The Athletics have non-tendered a trio of right-handed pitchers, as MLB.com’s Jane Lee tweets. Starters Mike Fiers and Kendall Graveman will be sent to free agency along with reliever Cory Gearrin.
It had been widely expected that Fiers would return to Oakland. After all, the A’s certainly need arms and he was quite successful in 2018 on both sides of the trade that sent him out west from the Tigers. He ended the season with a 3.56 ERA in 172 innings.
Still, Fiers projected to earn a hefty $9.7MM salary. And the results came in spite of some rough underlying stats. Fiers checked in with 7.3 K/9 and 1.9 BB/9, but coughed up 32 home runs — the same tally he allowed in the prior campaign. All of the major ERA estimators value him as a 4+ performer over each of the past four campaigns.
Graveman, meanwhile, is still recovering from Tommy John surgery and will likely miss most or all of the 2019 campaign. But he’s an interesting pitcher who should draw plenty of looks on the market. Gearrin, too, seems like a prime target as a steady veteran reliever. The A’s simply preferred not to pay their salaries, which were projected at $2.5MM and $2.4MM, respectively.
More to come is right… Fiers was Godsend for the A’s. probably only non-tender more perplexing than Blake Parker
Top lefty coming back from Tommy John’s in AJ Puk? Jesus Luzardo looks just about ready? James Kaprielian also coming back from TJ? Where do you put them?
I guess they’ll have a 15 man bullpen and just do that for 162 games, who needs capable starters anymore.
That method got exposed bad in the WC game and the NLCS.
Getting to game 7 with a lead in the NLCS with a team on a fraction of the budget who most would say had a fraction of the talent is being exposed? What an asinine comment.
How about AJ Puk, Jesus Luzardo, and James Kaprielian? Worth a look?
Thats surprising on fiers
eppler!
From no no to non tender
Assuming they will try and re-sign Fiers for cheaper, other two they can do without.
Why did they even trade for Fiers? He was good for them down the stretch yet they decided to start Liam Hendricks in the WC game. Now they dont want him at all….
“Why did they even trade for Fiers? He was good for them down the stretch. They got him for that reason.”
Edited your question into a fact.
So they decided he was good now lets dump him? You want to keep good players ideally
They probably wanna negotiate a different deal
He didn’t have a set contract for 2019. It was his arb 3
Money has to be allocated carefully, this is Oakland not LA
Do you have $9.75MM to offer him? Neither do the A’s
Did I miss the A’s signing a starter or 3? Fiers had to have some trade value.
Awful risky to hit 2019 with a rotation group of pretty much all question marks, Luzardo-Mengden-Montas-Bassit-Blackburn-Triggs-Howard-Brooks-Dunshee-Cotton-Kapreilian-Puk, but I kinda like it.
I recall being attacked a couple of years ago by an Oakland fan after I said Graveman was horrible. They claimed he was a potential top of the rotation starter. Lololol Next!!
When he was healthy he was serviceable at worst he had his moments but he’s out all next year
Wait….. you did?? You so crazy
Was he an ace? No. But ya I’ll definitely take 3 years of ERA just above 4 for about $500,000/season. This year was bad but not sure how much of that was pitching with a torn UCL. I certainly understand A’s logic here in cutting him as he recovers from TJ, but if you’ve got other SP available that will give you about a 4.10 ERA over 3 years/1.5 million, ya I’ll happily take that pitcher.
Non tendering Fiers on the other hand blows my mind.
Wow never saw a fan so excited about a pitcher with an ERA over 4 know matter how little he was paid. No wonder A’s fans do not understand winning.
I don’t know who you root for but wouldn’t be surprised if that team had a fat wallet and money was no object.
It’s pretty simple. Over the 3 years Graveman posted a ~4.10 ERA, average ERA in the American League was ~4.20 (and that’s including relievers). So yeah, I was happy to have a starting pitcher giving us better than average results at a cost of 4 million less per season than the average MLB salary. “Innings-eaters” get decent money on the open market.
Even the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees can’t pay for an all star at every position. Every team wants and needs guys they can count on to be a decent player at a “cheap” rate.
Well, they need to come with the buckies to pay Kris Davis, they want Familia back plus the catcher situation is still uncertain at this point… We will see…
Fiers would look good in a Brewers uniform again.