Randal Grichuk

Cardinals Option Randal Grichuk

By Steve Adams | May 29, 2017 at 12:20pm CDT

The Cardinals have optioned outfielder Randal Grichuk to Class-A Advanced so that he can put in extensive work on his pitch-recognition, GM John Mozeliak tells David Solomon of KTRS 550 AM (Twitter link). Per a team press release, the Cardinals have also activated outfielder Jose Martinez from the disabled list.

[Related: Updated St. Louis Cardinals depth chart]

The move comes as somewhat of a surprise, but Grichuk’s struggles at the plate recently have been pronounced; he’s hitting just .222/.276/.377 this season and has fanned in 30 percent of his plate appearances. The month of May, in particular, has been a rough one for the 25-year-old, as evidence by a .202/.253/.333 triple slash.

Strikeouts have long been an issue for Grichuk, though despite his penchant for whiffs he was a productive member of the Cardinals’ lineup in 2015-16. Over the course of those two seasons, Grichuk appeared to have solidified himself as a regular in the St. Louis outfield, hitting a combined .255/.306/.508 with 41 homers through 828 plate appearances. He also turned in quality defensive work in both center field and left field in addition to above-average contributions on the basepaths.

Grichuk’s demotion likely means more playing time for hot-hitting Tommy Pham, who has forced himself into the team’s outfield mix with a brilliant .333/.410/.621 batting line and five homers through 78 plate appearances since being recalled from Triple-A. Dexter Fowler, of course, will continue to serve as the primary center fielder, with Stephen Piscotty handling right field duties.

Grichuk’s production in the minors will likely determine the length of his stay (barring other injuries in the Majors), but it doesn’t seem likely to impact his long-term control. He needs just 67 more days of big league service time to reach three full years of Major League service, which would put him on track to qualify for free agency following the 2020 season. While it’s possible that he does spend a fair chunk of time in the minors, it’d be a surprise to see him spend enough time there to delay his free agency by a year. The Cardinals made a somewhat similar move early last June in optioning Kolten Wong to Triple-A — a stay that lasted only a couple of weeks.

Quick Hits: Quintana, White Sox, Sabathia, Harper, Grichuk

By Connor Byrne | January 15, 2017 at 3:51pm CDT

Interest remains strong in White Sox left-hander Jose Quintana, writes CBS Chicago’s Bruce Levine, who reports that teams have sweetened their trade proposals for the 27-year-old over the past week. While the Astros, Pirates and Yankees have been connected to Quintana more than anyone else this offseason, there are also other clubs in the mix, sources told Levine, who adds that the White Sox could strike a deal to move him soon. Chicago isn’t in any hurry to give up Quintana, but Levine expects it to happen prior to spring training.

Elsewhere around the majors…

Yankees southpaw C.C. Sabathia will turn 37 in 2017, the last year of his contract, but retirement isn’t on his mind. Regarding the end of the long Yankee tenures of Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira last season, Sabathia told Pete Caldera of the Bergen Record, “If anything, it made me want to play as long as I can. As long as I’m healthy and feeling good, I want to play.’’ While Sabathia is no longer the front-line starter he was earlier in his career, he did bounce back last season from a couple subpar years in a row. In 179 2/3 innings, he logged a 3.91 ERA, 7.61 K/9, 3.26 BB/9 and 50.1 percent ground-ball rate. That impressed general manager Brian Cashman, who said, “It’s a big year for him. It’s his free-agent walk year. And I’ll sign up right now to get what we got out of him last year. He was very effective.’’ Cashman also stated that Sabathia’s “expectations and hopes are to pitch for another four or five years or something like that.”
The Nationals and right fielder Bryce Harper avoided arbitration Friday when they agreed to a $13.625MM salary for 2017. That figure trumps MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz’s $9.3MM arbitration projection for Harper, leading Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com to wonder if it was a goodwill gesture on the Nationals’ part. Harper made $5MM last season, which was a bargain even during a down year for the 2015 National League MVP. By nearly tripling Harper’s salary, Zuckerman posits that the Nats may have been trying to make up for his cheap cost last year and perhaps improve their chances of extending the Scott Boras client before he hits free agency two winters from now. However, regardless of the club’s motivation, Zuckerman concedes that Harper’s 2017 salary probably won’t affect whether he’ll stay in D.C.
Cardinals outfielder Randal Grichuk underwent left knee surgery to remove loose cartilage earlier this offseason, he told reporters – including Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – on Sunday (Twitter link). Grichuk added that he’s doing well after a month-plus recovery. The 25-year-old has now undergone surgeries in back-to-back offseasons, including a procedure to repair a sports hernia last winter. With the signing of big-money center fielder Dexter Fowler in free agency, Grichuk is in line for the everyday job in left next season (depth chart).

Central Notes: Pirates, Tribe, Napoli, Cardinals

By Connor Byrne | August 6, 2016 at 8:09pm CDT

The Pirates have taken plenty of flak since sending left-hander Francisco Liriano and a pair of prospects – outfielder Harold Ramirez and catcher Reese McGuire – to the Blue Jays on Monday for right-hander Drew Hutchison. General manager Neal Huntington explained the Bucs’ thinking Saturday, telling Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review, “Our primary motivation was to acquire Drew Hutchison. … Instead, it came out that we moved two prospects to move Liriano’s contract. Now I can’t tell you that wasn’t a part of the motivation, but the primary motivation was to acquire a quality pitcher.” The 25-year-old Hutchison has spent the vast majority of the season in the minors and owns a below-average 4.92 ERA in 406 1/3 major league innings, but he has recorded a solid 15.1 K-BB percentage and is controllable through 2018. The Pirates were particularly mindful of the latter factor upon acquiring him. “Mediocre pitching is getting paid a lot of money. As we look forward, whether it’s the trade market or free agent market, the challenge of acquiring quality, controllable, productive starting pitching … is hard to do,” said Huntington. As for Liriano, Huntington expects him to do well “where hitters are unfamiliar with him, in a new environment, with new scouting reports,” but the GM believes the opposition in the National League became too accustomed to the 32-year-old.

Cardinals Place Brandon Moss On DL, Recall Randal Grichuk

By Jeff Todd | July 5, 2016 at 5:41pm CDT

The Cardinals have placed slugger Brandon Moss on the 15-day DL with an ankle injury, per a team announcement. He’ll be replaced by Randal Grichuk, who had been working out some kinks at the Triple-A level on optional assignment.

[Related: Updated Cardinals Depth Chart]

Moss has been fantastic this year after a down 2015 campaign, swatting 17 home runs and posting a strong .251/.340/.562 slash over 250 plate appearances. St. Louis has utilized him at first base and the corner outfield, making him a reasonably versatile piece as well. Though Moss doesn’t add value with the glove, he has been a major contributor for St. Louis.

It’s not yet clear how long Moss will be out, but the injury doesn’t sound terribly significant and he’ll get to rest up over the All-Star break. St. Louis will miss the bat, of course, but it has options on hand to pick up the slack.

Matt Adams has enjoyed a nice bounceback season as well, and figures to take the bulk of the load at first base. And Grichuk is a better call-up candidate than most teams have handy for the outfield, though he’ll need to effect his own recovery after a difficult first half.

Grichuk entered the year as the Cards’ regular center fielder, fresh off of a highly-promising season. But he’s been nearly half as productive at the plate as he was in 2015, slashing just .206/.276/.392 over 225 plate appearances. Since being demoted, the 24-year-old has hit for plenty of power in his fifty turns at the plate at Triple-A. But he still ran up a meager .280 on-base percentage and will need to continue to develop in that area if he’s to regain a regular role.

Cardinals Demote Randal Grichuk To Minors

By Connor Byrne | June 18, 2016 at 5:24pm CDT

The Cardinals have optioned starting center fielder Randal Grichuk to Triple-A Memphis and recalled Tommy Pham to take his place, tweets Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. As Goold notes (on Twitter), the Cardinals are hoping Grichuk reacts similarly to a demotion as Kolten Wong did. Despite signing Wong to a $25MM extension during the offseason, the Redbirds sent Wong to the minors June 6 after he got off to a nightmarish start during the first two months of the year. Wong then slashed .429/.529/.929 with four home runs in 34 Memphis plate appearances to regain his spot on the Cardinals’ roster.

Grichuk, 24, was a rookie revelation for the Cardinals in 2015, compiling a stellar .276/.329/.548 line with 17 homers and a .272 ISO in 350 PAs. Grichuk’s production was 37 percent better than the league average in 2015, per wRC+, but he’s down to .206/.276/.392 (20 percent below average) and a .186 ISO in 250 trips to the plate this year. Grichuk’s decreased output has come in spite of improving his walk rate from 6.3 percent to 8.0 percent and striking out at a noticeably lower clip (31.4 percent to 24.0). His batting average on balls in play has tumbled from .365 to .238, however, and he’s hitting fewer line drives and more grounders.

Pham, like Grichuk, was outstanding for the Cardinals last season, putting up a .268/.347/.477 line with five long balls in 173 PAs and providing plus defense. The 28-year-old has spent the vast majority of 2016 in Memphis thanks in part to an early season oblique injury, though, and has hit a disappointing .236/.344/.382 in 128 Triple-A PAs. The right-handed Pham figures to platoon in center with the lefty-swinging Wong, as Roster Resource shows.

NL Central Notes: Taillon, Adams, Grichuk, Garza

By charliewilmoth | May 28, 2016 at 2:59pm CDT

Top Pirates prospect Jameson Taillon skipped a start at Triple-A this week, but not because he’s hurt, writes MLB.com’s Adam Berry. “Taillon is strong and healthy, but as we look to monitor his and other pitchers’ workload to put them in a position to finish the season strongly, we will periodically look to reduce pitch counts by removing the pitcher from a game early or by skipping a start,” says GM Neal Huntington. Pirates fans are anxious for Taillon’s big-league debut, a day that could potentially come in June, after the Super Two threshold passes. After missing two seasons due to injury, Taillon has been outstanding for Triple-A Indianapolis, posting a 1.82 ERA, 9.3 K/9 and a measly 0.9 BB/9 in 49 1/3 innings. Here’s more from the NL Central.

Cardinals hitters Matt Adams and Randal Grichuk got off to slow starts this season but have come up huge lately, ESPN’s Mark Saxon writes. Adams is batting .382/.433/.673 in May, while Grichuk is hitting .273/.333/.481 this month after batting just .182 in April. Adams’ resurgence is perhaps the more notable of the two, given the big lefty’s disappointing .240/.280/.377 showing last year. “This is the kind of player we saw coming up through the system,” says manager Mike Matheny of Adams. “We were just kind of waiting for it to happen at this level and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be happening now.”
Brewers starter Matt Garza, who’s missed the entire season thus far with a lat issue, will begin a rehab assignment with Class A Wisconsin on Tuesday, MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy tweets. Garza says he hopes to return to the Brewers June 14. The Brewers are just 22-26 and don’t look like contenders, so it’s doubtful Garza’s return will have an immediate impact, especially given that he posted just a 5.63 ERA, 6.3 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 in 2015. If he does return in June, though, a performance closer to his 2014 (3.64 ERA, 6.9 K/9, 2.8 BB/9) could potentially make him a summer trade candidate.

Randal Grichuk Switches Agencies

By Steve Adams | April 25, 2016 at 11:46am CDT

Cardinals outfielder Randal Grichuk has changed agencies and is now represented by Casey Close of Excel Sports Management, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick reports (on Twitter).

Grichuk, 24, came to the Cardinals alongside Peter Bourjos in the 2013 trade that sent David Freese and Fernando Salas to the Angels. Grichuk was one of two first-round picks by the Angels in the 2009 draft, going 24th overall as compensation for the loss of Francisco Rodriguez to the Mets. (The Angels took Mike Trout with the following selection.) While he never cemented himself as a consensus top prospect around the league, Grichuk had a very strong rookie campaign with St. Louis last year (after a so-so MLB debut in 2014) when he slashed .276/.329/.548 with 17 home runs in 350 plate appearances. That production was aided by an inflated .365 batting average on balls in play, and Grichuk has come back to Earth in that regard early in 2016. However, he’s also made significant strides in his walk rate (6.3 percent in 2015, 13.6 percent in 2016) and strikeout rate (31.4 percent in ’15, 25.8 percent in ’16), so there’s reason to believe that he can improve on this year’s .228/.333/.439 line if he can sustain some of those gains.

With a year and 61 days of service time, Grichuk is controllable through the 2020 season and won’t reach arbitration eligibility until the conclusion of the 2017 campaign. He’ll fall a good bit shy of Super Two designation assuming he’s in the Majors to stay, so he’ll be arb-eligible the standard three times. While it’s impossible to say exactly what type of impact an agency change will have on a player’s long-term status with an organization, Cardinals fans may be interested to see that Excel Sports has brokered its fair share of extensions over the years, negotiating long-term pacts for the likes of Alex Gordon, Freddie Freeman, Chris Johnson and, most recently, Brandon Belt (MLBTR Extension Tracker link). Grichuk’s own teammate and fellow Each of those deals came when the player had already reached arbitration eligibility.

In addition to the players listed above, Excel represents a wide swath of players, including Zack Greinke, Jason Heyward, Dexter Fowler and Masahiro Tanaka, among others. All of that info can be found in the MLBTR Agency Database, which contains information on more than 2,500 Major League and Minor League players. If you see any notable omissions or errors within the database, please let us know via email: mlbtrdatabase@gmail.com.

NL Notes: Greinke, Dodgers, Cardinals

By Connor Byrne | April 17, 2016 at 9:10am CDT

In a data-driven piece, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic examines some of the reasons behind Diamondbacks ace Zack Greinke’s early season difficulties. Greinke’s ERA through three starts (6.75) is more than five runs worse than the league-best 1.66 he put up as a Dodger last season, and ERA estimators like FIP (4.52) and xFIP (4.30) also aren’t particularly bullish on his performance. Part of the reason, as Piecoro details, is that Greinke is finding too much of the plate. Only 111 of Greinke’s 3,239 pitches were center-cut (roughly belt-high over the middle) last season, while he has already thrown 14 such pitches this year, Piecoro found from Pitch-f/x data at BrooksBaseball.Net. Further, 11 of Greinke’s pitches have gone over the center of the plate and up in the zone, and 10 more have traveled over the plate and just above the strike zone. Greinke has therefore put himself in position to get hit harder than usual, which is exactly what has happened. In fact, 6.5 percent of balls hit off Greinke this year have carried exit velocities of at least 95 mph compared to 5.3 percent in 2015, per Statcast. Greinke is fresh off his best start as a Diamondback (seven innings, two earned runs, five strikeouts, one walk in San Diego), but Padres hitters swung at just 39 percent of his change-ups, the lowest rate in his last 18 starts, according to Piecoro. As a result, both the D-backs and Greinke wondered if he or someone else was tipping his pitches, manager Chip Hale said after the game.

NL Central Notes: Cahill, Cardinals, DH

By charliewilmoth | January 16, 2016 at 2:10pm CDT

Last month, the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo reported that Trevor Cahill had offers from the Pirates and Orioles to sign as a starting pitcher, but he turned them down in favor of a relief role with the Cubs. Cafardo noted that Cahill’s preference was to start, but that he preferred to remain in Chicago. Today, Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times tweets that, according to Cubs pitching coach Chris Bosio, the Pirates’ offer was for two years. The deal he accepted from the Cubs was only for one year and $4.25MM. It sounds, then, like Cahill’s preference to stay with the Cubs was strong indeed. Here’s more from the NL Central.

This offseason hasn’t gone the way the Cardinals had planned, with Jason Heyward and John Lackey heading elsewhere and David Price rejecting them for the Red Sox. But GM John Mozeliak is confident the team has what it needs to succeed, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes. “I feel like the answer for us is still we feel we have the right pieces,” he says. “If we go out and add an outfielder – where are they going to play? Who is not playing? How does that affect us? What does the short-term view look like vs. the long-term commitment? Honestly, we feel very comfortable with what we have.” Mozeliak says the team likes the idea of giving Randal Grichuk the opportunity to start in center field. The club also likes the idea of giving playing time to Stephen Piscotty and Brandon Moss.
Mozeliak says there has lately been “more momentum” for bringing the designated hitter to the National League, according to Goold (on Twitter). Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein also addressed the possibility of the DH coming to the NL today, according to Bruce Miles of the Daily Herald (also on Twitter). “We have so many good hitters coming that we wouldn’t mind the DH,” Epstein says. Against most NL competitors, the DH likely would be an advantage for the Cubs, given their strong group of young hitters and the presence of a defensively-challenged slugger in Kyle Schwarber on their roster. Epstein adds, though, that he doesn’t feel any change to NL rules is imminent.

Yadier Molina Undergoes Second Thumb Surgery

By Steve Adams | December 16, 2015 at 2:45pm CDT

Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina underwent a second operation on his ailing left thumb yesterday, reports MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch (on Twitter). The first surgery “didn’t take,” as Langosch puts it, and with a second operation coming in mid-December, she adds that it’s likely Molina will miss most of Spring Training.

Molina originally sustained the injury — a torn ligament — in mid-September but returned briefly in the playoffs after sitting out the final few weeks of the regular season. However, he exited Game 3 of the NLDS after very clearly aggravating his hand on a swing and didn’t return for the final game of that series. St. Louis has since added the switch-hitting Brayan Pena as a backup for Molina this offseason, but it certainly seems possible that he’ll now begin the regular season behind the plate with Molina landing on the DL for the early portion of the year.

Molina has suffered a torn ligament in each of his thumbs over the past two years, missing about seven weeks in 2014 before incurring this injury late in 2015. That pair of injuries may have impacted Molina’s offense, as he batted just .267/.309/.317 in 27 games following his 2014 injury and was sporting an uncharacteristically light .270/.310/.350 batting line in 2015 before injuring his other hand.

Beyond that, Langosch also tweets that center fielder Randal Grichuk underwent sports hernia surgery recently but is expected to be ready for Spring Training. Favorable timeline notwithstanding, Grichuk’s situation bears monitoring, as setbacks could impact his availability for the season. Grichuk projects to be the everyday center fielder in St. Louis following Jon Jay’s trade to the Padres; he will, presumably, be flanked by Matt Holliday and Stephen Piscotty on the outfield corners.

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