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Archives for September 2018

Indians Activate Andrew Miller

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Sept. 10: The Indians announced that Miller has indeed been activated from the disabled list.

Sept. 9: The Indians are planning to activate left-hander Andrew Miller from the 10-day DL on Monday, Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports (Twitter link).  This would make it slightly beyond a minimum stint for Miller, who originally hit the DL on August 29 due to an external impingement in his throwing shoulder.

Of course, this is also Miller’s third trip to the disabled list this season, as the southpaw has been limited to just 27 appearances (24 innings) due to previous absences dealing with hamstring and knee problems.  The knee inflammation was a particularly large issue, costing Miller over two months of the season.  It’s safe to say that these injury problems are a reason behind Miller’s numbers, as the reliever hasn’t quite been his usual dominant self, though most pitchers would be more than satisfied with a 3.38 ERA, 2.54 K/BB rate, and 12.4 K/BB.

A fully healthy and in-form Miller, however, is arguably the most dominant bullpen weapon in all of baseball, particularly given his ability to pitch multiple innings.  As the 2016 playoffs demonstrated, Miller can be an enormous force in a postseason series, so his return will be a huge boost to a Cleveland team that has been lacking in bullpen consistency all season.  (Though the Tribe’s relief numbers have improved lately, thanks to Oliver Perez’s continued late-career resurgence, and the acquisition of Brad Hand.)  A strong showing over the season’s last few weeks and into October would also go a long way to rebuilding Miller’s free agent value, as the 33-year-old hits the open market this winter.

White Sox Activate Jose Abreu

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The White Sox announced Monday that they’ve activated first baseman Jose Abreu from the 10-day disabled list. He’d been out since mid-August after being rushed to the hospital due to lower abdominal pain and eventually undergoing an emergency testicular torsion surgery.

Abreu, 33, missed about three weeks of action as a result of the surgery and could ultimately fall shy of a fifth consecutive 25-homer, 100-RBI season to open his big league career. The Cuban-born slugger struggled through a disappointing first half but was on absolute fire in the second half prior to his surgery, hitting at a .330/.394/.652 clip through 127 plate appearances between the All-Star Game and his most recent game played (Aug. 20).

Despite his standing as a productive veteran slugger on a team that has rebuilding for the past two-plus years, Abreu hasn’t been rumored to be much of a trade candidate this year. He’ll be a free agent following the 2019 season, as things currently stand, though the Sox have in the past suggested that there’d be interest in keeping their clubhouse leader around beyond that 2019 campaign. Abreu is playing the 2018 season on a $13MM salary and will be eligible for one final arbitration raise this winter before he’d be scheduled to hit the open market.

Athletics’ Jesus Luzardo Hires Scott Boras

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Athletics prospect Jesus Luzardo recently changed representation and is now a client of the Boras Corporation, as ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick first reported via Twitter.

Luzardo, 20, has had a meteoric rise in 2018 and is among the game’s more highly regarded prospects, having ascended from Class-A Advanced all the way up to Triple-A this season. Along the way, he’s pitched to a combined 2.88 ERA with 10.6 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 and allowed just seven homers in 109 1/3 innings of work.

Luzardo was considered a high-risk prospect, and perhaps still is, when the A’s acquired him alongside Blake Treinen in the July 2017 trade that sent Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson from Oakland to Washington. He’d undergone Tommy John surgery prior to being drafted in the third round by the Nats in 2016 and, at the time of the trade, had pitched just 13 2/3 professional innings. That trade could scarcely have worked out better for the A’s at this point, as Treinen has stepped up as an elite reliever in his own right, while Luzardo could be knocking on the door of a big league promotion next season as a 21-year-old.

The A’s don’t currently have many Boras clients on the roster, though Luzardo joins two of the team’s best players, Matt Chapman and Sean Manaea, in that regard. The change in representation has been reflected in MLBTR’s Agency Database, which contains representation info on upwards of 3,000 Major League and Minor League players. If you see any notable errors or omissions, please let us know via email: mlbtrdatabase@gmail.com.

Minor MLB Transactions: 9/10/18

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Here are Monday’s minor moves from around the game…

  • The Pirates outrighted left-handed reliever Buddy Boshers to Triple-A Indianapolis after he cleared waivers, per John Dreker of PiratesProspects.com (Twitter link). The 30-year-old lefty split the season between the Pittsburgh and Houston organizations but didn’t reach the Majors with either team. He’s posted a solid 3.32 ERA with 9.8 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 0.8 HR/9 and a 48 percent ground-ball rate through 57 Triple-A frames so far in 2018, but opposing lefties hit .303/.330/.434 against him this season. Boshers spent most of 2016-17 in the Majors with the Twins, pitching to a combined 4.56 ERA and generally holding lefties in check while struggling considerably against right-handed bats.

Poll: The Handling Of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Eloy Jimenez

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Two of the most talented players in Triple-A will remain there throughout the month of September. Third baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Eloy Jimenez will not receive a cup of coffee in the majors this month, per recent announcements from the Blue Jays and White Sox, respectively.

To those well-versed in MLB service time rules and practices, this news induces a reaction closer to a yawn than a surprise; teams have been using the service clock to manipulate team control for quite some time, and there was no reason to believe that would change in regards to Guerrero Jr. or Jimenez. Recent examples of players whose service time has been suppressed by their respective teams in order to yield them an additional year of team control include Kris Bryant, George Springer and Ronald Acuna Jr., and that list is far from complete. Others still, including the likes of Francisco Lindor, have been held in the minors long enough to reduce their earning power.

That doesn’t mean agents are quieting down about the issue, though. Both players’ representatives have been vocal in regards to their clients’ dearth of a promotion, as well they ought to be considering they’ll miss out on a significant amount of money. Jimenez’ agent in particular blasted with White Sox for service time manipulation. “Especially with elite players like Eloy and (Blue Jays top prospect) Vlad (Guerrero) Jr., that’s the nature of the business,” said Dan Kinzer. “It’s not about the money. It’s the extra year of control.” Similarly, the MLBPA has spoken out against Chicago and Toronto on the subject.

Perhaps J.J. Cooper of Baseball America put it best in his recent piece on the subject: it’s impossible to objectively argue that these players don’t deserve a call up based on performance. Guerrero Jr. has hit .336/.414/.564 with a microscopic 7.8% strikeout rate since his promotion to Triple-A this season, while Jimenez owns an even more excellent .355/.399/.597 line to go along with a 13.2% strikeout rate. Put simply, opposing pitchers aren’t fooling these prospects, and there’s no real reason development-wise that they ought not be exposed to major-league pitching. That’s particularly true in light of the fact that the White Sox promoted low-ceiling prospect Ryan Cordell, while the Blue Jays selected Triple-A veteran Rowdy Tellez. Whatever good there is to say of these young players, any attempt to argue that they’ve done more to earn a promotion than Guerrero Jr. or Jimenez would require a staggering amount of cognitive dissonance.

These teams are clearly planning to restrain their top prospects within the confines of Triple-A until the third week of April 2019, regardless of how well they hit. That’s the point at which they’ll be guaranteed an additional year of team control that allows them to keep those future superstars around through the 2026 season rather than hit free agency after 2025. It’s a distinction that could potentially cost them eight figures in earning power apiece depending on how they develop in the majors.

The question I want to pose is, how do you feel about the overt suppression of service time to manipulate a player’s team control? (Poll link for app users)

 

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Quick Hits: Judge, Seager, Rays

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Yankees sophomore sensation Aaron Judge is still feeling pain when he swings a bat, per a tweet from Marc Carig of The Athletic. Certainly there’s still time for him to regain his health and strength in advance of the postseason (we still have three weeks until October, after all), but the news has to be disconcerting both for the Yankees organization and for Judge himself. The outfielder has been out of commission since July 26th after sustaining a chip fracture in his wrist, and though it was reported as recently as yesterday that he could be nearing a return after he was able to participate in on-field drills, the news that his pain level (still describes as a “4” on a 1-10 scale) casts some doubt on the notion that he could be back on the field within the next week or so.

  • Corey Seager expects to play shortstop for the Dodgers next year, as he tells Ken Gurnick of MLB.com. Seager has had massive misfortune this year in regards to injuries; he suffered a UCL injury early on in the season that required the infamous Tommy John procedure, and had to undergo a second procedure on his hip soon thereafter. Recently, though, he’s expressed confidence in his recovery from these surgeries. Seager is already off of crutches, and he looks forward to resuming a throwing program next month. “Based to this point, I’ll be ready to go,” Seager said. “I should, ’quote unquote,’ have a pretty normal spring. It will probably be a little slow in the beginning, but should be pretty normal.”
  • In light of the Rays’ success with creativity this season, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times details some of the most interesting aspects of the club’s strategy in 2018. Carig explores various aspects of the club’s advances back to contention, highlighted by the purging of veterans in order to bring focus to a new, young core. The coming out parties for players like Jake Bauers and Joey Wendle have been fun to watch, to be sure. But equally interesting has been their improvements in much broader aspects of the game: a few mentioned by Carig include the team’s improvement on the hard contact and line drive front, trimming of strikeouts, spike in batting average, and, of course, the adoption and implementation of the “opener” strategy.

Giants’ Ryder Jones Out For Season With Dislocated Knee

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Giants rookie infielder Ryder Jones will not return this season after dislocating his knee, as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Bay Area was among those to report. Jones made seven plate appearances during his brief September call up.

It’s a sad and unfortunate situation for Jones, as the injury was something of a freak accident. The video in the link above shows how the 24-year-old dislocated his knee: it happened during an all-or-nothing-type swing in which he fouled a pitch into the seats behind third base. Jones immediately collapsed to the ground in immense pain, and needed help from the training staff to leave the field. The official diagnosis thereafter was a left knee patella dislocation, which apparently felt as painful as it sounds. The worst part is that this is the recurrence of a similar injury Jones suffered during the 2015 season.

Jones will reportedly undergo an MRI on Monday in order to determine if there’s any further damage beyond the initial diagnosis, and he’ll likely hit the 60-day disabled list at some point in the upcoming days to clear room for another September body. That will bring an abrupt end to an audition that was shaping up to be quite interesting; although Jones had only amassed seven plate appearances across four September contests, he’d already collected three hits including two homers.

Of course, there are risks that come with his profile. Jones struck out in the other four trips to the plate in 2018, and that certainly doesn’t help alleviate the pre-existing concerns about his plate discipline. During Jones’ MLB debut last season, he whiffed in 31.7% of his plate appearances while walking just 6.1% of the time. Across 171 trips to the plate in his career, Jones has now compiled a .185/.251/.318 batting line.

 

Poll: Grading the Josh Donaldson Trade

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Perhaps the most significant trade that took place on the day of the August postseason eligibility trade deadline was the one that sent Josh Donaldson to the Indians. The former AL MVP has endured an injury-plagued season owing to his shoulder and calf, but made it back to the field on a rehab assignment just in time to be put through trade waivers and ultimately sent to Cleveland in exchange for salary relief and a player to be named later.

At the beginning of the 2018 season, it would have seemed unfathomable that the Jays would get so little value as a result of Donaldson’s departure. Few expected them to seriously contend amidst a division that features the Red Sox and Yankees, but if they had been competitive enough to keep Donaldson through season’s end, most would have bet heavily on an outcome in which he’d receive and reject a qualifying offer. That would have netted the Jays a first-round pick had he signed for $50MM or more elsewhere, a scenario that the majority of baseball enthusiasts also would have put money on. And certainly if you’d have told a pundit back in March that Toronto would fall out of competition by late July, they’d have been wondering which team gave up a top prospect in order to acquire him ahead of the non-waiver trade deadline.

The actual outcome was an awful bout of bad fortune for both Donaldson and the Jays, of course. He only stayed on the field enough to accrue 159 plate appearances, and his performance was inconsistent with his track record. Most readers of MLBTR will by now recognize .234/.333/.423 as Donaldson’s batting line so far in 2018, a far cry from the numbers he’d previously put up over the course of his tenure in Canada.

In no small part due to those factors, the receipt of a qualifying offer that once seemed a foregone conclusion for the 33-year-old became a decision clouded with doubt across the industry. The club certainly faced serious risk had they kept the slugger. A full return to form would have made it worth issuing him a one-year contract approaching $20MM, but a poor or even average performance would have forced the Blue Jays with a difficult choice: let their star third baseman walk for nothing or make him an exorbitant offer and thereby risk both a payroll albatross and 2019 roster crunch involving Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Evidently, the Jays decided that the Tribe’s offer to pay $1.3MM of his remaining salary and fork over a young player presented a better alternative to taking such a risk. Reportedly, they’ll receive right-hander Julian Merryweather, who ranked as the club’s 15th-best prospect headed into the season prior to undergoing Tommy John surgery. One could certainly argue that Merryweather holds more upside and less risk than a late-first-round pick in next year’s draft, but his recent injury would make that a tough sell.

For that reason, some fans and reporters have chided the Jays for “giving Donaldson away”. That’s not literally the case, as anyone who wanted the three-time All-Star could have simply claimed him on waivers; all 29 rival teams opted to pass on that front). Still, one could look at the scenario as Toronto paying the Indians over $2MM to take Donaldson off their hands (though they’d have to assume that Merryweather has no value).

On the other hand, it’s perhaps a positive thing that the Jays were able to get Donaldson back on the field in time to reap any value at all from him. Though he’s absolutely raked during his rehab assignment in Cleveland, Toronto could have very easily watched Donaldson re-injure himself and thus been criticized by some fans for keeping him through September.

What do you think? How do you rate this trade from the Blue Jays’ perspective? (Poll link for app users)

Quick Hits: Gore, Trout, Zobrist, Orioles

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After spending parts of five seasons in the big leagues, Terrance Gore finally collected his first Major League hit, notching a single during the Cubs’ 10-3 loss to the Nationals yesterday in the first game of a double-header.  Though Gore has appeared in 55 games since the start of the 2014 season, he has only 16 career plate appearances due to his exclusive usage as a pinch-runner and late-inning defensive sub.  Gore’s speed made him a valuable roster piece during the Royals’ two postseason runs in 2014 and 2015, and he’ll likely see similar work for the Cubs down the stretch this season and potentially into October.

Here’s more from around the baseball world…

  • The Angels are expected to approach Mike Trout about an extension this winter, which The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal (subscription required) feels could determine whether or not the team would ever consider trading the game’s best player.  Management has been adamantly opposed to the thought of dealing Trout in the past, and the general feeling is that Arte Moreno wouldn’t okay a Trout trade as long as he owns the Angels.  If Trout declines an extension or gives an indication that he’ll test free agency when his current contract is up after the 2020 season, however, Rosenthal feels that the Angels “would know where they stood” in counting the superstar outfielder as part of their long-term plans.  The Halos could still just aim to build around Trout over the next two seasons or, conceivably, at least think about the possibility of a trade that could instantly add a lot of young talent to the Angels’ organization.  “One of the best talents in the history of the game is rarely explored in the market. A team might be willing to do something absolutely insane to acquire him. We just don’t know,” one rival executive said about a potential Trout trade.
  • As you might expect, Ben Zobrist has no regrets about signing with the Cubs in the 2015-16 offseason, the veteran super-utilityman tells The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney.  The decision has already led to one World Series ring for Zobrist, and unlike his other suitors that winter (a list that includes the Giants, Mets, and Nationals), the Cubs are still postseason contenders in 2018.  Zobrist has strongly rebounded from a down year in 2017 to hit .313/.387/.458 over 443 PA for the Cubs this season, so it’s fair to say that the team is also quite satisfied in its decision giving Zobrist a four-year, $56MM deal that winter.
  • The Orioles are lacking in multi-positional players, Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun writes, giving the team yet another area to address as it enters a rebuild period.  Not even any of the players acquired by the O’s in their deadline deals looks like a candidate for such a role in the future, though the team will be looking at what Jonathan Villar, Breyvic Valera, and Steve Wilkerson can do at multiple positions.

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