulnerable -- a major test for a Dodgers team that has struggled mightily to keep young arms healthy in recent years.

The thought from several scouts during Sasaki's posting process was that whichever team acquired him would start him late, given he might not throw more than about 150 innings in 2025. But the Dodgers won't do that. Friedman said during Sasaki's introductory press conference last month that he would "hit the ground running" in spring training and added that he will begin the season in the rotation if he's ready, with no designated innings limit.

"Our goal is to start him," Friedman said. "He's going to go and start the season and we will continue to work with him in between starts."

The Dodgers will spend a good portion of spring working with Sasaki to rekindle his four-seam-fastball velocity, part of which will consist of a more thorough examination of how his delivery might have been altered to account for prior injuries. They'll also begin to tweak his pitch mix in an effort to play up his wipeout splitter, perhaps by helping Sasaki introduce more cutters and two-seamers.

But one of the Dodgers' biggest tasks will be mapping out a rotation loaded with stars but riddled with injury concerns, including Sasaki, Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow (whose modest 134 innings total in 2024 was the most in his nine-year career), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (who missed three months with a strained rotator cuff last season), Tony Gonsolin (who is coming off Tommy John surgery), Dustin May (who made a combined 26 starts from 2021 to 2024) and Blake Snell (who has thrown less than 160 innings in four of his past five full seasons).

4. They're done adding players ... right?

Snell was the first impact player to join the Dodgers this offseason. He thought they were done adding with every subsequent move -- after Michael Conforto, after Teoscar Hernández, after Kim, after Sasaki, after Tanner Scott, after Kirby Yates. At some point, Snell will be right -- but perhaps not yet.

A "Kiké!" chant broke out at one point during DodgerFest, and the expectation is the Dodgers will eventually bring back Enrique Hernández, the effervescent, ever-popular super-utility player who has a knack for coming through in October. If they do -- and they keep Chris Taylor, who's in the last year of a four-year, $60 million deal -- then only one position player spot will be up for grabs in spring training.

It would seemingly come down to a competition between Kim and two young-but-established outfielders in Andy Pages and James Outman, the winner essentially determining how much time Edman will spend between center field and second base.

At full strength, the rotation might not eventually have room for anybody. Not with Clayton Kershaw also expected back. Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said Saturday that they've been waiting for Kershaw, 36, to get into his throwing program and thus have a better feel for how his body is holding up in the wake of November surgery on his left foot and left knee.

Gomes added that he expects "more conversations at an in-depth level here shortly" with Kershaw. The same can be said about Hernández, though in that case the two sides still have a financial gap to bridge. The timing is worth considering here, too. The Dodgers' 40-man roster is currently full, and the team doesn't want to subject anyone on it to waivers. Starting Monday, they can place rehabbing pitchers such as Gavin Stone, River Ryan, Kyle Hurt, Emmet Sheehan and Brusdar Graterol on the 60-day injured list, which opens space on the 40-man roster. Kershaw is expected to be added shortly thereafter. Hernández might be, too.

If they are, the roster will feature six MVP Awards, five Cy Youngs, 16 Silver Sluggers, nine Gold Gloves and 45 All-Star appearances.

"Incredible," Glasnow said. "It's like 'The Avengers.'"

5. How will they handle being the villains of MLB?

Betts spoke at DodgerFest last year, near the end of an offseason that saw Ohtani and Yamamoto sign contracts totaling more than $1 billion, and said every game against the 2024 Dodgers would qualify as "the other team's World Series." His point was the Dodgers needed to be ready for a season in which basically the entire sport would be aiming for them. He wasn't wrong.

But what about now?

The Dodgers have since won the World Series and signed practically every player they've wanted. Their luxury tax payroll projects to about $380 million, according to Spotrac, roughly $80 million more than the second-place Philadelphia Phillies. The only other teams to even reach $290 million are the New York Mets and Yankees. That doesn't account for the fact that the Dodgers' best and most popular player, Ohtani, deferred 97% of his contract. Or that arguably their biggest offseason acquisition, Sasaki, will make the major league minimum this season.

It has all worked to make the Dodgers the proverbial villains of their sport, a reality Roberts believes his team needs to "embrace."

"Who wouldn't want to be the focus and do what our organization is doing for the city, the fans?" said Roberts, who is entering the final year of his contract and still looking to sign an extension. "To be quite frank, we draw more than anyone as far as any venue in the world. And so when you're drawing 4 million fans a year, the way you reciprocate is by investing in players. And that's what we've done."

Roberts noted that none of the new players the Dodgers brought in have won a championship. Their desire for one, he hopes, will help fuel a team that might otherwise be prone to stagnation. Most of all, it's the outsized expectations that will help the Dodgers maintain their edge.

Alex Vesia, one of the Dodgers' primary relievers, believes the heightened pressure will once again bring them closer as a team, a trait that helped them overcome the grind of last October. But that won't play out until much later, when the games matter and the adversity hits.

At this point, the overwhelming sentiment around the Dodgers is simply gratitude.

"Fans come out here and support us," Freeman said. "They spend their hard-earned money to come and watch us play. And for them to spend that much money, and for them to see ownership take the product and put it back into the team, it's awesome. It's awesome to be a part of that. It's awesome to be a part of an organization that goes out there, year in and year out, to try and put the best team as possible to go out there and win the championship."

Speaking of opportunities, Ireland have a big one this weekend. An 11th straight victory over Scotland would push the holders closer to a third straight title, wound a contender and bolster the momentum gained from beating England.

On Ireland's last visit to Murrayfield, in 2023, Ireland lost Sheehan and replacement hooker Ronan Kelleher to injury in a chaotic game that forced Cian Healy to scrummage as a hooker and Van der Flier to throw into the lineouts.

Last year, despite a stout defensive effort from Scotland in Dublin, Ireland retained their title on the final day of the tournament with a 17-13 win.

But Sheehan, who scored in Ireland's 2023 World Cup and 2024 Six Nations wins over Gregor Townsend's side, says the run of defeats will serve only to ramp up the Scots' motivation.

"I think we approach it like every other game but we have to be almost hyper aware of their motivation and if they're going to bring in an extra and their motivation of what they'll bring to the table," he said.

"We probably glance over it once or twice during the week about what we think they might bring or their mindset going into a game, but then it's straight back into what can we add to the game and how are we going to approach the game.

"I think you can get yourself down a rabbit hole a little bit if you think about too much what the opposition are going to do, but I think if we go out and perform like we know we can and improve on last week we should be good for a good day out."

Arundell, who will become eligible to play for England again on his return to the Premiership, has scored seven tries in his international career so far, including a joint-record of five in a single match on his World Cup debut against Chile in September 2023.

He began his career in London Irish's academy, and went on to score 10 tries in 23 senior appearances for the side before the club folded at the end of the 2022-23 campaign.

"Henry has some world-class attributes, more specifically his speed and try-scoring ability," Bath head of rugby Johann van Graan said.

"Henry made it very clear when we spoke that he wants to improve as a player and I believe that Bath is the club to do that.

"His willingness to learn, grow and become better fits in well with what we, as a group of players, coaches and staff are all working towards on our journey together."

Arundell becomes the second high-profile signing for Bath for next season in the space of two days, with Gloucester and Argentina full-back Santiago Carreras having also agreed terms to move to the Recreation Ground.

The current Premiership league leaders have also signed hooker Dan Frost from Exeter and scrum-half Bernard van der Linde from South African side Bulls.

Additionally, England centre Ollie Lawrence has recently agreed new terms to stay at the club, along with prop Beno Obano and second row Quinn Roux.

Such has been Antoine Dupont's impact since making his France debut in 2017, numbers alone do not get close to doing him justice.

The frame of a bull, the acceleration of a wing and technical skills from the gods - Dupont's skillset is otherworldly. A scrum-half who matches 20 try assists in the Six Nations with 20 turnovers simply is not normal.

It is not just in the XV-a-side game that Dupont has excelled. The prospect of representing his country at a home Olympics last year meant he missed the 2024 Six Nations to focus on sevens, and Dupont scored two tries as France beat favourites Fiji to win the gold medal at the Paris Games.

"The boys joke around and call him 'The Martian' as he is not from earth, he is an alien," said Toulouse lock Emmanuel Meafou before last year's Champions Cup final. "The stuff he does in games is only half of what he is capable of."

And yet that half is better than virtually anyone else. In France's 43-0 win against Wales on Friday, the 28-year-old's shift lasted barely 50 minutes and yet he became the first player to provide three try assists in two separate men's Six Nations matches.

The cross-field kick for Theo Attissogbe's opening score was so casual, it was almost offensive.

Dupont next visits Twickenham's Allianz Stadium, where he masterminded a record rout of seven tries in 2023. The England camp have been keen to stress this week that the 2022 Grand Slam-winning captain is only human, but his reputation is becoming anything but.

However, coach Fabien Galthie has more recently favoured Thomas Ramos, more usually a full-back, at 10.

Jalibert returned to his club side Bordeaux-Begles rather than act as back-up to Ramos during the autumn internationals, but Galthie has insisted that there was no lasting damage to their relationship.

"We need Matthieu Jalibert," he said in January.

"I prefer a player who verbally expresses his wishes rather than players who suffer."

England will name their team later on Thursday with Fin Smith expected to promoted to fly-half and usual 10 Marcus Smith dropping into the backfield to play full-back.

France: Ramos; Penaud, Barassi, Moefana, Bielle-Biarrey; Jalibert, Dupont (capt); Gros, Mauvaka, Atonio, Roumat, Meafou, Cros, Boudehent, Alldritt.

Replacements: Marchand, Baille, Colombe, Auradou, Guillard, Jegou, Le Garrec, Gailleton.

Gatland's side face an Italian outfit that were beaten 31-19 by Scotland in Edinburgh in the opening round of matches.

Wales have not been beaten in Rome since 2007 and their last Six Nations victory was the away trip to Italy two years ago.

This has been followed by seven consecutive defeats in the tournament and defeat this week will leave Gatland's squad contemplating consecutive Wooden Spoons with home matches against Ireland and England and a trip to Scotland to come.

Another loss will also probably see Wales drop to a lowest position of 12th in the world rankings.

"This has been an important week with a lot of hard work put in during training," said Gatland.

"We want to be accurate and disciplined on Saturday. It's about our execution and how we manage the game.

"We know Italy are a quality side with physical players and are looking forward to a good contest. We're excited for the challenge on Saturday."

Wales: L Williams; Rogers, Tompkins, James, Adams; B Thomas, T Williams; G Thomas, Lloyd, H Thomas, Rowlands, Jenkins, Botham, Morgan (capt), Faletau.

Replacements: Dee, Smith, Assiratti, F Thomas, Wainwright, R Williams, Edwards, Murray.

CHICAGO -- The Chicago Blackhawks activated forward Craig Smith from injured reserve before Wednesday night's game against Edmonton.

Smith had been sidelined by a nagging back injury. He was in the lineup against the Oilers, playing on a line with Lukas Reichel and Pat Maroon.

The 35-year-old Smith has six goals and five assists in 30 games in his first season with Chicago.

The Blackhawks also assigned defenseman Artyom Levshunov and forward Colton Dach to Rockford of the American Hockey League.

The 19-year-old Levshunov was brought up on Monday to give him a chance to practice with the team during the AHL's All-Star break. The IceHogs' next game is Friday night at Texas.

Levshunov was the No. 2 overall pick in last year's NHL draft. He missed the start of the season because of a fractured right foot.

"We've had two good, spirited practices with a lot of pace and compete and that was a good learning experience for him to see," interim Blackhawks coach Anders Sorensen said. "Talking to him, he was kind of baffled how quick it was at times but that's good. That's how you realize where you need to be."

The 22-year-old Dach made his NHL debut on Jan. 3 against Montreal. The 6-foot-4 forward, a second-round pick in the 2021 draft, had one goal and three assists in 13 games with Chicago.