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The Best Minor League Signings Of 2018: Relief Pitchers

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Having already examined position players and starting pitchers, we’ll now set our sights on this year’s crop of minor-league signees who have turned into useful relievers. Volatility goes both ways, of course, so it’s relatively unsurprising to see hurlers emerge in a MLB pen after failing to land 40-man spots over the winter.

When we checked in on relief arms earlier this season, we were focused mostly on which pitchers had earned opportunities. Now, we’ll turn our attention to their actual contributions on the season. We’re looking for volume and quality of innings here. If there’s anyone you think I missed, drop a comment and we’ll talk it out.

The nominees, presented in order of the number of innings pitched:

  • Tyler Clippard, Blue Jays: Home runs have remained an issue, but Clippard has provided the Jays with 58 1/3 frames of 3.70 ERA ball with 10.5 K/9 against just 2.8 BB/9. Not bad considering Clippard opened the spring at the MLBPA free agent camp.
  • Dylan Floro, Dodgers/Reds: There’s a strong argument to be made that Floro has been the find of the year. He’s now through 57 innings with a 2.37 ERA, with less-than-exciting K/BB figures but an excellent 56.4% groundball rate. Better still, he won’t even be eligible for arbitration until 2021.
  • Richard Rodriguez, Pirates: Another excellent contender for the best minor-league relief signee, Rodriguez is humming along with 10.6 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 for the Bucs. His 13.0% swinging-strike rate portends good things in the future; like Floro, he’s under team control through at least 2023.
  • Justin Miller, Nationals: Though he’s fading a bit as the dingers pile up, Miller has also been pressed into roles to which he’s probably not best suited. Regardless, with 10.4 K/9 (13.9% SwStr) and 2.9 BB/9 over 44 frames on the season, to go with a 3.89 ERA, Miller looks like an arb keeper.
  • Erik Goeddel, Dodgers/Mariners: Though he’s dishing out too many free passes, the 29-year-old has been awfully tough to square up. He carries a .268 wOBA and a .264 xwOBA to match. In 36 2/3 innings this year, he owns a 2.95 ERA.
  • Xavier Cedeno, White Sox: Suppressing home runs has driven Cedeno’s 2.96 ERA, but he’s also producing 10.4 K/9 against 4.8 BB/9 to go with a 53.2% groundball rate. He hasn’t been asked to get many outs, compiling only 24 1/3 innings in 32 appearances, but seems like a good bet to be tendered a contract for 2019 (which will be his final season of arb eligibility).
  • Jonny Venters, Braves/Rays: Another veteran southpaw, Venters has allowed just seven earned runs in 24 2/3 innings this year — and done so after five full seasons away from the majors owing to a dizzying run of arm injuries. He has held 49 opposing lefty hitters to a .156/.229/.250 slash.
  • Vidal Nuno, Rays: It’s tough to get too excited about his 1.50 ERA when it is so heavily dependent upon a .169 BABIP-against and 95.7% strand rate, but Nuno has given the Tampa Bay organization 24 useful frames.
  • Oliver Perez, Indians: The bottom-line results are equally sparkly for yet another southpaw, but in this case there are more interesting underlying peripherals as well. Perez has recorded 10.2 K/9 and 1.6 BB/9 with a career-high 13.6% swinging-strike rate. Opposing hitters have managed a paltry .153 wOBA against him; that’s likely a bit fortunate, but the 37-year-old has also been outstanding by measure of expected outcomes based upon the quality of contact (.217 xwOBA).
  • Ryan Brasier, Red Sox: Though he has thrown only twenty MLB frames, Brasier has been a revelation for the Boston organization with a paltry 0.90 ERA. He’s pumping 97 mph heat and generating a hefty 15.8% swinging-strike rate in his first action in the majors since a brief showing back in 2013. There’s some regression to come, to be sure, as Brasier won’t continue to hold opposing hitters homerless with a .180 BABIP. Still, the initial showing has been awfully impressive.
  • Honorable Mention: John Axford, Matt Magill, Louis Coleman, Jorge De La Rosa, Neil Ramirez, Anthony Bass

Matt Bush Will Not Return In 2018

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Rangers right-hander Matt Bush is not going to make it back to the MLB roster this season, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reports on Twitter. Elbow issues forced him to the disabled list in the middle of June.

Though Bush is said to be working through a throwing progression, he says that there simply won’t be time for him to ramp up fully during the month of September. It certainly doesn’t help that he wouldn’t be able to utilize the club’s minor-league affiliates for rehab work.

Most of all, the Rangers likely see little reason to push it in the midst of a cellar-dwelling campaign. Things have gone about as well for the 32-year-old Bush as they have for the rest of the roster. He carries only a 4.70 ERA with 7.4 K/9 and 5.5 BB/9 in 23 innings.

Needless to say, that’s a disappointing set of results for the 2004 first overall pick, though his story remains fascinating. Bush had derailed his career with off-field choices, but remarkably reached the majors with the Texas club in 2016.

From an on-field perspective, though, there’s now reason for the Rangers to wonder what contribution they’ll receive from Bush in 2019. He was outstanding in his first MLB campaign, turning in 61 2/3 innings of 2.48 ERA pitching. Despite some downturns in his output in the following season, Bush still showed many of the same skills (12.3% swinging-strike rate, 97.9 mph average fastball). In his limited action in 2018, Bush lost a tick on his heater, saw his swinging-strike rate drop to 9.4%, and gave up a whopping 52.1% hard contact rate.

From the organization’s perspective, the silver lining of this lost campaign is what it means for Bush’s cost. He’ll enter the offseason with 2.143 years of service. We don’t yet know where the Super Two line will land, but Bush would be a likely candidate to exceed it based upon recent outcomes. Despite his 2016-17 output, this meager platform season will likely lead to quite a manageable arbitration salary, which not only ought to make Bush a cheap player to keep in 2019 but will also make for a lower salary floor to build off of in future seasons.

Of course, the Texas club would surely rather have paid up for a version of Bush that looked like a healthy, high-quality, high-leverage relief pitcher. Whether he can return to that form remains to be seen, thus adding another question mark to the Rangers’ pitching staff as the offseason approaches.

MLB Daily Roster Roundup: Bautista, Nimmo, Urias, Wong

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ROSTER MOVES BY TEAM
(August 27th-August 28th)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

  • NEW YORK METS | Depth Chart
    • Activated from 10-Day DL: OF Brandon Nimmo
      • Nimmo played RF and batted 8th on Tuesday (vs LHP).

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AMERICAN LEAGUE

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FUTURE EXPECTED MOVES

Clayton Richard To Undergo Knee Surgery

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Padres lefty Clayton Richard was placed on the disabled list earlier today due to inflammation in his left knee, and manager Andy Green now tells reporters that Richard is headed for season-ending surgery to alleviate discomfort that he’s pitched through since April (Twitter links via MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee).

Richard, 35 next month, pitched to a respectable 4.43 ERA (4.18 FIP, 4.06 xFIP) with 6.9 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 0.80 HR/9 and a 57.9 percent ground-ball rate through 124 first-half innings this season. However, his 2018 campaign has gone off the rails in a miserable second half that has seen him (perhaps literally) limp to an 8.57 ERA with 4.1 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, a whopping 2.80 HR/9 and a 53.5 percent grounder rate. Richard is far from a flamethrower, but a look at his season-long velocity charts show that his fastball has dropped in the month of August as well.

Richard is earning a $3MM base salary in 2018 as part of the two-year, $6MM extension he signed with the Padres late last season, and he earned a pair of $250K bonuses for crossing the 125-inning and 150-inning thresholds. He’s under contract for the 2019 season as well at that same $3MM rate and will once again have up to $1.5MM worth of incentives available to him — though he’d need to reach the 200-inning mark for the first time since 2012 in order to do so.

The Padres will likely look to Richard as a stabilizing innings eater in their rotation once again in 2019. While some of their promising young arms have begun to surface at the MLB level — Joey Lucchesi, Eric Lauer and Jacob Nix are among the team’s prospects to debut this season — there’s still a need for a bridging presence while that trio looks to establish themselves. Meanwhile, promising arms like MacKenzie Gore, Chris Paddack, Logan Allen, Cal Quantrill, Adrian Morejon and Michel Baez (among others) continue to work their way toward San Diego as the Padres’ front office eyes aims to compile a homegrown core of arms around which to build.

Latest On Athletics’ Rotation

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The Athletics have lost a pair of rotation pieces in the past three days, placing lefties Sean Manaea (3.59 ERA, 160 2/3 innings) and Brett Anderson (4.02 ERA, 65 innings) on the disabled list due to a shoulder injury and a forearm strain, respectively. Since being placed on the DL on Sunday, Manaea has been determined to be suffering from tendinitis in his rotator cuff, manager Bob Melvin told reporters today (Twitter links via Jane Lee of MLB.com). He’s been shut down from throwing, and the A’s aren’t certain yet whether he’ll pitch again in 2018. Meanwhile, Anderson is set to undergo additional testing to evaluate his injury.

However, despite that pair of notable losses, the A’s aren’t likely to make a trade for a starter in advance of Friday’s deadline for postseason eligibility, tweets Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. If there was any doubt based on that report, Oakland general manager David Forst went on record with Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle and, while he didn’t expressly rule out an addition, he characterized any such move as decidedly unlikely.

“We said when got Mike Fiers and Fernando Rodney how lucky we were that guys like that were available and we were able to make the deals,” said Forst. “And I don’t know if there is anything available outside the organization that can help us at this time.”

A look at the list of players known to have cleared revocable trade waivers reveals names such as Gio Gonzalez, Alex Cobb, Andrew Cashner, Francisco Liriano and Jordan Zimmermann as options to be freely traded. All five of those hurlers have under-performed to varying extents in 2018, and Cobb, Casnher and Zimmermann each come with undesirable contractual obligations beyond the current season. It’s possible, of course, that other arms have cleared or are currently on revocable trade waivers, but it doesn’t sound as though Forst and the A’s are keen on adding from outside the organization based on what’s currently available.

Internal options are the preferred route, it seems, but Forst made clear that top prospect Jesus Luzardo won’t be called upon to step into the starting mix. The 20-year-old Luzardo is among the game’s most highly regarded prospects, but he’s two and a half years removed from Tommy John surgery (March 2016) and has already seen an increase from 43 1/3 innings in 2017 to 109 1/3 innings in 2018. He’s made a rapid ascent to Triple-A, but his workload and importance to the Athletics’ long-term outlook are both understandable reasons for the Oakland brass to have some trepidation when weighing a potential promotion for Luzardo.

Forst indicated to Slusser that expanded September rosters could allow the A’s to utilize a bullpen-heavy approach to patching together the pitching staff. The Rays have already aggressively employed a bullpen-forward tactic in 2018, using relievers as “openers” and frequently leaning on bullpen days in lieu of a more traditional starting rotation. Such an arrangement is one of multiple approaches the A’s could contemplate when plotting out the remainder of the season. Relievers Yusmeiro Petit, Lou Trivino and Emilio Pagan are already accustomed to recording more than three outs per appearance.

[Related: Oakland Athletics depth chart]

For the time being, Oakland will plug right-handers Frankie Montas and Daniel Mengden into a starting staff that also includes Fiers, Trevor Cahill and Edwin Jackson. Chris Bassitt is the lone remaining healthy option on the 40-man roster, as the Athletics’ depth has been ravaged by injuries in 2018. Right-handers Kendall Graveman, Daniel Gossett and Jharel Cotton have all undergone Tommy John surgery, as has top left-handed pitching prospect A.J. Puk. Meanwhile, Andrew Triggs is on the 60-day DL due to a nerve injury, while Paul Blackburn has missed the past month-plus due to elbow issues.

Padres Promote Luis Urias

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Aug. 28: The Padres have formally announced Urias’ promotion to the Majors. Asuaje has been optioned to Triple-A to open a spot on the active roster. San Diego has also placed lefty Clayton Richard on the 10-day disabled due to inflammation in his left knee and activated right-hander Colten Brewer from the disabled list in his place.

Aug. 27: The Padres are set to promote highly regarded infield prospect Luis Urias, according to Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He is expected to debut tomorrow.

Urias, 21, is widely considered one of the crown jewels of a Padres system that, the organization has long hoped, will usher in a golden age of baseball in San Diego. There’s a clear consensus that he’s one of the most promising young players in baseball, with outlets such as Fangraphs (#22), MLB.com (#22), and Baseball America (#29) rating him among the game’s thirty or so best prospects.

There’s a lot to like about Urias’s potential as a hitter. He features a rare combination of plate discipline and contact ability that has allowed him to hit over .300 while carrying nearly a .400 OBP over his five minor-league seasons. Power isn’t a strong suit, though Urias has increased his home-run output over recent campaigns and this year has put the ball over the fence eight times in 533 plate appearances.

It seems fair to note, too, that Urias has the kind of underlying skills that could allow him to come into more power at the game’s highest level. In recent years, we’ve seen several players — Jose Altuve, Francisco Lindor, and Jose Ramirez among them, to take a few famous examples — develop surprising pop after reaching the bigs. Whether or not Urias is destined for that kind of outcome obviously isn’t yet known, but it seems notable that MLB.com credits him with more raw power than his outcomes indicate while BA cites Urias’s impressive exit velocity.

To be sure, Urias would likely generate even greater excitement if he was considered a future shortstop. Still, he is also valued for his defensive potential. Most evaluators indicate that he’ll likely be a high-quality defender at second base. It doesn’t hurt that he’s considered at least capable of playing shortstop as well; indeed, Acee says that Urias will get some time there upon his arrival.

For the Padres, this promotion offers an opportunity to get a look at a player who’s expected to hold down an important role for years to come. Urias will not accrue enough service time this year to put himself on track for future Super Two status. If he stays in the majors from here on out, he won’t be eligible for free agency until at least 2025. Picking up thirty-plus days of MLB action will make it a bit harder for the Friars to hold Urias down to open the 2019 season in hopes of extending the team’s control rights.

If he shows well upon his arrival, Urias will likely enter camp next year as the odds-on favorite to open the season as the regular second baseman. San Diego has not received much production from its options at the position thus far in 2018, after all, so the organization is no doubt anxious to plug in a permanent piece. Jose Pirela, Carlos Asuaje, and Cory Spangenberg have all failed to take advantage of opportunities at second this season.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Mariners Select Shawn Armstrong

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The Mariners announced Tuesday that they’ve selected the contract of right-hander Shawn Armstrong from Triple-A Tacoma and optioned fellow right-hander Nick Rumbelow to Double-A Arkansas to open a spot on the active roster. Seattle already had an open spot on the 40-man roster, so no further moves were necessary to accommodate Armstrong’s return to the big leagues.

Armstrong, 27, saw time in the Majors with the Indians across the 2015-17 seasons but was traded to Seattle in exchange for international bonus pool space this past offseason. The Mariners exposed Armstrong to outright waivers just three months later when a need for roster space arose in Spring Training. He’d go on to clear and remain in the organization, which could prove fortuitous for the Mariners.

Through 56 innings out of the Rainiers’ bullpen in Triple-A, Armstrong has been nothing short of overpowering. He’s posted a sterling 1.77 ERA while averaging 13.2 strikeouts, 4.2 walks and 0.48 homers per nine innings pitched, collecting 15 saves along the way. It should be noted that Armstrong is no stranger to gaudy Triple-A numbers, but he’s done a better job of limiting walks this year than in recent seasons while still maintaining a hefty strikeout rate.

Armstrong will join the Mariners with 43 1/3 innings of Major League experience already under his belt from his time with the Cleveland organization. In that time, he’s pitched to a 3.53 ERA but hasn’t matched his minor league strikeout tendencies, averaging 7.9 K/9 against 3.5 BB/9 with a 41.6 percent ground-ball rate.

Cardinals Extend Mike Schildt

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4:08pm: The three-year term on Shildt’s contract includes the current season, as Shildt’s new contract runs through the 2020 campaign, per Jen Langosch of MLB.com (on Twitter). The Cardinals have formally announced that Shildt has shed the “interim” label on his title and is now the full-time manager.

2:35pm: The Cardinals will make official today what had increasingly become obvious: interim manager Mike Shildt is going to stay in the job beyond the present season. He’s slated to receive a three-year contract in addition to having the interim label removed. Bob Nightengale of USA Today (via Twitter) and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Twitter link) had the news.

Since taking the helm of a club that was sitting just one game over .500 just past the season’s halfway point, Shildt has guided the Cards to a 26-12 record. The club is now firmly back in contention. Of course, numerous roster moves came along with the firing of Mike Matheny, and it’s always hard to allocate praise and blame for managerial performance, but the organization obviously had cause to be pleased with the early returns on the new skipper.

Shildt opened the year as the Cards’ bench coach, which in and of itself represented a remarkable rise in the game. He never played professionally and was first came to the St. Louis organization as a scout. Shildt rose steadily from there, ultimately becoming a manager in the lower minors and climbing the ranks to run the team’s top affiliate. He came to the MLB staff in 2017 as a quality control and then third base coach.

The Cardinals know Shildt well and are clearly impressed with his work to this point, though it’s nonetheless a bit surprising to see them remove the “interim” label from Shildt after just 38 games. Typically, even when organization have hired an interim manager on a full-time basis, he’s but one of many candidates amid a larger search at season’s end. That won’t be the case with Shildt, who has already overwhelmingly captured the hearts of many Cardinals fans and drawn praise from both his players and fellow coaches.

Michael Pineda Has Torn Meniscus, Won’t Pitch In Majors This Season

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Right-hander Michael Pineda has been diagnosed with a torn meniscus in his right knee and will not pitch in the Majors this season, Twins manager Paul Molitor revealed to reporters (Twitter links via Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press). Lefty Adalberto Mejia is also done for the season due a nerve issue in his left arm that’ll require more than the remaining five weeks to sufficiently heal.

The knee injury for Pineda is a discouraging one, as the right-hander had all but worked his way back to health following 2017 Tommy John surgery and had been expected to make a few starts for the Twins in September. The silver lining is that Pineda’s arm is seemingly fine, and he should be ready for Spring Training without any real health restrictions.

Minnesota’s signing of Pineda to a two-year, $10MM contract was never about the 2018 season anyhow. While the club would’ve considered it a bonus had the big right-hander been able to pitch out of the ’pen or make a few starts in September, the real goal of the signing was to acquire a talented arm to insert into the 2019 rotation.

Pineda has struggled to find consistency in the Majors, but he’s averaged 9.1 K/9 against 2.1 BB/9 while racking up grounders at a roughly league-average clip. That’s a favorable combination of skills for any pitcher, and Pineda will be viewed as an important piece in what the Twins hope will be a considerably better 2019 season.

As for Mejia, he could also be a part of the rotation picture next season, though the lack of a September platform to make his case for that role is disheartening for him in its own right. Minnesota acquired the now-25-year-old lefty from the Giants in the July 2016 trade that sent Eduardo Nunez to San Francisco, and he went on to make 21 starts for the Twins in 2017, working to a 4.50 ERA through 98 innings. Mejia notched a 3.32 ERA with 8.8 K/9 against 2.9 BB/9 in 62 1/3 Triple-A frames in 2018, and he’s posted a 2.01 ERA in 24 1/3 innings in the Majors this year.

The Twins’ rotation in 2019 currently projects to feature Jose Berrios, Kyle Gibson and Jake Odorizzi. Pineda should be favored to hold down one of the two vacancies, and there’ll be several candidates to take the fifth starter’s job, including Mejia, Fernando Romero, Stephen Gonsalves, Kohl Stewart, Zack Littell and perhaps Trevor May. Minnesota could also look to either free-agent market or trade market this offseason for further rotation help, perhaps looking to condense some of those depth options into a more definitive upgrade to bolster the starting staff.

Athletics Place Brett Anderson On 10-Day DL

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The Athletics’ recent pitching injury woes continue, as the club announced today that lefty Brett Anderson has been placed on the 10-day disabled list with a forearm strain. He joins fellow southpaw starter Sean Manaea on the shelf at an inopportune moment.

Oakland has turned in a remarkable surge, in no small part due to the unexpected contributions of several veteran hurlers. Anderson has certainly been among them, turning in 65 innings of 4.02 ERA pitching over 13 starts while earning just $1.5MM on the year.

The outlook for the lefty isn’t clear, but it’s always worrisome to hear of forearm problems. Anderson’s health history certainly doesn’t leave much room for optimism, though his back — not his arm — has typically been the culprit.

For the time being, righty Ryan Dull will come up to take the open spot on the roster. But the Athletics now seem to have an innings gap that will somehow need to be filled. Daniel Mengden is perhaps the top internal option, with Frankie Monts and Chris Bassitt also representing 40-man possibilities, but there are still a few days left to look outside the organization.

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