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West Notes: Healy, Maxwell, Rangers

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A rousing World Series hasn’t come without its controversies. On the field, questions have arisen about the baseballs themselves, as SI.com’s Tom Verducci discusses. The balls being used for the series are slicker than regular season ball, some players and coaches say, with some even feeling there have been differences through the postseason. This follows on a long-running debate over “juiced” balls in the regular season. It’ll be interesting to see whether and how the league addresses the subject over the winter.

Here are some notes from out west:

  • The Athletics may be putting out trade feelers on young power hitter Ryon Healy, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. As she notes, he mostly fits in a DH capacity on the current roster, but the team may prefer to bump Khris Davis into that slot. The 25-year-old Healy isn’t considered much of a defender, and only posted a .302 OBP last year, but has already blasted 38 home runs in 888 MLB plate appearances. Slusser suggests that the A’s might attempt to draw back some relief pitching in a hypothetical trade.
  • Slusser also has the latest on Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell. He was arrested for “allegedly waving a gun at a food delivery person” in a troubling incident that Slusser details. It’s not yet clear how the matter will impact Maxwell’s status with the team, but it seems he will be referred to MLB’s Joint Treatment Program, as Slusser notes. Maxwell, 26, is expected to play a significant role for the A’s next year as part of the club’s youth movement, but it seems he’ll have to address some other matters before the spring.
  • Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News takes a good look at the Rangers’ possibilities in left field, a position in quite some flux for the team. It may be that it ends up featuring a “cast of characters,” as Grant puts it. Slugger Joey Gallo and speedster Delino DeShields could see time in left if they aren’t used as primary options elsewhere. And top prospect Willie Calhoun, the main piece acquired in the Yu Darvish deal, could run with the position but may first need to iron out his glovework at Triple-A. What’s most interesting here, perhaps, is that the range of options seemingly leaves the club with some flexibility as it enters the offseason.

Tigers Hire Joe Vavra

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The Tigers have hired Joe Vavra to join the staff of new skipper Ron Gardenhire, LaVelle E. Neal III of the Star Tribune reports. Vavra had been employed as the bench coach with the Twins but will become “quality control coach” in his new job, per Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free-Press (via Twitter).

Gardenhire, of course, previously managed in Minnesota. Vavra had never served as his bench coach, but slid into that role under Paul Molitor when he took over for Gardenhire.

Another former Twins coach is also joining the Detroit staff, per the report. Rick Anderson, who served as the pitching coach under Gardenhire, is “expected” to become the Tigers’ bullpen coach.

While the move fills some staff vacancies for the Tigers, it creates a new opening for the Twins. The club had previously announced that it was retaining Vavra and others, after hammering out a new deal with Molitor. Now, it’ll be back on the market for a bench coach.

Jarred Cosart, Christian Friedrich Elect Free Agency After Clearing Outright Waivers

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Two Padres hurlers, Jarred Cosart and Christian Friedrich, have elected free agency after being outrighted off of the team’s 40-man roster. The club announced the moves today.

Cosart, 27, was projected to earn $1.3MM via arbitration. The Friars obviously weren’t willing to stake that much on a rebound for a pitcher that has dealt with arm problems. Cosart will spend the winter working back from elbow surgery, the details and outlook of which are not really clear.

Since landing in San Diego — as a buy-low candidate included in everyone’s favorite quirky 2016 deadline deal — Cosart has posted a 5.58 ERA through 61 1/3 innings. With as many strikeouts as walks (42 apiece) on his ledger, there were clearly concerns about performance even when he was healthy.

Meanwhile, Friedrich was slated to take home something in the ballpark of his projected $1.79MM arbitration value. The 30-year-old lefty did not appear in 2017 while dealing with elbow problems of his own. In total, he owns 5.37 ERA across 296 2/3 MLB innings.

Mets Release Nori Aoki

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The Mets have released veteran outfielder Nori Aoki, per a club announcement. He had been eligible for arbitration, but will instead return to the open market in search of his next destination.

Aoki, 35, caught on with the Mets after opening the 2017 season with the Astros and joining the Blue Jays via trade. In total, he compiled 258 plate appearances of .277/.335/.393 hitting on the season. That rates right near the league average in total output, which is more or less where Aoki has landed in all of his six MLB campaigns.

The move isn’t at all surprising given Aoki’s projected arbitration salary, which sat at a fairly hefty $6.3MM. Still, he’ll surely draw interest in free agency. For all he lacks in upside, Aoki has been stunningly consistent since coming over from Japan. Despite little power, Aoki is nearly impossible to strike out. And while his output against lefties dipped this year in a small sample, he has generally shown little in the way of a platoon split.

Giants Claim Micah Johnson, Designate Tim Federowicz

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4:18pm: San Francisco has designated catcher Tim Federowicz to open a 40-man spot, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle tweets.

Federowicz, 30, was projected to command $1.3MM as a 3+ service-class player in arbitration. In theory, he could have been retained to serve as Buster Posey’s backup, with Nick Hundley qualifying for free agency, but clearly the Giants have other plans.

Though he has seen time in six MLB seasons, Federowicz has only once taken more than a hundred plate appearances in a single campaign — his 2013 effort with the Dodgers. All told, he owns a .196/.245/.313 slash through 318 trips to the plate at the game’s highest level.

At Triple-A last year, he hit a sturdy .300/.366/.463. Indeed, Federowicz owns a career .877 OPS through parts of seven seasons at the highest level of the minors. Still, he has yet to receive an extended look in the bigs.

3:45pm: The Giants have claimed utilityman Micah Johnson off waivers from the Reds, as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area tweets. He had only recently landed in Cincinnati in a waiver claim from the Braves.

Johnson, 26, has bounced around a fair bit in recent years, moving from the White Sox to the Dodgers and then on to Atlanta before starting the present offseason with a flurry. Along the way, his prospect star has generally waned, though perhaps it’s too soon to give up on a player that comes with some pedigree as a well-regarded prospect.

Last year, Johnson did manage to produce a useful .289/.377/.400 batting line over 155 plate appearances at Triple-A. That represented an improvement on his ugly output at the highest level of the minors in the prior campaign. Johnson earned a brief stop in the majors for the third-straight season, but still has fairly minimal time there.

Clearly, the speedy Indiana University product is still seen by teams as worthy of some ongoing opportunity. The Reds evidently hoped to slip him through waivers, only to see another team with a high-priority spot on the NL waiver wire grab him instead. It wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Johnson bounce around a few more times this winter as teams jockey for position with 40-man roster spots.

Phillies Hire Gabe Kapler As Manager

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OCT. 30, 3:41pm: The Phillies have announced that Kapler will indeed take over the dugout.

7:30am: Kapler is indeed the Phillies’ choice to be their next manager, reports MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki. He impressed in a second interview this past Friday, and an announcement could come on Monday, according to Zolecki.

OCT. 29: The Phillies look to be close to naming Gabe Kapler as their next manager, as Jon Heyman and Robert Murray of FanRag Sports report that “barring something unforeseen,” Kapler is the team’s choice to replace Pete Mackanin.  An official announcement could come as early as Monday, or perhaps until after the World Series is over.

Kapler and Triple-A manager Dusty Wathan were known to be the finalists for the job.  Former Red Sox manager John Farrell also known to be in the running if Philadelphia opted for a skipper with MLB experience.  It now seems, however, that the Phillies will go in the opposite direction with Kapler, who will be joining a Major League staff for the first time in any capacity.  He has worked as the Dodgers director of player development for the last three years, and Kapler’s dugout resume consists of managing the Red Sox A-ball affiliate in 2007 and coaching on Team Israel’s staff during the qualifying rounds of the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

Despite this relative lack of experience, however, Kapler has long been cited as a potential manager of the future, even dating back to his playing career as an outfielder with the Red Sox, Rangers, Rays, Tigers, Rockies and Brewers from 1998-2010 (he took a year off for that Single-A managing stint).  Kapler was seen as a strong contender for the Dodgers’ last managerial vacancy, and it was even seen as something of an upset when the team instead hired Dave Roberts.

The Phillies were thought to be looking to hire a more analytically-minded manager, and Kapler would certainly fit that description.  Two years ago, ESPN.com’s Mark Saxon profiled Kapler’s full embrace of statistical analysis, physical and mental training methods in helping mold the Dodgers’ minor leaguers.  Kapler, 42, would be the latest in the game’s trend of younger managers not far removed from their playing days and without much formal managerial or even coaching experience.

Assuming the hire is official, Kapler will take over a young Phillies team still in the midst of a rebuild, but already with some intriguing building block pieces on the roster.  Phils GM Matt Klentak surprised many when he removed Mackanin from the manager’s job to a front office position last month, though since Mackanin was already in place when Klentak became GM in October 2015, Klentak has now firmly put his own stamp on the manager’s job.  Klentak and Kapler have a past relationship, as Klentak was working in the Rockies’ baseball operations department in 2003 when Kapler was playing for the team.

O’s Have Reportedly Reached Out To Tillman, Miley

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The Orioles have reached out to impending free agents Chris Tillman and Wade Miley to explore the possibility of retaining them on incentive-laden one-year contracts, reports Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun. MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko wrote earlier this morning that such an agreement with Miley seems unlikely and suggests that their talks may not have been especially recent. Talks with each free-agent-to-be are characterized as “preliminary” by Encina, if not “procedural.” Still, the Orioles need to add at least two arms this offseason, so even early talks with a pair of potentially outgoing rotation members are at least notable.

Tillman, 30 next April, has been a mainstay in the Baltimore rotation since 2013 but battled shoulder troubles en route to the worst performance of his career in 2017. Tillman’s season didn’t get started until mid-May after he was slowed by a bout of shoulder bursitis, and his subsequent struggles at one point cost him his spot in the Orioles’ struggling rotation. Overall, in 19 starts and five relief appearances, Tillman limped to a 7.84 ERA with a career-low 6.1 K/9 against a 4.9 BB/9 mark that rated as the second worst of his career.

Miley, 31 in two weeks, has a $12MM club option on his contract, though Baltimore is widely expected to instead pay a $500K buyout after a dismal 2017 campaign. The southpaw did notch the second-best K/9 mark of his career (8.12), but his 5.32 BB/9 was easily a career-worst. Miley’s HR/9 rate of 1.43 was also the highest of his career. Given the rapid ascent of his walk and home-run rates, as well as the 5.61 ERA he posted in 157 1/3 innings, it’s hardly a surprise that the O’s aren’t expected to pay that $11.5MM difference between his option and buyout to retain him.

MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko has recently reported that Miley would prefer a return to the National League, and Encina implies as much as well, calling a reunion with Tillman more likely than one with Miley. That said, it still strikes me as perhaps unlikely that Tillman would return on a deal with a “low base salary,” as Encina hears the Orioles have suggested. Though Tillman’s 2017 results were unsightly, last winter’s market saw names like Derek Holland and Tyson Ross — the latter of whom made just one appearance in 2016 — sign for $6MM bases. Andrew Cashner secured a $10MM guarantee on the heels of his own dreadful 2016 season, and he didn’t come with Tillman’s steady track record.

While it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Tillman sign a contract with plenty of incentives baked in, it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll have to settle for all that modest of a base salary when considering the guarantees attained by Holland, Ross, Cashner and aging veterans R.A. Dickey ($8MM) and Bartolo Colon ($12MM) last offseason.

Even Miley may not have to settle for all that low of a base; while he’s a year older and is coming off a pair of rough seasons, he’s also averaged 31.5 starts per season dating back to 2012 and has never made fewer than 29 starts in a season (with the exception of his rookie campaign in 2011, when he was called up to the Majors in late August and totaled 40 innings of work). Troublesome results aside, a club with a spacious home park in the National League could pay for his durability and hope to achieve better run-prevention numbers in a more pitcher-friendly environment.

If Tillman and Miley do ultimately land elsewhere this winter, it’s still likely that the O’s will land another pair of arms. GM Dan Duquette has been candid about his team’s needs in the rotation and voiced a preference to reel in at least one left-handed starter, which (speculatively speaking) could put names like Jaime Garcia, Jason Vargas, Hector Santiago and Francisco Liriano on the team’s free-agent radar.

With roughly $120MM on the books for next season (including projected arbitration salaries), the Orioles will have some room between that mark and 2017’s year-end payroll of roughly $166.6MM. But, adding two to three arms to the rotation and perhaps exploring some outfield and/or bullpen depth could also send that figure north in a hurry.

MLB Tenders Status Check On Korean Outfielder Ah-Seop Son

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Major League Baseball has tendered a status check on outfielder Ah-seop Son of the Korea Baseball Organization’s Lotte Giants, reports Jee-ho Yoo of South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. The status check is largely a formality, but an agreement between MLB and the KBO stipulates that if a team has interest in a potential KBO free agent (or a player that is eligible for posting), that MLB team must formally check the status of the player through official league channels. In other words, as Yoo points out, the status check indicates that at least one MLB team has expressed interest in signing Son this winter.

Some readers of MLBTR may recall Son’s name from two years ago, when KBO’s Giants posted him, but he did not draw a bid from a Major League club. At the time, Son was coming off a characteristically strong season at the plate, having batted .317/.406/.472 with 13 home runs and 11 stolen bases in 517 plate appearances. Excellent bating averages and OBP numbers are nothing new for Son, who has not batted lower than .306 and has not posted an OBP south of .370 since becoming a regular as a 22-year-old back in 2010. Yoo notes that Son’s career .325 batting average is tied for the league-wide lead among active KBO players.

However, Son’s two seasons since failing to draw a bid have been his two best campaigns yet. The 2016 season saw the left-handed-hitting corner outfielder bat .323/.418/.468 with 16 home runs and a career-high 42 stolen bases (in 46 attempts). This past season, Son clubbed a career-high 20 home runs and a career-best 35 doubles en route to a .335/.420/.514 batting line. He also swiped 25 bases in 33 attempts. He’ll turn 30 next March.

Unlike the last time he was made available for MLB teams, Son is a legitimate free agent following the conclusion of the Korean Series (the KBO’s championship series). He will not be subject to the KBO posting system or to international bonus pools, making him free to sign with any MLB team for any amount. That doesn’t guarantee that he’ll sign a Major League contract, of course; Son’s former teammate, Jae-gyun Hwang, was a superstar in the KBO but settled for a minor league pact with MLB’s Giants last offseason due to tepid interest on the open market.

Son, by all accounts, is limited to the outfield corners. He’s been compared to Nori Aoki in terms of skill set: limited power but excellent bat-to-ball skills and above-average speed. In his KBO career, Son has struck out at just a 15.4 percent clip, as compared to an 11.4 percent walk rate. Those marks were even better in 2017, as he walked in 12.4 percent of his PAs and whiffed at just a 14.3 percent pace.

That Son was able to show improved discipline while also logging a career-high in homers is certainly an encouraging trend for his stock as an international free agent this winter, but it remains to be seen exactly where he’ll fit into the market. J.D. Martinez, Justin Upton (assuming he opts out of the remaining four years on his contract) and Jay Bruce are the top corner names available, and teams interest in that trio won’t look at Son as a fallback. But, Son could provide teams looking at the next tier of free-agent outfielders — Carlos Gomez, Jon Jay, Jarrod Dyson, Howie Kendrick, etc. — with an affordable, albeit more uncertain option to pursue.

Quick Hits: Callaway, Tribe, Santana, Yankees, Long

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It was just under a decade ago that Mickey Callaway agreed to become the interim head coach for Texas A&M International University, which sparked his interest in teaching and training young players.  Though Callaway pitched in Taiwan and in independent baseball in 2008, that was his final season as a player, as Callaway tells Newsday’s Marc Carig that “It was hard to concentrate on playing after feeling that I was ready to start coaching.”  Carig’s profile of Callaway’s first time running a team is well worth a read, providing insight into the man who has become a big league manager for the first time after being hired by the Mets.

As we enjoy a wild Game Five of the World Series, here’s more from around baseball….

  • The Indians seem prepared to spend in the short-term to keep their window of contention open, Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer opines during his look at the some of the Tribe’s free agents this winter.  Pluto figures Carlos Santana will be issued a qualifying offer, and the team will monitor the markets of Santana and Jay Bruce to see if either could be re-signed for a reasonable amount, a la how several other veteran sluggers received smaller-than-expected deals last winter (which allowed the Tribe to sign Edwin Encarnacion).  As for other decisions, Pluto thinks Bryan Shaw and Boone Logan will both be pitching elsewhere in 2018, while Joe Smith seems the likeliest of the relievers to return to Cleveland.  Josh Tomlin’s $3MM club option seems like a good bet to be exercised by the team.
  • Also from Pluto, newly-hired pitching coach Carl Willis said two other teams had made him job offers and two others showed interest in his services.  With this kind of interest, the Indians had to jump to sign the veteran pitching coach just a few days after ex-pitching coach Mickey Callaway left for the Mets.
  • Mets hitting coach Kevin Long has been mentioned as a candidate for the Yankees’ managerial job, though he may also be a contender to be the Yankees’ next hitting coach, George A. King III of the New York Post writes.  Long previously served as the Bronx Bombers’ hitting coach from 2007-14 before moving over to his post across town with the Mets.  Alan Cockrell has been the Yankees’ hitting coach for the last two years, though with a new manager coming, there are likely to be changes made to the Yankees’ coaching staff.

NL West Notes: Morrow, Holland, Rockies, Giants

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Brandon Morrow has been a dominant force out of the Dodgers’ bullpen in both the regular season and postseason, though his injury history adds intrigue to his free agent case this winter, the New York Post’s Joel Sherman writes.  In a nod to Morrow’s arm health, the Dodgers were careful with the right-hander’s workload throughout the season, but the veteran has now become a workhorse in the playoffs, appearing in 11 of the team’s 12 postseason games.  Sherman thinks Ryan Madson’s three-year, $22MM deal from the 2015-16 offseason is a decent comparable to what Morrow could land in free agency; Madson missed all of 2012-14 before returning to post strong numbers for the 2015 Royals, paving the way for a nice free agent payday.

Here’s more from around the NL West…

  • Rockies GM Jeff Bridich has said that he’ll in touch with Greg Holland’s representatives about a return in 2018, though Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post breaks down the Rockies’ options at closer next season with or without Holland in the mix.  Antonio Senzatela, German Marquez or Carlos Estevez could be internal options to take the ninth-inning job, or the Rockies could acquire another closer via trade or free agent signing.  Re-signing Holland is also an option, though that carries the usual risks in committing big money and dollars to a veteran reliever, particularly one with Holland’s injury history.
  • In another piece from Saunders, he opines that bench depth will be a need for the Rockies in the offseason.  Pat Valaika brought some nice pop and versatility last year, though youngsters Ryan McMahon and Mike Tauchman don’t have much experience.  Saunders doesn’t think the Rockies will exercise their $2.5MM club option on Alexi Amarista, given the utilityman’s poor hitting and overall fielding numbers in 2017.  One internal bench option could be David Dahl, if the former top prospect is healthy after missing virtually all of last season due to a rib injury.
  • The Giants are looking to fill their remaining coaching vacancies with experienced MLB coaches, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, so minor league promotions don’t appear to be in the cards for the club.  A recent shake-up of the coaching staff left the Giants looking for a new pitching coach, hitting coach, and assistant hitting coach.  Jim Hickey and Chili Davis were two veteran names considered for the pitching and hitting coach jobs before both men joined the Cubs’ staff.

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