With the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline behind us, Major League teams must place players on revocable trade waivers in order to deal them to another club. A player that clears waivers can be dealt to any team, while a player that is claimed on waivers can be dealt to that team only (within 48.5 hours) or simply pulled back off waivers. A player can be placed on waivers a second time after being pulled back, but the waivers are no longer revocable the second time.
Here’s Friday’s rundown of which players have been placed on revocable waivers…
- Both Ichiro Suzuki and Brendan Ryan have been placed on revocable waivers by the Yankees, reports George A. King III of the New York Post. Neither player has hit much this season, with the 40-year-old Ichiro slashing .276/.324/.321 and the 32-year-old Ryan hitting just .214/.263/.257. Both come with good defensive reputations despite their light bats. Ichiro, guaranteed $1.85MM through season’s end, is a free agent this winter. Ryan has $568K of this season’s $2MM salary remaining and is guaranteed $2MM in 2015 as well. He has a $1MM player option for the 2016 campaign.
- Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe reports that the Red Sox have placed left-hander Craig Breslow and infielder Kelly Johnson on revocable waivers (Twitter link). Breslow, who turns 34 today, has struggled this year and endured a rough patch of late, surrendering a dozen runs in his past 15 2/3 innings. The typically effective southpaw has been hit hard by both righties and lefties en route to a 5.01 ERA this season. He’s owed $1.09MM through year’s end, plus a $100K buyout on a $4MM option.
- Johnson, 32, has been on the disabled list since being acquired by the Red Sox in exchange for Stephen Drew at the deadline. He batted .219/.304/.373 with the Yankees this year and is owed $852K through the end of the year. While Johnson is a versatile piece that has in the past offered both power and speed, he’s hit just six homers this year. Still, he could serve as a low-cost bench addition to a contending team.
- The Mets have placed Curtis Granderson on revocable waivers, according to ESPN’s Jayson Stark (via ESPN New York colleague Adam Rubin). Granderson, 33, is hitting .224/.330/.392 with 15 homers and eight steals in the first year of a four-year, $60MM pact inked with the Mets. He’s owed $3.69MM through season’s end plus another $47MM from 2015-17, making for a total of $50.69MM remaining on his deal. Granderson got off to a terrible start but is hitting .249/.353/.443 with 14 homers since May 1. Then again, he’s also been slumping of late. A claim seems unlikely, given the sizable sum remaining on his contract. If Granderson goes unclaimed, he could be dealt to any team, but that also seems unlikely in the first year of a four-year contract.
- Of note is that Stark also reports that Bartolo Colon has yet to hit waivers, though one would expect that the Mets will run him through the process at some point.
For a more complete explanation of how revocable trade waivers and August trades work, check out MLBTR’s August Trades primer. You can also check out MLBTR’s list of players that have cleared revocable waivers to see who is eligible to be traded to any team.
Everyone hits this list. Though I have to wonder, is Grandy the highest paid leadoff hitter in history?
uh, no? Reyes makes more than him?
Carl Crawford, Jacoby Ellsbury (until Joe Girardi batted him 3rd on an everyday basis). I’m sure there are others.
Mets just signed this guy this past year…..another organization that has no clear plan.
Granderson’s placement on waivers has little to do with the Mets’ direction. They, like every other team, will put most of their roster on waivers. We simply make a note when someone reports that a player has been placed on waivers, as it indicates the beginning of the 48-hour window for another team to claim them.
Granderson’s not going anywhere, and his placement on waivers is more or less procedural.
Yes, Granderson being placed on revocable waivers does not have much to do with the Mets’ direction, but signing him in the first place does. The Orioles got Nelson Cruz for 1 year and the Mets forked over all that dough for a much less productive player.
Nelson Cruz’s signing was a fluke! He was asking for 75+ mil for 4yrs (more than grandy) and with his history of PED he was forced to sign at a much lower amount with a team who could be a contender! He knew the mets wouldn’t be able to contend in 2014 and it would have taken a lot more to sign him. People like to criticize when a team doesn’t sign someone who has a breakout year and real quick to judge when something fails!!!!
So, signing an aging outfielder coming off a season lost to injury; signing a player dependent on the long ball to be productive and bringing him to a pitcher’s park; and making him bat leadoff in 35% of his plate appearances when he’d batted leadoff in only 19 games in the previous three seasons — these were good ideas worthy of defending with four exclamation points? Okay.
At his introductory presser, Collins called Granderson “the perfect guy” to offer lineup protection for David Wright. How do you do that batting leadoff 35% of the time?
Nelson Cruz is a DH and Mets play in the national league. If Cruz was playing in the OF everyday he would not be nowhere near as productive
Cruz has played 48 games in left, 8 in right, and 57 as a DH. He is playing in the field just as much as he DH’s. Even if he was a full time DH, that doesn’t take away from the fact that the Granderson contract is a terrible sign by the Mets.
On the contrary – the Mets have a clear plan. They’re building up the farm, especially with starting pitchers, until they have the platform in place for a big trade for a position player. The Mets went from having one of the worst farms in the game to one of the best and have developed Harvey, Wheeler, and deGrom during the current FO regime. Syndergaard’s close, too. Moreover, they also have position players close to the Majors – Reynolds, Plawecki, Nimmo, and Herrera come to mind.
This move means nothing pretty much. Nobody wants his contract so he will clear and he will not be traded anyway.
The Mets have no sense of direction and just made a move for the sake of it. Grandy has been going downhill since 2012 since he had health issues and then they decide to make him a cog in their anemic offense. I wouldn’t have gone beyond $20 mill over 2 years myself, but I am not the Mets GM.
in 2012 Grandy hit 43 HR’s (Career High) and in 2013 a freak injury sidelined him for the majority of the year! Don’t see how he was going “downhill” yes this year he struggled but he was not going downhill since 2012 that was his best of his career!! When the mets signed him they knew he does not hit for average but for power! Even though he has not belted many HR’s he is 2nd on the team and he moved to a much more pitcher friendly park that is NOT Yankee Stadium!
“and he moved to a much more pitcher friendly park that is NOT Yankee Stadium!”
You do realize this was a bad idea, right?
ok so they knew he would not match those numbers so if he hits 25 hrs it is somewhat a good deal
He has 15 HR on August 8. You think he’s going to add 10 before the end of September?
no i dont but im just saying that would be a good amount but i do see him hitting 5 more to round out the year at 20 and hopefully he can justify the contract in the next 3 yrs. My point is the deal he signed is fairly resonable.
Even I think that deal stinks.
– Ned Colletti
He’ll be 34 next March. In addition to power, he was supposed to bring speed to Citi Field. I expect he might lose a step before this contract expires. He has the 10th-highest annual salary of all outfielders and ranks 27th among them in Runs Created.
Yes he’ll probably pop another 8-10 HRs, he’s an all or nuthing streaky player, if you haven’t noticed
Granderson’s signing made little sense in conjunction with the Chris Young signing, as both outfielders have had historically woeful batting averages. In layman’s terms, both hitters are rally-killers, though Grandy has his attributes & his injuries were fluke.
The best way to mitigate any further damage and instill production in LF is to dfa both Youngs and promote Andrew Brown and Matt den Dekker and put them in some kind of meaningful rotation. Then, neither player will be under too much pressure nor riding the pine too long and getting stale.
cris young is gone, matt ddecker on his way. Ddekker and Kirk will platoon in left with so e EY and Soup. No room for Andrew Brown until September
grandy is a low BA, flyball hitter whose job is to hit the periodic nice hit and fly out while scoring a run. he had like 100RBI’s last season with the yanks, but the mets don’t really get on base
Doesn’t matter, he was also a leadoff guy with tremendous speed too. He was a threat in the Yankees lineup with speed and power.
He wasn’t a leadoff guy. He batted leadoff in only 19 games since 2011.
I wouldn’t call a team with incredible, young rotation depth one with “no sense of direction.” The Mets didn’t/don’t have a lot of offense and felt that Granderson would provide some.
I, too, thought 4/$60M was an overpay, but I still trust that Sandy Alderson knows what he’s doing with this organization in general.
Tigers could use some more pop and a left handed platoon for Raji
Though they will not want to pay all that salary so NY would have to through in some money. And really Det needs someone that can draw a walk and isnt so aggressive. So he fits the way the team plays doesnt fit as an upgrade. Though he would be an upgrade over the left hander that is platooning Raji
Granderson’s game was the long ball and Alderson moved him from a bandbox to the park with the lowest SLG since 2013. Predictable result.
yep
last winter all the mets fans were foaming at the mouth for the team to spend money, just to spend money. they got what they wanted
The problem isn’t that money was spent, it’s that it was misspent. The fans wanted it to be spent sensibly. It wasn’t. Granderson and Young? Colon made sense; the others, not so much.
Granderson may not be worth his salary in the later years but his presence has been transformative. His impact on the younger players on the team is hard to quantify but it’s there. I’m happy with the signing. It’s also great to know that out of the 4 big FA OFs in 2014 – Choo, Grandy, Ellsbury, and Beltrán, Grandy seems to clearly have the best “value” (performance/$).
Tigers should get Granderson. He’s the left handed bat they need and he knows Comerica Park unlike no one else
All you guys know that Granderson wasn’t signed to hit lead off right? Because the mets lack a typical lead off hitter, Grandy was places there. He’s been there for some time and that’s why his numbers are the greatest. Plus, if you take away his awful April numbers (adjusting to new team, league, park) he’s numbers have been pretty solid, something like .250,14,50. In the offseason when the mets can hopefully add a really good lead off hitter and shortstop (could be the same player) Grandy will move back to 4/5 depending on where Duda hits. $15 million a year for the numbers he will put up .240/25-30/80-90 is not bad at all
I’d love to see Ichiro in a Rays jersey but I think the Mariner’s need to get him back to Seattle. That’s where he belongs. Kelly Johnson needs to come back to the Rays and maybe Breslow might be a good addition with my Rays. We released 2 pitchers and need some more.
Mets should claim Ichiro.
no, they should not.
Funny how Sox fans thought the Yankees got fleeced for paying almost of of Drew’s remaining salary but it looks like Sox got damaged goods.
Nobody cares if Johnson takes the field or not. Moving Drew was about shedding his salary.
It was just a pure salary dump, open roster space. I doubt if Johnson will will ever actually get a PA in Boston
“The Mets will run Colon through the waiver wire.”
I’m thinking more of a leisurely waddle…
May have to widen it to get him through it, too.
Can Ichiro play center? He’s one of my favorite all time players, and it’d be cool to see him in a Braves uniform.
No he cannot.
on the bench
Since when is .276 “not hitting much.” I’ve seen .250 described as “solid” for other players…
That’s what I thought too at first, but after thinking about, I believe he was talking about limited plate appearances. Could have worded it a little more clearly.
.276 is pretty bad when you’re only slugging .321. Especially as a corner outfielder.
Well then they shouldn’t use his .276 average as a basis for the claim, they should use his slugging %.
And what does being a corner outfielder mean? I hate using a player’ position as any expectation for offensive output.
Traditionally certain positions have been more offensively productive than others. I remember a time when SS and 2B were nothing but bottom of the order, defense only type positions. Then along came the likes of Ryne Sandberg, Craig Biggio, Nomar, Arod, Jeter, etc. and the positions changed.
The issue really is that corner OFs need to produce offensively, because they add little value defensively. No one in their right mind puts Nelson Cruz in CF. However, play him in LF or RF if he is not DHing and he has value even if he is a liability defensively.
Positional output is important in baseball. You can get by with an average offensive SS or C if he is an outstanding fielder. Whereas, your 1B and RF/LF players are supposed to be cornerstone offensive pieces since their defensive importance is less impact-full to the team.
Would be nice to see Betts actually get a prolonged look in Boston rest of the season at CF (with JBJ’s 0 for August), meaning Johnson would have to move somehow.
without a doubt, my team, the NY Mets, is the most poorly run organization in baseball. I never clearly understand anything that they do and I am just so confused as to what they are thinking.
they are doing a pretty good job rebuilding for a 2015 or 2016 post-season run
Well I hope so but I was thinking we needed to live in 2014 and put a team out there that can win now. Oh well, I guess I was wrong.
Wheeler, deGrom, Duda, d’Arnaud, Murphy, Granderson, Lagares, Mejía, Familia, Black, and Edgin can all be pieces on a playoff-caliber club. Harvey’s coming back next year and Syndergaard will be up soon too. The team has a bright future for 2015 but nobody realistically thought the team had a chance at 95 wins this year.
They’re not even the most poorly-run team in the division, Lori. I strongly disagree with your sentiments. The Mets’ FO is extremely predictable and hasn’t made any “bonehead” moves. They are laying the groundwork for future success. What exactly do you find confusing about how they are run?