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Archives for July 2015

Braves To Sign Vin Mazzaro To Minors Deal

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The Braves have inked righty Vin Mazzaro to a minor-league deal, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on Twitter. He’ll head to Triple-A upon joining the Atlanta organization.

Mazzaro, 28, threw 12 frames earlier in the year for the Marlins, allowing five earned runs. Though that was good for a solid 3.75 ERA, he allowed 15 hits and six walks while retiring just six batters via strikeout. After being designated and outrighted by Miami, Mazzaro elected free agency.

Over parts of seven seasons in the big leagues, Mazzaro owns a 4.66 ERA while averaging 5.5 K/9 against 3.7 BB/9. His best season came in 2013 with the Pirates, when he put up 73 2/3 frames of 2.81 ERA pitching.

Cubs Designate Donn Roach

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The Cubs have designated righty Donn Roach for assignment, the club announced (via Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune, on Twitter). His 40-man spot was needed for the activation of Mike Olt from the DL. Olt was optioned to Triple-A.

Roach, 25, gave up four earned runs in a 3 1/3 inning appearance at the major league level. He has thrown 89 innings with a healthy 2.33 ERA at the Triple-A level on the year, striking out 3.3 and walking 1.6 batters per nine in the process.

Draft Signings: Rhett Wiseman, Miles Gordon

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Here are the day’s notable draft signings, with slot values via Baseball America:

  • The Nationals have signed third-rounder Rhett Wiseman with an at-slot bonus of $554.1K, Jim Callis of MLB.com reports on Twitter. An outfielder from Vanderbilt, Wiseman profiles as a quality all-around ballplayer rather than bringing any superior tools to the table. Baseball America rated Wiseman as the 88th overall draft-eligible player, his only top-100 ranking.
  • Reds fourth-rounder Miles Gordon has signed with the club, Callis recently tweeted. The outfielder will receive a $475K bonus that lands $18,300 shy of the slot value for the 115th pick, Devan Fink tweets. The speedy Canadian product rated within BA’s top 200, based upon his athleticism and reasonably high ceiling. He had been slated to attend the University of San Francisco.

Mets, Brewers Have Recently Discussed Ramirez, Segura

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The Mets and Brewers have recently had trade talks in which both third baseman Aramis Ramirez and shortstop Jean Segura were discussed, Jon Morosi of FOX Sports reports on Twitter.

It is unclear from the report how advanced discussions are, but certainly it does not sound as if any moves are imminent. Morosi tweeted in early June that the two sides had discussed position players, but this report appears to cover more recent exchanges.

New York is obviously in need of help on the left side of its infield. Third baseman David Wright remains a complete question mark for the rest of the year, while the club has moved Opening Day shortstop Wilmer Flores off of the position. In that regard, both Ramirez and Segura make some amount of sense. But the two players are obviously quite different sorts of trade targets, and it’s far from certain that they would represent much of an improvement.

Ramirez, 37, is a fairly expensive veteran ($14MM this year) at the tail end of his career. He’s had a rough first half at the plate, but has turned things around somewhat more recently. New York would obviously hope that he returns to hitting near his well-above-average career norms, but it’s hard to know how much he’ll contribute the rest of the way. It is also unclear what kind of alignment the Mets would utilize if they installed Ramirez at third. Presumably, Daniel Murphy would bounce over to second and Flores would slide back to short.

Meanwhile, the 25-year-old Segura comes with three more seasons of club control, all through arbitration. An approximately average shortstop, according to Defensive Runs Saved and Ultimate Zone Rating, Segura has yet to repeat his stellar 2013 campaign at the plate. He has shown some upside and remains young enough to dream on somewhat. But with Milwaukee surely putting a steep price tag on Segura, it it is particularly hard to ignore his .253/.292/.332 slash since the start of 2014.

International Notes: July 2 Pools, 2016-17 Market, Cuba

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In case you missed the recent action, be sure to catch up on the major July 2 signings. In the midst of teams agreeing to deals with young talent, they were also swapping quite a bit of bonus spending pools amongst themselves. Matt Eddy of Baseball America provides an exceedingly useful chart showing the aggregate results (as of this morning) of all those exchanges.

  • Now that the dust has largely settled, Baseball America’s Ben Badler breaks down at the clubs that have exceeded their total allotment. By Badler’s reckoning, fully one-third of the league will be restricted from spending more than $300K in next year’s July 2 market, with the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs, Royals, and Blue Jays joining the five teams that are set to serve the second year of their bans. (Toronto will only face one season of limitations, as their spending stands.) Badler also explains how all the bonus pool deals were put to use by the teams making them.
  • In the same piece, Badler takes a stab at predicting which clubs are planning to blow their budgets next year. He says that the Braves “seem determined” to make a big splash, while the industry chatter is that they could be joined by the Nationals, Rangers, Twins, and Padres.
  • MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez looks at the challenges to Cuban baseball posed by changing diplomatic tides. The stream of ballplayers heading for major league organizations has obviously hurt Cuba’s domestic league and national team, as Sanchez explains.
  • If you’re still confused by the way the international market works, check out this solid primer from Jonah Keri of Grantland. He uses a Q&A format to help simplify the often baffling series of rules, strategies, and factors weighing on this segment of the baseball transactional world.

Marlins Taking Offers On Mat Latos, Dan Haren, Others

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The Marlins are telling teams that they are prepared to field offers for a variety of short-term assets, Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald reports. Specifically, Miami is prepared to find deals for pitchers Mat Latos, Dan Haren, and Brad Hand as well as utilityman Jeff Baker.

Each of the players listed above, with the exception of Hand, is set to hit the open market after the season. With the Marlins sitting behind every team in baseball except for the woeful Phillies, Spencer says the organization has “reached the jumping-off point” for acting as a seller.

Latos and Haren obviously have the most potential appeal of the players listed. The starters have had rather different seasons thus far, Latos underperforming generally promising peripherals (4.90 ERA, 3.84 SIERA) and Haren doing just the opposite (3.34 ERA, 4.11 SIERA). The 27-year-old Latos is said to have shown a promising velocity uptick in recent starts, though he’s owed the balance of a $9.4 salary this year and has an unsettling injury history. Haren, 34, continues to see his average fastball drop towards the mid-80s and has benefited from a low BABIP and high strand rate, but he still doesn’t walk anyone and the Dodgers are on the hook for all of his salary.

While Miami might hope to achieve some real value for those pitchers, it is not clear that there’s much to get back for Hand or Baker. Working mostly as a reliever, the out-of-options Hand has scuffled to a 5.80 ERA over 40 1/3 innings, though he has suffered from the exact opposite BABIP/LOB rates that have aided Haren. As for Baker, the 34-year-old rates at or below replacement level for the last several years. He’s not very highly regarded for his glove, and is mostly useful against lefties, but has not really even hit them all that well this year.

One other player that Spencer notes could be moved is former closer Steve Cishek. He’s been much better since returning to the big leagues, but still looks like a non-tender candidate after the season and is hardly the most certain relief asset a contender could find on the market. Cishek is playing on a $6.65MM salary this year, so Miami will likely need to pay a good chunk of that to find a taker.

Follow MLB Trade Rumors On Instagram

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Recently, MLB Trade Rumors launched a brand new official Instagram account: @TradeRumorsMLB.  Each day, we’ll be sharing conversation-inspiring images about the hottest topics in baseball.  From there, we invite you to give us a like, weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section, and even share the link with a friend.

Jeff Samardzija’s name has popped up on MLBTR quite a bit in recent weeks and Wednesday’s image parodying the iconic Jaws poster asked followers to weigh in on where he might land.  Today’s Instagram picture asks you to predict what the 38-44 Reds might do at the deadline.  Previous entries feature Brewers star Carlos Gomez, Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, and a closer showdown between Jonathan Papelbon and Francisco Rodriguez.

So, what are you waiting for?  If you don’t have an Instagram account, this is the perfect excuse to sign up and get one.  Follow us on Instagram today!

Quick Hits: Rays, Nationals, Guerrero

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The Rays have struggled lately, but they’ve done surprisingly well overall this season despite numerous pitching injuries. One key reason is that they’ve pulled starting pitchers early in games, as Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan explains. The Rays have frequently removed starters after just five or six innings, even when they’ve been very effective, because batters tend to do much better against a pitcher the third time through the order. Rays pitcher Nate Karns says the team explained the strategy to its pitchers before the season. “They didn’t hand us a big spreadsheet or anything,” he says. “But they gave us what we needed to know. That’s something they’ve run a lot of numbers on, crunched a lot of data, and for me to have no numbers myself to refute it, I just trust them and believe what they’re doing is right. And it’s working.” The Rays’ rotation ERA of 3.29 ranks second in the American League despite injuries to a number of key pitchers. Here’s more from around the big leagues.

  • Injuries to regulars like Jayson Werth, Anthony Rendon, Ryan Zimmerman and Denard Span raise questions about whether the Nationals should acquire another hitter at the trade deadline, Nats Insider’s Mark Zuckerman writes. As Zuckerman notes, the Nationals are currently three games up in the NL East, and they’ve been one of the NL’s better offensive teams overall. (A season like the one Bryce Harper is having makes a big difference in that regard.) The Nationals have also gotten nice contributions from players who didn’t project to be starters, including Danny Espinosa, Michael Taylor and Clint Robinson. But the Nationals simply have too many injured players for whom to cover. Zuckerman argues that a versatile regular like Ben Zobrist would be tremendously helpful in patching the Nats’ lineup.
  • Alex Guerrero’s contract with the Dodgers contains a clause that allows him to opt out after 2015 if he’s traded, but Guerrero might consider waiving that clause if he were paid extra, Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles writes. Guerrero (who can’t be optioned to the minors without his permission, either) has played sparingly lately, with Justin Turner handling third most of the time. Guerrero is currently owed about $12MM through 2017. He’s just 28 and has hit 10 homers in 159 plate appearances this year (albeit with a .277 OBP), so he could be a more appealing addition to the trade market if he’s willing to dispense with his opt-out clause.

After 2014 Mess, Astros Pleased With 2015 Draft

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The Astros had a strange and disappointing 2014 draft, failing to sign top overall pick Brady Aiken and also failing to sign highly regarded fifth-rounder Jacob Nix when they lost the bonus pool allotment contingent upon Aiken’s signing. But amateur scouting director Mike Elias is pleased with his team’s 2015 draft and feels it makes up for the disappointing results in 2014, Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle writes.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget about that unfortunate part of that draft class,” says Elias. “I think we took a lot of other good players in that draft, but to certainly not sign the first overall pick, have what happened happen, and have the other complications that arose from that occur, it was an unpleasant experience I think for everyone involved.”

Since the Astros didn’t sign Aiken, they got the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft, which they used to sign LSU shortstop Alex Bregman. They also got Florida high school outfielder Kyle Tucker with their regular first-round pick (No. 5 overall), then picked another top talent, Georgia high school outfielder Daz Cameron, with the No. 37 overall pick, a Comp Round A selection they had acquired in the trade that sent Jarred Cosart the Marlins. All three have begun their careers in the Astros organization.

That the Astros had both the No. 2 and No. 5 overall picks gave them an enormous bonus pool of about $17.3MM, far bigger than that of that of the Rockies, who had the second biggest pool at about $14MM, and more than twice as large as the average pool, which came in at around $7.46MM.

The Astros have signed all their picks in the first ten rounds. Bregman signed for $5.9MM, significantly less than his allotment of about $7.4MM, and the Astros saved on later picks as well, picking college seniors in the seventh through tenth rounds as a way of limiting costs. They were thus able to sign Cameron away from a Florida State commitment with a hefty $4MM bonus that ties Tucker for the fourth-largest bonus in the entire draft so far (keeping in mind that top overall pick Dansby Swanson has not yet signed). The Astros also signed their 11th-round pick, California high school lefty Patrick Sandoval, for $900K, of which $800K counted against their pool.

“[T]o come away with three top 10 players, essentially, out of two high picks and a (compensation round pick at No. 37), it’s huge,” Elias says. “And it is, I think, the optimal outcome for the compensation that we received for not signing Brady last year. … [O]n paper, I do feel that we made the most of a scenario we were presented with for 2015.”

Neftali Feliz Elects Free Agency

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9:48pm: Feliz has elected free agency, Cotillo tweets. There will obviously be interest in his services, particularly as he has maintained his mid-90s velocity, though it remains to be seen whether Feliz will receive any immediate opportunities at the major league level.

1:39pm: Rangers righty Neftali Feliz has cleared outright waivers, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo tweets. Feliz was designated for assignment last Friday.

The 27-year-old Feliz is playing on a $4.13MM arbitration deal this year and remains controllable for a final year in 2016. That obligation, combined with the sub-par performances that led to the DFA, likely ensured that he would not be claimed.

Because Feliz has topped five years of service at this point, after entering the year with 4.151 to his credit, he can choose to elect free agency without giving up his remaining salary. Per the report, Feliz is still deciding whether or not to take an assignment with Texas.

One one of the game’s more exciting young pen arms, Feliz has scuffled this season to a 5.09 ERA with 7.6 K/9 and 4.6 BB/9. Though he’s had much better results in recent seasons, it has been some time since Feliz rated well in the eyes of ERA estimators. He has not dipped below the 4.00 mark by measure of SIERA since the 2011 season, after which the Rangers unsuccessfully sought to move him into the rotation.

[RELATED: Rangers To Sign Cuban Free Agent Andy Ibanez]

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