Mariners Re-Sign Jamey Wright
The Mariners have re-signed right-hander Jamey Wright to a minor league contract with an invite to their Major League Spring Training camp, reports the team's Twitter feed.
Wright pitched in the Cleveland and Oakland organizations last season before signing with Seattle last July. He posted a 3.41 ERA in 28 appearances for the club and had a 61.2% ground ball rate overall with the M's and Indians. The 15-year veteran has pitched for eight different teams in the majors, plus his minor league stint with the A's last year.
Mets, Pagan Avoid Arbitration
The Mets announced that they agreed to a one-year, $3.5MM deal with Angel Pagan, avoiding arbitration (Twitter link). Pagan filed for $4.2MM, while the Mets offered $3.06MM, so the sides agreed to a figure that's closer to the team's submission.
Pagan responded to his first everyday job with a breakout season in 2010. The 29-year-old hit .290/.340/.425 with 37 steals in 633 plate appearances, filling in admirably for Carlos Beltran. Though Pagan spent most of his time in center field last year, he also played left and right.
Now that the Mets have agreed to terms with Pagan, R.A. Dickey and Mike Pelfrey, none of the team's arbitration eligible players remain unsigned, as MLBTR's Arb Tracker shows.
Braves Sign Rodrigo Lopez
The Braves announced that they signed Rodrigo Lopez to a minor league contract with an invitation to Spring Training, according to Ed Price of AOL FanHouse (Twitter link).
The Braves' rotation is already deep; Tim Hudson, Derek Lowe, Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens provide manager Fredi Gonzalez with four solid starters. Lopez will presumably battle with Mike Minor for a rotation spot and Kenshin Kawakami and Brandon Beachy provide Atlanta with even more options.
Lopez logged 200 innings for the Diamondbacks last year, posting a 5.00 ERA with 5.2 K/9 and 2.5 BB/9. The 35-year-old induced more fly balls than ground balls last year, posting a 37.6% ground ball rate. Lopez underwent Tommy John surgery in 2007 and missed time with shoulder inflammation in 2009 before recovering to start 33 games last year, the second-highest total of his career.
Brewers, Kotsay Close To Deal
The Brewers are close to a deal with Mark Kotsay, according to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (on Twitter). The 35-year-old Legacy Sports client would provide the Brewers with another option in the outfield.
Kotsay hit .239/.306/.376 in 359 plate appearances for the White Sox last year. The left-handed hitter clubbed eight homers while playing first base and right field.
The Brewers already have a number of outfield options. They recently signed Jeremy Reed to a minor league deal and outfielders Chris Dickerson, Brandon Boggs, Caleb Gindl and Logan Schafer will also be in Brewers camp this spring. Gomez, Ryan Braun and Corey Hart are the team's starting outfielders.
This post was originally published February 1st, 2011.
Minor Deals: Banks, Fiorentino
Mark Hendrickson and Greg Dobbs already agreed to minor league deals today. We'll keep track of some lower-profile agreements right here:
- The Giants signed Josh Banks to a minor league deal, according to MLB.com's Chris Haft. Banks, a former second round pick of the Blue Jays, has played in the majors every year since 2007, but his only extended taste of the big leagues came in 2008, when he posted a 4.75 ERA in 85 1/3 innings. The 28-year-old right-hander has a 5.66 ERA with 4.1 K/9 and 3.2 BB/9 in 119 1/3 career innings.
- Jeff Fiorentino is returning to the Orioles on a minor league deal after a year in Japan, according to Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun. Fiorentino, 27, has appeared in parts of four big league seasons with the Orioles and A's. He made the majors the year after the Orioles selected him the third round of the '04 draft and has since compiled a .270/.341/.324 line in 173 career plate appearances. He has played all three outfield positions, but most of his big league experience has come in center.
Garcia: Not Returning To Chicago
Freddy Garcia continues to indicate that he'd prefer to spend 2011 playing outside of Chicago, despite recent reports that the White Sox are still considering him. Last Wednesday, he stated his goal to pitch for the Yankees this season, while not explictly ruling out out Chicago or any other team. But in a recent interview with Leonardo Mendoza and Francisco Zambrano from the Venezuelan paper Lider en Deportes (link in Spanish), Garcia seemed ready to say goodbye to the South Side:
"I would love to stay in Chicago because I like the city and I have friends here, but I don't think I'm going to come back," Garcia said. "In any case, I appreciate them for trusting me last year; however, a team like New York would be ideal, and would match up with this stage of my career."
Were he to head East, Garcia would presumably slot behind Phil Hughes in the Yankees' rotation, leaving the fifth spot open for contention among a group including rookies Ivan Nova and Andrew Brackman and veterans Bartolo Colon and Sergio Mitre. With Andy Pettitte's return far from a sure thing, and Joba Chamberlain looking more like a trade chip than a starter, a healthy Garcia could help the Yankees buy time in the short term to continue weighing their long-term options.
Reds Avoid Arbitration With Volquez
MONDAY: It's a $1.625MM deal that includes some performance bonuses, according to the AP (via the Dayton Daily News).
SUNDAY: The Reds and Edinson Volquez have avoided arbitration, coming to terms on a one-year deal, writes MLB.com's Mark Sheldon.
While no financial terms have been released yet, ESPN's Enrique Rojas reported that a deal would likely be in the $1.6MM range yesterday when we learned the two sides were nearing a deal.
Volquez, 26, returned from Tommy John surgery last season to throw 62 2/3 quality innings. The right-hander, who was acquired by Texas in exchange for Josh Hamilton in 2007, posted a 4.34 ERA while striking out 67 hitters. He featured his typical shaky command (5.0 BB/9 in 2010, 4.7 for his career), but he showed no loss of velocity, as his 93.6mph average was the same as his career mark.
As MLBTR's Arb Tracker shows, Volquez was the club's last remaining arbitration case.
Mets Avoid Arbitration With R.A. Dickey
The Mets and R.A. Dickey have avoided arbitration and agreed to a two-year deal with a third year club option, the team announced. Andy Martino of The New York Daily News, who first reported the agreement, says Dickey will make $7.5MM total for the two guaranteed years of the deal, excluding the option year and incentives (Twitter link). The contract is official, now that Dickey has passed his physical, according to Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork, who says the deal is believed to guarantee $7.8MM (Twitter link).
When doctors performed Dickey's physical, one thing they're didn't find was a UCL in his right elbow. The 36-year-old knuckleballer is famously missing the all-important ligament, something Texas Rangers' doctors first discovered when they drafted him in 1996.
Dickey has bounced from team to team for most of his career, but he broke out with the Mets last season. After being recalled from Triple-A in mid-May, he pitched to a 2.84 ERA with 5.4 K/9, 2.2 BB/9, and a 55.1% ground ball rate in 174 1/3 innings. Given the nature of the knuckleball, that walk rate is mighty impressive.
“R.A. had a breakthrough season for our organization last year, meriting this new contract,” Mets GM Sandy Alderson said. “We expect R.A. to be a major part of our success going forward.”
As our Arbitration Tracker shows, Dickey filed for $4.7MM in arbitration while the team countered with $3.35MM, prompting Ben Nicholson-Smith is name his arbitration case one of ten to watch. Dickey would have been eligible for free agency after the 2011 season.
New York Notes: Pettitte, Mets, Collins, Crawford
The Yankees would like a certain left-handed starter and the Mets are looking for the right minority owner. Here's the latest on baseball's two New York teams:
- Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports wonders if Andy Pettitte will demand more than Hiroki Kuroda money ($12MM) from the Yankees. The Bronx Bombers are reportedly set to offer the left-hander $12MM to play another season.
- Martin Luther King III told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he has interest in advancing "the vision of a more diverse ownership group in professional sports."
- Mets owner Fred Wilpon "is expected" to meet with commissioner Bud Selig in New York tomorrow, according to Peter Botte of the New York Daily News.
- A number of baseball officials tell Joel Sherman of the New York Post that the Wilpons are "delusional" if they expect to sell just part of the franchise without losing operating power.
- Sherman suggests the success of the upcoming Mets season depends on how well their expensive players produce or how much they bring in July trades.
- Sherman writes that Mets manager Terry Collins does not appear to have the same 'gravitas' as Bobby Cox, or even Joe Girardi.
- Carl Crawford's deal does not prevent a team from acquiring the left fielder and flipping him to the Yankees, according to Alex Speier of WEEI.com. Crawford can block trades to two teams thanks to the no-trade protection in his contract.
The Nationals’ Search For Pitching
Justin Duchscherer is the latest pitcher to decline the Nationals' overtures and sign elsewhere, but he's certainly not the only one. The Nationals showed interest in Zack Greinke, Cliff Lee, Carl Pavano, Jorge de la Rosa, Chris Young, Javier Vazquez, Brandon Webb and Jeff Francis this offseason, without landing any of those pitchers.
It's not unusual for teams to check in on a number of free agents and potential trade targets and it's not like GM Mike Rizzo wanted to sign all of the starters he expressed interest in. The Nationals aren't necessarily surprised or disappointed to have missed out on free agents in whom they had just passing interest.
But the Nationals did have trouble attracting elite pitchers like Lee and Greinke to Washington this winter. Earlier in the month, Rizzo told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post that luring free agents to D.C. isn’t easy.
"It shows the difficulty of trying to build something," Rizzo said. "The only thing that convinces players to come is winning. It's the chicken and the egg. Which comes first? Do you win and then the players come, or do the players come and then you win?"
The Nationals sidestepped free agency and acquired Tom Gorzelanny in a trade with the Cubs, but only after missing out on another offseason trade target, Matt Garza. The Nationals were willing to spend in free agency, but did not surrender the trade chips required to acquire a pitcher of Garza's caliber.
Gorzelanny joins Livan Hernandez, Jason Marquis, John Lannan and Jordan Zimmermann in a rotation that will include Stephen Strasburg once he recovers from Tommy John surgery. It's a passable rotation, but the Nationals had hoped for more. If and when they start winning, luring free agent arms to D.C. will likely be easier, but Rizzo has a challenge before him until then.