Justin Verlander Wins American League Cy Young Award
Justin Verlander has been named the American League’s Cy Young award winner, according to an announcement from the Baseball Writers Association of America. He received all 30 first-place votes.
Like Sandy Alcantara in the National League, Verlander took the award in a clean sweep. The respective dominance of each player has look since taken away much of the intrigue as to who would actually claim the honors, and the unanimous finishes paint a picture of their excellence. Verlander’s elbow blew out during his first start of 2020, eventually leading to a Tommy John surgery that kept him out of action until this year. He returned to the Astros on a $25MM guarantee last winter and, despite being 39 years old, showed no ill effects of such a major procedure.
Verlander returned to make 28 starts, staying healthy until a late-season injured list stint with a calf strain. He tossed 175 innings with an AL-best 1.75 ERA, a mark nearly a half-run lower than that of the next-best finisher. Even with the late-season IL stay, the former MVP placed 16th in the Junior Circuit in innings. He finished seventh among those with 100+ frames in strikeout rate (27.8%) and walk percentage (4.4%) alike.
It’s the third career Cy Young nod for the future Hall of Famer. Verlander becomes the 11th pitcher in big league history to claim the award three times, joining former teammate Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw as the only active players to do so. He earned his ninth All-Star nod midseason and led his league in ERA for the second time.
Verlander’s Cy Young adds to an already illustrious resume, while his stellar season positions him for a fascinating trip to free agency. He’s presently on the open market after declining a player option with Houston for the 2023 campaign. There’s essentially no precedent for a pitcher performing this well hitting free agency heading into his age-40 season. Verlander’s sure to secure one of the loftiest per-year salaries in MLB history, and Houston owner Jim Crane said last night he’s looking to top Scherzer’s three-year, $130MM deal with the Mets from last winter.
The other finalists in the American League were Chicago’s Dylan Cease and Toronto’s Alek Manoah. Cease received 14 second-place votes to earn the runner-up finish after placing second with a 2.20 ERA in 184 innings. Manoah finished just behind him with a 2.24 ERA across 196 2/3 frames, securing seven second-place votes in his own right. Cease and Manoah joined Verlander in appearing on all 30 ballots in some capacity.
Shohei Ohtani finished in fourth place and actually secured more second-place votes (nine) than did Manoah after leading the league in strikeout rate. Innings leader Framber Valdez ended up in fifth. Others who earned at least one vote are Shane McClanahan, Shane Bieber, Nestor Cortes Jr., Gerrit Cole and Kevin Gausman.
Full voting breakdown available here.
Enter The MLBTR Free Agent Prediction Contest
The MLB Trade Rumors Free Agent Prediction Contest is still open for entries! Click here to enter your picks for the destinations for our top 50 free agents. The deadline for entry is TONIGHT at 11pm central time. You can edit your picks until then. Further contest info:
- After the window to make picks has closed, we’ll post a public leaderboard page so you can see who’s winning the contest as players sign with teams. We’re going to use entrants’ full names on it. So, if that concerns you, please do not enter the contest. Entries with inappropriate names will be deleted.
- We are also collecting email addresses, which I will use to notify winners.
- If a player signs between now and the close of the contest, that’s a freebie, but you still need to go in and make the correct pick.
- After you submit your picks, you’ll receive an email from Google Forms. In that email, you’ll see a button that allows you to edit your picks.
- We will announce the winners on MLBTR once all 50 free agents have signed. We will award $500 to first place, $300 to second place, and $100 to third place. We will also be giving one-year memberships to Trade Rumors Front Office for everyone who finishes in the top 15. Winners must respond to an email within one week.
- The winners of this contest will be declared on Opening Day 2023, and any unsigned players will be excluded from the competition.
- Ties in the correct number of picks will be broken by summing up the rankings of the free agents of the correct picks and taking the lower total. For example: Tim and Steve each get two picks correct. Tim gets Aaron Judge (#1 ranking) and Noah Syndergaard (#21 ranking) for a total of 22 points. Steve gets Carlos Rodon (#6) and Jameson Taillon (#14) for a total of 20 points. Steve’s total is lower and he’s ahead of Tim for tiebreaker purposes.
If you have any further questions, ask us in the comment section of this post! Otherwise, make your picks now!
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Click here to view the transcript of today’s chat with MLBTR’s Anthony Franco.
Sandy Alcantara Wins National League Cy Young Award
Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara has won the National League Cy Young award, the Baseball Writers Association of America announced. It was a unanimous victory, with Alcantara receiving all 30 first place votes. He was followed in the voting by Max Fried of the Braves and Julio Urías of the Dodgers.
Alcantara has been the presumptive favorite for quite some time, and the unanimous voting serves as a particular testament to the caliber of season he put together. The right-hander easily lapped the field in innings, soaking up 228 2/3 frames that cleared second-place finisher Aaron Nola by 23 2/3. Alcantara and Nola were the only Senior Circuit pitchers to throw multiple complete games; Nola went the distance twice, while Alcantara did so six times. He also faced a league-leading 886 batters, with Nola’s 807 batters faced an extremely distant second.
That kind of throwback, workhorse mentality was part of what set Alcantara apart from the rest of the league, but he continued to perform brilliantly on a rate basis. Among NL starters with 100+ innings, he ranked fourth in ERA (2.28) and sixth in ground-ball percentage (53.4%). His 23.4% strikeout percentage was more good than elite, but he rarely issued free passes and kept the ball on the ground while consistently going deep into games.
Along the way, the 27-year-old earned the second All-Star nod of his career. Alcantara had posted an ERA between 3.00 and 4.00 in each of his first four seasons with the Fish to emerge as a top-of-the-rotation caliber arm. Miami inked him to a $56MM extension last offseason, a deal that extended their window of control through 2027. That seemed a strong move for general manager Kim Ng and her staff at the time, and it now stands as an absolute bargain with Alcantara cementing himself upon the game’s top handful of pitchers.
It’s the first Cy Young nod for the native of the Dominican Republic, who’d never previously appeared on an awards ballot. Fried and Urías each picked up some support for the second time. The Atlanta southpaw finished fifth in Cy Young balloting in 2020, while the L.A. hurler placed seventh last year. Both earned a top-three placement for the first time this year, with sub-2.50 ERA showings. Fried twirled 185 1/3 innings of 2.48 ball, while Urías led qualified starters with a 2.16 ERA.
Fried picked up 10 second-place votes, and Urías was the runner-up on seven ballots. Nola, Zac Gallen, Carlos Rodón, Corbin Burnes and Edwin Díaz were the other players to receive at least one second-place vote. Nola and Gallen placed fourth and fifth, respectively. Rodón, Burnes, Díaz, Yu Darvish, Kyle Wright, Logan Webb and Ryan Helsley were the other players to appear on a ballot.
Full voting breakdown available here.
Orix Buffaloes To Post Masataka Yoshida
The Orix Buffaloes of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball are going to post outfielder Masataka Yoshida, according to a report from Yahoo Japan, making him eligible to explore opportunities with MLB clubs. (hat tip to JJ Cooper from Baseball America and Jason Coskrey on Twitter.) The Japanese-language link lists the Yankees, Mariners, and Blue Jays as those with interest.
Yoshida, 29, made his NPB debut with the Buffaloes in 2016 and has since established himself as a key contributor at the plate. In 2022, he played in 119 games, hitting 21 home runs and producing an overall batting line of .335/.447/.561. That level of production and Yoshida’s age should lead to him garnering plenty of interest from North American teams.
This year’s market for free agent outfielders isn’t huge in terms of quantity. MLBTR’s list of the top free agents featured Aaron Judge in the top spot and Brandon Nimmo at number nine. Those guys are both likely to receive nine-figure deals, but then there’s only a few guys capable of everyday jobs in the middle of the list. Joc Pederson accepted the qualifying offer to return to the Giants, leaving Andrew Benintendi, Mitch Haniger and Jurickson Profar as some of the few mid-market options. Then there are some guys likely to require less cost but with injury risks, such as Michael Conforto and Michael Brantley.
Teams will likely have wide variance in how they evaluate Yoshida, but it’s unlikely he will earn a contract that rivals the top-market guys. Seiya Suzuki was another highly-touted slugger who was posted a year ago and he eventually signed with the Cubs for five years and $85MM. He was 27 years old at the time, two years younger than Yoshida is now. That likely makes it difficult for Yoshida to beat Suzuki’s guarantee, though it’s possible some team values him significantly higher than the Cubs valued Suzuki. For the teams that miss out on the top free agent outfielders, Yoshida should add an interesting new option for the next tier of the market.
The fact that the Blue Jays and Mariners are two of the teams listed as being interested in Yoshida is quite interesting, given that those two clubs swung a trade earlier today to send Teoscar Hernandez from Toronto to Seattle. That gives the Blue Jays a clear opening in their outfield mix that they could slot Yoshida into. They do have George Springer, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Whit Merrifield, though Merrifield took over as the everyday second baseman down the stretch and could play there again in 2023. They’ve already been connected to Nimmo since the departure of Hernandez but Yoshida could also make sense.
For the Mariners, they now have Hernandez and Julio Rodriguez taking up two spots in their outfield mix, with Jesse Winker, Jarred Kelenic, Taylor Trammell, Sam Haggerty and Kyle Lewis on hand as options for a third spot. Winker has been mentioned as being available in trade discussions, but it would be a surprise to see the club fill out that last outfield position and block all of its young options from a path into the regular lineup.
For the Yankees, they have a clear need in the outfield with both Judge and Benintendi having reached free agency recently. They have Harrison Bader in place for center field but will likely be looking to add two outfielders before Opening Day. They have Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks on hand but Stanton has largely been a designated hitter for a while and can’t be counted on for everyday action in the outfield while Hicks is coming off a second straight disappointing year at the plate.
Once Yoshida is formally posted, there will be a 30-day window where MLB clubs can negotiate with his representatives. If a deal is reached, the signing team will also owe money to the Buffaloes, with that amount being relative to the size of the contract given. Any big league team that signs him would owe the Buffaloes a fee equal to 20% of the contract’s first $25MM, 17.5% of the next $25MM and 15% of any dollars thereafter. If he does not reach an agreement with an MLB team, he will return to the Buffaloes for 2023.
Rangers Hire Will Venable As Associate Manager
The Rangers announced Will Venable is joining their coaching staff, working under new manager Bruce Bochy as associate manager. The former big leaguer had been working as bench coach with the Red Sox.
Venable, 40, has spent the past five seasons working on a big league staff. He served as a base coach with the Cubs from 2018-20. Venable, who had interviewed for a managerial vacancy in Boston during the 2020-21 offseason, ended up being tabbed as bench coach under Alex Cora — who returned as manager after being dismissed and suspended for the 2020 campaign.
The Princeton graduate has never managed in the big leagues (aside from a brief interim stint while Cora was sidelined by COVID-19 this year), but he’s frequently been regarded as a manager-in-waiting. Venable has interviewed for a number of lead positions in recent winters, sitting down with the Tigers, A’s, Astros, Cubs and Giants in prior offseasons. He reportedly drew some attention from the Royals in their search last month, but it’s unclear whether they ever met with him before tabbing Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro.
With all the managerial positions filled, it looked likely Venable would reprise his role as Cora’s right-hand man for a third season. Instead, he’ll make the jump to Arlington to work with Bochy in the veteran skipper’s return to the dugout after three years. Venable was a prospect in the San Diego farm system during Bochy’s time as manager in 2005-06. Bochy was already in San Francisco by the time Venable made the big leagues, but he did overlap there with Chris Young. The Texas general manager was a teammate of Venable’s in San Diego through 2010, and the former outfielder also had a brief playing stint as a Ranger late in the 2015 campaign.
Astros Sign Austin Davis To Minor League Deal
The Astros have informed reporters, including Brian McTaggart of MLB.com, that they have signed left-hander Austin Davis to a minor league deal with an invitation to major league Spring Training.
Davis, 30 in February, was drafted by the Phillies and made his MLB debut with them in 2018. He’s since bounced around quite a bit, spending time with the Pirates, Red Sox and Twins.
In 2022, he saw his most extensive big league action, logging 56 innings between Boston and Minnesota. In that time he posted a 5.79 ERA with a decent 24.2% strikeout rate but an unfortunate 12.5% walk rate. It’s possible that there was a bit of bad luck in there from his .331 batting average on balls in play and 63.6% strand rate. Advanced metrics liked him better but not by too much, with Davis earning a 4.59 xERA, 4.02 FIP and 4.13 SIERA. The Twins designated him for assignment in September.
Despite those numbers, Davis might have a path to joining the Astros since they are light on southpaws in the bullpen. The only left-handed relievers on the 40-man roster at the moment are Blake Taylor and Parker Mushinski. Taylor spent a decent chunk of 2022 on the IL due to elbow discomfort and was optioned to the minors at the end of his rehab assignment. Mushinski was up and down all year, only getting into seven big league games. It doesn’t seem like either one is a lock for a spot with next year’s bullpen, meaning there could be an opening for Davis to work his way in there. He’s out of options but has between two and three years of MLB service, meaning he can be retained for future seasons via arbitration if he earns a roster spot and keeps it.
Astros Unlikely To Hire GM Before End Of Year
Despite the Astros cruising to a 106-56 record in 2022, rumors began to trickle out during the season that there was some tension between owner Jim Crane and general manager James Click, with the latter on an expiring contract. Despite those reports, the assumption of many was that the success of the team would compel the parties to work something out eventually. However, despite the Astros making the ALCS for a sixth straight year and winning their second World Series title in that time, Click was eventually fired just a few days after the title celebration, as was assistant GM Scott Powers.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan provides a deep dive behind the scenes, taking a look at how such an unusual situation came to be. Interested readers are encouraged to check out the full piece for all the details, but the essence is that Crane didn’t like Click’s approach to the job as much as he liked that of Jeff Luhnow. Luhnow, of course, was fired after the sign-stealing scandal was revealed, with Click quickly hired to replace him.
Over the past year, Crane has seemingly taken a more hands-on approach to the team. He apparently was the one who closed the deal to bring Verlander back for 2022. He also felt the organization needed more “baseball men,” bringing in former big leaguers Jeff Bagwell and Reggie Jackson to take part in front office meetings. He also reportedly blocked a deadline deal, on the advice of manager Dusty Baker, that would have sent José Urquidy to the Cubs for Willson Contreras.
With Click and Powers now gone, it seems as though Crane is running the show, at least to some degree. Bill Firkus, recently promoted to assistant general manager, seems to be handling day-to-day operations. Andrew Ball and Charles Cook, who also have the title of assistant general manager, are also involved to some degree. But according to Passan, Crane personally negotiated the three-year, $34.5MM deal given to reliever Rafael Montero last week and he seems to be directly involved in Verlander’s free agency yet again.
It might continue in this ad hoc fashion for some time as well, with Crane telling Brian McTaggart of MLB.com that he plans to take his time with his search for Click’s replacement, probably not making a hire until the calendar flips to 2023. “I’m going to take my time on it this time,” Crane says. “Last time, I was in a little crunch. I didn’t have a GM and didn’t have a manager. We’ve got a pretty solid baseball ops team that’s been around. Firkus and Charles Cook have been with the team a while. … We’re going to interview a bunch of people and see where we land with that. I don’t expect anything to happen before the first of the year.”
Passan floats some names as candidates who cover a spectrum of styles. Sig Mejdal, formerly of the Astros but now with the Orioles, is known for his expertise on the analytical side of the game. While former player and manager Brad Ausmus is thrown out as someone with an arguably more traditional approach. Passan adds that Ausmus was recently in Houston and met with Bagwell, though it’s unclear if they discussed the open GM position. Even when a new GM is hired, all signs seem to point to Crane staying heavily involved.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty in terms of what lies ahead for the Astros, but the idea of them turning their backs on their calculated approach has the potential to alter the trajectory of the franchise. The club’s current golden age has been achieved not by wild spending, but largely by player development and quantitative analysis. They’ve never given a free agent a deal longer than four years and only crossed the competitive balance tax threshold once, in 2020. Justin Verlander took a sizeable investment but the rest of their rotation was homegrown, either through the draft (Lance McCullers Jr.) or international free agency (Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia, Urquidy).
The position player core is similar, with most of the lineup having been drafted by the club and sometimes subsequently extended. Even when players do reach free agency, like George Springer and Carlos Correa, the club has been savvy at replacing them internally. Their primary shortstop and center fielder this year were Jeremy Peña, a third round draft choice playing in his rookie year, and Chas McCormick, a 21st round pick playing in his second season.
That makes it especially eyebrow-raising that Bagwell, who apparently is one of Crane’s most trusted advisors, criticized the club’s player development system. From an outside perspective, it would seem that the Astros’ recent run of success would be credited in large part to their successes in that department, but perhaps Bagwell and Crane don’t see it exactly that way.
Though it seems the Astros are making a pivot on the heels of their second World Series title, we likely won’t know for some time exactly how drastic the changes are. Perhaps any suggestion of a sea change is overblown and the club will continue largely on a familiar path. Though if they do indeed move away from what has made them so successful, it would make for a stunning and fascinating turn of events. For now, the Astros are pushing forward without Click and Powers, and without Pete Putila and Oz Ocampo, two front office members who recently left for the Giants and Marlins, respectively. It seems that Crane is now the one driving the bus, and time will tell where he takes it.
Blue Jays Interested In Brandon Nimmo
The Blue Jays subtracted from their outfield mix earlier today when they dealt Teoscar Hernandez to the Mariners. In the wake of that deal, they are now showing interest in adding free agent Brandon Nimmo, according to Jon Morosi of MLB.com.
Toronto’s general manager Ross Atkins spoke with members of the media on a conference call after the deal and, though he didn’t mention Nimmo by name, nothing he said would seem to preclude the club from such a bold move. “We’re in a better position to do so now from a resource and from a playing time and recruitment standpoint,” Atkins tells Shi Davidi of Sportsnet on the subject of adding a free agent outfielder. One option that’s on the table is acquiring a center fielder and pushing George Springer over the now-vacated right field position. “I know George will be open to it,” Atkins tells Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.
If the Blue Jays are indeed interested in adding a free agent center fielder, they could hardly do better than Nimmo. Excluding Aaron Judge since he’s more of a right fielder, Nimmo is the clear top option available on the center field market. Then it’s a steep drop down to the next tier, consisting of veterans coming off injury-plagued seasons such as Kevin Kiermaier and Adam Duvall.
Having spent his entire career with the Mets thus far, Nimmo is a quality hitter, primarily for his ability to get on base. His career walk rate is 13.6%, well above the 2022 league average of 8.2%. That’s helped him produce a batting line of .269/.385/.441 for a wRC+ of 134, indicating he’s been 34% above league average in his time in the majors. He’s also been generally regarded as a quality outfielder, though perhaps not elite. Defensive Runs Saved gave him a 5 last year but a -3 in 2022. Ultimate Zone Rating had him at 3.4 in 2021 but -0.4 this year. Outs Above Average, however, had him at a 3 last year and a 6 this year.
Given that excellent production and his ability to also play the corners, Nimmo would likely be able to upgrade the outfield of the majority of teams around the league. It’s possible that Nimmo’s left-handed bat makes him extra appealing to the Blue Jays given their lineup is predominantly right-handed, though that wasn’t really a problem for them in 2022. Against right-handed pitching this year, the club collectively hit .266/.329/.432. That amounts to a 118 wRC+, indicating they were 18% above league average. Only the Dodgers at 122 wRC+ and Mets at 119 wRC+ were better against northpaws, which doesn’t suggest the club needs to make a left-handed bat a specific target.
Regardless, there’s an argument to moving Springer out of center field and into a corner, where the rigors of the position are generally agreed to be lesser. Springer is now 33, more than three years older than Nimmo, who is 29 and turning 30 in March. He’s also dealt with his fair share of injuries since joining the Blue Jays, only getting into 211 total games over the past two years. He’ll recovering from elbow surgery this offseason but is expected to be recovered in time for Spring Training. The advanced defensive metrics have him hovering around average in recent years, not terribly dissimilar to Nimmo. Of course, Nimmo has also dealt with injuries throughout his career, but his only significant absence of the past three seasons was a two-month stay on the IL in 2021 due to a left index finger contusion.
Since the Blue Jays aren’t the only team that could benefit from Nimmo’s skills, they will have competition and he won’t be cheap. The Mets are already known to be interested in bringing him back to Queens. MLBTR recently predicted a contract of $110MM over five years, which works out to $22MM per season. After today’s trade, Roster Resource puts Toronto’s 2023 payroll at $176MM. That means they’re already on track for an increase over last year’s franchise record Opening Day figure of $171MM, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts. A few non-tenders could bump that down a hair but it still means that the club will have to spend into uncharted territory, or make a sizable subtraction, to make a significant free agent splash. Though they upgraded their bullpen today by acquiring Erik Swanson, they likely still need to do some work on the rotation as well. Regardless of where the final number ends up, Atkins seems to think they have the funds necessary to address their needs. He told Nicholson-Smith that today’s trade added payroll flexibility but “we didn’t need it.”
Braves Unlikely To Pursue Big Name Shortstops If Swanson Signs Elsewhere
The Braves have had more success in extending young, core players than any team in recent memory, but for a second straight offseason they’re facing the potential departure of a longtime regular who’s helped to anchor the infield. Dansby Swanson, like Freddie Freeman before him, reached the open market without signing an extension, has rejected a qualifying offer and is now free to field interest from the game’s other 29 teams.
Atlanta reportedly offered Swanson an extension in the neighborhood of $100MM at some point over the course of the season, but the widespread expectation is for him to outpace that guarantee by a comfortable margin. (MLBTR predicted a seven-year, $154MM contract on last week’s Top 50 free agent list.) One of the biggest questions on the minds of Braves fans is just what the team will do at shortstop. Can Swanson be retained? And, if not, where does the team turn? The market offers a trio of high-end alternatives in the form of Trea Turner, Carlos Correa and Xander Bogaerts.
As Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports, however, it’s unlikely that the Braves will make a legitimate play to sign any of the big free-agent shortstops other than Swanson. President of baseball ops Alex Anthopoulos went out of his way to mention Vaughn Grissom and Orlando Arcia as in-house alternatives at last week’s GM Meetings, and Rosenthal adds that the Braves are generally reluctant to add a major salary that “takes up too high a percentage of their payroll” — including oft-speculated fit Jacob deGrom.
Braves fans were understandably heartened by CEO Terry McGuirk’s comments about Atlanta growing to have one of the game’s five largest payrolls, but what McGuirk didn’t stress was just how close the Braves already are to reaching that territory before making a single addition. Last month at MLBTR, I pointed out that for the Braves to make even one high-priced acquisition, they’d need to exceed the luxury-tax threshold; making a pair of big-name additions — or signing one premier free agent and, say, extending Max Fried — could shatter the threshold and send the team barreling into at least the second tier of luxury penalization.
As things currently stand, Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez projects the Braves to be less than $5MM away from tier one of the luxury tax . They’d be a first-time luxury payor, so the penalty on the first $20MM by which they cross that threshold would “only” be 20%. The penalty on the next $20MM would jump to a 32% tax.
We’ll get back to the shortstop quandary, but it’s worth digressing and taking a deeper look at just what the luxury tax realities might look like for the Braves.
To put this into more specific context, we can use deGrom as an example. Many believe that the four-time All-Star and two-time Cy Young winner could secure an average annual value of $40MM or more this winter. A $40MM AAV on deGrom would push the Braves’ luxury-tax bill up into the $268MM range — an overage of roughly $35MM. The 20% tax on that first $20MM would come out to $4MM, and the 32% tax they’d be paying on the next $15MM would be another $4.8MM. So to sign deGrom for a $40MM AAV, the Braves would effectively need to be willing to pay $48.8MM in total — at least for the upcoming season. With Justin Verlander seeking a deal comparable to that of Max Scherzer, this can all be applied to him as well.
It’s a similar, but not quite so extreme case with Swanson. Using the $22MM AAV on MLBTR’s predicted contract as an example, Swanson would push the Braves a bit more than $17MM over the luxury tax on his own. That’d make our predicted $22MM AAV more akin to paying $25.4MM this season. And, of course, signing Swanson at that rate would mean that any subsequent salary additions of note would then push the Braves into the second tier of penalization, subjecting them to the same 32% rate mentioned in the deGrom example.
The other wrinkle is that any such signing would further cause the team’s luxury bill to balloon in future seasons. The Braves already have about $135MM of luxury obligations on their 2024 payroll, two years down the road, and that doesn’t include potential club option pickups for veterans like Charlie Morton, Kirby Yates and Collin McHugh — nor does it include arbitration salaries for Fried, A.J. Minter and Kyle Wright. Paying the luxury tax for consecutive seasons would cause those rates of penalization also increase (30% in tier one, 42% in tier two, etc.).
Certainly, there are ways for the Braves to lower their current luxury tab and provide further breathing room, though the path to doing so is not an easy one. There’s little hope of finding a team willing to cover even a small portion of the $36MM still owed to Marcell Ozuna through 2024. Atlanta would probably welcome the opportunity to shed the $9MM owed to Eddie Rosario in 2023, but that’s also far easier said than done after he hit .212/.259/.328 in the first season of a two-year, $18MM contract. One recent source of Twitter speculation among fans — a possible trade of Ronald Acuna Jr. — is not something the Braves are considering, per Rosenthal.
Lengthy digression aside, let’s get back to the shortstop question. If, as Rosenthal suggests, the team is likely to be “out of the picture” for any of Correa, Turner or Bogaerts in the event of a Swanson departure, what might that mean for their 2023 outlook at shortstop?
Grissom and Arcia are in-house candidates, as alluded to by Anthopoulos, but Grissom’s bat wilted after a torrid start to his rookie season in 2022. He still finished with a terrific .291/.353/.440 batting line in 156 plate appearances, but Grissom slashed .420/.463/.660 in his first 54 plate appearances and just .220/.294/.319 over his final 102 trips to the plate. He also skipped Triple-A entirely on his way to the Majors, and scouting opinions on his long-term outlook at shortstop vary. Arcia, once one of the game’s top-ranked prospects, was a roughly league-average hitter in a part-time role last year but carries a .233/.288/.356 slash (70 wRC+) over the past five years.
The free-agent market has some modest stopgaps who could help ease Grissom into the full-time role at shortstop. Elvis Andrus was released by the A’s over the summer, but that was more about preventing his 2023 vesting option from kicking in than about his play. He had a strong finish after signing with the White Sox and hit a combined .249/.303/.404 with 17 homers and 18 steals between the two clubs. Jose Iglesias keeps hitting for average and rarely striking out — .291/.325/.408, 13.1% strikeout rate since 2019 — but defensive metrics have soured on the soon-to-be 33-year-old over the past two seasons. Old friend Andrelton Simmons is a free agent, too, but he’s batted just .216/.277/.261 in 536 plate appearances since Opening Day 2021.
None of those free-agent options are going to inspire Braves fans much — save for the possible nostalgia of a Simmons reunion — but they highlight the fact that it’s a thin crop beyond the “Big Four.” The trade market, then, could be a more palatable approach for Anthopoulos to explore. Cleveland’s Amed Rosario is a clear trade candidate with just a year to go before free agency and a mounting (by the Guardians’ standards) price tag. He’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $9MM next year, and a low-payroll Guardians club that’s deep in MLB-ready middle infield prospects could look to cash in on the 27-year-old, as I recently explored at greater length.
The Yankees figure to be open to moving on from Isiah Kiner-Falefa now that Oswald Peraza is ready for a look in the Majors. The Reds would likely be open to dealing Kyle Farmer, with whom Anthopoulos is surely familiar dating back to his Dodgers days. Arizona’s Nick Ahmed and St. Louis’ Paul DeJong are veteran alternatives who could be had for pennies on the dollar, as the D-backs and Cardinals would surely welcome the chance to just shed some of the respective $10MM and $11MM remaining on their contracts. Both are buy-low options, at best, coming off poor showings in recent seasons. Any of Kevin Newman (Pirates), Nicky Lopez (Royals) or the oft-injured Adalberto Mondesi (Royals) could likely be had in a deal, but each has some obvious red flags.
To be clear, there’s no indication that the Braves plan to simply stand pat this winter. A reunion with Swanson remains eminently plausible, even if previous extension attempts with his representatives — the same agents who represent Freeman, for what it’s worth — have yet to bear fruit. It’d push the Braves into luxury territory for the first time in franchise history, but based on McGuirk’s comments about a potential top-five payroll club, that’s something on which the front office will have a green light, at least with regard to Swanson.
What does seems far less likely is a lavish spending spree that sees the Braves make multiple marquee splashes on the free-agent market. If Swanson does sign elsewhere, it’s the bulk of the Braves’ heavy lifting may very well come via the trade market and the middle tiers of the free-agent market.