Twins first baseman Byung Ho Park’s season ended in August after a wrist injury that required surgery, but he’s now able to work out without restrictions and he has returned to batting practice, Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press writes. Park, formerly one of the top power hitters in the KBO, will try to bounce back from a disappointing first season in the Majors in which he batted .191/.275/.409 and struck out 80 times in 244 plate appearances. The Twins owe him a total of $9.25MM through 2019. Here are a couple more quick notes from the American League.
- A couple details on Mark Trumbo’s market — first, Peter Gammons tweets that the Orioles’ previously reported offer to Trumbo was for three years $40MM, not $50MM-plus. That’s a relatively small offer for a player who swatted 47 home runs last season, but perhaps it’s somewhat reflective of the evident change in the market for one-dimensional sluggers, many of whom linger in free agency. A second, and perhaps related, tidbit is that the Athletics don’t seem likely to be key players in the Trumbo market, as John Hickey of the Bay Area News Group writes. The A’s strongly pursued Edwin Encarnacion, but it doesn’t appear they’re as interested in Trumbo, to whom they were connected last week.
- Free agent righty Anthony Bass has been in contact with five or six teams, and the Tigers are among them, MLB.com’s Jason Beck tweets. Bass would prefer an opportunity to start, but he is also open to pitching out of the bullpen. It’s probably unlikely he’ll get a chance to do either in the Major Leagues right away — the 29-year-old is coming off a decent but not overwhelming season with the Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan, for whom he posted a 3.65 ERA, 6.2 K/9 and 4.1 BB/9 over 103 2/3 innings. He last appeared in the big leagues in 2015 with the Rangers.
Trumbo is terrible. I wouldn’t give him more than 1/$8 mil. He’s projected for 1.1 fWAR next year and comes with a draft pick attached.
As a Seattle fan I totally agree
He’s an average to above average first baseman, and has immense power. I agree the draft pick is harming his market thought. He isn’t a terrible player, just a one dimensional one.
Well, good thing for Trumbo you’re nowhere close to being an MLB owner.
Terrible players don’t hit 47 HRs, no matter how you try to downgrade the importance of power.
How valuable can you really be if you only reach base 30% of the time?
worth 8 million for sure if your agreeing with rols1026
Exactly. Tack on his terrible defense and baserunning and you have a below average player.
So David Ortiz was a terrible player by this logic since he had worse defense and worse base running.
Incidentally Trumbo fielding at 1st base is league average.
Do terrible players not hit 41 homers either and lead the NL in homers? That’s what Chris Carter did and he’s been non-tendered for two straight seasons. Trumbo is worth having if he’s hitting 45-50 bombs but his career high before this year was 34….
The drugs are the real issue.
The dude Hot , and the O’s know it !
Why are you even on this sight. Do some research before you bash the MLBs home run leader
I mean site
Chris Carter led the NL in homers. He’s terrible. One stat does not define a player. Trumbo is an average offensive player with negative defensive value. Plus he comes with draft pick attached. I’ll take a hard pass lol
Try 101 Runs Created and 5.7 RC/G, which would be the average Runs per game if you had 9 Mark Trumbos in your lineup. That’s 923 Runs…
WAR is not the definitive stat and still needs a lot adjustment and re-evaluation in some areas.
Sure, and if you had 9 Trumbos on defense they would allow far more than that.
Baseball isn’t just about HRs, Trumbo’s HRs come with a LOT of outs, bad base running, and horrible defense…which make him a roughly average player during his best seasons who is already 31.
The reason he is still available and there had been very little market for him is because he is a 1B/DH (or a truly horrible OFer), and teams just aren’t going to pay a lot and give up a pick for a guy with no consistent track record that is great at 1 thing and gives back a ton of value in every other phase of the game.
WAR is a flawed stats so lets talk about how many runs a guy who can sorta play first base would create if a team had 9 of him and totally ignore any sort of defense…what a terrible terrible argument
Lol 9 Mark Trumbo’s on the same team, what kind of argument is that? That team would be soooooo bad anyways! Imagine Trumbo at SS or C. Geez you’re dumb…
Trumbo is no fit for the A’s since they already have to many players that play 1B. Trumbo is going to have a hard time signing a offer the longer he waits. The market is getting smaller by the day.
I would argue that we really don’t know yet if Trumbo is that negative a defensive player since no one has ever really given him his most obvious position of 1B, if you take Miguel Cabrera in stock him in RF you might regress his value exponentially. Am not saying that Trumbo and Miggy provide same value by any means but if put Trumbo at 1B we could expect his WAR to increase as his weakness should be Lee’s relevant. Edwin Encarnacion moving off 3B helped his overall game maybe we could see a similar late bloomer scenario here.
Good post.
Great post!
Who ever said if you have 9 Trumbos your team will be horrible. No sh*t Sherlock. Why would you put a player like Trumbo anywhere except 1st/DH and occasionally at a corner outfield spot. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up in Texas
The point is if you had 9 Trumbo like players, not literally 9 Trumbos. So if you had a team, where at every position you have a guy hitting that many homers but providing horrible defense the amount of runs such a team would allow would at least overtake the numbers of runs it would create.
I’d love it if he ended up here with Texas. Even with a below avg defense he is 100x better than anything else we have to run out at 1B everyday. If you lay out all of his HR from 2016 at Globelife all are still out of the ballpark and only a small few are even close to the wall. With the way balls fly out of there he would hit 35+ every year and again that’s better than bringing a broken Napoli back to play first for the 3rd time, and much better than the other talk of platooning Ryan Rua/Profar at 1B. Heck and Texas could use a DH too which would negate his subpar defense.
Lol Trumbo is not a good player. He has one skill, and cant play defense, hit for average or obp, and cant run. Just because he hit a lot of homers in the most hitter friendly division in baseball doesn’t make him good.
Couldn’t agree more. Too many fans get infatuated with the long ball. The total package shows Trumbo is a below average player who is now on the wrong side of 30. Count me out
Hey jFisnasty, you don’t know what the hell are you talking about… you don’t know what really brings baseball players to the mayors.. is how good you are hitting a baseball ( ask Michael Jordan ) “the best athlete in the world ” suuuuure.. this guy is a good hitter yeah not a good fielder but that is why GM’S are for, they need to find the right position for him.
The thing is he’s not good at hitting a baseball. He only gets on about 30% of the time which proves it. There’s a reason Chris Carter gets non tendered, and Carter is a poor mans mark trumbo
He’s not a good hitter??? This guy hit 47 homers and he’s not a good hitter??? Go to the batting cages and try to hit at least a 80 miles per hour fastball and you will see how hard it is to hit a baseball… and the reason he’s still available is because of the first round pick and money.. but he is a good hitter. He’s not mike trout but he is a good hitter.
His career wRC+ is 111 and his career K% is 25%. He’s a slightly above average hitter, not a great hitter by any means.
Just because he can hit it far doesn’t make him good. He can’t get on base and when he does he can’t contribute on the base paths. He is not good
I like how is arguement is for us to try to do that like anyone said something like we could do a better job. We are comparing him to his competition not a bunch of guys on a keyboard.
Ya I’m no cook but I still know when food tastes like crap
Mark Trumbo doesn’t have much range in the OF but at least he can play 3 positions. He only played 1B full time his rookie season and 1281 PO, 93 A, 10 E was not great but it was not bad either. In 2016, I look at 327 TB. How is 94 R, 157 H, 27 2B, 47 HR, 108 RBI and .256 “One Dimensional”?
Alot of people discredit those accomplishments based off of a few things:
1. His home ballpark was a big factor he’s hit 34 Homer’s one other time in his career. Why? Alot of people believe playing not only 81 games @ Camden but the rest of the al east as well.
2. He had a 316 obp which he’s done one other time. Other than that he was mainly posted sub 300 obps.
3. He had 170 strikeouts.
4. As u eluded to his defense has been suspect in the outfield meaning you’re being compared to 1b/dh which should be his position. Compared to other available 1b even he doesn’t even separate himself all that much such as Napoli, carter, and jose bautista. Who all offer more or pretty much the same level of production.
Um…. It’s not 1975 anymore. Nobody cares about RBI, batting average and runs scored. Lmao.
The draft pick is hurting him. He needs a one year deal with a NL deal to prove he can get better in the field and that last year wasn’t a fluke. But the draft pick is keeping that from happening.