The date was December 11, 2012. Major League Baseball had just completed their annual Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tennessee – the same venue of this year’s Winter Meetings, which begin next Sunday. The Dodgers were holding a press conference to announce the signing of free agent right-hander Zack Greinke

At the time is was pretty much a given that the then 29-year-old Orlando, Florida native wasn’t going to sign with a team until after the 2012 Winter Meetings; and why would he when representatives from all 30 MLB teams would be gathered at one place at the same time with wallets in hand? But even then it took another week for Greinke and his agent Casey Close to come to terms with first-year Dodgers owners Mark Walter, Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten, Peter Guber, Bobby Patton and Todd Boehly (aka: Guggenheim Baseball Management group), who held the fattest wallet of them all.

Zack Greinke at his December 11, 2012 introductory press conference. Will there be another?
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Even though Greinke was among the very first top-tier free agent starters to sign for a record-setting six-year / $147 million, it opened the flood gates and started the clock ticking on the signing (or re-signing) of the other top-tier and most sought-after starting pitchers – most notably Felix Hernandez, who signed a seven-year / $175 million contract extension with the Seattle Mariners eight weeks later to become the new salary king (pun intended). The point is, once that first domino fell, the others soon followed.

On Sunday morning the first domino of the 2015 off-season fell when former Washington Nationals right-hander and current free agent Jordan Zimmermann came to terms with the Detroit Tigers for a reported five-year / $110 million deal – which averages out to $22 million per season through 2020. The 29-year-old Auburndale, Wisconsin native was the Nationals second-round pick in the 2007 MLB First-Year Player Draft out of the University of Wisconsin (at Stevens Point) and has a career mark of 70-50 and 3.32 ERA through seven major league seasons.

Zimmermann will make a reported $110 million over the next five seasons with the Detroit Tigers.
(Photo courtesy of The Washington Post)

Although some do not put Zimmermann in the same category as Zack Greinke, David Price or Johnny Cueto, he is (or was) among the top four most sought-after available free agent starters this off-season. But regardless of his position on that list, his new $22 million average annual salary creates a starting point at which the Greinke-Price-Cueto sweepstakes will begin at – and probably very soon. But here again, it is not likely to happen before next week’s Winter Meetings.

It is now extremely unlikely that the Tigers will re-sign 30-year-old David Price now that they have acquired Jordan Zimmermann. (Photo credit – Jim McIsaac)

All of this being said, with Zimmermann no longer available for teams looking to add a top-of-the-rotation starter, it puts an additional level of pressure on the Dodgers to re-sign Greinke or run the risk of being shutout in acquiring one of the other (and now fewer) available top-tier free agent starters – something that I simply cannot see Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi letting happen. And even though Zimmermann becomes the first post-Tommy John surgery pitcher to sign a $100 million-plus contract, he also enters the 2016 season as a 29-year-old, whereas Price and Cueto will do so as 30-year-olds and Greinke as a 32-year-old. The difference, of course, is that Price, Cueto and Greinke have not had Tommy John surgery – at least not yet.

With Zimmermann now off the market and with the Winter Meetings only days away, look for the Hot Stove to become blazing hot in the very near future.

The Zack Greinke clock is now officially ticking.