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Marcus Semien

Health Updates: Heyward, Semien, Giants, Verlander

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Jason Heyward was removed from tonight’s game prior to the fifth inning due to illness, and Cubs manager David Ross told The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney (Twitter links) and other reporters that Heyward was sent to hospital for precautionary reasons.  “He’s not a guy that you ever have concerns about, so when he says he is having trouble breathing and (feeling) light-headed, I just want to make sure everything’s all right,” Ross said.

It seems probable that Heyward will miss at least a game or two due to this situation even if everything checks out with doctors, though obviously the chief concern is that Heyward is healthy and well.  The 31-year-old Heyward is enjoying by far the best of his five seasons in Chicago, entering tonight’s play with a superb .306/.421/.551 slash line and five home runs over 121 PA.

Some more items from around baseball…

  • A rib/side injury has kept Marcus Semien out of action since August 29, though the Athletics shortstop could take batting practice on the field tomorrow, manager Bob Melvin told MLB.com’s Martin Gallegos and other reporters.  That could be a precursor for an impending return for Semien, who can return whenever he is ready since he wasn’t placed on the injured list — the A’s had a team-wide break in the schedule due to a positive COVID-19 test.  Semien is still looking to get on track this season, hitting only .229/.285/.379 over his first 151 plate appearances.
  • Giants hurlers Jeff Samardzija and Drew Smyly each threw around 50 pitches in simulated game action on Saturday, manager Gabe Kapler told reporters (including Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle).  Smyly has been out of action since August 2 due to strained left index finger, while Samardzija hit the 10-day IL on August 8 with a shoulder impingement.  It isn’t yet clear when either pitcher could return, or in what roles they could be deployed in upon their returns.  Kapler’s mention of relief work as a possible route for Samardzija is notable, given that “The Shark” has worked exclusively as a starter since the start of the 2012 season.
  • Justin Verlander has begun throwing off a mound, Astros GM James Click said today during a pregame interview with Astros Radio (hat tip to The Athletic’s Jake Kaplan).  A forearm strain has kept Verlander sidelined for all but one start of the 2020 season, though his latest rehab update provides some hope that Verlander could potentially still return at some point in the regular season or postseason.

Marcus Semien Underwent MRI Due To Side Discomfort

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5:18PM: Semien’s MRI “revealed no serious issue,” The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal tweets, and so Semien could only miss a few days’ worth of games.  (Or, a few days but no games at all, due to the positive COVID-19 test on Oakland’s roster.)

6:41AM: Athletics shortstop Marcus Semien was scratched from the nightcap of yesterday’s doubleheader against the Astros. He was experiencing soreness in his left side, manager Bob Melvin told reporters (including Shayna Rubin of the San Jose Mercury News). Semien underwent an MRI yesterday afternoon.

As Rubin notes, that broke a remarkable streak of 276 consecutive games in which Semien was penciled into the lineup as Oakland’s shortstop. Star third baseman Matt Chapman slid over to short for the first time in his MLB career in Semien’s stead. Rule V draftee Vimael Machin stepped in at the hot corner.

Surely, the hope is that Semien’s MRI will come back clean and he’ll be back shortly. At 22-12, the A’s are in extremely strong position to qualify for the postseason, so they can afford to play things cautiously. Semien has been off to a disappointing start, hitting just .229/.285/.379 with five home runs in 151 plate appearances, but there’s no questioning his importance to the club. After all, the 29-year-old is coming off a season in which he racked up nearly eight wins above replacement and finished third in AL MVP voting.

If Semien were to miss time, it’s possible Chapman could stay at shortstop. His elite defense at third base would seem to suggest he’d be more than capable of sliding up the defensive spectrum. (Of course, it’s arguable that moving Chapman off third is too risky considering how great he’s been at that position). As Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle observes (Twitter link), the A’s do have Sheldon Neuse and non-roster invitee Nate Orf at their alternate training site as potential infield depth. Utilityman Chad Pinder (who went on the paternity list earlier this week) has a bit of MLB shortstop experience as well.

Replacing An MVP-Contending Shortstop

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Because of the coronavirus, the Athletics are facing at least one very sad possibility: Shortstop Marcus Semien may never wear their uniform again. Whether or not any kind of season happens, Semien will be eligible to reach free agency next winter. He’ll be among the most coveted players available, and the low-budget Athletics have never been known for splurging on anyone. The largest guarantee they’ve ever given out still belongs to former third baseman Eric Chavez, whom they signed to a $66MM guarantee way back in 2004. And frankly, if any one player on the current A’s is going to exceed that amount sometime soon, third baseman Matt Chapman is probably a better candidate than Semien.

Now, saying Oakland will probably prioritize Chapman isn’t a knock on Semien. But Semien’s a couple years older – his 30th birthday is in September, while Chapman just turned 27 today – and the A’s have less time to lock him up with a potential trip to free agency looming.

Should Semien walk, he’d be an enormous loss for the club. Originally acquired from the White Sox in a 2014 trade, Semien has gradually evolved into an elite shortstop. He was a decent player for the A’s from 2015-18, a four-year, 2,311-plate appearance stretch in which he accumulated 9.1 fWAR, but was only a league-average hitter throughout.

Semien truly turned a corner last season during a near-American League Most Valuable Player effort. He slashed .285/.369/.522 with 33 home runs and 10 stolen bases en route to 137 wRC+, the second-highest number among all full-time shortstops (only Boston’s Xander Bogaerts fared better). And while Semien’s work at short drew criticism in his younger days, 2019 represented his second straight resoundingly successful year as a defender. He put up 12 Defensive Runs Saved and managed a 6.7 Ultimate Zone Rating. The entire package was good for 7.6 fWAR, the fifth-highest amount in the majors and one that helped him to a third-place finish in AL MVP balloting behind Mike Trout and Alex Bregman.

It’s just about impossible to immediately replace what Semien brought to the table last season, but Oakland may soon have to make the attempt. The question is: How? As mentioned, the A’s aren’t big spenders. That said, it doesn’t seem crazy to think they could at least make an effort on Andrelton Simmons or Didi Gregorius, the next best free-agent shortstops in the upcoming winter’s class, if they only command short-term contracts. The rest of the market should be decidedly less inspiring at the position, but Oakland could plug in someone like Freddy Galvis or Jose Iglesias as affordable stopgaps capable of offering roughly league-average WAR totals.  As for trades, would the A’s dare be aggressive enough to push their chips to the table for someone like Francisco Lindor of the Indians or the Rockies’ Trevor Story, free agents-to-be after 2021 who would surely be rentals for them?

Alternatively, there’s the chance of adding a second baseman via trade or free agency and shifting an in-house player to short. The trouble is that the A’s, Semien aside, don’t have any proven shortstop options from within their ranks. Franklin Barreto was once a premium middle infield prospect, but he hasn’t panned out so far, and he didn’t play much short in the minors from 2017-19. Sheldon Neuse appeared in all of nine minor league games there last season. Jorge Mateo has quite a bit of minors experience in the spot, but he hasn’t inspired at the plate. Vimael Machin’s a Rule 5 pick, and seldom do they turn into valuable performers. Prospects like Nick Allen or Logan Davidson could eventually be the solution, though neither has even gotten to Double-A yet.

Every team is in a difficult position as a result of the pandemic, but Oakland ranks near the top. The Athletics are a back-to-back 97-win team who, as constructed, could compete for a World Series championship. Semien’s an important part of that, though, and nobody knows whether he’ll play for the club again. But regardless of whether a season happens, the A’s may be mere months away from facing the unenviable task of trying to replace a player who has become a star in their uniform.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

The Athletics Have Placed Their Betts

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At first glance, the Athletics didn’t really do much of note this winter. The club retained southpaw Jake Diekman and picked up infielders Tony Kemp and … picked up a club option over Yusmeiro Petit and … umm …. signed Ryan Goins to a minor-league deal.

Viewed through another lens, though, the notoriously low-budget A’s had a blockbuster, all-in offseason. Which lens is that? The one through which Red Sox owner John Henry views the game of baseball.

After trading away homegrown superstar Mookie Betts, Henry conveyed his cherished memories of Stan The Man for brownie points with the Boston fanbase. Saying his young heart would’ve shattered had childhood hero Stan Musial “ever been traded — for any reason,” the now-grown Henry … well, gave some reasons why Betts was sent west by one of the richest teams in sports.

It wasn’t about getting under the Competitive Balance Tax threshold, Henry says. Rather, it’s just the sort of thing that is foisted upon MLB teams — even those “consistently among the highest-spending clubs in baseball” — by the collective bargaining agreement (a deal those same teams negotiated to their general advantage).

The Red Sox, per Henry, were forced to “make hard judgments about competing for the future as well as the present.” Their hands were tied by the fact that, “In today’s game there is a cost to losing a great player to free agency — one that cannot nearly be made up by the draft pick given.” Ultimately, Henry said of the organization’s leadership: “we could not sit on our hands and lose [Betts] next offseason without getting value in return to help us on our path forward.”

There are many ways to approach and discuss these comments. For our purposes here, we’re not even going to consider what they mean for the Red Sox or the game of baseball. There’s no need to call for pitchforks; that statement has already had its day in the news cycle anyway. The Boston club certainly has spent and put a winner on the field of late. And Henry at least fessed up to the fact that the team simply decided to punt near-term performance for future value, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge the rather obvious financial component of that calculus.

What’s most interesting to me about the comments is that … holy smokes, the Oakland Athletics really believe! If Henry is to be taken at his word, then the A’s are making one heckuva roll of the dice by keeping, rather than trading, their own pending free agent star: shortstop Marcus Semien.

True, Semien almost assuredly isn’t as good as Betts, but the former actually contributed a full fWAR more than the latter in 2019. Semien is only earning $13MM, just under half the $27MM Betts will receive. But it’s a much bigger portion of the Oakland payroll than Betts was to the Boston budget. (That’s true just based upon simple math, but that tends to undersell the impact. The A’s have to consider every dollar spent over league minimum, while the Red Sox have far greater operating leeway to shoehorn in cost-efficient but more-than-minimum players.)

What of the odds of success in 2020, which is obviously a huge component of this decision? The Red Sox are well behind the Yankees on paper. But the A’s are chasing an uber-talented Astros team that remains mighty even without its crack signals operations unit. Both of these teams are unlikely to take their division, but each is a solid Wild Card contender. Fangraphs’ postseason odds aren’t gospel and obviously must be taken only as a guide to true roster capability (as they are intended) … but wait, how does this make sense? The Red Sox, sans Betts, project at about a coin flip of making the postseason. That tops the A’s, even with Semien! You might quibble with the projections and point to the upside on the Oakland roster. But don’t the Red Sox still have Chris Sale and Xander Bogaerts and Andrew Benintendi and Rafael Devers?

So, even as the Red Sox determined they couldn’t “sit on [their] hands and lose” Betts without adequate compensation after the coming season, the Athletics decided to keep Semien in roughly analogous circumstances. Well, analogous from a roster talent and postseason odds perspective. The low-budget A’s are the sort of team that’s typically forced to take its Betts-type players off the table on the rationale set forth by Henry, even if it stings, in order to preserve a long-term flow of talent and keep up with deeper-pocketed rivals. Instead, they’re letting their version of Betts ride.

It’s quite the juxtaposition. Perhaps the A’s still have designs on a Semien extension, but it’s far from inevitable and we haven’t heard indication that a deal is particularly likely. And if one is to be struck, it’ll require convincing him to forego free agency … which will assuredly require the kind of price that makes the A’s squirm (even if they can now finally see a new ballpark on the horizon). A mid-summer trade fall-back is available but isn’t exactly plan A. All things considered, in relative terms, the situation is quite similar to that which would’ve faced the Red Sox on Betts.

Look, I don’t really have a Take here. I’m not here to call the Oakland front office reckless or label Henry’s explanation feckless. My point is only this: given those two teams’ divergent approaches, doesn’t Henry’s statement suggest that one or the other is true?

Athletics Avoid Arbitration With Marcus Semien, Liam Hendriks

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The Athletics have avoided arbitration with a series of key players. Of particular note, shortstop Marcus Semien will earn $13MM in his final season of arbitration eligibility, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (via Twitter).

Increasingly excellent reliever Liam Hendriks also gets a nice boost, checking in at $5.3MM, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitter link). Ditto outfielder Mark Canha, who’ll earn $4.8MM, per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale (via Twitter).

Also securing notable numbers were lefty Sean Manaea ($3.75MM) and outfielder Robbie Grossman ($3.725MM) with those reports also coming from the Twitter accounts of Slusser and Nightengale. Righty Chris Bassitt also finished off a $2.25MM deal at the last moment, Slusser tweets, thus completing the Oakland arb business for the offseason.

As compared to the projected arb values, most of the numbers don’t stand out. Semien is half a million shy of the mark set by the model, while Hendriks ($200K) and Canha ($100K) also come in just under that level. Manaea and Grossman bettered their projections ($3.5MM and $3.3MM, respectively) while Bassitt fell shy of his ($2.8MM).

It remains to be seen whether there’ll be further contract talks between the A’s and Semien, who stands out as an extension target as he enters his final season of team control. In all likelihood, it would take a team-record contract to keep him around after a breakout 2019 campaign. Hendriks is also slated to hit the open market at the close of the coming season.

Marcus Semien, A’s Mutually Interested In Extension

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9:22pm: The A’s are more focused on Semien’s arbitration figure than a potential extension, according to agent Joel Wolfe, Heyman tweets.

7:32pm: A’s shortstop Marcus Semien has told the front office he’s interested in a long-term extension, reports Jon Heyman of MLB Network (via Twitter). The A’s “would love to keep Semien” and the two sides will kick off dialogue on talks about a long-term deal, Heyman adds.

Of course, mutual interest in an extension doesn’t guarantee that a deal will come to fruition. The low-payroll A’s haven’t had ample success retaining homegrown stars in the past, and any deal with Semien would certainly be pricey. The AL MVP finalist is entering his final season of team control via arbitration, in which he’s projected to make $13.5MM. With free agency not too far in the future, Semien has the leverage to hold out for a rather lucrative deal.

There’s some chance the A’s don’t even have to top the market to retain Semien’s services. The Bay Area native starred at Berkeley and has spent the past five seasons playing in Oakland. Over the first three of those seasons, Semien was merely an average, if durable, performer. The A’s stuck with Semien, though, as Heyman notes, and they’ve been rewarded the past two years. Semien totaled 3.8 fWAR in 2018 before truly breaking out last season, slashing .285/.369/.522 (137 wRC+) en route to a nearly eight-win season.

On both sides of the ball, Semien’s development has been remarkable. Defensively, he endured some well-publicized throwing tribulations in his first two-plus years in Oakland. The past two seasons, though, he’s almost completely eradicated the miscues and transformed into one of the game’s top defensive infielders. Since the start of 2018, Semien has totaled 14 defensive runs saved at shortstop, ninth-most at the position.

At the plate, Semien put together a banner year in nearly every category in 2019. Always one with a keen eye for the strike zone, Semien chased fewer pitches and made more contact than ever, enabling him to sport a career-high walk rate and a career-low strikeout rate. He also upped his hard contact by nearly ten points from 2018, contributing to career-best marks in homers (33) and ISO (.237).

Before last season, Semien had never before been above league average with the bat, so it would be fair to anticipate some regression in 2020. That said, he turned 29 in September and Statcast largely supports his bottom line results from last season, so there’s little reason to believe he’ll revert all the way back to a league average hitter. Even output 15-20 percent better than average at the dish, while not at the level he performed in 2019, would make Semien a true star given his elite durability and plus glove at the infield’s most important position.

Semien’s market is tough to gauge. If he were to play out 2020, he’d hit free agency having just turned 30. Assuming he were to stay healthy and approach anything near his level of production the past two seasons, Oakland would surely make him a qualifying offer. That could be a small hit to his market, but there’d be ample interest in Semien regardless. If he repeats his 2019 production, he’d no doubt be among the top free agents in next year’s class. However, there is certainly some risk involved for the player in taking that course of action. He has been extremely durable to this point, but injuries are always a risk for any player. Any regression in performance, too, would obviously curtail his earning power. One need look no further than the top shortstop on this year’s market, Didi Gregorius, for a cautionary tale of how quickly one’s long-term outlook could change. Of course, Gregorius has never approached the type of season Semien just put up.

For the A’s, committing to Semien would be a franchise-defining decision. As MLBTR’s Connor Byrne explored in his offseason outlook, Oakland doesn’t have much wiggle room if they plan to open 2020 with a payroll in a similar range as their $92MM season-opening outlay last year. However, much of that payroll is tied up in arbitration-eligible players, with Oakland’s only commitments beyond 2020 a combined $25MM to Khris Davis and Stephen Piscotty. Matt Chapman and Matt Olson will surely get more expensive as they progress through arbitration, too, but there seems to be some room in the long-term budget if the A’s front office feels comfortable betting on Semien long-term. Oakland has previously made runs at both Semien and Chapman in the past, but to no avail. With both players having truly broken out, neither would come cheap at this point. The club did extend Davis as he entered his walk year, although the commitment required to lock up a two-way star shortstop like Semien dwarfs that of a DH-only like Davis.

Semien’s future will perhaps be the defining decision of the offseason for executive vice president Billy Beane, GM David Forst, and the rest of the Oakland front office. Earlier this month, MLBTR readers weighed in on the subject. In a tightly-contested vote, 37% called for Oakland to extend Semien (even if at market value), 32% thought it best to trade him this offseason, while 31% felt the sides should simply play out the season.

Exploring NBA’s Model-Based Load Management System For Position Players

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Studies around the game are investing significant resources into the study of players’ health, and though we know all change is bad and everyone hates it, baseball could soon turn to the model-based resting patterns that has swept through the NBA in recent seasons, per The Athletic’s Eno Sarris.

Technological advancement has already clung to the pitching side of the game, where Driveline and pitching labs have entered the common vernacular. Studies continue to work towards a better understanding of pitcher health, including looking at spin rate changes as an indicator of future injury. The naked eye can only gauge so much in terms of a player’s fatigue level, and the goal here is to put as much precision into the process as is scientifically possible.

Pitchers’ rest has obviously been a key part of the modern game, but it’s the position player side that might lean towards an NBA-style model-based resting program. It’s not uncommon, of course, for players to want to play everyday or even insist that their play improves the more often they’re in the game. Sarris provides Marcus Semien as an example – Semien feels days off knocks him out of rhythm.

There’s certainly validity to Semien’s line of thinking, but the counter would be that a day or two of feeling off in the box is worth it in the grand scheme of a 6-month long season. Tracking acute stress versus chronic stress is one of the key issues in managing player fatigue, and there’s more than one philosophy on how to manage it. It’s difficult to quantify the impact of fatigue on player performance, but there’s little doubt it plays a significant role in the game. In fact, it very well might be the area of greatest impact of which we know the least.

Of course, getting enough information to make a model-based resting program would mean cooperation from the players. There’s a fair amount of data acquisition possible through wearable technology, but if players aren’t invested in these programs, it will be difficult to progress. Players have plenty of reason to invest themselves in this brand of technological advancement, but they also have cause to be wary. If data collected is owned by the teams, players are put in a vulnerable position – as said data could be used against them in contract negotiations.

As pitcher velocity rises and injuries continue to threaten their livelihood, expect this conversation to gain traction, and don’t be surprised if the data ownership conversation spills over into the next round of CBA negotiations. In an increasingly flattened competitive landscape, teams already view health as a new frontier to gain a competitive advantage. To delve further, Sarris’ full article is well worth a read, as he explores this issue in full, citing a number of studies currently working to better understand player load management.

MLBTR Poll: Marcus Semien’s Long-Term Future

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Marcus Semien emerged as a true star in 2019. He slashed .285/.369/.522 with 33 home runs despite playing in a pitcher-friendly home park (137 wRC+). Semien’s walk rate spiked to a career-high 11.6%, he cut his strikeout rate to a career-low 13.7%, and easily set career marks in every power metric. The baseball traveling further than ever certainly helped, but Semien also set new career highs in hard contact rate and average exit velocity.

He was also as reliable as they come for manager Bob Melvin. Semien started 161 games at shortstop and rated as one of the league’s most valuable defenders, reaping the rewards of an elite work ethic which the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal chronicled in June. Those well-rounded contributions (he was worth 7.6 fWAR, fifth-most in MLB) have Semien alongside Mike Trout and Alex Bregman as finalists for the AL MVP award.

This offseason, though, could present an interesting question for A’s president of baseball operations Billy Beane and general manager David Forst. Semien has 5.118 years of MLB service, meaning he’s entering his final season of team control. MLBTR’s Matt Swartz projects Semien to land a $13.5MM salary in arbitration this offseason. That’s a huge bargain for the production Semien brings to the table, even if one is skeptical he’ll maintain his superstar level numbers next season. That said, it’s not inconsequential for an A’s team that ended last season with a $94MM payroll, per Roster Resource, but is currently projected to exceed $111MM in 2020. A big class of potential non-tenders, as explored by MLBTR’s Connor Byrne in his A’s Offseason Outlook, will surely cut that number down, but Oakland doesn’t figure to have a ton of financial flexibility this offseason.

That could lead to some speculation about Semien’s long-term future. By all accounts, player and organization remain extremely fond of one another, but at last look, there seemed to be little movement on extension talks. That’s not to say the sides will give up on hammering out a long-term agreement, but one coming together seems unlikely. After all, the 29-year-old has little financial incentive to give a hometown discount (and it would truly be a hometown discount, as Semien is from the Bay Area and attended college at UC Berkeley) being so close to free agency. The A’s, of course, aren’t typically ones to top the market on star players.

While Oakland no doubt hopes to contend in 2020, the AL West will be formidable. The Astros will again be heavy favorites coming off a 107-win season, and the Angels are widely expected to pursue the market’s top free agent starters. Perhaps the time is right for the A’s to gauge Semien’s value on the trade market, particularly if they don’t anticipate coming to an agreement on an extension. A Semien trade would be unpopular among A’s fans, but it wouldn’t be the first time Oakland traded a star player in his prime.

Assuming Semien doesn’t settle for less than he’s worth on the open market to stay in Oakland, how should the A’s proceed? Get a deal done with Semien at all costs and build around a likable, hometown star? Make the unpopular move to send him away after he’s fully blossomed, but perhaps at peak value? Or play it out, make a run for a third straight postseason appearance and recoup a compensatory draft pick if/when Semien leaves in free agency?

(poll link for app users, answer choices in random order)

AL Notes: Semien, Orioles, Astros

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For those actively searching for a player ready to assume Anthony Rendon’s former title as the game’s “Most Underrated” player, Athletics shortstop Marcus Semien is making a valid case for himself in 2019. As Martin Gallegos of MLB.com notes, Semien scored his 120th run of the season on Sunday, placing him just three runs behind Reggie Jackson 1969 record for most runs scored by an Athletic in a single season (link). Besides that possibly impending accomplishment, it’s important to note that the 28-year-old Semien has done more than just cross the plate in 2019. Among AL shortstops, his 32 homers place him 3rd, his 90 RBIs are good for 2nd, and his 7.2 WAR valuation places him behind only Houston’s Alex Bregman at his position. However you slice it, 2019 has been a banner year for the former Cal Bear, who will likely garner MVP consideration at season’s end.

Semien’s near-peerless production has been a large reason behind Oakland’s 2.0-game cushion on all Wild Card competitors. He’s likely due a sizable raise in his third trip through arbitration this offseason, as his $5.9MM salary this year represents one of baseball’s biggest bargains.

More notes from around the league on a quiet Sunday eve…

  • Yesterday, we passed along word of one dissatisfied ex-employee of Orioles GM Mike Elias’–namely, former special assignment instructor BJ Surhoff, who felt disrespected by Elias’ handling of his dismissal. Despite that bit of scuttlebutt, Elias is feeling good about his organization’s direction now that he’s had nearly a calendar year to direct its progress, as he told Roch Kubotko of MASN Sports in a wide-ranging interview (link).“When we came in here, the big league team (had) the worst record in the league last year,” Elias told Kubotko. “The farm system was ranked in the 20s…We had no real international scouting function, a minimalist analytics group. All of that’s changed. We’ve got our program going internationally. We’re signing players, we’re competing for players out there. We’re building towards a bigger analytics staff. The farm system’s taking a huge jump this year.” There are several other items of note in the article itself, among them his support of manager Brandon Hyde (who did ’Great’ in 2019, in Elias’ estimation) and his expectations for the club in 2020.
  • The Astros were finally able to pop the corks on champagne bottles that had remained on ice through Friday and Saturday, as Sunday saw the team capture its third consecutive AL West title. In a well-written piece from the Houston Chronicle’s Chandler Rome, manager A.J. Hinch credits mentality–not the team’s embarrassment of stars–as the source behind Houston’s success (link). “We just keep on keeping a winning culture, a winning mindset. We show up ready to play every day,” Hinch told Rome. “It’s the thing I’m most proud of. We just stay current in the moment.” Also of note in Rome’s article is a rundown of the club’s utter dominance of its AL West opponents in 2019; the club has won 32 out of its last 38 games at home against AL West competitors, en route to an overall 51-19 record against divisional foes this year.

Latest On A’s Extension Possibilities

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With third baseman Matt Chapman and shortstop Marcus Semien, the left side of the Athletics’ infield is among the most productive in baseball. The fact that the two combine to make less than $6MM (almost all of which belongs to Semien) only adds to their appeal from the low-budget Athletics’ perspective. But their days of earning relatively meager salaries might not last for much longer. Both players are candidates for contract extensions, though Semien will reach free agency after next season if nothing comes together between him and Oakland in the meantime.

To this point, the A’s haven’t handed out a longer or richer contract than the six-year, $66MM extension they signed third baseman Eric Chavez to entering the 2004 campaign. They now have a new standout at the hot corner in Chapman, a Scott Boras client who could eventually unseat Chavez as the recipient of the biggest deal in team history. It’s “believed” the Athletics are considering making Chapman an offer for longer than the one Chavez signed 15 years ago, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Fortunately for the Athletics, there’s no imminent danger of losing Chapman. The 26-year-old isn’t even slated to reach arbitration for the first time until after 2020, and once he does, he’ll still be controllable for three seasons. Nevertheless, though, the A’s may want to get out in front of the arbitration process with Chapman. After all, he has burst out as one of the most valuable players in the sport over the past couple seasons, combining defensive virtuosity with marvelous offense.

Dating back to last year, his first full season in the majors, Chapman has slashed .267/.347/.506 (130 wRC+) with 51 home runs in 1,116 plate appearances. His 10.7 fWAR in that span ranks seventh among all position players, putting him just behind Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon – a pending free agent who could collect a payday in the $150MM range in the offseason.

Considering the disparate points they’re at in their careers, Chapman obviously doesn’t have the earning power of Rendon. Depending on the length of the deal, though, Chapman could come within shouting distance of nine figures. MLBTR’s Jeff Todd posited last October that a seven-year, $80MM commitment might not have been out of reach on an extension, and that was before Chapman’s second straight overwhelmingly successful season.

Semien, 29 next month, has joined Chapman in emerging as an integral Athletic in the past couple years. By FanGraphs’ wRC+ metric, Semien was a slightly below league-average offensive producer from 2013-18, but the former White Sox infielder has found another gear this season. He’s hitting .273/.359/.469 (122 wRC+) with 19 HRs through 551 trips to the plate. Between his improved offense and quality defense, Semien has accounted for a personal-best 4.6 fWAR thus far. He’ll absolutely earn a solid raise in arbitration during the winter, but perhaps the Athletics will lock him up before it comes to that. Having just switched representation last week, he told Slusser his goal is to stick with the A’s for the long haul.

“That’s always been a big want for our family,” Semien said. “We’re extremely happy living here year round — that’s what anyone would want. And this team is such an amazing group to be around. Everyone talks about how bad the stadium is but when you have a group of guys you enjoy being around, that doesn’t matter.”

Oakland previously tried to extend Semien at the beginning of the 2017 season, when he would’ve come much cheaper. But the club wasn’t willing to match the six-year, $25MM guarantee the White Sox awarded shortstop Tim Anderson around the same time, according to Slusser. No agreement materialized as a result, and that may not change going forward, as Slusser writes “it’s hard to imagine” the A’s giving Semien a contract worth that much more than Chavez’s. It seems a long-term accord for Chapman is the bigger priority for the team.

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