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Mariners Announce Coaching Changes

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The Mariners have unveiled their coaching staff for the 2020 season, with three new faces joining the crew.  Pete Woodworth will replace Paul Davis as Seattle’s pitching coach, as Davis will take on a new position as the organization’s chief pitching strategist.  Carson Vitale will be the team’s new Major League field coordinator, while Jarret DeHart will become the assistant hitting coach, working alongside second-year hitting coach Tim Laker.

All three are internal hires, coming up to the big league club after previously working in the Mariners’ farm system.  Woodward has been moving up the affiliate ranks as a pitching coach for the last four seasons, most recently serving as the pitching coach for Double-A Arkansas.  Vitale has been the Mariners’ minor league field coordinator for the last two seasons.  DeHart has also been with the organization for the last two years, working as the hitting coach for the M’s Arizona League team in 2018 and spending last season as a roving minor league hitting strategist.

The coaching staff as a whole will have a different yet familiar look, as several incumbent coaches will be taking on new roles.  Jared Sandberg, who was the previous Major League field coordinator, will now be Scott Servais’ bench coach.  Manny Acta, who worked as bench coach for the last two seasons and as the third base coach in 2016-17, will be coaching at the hot corner once again, replacing the departing Chris Prieto.

Brian De Lunas is another coach resuming an old position, as he will step into the bullpen coach job that was held by Jim Brower in 2019.  De Lunas was Seattle’s bullpen coach in 2018 before working as director of pitching development strategies in 2019.

Laker and first base/infield coach Perry Hill will both be back in their same coaching roles in 2020.

Hamels Open To One-Year Deal With Win-Now Club

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Veteran lefty Cole Hamels is a free agent for the first time in his excellent 14-year career, but unlike many free agents he doesn’t sound laser-focused on securing one last, lucrative multi-year deal. Rather, he tells MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki that his focus is on signing with a club that is making a clear push for postseason play — even if it means taking a one-year deal.

“I can do one year here and there and just play as long as I can play,” says Hamels. “I think that’s what will help give me an opportunity to play on teams that are trying to go to the postseason. If you need one guy, I can just kind of bounce around.”

There’s some degree of strategy to the decision. Locking himself into multiple years could, conceivably, lead to being stuck on a club where things go south for in 2020 but he’s retained with an eye toward 2021. Plus, on a one-year deal, even if the team with which he signs performs poorly and falls out of contention, there’s always the possibility of being traded to a club making a more definitive postseason push.

Hamels has one World Series ring to his credit already, which he secured more than a decade ago when he was named both the NLCS MVP and World Series MVP for the Phillies’ last championship in 2008. A second tour of duty with the Phillies holds appeal to the veteran Hamels, who says he would “love the opportunity to come back” and recognizes that the organization is “finally trying to make that push.” Notably, he adds that he’d consider a multi-year pact to return to Philly.

Of course, the Phillies’ starting staff quite likely needs more help than Hamels alone can provide, but his willingness to take a one-year pact could allow Philadelphia (or any other win-now club with multiple starting needs) to spend more aggressively on a higher-end rotation augmentation. At present, the Phillies have Aaron Nola atop their starting staff and little else in terms of certain commodities. Jake Arrieta is under contract for another season, but he struggled considerably before undergoing season-ending surgery to remove bone spurs from his elbow. Zach Eflin finished out the year with respectable but unspectacular numbers, while fellow righties Nick Pivetta and Vince Velasquez both turned in ugly 2019 campaigns.

Hamels, 36 in December, experienced something of a career renaissance with the Cubs after being traded over from the Rangers prior to the 2018 non-waiver deadline. His 2019 season crumbled after he returned from an oblique injury — the lefty admits to Zolecki that he rushed back far too soon — but from the time of his trade in 2018 to this year’s IL placement he posted a 2.71 ERA with 8.7 K/9, 3.0 BB/9, 0.77 HR/9 and a 49.7 percent grounder rate in 176 innings.

It’s tough to wholly ignore the 42 ugly innings that Hamels posted upon returning from that injury, though. After allowing just nine homers, issuing 35 walks and hitting three batters in his first 99 2/3 innings of the season, Hamels served up eight homers, yielded 21 walks and plunked four batters in those final 42 frames. The result was a woeful 5.79 ERA in that stretch of 10 starts, leaving him with a combined 3.81 ERA in 141 2/3 innings in 2019.

It’s worth emphasizing that being open to a one-year deal and strictly preferring a one-year deal aren’t the same thing. Hamels may be open to a one-year arrangement, but that doesn’t limit him to signing for only a single season. Most contenders would surely prefer a one-year term, but it’s possible that there’ll be enough interest to create multiple two-year offers from World Series hopefuls. The fact that the Cubs opted not to make him a qualifying offer, thus absolving him of the burden of draft-pick compensation, only makes him more appealing to contenders with rotation needs.

Regardless of contract length, the four-time All-Star’s comments make it clear that he has no plans to sign on as a veteran mentor for a rebuilding club: “I just want to have the opportunity to get to the postseason, just so that I can try to win.”

Yankees, Brett Gardner Discussing New Contract

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The Yankees and Brett Gardner have already begun talks about a new contract, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets. A new arrangement between the two sides would bring Gardner back to the Bronx for at least a 13th season.

Gardner, 36, had a career year at the plate in 2019, hitting .251/.325/.503 with 28 home runs, 26 doubles, seven triples and 10 steals (in 12 attempts). The power surge should likely be taken with a grain of salt, thanks to the supercharged ball that led to record-setting home run levels throughout the league, but Gardner still demonstrated that there’s life left in his bat and once again displayed a quality approach at the plate (9.5 percent walk rate, 19.5 percent strikeout rate).

A reunion between the two sides has long looked plausible, but the recent revelation that Aaron Hicks will miss a substantial portion of the 2020 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery only increased the likelihood of a new deal. With Hicks shelved and Jacoby Ellsbury more than two years removed from his last MLB appearance, the Yankees have a clear need in center field. The free-agent market features little in the way of enticing options at the position (beyond Gardner himself), and Gardner was motivated enough to stay in New York last winter that he took what amounted to a $3MM pay cut to return to do so. Given all that context, it’s hardly a surprise to see the two sides proactively begin negotiations.

Gardner isn’t the burner that he once was on the basepaths and in the outfield, but he still remains a quality defender that is capable of handling center field work. He logged 820 innings in center in 2019, plus another 348 in left field, drawing positive marks for his glovework on the whole (+5 Defensive Runs Saved, +3.0 Ultimate Zone Rating, +2 Outs Above Average).

Gardner checked in at No. 32 on MLBTR’s Top 50 free agent rankings this week. As noted within, Gardner’s outstanding season and the thin market for center fielders could seemingly combine to get him a two-year deal elsewhere, but a one-year pact — and a raise on this year’s $7MM salary — to return to the Yankees seems likeliest.

As currently constructed, the Yankees have roughly $158.5MM committed to 10 players for the 2020 season. Add in another $35.9MM of projected arbitration salaries (via MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz) for another 10 players plus a handful of pre-arbitration players to round out the roster, and the Yankees are looking at a payroll around $198MM before making any additions. They’re already at or over the luxury line as it is — luxury payroll, unlike actual payroll, is calculated based on contracts’ average annual value and also includes money for player benefits — though that doesn’t seem likely to be a major roadblock with regard to Gardner.

Kevan Graves, Pete Putila Under Consideration In Giants’ GM Search

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10:38am: San Francisco has also considered Pirates assistant general manager Kevan Graves for the GM post, Rosenthal tweets. Graves is currently serving as the Pirates’ GM on an interim basis after the firing of longtime general manager Neal Huntington late last month, however, and Rosenthal notes that he’s a candidate for both positions.

8:33am: The Giants are considering Pete Putila in their search for a general manager to serve under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). Putila presently serves as the Astros’ director of player development.

Putila becomes at least the second known candidate for the opening, though it’s possible to surmise at least one more. As Rosenthal reported yesterday, and we discussed here, Cubs assistant GM Scott Harris is known to bee under consideration. And it appears likely that Athletics AGM Billy Owens has at least been contemplated in some manner, though the current status there is not known.

It remains entirely unclear when a hiring decision will be made. As noted yesterday, the Giants are likely planning to do so before long, given that the offseason market is now open for business. At the same time, the team doesn’t face much pressure from the executive market since most other teams are not hiring a #2 baseball ops exec at the moment. (The Pirates are still engaged in a search for their top job, which certainly could have an impact.)

Putila has helmed the Astros’ farm system for over three years now, overseeing a key component of one of the game’s most recently successful organizations. He brought a varied background to that role after five prior seasons with the Houston club. Whether or not Putila is picked up by the Giants, his involvement in this process makes him only the latest of many Astros executives to draw interest from other outfits.

Devon Travis Elects Free Agency

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The Blue Jays announced that second baseman Devon Travis has rejected an outright assignment in favor of free agency. He’s now eligible to sign with any club.

This was the obvious outcome when Toronto announced that Travis had cleared outright waivers earlier in the week. Any player with three or more years of Major League service time — Travis has four-plus years — has the right to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency, and virtually every such player who is outrighted this time of season opts to test the open market.

Travis, who’ll turn 29 in February, at one point looked to be the Blue Jays’ second baseman of the future. Acquired in a one-for-one swap that sent outfielder Anthony Gose to the Tigers nearly five years ago to the day, Travis burst onto the scene the following season with a .304/.361/.498 batting line, eight homers and 18 doubles in just 239 plate appearances. Despite being promoted to the Majors in early April that year, Travis was limited to 62 games as a result of a shoulder issue that twice put him on the shelf for at least a month.

Injury notwithstanding, a strong impression was made, and the following season gave further reason for optimism. Upon returning from surgery to repair that balky shoulder, Travis appeared in 101 games and hit .300/.332/.454 with 11 homers, 28 doubles and a triple in 432 plate appearances. Through the first two (injury-shortened) seasons of his career, Travis carried a .304/.342/.469 slash (116 OPS+) and looked well on his way to a quality big league career.

Unfortunately for both Travis and the Jays, knee troubles set in during the 2016 postseason, and his recovery from that issue proved far more cumbersome than his recovery from the 2015 shoulder troubles. A bone bruise in the 2016 ALCS led to offseason knee surgery for Travis, and he underwent a second procedure on that knee the following summer. Those injuries contributed to a miserable season at the plate in 2018, and in Spring Training 2019, Travis underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his other knee. Multiple setbacks in his recovery followed, and Travis didn’t play at all this past season.

In all, since that promising two-year stretch to open his career, Travis has appeared in just 153 games over a three-year period and posted a lackluster .242/.280/.400 batting line with 16 homers and 32 doubles in 575 plate appearances. It’s clear that he possesses plenty of raw ability, though with shoulder surgery and a trio of knee operations all coming before his 29th birthday, it’s fair to wonder just how much his body will allow him to tap into that talent. He may have to settle for a minor league pact to prove he’s healthy enough to return to his once-productive ways. Any club that signs him would be acquiring multiple years of control, as Travis is nine days shy of five years of Major League service time, meaning he’d remain arbitration-eligible through the 2021 campaign.

Cubs To Hire Chris Young As Bullpen Coach

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The Cubs will hire Chris Young as their next bullpen coach, according to Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic (via Twitter). He’ll take over for departing long-time pen leader Lester Strode.

This makes for a notable hire under new skipper David Ross. Young — no, not the former MLB pitcher and certainly not the former outfielder — just wrapped up his brief time as the Phillies pitching coach.

While his tenure in Philly didn’t turn out as hoped, Young’s perspective on the game remains highly valuable. He’s an analytically oriented presence who has had some ups and downs in his efforts to transition to a uniformed role. It remains to be seen who’ll take the pitching coach job in Chicago, but the Cubs obviously feel they can structure a productive combination of voices to guide the team’s staff.

Will Anyone Take The Qualifying Offer?

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Ten players received $17.8MM qualifying offers this winter. The clock is now ticking on their decisions to accept or decline, with a final call due one week from today. In many cases, the QO is quite easy to spurn. For players of a certain quality level, there just isn’t much downside to saying no — even if that means dragging draft compensation with you onto the market. Even when the market doesn’t developed as hoped, it’s usually possible to beat or exceed the QO value. Last year, Craig Kimbrel secured a mid-season, multi-year deal while Dallas Keuchel earned a bit more than the QO rate for the time he spent in the big leagues in 2019.

That said, there are risks to rejecting the qualifying offer for qualifying offer recipients — even those that seem fairly obvious candidates to reject it. Ian Desmond, Mike Moustakas, Dexter Fowler, and Nelson Cruz are among those that have followed Kendrys Morales and Stephen Drew in stumbling into some of the pitfalls of the system.

This year, as usual, there’s a slate of players that won’t give the qualifying offer a second thought. And there are a few that will at least need to ponder how they’ll be treated on the market if they say no.

Here’s this year’s list …

There’s virtually no chance of Bumgarner, Cole, Donaldson, Rendon, Strasburg, or Wheeler settling for a one-year, $17.8MM payday when their market outlook is so strong. (But we’ll include them in the poll anyway.) There’s at least some argument for each of the other players to consider it.

Abreu is perhaps the most obvious option to run into choppy open-market waters if he declines. But there’s also every expectation that he’ll remain with the White Sox in one manner or another, so he could even reject it and just keep talking about a slightly lengthier pact (if one isn’t reached within the next week, as seems likely).

Excellent as Smith has been, he’s a relief pitcher. Much as there’s a newfound appreciation for the value of high-leverage arms, there’s still also an unwillingness to go too big in terms of contract length in the current market climate. There should be widespread interest in the southpaw, but perhaps teams will balk at the draft pick. It seems reasonable to think Smith can at least land a multi-year arrangement, particularly with Aroldis Chapman staying in New York before free agency kicked off, but that $17.8MM single-season salary still holds appeal. The incomparable Chapman is earning $16MM annually over three seasons on his new arrangement. Perhaps Smith will just shrug and count his blessings to be paid for one season like almost no reliever before him. (Wade Davis earned $18MM in 2019.)

It’s tougher to see Odorizzi or Ozuna following that same logic, but not impossible. The former just turned in a much better campaign than he did in his prior two seasons, which cuts both ways. Perhaps now is the time to cash in on that multi-year deal. But there are also some shades of Jeremy Hellickson, who took a QO out of fear that the market wouldn’t reward his strong results. Odorizzi’s peripherals look to be in better shape, it ought to be noted.

Ozuna seems to be a safer bet on the open market as a youthful hitter. But look back at that group of players that have really been bitten by the QO and you’ll see a bunch of position players, some of them relatively young at the time they reached the market. Teams may be somewhat more hesitant to do lengthy pitching contracts, but they’ve proven willing to bail out hurlers with heftier deals as well, likely reflecting the greater need for depth in that area and ease of knocking in-house pitchers down the depth chart when a new one is added.

Despite my best efforts, our polling system seems unwilling to enable a multiple-choice setup. Instead, we’ll settle for asking how many players you anticipate taking the offer this year:

(Poll link for app users. )

Braves Reportedly Prioritizing Madison Bumgarner

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Now that the offseason has begun, we’re likely in for several weeks of rumors centering on longtime Giants left-hander and current free agent Madison Bumgarner. Let’s get the ball rolling in earnest: Atlanta has “made Bumgarner a priority and planned to quickly communicate that to the left-hander,” Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports California reports. If Bumgarner doesn’t re-sign with the Giants, the Braves are the front-runners for his services, according to Pavlovic.

For now, Bumgarner has until Nov. 14 to decide whether to accept the $17.8MM qualifying offer the Giants gave him earlier this week. But rejecting it looks like a formality for the 30-year-old Bumgarner, who MLBTR projects will land a four-year, $72MM contract on the open market. Whether the numbers are exact remains to be seen, but Bumgarner’s surely in line for a substantial payday, so the main question is whether San Francisco will be the team that hands it to him.

The Giants are the lone club Bumgarner has known since they selected him 10th overall in the 2007 draft. Although he has since turned into a decorated hurler who has helped the Giants to three championships, there hasn’t been any indication that the team has seriously pursued a contract extension. The Giants did elect against selling off Bumgarner prior to the July 31 trade deadline, but it’s possible they would have gone another way had it not been for an improbable midsummer surge. The team ultimately faded after its torrid July stretch, finishing 77-85, and now it could lose Bumgarner for nothing more than draft-pick compensation if he rejects its QO and heads elsewhere.

In the event Bumgarner does leave the Giants, Atlanta looks like a reasonable fit on paper for the North Carolina native. With Dallas Keuchel now on the free-agent market, the Braves are known to be looking for at least one capable veteran starter to complement Mike Soroka, Max Fried and Mike Foltynewicz. And Bumgarner, unlike Gerrit Cole or Stephen Strasburg (the top two starters available), wouldn’t cost a bank-breaking amount or force the Braves to make an extraordinarily long-term commitment. Of course, there’s an obvious reason for that: Bumgarner, despite his past accomplishments, isn’t nearly as good as Cole or Strasburg at this point. While he was a front-line starter during his younger days, Bumgarner now looks more like a quality mid-rotation arm.

Bumgarner’s on the market fresh off a 207 2/3-inning season (his seventh year of 200-plus frames) in which he pitched to a matching 3.90 ERA/FIP with 8.8 K/9, 1.86 BB/9 and a career-low 35.8 percent groundball rate. For the most part, those numbers look closer to good than spectacular, though they’d still be welcome in just about anyone’s rotation – including the Braves’.

NL Notes: Carpenter, Giants, Mets

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A quick look around the National League…

  • The 2019 season was surprisingly pedestrian for Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter, a normally excellent producer who fell flat after the team signed him to a two-year, $39MM extension in April. Carpenter stepped to the plate 492 times and hit a mediocre .226/.334/.392 with 15 home runs, giving him the lowest wRC+ (95) and fWAR (1.2) he has posted over a full season since debuting in 2011. But Carpenter, who will turn 34 later this month, seemingly hasn’t lost the confidence of Cardinals brass. ”‘Carp’ obviously will have a better season, we expect. He’s highly motivated,” chairman Bill DeWitt said this week (via Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). President of baseball operations John Mozeliak echoed that sentiment, saying the Cardinals’ confidence in Carpenter is “high” and calling this year “an outlier.” Of course, the Cardinals don’t have much choice but to publicly show faith in Carpenter, whom they’re likely stuck with because of the money left on his contract and his no-trade clause.
  • As of last week, Royals quality control coach Pedro Grifol was reportedly one of the finalists to become the Giants’ next manager. That no longer seems to be the case, though. Grifol is now completely out of the race, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea, who names ex-Phillies manager Gabe Kapler, current Astros bench coach Joe Espada and Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro as the last candidates standing. Grifol, Kapler, Espada and Quartaro make up four of 10-plus candidates who have interviewed with the Giants, per Shea. There’s no deadline to hire a new skipper, however, and with the Giants one of just two teams without a manager, there’s seemingly no reason to rush.
  • The Mets negotiated with relievers Daniel Hudson and Jake Diekman when they were free agents a year ago, Ken Davidoff of the New York Post reports. The club ultimately didn’t land either, instead watching Hudson sign with the Angels on a minor league contract and Diekman land with the Royals for a guaranteed $2.75MM. Hudson then wound up with the Blue Jays and finished the season as a member of the Nationals, with whom he emerged as one of many key cogs during their improbable World Series run. Diekman concluded the campaign with the Athletics, who traded for him in July. Now that Hudson and Diekman are back on the open market, the Mets  – who remain in need of competent relievers – could again push for one or both, though there’s no indication they plan on doing so.

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