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Mets Designate Ali Sanchez

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The Mets have designated catcher Ali Sanchez for assignment, MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo reports on Twitter. His roster spot was needed to make way for the team’s new addition this evening.

Sanchez, 24, becomes the second player to lose a Mets 40-man spot this evening. He reached the majors briefly in 2020, getting enough time to record his first hit but little more. Sanchez earned that opportunity primarily with his glovework, as he carries a marginal .259/.317/.331 batting line over his minor-league career.

Blue Jays Claim Joel Payamps

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The Blue Jays won a waiver claim to acquire righty Joel Payamps from the Red Sox, per TSN’s Scott Mitchell (via Twitter). Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com had tweeted that the move appeared to be in the works.

Payamps has never appeared with the Boston organization, which claimed him earlier in the offseason only to designate him for assignment when a roster need arose. The 26-year-old first reached the upper minors in 2017 but has only received limited MLB chances to this point. It’s certainly possible he’ll end up on the DFA carousel as teams compete to see who’ll be able to slip him through waivers in hopes of stashing him for depth.

Mets Designate Corey Oswalt

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The Mets have designated righty Corey Oswalt for assignment, per a team announcement. His roster spot will go to Albert Almora, whose previously reported deal is now official.

Oswalt, 27, has received several MLB opportunities over the past three seasons. All told, he carries a 6.19 ERA with a 16.4% strikeout rate, 7.5% walk rate, and 41.3% groundball rate through 84 1/3 innings of action.

None of those stats jump off the page. Likewise, Oswalt doesn’t throw particularly hard and didn’t produce gaudy peripherals in the minors. That said, he has produced full-season, sub-3.00 ERA efforts at the Double-A and Triple-A levels and could hold appeal elsewhere as a depth arm.

FA Pitching Notes: Robertson, Kintzler, Marlins, Shoemaker, Parker

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Free-agent reliever David Robertson will hold his previously reported showcase on Thursday, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets. There will be a large group of teams in attendance, Heyman suggests, owing to a combination of the 35-year-old Robertson’s past accomplishments and what should be a low-risk contract. Robertson enjoyed great success as a Yankee and White Sox from 2008-18, establishing himself as an oft-dominant workhorse along the way, but the right-hander fell off as a Phillie after that. He threw 6 2/3 innings in an injury-shortened 2019 and didn’t pitch at all last season while recovering from Tommy John surgery.

  • Brandon Kintzler turned down a $2MM guarantee from the Marlins to join the Phillies on a non-guaranteed pact Wednesday, Barry Jackson of the Miami relays. The righty is betting on himself that he’ll land a roster spot in Philadelphia and earn a $3MM salary with up to $1MM in incentives. Kintzler was the closer last year in Miami, where he saved 12 of 14 games and posted a terrific 2.22 ERA with a similarly impressive 57.3 percent groundball rate. The veteran’s ability to keep the ball on the ground helped him overcome a K-BB percentage of 3.0 – the sixth-lowest mark among qualified relievers. The Marlins had an opportunity to keep him after last season, but they instead declined his $4MM option in favor of a $225K buyout.
  • Righty starter Matt Shoemaker is “weighing multiple offers” and may sign somewhere this week, Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet reports. Shoemaker, 34, was a Blue Jay from 2019-20, but injuries held him back in both seasons. He threw 28 2/3 innings in ’19 because of a torn ACL and finished last year with another 28 2/3 while battling shoulder inflammation. A lofty 29.6 percent home run-to-fly ball rate led to a 4.71 ERA for Shoemaker in 2020, but his 4.35 SIERA, career-high 92.1 mph fastball velocity, and above-average walk and groundball percentages (7.6 and 48.1) were more encouraging.
  • Reliever Blake Parker is deciding among three teams’ offers (one of which is a major league deal) and could make his choice soon, per Heyman. The 35-year-old righty turned in a fine 2020 as a Phillie with a 2.81 ERA/3.39 SIERA and an exorbitant strikeout rate (36.0 percent) over 16 innings, though he also walked 13.0 percent of the batters he faced.

Mets Interested In Jake Arrieta, James Paxton

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The Mets attended Jake Arrieta’s recent workout for MLB clubs, and the two sides have had discussions about a potential contract in the weeks since that outing, per SNY’s Andy Martino (Twitter link). Martino notes that there’s no sense a deal is close and adds that lefty James Paxton is also of some interest to the Mets.

Both Arrieta and Paxton are repped by the Boras Corporation, so talks regarding the team’s interest in the pair are largely streamlined. Arrieta and Paxton aren’t free agents at ideal times, but they do represent a couple of the most established arms available on a shrinking market that lost No. 1 option Trevor Bauer to the Dodgers last week. The Mets were finalists for Bauer, and though they’re not going to acquire anyone of his caliber at this stage (barring an unexpected blockbuster trade), they remain on the hunt for starting help.

The Mets’ rotation has undergone a few noteworthy changes already since the offseason started. They brought back Marcus Stroman for the $18.9MM qualifying offer after he sat out all of last year over health concerns. The club also acquired Carlos Carrasco from Cleveland in the Francisco Liriano trade, while it dealt Steven Matz to the Blue Jays and brought in a potential replacement in Joey Lucchesi as part of a three-way swap with the Padres and Pirates.

Stroman, Carrasco, Lucchesi and David Peterson currently look like the favorites to back superstar Jacob deGrom in New York’s rotation when the season opens. If signed, though, Arrieta or Paxton would appear to be in line for a back-end spot. Arrieta’s a former NL Cy Young winner, though the soon-to-be 35-year-old posted a rough 5.08 ERA/4.83 SIERA combination in 44 1/3 innings with the division-rival Phillies last year.

Paxton has frequently dealt with injury issues during what has otherwise been a solid career, and he pitched just 20 1/3 frames as a Yankee in 2020 because of back and arm troubles. When the 32-year-old did take the mound, he limped to a 6.64 ERA and saw his average fastball drop from 95 mph-plus to a little over 92, though Paxton did log a respectable 3.88 SIERA. He also continued to generate strikeouts at a high clip, as his 28.9 percent K rate checked in well above the league average of 23.4.

Reds Claim Max Schrock

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The Reds have claimed infielder Max Schrock off waivers from the Cubs, per a team announcement. Chicago had recently designated Schrock for assignment. The move fills the Reds’ 40-man roster.

Schrock, 26, was a 13th-round pick by the Nationals back in 2015 but has since been traded to the A’s (in return for Marc Rzepczynski) and the Cardinals (in exchange for Stephen Piscotty). He made his big league debut with the Cards in 2020, going 3-for-17 with a home run, but was then claimed off waivers by the Cubs at season’s end. The Reds’ claim will put Schrock on his third NL Central roster in a span of just four months.

While Schrock won’t do much for the Reds’ glaring lack of a shortstop — he’s played just 78 innings at the position in his pro career — he gives them a left-handed bat with experience at second base and at third base. He’s never shown much power, but Schrock is a career .300/.354/.406 hitter in five minor league seasons, including a .260/.324/.350 line in 760 Triple-A plate appearances.

Which Players Will Have The Largest Change In Performance In 2021?

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FanGraphs’ 2021 playoff odds are out.  If you’re into forecasting, it’s fun to look at something like this.  At this moment in time, FanGraphs projects the Yankees, Twins, Astros, Mets, Cardinals, and Dodgers as the six division winners.  Their projections have the White Sox, Blue Jays, Padres, and Braves as the wild card teams.

For FanGraphs’ playoff odds to have any meaning, you have to consider the many underlying assumptions.  FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens explains how it’s done here.  Most importantly, team projections require forecasts for both performance and playing time.  I’m going to assume that the site’s Depth Charts player projections, described as ” a combination of ZiPS and Steamer projections with playing time allocated by our staff,” are similar to what fuels their playoff odds.

One thing that’s easy to forget when talking about which teams have improved the most over the offseason is that we cannot assume the performance of holdover players will be constant.  Take AL MVP Jose Abreu, for example.  Abreu was worth 2.6 WAR in last year’s 60-game season, so with a simple multiplier of 2.7, that extrapolates to about 7 WAR over a full season.  In other words, for 60 games, Abreu played like a 7-WAR player.

FanGraphs’ blended ZiPS/Steamer projections do not predict anything close to a 7 WAR season for Abreu in 2021.  Instead, they predict a 1.8 WAR campaign, the same as Abreu produced in 2019.  A 1.8 WAR Abreu is basically what’s baked into FanGraphs’ projection of 88.2 wins for the 2021 White Sox.  Their projection is that Abreu will be the 11th best player on the 2021 White Sox.

Here’s a look at the position players FanGraphs expects to lose the most WAR in 2021, compared to the player’s extrapolated full season 2020 production (link for app users):

On the flip side, many who struggled in 2020 are expected to bounce back.  I’ve replaced negative 2020 WARs with zero for the table below, as I don’t think it makes sense to extrapolate J.D. Martinez’s -1.0 WAR to -2.7.  With that in mind, here are the biggest projected gainers for position players (link for app users):

On to the starting pitchers.  Here are the biggest projected dropoffs (link for app users):

And here are the biggest projected gains for starting pitchers.  As you’d expect, the biggest gains are projected for pitchers who missed all of 2020 due to injury or opting out (link for app users):

What do you think?  Which players will experience the biggest change from their 2020 performance?

Athletics Sign Jed Lowrie To Minor League Deal

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The Athletics announced Wednesday that infielder Jed Lowrie is returning to the organization on a minor league contract. The Excel Sports client will be in Major League Spring Training and compete for a job.

Lowrie, 37 in April, rejoins the A’s on the heels of a disastrous two-year stint with the Mets — one which fans would surely prefer to forget. It was an unexpected match at the time, but now-former general manager Brodie Van Wagenen signed Lowrie to a two-year, $20MM contract in his first season in charge of baseball operations for the Mets. New York already had a largely full infield mix, but Van Wagenen nevertheless brought in one of his former clients — surely in hopes of cultivating the type of depth that is so often seen on today’s championship clubs. As a switch-hitter capable of playing all four infield slots, it was reasonable to expect that Lowrie could provide value in a semi-regular role, even if there wasn’t a clear-cut starting position available  to him.

As it turned out, though, Lowrie only tallied seven plate appearances over his two years with the team. A knee injury suffered in Spring Training 2019 wound up costing him nearly the entire season. It also set in motion a bizarre chain of non-updates on Lowrie’s medical status.

Even with a new front-office regime and new manager in place, the Mets were as vague and nebulous as ever in divulging information about Lowrie’s ailments. Timelines were always presented in muddy fashion, and the eventual reveal of Lowrie’s diagnosis proved similarly perplexing when Van Wagenen revealed this past summer that Lowrie had “posterior cruciate ligament laxity” in his left knee. Lowrie did not play in 2020.

While the circus-like nature of his tenure in New York is something both Lowrie and the Mets surely hope to put behind them, it should of course be pointed out that a healthy Lowrie is a very fine player. Lowrie landed that $20MM deal with the Mets after turning in a .272/.356/.448 batting line in 1325 plate appearances with Oakland from 2017-18. That performance earned him an All-Star nod in ’18.

Injuries have slowed Lowrie throughout his career, but from 2012-18 he was a decidedly above-average hitter, slashing .264/.338/.415 in more than 3500 plate appearances despite the bulk of those PAs coming at Oakland’s cavernous home park. He’s never been an especially strong defender at any position but has been playable at shortstop, second base and third base throughout his career. It’s unlikely that he can still handle shortstop at age 37 and with two seasons of knee injuries behind him, but Lowrie ought to be in the mix to win a roster spot and take at-bats at second base.

Phillies Sign Matt Joyce To Minor League Deal

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The Phillies have signed veteran outfielder Matt Joyce to a minor league contract, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski announced to reporters Wednesday (Twitter link via The Athletic’s Matt Gelb). The ACES client will compete for a job in Spring Training.

Joyce, 36, had a noticeable dip in power with the Marlins in 2020 but remained a strong on-base threat, as is typical for the 13-year big league veteran. In 148 plate appearances with the Fish, Joyce batted .252/.351/.331 with a pair of homers and four doubles. A career-worst 27.7 percent strikeout rate does create some cause for concern, but that came in a small sample and punchouts have never been too large a problem for Joyce.

Dombrowski is quite familiar with Joyce, having selected him in the 12th round of the ’05 draft, developed him with the Tigers (for whom he made his MLB debut) and traded him to the Rays (in exchange for the also-well-traveled Edwin Jackson when both were still in their mid-20s). The pair will reunite with a Phillies club that is largely set in the outfield, where Andrew McCutchen, Adam Haseley, Bryce Harper, Roman Quinn and Scott Kingery are all options. (Dombrowski said on today’s call that the club hasn’t decided whether Odubel Herrera will be invited to Spring Training.)

Joyce, however, can give the Phils the quintessential “professional” bat off the bench. He walked at a 13.5 percent clip this past season and hasn’t posted a walk rate south of 10.6 percent in any year since 2011. He’s a lifetime .253/.355/.448 hitter against righties.

Rangers Designate Adolis Garcia For Assignment

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The Rangers announced Wednesday that they’ve designated outfielder Adolis Garcia for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to right-hander Mike Foltynewicz, whose previously reported one-year contract is now official.

Garcia, 27, went 0-for-6 with a walk in seven plate appearances with Texas in 2020. That marked his first and now perhaps his only season with the organization. The Rangers originally acquired him from the Cardinals in exchange for cash in Dec. 2019.

Garcia has only 24 big league plate appearances to his name, and he hasn’t done much with them. He was an accomplished hitter in the Cuban National Series before defecting and eventually landing with the Cardinals, for whom he’s spent considerable time in Triple-A. Garcia’s free-swinging ways have resulted in a paltry OBP, but his power is readily apparent. In 1104 plate appearances with Triple-A Memphis, he’s a .260/.299/.505 hitter with 57 homers, 58 doubles and a dozen triples.

Garcia has some speed, as evidenced by those triples and by 26 stolen bases. However, he’s not particularly efficient on the basepaths either; he’s been caught 14 times. Texas will have a week to trade him, release him or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. Garcia does have a minor league option remaining, so it’s possible an outfield-needy club will take a shot on his right-handed power despite the lack of plate discipline.

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