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Orioles Release Alcides Escobar

By Steve Adams | March 20, 2019 at 3:50pm CDT

The Orioles announced this afternoon that veteran shortstop Alcides Escobar, who had been in camp as a non-roster invitee, has been granted his release. He’s now a free agent.

Escobar went 7-for-32 with a pair of doubles, four strikeouts and four walks in his brief time with the Orioles this spring before exercising an opt-out clause in his contract. He’ll now search for another club in need of some infield depth. With Escobar now out of the picture, both of Baltimore’s Rule 5 picks — Richie Martin and Drew Jackson — stand an increased chance of breaking camp with the team.

The 32-year-old Escobar has spent the past eight seasons with the Royals organization, generally providing Kansas City with quality defense and baserunning but significantly below-average offensive output. He’s a carer .258/.293/.343 hitter in 5702 Major League plate appearances, including a dismal .242/.275/.338 slash in 1160 PAs over the past two seasons. Given that lack of offense, Escobar isn’t likely to land another shot as a regular, but his speed-and-defense approach to the game could make him a useful bench piece — particularly if he is amenable to moving around the diamond a bit, as he did in his final season with the Royals.

Angels Outright Kaleb Cowart

By Steve Adams | March 20, 2019 at 3:40pm CDT

The Angels announced that infielder/relief pitcher Kaleb Cowart has cleared waivers and been assigned outright to Triple-A Salt Lake, thus clearing a spot on the 40-man roster.

Cowart has bounced around the league a bit since the end of the 2018 campaign. The Mariners claimed him from the Angels back in December but lost him to the Tigers via a late-January waiver claim. A month later, the Angels claimed him back off waivers and brought him to big league camp. He’s now been reassigned to minor league camp.

Cowart, a first-round pick back in 2010, has never established himself as a credible bat at the Major League level, batting just .177/.241/.293 in 380 trips to the plate. The former top prospect has had his share of success in Triple-A (.298/.361/.469 in parts of four seasons), and he’s recently sought to improve his versatility by functioning as a two-way player. Each of the teams who has rostered Cowart since the end of the ’18 campaign has done so with a willingness to try him out as a two-way player, but that’s a tough experiment to conduct at the MLB level. And, given that Cowart is out of minor league options, exposing him to waivers was a necessity in order to allow him to work on that new role in Triple-A.

Giants Sign Matt Joyce

By Steve Adams | March 20, 2019 at 3:16pm CDT

The Giants announced Wednesday that they’ve signed Matt Joyce to a minor league contract. He’ll be in camp for what’s left of Major League Spring Training. Joyce is represented by ACES.

The Giants will be the second stop for Joyce this spring, as he spent the bulk of camp with the Indians before being granted his release after being informed that he wouldn’t crack the big league roster. He’ll now head to an organization with a similarly undefined outfield mix in hopes of a clearer path to the Majors.

Joyce, 34, had a rough 2018 season with the A’s (.208/.322/.353 in 246 PAs) and didn’t hit much in his limited time with the Indians this spring (5-for-27 with three walks and seven strikeouts). However, he’s only one season removed from batting .243/.335/.473 with the Athletics in 2017 and is a career .250/.351/.451 hitter in 3373 plate appearances against right-handed pitching.

San Francisco’s outfield seems likely to consist of sophomore center fielder Steven Duggar, out-of-options slugger Mac Williamson and veteran Gerardo Parra, who like Joyce is in camp on a minor league contract. Rule 5 pick Drew Ferguson is also an outfielder and could be in mix if he breaks camp, though he’s just 3-for-27 on the spring. Cameron Maybin is also in camp on as a non-roster player, but his DUI arrest earlier this month surely didn’t help his chances of landing a roster spot.

Even if Joyce doesn’t crack the 25-man roster out of camp, he could potentially head to Triple-A and serve as an early-season depth option given the Giants’ lack of established outfielders at present.

AL Notes: Gio, Armstrong, Herrera, Tepera/Axford

By Jeff Todd | March 20, 2019 at 2:58pm CDT

Newly minted Yankees lefty Gio Gonzalez says it was an easy choice to join the New York organization, as George A. King III of the New York Post and MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch cover (Twitter links). The offer from the Yanks “was pretty much” the only one he got all winter long, says the veteran southpaw. It has been quite some time since Gonzalez has had to fight for a roster spot and a big-league paycheck, but he says it’s “a pretty great opportunity” that he “can’t be ungrateful” for. If he cracks the roster, Gonzalez will play for a $3MM base salary and would also take home $300K for each game started.

Here’s more from the American League …

Mariners righty Shawn Armstrong is heading to the injured list with a grade 1 oblique strain, MLB.com’s Greg Johns reports. He says he’ll be patient in allowing thing to heal, but didn’t hide his anger at hitting the shelf just before the season began. (Anderson flew to Japan believing he would be ready to roll, but the issue was worse upon arrival.) Armstrong, 28, is still hoping that this’ll be the season he fully establishes himself in the majors. He has seen action in four seasons but has yet to be entrusted with more than 21 appearances in a given campaign. Armstrong turned in sub-2.00 ERA performances at both Triple-A (in 56 innings) and the majors (14 2/3 innings) in 2018.
The White Sox may not go long without new reliever Kelvin Herrera, Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times writes. The veteran hurler, who’s working back from a Lisfranc fracture in his left foot, hasn’t yet fully ramped things up but seems on track to get back to being a high-powered relief arm early in the new season. “I will probably be in full shape by April something or May,” he says.
It seems there’s some new potential for late-camp movement with the Blue Jays roster. Skipper Charlie Montoyo says that righty relievers Ryan Tepera and John Axford have turned up with elbow pain that is being looked at more closely, as Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca reports (Twitter link). Those injuries are among the factors that could leave the Toronto organization with more 40-man roster room to work with — but also more 25-man roster needs to address — than had been anticipated, MLB.com’s Gregor Chisholm notes on Twitter.

Twins Release Lucas Duda

By Jeff Todd | March 20, 2019 at 2:00pm CDT

The Twins have released first baseman Lucas Duda, as Dan Hayes of The Athletic was among those to report (Twitter link). The move comes in advance of the opt-out clause his contract provided on Saturday.

Duda, 33, has long been quite a productive MLB hitter, though he hit a wall late in the 2017 season and hasn’t recovered since. He’ll head back out onto an unforgiving free agent market for defensively limited sluggers.

While he hasn’t hit anywhere near his prior levels of late, Duda has remained an approximately league-average bat. That’s not enough, clearly, for a player who’s likely to be viewed at most as a platoon first baseman. But there’s still some reason to hope that he can be a useful member of the right roster.

Brewers Have Had Recent Talks With Craig Kimbrel

By Steve Adams | March 20, 2019 at 1:32pm CDT

TODAY: Discussions are “pretty serious,” per Jon Heyman of MLB Network (via Twitter).

YESTERDAY, 11:26pm: While the two sides have indeed spoken, there’s no agreement close at the time being, per Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Haudricourt adds that the team’s payroll is already “stretched” after signing Grandal and Moustakas.

8:43pm: The Brewers are in discussions with free-agent reliever Craig Kimbrel, Ken Rosenthal and Robert Murray of The Athletic report (via Twitter).

Should a deal come to fruition, the signing would seem similar to the team’s previous agreements with Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas in that both landed in Milwaukee on shorter-term deals than anticipated. A match between Kimbrel and the Brewers, at least on paper, has looked plausible the longer his market seemed to stagnate. While the bullpen isn’t necessarily a need for a team that already has Josh Hader, Corey Knebel and Jeremy Jeffress, the latter of that trio is currently battling shoulder weakness, and Kimbrel would obviously deepen any team’s ’pen by pushing out its seventh- or eighth-best relief arm.

Kimbrel, 30, reportedly entered the offseason in search of a record contract that’d promise him six years and a total dollar value in excess of $100MM. Those terms, if indeed accurate, likely scared off a number of suitors early in free agency and led to Kimbrel’s stay on the open market lasting far longer than most would’ve anticipated. Certainly, that type of contract is unattainable for him now, though it’s still possible that Kimbrel could establish some type of record payday for a reliever. Currently, Wade Davis’ $17.33MM annual rate is the highest ever for a bullpen arm, and Kimbrel could still conceivably topple that mark.

That’d be serious money for a typically low-spending Brewers club that is already projected to open the season with a franchise-record $127.5MM payroll. Owner Mark Attanasio, however, has already given president of baseball operations David Stearns the green light to guarantee Grandal an $18.25MM salary on a one-year deal with a mutual option. And, the Brewers have every incentive to increase their spending given their recent NLCS run that provided increased revenue while simultaneously raising expectations surrounding the team.

Milwaukee has already surrendered its third-highest selection in the 2019 draft for signing Grandal, who rejected the Dodgers’ $17.9MM qualifying offer after the season. The Brewers would surrender their next-highest pick in order to sign Kimbrel, who also rejected a qualifying offer. The Brewers, though, are very much in a win-now mode, and their status as a non-luxury-tax-paying recipient of revenue sharing means they face a lower penalty for signing qualified free agents than CBT payors and teams that do not benefit from revenue sharing.

Brewers Release Josh Tomlin

By Jeff Todd | March 20, 2019 at 11:41am CDT

The Brewers announced today that they have released right-hander Josh Tomlin. He had been in camp as a non-roster invitee after signing a minors deal but opted out of his deal, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports (via Twitter).

That news gives some clarity to the organization’s rotation picture, though Tomlin had a tough path to a big-league job regardless. With so many potential candidates for the rotation, and Jimmy Nelson readying for an early-season return, the Milwaukee organization was obviously not willing to commit a 40-man roster spot to Tomlin.

Tomlin evidently did not show enough in camp to force the Brewers’ hand. He has allowed eight earned runs with nine strikeouts and two walks in his 15 spring innings. Since the start of the 2016 season, Tomlin has managed only a 4.93 ERA with 6.4 K/9 and 1.1 BB/9 in 385 1/3 innings.

Tomlin will surely look around to see if there’s a more attractive opportunity elsewhere. If not, it appears the Brewers would consider re-signing the command artist to work at Triple-A, Haudricourt also notes on Twitter.

Anthony Rendon On Contract Talks With Nationals

By Jeff Todd | March 20, 2019 at 10:59am CDT

The Nationals have held ongoing contract talks with third baseman Anthony Rendon, with optimism at times of reaching a long-term deal. But Rendon says he rejected an offer in late February (around the time that Nolan Arenado signed his new deal with the Rockies) and that talks have “kind of come to a halt lately,” as Todd Dybas of NBC Sports Washington reports.

It’s not known what the Nats dangled to Rendon when last the sides spoke in earnest. But the number “wasn’t to where we thought we should be,” per the 28-year-old.

While it seems that chatter hasn’t picked back up since, there’s still an opening to a possible deal. Rendon says that the Nationals told him “we’re going to continue to talk.” And it seems that he’s still open to working something out. But it’s now more clear than ever that Rendon will be demanding full market value for his future services and that he’s plenty willing instead to play out the 2019 season and hit the open market.

As Rendon put it: “If [an extension] happens, it happens, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.”

Even as the sides have batted around scenarios, other teams and players have lined up on deals. Several third-base price points have hit the books, in fact. It’s hard to draw much from the deal reached yesterday between the Astros and pre-arbitration infield Alex Bregman, but Manny Machado’s free-agent contract with the Padres (ten years, $300MM) and Nolan Arenado’s extension with the Rockies (seven years, $234MM) are plenty relevant.

While Rendon is older than both Machado and Arenado, he’s less than a year senior to the latter. Even if Rendon would need to take a shorter pact, the average annual values of those contracts — $30MM and $33.4MM, respectively — seem within reason for the long-time Nationals infielder. Both of his contemporaries are more visible players, to be sure, but Rendon has edged them both in fWAR over the past three seasons.

Prior indications were that Rendon sought a contract of the sort previously agreed to between Jose Altuve and the Astros (five years, $151MM). Whether that is in fact his asking price, and if so how close the Nats will come to reaching it, remains to be seen.

Astros Extend Ryan Pressly

By Steve Adams | March 20, 2019 at 10:26am CDT

TODAY: This deal is now official. The option vests with sixty appearances apiece in 2021 and 2022, Jake Kaplan of The Athletic tweets.

YESTERDAY, 8:35pm: The vesting option is based on appearances and is worth $10MM, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets.

8:11pm: The two sides have an agreement in place, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal tweets.

8:01pm: The Astros and right-hander Ryan Pressly are close to finalizing a two-year extension worth a guaranteed $17.5MM, Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle reports. The deal would kick in beginning with the 2020 season, paying him $8.75MM that year and again in 2021, with a vesting option for a third season. He’s already earning $2.9MM in 2019 after avoiding arbitration and was set to become a free agent at season’s end. Pressly is represented by the Ballengee Group.

Pressly, 30, joined the Astros in a midseason that sent prospects Gilberto Celestino and Jorge Alcala to the Twins in July. Already in the midst of a strong season in Minnesota, Pressly became an all-out buzzsaw in the late innings with Houston. Pressly, who attributed his breakout to the Astros’ analytics department and its presentation of data to players, pitched to a 0.77 ERA with a 32-to-3 K/BB ratio in 23 1/3 regular-season innings following the trade. He tacked on another five innings and allowed one run in the postseason.

A former Rule 5 pick by the Twins out of the Red Sox system, Pressly steadily improved his K/BB numbers from 2015-18, and his improvement in ’18 has the look of a potential elite weapon for the Astros moving forward. No reliever in baseball topped Pressly in terms of curveball spin rate — Garrett Richards was the only pitcher in all of MLB to best him in that regard — and the spin rate on Pressly’s fastball ranked in the 98th percentile of MLB pitchers.

He also ranked in the top five percent of the league in terms of overall strikeout percentage and several Statcast metrics (including expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected weighted on-base average). Whether looking at traditional stats or newer metrics, Pressly was an overpowering force in 2018, and the Astros apparently had no interest in letting him get to the open market.

While that dominance hasn’t been sustained over a multi-year stint yet, there’s still an argument that Pressly could’ve reached free agency next winter as the market’s most desirable reliever. He hasn’t yet reached even $7MM in career earnings, so it’s easy to see why would take the security of a guaranteed payday worth two and a half times what he’s banked since his MLB debut. But, the relatively short-term nature of the deal and the $8.75MM annual rate could both have been topped with a similarly strong 2019 campaign; Adam Ottavino, for instance, parlayed a 2018 season that was not as dominant as Pressly’s into a three-year deal worth $27MM. Extensions are always a question of risk tolerance, though, and Pressly’s annual value is commensurate the annual rates attained by Ottavino and Joe Kelly (three years, $25MM with the Dodgers).

Mookie Betts Does Not Expect To Reach Extension With Red Sox

By Jeff Todd | March 20, 2019 at 9:49am CDT

In the midst of a run of extensions around the game — in particular, yesterday’s $360MM Mike Trout agreement — Red Sox star Mookie Betts faced another round of questions about his future in Boston from reporters including Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald (links to Twitter). While he again expressed that he’s fond of the organization, Betts left little doubt that he’s not moving off of his price point for his post-arbitration years.

Betts acknowledged having received prior offers from the Red Sox. To this point, they simply haven’t met his understandably lofty self-valuation. It was reported yesterday that the team dangled $200MM in advance of the 2018 season. That was a hefty offer under the circumstances, but Betts has little cause to regret turning it down. He went on to turn in a hugely productive season and take home American League MVP honors, setting himself up for a record-setting run through arbitration and untold riches thereafter.

When asked whether he expects to open the present season without a long-term deal, Betts responded:

“That’s exactly what I expect. Didn’t expect anything to happen until I’m a free agent.”

It certainly doesn’t sound as if there’s much cause for optimism for a deal to come together before Betts hits the open market after the 2020 season. While nothing can be ruled out, as the 26-year-old hasn’t indicated that he’s altogether opposed to listening to offers, he’ll evidently demand that the Red Sox put quite a bit more money on the table than they have to this point.

Betts offered another hint about his own views on his value and how he intends to pursue a contract that matches it. While he called some of the recent extensions “great deals” for the players involved, he also noted that “some of them could’ve gotten more.”

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