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Breakout Candidate: Max Fried

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Max Fried ranked among the Braves’ top prospects from the time they acquired him as the headlining young piece in a trade that sent Justin Upton to the Padres until he exhausted his rookie status in 2018. From 2015-17, Fried was considered among the best in a deep system,but he never entered the club’s top five prospects (at either MLB.com or Baseball America) and was at times outranked by Sean Newcomb, Kolby Allard, Touki Toussaint, Tyrell Jenkins, Manny Banuelos, Aaron Blair, Joey Wentz, Luiz Gohara and current teammate Mike Soroka. Fried’s outlook is now considerably brighter than most of that bunch, and it’s possible that by the end of the next season — whenever that is — he’ll even have surpassed Soroka as Atlanta’s top arm.

Max Fried

Fried recently turned 26, and although it’s been nearly eight years since San Diego took him with the seventh overall pick in the 2012 draft and more than five years since Atlanta acquired him, he has just 225 1/3 MLB innings under his belt. Fried underwent Tommy John surgery as a prospect, slowing his march to the big leagues, and some of the names ranked ahead of him got earlier looks when rotation spots did open up. To this point in his young career, he has a 3.83 ERA and an FIP that’s an exact match. He’s been a quality arm, but the 2019 season was his first full year in the rotation. He produced a 4.02 ERA through 165 2/3 frames.

If you want to argue that Fried has, to an extent, already broken out — that’s defensible. Last year’s ERA, after all, was better than the league average when considering the juiced ball’s impact around the league (and especially given Fried’s hitter-friendly home park). Park- and league-adjusted metrics like ERA- and ERA+ had him anywhere from nine to 16 percent better than the average pitcher. Last year’s 3.72 FIP was 15 percent better than the league average, per FIP-. In all, Fried was worth about three wins above replacement (3.0 rWAR, 2.7 fWAR). He’s clearly already a good pitcher.

The question is whether there’s another gear for Fried to reach. The left-hander ranked 22nd among 75 pitchers who threw at least 150 innings with a solid but not elite K-BB% (18.0). More impressively, he tied for eighth-best with a 3.32 xFIP. Fried’s blend of high-end strikeout rates (9.4 K/9, 24.6 percent of the hitters he faced), walk rates (2.6 BB/9, 6.7 percent) and ground-ball rate (53.6%) all contribute to him faring well in terms of fielding-independent pitching metrics.

Looking at his individual pitches, Fried upped his four-seam velocity to a career-best 93.8 mph average in 2019. That’s particularly strong for a lefty, as southpaws tend to have lower average velocities than their right-handed peers. It’s a low-spin offering, however, and Fried’s pedestrian swinging-strike rate on that four-seamer reflects that. He does locate the pitch well, and his improved ability to work ahead in the count — his first-pitch strike rate jumped from 57.8 percent in 2018 to 63.7 percent in 2019 — allowed him to use his curveball more often. Fried’s curveball was lauded as his best pitch during his prospect days (one of the best curves in all of minor league baseball, for that matter), and he demonstrated why in 2019.

Only eight pitchers in the game garnered more swinging-strikes on their curves in 2019, and while it’s true that Fried threw more hooks than the average pitcher, his 15.5 percent swinging-strike rate topped quality curveballs like those of Jose Berrios and Sonny Gray, aligning more closely with the whiff rates of Stephen Strasburg (15.3 percent) and Charlie Morton (16.4 percent). Fried also generated a called strike on 18 percent of his curveballs; just over one third of the time that he threw the pitch, it resulted in a strike without the ball being put into play.

The curveball was always supposed to be Fried’s bread and butter, but he broke out a slider in 2019 that looks to be equally effective — if not even better. Hitters whiffed on the new pitch at a 15.3 percent clip that nearly matched his curve, and they chased it out of the strike zone at a 41 percent rate — the best of all his offerings. Fried’s spin on the slider isn’t at the elite levels of his curve, but it ranked in the 76th percentile. Opponents batted .212/.241/.327 when putting his curve into play and .200/.230/.331 when putting his slider into play. Not bad for a pitch he’d literally never thrown in a big league game until March 28, 2019.

When hitters did make contact against Fried, the quality of said contact wasn’t particularly impressive. Per Statcast, Fried allowed hitters to barrel just 4.4 percent of the pitches put into play against him, ranking 16th of 242 pitchers. Opponents batted .270/.324/.419 against Fried in 2019, which translated to a .315 wOBA. But based on the quality of contact he allowed and his strong K/BB numbers, Statcast projected a .297 expected wOBA for Fried. That 18-point gap between his actual wOBA and his xwOBA was the 34th-largest among 242 big league pitchers (with most who ranked ahead of him being pitchers who were shelled at an unsustainable rate in the first place — not quality performers).

The pitching-rich Braves still have more arms on the way. Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright highlight their current crop of minor league arms. Soroka, of course, is a highly talented pitcher in his own right — evidenced by a runner-up finish in NL Rookie of the Year voting a sixth-place nod in 2019 Cy Young balloting. It’s easy for Fried to get a little lost in the shuffle after Soroka’s electric debut and the constant hype surrounding their rich farm system. But it seems very possible that we’ve yet to see the best Fried has to offer, and there’s reason to think that his best will be enough to push him into the upper echelon of NL starters.

AL Central Notes: Buxton, Fulmer, Royals

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The Twins’ expectation is that center fielder Byron Buxton would’ve been in center field on Opening Day had the season commenced on time, writes Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The 26-year-old underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left (non-throwing) shoulder last September, and manager Rocco Baldelli said in a weekend conference call that Buxton’s rehab from the procedure “could not have gone smoother.” Buxton was a bit limited early in camp during the first spring training, but he’ll be on a normal schedule if a second (likely abbreviated) training camp is able to come together. Injuries have plagued much of Buxton’s career — crashing into the center field fence on the regular and frequently laying out for diving attempts take their toll on a body — but he turned in a .262/.314/.513 slash line (114 OPS+, 111 wRC+) in 295 plate appearances when healthy last season. Despite playing in only 87 games, he tied for fifth among MLB outfielders in Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric.

More out of the division…

  • Michael Fulmer’s rehab from Tommy John surgery is on track, and the Tigers right-hander would likely be ready for a minor league rehab stint in early July if play has resumed by that point, writes Chris McCosky of the Detroit News. Fulmer’s 2018 season was cut short due to knee surgery, and he sustained the UCL tear that led to his Tommy John surgery last spring. A late start to the year and an pushed-back end date would give Fulmer some additional innings, though he’s quick to say that he “[doesn’t] think there are any positives to take out of” the COVID-19 pandemic, even while acknowledging that it could allow him to get in more work in 2020. Fulmer, the 2016 American League Rookie of the Year (159 innings, 3.06 ERA, 5.4 rWAR), hasn’t pitched since September 2018 and will be arbitration-eligible for the third time next winter. He’s a Super Two player and remains under club control through the 2022 season.
  • Lynn Worthy of the Kansas City Star takes an interesting look at the manner in which the Royals’ front office is operating amid the suspended state of play. And while the makeshift manner in which the club’s player development staff now has to interact with players is obviously a sub-optimal setup, assistant general manager J.J. Picollo believes that the club “will end up with better processes for our offseason communication” as a result of needing to be more nimble with their interactions. Regular Zoom meetings; webinars on nutrition, pitch grips and new technologies to utilize; and more concrete one-on-one communication schedules have been put into place via a variety of platforms.

The Yankees’ (Brief) History Of Contract Extensions

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Twenty-eight different contract extensions were signed between teams and players between February-April 2019, and the Yankees were one of the many clubs that joined in on this rush.  Aaron Hicks was a season away from free agency at the time, though the outfielder chose to forego the open market in favor of a contract that paid him $64MM in new money through the 2025 season.  Right-hander Luis Severino inked a four-year, $40MM deal that covered his four arbitration-eligible years as a Super Two player, and the deal also contains a $15MM club option for the 2023 season, which would have been Severino’s first free agent year.

Another extension came after the season, as the Yankees worked out an agreement with Aroldis Chapman that would see the closer decline his opt-out clause in favor of a three-year, $48MM extension that essentially added an extra year (and another $18MM) onto the final two seasons of Chapman’s previous contract.

Three extensions in less than a year is a pretty notable amount of business for any team on the long-term front.  In the Yankees’ case, however, it counts as an absolute flurry given how rarely the Bronx Bombers have engaged in such internal long-term deals.  New York’s three extensions in 2019 came on the heels of only six extensions in the previous 18 years.

The reason for this lack of extension action is simple — it was against team policy.  “I just don’t believe in contract extensions, and that’s throughout the organization, no matter who it is,” managing partner Hal Steinbrenner told the Associated Press and other reporters in 2010.  “Hopefully nobody takes that personally. It’s just business.”

Between the time Steinbrenner officially became the Yankees’ control person in November 2008 and the start of 2019, his anti-extension stance stayed almost completely intact, with two exceptions that somewhat mirrored the Chapman and Hicks situations.  C.C. Sabathia also had a contractual opt-out decision following the 2011 season, though he and the Yankees worked out a new deal that gave the southpaw five years and a guaranteed $122MM to overwrite the previous four years and $92MM remaining on his previous contract.  Prior to the 2014 season, Brett Gardner (like Hicks) was also just a year away from free agency before New York locked him up for a four-year, $52MM extension.

Beyond the Sabathia and Gardner contracts, however, that was it on the extension front.  As Steinbrenner noted, the “no matter who it is” edict even stretched to the likes of Mariano Rivera or Derek Jeter, who both reached the open market before eventually (and, in Jeter’s case, not without some contentious words) re-signing with New York.  Even general manager Brian Cashman’s last three contracts have only been signed after the GM’s previous deals had expired.

Why would the team take such a hard line?  In short, the Yankees always wanted as much flexibility as possible in deciding their future moves, since they had the financial resources to immediately pivot to a better option in free agency or the trade market if such an upgrade was available.  Whereas other teams pursued extensions as a way of locking up young talent into their free agent years or at least getting some cost certainty through arbitration years, such concerns simply weren’t on the Yankees’ radar given their free-spending ways.

Of course, the franchise has become somewhat more cost-conscious in recent years, which likely explains the Bombers’ openness towards extensions in 2019.  After 15 years of overages, the Yankees finally ducked under the Competitive Balance Tax threshold during the 2018 season, allowing them to reset their penalty clock for 2019 (when they surpassed the threshold again).  Though New York didn’t go to the extremes of other big-market clubs like the Cubs or Red Sox in limiting or eliminating their luxury tax payments, the Yankees saw value in getting under the tax line once, plus they had the additional bonus of being able to cut their tax bill while still remaining competitive since so many of the club’s young stars seemingly broke out at the same time.

With the CBT penalty reset, the Yankees had the freedom to explore a tactic like signing Severino through his arbitration years.  The deal was seen at the time as very canny, given that Severino seemed to be a burgeoning ace, and thus in line for an escalating arb price tag.  In Hicks’ case, he may have had extra motivation to sign an extension given how the restrained 2017-18 and 2018-19 free agent markets left a lot of players settling for below-market deals or having long waits on the open market.  Hicks could have preferred the security of just remaining in New York, and his price was apparently satisfactory enough for the Yankees to make the long-term commitment to a player they obviously wanted to retain.

The early returns on both deals, however, haven’t been good.  Injuries limited Hicks to only 59 games in 2019 and he underwent Tommy John surgery last October, putting him out of action until at least June (though he might not miss any game time at all, given the delayed start to the season).  The news was even worse for Severino, who tossed just 12 innings last season due to injuries and then underwent a Tommy John procedure of his own in late February.  The righty now won’t be back on the mound until early in the 2021 campaign.

It isn’t yet clear if the disastrous starts to both of these extensions may have once again made the team wary of such longer-term deals, or if Steinbrenner and the Yankees front office still consider the process to be sound — after all, there’s still plenty of time for Hicks and Severino to make good on their deals.  Since big-picture concerns likely inspired the club’s decision-making towards those extensions in the first place, it’s safe to assume that inevitable changes to the sport’s financial structure will also impact the Yankees’ future approach more so than a pair of Tommy John surgeries.

Both baseball and the world at large are gripped with the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, plus there’s also the fact that the current Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB and the players’ union is up in December 2021.  With these factors in mind, it isn’t a stretch to say that the way baseball does business could be vastly different two years from now, which could leave the Yankees and several other teams hesitant about committing any more long-term money until things can be figured out.

Working out an extension for, say, Aaron Judge seems to pale in comparison to such matters.  But, when trying to guess whether or not New York will (once the roster freeze is lifted) seek out multi-year deals for the likes of Judge, Gleyber Torres, Gary Sanchez, DJ LeMahieu, Miguel Andujar, or any number of other players, it’s worth noting that the Yankees generally don’t extend players very often, and it wouldn’t be a shock if they return to their old wait-and-see approach.

10 Players Switch Agencies

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Agent Rafa Nieves’ newly-founded Republik Sports agency will represent several players formerly represented by Nieves at Wasserman.  A video published earlier today on Republik’s official Twitter feed reveals the names of 11 players who will continue to be represented by Nieves at this new firm.

We already heard last night that Nationals outfielder Victor Robles (a Nieves client at Wasserman) was joining Republik, and the other ten names cited in the video include a mix of prominent veteran and up-and-coming stars.  The list consists of Indians infielder Jose Ramirez, Reds right-hander Luis Castillo, Pirates outfielder Gregory Polanco, Athletics right-hander Frankie Montas, Blue Jays outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, Rockies righty Antonio Senzatela, Padres outfielder Franchy Cordero, Marlins catcher Francisco Cervelli, and White Sox relievers Alex Colome and Kelvin Herrera.

As we’ve seen in several past cases of representatives changing agencies or starting new agencies, it’s quite common for players to continue using the same agent even after that rep becomes part of another company.  We saw this in 2017 with Nieves himself, as several of the aforementioned players (namely Ramirez, Robles, Herrera, Colome, Cervelli, Polanco, and Montas) all went with Nieves when the agent moved from the Beverly Hills Sports Council to Wasserman.

The 10 changes have all been updated in our Agency Database.  If you see any notable errors or omissions within the database, please let us know via e-mail: mlbtrdatabase@gmail.com.

MLBTR Originals: 3/23/20 – 3/29/20

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Even with the baseball world shut down, MLB Trade Rumors is still covering any breaking news and also exploring some other topics.  Here’s the roundup of the week’s original content from the MLBTR staff….

  • Jeff Todd profiled different topics every weekday on MLBTR’s YouTube series, with this week’s entries covering the agreement between players and the league about how baseball’s business will be conducted during the 2020 season, looks back at both Joe Mauer’s 2010 extension with the Twins and the 2015 trade that sent Troy Tulowitzki to the Blue Jays, plus career retrospectives on Noah Syndergaard and Yoenis Cespedes.
  • Speaking of looks back, the GM Trade History series allows us to review the trades made by past and current general managers from around the game, detailing years’ worth of major and minor deals…not to mention some seemingly minor trades that suddenly look major in hindsight.  The first five executives featured are Jeff Bridich (Rockies), Billy Eppler (Angels), David Stearns (Brewers), Mike Hazen (Diamondbacks), and former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow.
  • The White Sox and Cubs don’t often link up on trades, but the most recent swap between the Windy City rivals was a doozy.  Anthony Franco breaks down the July 2017 trade that sent Jose Quintana to the Cubs for a four-prospect package headlined by Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease, a deal that now looks like one of the cornerstones of the White Sox rebuild.
  • MLBTR’s Offseason In Review series continued with examinations of what the Brewers and Rockies each did over the winter.
  • Since the offseason has now been unexpectedly and indefinitely continued due to the COVID-19 pandemic, MLBTR is looking at how the delayed season will impact individual teams.  This week’s featured clubs: the Phillies and Angels.
  • The delay is also pushing back our first extended look at several rookies who could be impact players for their teams.  Steve Adams and Jeff Todd fired up the Rookie Radar to seek out some of the top youngsters in the NL West, AL West, and AL Central.
  • Rangers slugger Willie Calhoun and Reds right-hander Robert Stephenson have already walked the path from star prospect to established big leaguer, though could either player be primed to take a further step if or when the 2020 season gets underway?  Connor Byrne profiles Stephenson, while Anthony Franco examines Calhoun.
  • From breakout candidates to rebound candidates, as Connor Byrne looks at three veterans hoping to bounce back from disappointing 2019 seasons.  Reds star Joey Votto is looking to get on track in his age-36 season, while Justin Smoak is looking for a fresh start after signing with the Brewers, and Alex Wood is likewise hoping to recover his past form on a new (old?) team, the Dodgers.

GM Trade History: Rockies’ Jeff Bridich

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It’s not always fair to judge baseball operations leaders for free agent signings.  In many cases, the biggest contracts are negotiated to varying extents by ownership.  The same can hold true of major extensions.  It’s just tough to know from the outside.

There’s obviously involvement from above in trade scenarios as well.  But, when it comes to exchanging rights to some players for others, it stands to reason the role of the general manager is all the more clear.

In any event, for what it’s worth, it seemed an opportune moment to take a look back at the trade track records of some of the general managers around the game.  After covering the Diamondbacks’ Mike Hazen, former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, the Brewers’ David Stearns, and the Angels’ Billy Eppler, let’s head to Denver to look at Rockies GM Jeff Bridich.  Since he was promoted to the job in October 2014, here are Bridich’s trades (in chronological order and excluding minor deals; full details at transaction link.)

2014-15 Offseason

2015 Season

2015-16 Offseason

2016-17 Offseason

2017 Season

2018 Season

2018-19 Offseason

2019 Season

2019-20 Offseason

  • None

 

How would you grade Bridich’s history in trades?  (Poll link for app users)

Two Cubs Employees Test Positive For COVID-19

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Two unnamed Cubs gameday employees have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, according to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times. One of those employees is recovering at home; the other is receiving hospital treatment, according to Gordon Wittenmyer of NBC Sports Chicago.

The two staff members tested positive on March 23 and 24, just more than two weeks after attending a staff training session at Wrigley Field on March 8. That said, team spokesman Julian Green told Wittenmyer that “there’s nothing definitive to suggest [the] training may have contributed.” Still, the organization would rather respond with profound caution and is doing its part to extend support to those employees.

For what it’s worth, the Cubs played their final Spring Training games on March 10 and 11. There’s been no word yet as to whether the Cubs will implement further testing for staff members who would have been in close contact with the two employees at the aforementioned training session. But that seems like a sensible precaution, given that the CDC estimates the incubation period for the coronavirus is somewhere between 2 and 14 days after exposure.

Transaction Retrospection: Jose Quintana/Eloy Jimenez Trade

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Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Eloy Jiménez’s MLB debut. With that in mind, it’s an interesting time to look back at the blockbuster crosstown deal that brought the 23-year-old slugger to the South Side.

Jiménez wasn’t the headlining name of that July 2017 swap. That was José Quintana, with good reason. The southpaw had emerged as one of the game’s most consistent, reliable starters. True, he always played second fiddle to Chris Sale, but he was perhaps the game’s preeminent #2. Over the three-plus seasons preceding the deal, Quintana combined for a 3.47 ERA/3.31 FIP with no injury history to speak of. Equally as appealing, the hurler was controlled at well below market rates through 2020 thanks to an early-career extension.

The appeal for the Cubs was apparent. They had a superlative position player core that had carried them to the 2016 World Series. The starting rotation was already a strength, but one with some question marks on the horizon. Jake Arrieta and John Lackey were each approaching free agency, and it was fair to wonder for how much longer Jon Lester could post ace-level production. Locking in a cheap, young rotation stalwart like Quintana made perfect sense for that season and beyond.

It came at a hefty price. Jiménez, Baseball America’s #14 prospect entering that season, centered the package for the White Sox. Alongside him came another top 100 prospect, flamethrowing right-hander Dylan Cease. It was easy to see the South Siders’ thinking, too. Never able to build a competent roster around Sale, Quintana, Adam Eaton and José Abreu, the Sox had already pivoted to a teardown. Abreu stuck around, but the rest of the core was shipped off for future assets. It was a fascinating, if mutually-understandable swap, with the clubs’ crosstown rivalry no doubt adding intrigue. How have things actually played out?

To some extent, as expected. Quintana has remained remarkably durable and taken the ball every fifth day. That’s been especially useful for a team whose concerns about its long-term pitching outlook have generally proven true. Lester, Kyle Hendricks and Quintana have each been dependable, while big ticket free agent Yu Darvish has had some extreme highs and lows.

Despite a deluge of recent early-round picks on college arms, though, the Cubs haven’t established any sort of pitching pipeline from the farm system to supplement that quartet. On the one hand, that lack of cheap, in-house pitching makes acquiring Quintana all the more meaningful. Yet it’s also played some role in keeping the Cubs from reaching the dynastic heights some had anticipated.

Since the deal, the Cubs have been solid, but not quite at the level one could’ve reasonably hoped for. That characterization also applies to Quintana himself. The Colombian lefty has given the Cubs 400+ innings of 4.23 ERA/3.95 FIP ball. That’s about league average production on a rate basis. With his exceptional durability, he’s a valuable pitcher, especially relative to his contract. But he hasn’t pitched at the level he showed on the other side of town. Now 31, Quintana’s entering the final season (assuming there is a season) of the aforementioned extension. He’s a plausible but uncertain candidate for a qualifying offer next winter, which could allow the Cubs to add a draft pick.

Even if Quintana does net a compensatory pick, that player won’t project to be anywhere near the level of Jiménez. (That, of course, is what the Cubs expected, since there was always going to be a high price to pay for a pitcher of Quintana’s caliber). Not only did Jiménez continue to thrive in the White Sox’s system, he’s already found major league success.

Last season, Jiménez hit .267/.315/.513 (116 wRC+) with 31 home runs in 504 plate appearances. He’s not without his flaws; he didn’t rate well in left field and could perhaps stand to be a little more patient at the plate. Yet there’s no questioning Jiménez’s massive power upside, and he certainly looks the part of a potential middle-of-the-order force. Clearly, the White Sox expect him to be just that, having inked him to a $43MM guarantee that could keep him in Chicago through 2026. So continues the long line of early-career extensions the organization has amassed in recent years. Those deals (Quintana’s included) have paid huge dividends on the whole.

Cease, too, has a shot at emerging as a long-term asset. He raised his stock immediately after the trade with a strong season and a half in the minors. That didn’t translate in his first 14 MLB starts last season, but there are things to dream on. Cease posted a solid 24.9% strikeout rate as a rookie while averaging 96.5 MPH on his fastball. His is a higher-variance profile than Jiménez’s, but the Sox surely hope he can emerge as a useful arm in the near future, even if as a reliever.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s probably fair to say the Cubs wouldn’t make this deal again. It was a perfectly defensible move at the time, and Quintana has capably filled a key need on the roster. It’s not a disaster, as a few of the front office’s free agent moves have been. But Quintana’s slight regression on the North Side, combined with Jiménez’s continued blossoming offensively, looks to have tipped the scales in the White Sox’s favor.

Quick Hits: Miller, Wacha, Expansion

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Some items from around the game…

  • Cardinals reliever Andrew Miller spoke to Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about several topics, including the recent agreement between the league and players’ union about the 2020 season, how Miller is handling the shutdown, and the rather mysterious arm problem that sidelined Miller earlier this month.  “There are some explanations for some of what I’m going through and I have a lot of appreciation for the amount of time [Cardinals head athletic trainer] Adam Olsen and Dr. [Brian] Mahaffey have put in helping me to look for some answers,” Miller said.  Though there still isn’t an actual diagnosis of Miller’s issue, “I think I have answers that make a lot of sense and they’re not the type of thing that brings any sort of concern to my health and my livelihood.”  The southpaw is currently throwing, albeit under “not…ideal” circumstances working out at his home rather than in a normal training environment.
  • Michael Wacha turned to some offseason video analysis with his father to help solve mechanical problems from the 2019 season, which put him in a good place heading into his first Spring Training with the Mets, Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News writes.  By the time Wacha met with pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and assistant pitching coach Jeremy Accardo in camp, “they said my mechanical changes that I made over the offseason were exactly what they were going to be telling me,” Wacha said.  “Exactly the same type of information or helpful tips that they were trying to get me into, I already made them on my own.”  The early returns in Grapefruit League action were somewhat promising, as Wacha posted a 1.17 ERA over 7 2/3 innings, albeit with four walks against only five strikeouts.  However, Wacha also didn’t allow any home runs, which was a positive sign after an ugly 1.8 HR/9 helped push his ERA to 4.76 over 126 2/3 innings with the Cardinals last season.  Wacha signed a one-year, $3MM with the Mets in the offseason and now looks to be a member of their starting five, in the wake of Noah Syndergaard’s season-ending Tommy John surgery.
  • With league revenues bound to take a massive hit due to the shutdown, could expansion be an ideal way to inject some new money into the sport?  Fangraphs’ Craig Edwards explores the question, noting that adding two new teams worth $750MM each (which is perhaps a conservative estimate for the price tag of a new club) in franchise fees would give each current team an extra $50MM in revenue.  Commissioner Rob Manfred has often said that the league would only consider increasing its membership after all of the current 30 teams (namely the A’s and Rays) had some type of plans in place for a new ballpark, and Edwards observes that the league hasn’t had any real financial incentive to expand in recent years.  Of course, the pandemic could now change that stance entirely, though Edwards also points out that the worldwide financial uncertainty caused by the ongoing crisis could lead to fewer potential owners willing meet the price for an expansion team, and cash-strapped cities will now have even less of a reason to spend resources on building a new stadium for a new team.

Diamondbacks, Robbie Ray Hadn’t Been Discussing Extension

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There won’t be any extension negotiations happening anytime soon around the baseball world, though even prior to the league shutdown, the Diamondbacks and left-hander Robbie Ray weren’t engaging in any talks about a new deal, the Athletic’s Zach Buchanan (subscription required) reports.  Ray is scheduled to be a free agent in the 2020-21 offseason, and he is still set to hit the open market even in the event that the 2020 season doesn’t happen, as per the recent agreement between the league and the players’ union.

An extension between Ray and the D’Backs never seemed overly likely, as the southpaw has been a fixture in trade rumors for over a year.  Rather than be one of the prominent Diamondbacks stars to leave town via trade (i.e. Paul Goldschmidt, Zack Greinke) in recent years, Ray now looks to follow Patrick Corbin and A.J. Pollock on the list of D’Backs who left in free agency.  Despite this turnover, however, GM Mike Hazen has remodeled the Snakes into a team that looks like it could compete for a postseason berth if the 2020 season happens, especially after a busy winter that saw Arizona acquire Madison Bumgarner and Starling Marte.

While last summer’s Greinke trade indicates that we can’t be totally sure that the D’Backs wouldn’t try to move Ray even if they remain in contention, Ray doesn’t have nearly the payroll impact that Greinke’s contract carried.  Ray avoided arbitration in his third and final arb-eligible year by agreeing to a $9.43MM for 2020, meaning that he didn’t represent much of a financial burden even before the league shutdown, and Ray will now earn only a prorated amount of that $9.43MM figure based on the number of games actually played in the shortened schedule.

It’s a more than reasonable price to pay for a starter who has been occasionally spectacular but mostly solid over the last five seasons.  Since coming to Arizona as part of the three-team trade with the Tigers and Yankees that sent Didi Gregorius to New York and Shane Greene to Detroit in December 2014, Ray has a 3.96 ERA, 11.3 K/9, and 2.77 K/BB rate over 762 innings.  Ray has battled some control and hard-contact issues, and has consistently had difficultly keeping the ball in the park, though getting out of Chase Field could help address that latter problem.  The 28-year-old southpaw has allowed 58 homers in 349 2/3 innings at Chase Field over his career, and only 52 home runs in 441 innings elsewhere.

Another good season would have put Ray in line for a lucrative multi-year deal in free agency, and MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes had Ray ranked sixth in the first edition of the 2020-21 free agent power rankings (written in February).  Projecting what Ray might earn is now much harder, of course, given the total uncertainty of what next winter’s market could look like in the aftermath of the abbreviated-or-canceled 2020 season.

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