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Free Agent Profile: Scott Feldman

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Scott Feldman didn't exactly take a conventional path to his first free agent contract. As a 23-year-old in 2006, he enjoyed a solid rookie campaign in the Rangers' bullpen only to struggle through his sophomore campaign in the same role. Texas responded by giving him 25 starts in 2008, which produced an ERA over 5.00, but Feldman posted a 4.08 ERA in 189 2/3 innings in 2009. His ERA spiked back over 5.00 in 2010, and microfracture surgery on his knee caused him to miss most of the 2011 season. When he returned, the rotation was stacked, and Feldman went back to relief work. Well, for a half-season anyhow. After a 3.94 ERA as a reliever in 2011, he made another 21 starts in 2012 but saw his ERA creep north of 5.00 again.

Unfazed by his inconsistency and likely noting his more promising peripheral stats, the Cubs picked Feldman up on a low-risk, one-year deal worth $6MM (plus incentives) this past offseason.  Feldman

Strengths/Pros

Through all of Feldman's ups and downs, two things have remained constant: he has good command and he generates ground balls. Feldman's highest single-season BB/9 mark dating back to 2008 is 3.3, and he's posted a mark of 2.9 overall since that time (in 811 innings). He's never posted a ground-ball rate below 42 percent. His career mark of 47.3 is above the league average, and he's been even better in 2013, generating grounders at a 50.7 percent clip.

Feldman's career ERA of 4.56 is a near mirror image of his 4.45 FIP, 4.41 xFIP and 4.50 SIERA. An ERA in the mid-4.00s is a very reasonable expectation for Feldman, and his past three seasons of work have produced a 3.91 FIP, 3.91 xFIP and 3.95 SIERA, so there's plenty of room for optimism. The similarities between his FIP and xFIP are easily explainable — Feldman allows homers at roughly a league-average rate (10.4 percent career HR/FB). All of his work has come for teams in hitter-friendly home parks (the Rangers, Cubs and Orioles), demonstrating that he can succeed in difficult settings.

Feldman will be 31 years old in February, making him one of the younger starters available on the market. He won't be tied to draft pick compensation, as he's ineligible to receive a qualifying offer after being traded midseason.

Feldman had Tommy John surgery as a minor leaguer back in 2003 but hasn't had any arm-related health issues since. It can be argued that he has little mileage on his arm compared to similarly aged free agents; he's thrown 900 2/3 Major League innings to date.

Weaknesses/Cons

Feldman has never been a flamethrower, but his 90 mph average on his four-seamer and 88 mph average on his cutter this season are both career-lows. As a ground-ball pitcher, he doesn't miss many bats — his swinging-strike will rate sit between six and eight percent in any given season — nor does he generate many strikeouts. His K/9 rate of 6.5 this season is actually an improvement over his 5.6 career mark but still lower than the league average for starting pitchers (7.2).

The inconsistent track record that I alluded to before also makes his durability a relative question mark. Feldman has never tossed more than 189 2/3 innings in a season, and he's only topped 30 starts in a season on one occasion. As it stands, he's on pace to make exactly 30 starts this season, but he won't set a new career-high for innings pitched without hurling a pair of complete games in his final two starts.

Personal

Feldman, whose father is a retired FBI agent, is an avid supporter of the Wounded Warrior project. He and his wife have also hosted charity softball events in Dallas to raise money for wounded military members and participated in fundraisers and blanket drives for anti-domestic violence organizations. Highly competitive by nature, Feldman has a fairly quiet personality and is very popular among teammates. He embodies the "every fifth day" mentality, as he always wants to take the ball, even in the face of soreness and injury.

Market

Feldman isn't going to be one of the very top starters on the free agent market, and as such he may wait until after some of the bigger names have signed to ink a deal of his own. That waiting game is a delicate balance, however, as pitchers like Joe Saunders and Brett Myers can attest to. Each waited until after the New Year to sign and settled for a one-year deal last offseason while comparable arms like Brandon McCarthy, Kevin Correia and Joe Blanton signed in December and received two guaranteed years.

Feldman's ground-ball tendencies won't scare off teams in small parks, and unlike the Matt Garzas and Masahiro Tanakas of the world, Feldman probably won't be priced out of any team's range. He could be appealing to a large number of teams looking for a quality arm to slot into the middle or back of their rotations.

Predicted Contract

It's tough to foresee Feldman earning himself three guaranteed years on the open market given his inconsistent innings totals, but his 2013 can't be ignored. He's posted a 3.49 ERA with 6.5 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and a 50.7 percent ground-ball rate to this point, which should be enough to land a two-year deal at a slightly higher rate than the $7MM he'll bring home this year after hitting his incentives. Perhaps his agent, Matt Brown of Pro Prospects Inc., could compromise by pushing for an easily attainable vesting option for a third year based on innings pitched.

Ultimately, Jeremy Guthrie's three-year, $25MM contract from last year could be his ceiling, but I predict that Feldman will sign a two-year, $17MM contract with a vesting option for a third season.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Baseball Blogs Weigh In: Mariners, D’Backs, Royals

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Sometimes, it's rough being the new guy.  On this date in 1997, Matt Williams tricked Royals rookie Jed Hansen with the rarely used hidden ball trick. The second baseman, deceived about the location of the ball, was tagged out by the Indians veteran infielder taking a lead off third base in an eventual 6-2 Cleveland victory.  You don't have to be a youngster to fall for the gag – the Rays got the Dodgers' Juan Uribe last month and just yesterday, Todd Helton pulled a fast one on the Cardinals' Matt Carpenter.  Here's this week's look around the baseball blogosphere..

If you have a suggestion for this feature, Zach can be reached at ZachBBWI@gmail.com.  

Andy Pettitte To Retire After 2013 Season

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11:17am: The Yankees have issued a press release officially announce Pettitte's retirement. Pettitte offered the following statement within the release:

“I’m announcing my retirement prior to the conclusion of our season because I want all of our fans to know now — while I’m still wearing this uniform — how grateful I am for their support throughout my career. I want to have the opportunity to tip my cap to them during these remaining days and thank them for making my time here with the Yankees so special. I’ve reached the point where I know that I’ve left everything I have out there on that field. The time is right. I’ve exhausted myself, mentally and physically, and that’s exactly how I want to leave this game. One of the things I struggled with in making this announcement now was doing anything to take away from Mariano’s day on Sunday. It is his day. He means so much to me, and has meant so much to my career that I would just hate to somehow take the attention away from him.”

10:05am: The final two starts of Andy Pettitte's storied career, appropriately, will come at Yankee Stadium in New York (on Mariano Rivera day) and Minute Maid Park in Houston. Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports that the 41-year-old Pettitte will announce his retirement later this afternoon.

Pettitte originally retired following the 2010 season and didn't play in 2011, but the veteran lefty came back for two more years with the Yankees from 2012-13. An broken fibula cost him much of the 2012 season, but it's hard to argue with the overall results he's delivered in his return tour. Over the past two seasons, Pettitte has pitched to a 3.60 ERA with 6.8 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 in 244 2/3 innings, adding 15 wins and slightly more than four WAR to his career totals. According to Sherman, Pettitte has told friends that the 2013 season has been much tougher on his body than he had anticipated.

Pettitte has earned just shy of $140MM in his baseball career, according to Baseball-Reference.com. He donned just two jerseys in his 18-season Major League career — those of the New York Yankees and his hometown Houston Astros. He's pitched exactly 3,300 innings to date, compiling a 3.86 ERA, 6.6 K/9 and 2.8 BB/9 to go along with 255 Major League wins. He is a three-time All-Star and has finished in the Top 5 in Cy Young voting on four occasions. Pettitte helped the Yankees to five World Series championships, and his 19 postseason wins are a Major League record. His Hall of Fame candidacy will likely be negatively impacted by his admitted use of HGH on two instances in the early 2000s.

Free Agent Faceoff: Grant Balfour vs. Joaquin Benoit

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MLBTradeRumors is firing up this year's vesion of the Free Agent Faceoff series, in which two comparable free agents are analyzed side by side. Each post will conclude with a reader vote on the value of the two players.

The free agent market for relievers with closing experience isn't exactly stacked this year, nor is it a particularly youthful crop. However, if you're looking for a solid arm with ninth inning experience that's still plenty successful in spite of his age, Joaquin Benoit and Grant Balfour are two of the better guys to turn to.

Balfour, a native of Australia, has served as Oakland's closer for the past two seasons and was their setup man in 2011. He's thrived in both roles, posting a combined 2.57 ERA with 9.0 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 and a 37 percent ground-ball rate in 196 1/3 innings. His FIP (3.43) and xFIP (3.63) both suggest that his ERA could come up a good deal. He's averaged 93 mph on his heater in that time but is averaging an even more impressive 93.4 mph in 2013. Balfour has also shown an ability to suppress home runs throughout his career — just 7.9 percent of fly-balls against him have gone for homers. He will turn 36 years old in late December.

Benoit turned 36 in July and has similar stats to Balfour. He's posted a 2.89 ERA with 9.9 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and a 38.9 percent ground-ball rate in 193 1/3 innings since 2011. He throws noticably harder — averaging 93.9 mph on his fastball and sitting at 94.1 mph in 2013 — and generates more swinging strikes than Balfour (14.9 percent compared to 9.1 percent). However, Benoit has proven more susceptible to the long ball, yielding more homers in 2012 alone than Balfour has in 2012-13 combined.  For his career, 9.9 percent of the fly-balls hit against Benoit have gone for homers. Like Balfour, Benoit has outperformed both FIP (3.39) and xFIP (3.27) over the past three seasons.

Both Balfour and Benoit will pitch most of next season at 36 (Benoit will turn 37 just prior to the trade deadline). Both average a strikeout per inning or better with solid command and a fly-ball profile, and both have done well when handed a closer's job late in their careers. It can be argued that Benoit's advantage in strikeouts and walks can be offset by Balfour's stingier ways with home runs, lower ERA and slight age advantage, begging the question…

Quick Hits: Beckham, Lind, Tejada, Sveum, Ravin

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Tim Beckham, the first overall pick in the 2008 Draft, entered the Rays' game as a pinch-hitter against the Rangers Thursday night and singled in his first big-league at-bat. It marked a milestone for the infielder, who crawled through the minor leagues, never hitting all that impressively at any level, before posting a line of .276/.342/.387 in 2013 for Triple-A Durham. All of the 20 players drafted immediately after Beckham made it to the big leagues before he did. (Many, of course, were drafted out of college; Beckham came out of high school.) Remarkably, as Baseball America's John Manuel notes (via Twitter), Beckham is the first player drafted by the Rays since 2007 to make it to the big leagues with them. That's surprising, given how vital young players are to a low-payroll team like the Rays and how successful they've been in recent years. Here are more notes from around the Majors.

  • Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos has implied to first baseman Adam Lind that there's a good chance the team will pick up Lind's 2014 option, but nothing is certain yet, SportsNet.ca's Shi Davidi reports. "You know Alex pretty well, it’s pretty much the explanation I anticipated," says Lind, who will get either $7MM to play for the Jays or a $2MM buyout. The Jays also have options on Lind's services for 2015 and 2016. Lind has hit .282/.352/.486 so far this season. The team isn't required to make a decision about his option until shortly after the World Series ends.
  • Mets manager Terry Collins wants Ruben Tejada to take command of the shortstop position next season, Anthony DiComo and Chris Iseman of MLB.com write. "My message is real simple: this job is his," says Collins. "But he's got to show everybody that he wants it desperately." That doesn't rule out the possibility that the Mets could pursue a shortstop from outside the organization. The offseason free-agent market isn't a strong one, but a trade might be a possibility. Tejada has hit .202/.259/.260 in 227 plate appearances this season.
  • The Cubs aren't ready to say whether Dale Sveum will remain their manager in 2014, but the notion that the Cubs would fire Sveum is "laughable," says Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times. Morrissey raises the possibility that the Cubs hesitation on Sveum may have something to do with big-name managers like Joe Girardi and Ron Gardenhire being free agents this offseason. He argues that Sveum shouldn't be blamed for the struggles of Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro this season, suggesting that the pair might simply not be as good as the Cubs and their fans hoped.
  • The Brewers claimed pitcher Josh Ravin off waivers from the Reds today, and MLB.com's Adam McCalvy compares Ravin to Joe Nathan, noting that Ravin can throw in triple digits (Twitter link). Ravin wouldn't be the first player to find success as a reliever in the Majors after an unimpressive minor-league career, but Joe Nathan is a lofty name to drop when discussing a 25-year-old who posted a 5.82 ERA with 6.7 BB/9 in the minors this year.
  • Dodgers lefty Onelki Garcia is now represented by BHS Sports Council, CBS Sports' Jon Heyman reports (via Twitter). Garcia posted a 2.90 ERA with 9.7 K/9 and 5.1 BB/9 in the upper levels of the minors in 2013, and he made his big-league debut last week.

AL Notes: Dombrowski, Yamauchi, Porter

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The Tigers won the three-way Curtis Granderson deal with the Yankees and Diamondbacks, Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes. With Granderson fighting through an injury-riddled season and Ian Kennedy now in San Diego, Max Scherzer and Austin Jackson have been crucial contributors to what is extremely likely to be a division-winning season for Detroit. The Tigers have also acquired Miguel Cabrera, Doug Fister and Anibal Sanchez via trade, Sherman points out.

"I learned not to care what others thought, only what we thought," says GM Dave Dombrowski. "The guys who are ranking, they have never seen our players." Sherman argues that one key to Dombrowski's success as a trader has been his willingness to deal his prospects. Also, Dombrowski isn't concerned with fleecing the other team, and is willing to give good value to get good value, Sherman says, citing this summer's swap of Avisail Garcia for Jose Iglesias (part of the Jake Peavy deal) as an example. "We didn’t want to trade Avisail Garcia," says Dombrowski. "We think he is going to be a very good player. The question for us is how good is the player we are getting back. We think Jose Iglesias is going to be a very good player, too." Here are more notes from the American League.

  • In the wake of the death of owner Hiroshi Yamauchi, the Mariners' future is uncertain, Jon Morosi of FOX Sports writes. One possibility might be the return, in some capacity, of former GM Pat Gillick, who currently works for the Phillies. "People here think very fondly of him,” says Scott Weitz, a sports law attorney from Seattle. "I don’t think anybody would be disappointed if he took on a role with the team." It's also unclear whether Yamauchi's stake in the team will be sold — his 55% of the team is now controlled by Nintendo of America.
  • Manager Bo Porter will be back for the Astros in 2014, although it's unclear what will happen to his field staff, MLB.com's Brian McTaggart tweets. The Astros have suffered through a 51-101 season, but it isn't as if a large percentage of the Astros' struggles can be pinned on their manager or his staff — 2013 was clearly a rebuilding year.

AL Notes: Twins, White Sox, Wedge

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The Twins could have as much as $40MM to spend this offseason, Phil Mackey of 1500ESPN writes. The contracts of Justin Morneau ($14MM in 2013), Nick Blackburn ($5.5MM) and Mike Pelfrey ($4MM) won't be on the books anymore, and Mackey points out that the Twins have $90-100MM budgeted for payroll in 2014. That doesn't mean they'll actually spend it all, and they haven't been big free-agent spenders in the past. But the possibility should make the offseason an interesting one for Twins fans. Here are more notes from the American League.

  • GM Rick Hahn of the White Sox doesn't feel his predecessor, Kenny Williams (who was promoted to executive vice president after the 2012 season), left the organization in a tough spot, reports MLB.com's Scott Merkin. "He left the position of general manager with a club that was in first place for [117] days," says Hahn. "He left us in a position to have a nine-digit payroll. You are not going to hear any gripes about the condition he left us in." Hahn points to the White Sox's crop of starting pitchers — which includes Chris Sale, Jose Quintana and Hector Santiago — as evidence that the White Sox aren't in that unfavorable a position.
  • Manager Eric Wedge says that "the kids," meaning young players, and their struggles with fundamentals have been a big part of the Mariners' struggles during his tenure. But Dave Cameron of USS Mariner points out that, while the Mariners have given playing time to lots of young hitters in recent years, those hitters — including players like Kyle Seager and Brad Miller — have mostly played at least passably, if not well. It's hitters over 25 who have really struggled. Cameron doesn't address how the Mariners' young pitchers have done, but it's clear that the Mariners' young hitters, at least, don't deserve a large portion of the blame for the team's performance.

Brewers Designate Blake Lalli For Assignment

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The Brewers have designated Blake Lalli for assignment to clear a 40-man roster spot for Josh Ravin, whom they claimed off waivers from the Reds earlier today, according to MLB Daily Dish's Chris Cotillo (Twitter link).

Lalli, 30, went 3-for-24 with three singles for Milwaukee this season and is 5-for-39 in his brief Major League career. The catcher/first baseman has a much stronger track record at Triple-A, where he has a solid slash line of .268/.312/.420 with 19 homers in 651 plate appearances. Lalli attended Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C. and signed with the Cubs as an undrafted free agent in 2006.

As always, you can track the status of Lalli and every other recently designated player using MLBTR's DFA Tracker.

NL East Notes: Sandberg, Bowa, McCann, Tejada

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It seems to be a fait accompli that Ryne Sandberg will have his interim tag removed and be named full-time manager of the Phillies sometime in the next week or so, writes Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com.  Whether the announcement happens in a matter of days, after the season finale against the Braves on September 29th, or shortly thereafter, the smart money is on Sandberg taking the full-time gig.  Here's more on the Phillies and the latest out of the NL East..

  • More from Salisbury, who wonders if Larry Bowa could be joining Sandberg on his staff for next season.  Bowa was in the Phillies’ dugout before Wednesday’s game and the idea of adding the 67-year-old has been discussed within the organization.
  • Braves catcher Brian McCann may not be back in Atlanta next season, but his focus is on the team's current run as they near the postseason, writes MLB.com's Mark Bowman.  Many have speculated that McCann will find a big payday elsewhere this winter.
  • Mets skipper Terry Collins wants to see Ruben Tejada take control of the shortstop position in 2014.  "My message is real simple: this job is his," Collins said of next year's starting shortstop role. "But he's got to show everybody that he wants it desperately."  Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork.com recently wrote that the Mets could look out-of-house for their next shortstop and may even consider trading Tejada.
  • Peter Gammons of MLB.com (on Twitter) notes that Ed Lucas, who belted his fourth homer of the year for the Marlins last night, was a Winter Meetings job seeker last season.  The Dartmouth grad spent nine seasons in the minor leagues before getting called up by Miami in late May. 

Brewers Claim Josh Ravin

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The Brewers have claimed Josh Ravin off waivers from the Reds, according to Chris Cotillo of MLBDailyDish.com (via Twitter).  The right-hander took to Twitter himself to confirm the transaction. 

Ravin was designated for assignment by Cincinnati earlier this week.  The 25-year-old posted a 5.82 ERA with 8.5 K/9 and 6.7 BB/9 in 51 innings of relief between Double-A and Triple-A this season.  He boasts a career 8.1 K/9 and 6.1 BB/9 across parts of eight minor league seasons.

To keep up with the status of all players in DFA limbo, be sure to check out the MLBTR DFA Tracker.

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