Eduardo Rodriguez

AL Central Notes: Lynn, Candelario, Tigers, Twins, Ryan, Dobnak

By Mark Polishuk | June 5, 2022 at 5:52pm CDT

Lance Lynn is scheduled to make his third rehab start on Wednesday, White Sox manager Tony La Russa told reporters (including Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times). Beyond that, La Russa left open the possibility that Lynn could be activated from the 60-day injured list, assuming that the veteran right-hander is feeling good coming out of that next Triple-A outing.

Knee surgery sidelined Lynn in early April, so the hurler has yet to make his 2022 debut. Getting Lynn back in action would be a huge help to a Chicago team that has been bitten hard by the injury bug, but the White Sox are still treading water despite a shorthanded roster. The White Sox improved to 25-27 after today’s 6-5 win over the Rays.

Tigers Place Eduardo Rodriguez On IL With Ribcage Sprain

By Darragh McDonald | May 22, 2022 at 9:20am CDT

The Tigers have announced that left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez has been placed on the 15-day injured list with a left ribcage sprain. The move is retroactive to May 19. Another E-Rod is joining the team in a corresponding move, as righty Elvin Rodriguez has been recalled from Triple-A Toledo.

Eduardo was removed from his start on May 18 after recording just one out due to discomfort in his side. An MRI performed in the subsequent days didn’t find anything concerning about his oblique or intercostal muscles, making his ailment a bit of a mystery. It seems the team’s personnel have settled on a diagnosis, though no timeline was provided for his absence.

Regardless of how long he’s out of action, it’s a serious problem for the Tigers. After an aggressive offseason, it was expected that they could contend for a postseason berth this year, with their rotation standing out as a potential strength. Unfortunately, a slow start has been compounded by a truly staggering numbers of injuries to their starting pitchers. E-Rod joins Matt Manning, Casey Mize, Tyler Alexander, Michael Pineda and Spencer Turnbull on the IL. Eduardo and Tarik Skubal are the only Tigers to have made more than five starts this season, with Skubal now the last man standing in terms of rotation mainstays on the year.

Due to that rash of injuries, the club has had to lean on its depth, giving MLB debuts to Alex Faedo, Beau Brieske and Joey Wentz already this year. Elvin Rodriguez also made his big league debut, though in relief, throwing 2 2/3 innings back on April 10. He’ll make his first start in the show tomorrow. Since that lone MLB outing, he’s made six appearances in Triple-A, five starts, throwing 22 2/3 innings with a 3.57 ERA. In that time, he’s got a 21.6% strikeout rate, 13.4% walk rate and 37.7% ground ball rate. That walk rate is certainly high but is actually uncharacteristic for him, as he’s never had a rate above 8.8% before, perhaps suggesting small sample noise.

The club’s record is currently 13-26, the worst in the American League, but it can’t be entirely blamed on pitching injury woes. The team-wide ERA of 3.67 is actually 12th in MLB, though advanced metrics are a bit less bullish. The real culprit has been the lineup, as the team as a whole is hitting .219/.282/.313 for a wRC+ of 77, a figure that places them dead last across the majors.

Injury Notes: Wade, E-Rod, Skubal, Murphy

By Steve Adams | May 20, 2022 at 9:20pm CDT

The Giants placed LaMonte Wade Jr. back on the injured list with continued inflammation in his left knee, per a team announcement. Outfielder Luis Gonzalez, who was optioned earlier int he week after a hot start to his Giants tenure, is back up to take his place on the roster. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area reports that Wade had an MRI and is slated to see a third-party doctor this coming Monday to get a second opinion. The 28-year-old already missed nearly four weeks of the season due to left knee troubles and has appeared in just 10 games with San Francisco on the year. He’s hitting .240/.375/.360 in a small sample of 32 plate appearances, which is solid thanks to five walks and a hit-by-pitch but a ways off from last year’s pace in the power department. Wade smacked 18 homers, 17 doubles and three triples in just 381 plate appearances with the Giants last season.

While there’s surely concern throughout the Giants organization regarding Wade’s knee, his return to the injured list paves the way for the 26-year-old Gonzalez to try to prove that his .349/.397/.492 start to the season (73 plate appearances) has some legitimacy. No one should expect Gonzalez to maintain a .370 average on the balls he puts into play, but his 8.2% walk rate is solid and his 13.7% strikeout rate is downright tiny by today’s standards. While there’s surely some regression in store, Gonzalez was a prospect of some note in the White Sox system before landing in San Francisco, but he only ever received 13 big league plate appearances with the South Siders.

Some more injury notes worth monitoring around the league…

A recent MRI performed on Tigers lefty Eduardo Rodriguez didn’t reveal any major damage to his oblique or intercostal muscles, Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic writes. On the one hand, that’s good news, but on the other, it leaves some mystery as to what is ailing the southpaw. Rodriguez left his start against the Rays this week in the first inning, having allowed six of the seven batters he faced to reach base. His fastball velocity was noticeably down, sitting at just 89.8 mph after averaging a bit better than 92 mph through his first seven outings. He’s likely IL-bound, and it seems the Tigers will continue to evaluate him as they search for the root of the issue.
As if the Tigers’ injury woes weren’t bad enough — Rodriguez is likely IL-bound, where he’ll join Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Tyler Alexander, Michael Pineda and Spencer Turnbull — breakout starter Tarik Skubal exited tonight’s game after taking a 100.4 mph comeback liner off his leg at the end of the fifth inning. The 25-year-old Skubal blanked Cleveland over five frames prior to exiting, dropping his ERA to 2.22 through 42 2/3 frames. He’s fanned 28.4% of his opponents against just a 4.5% walk rate on the season. The Tigers announced that Skubal has been initially diagnosed with only a contusion, but MLB.com’s Jason Beck tweets that he’ll undergo additional testing tomorrow. Skubal tells reporters that he’s optimistic of making his next start, but there’s enough swelling that doctors have yet to perform imaging (hence the additional evaluation tomorrow).
Mariners catcher Tom Murphy, out since dislocating his shoulder on a tag play at home plate back on May 6, had a setback in his recovery and isn’t expected to come off the injured list anytime soon, tweets Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times. Further specifics haven’t been announced by the team just yet, but it’s a notable blow given that Murphy was out to a .303/.439/.455 start to his season, albeit through a small sample of 42 plate appearances. He’s been a .240/.321/.440 hitter overall in 687 plate appearances since joining the Mariners in 2020, and his absence will leave the team reliant on young backstops Cal Raleigh and Luis Torrens, both of whom have struggled immensely at the plate this year.

Eduardo Rodriguez Suffers Side Injury, Likely Headed For IL

By Mark Polishuk | May 18, 2022 at 3:19pm CDT

3:19PM: Rodriguez left the game due to discomfort in his left side, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch told reporters (including MLive’s Evan Woodbery). The left-hander is likely to require an injured list placement.

1:57PM: Eduardo Rodriguez lasted just one-third of an inning in today’s start against the Rays, and left the game after a mound visit from the Tigers’ team trainer. Rodriguez was clearly off his game, allowing four singles and a walk before recording his only out of the afternoon.

After issuing another walk, the left-hander then indicated towards the Tigers’ dugout, which prompted the mound visit and Rodriguez’s departure after only 23 pitches. Only two of those pitches hit the 90mph threshold, as E-Rod’s fastball velocity was a few miles below his 92mph average.

There hasn’t yet been an update on Rodriguez’s condition, but pitching injuries have unfortunately become far too common for the Tigers this season. Matt Manning, Casey Mize, Michael Pineda, and Tyler Alexander have all hit the injured list since Opening Day, resulting in Beau Brieske, Alex Faedo, and Joey Wentz all being called up to make their Major League debuts. If Rodriguez might now also be facing an IL visit, swingman Wily Peralta is probably the likeliest candidate to step into regular rotation work.

One of the major additions of a busy offseason for Detroit, Rodriguez signed a five-year, $77MM free agent contract in November, with the Tigers eyeing the southpaw as a veteran cornerstone for its young rotation. After a slow start, Rodriguez looked to be putting things together over his last two outings, with just one run allowed in 13 1/3 innings prior to today’s abbreviated start.

Which 2022 Draft Picks Have Teams Gained And Lost From Qualifying Offer Free Agents

By Mark Polishuk | December 19, 2021 at 8:34pm CDT

Of the 14 free agents to receive qualifying offers this winter, nine have already figured out where they will be playing next season, leading to some noteworthy adjustments to the 2022 draft order. For a refresher on the QO rules, you can check this list of what signing a qualifying offer-rejecting free agent would cost each team, or this list of what teams receive as compensation for losing a QO-rejecting free agent.

Or, for simplicity’s sake, you could just read this post right here as a quick summary of the extra picks gained and lost due to these signings. First of all, four of the nine signed players don’t factor into the discussion, since they are back with their former teams — Brandon Belt accepted the Giants’ qualifying offer in the first place, while Raisel Iglesias re-signed with the Angels, Chris Taylor re-signed with the Dodgers, and Justin Verlander re-signed with the Astros.

For the five other signed QO free agents and the five unsigned QO free agents, here is the breakdown of what their former teams would receive as compensatory picks. The specific order of the compensatory picks is based on the previous year’s record, so the team with the fewer wins would get the superior pick.

Extra pick after Round 1 of the draft: This is awarded to a team that receives revenue-sharing funds, and whose QO-rejecting free agent signs with another team for more than $50MM in guaranteed salary. The Rockies and Reds would therefore each qualify if Trevor Story (Colorado) or Nick Castellanos (Cincinnati) signed for $50MM+. Since the Reds had the better record between the two teams, the Rockies would pick 32nd overall and the Reds 33rd overall if both clubs indeed ended up in this same category. If Story and/or Castellanos signed for less than $50MM, Colorado and/or Cincinnati would be in the next group…
Extra pick between Competitive Balance Round B and Round 3: Four picks have already been allotted within this group, comprised of teams who don’t receive revenue sharing funds. The Mets received an extra selection when Noah Syndergaard signed with the Angels, the Blue Jays received two picks when Marcus Semien signed with the Rangers and Robbie Ray signed with the Mariners, and the Red Sox got a pick when Eduardo Rodriguez signed with the Tigers. Like Toronto, the Mets could also receive a second pick if Michael Conforto signed elsewhere. The Braves (Freddie Freeman) and Astros (Carlos Correa) would also land in this category if their respective QO free agents left town. The draft order of this sandwich round based on 2021 record would line up as Mets (77 wins), Braves (88 wins), Blue Jays (91 wins), Red Sox (92 wins), and Astros (95 wins). For the moment, the four picks in this group represent the 75th-79th overall selections in the draft, though that specific order will be altered based on where the other QO players sign, or what other second-round picks might be surrendered as penalties for signing those free agents.
Extra pick after Round 4: For teams that lose a QO free agent but exceeded the luxury tax threshold in 2021, their compensatory pick is pushed back to beyond the fourth round. Therefore, this is where the Dodgers will make their extra pick in the wake of Corey Seager’s deal with the Rangers.

Moving on, here is what the four teams who have signed QO free agents had to give up in draft capital…

Second-highest 2022 draft pick, $500K in international signing pool money: The Angels didn’t receive revenue sharing funds, and didn’t exceed the luxury tax in 2021. As a result, signing Syndergaard will cost the Angels their second-round draft selection and a chunk of their funds for the next international signing period.
Third-highest 2022 draft pick: The Mariners and Tigers fall into this category, as teams who received revenue sharing payments in 2021. For Seattle, this is simply their third-round selection. For Detroit, their “third-highest pick” won’t be determined until MLB establishes the order for this year’s Competitive Balance Draft. Depending on which of the two CBD rounds the Tigers are drawn into, their cost for the Rodriguez contract could either be their second-rounder or their pick in Competitive Balance Round B.
Both their second AND third-highest 2022 draft picks, and $500K in international signing pool money: The Rangers splurged by signing both Seager and Semien, and thus faced twice the draft penalty (both their second-round and third-round picks) for landing a pair of QO free agents. Texas would have faced the same penalty as the Angels if it had signed just one of Seager or Semien.
Second- and fifth-highest 2022 draft picks, $1MM in international signing pool money: The stiffest penalty is reserved for teams who exceeded the luxury tax threshold last season. Therefore, only the Dodgers and Padres would have to give up multiple picks to sign a single QO free agent, which would surely influence any efforts on their part to pursue Correa, Freeman, Conforto, Story, or Castellanos.

Red Sox Notes: Baez, Rodriguez, Matz

By Steve Adams | November 19, 2021 at 10:29am CDT

The Red Sox are among the teams with some level of early interest in free-agent infielder Javier Baez, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported this week. Boston already has a high-end shortstop in place, but Xander Bogaerts can opt out of the remaining three years and $60MM of guaranteed money on his contract at the end of the 2022 season. Baez, 29 next month, is also a markedly better defender at shortstop, which could open the possibility of the Sox realigning their infield in some capacity.

Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has made it clear that his front office values defensive versatility since taking the reins in Boston — evidenced by the signings of Enrique Hernandez, Marwin Gonzalez and Danny Santana. Of course, Baez figures to be in an entirely different stratosphere from a salary standpoint, and the Sox also now have some additional needs on the pitching staff with Eduardo Rodriguez officially joining the Tigers on a five-year contract. The Red Sox already have about $173MM in projected 2022 payroll at this point, plus about $184MM of luxury-tax obligations, per Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez.

Bloom spoke this week about the difficulty of losing Rodriguez, candidly acknowledging that the left-hander’s market simply reached a point where the Sox were no longer certain that making the top offer “was the best use of our resources” (link via MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo). That said, the decision did not come lightly for Bloom and his colleagues — some of whom have been with Rodriguez since he debuted in 2015.

“We were certainly fighting our emotions on that the whole way because of how highly we think of him and how much we enjoyed having him here,” said Bloom, who went on to add that the club was happy to see the market reward Rodriguez after a trying 2020 season lost to Covid-19 and myocarditis:

“There were points in time where we weren’t even sure if he was going to be able to play again, so to see him come back this year, do what he did, and now to have the market reward him for it, it’s a really great story.”

Nevertheless, with Rodriguez out the door, the Sox figure to explore other avenues to address a rotation that currently projects to include Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi, Nick Pivetta, Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock. It’s an undeniably talented mix, but neither Houck nor Whitlock has actually produced for a full big league season while shouldering a starter’s workload. Sale, meanwhile, will be in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery, while Eovaldi has a lengthy injury history of his own. The 28-year-old Pivetta (29 in February) was solid in 30 starts last year, but his career has been punctuated by inconsistency thus far.

With those questions in mind, southpaw Steven Matz is among the free agents with whom the Red Sox are in contact, tweets Cotillo. The 30-year-old Matz just wrapped up a strong season with the division-rival Jays, for whom he pitched to a 3.82 ERA with a 22.3% strikeout rate and 6.6% walk rate through 150 2/3 frames. Toronto declined to issue a qualifying offer to Matz, meaning he won’t come with any draft compensation for the Red Sox or any other interested parties. It’s been a robust market for starters so far, which bodes well for Matz and other arms remaining on the market — particularly with quite a few big-market clubs like Boston still on the hunt for arms.

Tigers Sign Eduardo Rodriguez

By Anthony Franco | November 16, 2021 at 12:38pm CDT

The Tigers have made the biggest move of the 2021-22 offseason to date, formally announcing a five-year contract with free agent starter Eduardo Rodríguez. The deal comes with a $77MM guarantee and can max out at $80MM, depending upon incentives.

The contract also affords Rodriguez the opportunity to opt out of the after the second season of the deal. MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes reports that Rodriguez will earn a combined $28MM total from 2022-23 (Twitter link), meaning he’ll be faced with the decision of whether to opt out of the remaining three years and $49MM on his contract after the 2023 campaign. Rodríguez, who recently rejected a qualifying offer from the Red Sox, is represented by Mato Sports Management.

Rodríguez was seemingly in strong demand — his contract tops MLBTR’s projected five-year, $70MM estimate — drawing varying levels of interest from the Blue Jays, Angels and incumbent Red Sox. (Boston presented him with a multi-year offer in addition to the one-year qualifying offer.) Detroit will wind up topping the bidding, in the process installing a mid-rotation arm to its fairly young starting staff. That was known to be a priority for the Tigers’ front office, with general manager Al Avila frankly telling reporters after the season that adding an established starter “would be a necessity” for the club.

Detroit has also been tied to right-handers Jon Gray and Anthony DeSclafani, but it seems Rodríguez will be the Tigers’ big rotation add of the offseason. He’ll serve as the veteran anchor in a starting group that also includes young, highly-touted arms like Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning. With Spencer Turnbull expected to miss most or all of 2022 after undergoing July Tommy John surgery and Matthew Boyd looking likely to be non-tendered after undergoing a flexor procedure, it’s possible Detroit looks to add additional rotation depth later in the offseason. It’s unlikely any subsequent pick-up will be as impactful or as costly as Rodríguez, whose reported contract terms are quite strong.

Not only does he beat MLBTR’s projected guarantee by $7MM, he picks up the freedom to re-test the market two years from now. The southpaw won’t turn 29 years old until April 2022, meaning he’ll only be entering his age-31 campaign over the 2023-24 offseason. If he pitches well over the next couple seasons, it’s easy to envision Rodríguez opting out and hitting free agency in search of another long-term deal during a winter without any sort of uncertainty about the collective bargaining agreement. Yet the contract’s five-year guarantee also gives him solid stability to guard against injuries or underperformance that could crop up over the next two years.

That Rodríguez generated such strong interest and landed this kind of commitment from the Tigers serves as the latest reminder of teams’ changing methods of player evaluation. On the surface, Rodríguez wouldn’t appear to be coming off a particularly impressive season. He racked up 157 2/3 innings over 32 appearances (31 starts), but he did so with a career-worst 4.74 ERA. Not long ago, a five-year guarantee for a pitcher coming off a platform season in which his ERA was pushing 5.00 would’ve been inconceivable.

Teams are going far beyond ERA to evaluate pitchers in 2021, though, and Rodríguez’s underlying numbers were very strong. He struck out 27.4% of opponents this past season, a mark that’s nearly five percentage points above the league average for starters. Rodríguez’s 11.7% swinging strike rate is also a bit north of the 10.9% league mark, his fourth consecutive healthy season generating whiffs at greater than an 11% clip.

Rodríguez also has solid control, with his walk percentages typically hovering right around the league average. He doled out free passes at just a 7% rate in 2021, the lowest mark of his career. And despite pitching in one of the game’s most hitter-friendly home parks and divisions, he’s never really had issues preventing home runs.

More than anything, Rodríguez’s poor run prevention numbers in 2021 were the result of what happened when batters put the ball into play. Opponents had a .363 batting average on balls in play this past season, the second-highest mark among the 129 pitchers with 100+ frames. It’s not as if Rodríguez was simply getting battered night in and night out, though; opposing hitters’ 86.5 MPH average exit velocity was in the bottom ten percent leaguewide, while their 33.6% hard contact rate was in the worst fifteen percent.

Between his combination of swing-and-miss stuff, control and soft contact, Rodríguez fared quite well in the eyes of ERA estimators. While his actual ERA ranked 100th of that group of 129 hurlers, his FIP (3.32) and SIERA (3.64) checked in 21st and 24th, respectively. The Tigers are clearly of the belief that those metrics better reflect Rodríguez’s true talent level, with his ghastly 2021 run prevention attributable mostly to some combination of poor luck and a Boston defense that was the league’s worst at turning balls in play into outs. In prior seasons, Rodríguez’s peripherals and ERA aligned a lot more closely, and he posted a cumulative 3.92 ERA/3.84 FIP between 2017-19.

A deeper dive into Rodríguez’s underlying numbers explains why the Tigers were willing to put forth this kind of financial outlay, but that’s not to say the move is without risk. Long-term investments in pitchers are inherently a gamble, considering the rate of pitcher injuries throughout the league. And while Rodríguez has been a durable workhorse for the bulk of his career, he didn’t pitch at all in 2020 after a scary bout with myocarditis (essentially inflammation of the heart) that arose from a case of COVID-19.

Rodríguez was open about the toll the disease took on his body, with doctors forbidding seemingly mundane tasks like walking his dog and playing video games for months — to say nothing of a strenuous activity like pitching (link via James Wagner of the New York Times). In that context, his return to the field in 2021 was remarkable, and he didn’t look worse for wear once he could return to the diamond. Detroit’s medical staff no doubt did due diligence on evaluating how likely that unfortunate circumstance would be of affecting Rodríguez over the long term.

It’s not yet clear precisely how Rodríguez will be paid over the coming seasons. If he’s paid a flat $15.4MM sum annually, that’d push Detroit’s 2022 payroll just above $125MM, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. Non-tendering a few arbitration eligible players like Boyd, Niko Goodrum and Dustin Garneau could knock $10MM+ off that tally. The Tigers would still be far above the approximate $81MM payroll with which they entered the 2021 season (via Cot’s Baseball Contracts), but the franchise has spent nearly $200MM on players in seasons past.

The Tigers’ biggest spending days came during the tenure of late owner Mike Ilitch. The franchise drastically reduced payroll after he passed away and left primary control of the team to his son Christopher Ilitch. Detroit has been amidst a massive rebuild for essentially all of the latter’s ownership tenure, however, and Ilitch suggested in August that he’d be prepared to spend for “high-impact” players. Rodríguez certainly qualifies, and it’s generally expected the Tigers will be among the primary suitors in this offseason’s star-studded free agent shortstop class as well. Indeed, the Detroit front office has had at least cursory conversations with representatives for Carlos Correa, Corey Seager and Trevor Story, among others.

As for the Red Sox, they’ll now have to replace a player who’s been a valuable rotation member for the past six seasons. Rodríguez broke in with Boston in 2015 and has been a fixture on the starting staff ever since (excluding his missed 2020 campaign). He was a key member of the Sox’s World Series-winning 2018 team, finished sixth in 2019 AL Cy Young Award voting and pitched in the postseason for Boston in each of 2017, 2018 and 2021.

Because the Red Sox made him a qualifying offer, they will pick up a compensatory pick in next summer’s amateur draft. As a team that neither received revenue sharing nor exceeded the luxury tax threshold in 2021, Boston receives a pick after Competitive Balance Round B (typically in the 70-75 overall range).

The Tigers, meanwhile, will forfeit a pick as a penalty for signing away a qualified free agent. Detroit received revenue sharing in 2021, meaning they’ll only lose their third-highest draft choice next year. Were the Tigers to sign another qualified free agent this offseason, they’d surrender their fourth-highest pick as well.

Cody Stavenhagen of the Athletic first reported that Rodríguez was nearing agreement on a multi-year deal with the Tigers. Jon Heyman of the MLB Network reported Rodríguez and the Tigers were in agreement on a five-year contract. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the guarantee to land within the $77MM – $80MM range. Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported the presence of an opt-out clause. Heyman reported the guarantee to be $77MM, that Rodríguez’s opt-out possibility came after the 2023 season, and the possibility of incentives. Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press pegged those possible incentives at $3MM and reported the presence of no-trade protection.

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Sports.

Latest On Eduardo Rodriguez

By Darragh McDonald | November 14, 2021 at 2:18pm CDT

Eduardo Rodriguez has until November 17 to decide whether or not to accept the $18.4MM qualifying offer extended to him by the Red Sox, but seems to be garnering a decent amount of attention from other clubs in the meantime. MLB Network’s Jon Morosi reports that the Blue Jays, Angels and Tigers are interested in the lefty, who turns 29 in April.

The free agency of Rodriguez is an interesting case, as there’s a disconnect between his surface results and underlying numbers. In 2021, he had a strikeout rate of 27.4%, walk rate of 7.0% and groundball rate of 43.2%, all of those numbers being better than league average. Despite all of that, his ERA was a lofty 4.74. However, there seems to be quite a bit of bad luck in there, as his BABIP of .363 was much higher than his previous seasons, and all the advanced metrics seemed to think he deserved an ERA closer to the 3.50 range. MLBTR recently predicted that teams would see past that ERA, with Rodriguez getting a contract in the range of five years, $70MM, and this early interest seems to suggest that may be the case. Since extending that one-year qualifying offer, it has been revealed that the Red Sox added a multi-year offer to the table, and the interest of the Angels had been previously reported as well.

The fact that the Blue Jays are interested is hardly surprising, given their rotation situation. Fellow lefties Robbie Ray and Steven Matz have both entered free agency, leaving Toronto with a top-heavy rotation of Jose Berrios, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Alek Manoah, with two spots available for options such as Ross Stripling, Nate Pearson, Thomas Hatch and Anthony Kay. They are also very familiar with Rodriguez by virtue of his pitching for their division rivals over the entirety of his career thus far. The Blue Jays figure to consider all options to bolster their pitching staff, and have already been connected to the Justin Verlander showcase as well as making a strong offer to Andrew Heaney in the early days of this offseason.

As for the Tigers, they are looking to jump out of their rebuild and into contention for 2022. After an awful April in 2021 where they went 8-19, the club went 69-66 the rest of the way, which perhaps suggests they were a better club than their 77-85 record would indicate. It could be a very busy offseason for the Tigers, as Morosi also says they’re open to adding a shortstop and an outfielder. Their current rotation primarily consists of young and still-developing hurlers like Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning. They’ve likely lost Spencer Turnbull for 2021 due to Tommy John surgery and perhaps lost Matthew Boyd to flexor tendon surgery, creating the need for a veteran contributor like Rodriguez. Like the Blue Jays, they have also been frequently mentioned in rumors so far, being represented at the aforementioned Verlander showcase, as well as showing interest in Anthony DeSclafani and Jon Gray.

Minasian: Angels Hope To “Significantly Improve” Rotation This Offseason

By Steve Adams | November 11, 2021 at 8:47am CDT

TODAY: The Angels also have interest in Marcus Stroman, Alex Wood, and Noah Syndergaard, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.

NOVEMBER 9, 8:58pm: Minasian reiterated his desire to land an impact starter when speaking with Alden González of ESPN this evening (Twitter link). “Frontline starting pitching is tough to acquire. It’s very difficult,” the GM acknowledged. “That being said, we’d like to significantly improve our rotation. That’s an area where we’ll definitely look for a certain type of quality.”

2:16pm: It’s become something of an offseason tradition to note that the Angels are in the market for rotation help, and that’s again the case as the 2021-22 offseason commences. Second-year general manager Perry Minasian again told reporters at this week’s GM Meetings that pitching help is his top priority — Minasian offered a similar outlook in early October — and perhaps more importantly suggested that the team isn’t operating under any payroll constraints (Twitter links via Jack Harris of the L.A. Times). Asked about the budget, Minasian simply replied he “wouldn’t rule us out of anything.”

It’s hardly a surprise to see the Angels again in the market for pitching help — especially with regard to the rotation. Halos starters ranked 26th in the Majors with just 776 1/3 innings pitched in 2021, and their collective 4.78 ERA ranked 22nd. In terms of fielding-independent metrics like FIP and SIERA, the Angels were a middle-of-the-pack club, and the same was true of their strikeout percentage. No team in baseball saw its starters walk a higher percentage of opponents than the Angels’ nine percent mark, however, and their rotation ranked 15th in hit batters despite tallying the fifth-fewest innings of any team in MLB.

Minasian confirmed to Harris and others that the team was represented at yesterday’s Justin Verlander showcase, and MLB.com’s Jon Morosi tweets that the Angels have made some early inquiries with free-agent lefties Robbie Ray and Eduardo Rodriguez. Any big-market club with a need in the rotation figures to check in with the representatives for this trio of pitchers, of course, but it’s notable that all three of Verlander, Ray and Rodriguez have received qualifying offers from their respective clubs.

If the Angels were to sign anyone from that trio, they’d need to forfeit their second-highest draft selection and $500K of their international bonus pool. For some teams, that’s a firm roadblock, but it’s at least somewhat telling that the Angels don’t seem fazed by that reality. Their early interest in this group meshes well with Minasian’s sentiment that they’re not ruling anything out as they look to address a longstanding rotation need.

In the bullpen, the Angels have made a qualifying offer of their own, extending that $18.4MM proposal to closer Raisel Iglesias. Minasian hasn’t received any indication as to whether Iglesias will accept or decline the offer — the latter seems likely — but emphasized (via Harris) that the Angels would like to have Iglesias at the back of their ’pen again in 2022, whether he accepts or declines.

The Angels’ rotation currently projects to be headlined by MVP frontrunner Shohei Ohtani, with younger options such as Patrick Sandoval, Jose Suarez, Jaime Barria, Reid Detmers, Griffin Canning and Janson Junk among the options to round things out. It’s an inexperienced group, to say the least, so it’s likely the Angels will be in the market for multiple veteran arms to join the group in the offseason. Alex Cobb previously expressed interest in returning to the club but will at least be able to field interest from other clubs now that he’s a free agent.

From a payroll vantage point, the Angels currently owe a combined $108.95MM to five players: Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, Justin Upton, David Fletcher and Ohtani. Add in a modest projection of $7.7MM in arbitration salaries — including a combined $2.8MM to non-tender candidates Junior Guerra and Phil Gosselin — as well as a slate of pre-arbitration players, and next year’s projected payroll jumps to somewhere in the $125-130MM range.

For a team that carried a $182MM payroll in 2021 and recently saw Albert Pujols’ decade-long megadeal come off the books, that’s a fair bit of flexibility. And, considering further that Justin Upton’s backloaded contract ($28MM in 2022) is off the books next winter, the outlook is a bit brighter yet. The Angels will still surely want to consider a long-term deal to keep Ohtani beyond the 2023 campaign, currently his final year of club control, but there ought to be room to bring in an arm of some note.

That said, with all of Trout, Rendon and ideally Ohtani on the books for the long haul, it might be difficult for the Angels to sign two high-end pitchers to long-term arrangements. It’s feasible that they could sign someone like Ray or Rodriguez to a long-term deal, ink another impact starter to a shorter-term arrangement — Verlander, Max Scherzer and Carlos Rodon are among the candidates for that type of deal, speculatively speaking — and then look to the trade market for another arm. The Reds, Marlins and Athletics could all look to move some starters this winter, and the Halos of have several promising young outfielders, including Jo Adell, Brandon Marsh and Jordyn Adams. Any of the previously mentioned young rotation options could also be included in a package for a more established arm.

Regardless of how things unfold, the Angels have a good bit of payroll space at their disposal for at least the next few years. The manner in which they address the rotation this winter and the outcome of their inevitable extension talks with Ohtani will dictate how things look in 2023 and beyond.

Red Sox Have Made Multi-Year Offer To Eduardo Rodriguez

By Steve Adams | November 10, 2021 at 10:00am CDT

In addition to their one-year, $18.4MM qualifying offer to Eduardo Rodriguez, the Red Sox have also made a multi-year contract offer to the free-agent lefty, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports (via Twitter). Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said earlier this week that there was mutual interest in a longer-term deal between the two parties (via Alex Speier of the Boston Globe).

Proposed terms aren’t clear at this point, but the fact that the Sox are trying to retain Rodriguez on a multi-year pact is nevertheless of some note. We’ve seen players accept a qualifying offer and still work out a subsequent extension in the past — Jose Abreu and the White Sox, for instance — but interest in Rodriguez figures to be robust. The fact that the Sox are looking at multi-year arrangements is at least a sign of a healthy market. Rodriguez has already been loosely linked to the Angels, and MLB.com’s Jon Morosi tweets this morning that the Tigers have showed some “early interest” as well.

The 28-year-old Rodriguez was viewed by some as a surprise recipient of the qualifying offer on the heels of a 4.74 ERA this season. Beyond that mark, however, everything in the lefty’s profile looks quite appealing. Rodrgiuez posted career-best marks in strikeout rate (27.4%) and walk rate (7.0%) while effectively tying career-best marks in swinging-strike rate (11.7%), called-strike rate (16.4%) and opponents’ chase rate (33.7%).

Rodriguez was also among the very best in baseball in terms of limiting hard contact (90th percentile average exit velocity, 87th percentile hard-hit rate) and finished the season on a rather strong note. The lefty posted a 3.71 ERA and 2.89 FIP following the All-Star break, including a 2.11 ERA in his final four starts of the season. Rodriguez was pulled early in his Game 1 ALDS date with the Rays after allowing a pair of runs in 1 2/3 innings, but he came back strong in his next two starts, allowing just eight hits and punching out 13 with no walks over the course of 11 innings. In all, over Rodriguez’s past three healthy regular seasons, he carries a 4.11 ERA, 3.63 FIP and 3.95 SIERA in just shy of 500 innings.

“Healthy” seasons is a key distinction, of course. The 2020 season was completely lost for Rodriguez when he developed myocarditis in the wake of a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. Rodriguez detailed the ordeal to James Wagner of the New York Times back in May, explaining that he couldn’t even get through 10 pitches in a bullpen session at one point before debilitating exhaustion overtook him. He was eventually barred from virtually any physical activity for three months, with even minor tasks like walking his dog and going to the supermarket off the table.

Given that context, it’s somewhat remarkable that Rodriguez was able to make it back for a full slate of 32 games in 2021 (including a lone, one-inning relief stint late in his final appearance). He tallied 157 2/3 innings during the regular season and tacked on another 12 2/3 in the postseason for a total of 35 games pitched. The Sox were seemingly mindful of his per-start workload, as he averaged just north of five frames per outing — a far cry from the six innings he averaged in 2019. Still, the overall workload is quite encouraging, given where Rodriguez was a year ago at this time.

All of that will be weighed by teams as they determine how aggressively to pursue Rodriguez, as will the fact that he’s tied to draft compensation by virtue of that aforementioned qualifying offer. Rodriguez has until Nov. 17 to determine whether to accept or reject that one-year, $18.4MM offer.

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