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Aroldis Chapman Cleared To Return To Yankees

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Star closer Aroldis Chapman is headed back to the Yankees, per ESPN.com’s Marly Rivera (Twitter link). Having previously tested positive for COVID-19, he had to register a pair of negative tests.

It isn’t yet clear whether Chapman will jump right onto the active roster at this time. He hit the injured list on July 11th, so he has been out of action for a decent stretch, but perhaps he won’t require much of a ramp-up if he has been able to throw while on the sideline.

The Yanks worked out a new deal last fall with Chapman, who could’ve opted out and tested free agency. The 32-year-old is earning a pro-rated portion of a $16MM salary this year and will be due the same in each of the next two campaigns.

It’s good to hear that Chapman was able to clear the virus in short order. And it’s obviously also great news for the back of the Yankees pen. Chapman’s flamethrower of a left arm wasn’t quite as hot last year, when he averaged a mere 98.2 mph on his four-seam fastball, but he offset that by gaining confidence in his slider.

Even in his slightly less-dominant form, Chapman remained an absolute force. He threw 57 innings of 2.21 ERA ball last year, sporting a 14.1% swinging-strike rate while allowing just 0.47 homers per nine.

White Sox Promote Nick Madrigal, Designate Kelvin Herrera

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The White Sox have called up second baseman Nick Madrigal, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN.com (via Twitter). His promotion had been anticipated but was not yet confirmed to be imminent.

Reliever Kelvin Herrera was designated for assignment to create 40-man and active roster space. He was in the second season of a two-year, $17MM deal.

Madrigal, the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft, will not have a chance to accrue a full season of MLB service. He will, however, be on track to ultimately qualify for arbitration after the 2022 season as a Super Two player.

It’ll certainly be fun to watch the 23-year-old in the majors. He has quite an unusual skillset, with negligible power but otherworldly contact ability and plate discipline.

A consensus top-50 prospect leaguewide, Madrigal have to keep hitting and walking at a tremendous rate to be an above-average MLB hitter. Last year, over the three highest levels of the minors, he logged 532 plate appearances of .311/.377/.414 hitting. Though he managed only four home runs, Madrigal amazingly struck out only 16 times while drawing 44 walks.

As exciting as it is for the Sox to welcome Madrigal, bidding adieu to Herrera represents an acknowledgement of a disappointment. The 30-year-old signed his contract after recovering from a major foot procedure but just hasn’t returned to form.

As MLBTR’s Connor Byrne examined in depth recently, the once-excellent reliever has struggled mightily in Chicago. He limped to a 6.14 ERA in 51 1/3 innings in 2019 and was shelled for four earned runs over his first two outings in 2020. Worst still, his typically upper-nineties fastball velocity has drooped to about 94 mph thus far this season.

With the decision, the White Sox will owe Herrera the remainder of the pro-rated portion of his $8.5MM salary this year. They’ll also still have to pay him a $1MM buyout on a 2020 vesting/club option.

Phillies-Blue Jays Series Postponed

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4:05pm: Major League Baseball has formally announced the postponement of this weekend’s Jays/Phillies series and issued the following statement:

Out of an abundance of caution, the Philadelphia Phillies’ three-game weekend series with the Toronto Blue Jays, scheduled for Saturday, August 1st and Sunday, August 2nd at Citizens Bank Park, has been postponed. Major League Baseball will coordinate with health experts and the Major League Baseball Players Association in planning for the Phillies’ resumption of play, and will provide further scheduling updates as necessary.

12:34pm: The scheduled weekend series between the Phillies and Blue Jays has been postponed, Toronto skipper Charlie Montoyo tells reporters including Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca (via Twitter). For the time being, the Jays will hang tight in D.C. and await further word after wrapping up their series with the Nats.

This adds to a still-building MLB scheduling pile-up that will require increasingly convoluted mid-season adaptations. The hope had been that the Marlins’ COVID-19 breakout would stay within that club. But it emerged this morning that two non-player members of the Phillies organization have come down with infections.

With two teams sidelined, their planned opponents are also on ice. In this case, the Jays and Nats may actually end up hanging out waiting in the same place. There’s no word yet whether the league will somehow attempt to stage contests between those two organizations in order to keep logging games.

Seranthony Dominguez Undergoes Tommy John Surgery

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Phillies righty Seranthony Dominguez has undergone Tommy John surgery, the club announced. He had long battled with elbow issues.

With the news, the reliever will all but assuredly miss most of the 2021 season. It’s certainly possible he could make it back late in the year, depending upon how aggressive a timeline he pursues, but it’d be hard to count on.

The news makes it quite possible that the Phils will non-tender Dominguez when the time comes. He stands to reach arbitration eligibility as a Super Two after the campaign. It won’t cost all that much to keep Dominguez, but it’ll be tough to tie up the roster spot throughout the offseason. Then again, the 25-year-old did throw 58 innings of 2.95 ERA ball in his debut season of 2018.

In other news, lefty Cristopher Sanchez will join the Phillies’ 60-man player pool. The 23-year-old is already on the 40-man roster, so he can now be called upon in the majors at any point if there’s a need. Sanchez has just one appearance under his belt over the High-A level. Last season, he worked to a 2.26 ERA with 8.7 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9 in 75 2/3 total minor-league frames.

Marlins To Sign Pat Venditte

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The Marlins have added switch-pitcher Pat Venditte on a minor-league deal, Jeff Passan of ESPN.com reports on Twitter. He had been with the organization during Spring Training.

Venditte, 35, has long been one of the game’s quirkiest players due to his ability to work off the mound with either arm, depending upon the handedness of the hitter. It’s more than a gimmick. He has done enough to warrant MLB stints with five teams over parts of four seasons.

While Venditte’s unique path to the majors is worthy of celebration, he has had a hard time carving out a permanent role. All told, he owns a 5.03 ERA in 68 innings at the game’s highest level. For the Marlins, who are dealing with a coronavirus outbreak that has covered half of the active roster, the key consideration is to pick up another experienced player who is capable of holding his own in the majors.

One Phillies Coach, One Clubhouse Staffer Test Positive For COVID-19

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The Phillies announced today that one member of the coaching staff and one home clubhouse staff member have tested positive for COVID-19. No players registered positive tests. The club has cancelled its scheduled workouts indefinitely.

While it’s obviously possible that these infections occurred elsewhere, it is impossible to ignore the possibility that they came about during the series last weekend with a Marlins club that is now riddled with coronavirus infections. It had been hoped that the virus had been contained to the Miami organization.

The plan had been for the Phillies to resume play on Saturday. Whether that is now in jeopardy isn’t known. The organization has already dealt with some infections earlier this year, but managed to avoid further spread within the club.

This is worrisome news on several levels. First and foremost, it’s concerning to see two more individuals in the game carrying this disease. Hopefully they’ll both make a swift and full recovery.

Beyond that, it’s obviously concerning to see that spread (presumably) occurred between the teams. Fortunately, the Phillies have not had further contact with other organizations since the series against the Marlins. But it seems quite possible that other members of the Phillies organization could still be harboring infections that haven’t yet triggered positive tests. It’s also hypothetically possible that transmission could’ve occurred from the coach and staff member to others, though one would hope the team has exercised stringent caution over the past few days.

Royals To Promote Kris Bubic

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The Royals will promote lefty Kris Bubic to make his MLB debut, manager Mike Matheny tells reporters including Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com (via Twitter). He’ll take the ball on Friday.

Bubic, who’ll soon turn 23, was selected with the 40th overall pick of the 2018 draft. He followed Brady Singer in that draft and will now join him in vaulting quickly to the majors.

At the time, the Royals made clear they hoped their slate of incoming college arms would move swiftly through the system and help launch a rapid return to contention. The first prong has come to pass. Now we’ll see what kind of near-term and long-term output the team will get from its promising hurlers.

Bubic, a Stanford product, cracked the Baseball Prospectus top-100 prospect list entering the 2020 season. He earned that placement with an excellent showing at the High-A level in his first full season as a profession, racking up 101 2/3 innings of 2.30 ERA ball with 9.7 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 over 17 starts.

Impressive though that was, Bubic still hasn’t been exposed even to upper-minors bats. The Royals obviously saw enough from him in camp to make the bold move to bring him up. Though he won’t spend enough time on the active roster to accrue a full year of service, even if he stays up for all of 2020, Bubic now profiles as a potential Super Two player.

Additional Marlins Player Tests Positive For COVID-19

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Another Marlins player has tested positive for COVID-19 infection, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). His identity is not known at this time.

It’s not altogether surprising to see additional positive tests arising, given the incubation period of the disease and multiple potential chains of transmission. In this case, Rosenthal says, contract tracing efforts had already identified the particular player as likely to have been exposed.

That doesn’t change the gravity of the situation. With this test, Rosenthal says, we’re now up to 17 players from the 30-man active roster and/or 3-man taxi squad that are carrying the virus.

There are many implications of this outcome. For one thing, it seems clear that the Marlins’ anti-transmission measures were insufficient. The team’s protocols — and/or individuals’ commitments to following them — not only failed to prevent an initial infection, but also did not tamp down the spread within the organization.

At a minimum, the Marlins will now have yet another roster spot that it needs to fill with a plausible MLB player. The team has been removed from play for the time being; whether and when it will resume remains to be seen and could yet depend upon whether further players end up registering positive tests.

MLB, MLBPA Agreed To New Sign-Stealing Rules

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It seems that Major League Baseball would prefer to avoid a repeat of the Astros’ sign-stealing debacle, a scandal that only worsened when individual players escaped punishment due to a lack of a punitive framework and an exchange of immunity for information.

There’s a new structure for dealing with such matters, should they arise in the future, according to Evan Drellich of The Athletic (subscription link). MLB and the MLB Players Association have agreed to a series of rules that are designed to foreclose the round of controversy we’ve seen recently from the Astros and other teams.

The key here is that the commissioner’s office now has authority to impose suspensions — without pay and service time — against players and personnel. Punishment can be assessed upon a violation of the broad prohibition of utilizing “Electronic Devices or Visual Enhancement Devices during the game to identify, communicate or relay the opposing club’s signs or pitch information.”

There are some added protections for players. They’ll get union representation while the league investigates. Much as in the context of the domestic violence policy, the league will start fresh in terms of precedent for suspension lengths (at least for players). It’ll all be subject to appeal and final determination  by a neutral arbitrator.

The league is also stepping up its monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. The video review rooms will be isolated and communications strictly limited; ultimately, cameras will watch over the proceedings. Trained security professionals from a third-party vendor will watch the door to the doors even to the clubhouse; notably, they’ll be given authority to document and even confront any players or personnel that violate rules such as the ban on in-game cellphone access.

For the time being, players will not be able to watch any kind of live or video feed during a game that features an angle of action that would reveal signs. That will ultimately change, but the league needs time to sort out a system for blotting out signs in the feeds its players will be allowed to access.

It’s all a game of whack-a-mole to some extent, but there’s a key backstop now — a clear threat of suspension — that was lacking previously. The new system is a reflection of the inadequacy of the old one. It would be an improvement if it could ferret out and adequately punish cheaters, but the league hopes for more. If this slate of initiatives really works, the likelihood of being exposed and fear of significant punishment will prevent would-be rule-breakers from even trying.

Predict The NL West Division Winner

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With final roster decisions in the books and the 2020 season underway, it’s time to make some predictions. We’re polling the MLBTR readership on each of the game’s six divisions — though plenty more teams will crack the postseason under the rather inclusive new playoff qualification system. We’ve already surveyed the AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL Central, and NL East landscapes, so it’s time to wrap things up with the National League West.

The Dodgers have owned this division for some time now and are perhaps more laden with star-level talent than ever with Mookie Betts on board. Then again, they may be more vulnerable than ever in a short-season format. There’s a nice assembly of talent on the Diamondbacks roster, which includes an elite young player in Ketel Marte and a sturdy slate of veterans now highlighted by intra-division transferee Madison Bumgarner. Then again, you could argue that the Padres have the greatest capacity to surprise with their own budding legend in Fernando Tatis Jr., still-youthful star Manny Machado, and a potential-laden rotation. The Rockies have an excellent core unit in their own right and perhaps have more upside than is generally recognized. And while the Giants don’t really appear primed to compete, they managed to do so last year and still have a lot of players with lofty established performance ceilings at the game’s highest level — even if it has been a few years.

Which team do you think is going to take the division title? (Poll link for app users.)

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