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Dodgers Notes: Kazmir, Hill, Johnson

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Dodgers lefty Scott Kazmir is headed for an examination today as he deals with back and neck issues, as Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times was among those to tweet. The issue isn’t exactly a new one, but seems to be an occasionally recurring problem. As Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register tweets, Kazmir says that he ends up having trouble picking up the target and keeping his right side closed when it flares up. It’s not yet clear whether a DL stint will be considered or whether there’s cause for broader concern. Regardless, it’s not great news for a Los Angeles team that has dealt with injuries to nearly every member of its rotation at one point or another this year.

Here are a few more notes out of Los Angeles:

  • The Dodgers are at least finally set to welcome trade deadline acquisition Rich Hill to the rotation on Wednesday, as he is now officially scheduled to start an important tilt against Johnny Cueto and the Giants. Hill has been on the shelf for much longer than had been expected while waiting for a blister to heal and has yet to take the mound since arriving in L.A. over three weeks ago. A blister may not sound like much of an injury, but as Eric Nusbaum explores in great detail for Vice Sports, it’s a major problem for a pitcher.
  • Dan Johnson, a 37-year-old former first baseman, has joined the Dodgers as a knuckleballing hurler, per an announcement from the indy league St. Paul Saints (with whom he was pitching). He’ll head to Double-A for the Los Angeles organization, where he’ll be reunited with Andrew Friedman — who was the GM of the Rays back when Johnson popped his famous home run for the organization. Johnson had returned to Tampa Bay for Spring Training this year, but wasn’t able to stick as a pitcher. Now, he’ll head to the Double-A level and try for an improbable return to the majors. Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN recently ran a story on Johnson that is well worth a look.

Tim Tebow Set To Work Out For MLB Scouts

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Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow will hold a workout for major league teams on August 30th, as ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick was among those to tweet. You can find a round-up of ESPN.com’s reporting on the topic here. He’ll be hoping to convince scouts that he is worthy of his first professional baseball contract at 29 years of age.

An all-time great NCAA football performer on the gridiron for the University of Florida, Tebow’s celebrity has outstripped his performance since he joined the professional ranks. He washed out after just three seasons in the NFL and has mostly worked as a college football analyst since 2012.

The more recent shift of Tebow’s gaze to the National Pastime has created ample media attention. It largely goes without saying, though, that the odds remain firmly against him ever playing any kind of impactful role in a minor league system — let alone reaching or succeeding in the majors. Tebow was quite a productive baseball player in high school, when he lined up in the corner outfield, but has focused exclusively on football in the intervening decade-plus since he hung up his glove and bat after his junior year.

Despite the long odds, it seems that MLB clubs are intrigued enough to take a look. More than twenty, in fact, are reportedly sending talent evaluators to see the workout, which is said to be the culmination of almost a year of preparation. Tebow will go through a fairly typical routine, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post. He’ll run, field flies and throw to bases, take live BP, and then face some live pitching.

The Dodgers previously “showed interest” after one of their scouts watched Tebow before the season, per ESPN.com’s Darren Rovell. Perhaps it’s telling, though, that the game’s most voracious consumer of amateur talent did not find a way to get the former Heisman Trophy winner into its talent pipeline when it had the chance. Whether or not Tebow has enhanced his appeal since that time remains to be seen, though it seems apparent already that the entire undertaking has succeeded in creating a spectacle.

Blue Jays Pursued Joey Votto Trade Last Summer

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The Blue Jays opened “serious discussions” with the Reds last summer about a possible deal to add star first baseman Joey Votto, according to Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star. But those talks “never gained momentum,” per the report.

Instead, Toronto shifted its attention to adding Troy Tulowitzki and David Price in a pair of blockbusters that helped push the club into the post-season. While the dialogue with the Reds seemingly did not get very far down the line, Griffin says that the expectation was that Cincinnati would hold onto some of the large financial commitments to Votto, who is owed $179MM after the end of the 2016 season. (Ultimately, the Blue Jays took on Tulowitzki’s own lengthy deal, but sent Jose Reyes back to the Rockies to help offset the cost.)

Of course, it must be emphasized that those moves — as well as the chatter with Cincinnati — all took place under former general manager Alex Anthopoulos. He left over the offseason after the team hired Mark Shapiro as club president, with Shapiro ultimately bringing in Ross Atkins to step into the GM role.

It’s not clear whether or not the new front office leadership would share the interest of its predecessors in adding Votto. A native of Ontario, Votto would surely be desirable to any organization, as he continues to put up stellar offensive numbers (.309/.433/.522 with 20 home runs thus far in 2016). But the monster contract is another matter, especially for a player who will soon turn 33 years of age.

We’ve yet to hear of any current interest in such a maneuver from the Shapiro/Atkins front office group, so for now it’s all hypothetical, but Griffin goes on to argue that Votto still makes sense as a target for the Jays. It seems likely that Votto will clear waivers, and perhaps he’d be amenable to waiving his no-trade clause for a chance to return to his native land. In the near-term, he’d represent a major boost to a team that has seen its best left-handed hitters fade of late, and then he’d step into the void left when Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista reach the open market after the season.

There’s certainly some facial appeal to the suggestion, but it bears noting that there are plenty of hurdles even if Toronto were to pursue Votto. Among other things, the Reds would presumably want to minimize their  ongoing salary obligations while also reaping a nice package of young talent to part with their best player.

John Henry On Dombrowski, Sandoval, Ortiz, Extensions, Pitching

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Red Sox owner John Henry discussed a variety of topics in an exchange with Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald (read more here and here). Fans of the team and those interested in the interaction of the front office and upper management will certainly want to give the Q&A a full read, but here are some of the highlights:

Henry discussed the baseball operations department quite a bit. He credited former GM Ben Cherington for his “discipline” during his tenure running the team. Indeed, Boston has benefited from the strong play of several young players who were often mentioned as possible trade pieces. Upon taking the helm, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has “done a very good job of bringing the clubhouse and front office together,” says Henry.

The decision to add Dombrowski not only represented a switch at the top of baseball ops, but also led Boston to join an increasing number of teams in utilizing a president of baseball operations as well as a general manager. C“I think most big clubs now realize that the traditional GM role was just too large and demanding,” Henry explains while noting that he has been impressed by the performance of new GM Mike Hazen, who was Cherington’s top lieutenant but ended up being retained and promoted by Dombrowski.

Henry also touched upon the status of injured and embattled Red Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval. The 30-year-old is an important part of the near future for Boston, Henry says. That’s self-evident to some extent, as Sandoval is owed $58MM over the next three seasons (including the buyout of a 2020 club option). But the Sox owner suggests that the organization has expectations that Sandoval can return to being the “supremely talented veteran and a proven winner” that the club signed up for in the first place. “This year and last were frustrating for him and frustrating for us,” Henry says of Sandoval. “We need him next year.”

Sandoval’s importance is heightened by the fact that David Ortiz is set to retire after the year, Henry suggests. Big Papi is in the midst of an all-time age-40 season — he currently leads the league with a 1.050 OPS — and that obviously represents a more-or-less irreplaceable source of offense, though the free agent market does promise to offer several big bats. Sandoval certainly doesn’t look like a direct substitute, but a typical pre-Boston season from the Panda would go a long way toward making up for the loss.

Ortiz’s monster season has inevitably raised questions about whether he’ll reconsider his decision to hang ’em up. While Henry says that he would invite that, it doesn’t sound as if anything is actually under consideration with Ortiz still battling through pain to make it on the field. “If at some point he seriously considers coming back, it would be a great day for the organization,” said Henry. “But, unfortunately, I don’t think that is in the cards.” 

Even as the Sox bid adieu to Big Papi, they have some immensely talented, younger position players like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr. on hand to constitute a new core. The natural question is whether and when Boston will aim to extend some of these regulars. While Henry declined to answer in any detail, he did note that, “if this group wants to play together for a long-time, we’ll do everything we can to make it happen.”

It’s rather easy to make a case for offering new, long-term deals to any of those three players, each of whom has now performed in the majors for a reasonably extended stretch — thus seemingly making good on their promise as prospects. But the Red Sox organization has a much less impressive record in developing pitching than in churning out bats from the farm. Unsurprisingly, Henry labeled that a “problem.” While he didn’t divulge much, he suggested that it’s a priority for the team to figure out how to draft and develop young arms.

AL Notes: Weaver, Gray, Storen, Jays

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Angels righty Jered Weaver isn’t ready to decide whether or not he’ll be back in 2017, as Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reports. “There’s still a lot of season left,” said the veteran hurler. “When the time comes to answer those questions, I will.” Though Weaver has been hit hard this year, there are some positives, including a steadily rising average fastball velocity (albeit one that still sits in the mid-eighties). Both Angels GM Billy Eppler and Weaver’s agent Scott Boras note that the 33-year-old has been durable this year, though he is now two seasons removed from being a high-quality major league starter. It’s not yet clear whether the Halos will have interest in continuing their longstanding relationship with Weaver, who has spent all 11 years of his career with the organization and is finishing out a five-year, $85MM contract.

Here’s more from the American League:

  • The Athletics seem unlikely at this point to receive another start from righty Sonny Gray in the 2016 season, as John Hickey of the Bay Area News Group writes. Oakland’s medical staff still hasn’t cleared Gray to begin throwing. Without much time in the minor league season to permit a rehab assignment, the road back to the big league hill may not pick up again in earnest until the spring. Manager Bob Melvin suggests that the best outcome at this point may be for Gray to “just throw off a mound and throw a bullpen” to give the 26-year-old “peace of mind about how he feels going into the offseason.”
  • Mariners righty Drew Storen is headed to the 15-day DL with right shoulder inflammation, per a club announcement. His active roster spot will go to outfielder Guillermo Heredia. While the Seattle pen has several injured hurlers filtering back to the majors and remains a solid overall unit, it’s another blow for the 29-year-old Storen. Since coming to the M’s a few weeks back after being designated by the Blue Jays, Storen has thrown 10 1/3 innings of 4.35 ERA ball. That’s an improvement in the results department over his poor half-season in Toronto, but Storen has recorded only six strikeouts in Seattle and hasn’t reversed his pronounced velocity decline. He’ll be a free agent after the year, and will surely end up seeking an opportunity to bounce back and return to being the quality late-inning arm he was during most of his six seasons with the Nationals. [Related: Updated Mariners Depth Chart]
  • Adding to several firings in the upper reaches of their scouting and player development departments, the Blue Jays have decided to part ways with minor league pitching coordinator Sal Fasano, as Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca reports. The long-time MLB catcher has been with the Toronto organization in various capacities since 2010. GM Ross Atkins recently discussed the team’s changes and plans for finding replacements.

NL Central Notes: Bell, Peraza, Senzel, Capuano, Nolin

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The Pirates recalled top first base prospect Josh Bell over the weekend, and he’ll have a larger role than he had in his brief initial call-up earlier this season (three brilliant pinch-hit plate appearances), GM Neal Huntington tells Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We brought Josh up to play a decent amount,” said Huntington of the 24-year-old Bell, who has batted a .295/.382/.468 with 14 homers in 114 Triple-A games this season. Bell’s prospect pedigree and strong minor league production, paired with a .167/.306/.250 second half from John Jaso, could well pave the way to everyday at-bats (or something close to it) down the stretch. If he can prove himself to be a consistent hitter in the Majors and one capable of playing a passable first base — Huntington tells Brink that Bell’s defense will “continue to be a work in progress” — Bell could unseat Jaso and lead the team to shop the veteran (and his two-year, $8MM contract) over the winter.

A bit more from the NL Central…

  • Reds manager Bryan Price tells MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon that Jose Peraza could remain with the team for the rest of the year even if Zack Cozart returns quickly from a minor Achilles injury, but he stopped short of committing to the notion of Peraza sticking in the Majors through the end of the Triple-A season on Sept. 5. As Sheldon notes, Peraza was scarcely used when he spent a month and a half in the Majors earlier this summer, but he’s had a pair of multi-hit games since being recalled to fill in for Cozart at shortstop and could get looks at second base, in left field and in center field over the course of September in an effort to see what he can do with consistent playing time against MLB pitching. It would be somewhat strange for the Reds not to work him into the lineup as much as possible in order to get a better evaluation of Peraza, especially considering the fact that he can be deployed at a number of positions.
  • Having watched Dansby Swanson, Alex Bregman and Andrew Benintendi go from the 2015 draft to the Majors less than a year later, Reds third base prospect Nick Senzel said on the MLBPipeline.com podcast that he hopes for a similarly quick ascent (also via Sheldon). Senzel, the No. 2 overall pick in this season’s draft, is hitting .309/.400/.545 with seven homers in 46 games with Class-A Dayton. He hasn’t been moved quite as aggressively as Bregman, who played at Class-A Advanced during his debut season, but neither Swanson nor Benintendi topped Class-A last season and both still made it to the bigs this year. “You look at those guys … get there their first full year, as a player and a college hitter that makes you hungry to get up there,” said Senzel.
  • Brewers left-hander Chris Capuano isn’t likely to return to the team in 2016, GM David Stearns tells Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The 38-year-old has been sidelined by an elbow injury since late May, and a platelet-rich plasma treatment hasn’t sped along his recovery as much as had been hoped. Stearns notes that Capuano “is still very motivated to make it back and continue his career,” so it sounds as if there’s a good chance he’ll aim to return in 2017 if he can’t do so at the tail end of the present season.
  • Another Brewers southpaw, Sean Nolin, recently underwent Tommy John surgery after trying to stave off the procedure, Haudricourt further reports. He, too, tried a PRP treatment but did not improve enough to avoid a UCL replacement. Milwaukee outfielder Rymer Liriano, meanwhile, has faced slow going after being struck by a pitch in the face this spring. Though he has now begun baseball activities, Liriano won’t be able to make it to the majors this year. Instead, says Stearns, he may be able to participate in fall instructional league action.

Michael Hill Discusses Marlins Roster

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With the Marlins sitting just out of Wild Card position, president of baseball operations Michael Hill discussed his team’s roster with MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro. While Hill didn’t get into specifics, he did suggest that Miami will continue looking for ways to improve its roster.

The club only has about a week to add playoff-eligible players, of course, but has been said to be looking at both pitching and outfield additions. “We’re right in the thick of this thing,” Hill said when asked about possible acquisitions. “Every win counts. We’re going to give ourselves every opportunity to do so, hopefully throughout the rest of August and into September.”

As ever, internal dynamics can have the largest impact. First and foremost, Hill noted that the return of A.J. Ramos will restore the late-inning mix that the club hoped for when it acquired Fernando Rodney earlier in the summer. Rodney will stay in the ninth inning for the time being.

The starting staff is still hurting with Adam Conley and Wei-Yin Chen on the shelf. It seems that the former is closer to his return, though his timetable remains uncertain. Hill suggested that the hope is Chen can make it back by the end of the regular season, though it appears that his elbow injury will keep him out through at least most of the month of September.

Critically, ace Jose Fernandez is on track for the team’s innings target, according to Hill. The team’s top baseball operations man says that Fernandez is set up to shoulder a full workload down the stretch and into a hopeful post-season berth.

Also, with Justin Bour still working his way back from an ankle injury, the Marlins expect to mix and match at first base to get their best bats into the lineup. Hill said that manager Don Mattingly will decide who to go to among Derek Dietrich, Chris Johnson, and the just-recalled Xavier Scruggs.

D-Backs To Activate A.J. Pollock From DL Later This Week

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The Diamondbacks appear to be on the verge of some much-needed good news, as manager Chip Hale suggested today that center fielder A.J. Pollock will likely be activated from the DL later this week. Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic tweeted Hale’s comments.

Pollock’s season debut will come too late to help reverse a forgettable 2016 campaign. But it’s an enormous step for the organization, which entered the year with exceedingly high hopes only to fall into last place in the NL West.

For all the attention that has been paid to some questionable offseason decisions by the Arizona front office, there’s no doubt that the organization was trying to push its chips in to create a winner. The view was that a talented young core was worthy of supplementation.

Apart from star slugger Paul Goldschmidt, Pollock was the most important element in that assessment. He entered spring camp fresh off of a gem of a campaign in which he hit .315/.367/.498, popped twenty long balls and swiped 39 bags, and drew rave reviews with his glove in center. That not only made him one of the game’s best overall performers in 2015, but pushed his earning power up (resulting in a two-year, $10.25MM deal to buy out two of his three arbitration seasons) and created hopes of a sustained breakout for the season yet to come.

While the D-Backs’ chances at the postseason were more average than great to begin with, Pollock’s fractured elbow — which occurred just before the start of the season — dealt them a severe blow. Making things even worse, the team had dealt away its best remaining outfield defender (Ender Inciarte) in the deal to acquire Shelby Miller, stripping the team of a clear replacement up the middle.

The injury came with greater-than-usual long-term complications, too. Pollock previously missed an entire season of minor league action after fracturing his growth plate in the same elbow, and initial reports of his new injury suggested there was no known timeline for his return.

As it turns out, Pollock has seemingly fared somewhat better than might have been feared. He will be able to return for about five weeks of action and, so long as all goes well, enter spring at full speed. If his .433/.541/.733 slash line on his rehab assignment is any indication, Pollock will have no trouble picking up where he left off, though it remains to be seen whether the injury will have lasting effects.

Tony La Russa Defends Shelby Miller Trade

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A necessary search for quality pitching drove the Diamondbacks’ offseason acquisition of right-hander Shelby Miller, club chief baseball officer Tony La Russa said in defending the swap in comments to Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. While the Arizona front office has obviously discussed that highly-scrutinized deal before, its ongoing relevance is heightened by recent rumblings of change in the baseball operations department.

Amidst reports of embarrassing missteps, Arizona’s upper management hasn’t yet committed to retaining La Russa, GM Dave Stewart, or other top baseball ops personnel. And a more recent report says that the ownership group has nixed several significant would-be actions by La Russa and company in recent weeks, suggesting at least some lack of alignment in the organization’s baseball decisionmaking.

The Miller deal, which followed the team’s out-of-nowhere signing of Zack Greinke, is Exhibit A in the detractors’ case against La Russa and Stewart. It is a powerful piece of evidence, because Arizona not only gave up solid and controllable MLB regular — Ender Inciarte — but parted with a quality pitching prospect in Aaron Blair and the just-drafted top overall pick in Dansby Swanson. In return, the D-Backs received a pitcher who didn’t really seem worth that package at the time, and who has gone on to suffer through an unimaginably bad 2016 season.

Because a transaction of that magnitude could end up altering a franchise’s trajectory, its success or failure carries significant weight in assessing front office performance. In that context, La Russa and Stewart have recently defended the swap — among other moves — as pressure mounts. The D-Backs currently hold the second-worst record in the National League, leading only the Braves — who are, of course, the rebuilding organization that sent Miller to Arizona.

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Steven Matz Headed To Disabled List With Shoulder Tightness

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2:45pm: Matz will placed on the disabled list, retroactive to Aug. 15, with tightness in his left shoulder, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post.

AUG. 22, 1:09pm: Matz has been diagnosed with a “mild” strain and some inflammation of the rotator cuff in his left shoulder, but doctors found no structural damage, reports Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports. There’s no word yet on whether he’ll require a stint on the disabled list, however, and the Mets have yet to formally announce the test results.

AUG. 19: Mets left-hander Steven Matz has been scratched from tonight’s start due to discomfort in his left shoulder, as Newsday’s Marc Carig writes. The New York Post’s Mike Puma writes that he’s likely to be examined on Monday in New York.

Matz stated that what he’s experiencing is “just discomfort” and said he’s not too worried about the issue, but there’s obviously at least some cause for concern for both Matz and the team. Matz, of course, has been pitching through a bone spur in his left elbow, and while Carig writes that neither the team nor Citi Field’s Trackman software has detected any mechanical changes to his delivery due to the spur, there’s still no immediate way of knowing whether the elbow ailment has contributed to his newfound shoulder troubles. Matz first felt the discomfort when throwing off flat ground earlier this week and didn’t feel improvement when throwing prior to yesterday’s game.

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