Archives for March 2017

NL Notes: Phillies, Greinke, Carpenter, Nats

By Jeff Todd | March 9, 2017 at 10:53pm CDT

As his organization embarks on a year in which it hopes to see continued growth, Phillies GM Matt Klentak discussed the state of the club on MLB Network on Sirius XM (Twitter link). Klentak says he sees “a lot of growth,” with many young players joining major league camp for the first time. The club’s winter strategy was to “do everything we can to supplement this group” of young talent, he says, while being careful “not to stunt the development of our young players.” As for hyped shortstop prospect J.P. Crawford, Klentak says that having two established middle infielders in Freddy Galvis and Cesar Hernandez allows the team to avoid rushing him to the bigs after an aggressive promotional timeline through the minors.

Here are a few more notes out of the National League:

Diamondbacks righty Zack Greinke has continued to exhibit slower-than-usual fastball velocity this spring, as Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports. The veteran didn’t crack 90 mph in his second spring outing; while he noted “it’s still early,” Greinke did acknowledge “it’s not ideal, either.” Skipper Torey Lovullo said that he’s not concerned at this point, but a rival scout does tell Piecoro that he observed a downturn in Greinke’s offerings. At this point, it’s just something to watch, but as Piecoro notes, there are some additional reasons concern, including Greinke’s late-2016 shoulder issues and his delayed start to spring (which the team says wasn’t due to health).
Cardinals first baseman Matt Carpenter is playing, but only bunting in game action as he works through lower back pain. He’s about ten days from being ready to hit in a game, per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via Twitter). While that doesn’t leave a ton of time for Carpenter to ramp up for Opening Day, it seems he’ll be able to do so barring a setback.
The Nationals played a reduced role on the international market for quite some time, but as Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post writes, the club was able to find value in older Dominican players. As ever, age is relative; the Nats were targeting players who had fallen through the cracks of the traditional July 2 market and remained unsigned at 17 or 18 years of age. Outfielder Rafael Bautista was late to the game, but showed enough to command a $35K bonus and has shown enough to earn a 40-man spot, as has first baseman Jose Marmolejos. Catcher Pedro Severino and infielder Wilmer Difo were some of the others who signed for little but have already reached the bigs as the Nats targeted “pitchers and middle-of-the-field players with tools,” as Castillo writes. It’s an interesting look at the organization’s strategy, which has certainly evolved over recent years.

Offseason In Review: Milwaukee Brewers

By charliewilmoth | March 9, 2017 at 9:05pm CDT

This is the latest entry in MLBTR’s Offseason In Review series. The full index of Offseason In Review posts can be found here.

The Brewers’ offseason saw them continuing to add young talent, but they also acquired several veterans who should help make them fun to watch as they integrate younger players onto their roster.

Major League Signings

1B Eric Thames: three years, $16MM (including $1M buyout on $7.5MM option for 2020)
RHP Neftali Feliz: one year, $5.35MM
LHP Tommy Milone: one year, $1.25MM (non-guaranteed)

Notable Minor League Signings

Joba Chamberlain, Ryan Webb, Eric Sogard, Ivan De Jesus Jr..

Trades And Claims

Acquired 3B Travis Shaw, SS Mauricio Dubon, RHP Josh Pennington and PTBNL from Red Sox for RP Tyler Thornburg
Acquired C Jett Bandy from Angels for C Martin Maldonado and RHP Drew Gagnon
Claimed 1B Jesus Aguilar from Indians
Lost RHP Miguel Diaz to Twins in Rule 5 Draft

Notable Losses

Chris Carter, Thornburg, Blaine Boyer, Chris Capuano

Needs Addressed

The Brewers’ offseason mostly continued their recent trend of rebuilding what had been an aging roster, but their activity this winter also showed small signs that they’re looking toward contending in the near future.

Their first big move of the winter was to replace first baseman Chris Carter with Eric Thames, who signed a three-year, $16MM deal the same day the Brewers designated Carter for assignment, thereby avoiding taking him through the arbitration process. The Carter move was eyebrow-raising — it isn’t every day that a team drops a 41-homer hitter who’s set to receive a seemingly reasonable salary. The arbitration process, though, rewards counting stats like home runs and likely would have minimized Carter’s shortcomings, such as his strikeout and contact issues and lack of defensive value. MLBTR projected in October that Carter would receive $8.1MM through arbitration, and there are suggestions the salary might have gone higher. That sum seems paltry for a prolific home-run hitter, but the apparent ambivalence to one-dimensional power sources on this winter’s market strongly indicates that teams aren’t overly interested in sluggers who don’t bring something else to the table. The Brewers’ inability to trade Carter, as well as his eventual signing with the Yankees on a mere $3.5MM deal, suggest that the league didn’t think Carter was worth nearly as much as the arbitration process would have paid him.

In Carter’s place, the Brewers landed Thames, whose unusual background makes him an interesting and somewhat outside-the-box fit for the team’s first-base opening. Thames spent two forgettable seasons with the Blue Jays and Mariners in 2011 and 2012 before heading to the NC Dinos in South Korea, where he emerged as one of the KBO’s most fearsome sluggers. Even in a league dominated by offense, Thames’ numbers stood out — he hit 124 home runs in Korea in a mere 1,634 plate appearances. He’s also still just 30, young enough that he could have several more power-hitting seasons left in him.

There’s still very limited data on how KBO stats will translate to the Majors, and the existing precedents for prime-age sluggers point in different directions — Jung Ho Kang has been a success (his off-the-field problems notwithstanding), while Byung Ho Park’s first season was a failure. Perhaps the biggest difference between Kang and Park prior to their arrivals in the states, though, was their plate discipline. Kang had 293 strikeouts in his last three seasons in Korea, while Park had a very high 399 (including 161 in his last season there). Thames, like Kang, had 293 whiffs in his three seasons in the KBO, suggesting a balanced approach that could play well as he returns to the big leagues. The well-rounded offensive game Thames demonstrated in Korea, where he posted OBPs above .420 in all of his three seasons, also contrasts sharply with that of Carter. No one really knows how Thames’ game will play in the big leagues at this point, but the Brewers, as a rebuilding club that didn’t have an obvious fix at first, were in great position to gamble on a relative unknown.

More analysis after the break …Read more

The Brewers also swapped catchers with the Angels, taking what would appear to be a slight short-term hit to acquire more youth and team control. Martin Maldonado, who headed west in the deal, is a well-regarded pitch framer and an outstanding backup. He only has two years of control remaining before free agency, though, and his struggles to hit for average limit his upside as a starter. In return, the Brewers received Bandy, who’s less of a known quantity but who hit passably in 2016 in his first full year in the big leagues. He’s also three and a half years younger than Maldonado and has five years of team control remaining.

In the bullpen, the Brewers added a new closer in Neftali Feliz, compensating in large part for the departures of Tyler Thornburg (see below), and, before him, Jeremy Jeffress and Francisco Rodriguez. Feliz’s $5.35MM guarantee fell well short of the three-year, $18MM deal MLBTR predicted he’d receive (although Feliz’s contract does contain bonuses for games pitched and games finished that could be quite lucrative if he serves the whole year as a closer). Perhaps the biceps tendinitis that ended Feliz’s 2016 season a month early had a significant effect on his market.

That’s not to say signing with the Brewers didn’t have benefits for Feliz, however. A one-year pact and an opportunity to pitch the ninth could allow him to market himself as a closer next offseason, potentially landing a bigger deal than he would have received had he taken a multi-year contract to pitch elsewhere in a setup role. The Brewers, meanwhile, got a high-velocity righty who could help the back end of their bullpen and be a valuable trade chip in July should they fall out of the race.

The Brewers also added Tommy Milone on a cheap, non-guaranteed deal. Milone will compete for a spot in the back of the Brewers’ rotation, potentially giving the team a left-handed arm to slot alongside what figures to be a large collection of righties. If he doesn’t win that job, he could work as a lefty out of the bullpen (although he’s had relatively even splits throughout his career, meaning he isn’t an obvious fit as a LOOGY). The soft-tossing Milone has never been a star, and he’s coming off a poor season in Minnesota. He had four straight years before that in which he was at least modestly productive, though, and at $1.25MM, he represents only a tiny risk for a team that might need him to eat innings.

Elsewhere, the Brewers attempted to extend infielder Jonathan Villar on a $20MM contract, but were rebuffed. The structure of the deal isn’t currently known, but it presumably would have bought the Brewers control over one or more years beyond 2020, after which Villar is scheduled to become a free agent. Villar is coming off a breakout 2016 in which he led the NL in stolen bases and batted .285/.369/.457; it appears both he and the Brewers are optimistic about his ability to perform at a high level. He’ll play second base in 2017 after manning mostly shortstop and third last year. The move, along with the acquisition of Travis Shaw (see below), bumps Scooter Gennett from the starting lineup after two straight years of just over replacement-level performance.

Questions Remaining

As with most rebuilding teams, the Brewers have no shortage of questions about their roster. MLBTR’s Jason Martinez outlined those questions heading into Spring Training. Notably, the Brewers must decide how best to distribute playing time at catcher between Bandy, Andrew Susac and Manny Pina, as well as which five pitchers should make up a rotation that currently appears to be up in the air beyond Junior Guerra and Zach Davies.

In general, though, most of the organization’s big questions won’t be answered until later. For now, they’ll try to sort through what’s becoming a growing collection of young talent. There are surely positions where they’re more comfortable, such as second base (Villar), shortstop (former top prospect Orlando Arcia, although he struggled in his 2016 rookie season) and center field (where they have 2016 breakout performer Keon Broxton). The Brewers also have capable or potentially capable veterans at first base (Thames), third base (Shaw) and left field (Ryan Braun). Elsewhere, they’ll attempt to address uncertainty with quantity, but it still could be argued that they have the potential for at least average performances at every position on the diamond.

The pitching staff is a different story, and the Brewers’ rotation in particular currently looks weak, with Matt Garza, Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, Wily Peralta and Milone among the many merely passable possibilities to fill out the rotation beyond Guerra and Davies (who don’t exactly project to be aces themselves). But that group could solidify in the coming years with the additions of prospects like Josh Hader, Luis Ortiz and Brandon Woodruff, with others perhaps coming along also via trade or the team’s development pipeline. Despite the Feliz addition, the bullpen doesn’t look particularly strong either, although the Brewers’ relief situation could look quite different by the time it looks poised to contend, and they can always add relievers in future offseasons.

The Braun deal the Brewers reportedly pursued with the Dodgers last summer, which would have netted them veteran starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy along with other talent (Yasiel Puig and a pair of prospects of unknown identity), perhaps demonstrates what the Brewers might be thinking should they attempt to move Braun again later. McCarthy would have given the team a potentially productive — albeit risky — rotation option in his second year back after April 2015 Tommy John surgery. The more important likely reason McCarthy came up in trade reports was because the Dodgers wanted to offset some of Braun’s salary, but from the Brewers’ perspective, the fact that McCarthy might have become a decent rotation option was surely a nice perk.

Speaking of that unconsummated trade, one issue that remains unsettled is Braun’s continued presence on the Brewers’ roster despite the recent departures of many of his peers. There weren’t many juicy Braun rumors this offseason, despite the reported potential Dodgers blockbuster last summer. One factor might have been the crowded OF/1B/DH market, which caused many sluggers to languish in free agency well into the new year. Braun is signed through 2020 and controllable through 2021, so the Brewers theoretically have time to trade him, although he already has a limited no-trade clause that allows him to block deals to all but six teams, and he will acquire an ironclad no-trade clause if he reaches 10-and-5 status in mid-May.

Deal Of Note

The Brewers’ trade of Thornburg to the Red Sox for Shaw, Mauricio Dubon, Josh Pennington and a player to be named looks like it improves the organization for the long term, perhaps without even sacrificing much in the short term. Thornburg has, to be sure, become an elite reliever, using an outstanding fastball to post a 2.15 ERA, 3.4 BB/9 and an excellent 12.1 K/9 last season. But he has only three years of control remaining. Shaw, meanwhile, has five, and has already become a productive regular in his first season and a half in the big leagues. And as good as Thornburg was last year, his ERA was ahead of his peripherals. Projection systems like Steamer and ZiPS see Thornburg coming back to earth somewhat in 2017, and Shaw, a credible regular third baseman who seems capable of average to above-average defense at either corner infield spot, providing greater overall value.

Shaw, it should be noted, faded badly in 2016, batting just .194/.259/.360 in the season’s second half. And at 27 in April, he doesn’t appear to have tremendous upside — one of the better-case scenarios for him is that he becomes merely a very good player, rather than a star. He might, at some point, need to be platooned as well. Also, the value of dominant bullpen arms has rarely been higher than it is now, meaning that even though Thornburg lacks the closer pedigree of the recently traded relievers who have commanded the largest hauls (such as Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel), he should have fetched quite a bit on the trade market.

Even so, it appears there’s decent potential for Shaw alone to outproduce Thornburg right away. And that’s even before considering the rest of what the Brewers received. Dubon is still just 22, can play shortstop, and broke out in Class A+ and Double-A last season. He doesn’t seem likely to hit for much power, but he could post good on-base percentages in the Majors. And while Pennington is a lottery ticket, he’s an interesting one, with a mid- to high-90s fastball and a decent curve. There’s also the player to be named, who hasn’t yet been revealed.

Overview

2017 isn’t likely to be the Brewers’ year, but their future appears promising — in addition to their interesting group of position players at the big-league level, they now boast a strong farm system headed by recent trade acquisitions like Lewis Brinson, Isan Diaz, Dubon, Hader and Ortiz, along with top draft picks like Corey Ray, Trent Clark and Lucas Erceg. The team seemingly has many more good position players than pitchers, although GM David Stearns can address that imbalance on the trade market as he attempts to mold an increasingly interesting collection of talent into the next good Brewers team.

What’s your take on the Brewers’ winter? (Link to poll for mobile app users …)

Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Caleb Cotham Retires

By Jeff Todd | March 9, 2017 at 8:01pm CDT

Reliever Caleb Cotham has decided to hang up his spikes, he announced on Twitter. Cotham, 29, had recently agreed to a minor-league deal with the Mariners.

Cotham isn’t being forced out of the game due to a catastrophic injury, though he has had his share of injury woes both recently and in the past. Instead, it seems, he’s not interested in continuing to endure the toll of the grind.

“For me it is time to explore how I can give back and offer value to the game of baseball in ways other than playing,” Cotham writes. “My love for the game has never been higher, I am just no longer willing to pay the emotional/physical price to rehab/play at the highest level.”

There’s no doubting the pressures and demands placed upon a player in Cotham’s situation. Over the past two years, he has bounced between the upper minors and the majors. While he was able to earn 35 MLB appearances, Cotham allowed 27 earned runs in that span and faced an uphill path to the Mariners’ active roster this year.

Cotham first cracked the bigs with the Yankees after a breakthrough 2015 season in which he threw 57 innings of 2.21 ERA ball with 9.6 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 in the upper minors. He ended up being dealt to the Reds as part of the return for Aroldis Chapman.

While he made the Opening Day roster with Cincinnati, Cotham contributed to the team’s historically dreadful relief work. He was ultimately sidelined with shoulder inflammation and then suffered a season-ending knee injury upon his return to the minors. (That string of ailments surely brought back unwanted memories; originally a fifth-round pick out of Vanderbilt, Cotham threw only 31 innings from 2009 through 2011 owing to knee and shoulder surgery.) The Reds outrighted him off of their 40-man roster in late October.

‘Lucky Charm’ Jared Porter On Metrics, D-Backs’ 2017 Roster

By brettballantini | March 9, 2017 at 6:34pm CDT

This is the second half of an interview with Diamondbacks assistant GM Jared Porter, conducted by MLBTR contributor Brett Ballantini. Click here to read Part 1.

In the second part of the conversation, Porter addresses the intricacies of his job, including his go-to stats, and taking the “macro” view on the Diamondbacks’ future:

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You were with the Cubs when the Diamondbacks traded for Shelby Miller, which from the jump seemed a significant overpay by Arizona. What was your impression?

It’s impossible for me to weigh in heavily due to the fact that I wasn’t here and don’t know all of the circumstances surrounding the trade. With that said, we are really excited to have a pitcher of Shelby Miller’s quality in our rotation. It’s been great getting to know Shelby as a person over the course of the last month or so and has been exciting to watch him feature such explosive stuff in his first two spring outings. He’s in impeccable physical shape and has a great mindset heading into the season. We’re lucky to have Shelby on the Diamondbacks.

Analytics is a rabbit hole that ultimately yields greater and greater understanding of the game. We’re so far from sheer batting average or pitching wins now, we can never go back. But clearly, each front office doesn’t just have a Baseball-Reference stock ticker of WAR numbers that steers evaluation. There are nuances wrapped in projections inside of data. Even among your own equfront office, with a relatively flat hierarchy, each of you must have your own pet data or go-to projections. If you can give me the Shake n’ Bake without revealing its flavor, what is your go-to stat?

Great question. I don’t think I have a “go-to stat,” but what I like the most is the data that helps prove things that are hard for our eyes to see or that can be hard to gauge within a scouting report. Player evaluation is so tough, even for the best evaluators, that any advantages we can find and use are so important.

For me, I’ve really been gravitating towards run prevention data lately. Some examples of this are PITCHf/x data (movement qualities of the pitch), pitch results data (how a pitcher’s stuff impacts the way hitters put balls into play) and pitch sequencing data (how a pitcher uses his pitches); defensive data and defensive positioning data; and catcher defense analysis.

One area that tends to get over-reported is catcher framing. While I’m a firm believer in the value of catcher framing and the impact it makes, the story often stops with catcher framing data and not enough attention is paid to the importance of game-calling and game leadership when it comes to evaluating catchers. A big part of a pitcher’s conviction in the stuff he’s throwing has to do with how the game is called and led behind the plate.

Your most significant trade of the offseason sent Jean Segura to the Seattle Mariners for Taijuan Walker and Ketel Marte. Was that a matter of selling high on Segura, buying low on Walker, or a little bit of both?

We’re really excited to have Taijuan Walker and Ketel Marte in Diamondbacks uniforms right now. We gave up a very talented and well-rounded impact player in Jean Segura as the centerpiece of the deal for Seattle, but continuing to add young, controllable, high-ceiling players like Taijuan and Ketel will make our talent pool deeper and more sustainable from a macro viewpoint.

Taijuan is a pitcher who all three organizations I’ve worked for have tried to acquire over the last two or three years. Getting to know him a bit over the course of the last month has given us a lot of confidence in the person he is. He wants to be great, and he wants to win. We’re very excited to have such a talented athlete in our program.

You have an exhausting number of responsibilities, overseeing player personnel, baseball operations, and the medical staff. But arguably your more significant responsibility with Arizona is in pro scouting. I’m guessing that amateur scouting—confirming blue chips or uncovering hidden treasure—is significantly different from pro scouting, where we imagine a half-dozen guys with radar guns trying to pick the bones of this summer’s early rebuilders. How do the roles of amateur and pro scouts differ?

The nature of all scouting is the same: Consistently beat other teams by evaluating and recommending talented, championship-caliber players for your organization. The types of scouting that I have the most significant responsibility for within Arizona are professional (other teams’ minor league players, and the independent leagues), major league (other teams’ major league players, and advance scouting), and international professional (typically NPB, KBO, and Cuban players who don’t fall under the amateur cap).

There are a few major differences between amateur and professional scouting that stand out. Every year there is a draft, so it’s a fact that an enormous pool of amateur players will be selected and signed to play professional baseball every June. For this reason, there’s a culminating point in every draft cycle. We don’t have as much information on amateur players. Although the information available is growing at an astonishing rate, there still isn’t as much information available in comparison to professional players. We haven’t had the opportunity to see amateur players compete against their professional peers on a daily basis yet, so the accuracy of evaluations is more volatile and higher risk. It becomes critical to mitigate the risk as much as you can while continuing to maximize the upside and the potential impact of players you’re bringing in.

On the professional and major league side, we have significantly more information, but oftentimes the assets you’re giving up in player or financial capital are so great that it makes the margin for error within these decisions minuscule. Also, the player pool to select from is more finite. Professional scouting is more of an ongoing process with regards to acquisition. Although there are a few big dates, like the Trade Deadline or Winter Meetings, the professional player acquisition period is literally 365 days a year, because a transaction can happen at any time.

Which scouting is a greater challenge, or more fun?

The best way for me to describe it is that it’s all awesome, and it’s all really challenging. You can never learn enough about player evaluation with regards to organizational building and roster construction.

You have inherited a Diamondbacks team that seems a given to put 69 wins in the rearview mirror, with not just superstars like Zack Greinke, Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock, but quite a few budding stars as well. Obviously, you’ve got a long-term vision of remaking the team, but how jazzed are you regarding your immediate, 2017 prospects?

We’re all very excited about the talent on our 40-man roster and certainly feel fortunate to inherit so many talented and athletic players with high ceilings. [Rookie manager] Torey Lovullo has set a great tone in camp, with everyone being part of a unified group headed in the same, positive direction. It’s been a point of emphasis for us this offseason to put a well-rounded, versatile, and deep group of major league players together going into the season. It’s still roughly a month to go before Opening Day, but so far, so good. Personally, I’ve enjoyed getting to know our players better as competitors and people, and am excited to continue to do so.

I asked Dave Stewart this question last year, and for all his intensity and aggressiveness, he surprised me with a muted answer. With specific regard to making an offer to a guy like [ex-Los Angeles Dodger] Greinke, is there any additional incentive beyond what he can do for the Diamondbacks—does taking a valuable player away from a direct rival color your decision-making at all? Or, asked another way, are the battles for wins fought exclusively between the lines, or can a front-office guy steal a couple of wins for the team and contribute the same value as a hitter with a knack for a game-winning RBI?

No, I don’t see it this way at all. It’s our job to help build a sustainable, deep, and well-rounded Diamondbacks team regardless of what other teams in our division are doing. If we do that, it doesn’t matter what other teams are doing because we’ll be able to provide Torey and our coaching staff with the necessary weapons to navigate a 162-game schedule, and hopefully more.

There is some nuance within the season with regards to matchups, maybe stocking your bullpen with a certain type of reliever for a series or two, picking the right time to spot start a guy, or adding a bat that might match up well for a certain stretch. But when it comes to the macro decisions, we have to constantly focus on making our team better and not worry about the others.

Fortunately, this is something I was able to see first-hand in Boston when I was younger due to the incredible depth and talent in the AL East at the time. I never saw Theo give in to any pressures that might have been there to match our division rivals, and I feel that as a result our internal player pool was always deep and sustainable, with great young players ready to make an impact at the major league level.

You were hired by the Red Sox in 2004 and, poof, there goes an 86-year Curse of the Bambino. The Cubs snapped you up in 2016 and, boom, the longest streak in the history of pro sports, 108 years without a title, is gone. Every time you join a new team, they win a World Series. Arizona’s drought of 15 seasons is slightly less dramatic than what you’ve conquered already. So, pressure’s on, are you going to make it three-for-three?

I wish it were that easy. I’ve been fortunate to work around great people and for teams with great players in Boston and Chicago. My hunch tells me that it’s been more about the players than me being a curse breaker! We’ll chalk it up to good timing.

With that said, we have a talented group here in Arizona and we are working daily to create the culture both in the office and in the clubhouse through Torey that we’ve seen lead to sustainable success in Boston and Chicago.

Follow Brett Ballantini on Twitter @PoetryinPros

Cubs, Kris Bryant Agree To Record Pre-Arb Deal

By Jeff Todd | March 9, 2017 at 5:01pm CDT

The Cubs have agreed with star third baseman Kris Bryant on a record-setting pre-arbitration salary, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag reports. Fresh off of a year in which he won the National League’s Most Valuable Player award, Bryant will take home $1.05MM.

Chicago also shared some of its World Series wealth with righty Kyle Hendricks, who’ll earn a hefty $760,500, per Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times. Hendricks was another key performer for the Cubs, turning in an outstanding campaign that saw him land third in the N.L. Cy Young voting. Larger-than-usual salaries are also on tap for Addison Russell ($644K), Javier Baez ($609K), and Kyle Schwarber ($565,500), per Wittenmyer’s report.

Bryant’s payday doesn’t blow the prior record out of the water, but does land a bit north of Mike Trout’s 2014 salary of $1MM. Recently, standout Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts was renewed at $950K after his own high-quality season. Notably, unlike Trout and Betts, Bryant has yet to achieve his second full year of MLB service — owing to the team’s controversial decision to delay his MLB debut in 2015.

The 25-year-old star will reach arbitration next year, though, as he’ll easy qualify for Super Two status. If he posts anything approaching the numbers from his first two season — including a composite .284/.377/.522 batting line and 65 total home runs — Bryant will earn a massive raise in his first trip through the arb process.

If the sides discuss a larger contract, Trout could again provide a target. His six-year, $144.5MM pact, which replaced the above-noted arb deal in 2014, was the second-largest contract ever given to a 2+ player. Buster Posey still holds the record for that service class at $159MM over eight years. Odds are that the Scott Boras-repped Bryant would be looking for quite a bit more money than either of those two players; certainly, it’s arguable that the market has moved northward since that time, and the Trout contract seems a notable bargain in retrospect for a player of that quality (even given the remaining club control the organization had).

Hendricks, 27, was in the 2+ arb class, but fell well shy of Super Two eligibility. After a solid 2015 effort, he turned one of the most surprising campaigns in the league last year. Over 190 frames, Hendricks worked to a National League-leading 2.13 ERA with 8.1 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9. He, too, will be in line for big first-year arb earnings if he can replicate that success.

Heyman’s Latest: Maddon, Braves, Rockies, Hammel, Kenley, Napoli, Lucroy

By Steve Adams | March 9, 2017 at 3:54pm CDT

The Cubs’ World Series victory triggered an escalator clause in manager Joe Maddon’s five-year, $25MM contract, reports Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports. Maddon’s annual salary will now be bumped from $5MM to $6MM in the final three years of the deal, though the skipper claims to ESPN Chicago’s Jesse Rogers that he wasn’t even aware of the clause. “I’ve never seen a paycheck,” Maddon tells Rogers.

Here are some highlights from Heyman’s latest lengthy Inside Baseball column…

The Braves are in the market for a right-handed-hitting outfielder that can handle center field. Currently, Atlanta lacks a clear-cut fourth outfielder and is set to deploy two left-handed-hitting starters in Ender Inciarte and Nick Markakis.
Rockies right-handers Jason Motte and Chad Qualls, each of whom disappointed in the first season of their respective two-year contracts last year, are both available in trade, per Heyman. Motte hasn’t enjoyed a strong season since 2012 and has undergone Tommy John in the interim (making the two-year deal all the more surprising). He’s owed $5MM in 2017. As for Qualls, the 38-year-old is more affordable at $3.25MM this season, but he’s also considerably older and coming off a worse year.
Jason Hammel and the Mariners were discussing a one-year deal in the $10MM range before he switched agents this offseason. Following the change in representation, Hammel shifted course and took a larger guarantee but a lower annual value, inking a two-year deal worth $16MM with the Royals. Seattle, in turn, picked up Drew Smyly and Yovani Gallardo via the trade market.
The Marlins’ offer to Kenley Jansen this winter was, perhaps unsurprisingly, extremely backloaded, Heyman reports. The deal would’ve paid Jansen something in the vicinity of $7MM in year one, $9MM in year two, $11MM in year three and $25MM in each of the final two years. That’d obviously be an advantageous structure for owner Jeffrey Loria, who is looking to sell the team.
The Padres and Tigers are both still looking to add to their roster, with San Diego focusing on shortstop options while Detroit pokes around the market for center field help. Heyman notes that the Friars would prefer a shortstop who is controlled beyond the 2017 season. Currently, the only MLB-ready, in-house option that fits that bill is Luis Sardinas.
The Twins were willing to pay Mike Napoli $11MM on a one-year deal or $16MM on a two-year pact, but Napoli instead is headed back to the Rangers on a one-year, $8.5MM deal with an option for the 2017 season that would allow him to match the $16MM total he could’ve made over two years in Minnesota. The slugger tells Heyman that he’s already made a lot of money in his career and instead prioritized winning.
The Rangers are still hoping to talk extension with Jonathan Lucroy and Yu Darvish. Lucroy tells Heyman that he “would absolutely love to stay” in Texas, adding that he likes the culture, the coaches and his teammates. The former Brewers backstop conceded that he at one point regretted signing his initial contract — a five-year deal with a club option that will end up paying him a total of $15.5MM over the six years — though it sounds like those days are behind him. (And, obviously, he’s poised to do quite well for himself in the very near future.) As for Darvish, Heyman notes that his agents may well try to use Stephen Strasburg’s seven-year, $175MM contract as a comp in negotiations, but the Rangers aren’t willing to push it that far to retain Darvish.

Rangers Not Ruling Out Free Agent Starters

By Steve Adams | March 9, 2017 at 1:36pm CDT

The Rangers’ free-agent additions to the rotation this winter consisted of Andrew Cashner and Tyson Ross, but following a setback for Cashner in his bout with biceps tendinitis, neither of those right-handers will be ready for Opening Day. In light of that news, MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan reports that the Rangers aren’t ruling out the addition of a free-agent starter (Twitter links). More specifically, he adds that some club officials admitted to him that they’re missing right-hander Colby Lewis. Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tweets something similar, noting that the Rangers aren’t sure where Lewis is at from a training standpoint but adding that it “sounds like he’s entered their thinking.”

The 37-year-old Lewis, who has spent the past seven seasons in the Rangers organization, and the 33-year-old Doug Fister are the two most prominent names remaining among unsigned free agents. Others that are available include Edwin Jackson (who reportedly didn’t impress Texas at a February workout), Jake Peavy (who is not ready to sign due to personal reasons) and Jerome Williams.

Lewis is obviously a known commodity for the Texas front office, having racked up 997 2/3 innings with the Rangers dating back to the 2010 season — his first back in the Majors following a stint in Japan that saved his career. Last season saw Lewis turn in a 3.72 ERA with 5.7 K/9, 2.2 BB/9 and a 34.1 percent ground-ball rate in 116 1/3 innings of work. A strained lat muscle cost Lewis nearly three months of the year, and when he returned to action in mid-September, the results were hardly encouraging; in four starts to close out the season, Lewis yielded 17 runs (13 earned) on 22 hits and nine walks with 12 strikeouts in 18 1/3 innings.

As for Fister, the right-hander gave the Astros 180 1/3 innings of work last year — his highest innings count since the 2013 season — but wasn’t able to recover much of the missing life on his fastball. Fister averaged just 87 mph on his heater last year and has averaged 86.7 mph on the pitch over the past two seasons combined. The results, as one might expect, haven’t been great. In 283 1/3 innings between the Nationals and Astros, Fister has worked to a 4.48 ERA with 5.7 K/9 against 2.7 BB/9 while his ground-ball rate has dipped from 54 percent to 45 percent. And if one were to eliminate the 10 solid relief appearances he made in 2015 after losing his rotation spot, his ERA as a starter over the past two campaigns checks in at 4.63.

That’s a fair amount of doom and gloom, but the fact is that each pitcher comes with a lengthy track record in the Majors and could help to deepen the Rangers’ pitching staff. Either could potentially serve as a stopgap until one or both of Cashner and Ross is ready, and it’s certainly plausible that either could rebound as well. Lewis was sharp prior to hitting the DL with the aforementioned lat injury last season. Fister is still just 33 years old and made 32 starts last season, suggesting that there’s still plenty left in the tank, even if his velocity isn’t what it once was.

Yu Darvish, Cole Hamels and Martin Perez are locks in the Texas rotation as it stands, but the team’s other options behind that trio include a less-inspiring mix of A.J. Griffin, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Nick Martinez, Tyler Wagner, Eddie Gamboa and non-roster invite Dillon Gee.

Follow @pfrumors On Twitter For Today’s NFL Free Agency News

By Zachary Links | March 9, 2017 at 11:40am CDT

NFL free agents can’t officially ink their deals with clubs until this afternoon, but the transaction frenzy is already in full swing.

The Patriots shocked everyone by signing cornerback Stephon Gilmore, the Browns landed wide receiver Kenny Britt, and the Bears have agreed to pay quarterback Mike Glennon upwards of $45MM on a three-year deal. Meanwhile, defensive lineman Calais Campbell is apparently waffling on a rumored deal with the Jaguars and could sign with the Broncos. Some big names have come off the board, but tons more remain including Texans free agent cornerback A.J. Bouye, Bears wide receiver Alshon Jeffery, and Chiefs defensive tackle Dontari Poe.

On top of that, we still don’t know where superstars Tony Romo and Adrian Peterson will wind up, and the Patriots just might complete their second trade of the week by acquiring stud wide receiver Brandin Cooks from the Saints.

If you haven’t been following NFL free agency to this point, you can get a quick crash course by checking out PFR’s Free Agent Power rankings, which are based on the potential earning power of each player on the open market. We’ve also broken down the top offensive and defensive free agents by overall ability.

Whether you’re an NFL diehard or just a casual fan, you won’t want to miss out on all of this. Follow @pfrumors on Twitter and head to ProFootballRumors.com now to get up-to-the-second updates on everything going down.

Sonny Gray Shut Down Three Weeks Due To Lat Strain

By Steve Adams | March 9, 2017 at 11:11am CDT

Athletics right-hander Sonny Gray has been shut down for three weeks with what the club is terming a “moderate” lat strain, tweets MLB.com’s Jane Lee. The setback means that Gray will open the year on the disabled list and may not pitch until late April, tweets Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle.

[Related: Updated Oakland Athletics Depth Chart]

The news is obviously disheartening for the A’s and for Gray, who missed significant time in 2016 due to a strained trapezius muscle and a strained right forearm. Those injuries contributed to the worst year of Gray’s young career. The 2015 Cy Young candidate limped to a 5.69 ERA in 2016 while registering an elevated walk rate and a 1.4 HR/9 rate that was twice as high as the 0.7 mark he posted a year prior.

With Gray on the shelf for what could be nearly a month of the season (in a best-case scenario), the Opening Day assignment in Oakland likely falls to Kendall Graveman or Sean Manaea. Both young starters are considered locks for the rotation, where they’re likely to be joined by another young arm in the form of Jharel Cotton. To this point in camp, there’s been a competition for the fifth spot in the rotation behind Gray and that young trio, but it now appears as if two spots will be up for grabs. Jesse Hahn, Andrew Triggs, Frankie Montas and Paul Blackburn are all 40-man options for manager Bob Melvin.

The Gray injury represents the second notable hit to the Athletics’ rotation depth in the past month. Back in early February, the A’s announced that right-hander Daniel Mengden, who started 14 games for the team last year, underwent foot surgery that would keep him in a walking boot for at least six weeks. While Oakland has some obvious depth in the rotation (as evidenced by the names listed above), one can imagine that the agents for currently unsigned free agents like Colby Lewis, Doug Fister and others will now circle back with president of baseball operations Billy Beane to determine if the latest setback for Gray creates any urgency to add an arm to the mix.

From a broader perspective, the injury to Gray could potentially hurt the Athletics beyond the thinning of their rotation early in the season. Gray has been an oft-speculated trade candidate for more than a year now, but an early injury in 2017 on the heels of an injury-ruined 2016 campaign makes it more difficult for the A’s to cite that 2016 campaign as an aberration. Even if Gray were to return to peak form upon returning from the disabled list, it’s unlikely that interested parties would completely disregard the recent run of injuries that have slowed the talented young righty.

Of course, Gray still has three years of club control remaining (including the 2017 campaign), so there’s little urgency for the Athletics to trade him in the near term anyhow. The 27-year-old agreed to a one-year, $3.575MM deal this winter to avoid arbitration — his first trip through the arbitration process.

AL East Notes: Severino, Benintendi, Bautista, Orioles

By Steve Adams | March 9, 2017 at 8:41am CDT

Despite the fact that Luis Severino was dominant in 23 1/3 innings of relief last year after flopping in the rotation, the Yankees still view the 23-year-old as a starting pitcher, writes Ken Davidoff of the New York Post. That’s fine with Severino, who tells Davidoff: “Of course I want to be a starter.” Pitching coach Larry Rothschild tells Davidoff that Severino still has a starter’s mentality and adds some optimism that the talented righty can overcome the “bumps in the road” that he incurred in 2016. Severino shined as a 22-year-old rookie, logging a 2.89 ERA with 8.1 K/9, 3.2 BB/9 and a 50.3 percent ground-ball rate in 62 1/3 innings back in 2015. However, he was clobbered for an 8.50 ERA and 11 homers in 47 2/3 innings as a starter last year before shifting to the ’pen. Working in short relief, Severino posted a 0.39 ERA and allowed just eight hits with a 25-to-10 K/BB ratio in 23 1/3 frames. He’s competing with Chad Green, Luis Cessa, Bryan Mitchell and Adam Warren for the two open rotation spots in the Bronx.

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