Click here to read a transcript of today’s chat with host Jeff Todd.
Archives for November 2018
Reds Reportedly Have Serious Interest In Dallas Keuchel
As they seek to bolster their questionable rotation, the Reds are “all over” free agent southpaw Dallas Keuchel, according to a report from Jon Heyman of Fancred. Cincinnati has also reached out to fellow open-market lefty J.A. Happ, per the report.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see if the Reds land one of these targets, but it’s notable enough just to hear of the interest. Keuchel, of course, is one of the top free agents on the market. MLBTR rated him fourth on its top fifty list, predicting a four-year, $82MM pact.
Though he’s plenty accomplished, Keuchel is also nearing his 31st birthday and was not at peak form in 2018. He still got solid results, and generated plenty of weak contact, but also saw big year-over-year drops in his swinging strike rate (10.9% to 8.3%) and groundball rate (66.8% to 53.7%).
At his best, Keuchel gets a few more strikeouts and quite a few more worm-burners. He also has at times been quite tough to take out of the yard; as Heyman notes, that’s an important consideration for a team playing in a bandbox.
The Reds no doubt like the fact that Keuchel and Happ have generally been durable and given a good number of innings over the past several seasons. Keuchel did have some shoulder and neck issues, but worked through them and topped 200 frames for the third time in 2018. Happ is already 36 years of age, but has averaged 155 frames annually dating back to 2011. Both come with risks, of course, but neither seems to have particular health concerns.
Whether either of these or other top free agent hurlers will requite the Reds’ interest remains to be seen. Certainly, the team’s willingness to match or beat the rest of the market will be a deciding factor. It seems, though, that we can generally expect the Reds at least to explore many of the best-available pitchers over the remainder of the winter.
Reds Claim Jordan Patterson
The Reds have claimed outfielder/first baseman Jordan Patterson from the Mets, per a club announcement. He was only recently claimed by the New York organization from the Rockies.
Clearly, the Mets had hoped to stash Patterson off of their 40-man roster. Instead, he’ll hang on to a MLB placement — for the time being, at least. He does not appear to be particularly clean fit on a Reds roster that already has plenty of options at his positions to face right-handed pitching, but it’s still possible he’ll enter camp with a shot at earning a job.
Regardless, it seems reasonable to expect that the Patterson will get a shot at some point in his age-27 season. He has little left to prove at the plate in the upper minors, after all, having slashed .282/.363/.516 over three campaigns at Triple-A — an impressive track record even though he was hitting at altitude.
Latest On Noah Syndergaard
While other major rumors swirl, the Mets appear to have a line open with other organizations regarding power righty Noah Syndergaard. Chatter on Thor has been percolating for some time now, but there’s increasing indication that the Mets actually prefer to move the franchise cornerstone.
Indeed, the New York org is “motivated” to move on from Syndergaard, according to Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs (Twitter link), with the organization said to be reaching out to rivals to gauge interest. As others have suggested, the Mets would then anticipate turning around and bringing in another starter via free agency.
It remains somewhat unclear precisely why the Mets have determined that trading Syndergaard is the right course, but new GM Brodie Van Wagenen is clearly out to re-shape the roster. That the big righty is a former Van Wagenen client only adds to the intrigue. In any event, there’ll be no shortage of suitors. When healthy, Syndergaard is a monster on the mound and a rather marketable asset to boot.
The rival club most frequently tied to Syndergaard of late is the Padres. As Jon Heyman of Fancred tweets, though, the San Diego outfit is not only unwilling to part with top prospect Fernando Tatis Jr., but won’t part with MacKenzie Gore or Luis Urias, either. It seems that the Friars are more amenable to discussing other prospects, though it’s arguable there are a few others who are or ought to be just as untouchable as that trio.
Otherwise, the Brewers are now a team to watch on Syndergaard, according to Andy Martino of SNY.tv. Their level of interest isn’t clear, but it’s obviously not hard to imagine the Milwaukee org liking the idea of placing Thor atop their rotation. The Reds and Yankees, however, are not involved in the pursuit.
As for the Mets’ apparent plan to add another arm if they move Syndergaard, it’s anyone’s guess how that’ll play out. Certainly, with other moves afoot that’d add salary, this approach would indicate a real willingness to boost the payroll. Just how far, though, remains to be seen. The top-available pitchers would require significant contracts. Other, lesser hurlers are obviously under consideration — Mike Puma of the New York Post cites Gio Gonzalez on Twitter — but assuredly will not bring Syndergaard’s upside and will still out-earn him in 2019 (he’s projected at just $5.9MM).
“Strong Possibility” Brewers Non-Tender Jonathan Schoop
With the non-tender deadline looming tomorrow, there’s a “strong possibility” the Brewers will non-tender infielder Jonathan Schoop, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). A trade route is also possible, per the report; the takeaway, regardless, is that the Milwaukee organization seems to be preparing to move on.
That’d be a tough pill to swallow, given that the Brewers acquired Schoop just last summer in anticipation of a turnaround. That did not come to pass late in 2018, and evidently the organization isn’t all that optimistic that the bounce back will occur in the season to come. Or, at least, it’s not willing to pay what it’ll take to find out.
[RELATED: Projecting Payrolls: Milwaukee Brewers]
In his final season of arbitration eligibility, MLBTR and contributor Matt Swartz project, Schoop will take down something on the order of $10.1MM. That’s an easy payday to commit to for the 2017 version of Schoop. He slashed a robust .293/.338/.503 with 32 long balls and turned in solid defensive work, making him a comfortably above-average regular.
Last year, though, the bottom dropped out. While he continued his solid glovework, and even showed that he can handle shortstop, Schoop’s bat fell apart. He still had good power, but ended the season with only a .233/.266/.416 slash.
The difference on the stat sheet primarily comes down to quality of contact. Schoop’s batting average on balls in play plummeted from .330 in 2017 to .261 last year. Since he rarely walk, that devastated his on-base percentage. And it’s hard to chalk it up to bad luck, as Statcast actually suggests he enjoyed good fortune (.290 wOBA vs. .266 xwOBA).
If the Brewers do indeed pull the plug, it’ll reflect not only their feelings about Schoop, but also of the remainder of the market. The organization may anticipate better opportunities to improve its infield mix; after all, at second base especially, there are numerous open-market and trade options. With other needs to address as well, and perhaps not a lot of available money to work with, there certainly could be an opportunity for the Brewers to add a solid second base asset at a lower price — or even to pursue other, more creative roster tweaks.
Dodgers, Padres Pursuing Garrett Richards
The Dodgers and Padres are among the teams pursuing free agent righty Garrett Richards, with Jon Heyman of Fancred (via Twitter) reporting that both have made offers. The Los Angeles organization, in particular, is said to be “making a push” to keep the long-time Halos hurler in the region.
Richards has been derailed by elbow issues for some time now, recording only 138 2/3 total innings since the start of the 2016 season. While he was able to stave off Tommy John surgery for quite some time, he finally went under the knife last July and is expected to miss most or all of the 2019 season while recovering.
In all likelihood, then, the clubs pursuing Richards will be angling for some sort of multi-year arrangement. The current standard for this sort of situation is a two-year, $10MM pact. That’s what Drew Smyly (with the Cubs) and Michael Pineda (Twins) took home last year under similar circumstances, and it’s also what MLBTR predicted for Richards in our annual ranking of the top fifty free agents.
Of course, market forces could push the money or years in a different direction in this case. Richards is quite an accomplished pitcher, after all, having thrown 744 2/3 career MLB innings of 3.54 ERA ball. The high-velocity hurler is a consistent groundball producer (52.5% career GB rate) but has increasingly shown an ability to get whiffs (he has generated more than an eleven percent swinging-strike rate in each of the past four seasons and carries 9.6 K/9 in the past three).
It’s notable that these two California organizations are pushing for Richards, though he’d fit comfortably with any club that likes him and is interested in taking some financial risk for a potentially high-quality starter. There are some connections to the state that are worth noting: not only has Richards obviously spent his professional career to date in California, but he has family roots there as well. (He was born in the state, though spent most of his childhood in Oklahoma.)
Arbitration Breakdown: Khris Davis
Over the last few days, I have been discussing some of the higher profile upcoming arbitration cases. I rely partly on my arbitration model, developed exclusively for MLB Trade Rumors, but will also break out some interesting comparables and determine where the model might be wrong. 2019 arbitration projections are available right here.
Khris Davis enters his third year of arbitration under somewhat familiar conditions—with a .247 average (matching his exact batting average in each season from 2015 through 2017) and at least 40 home runs in his platform season. Coincidences aside, my model sees him getting his biggest raise ever, a $7.6MM bump, good for an $18.1MM salary projection. Last year, he got a $5.5MM raise from his initial $5MM salary in his first year of arbitration.
With career highs of 48 home runs and 123 runs batted in, it is pretty logical that Davis is projected to get his biggest raise yet. On top of that, the same type of performance in the third year of arbitration eligibility is typically associated with a larger raise than it would in the second year of eligibility.
Davis’ case obviously hinges on his power numbers, which is certainly a fortunate skill to possess when it comes to arbitration; power is the skill the arbitration system favors most heavily. Looking for appropriate comparables for Davis is going to require looking for other players who have had significant tallies of the right counting stats, so we should restrict our search to prominent sluggers.
Somewhat surprisingly, in the past decade, only one player has hit 40 home runs going into his third year of arbitration: Todd Frazier, two years ago. Frazier only hit .225 that year and fell just short of 100 RBIs with 98. Davis hit eight more home runs than Frazier did, too. Putting that together, we get an absolute floor of the $3.75MM raise from Frazier’s case.
Even if we soften the home run requirement to 35 and require 100 RBIs, we only get one player in the past five years: Charlie Blackmon, last year. He got a $6.7MM raise for hitting .331 with 37 home runs and 104 runs batted in. There was some debate last year about whether that was enough of a raise, with some rival agents taking shots through the media claiming he should have gotten more. If applied back to Blackmon’s case, the current iteration model does project his 2017 season to support a larger raise of $7.8 million. That also means that the model slightly prefers that season, with its lofty batting average but lesser power stats, to the one just turned in by Davis. All things considered, Blackmon seems like a pretty solid overall comparable, one that either side in the Davis case could argue off of.
It is difficult to come up with other comparables in recent years, but if Davis and the A’s go further back, they might want to look for someone who led the league in home runs like Davis did going into his third year of arbitration. That would be Matt Kemp, who got a $5.05 million raise for his .324/39/126 season in 2011. That is obviously very stale, but it makes it plausible that Davis could get a similar kind of raise with inflation, although his batting average was obviously worse.
With so few plausible comparables, it is difficult to know what Davis could command. In such situations, I would lean towards the model, especially without much evidence that the number was too high or too low. Regardless, in the current era with so many home runs being hit league wide, it will be interesting to see how this affects future cases for guys like Davis who hit so many home runs. Of course, we may not get to see a one-year settlement. The relationship seems to be working for both sides and all involved surely remain mindful of the open market’s devaluation of sluggers, so it would not be surprising to see a multi-year agreement of some kind.
Athletics Announce Stadium Plans
Yesterday, the Athletics announced their initial plans for a long-awaited new ballpark. Set in Oakland’s Howard Terminal, the proposed new facility would represent a marked departure from standard stadium design.
Renderings and other information are available here. They show a waterfront facility that might be described as baseball’s version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. A fan-accessible, greenscaped ring (the club calls it an “elevated park”) surrounds a much tamer inner stadium that’s notable mostly for its ample provision of standing room and snug, 34k-seat capacity.
There’s more to this than the architecture, of course. The proposal, like most other ballpark projects we’ve seen of late, would include plans for mixed-use development featuring “housing, including affordable housing, offices, retail, small business space and restaurants, hotels, public gathering spaces, and parks.” Transportation challenges could be met in part by a gondola system connecting to downtown Oakland, which certainly sounds like a unique new way to get to a ballgame.
As with the Rays, the other MLB organization that realistically lacks a contemporary stadium and has recently proposed a striking new facility, public handouts will not completely carry this project through. In this case, while the A’s will surely seek public support in a variety of ways — acquiring rights to the site, to take but one notable example — the club says it will fully finance the ballpark construction through private means.
Needless to say, it’s quite an ambitious overall undertaking that will take some time to pull off. The team says it hopes to break ground in 2021 and open the ballpark in time for the 2023 season. For a perennially underfunded A’s club, there’s a lot at stake. As the organization itself claims on the stadium website, getting the new facility up is necessary to “retain our players and build a more competitive team.”
Padres’ Franmil Reyes To Undergo Knee Surgery
Padres outfielder Franmil Reyes will undergo surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee and will be sidelined for the next four to eight weeks, tweets Dennis Lin of the Athletic. The team expects him to be ready for Spring Training.
Reyes, 23, sustained the injury while playing in the Dominican Winter League, where he was off to a ludicrous start through 13 games: .444/.510/.689 with three homers and two doubles in 51 plate appearances. The knee issue will likely end his DWL season, though even an eight-week timeline would have him back up to speed by the end of January.
The injury is of some note, however, given that Reyes has seen his name surface in past trade rumors. San Diego has somewhat of a crunch in the outfield corners, with Wil Myers, Hunter Renfroe and Franchy Cordero all on the 40-man roster, to say nothing of center field options like Manuel Margot and Travis Jankowski.
Certainly, a relatively minor knee surgery won’t eliminate trade interest in the young slugger. But, the added health questions could nonetheless give some teams pause and/or lower the amount that an interested party would be willing to surrender in a theoretical deal. The Padres’ efforts, to this point in the offseason, have seemingly focused on potentially shedding the remainder of Myers’ contract, but they’ll undoubtedly explore a wide swath of options with regard to their outfield as the Winter Meetings approach.
Reyes, listed at a hulking 6’5″ and 275 pounds, made his MLB debut with the Padres this past season after laying waste to Triple-A pitching early in the year. The big man somewhat quietly posted a .280/.340/.498 batting line and clubbed 16 home runs through just 285 MLB plate appearances — production that’s all the more impressive when considering the spacious nature of San Diego’s Petco Park. Reyes has his flaws — he graded out below average in right field and struck out at a 28.1 percent clip — but there’s plenty about which to be encouraged when looking at his under-the-radar rookie campaign.
Francisco Cervelli, Russell Martin Available On Trade Market
Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli and Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin are both generating some degree of interest on the trade market, per Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (all Twitter links). The Jays are willing to pay a “significant” portion of the final $20MM on Martin’s contract, per Passan, and have already discussed him with other clubs. Cervelli’s on-base skills are also appealing to catcher-needy teams, Passan notes, and the Pirates are willing to listen to offers for the veteran backstop. Both players are entering the final season of multi-year contracts.
Cervelli, 33 in March, just wrapped up a vastly superior offensive season to Martin and is owed a more palatable $11.5MM in 2019 before reaching free agency next winter. That price point is obviously steep for the typically low-budget Pirates, but other clubs around the league may not consider it excessive for a player who hit .259/.378/.431 with a career-high 12 home runs in 404 plate appearances last season. That OBP is hardly anything new for Cervelli, who has reached at a .370 clip or better in five of the past six seasons, with a .342 mark in 2017 serving as the lone exception.
Cervelli also halted an outstanding 39 percent of stolen-base attempts against him, though his once-superlative framing skills have checked in below the league average in each of the past two seasons, per Baseball Prospectus. He also rated below average in terms of pitch blocking in 2018.
The 35-year-old Martin is in a much different spot. He’ll make $20MM in the final season of a backloaded five-year, $82MM contract next season, and while his 15.9 percent walk rate was sensational, his overall .194/.338/.325 batting line leaves plenty to be desired. Martin was undoubtedly harmed by a .234 average on balls in play, but that’s perhaps not as unlucky as some might think at first glance.
While that .234 mark is well south of his career .283 BABIP, Martin saw his line-drive rate drop by nearly 10 percent this past season — from 23.7 percent in 2017 to 14 percent in 2018. He also posted a career-worst 19.4 percent infield-fly rate and hit the ball on the ground at a career-high 51.2 percent clip. For a 35-year-old catcher whose once-surprising speed has largely evaporated, that’s not a great trend.
Defensively, Martin’s once-excellent caught-stealing rate has waned over the past three seasons (22 percent in 2018 — six percent below the league average), but Baseball Prospectus still grades him as a premium framer and blocker.
The availability of both Cervelli and Martin only further adds to a market that has a vast supply of options but also a rather substantial amount of demand. Marlins star J.T. Realmuto is obviously the prize of the catching class but also surely comes with a substantially greater cost of acquisition than either Cervelli or Martin. Cleveland’s Yan Gomes, too, is said to be available. Free agency, meanwhile, offers the likes of Yasmani Grandal, Wilson Ramos, Martin Maldonado and Robinson Chirinos, among others.
As for demand, there’s no shortage of contenders or hopeful contenders who could use upgrades. The Dodgers, Astros, Rockies, Angels, Twins, Red Sox, Mets, Brewers and Phillies could all conceivably explore the market, as could a number of teams that are either in the midst of a rebuild or retooling process (e.g. Mariners, Tigers). And, of course, if any of Cervelli, Martin or Realmuto is moved, those catchers’ former clubs could look to the market to add a replacement option at a lower price.
