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Angels Sign Matt Duffy, Place Griffin Canning On 60-Day IL

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The Angels have announced that they’ve signed infielder Matt Duffy to a one-year deal. Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register relays that he’ll make a salary of $1.5MM and that Griffin Canning is going on the 60-day IL to open up a roster spot.

The 31-year-old Duffy has had a real up-and-down career thus far. After making his MLB debut and getting a cup of coffee with the Giants in 2014, he broke out in 2015 to the tune of a .295/.334/.428 slash line over 149 games, producing a 113 wRC+. That offensive output, combined with this excellent defense, produced 4.4 fWAR. 2016 was a step in the wrong direction, however, as his bat slipped below league average and the Giants sent him to the Rays as part of the Matt Moore trade.

2017, his pendulum swung back in the other direction, as he hit .294/.361/.366, for a wRC+ of 107 and 2.5 fWAR. In 2019, injuries sapped him of his playing time and production, as he only played 46 games and wasn’t very good when he was on the field. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he signed a couple of minor league deals but couldn’t crack the big leagues. In 2021, he parlayed a minor league deal with the Cubs into yet another bounceback effort, playing 97 games and hitting .287/.357/.381, for a wRC+ of 102 and 1.5 fWAR.

Defensively, Duffy spent most of his time at third base last year but also saw significant action at second, as well as cameos at shortstop, left field and first base. For the Angels, the hot corner is spoken for as long as Anthony Rendon is healthy. He was limited to just 58 games last year due to injuries but seems to be fully recovered for this season. For the middle infield reps, manager Joe Maddon recently said that Andrew Velazquez was the favorite to get the majority of playing time at shortstop, with Tyler Wade, Luis Rengifo and David Fletcher also in the mix. One of that group will also have to cover second base, with Duffy now competing against them all as well.

As for Canning, his 2021 season was cut short in August due to back issues that seem to still be lingering. Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times reported earlier today that Canning had a setback and wouldn’t be ready for Opening Day.

Brewers Sign Andrew McCutchen

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MARCH 16: It’s a one-year, $8.5MM pact, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.

MARCH 14: Outfielder Andrew McCutchen is in agreement on a deal with the Brewers, reports Daniel Álvarez Montes of El ExtraBase (on Twitter). Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic had reported this afternoon the sides were in discussions.

McCutchen, 35, has 13 MLB seasons under his belt at this point, having broken into the league as a Pirate in 2009. From that season to 2019, he posted a wRC+ of at least 120 in each season except for a slight dip to 105 in 2016. In 2013, he hit 21 home runs, stole 27 bases and put up an incredible line of .317/404/.508, wRC+ of 156. Combined with his excellent center field defense, he was worth an incredible 8.1 fWAR on the year, winning National League MVP and helping the Pirates make the postseason for the first time since 1992.

In 2018, he had one year remaining on the extension he signed with the Pirates back in 2012. The Bucs sent him to the Giants in exchange for Bryan Reynolds, Kyle Crick and international bonus money. The Giants, in turn, sent McCutchen to the Yankees at the August waiver deadline. Reaching free agency for the first time, he signed a three-year, $50MM deal with the Phillies prior to the 2019 season.

His production has naturally declined somewhat over the years, with his elite center field defense gradually becoming subpar left field defense. He hasn’t reached double-digit steals since 2018. However, he’s still plenty useful with the bat, particularly against left-handed pitching. Over the past two seasons, he’s hit 37 home runs and slashed .232/.331/.441, wRC+ of 106. But when he has the platoon advantage, his line jumps up to .290/.402/.603, wRC+ of 164.

For the Brewers, they went 95-67 last year and won the NL Central, despite a fairly tepid offense. The batting line for the entire team was .233/.317/.396, adding up to a wRC+ of just 91, ranking them 23rd out of the 30 teams in the league. Their moves this offseason have largely been about trying to complement their superb pitching with some increased firepower in the lineup. To that end, they traded for Hunter Renfroe and Mike Brosseau before the lockout, and have now added McCutchen into the mix as well.

McCutchen will join Renfroe in an outfield group that also includes Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain and Tyrone Taylor. That’s a bit of a crowded mix, but with the recent implementation of the designated hitter in the National League, they should be able to spread at-bats around to whichever part of this group needs a day off their feet. McCutchen and Cain are both 35 years old, with Cain turning 36 in less than a month, making them particularly good fits for some time in the DH slot, in order to keep them healthy and in the lineup throughout the season.

However manager Craig Counsell decides to construct the lineup, it seems like it will be capable of more firepower than last year’s version, as they attempt to defend their division title and make the postseason for a fifth consecutive season.

Braves Sign Tyler Thornburg, Place Kirby Yates On 60-Day IL

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The Braves have announced that they’ve signed Tyler Thornburg to a non-guaranteed, one-year deal worth $900K. To open up a spot on the 40-man roster, they placed Kirby Yates on the 60-day IL.

Thornburg’s career has been a rollercoaster to this point, with the highs of excellent performance constantly giving way to lows brought about by injuries. In 2013, he threw 66 2/3 innings for the Brewers, logging a 2.03 ERA. However, elbow issues limited him to around 30 frames in each of the next two campaigns. 2016, he got back on track, logging 67 innings with a 2.15 ERA, excellent 34.2% strikeout rate and 9.5% walk rate.

It was after that tremendous campaign that the Brewers sent Thornburg to the Red Sox for Travis Shaw, Mauricio Dubon and Josh Pennington. Unfortunately, Thornburg required surgery to correct thoracic outlet syndrome, missing the entirety of the 2017 season. When he came back, he was much less effective, throwing 42 2/3 innings over 2018 and 2019 for the Red Sox, putting up an ERA of 6.54, strikeout rate of 22.3% and walk rate of 10.4%. In 2020, he logged seven innings for the Reds before hitting the IL, eventually undergoing Tommy John Surgery in September.

Now that about 18 months has passed since that surgery, Thornburg is presumably healthy again and ready for another kick at the can. For the Braves, this is a low-risk flier on a player who could be a bargain if he can stay healthy and resume his previous form. His $900K salary is just barely above the league minimum, which is $700K in the new CBA. Also, since the deal isn’t guaranteed, the club could even avoid that modest sum if Thornburg’s injury past catches up with him in spring.

As for Yates, the IL placement is merely a formality. The club signed him in November to a two-year deal, knowing that he would miss the first half of 2022.

For the defending World Series champion Braves, their bullpen took a hit at the end of the season, as Richard Rodriguez, Josh Tomlin, Jesse Chavez and Chris Martin hit free agency, with Chavez and Martin both signing with the Cubs in recent days. They’ve seemingly tried to compensate for those losses by taking fliers on talented hurlers who are relatively affordable because of their injury histories, such as Yates, Thornburg and Collin McHugh, whom they signed yesterday.

Phillies Outright Scott Moss

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MARCH 16: Moss has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, the team announced. He doesn’t have the requisite service time to refuse an outright assignment, so he’ll remain in the organization.

MARCH 15: The Phillies announced Tuesday that they’ve designated lefty Scott Moss for assignment. That’s one of two corresponding moves to make room for the signings of lefty Brad Hand and righty Jeurys Familia — both of whom signed one-year, $6MM contracts to join the Philadelphia bullpen. Both contracts have now been formally announced. The Phils also placed lefty JoJo Romero on the 60-day IL.

Moss, 27, is still searching for his MLB debut. The former fourth-round pick posted solid numbers with both Cincinnati and Cleveland early in his professional career, with his 2019 season in particular standing out. That season saw Moss make 26 starts between Double-A and Triple-A while working to a 2.96 ERA with an impressive 28.9% strikeout rate (against a much less-inspiring 12.7% walk rate).

Moss was in Cleveland’s 60-man player pool during the shortened 2020 season but never got a look in the big leagues. This past year in Triple-A, injuries limited him to just nine games and 20 1/3 innings, during which time he posted a 7.08 ERA. The Phillies claimed him off waivers from the Guardians back in November, but he’ll now either be traded within the week or again made available to all 29 other teams via outright waivers.

Reds Sign Donovan Solano, Buck Farmer

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5:13pm: Cincinnati has officially announced both deals. As expected, Farmer is in camp on a minor league contract as a non-roster invitee.

2:45pm: The Reds have signed infielder Donovan Solano to a contract worth $4.5MM, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network. It was previously reported by various reporters, including C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic, that Solano had a locker in the Reds’ spring clubhouse, along with right-hander Buck Farmer.

Solano, 34, spent many years as a classic journeyman, bouncing from the Cardinals to the Marlins, Yankees and Dodgers, playing 370 MLB games from 2012 to 2018. Prior to the 2019 season, he signed a minor league deal with the Giants and has quietly had an excellent showing for San Fran over the past three campaigns. In that time, he’s gotten 775 plate appearances and hit .308/.354/.435, for a wRC+ of 114. He mostly slotted in at second base but also saw some time at third base and shortstop for the Giants.

The Reds don’t really need help at the keystone as they have Jonathan India, last year’s National League Rookie of the Year, slotted in there. Third base is a bit more open, however, in the wake of this week’s trade of Eugenio Suarez. The club could use Mike Moustakas as their everyday third baseman but he dealt with multiple injuries last year and only got into 62 games. Now that National League teams are able to use the designated hitter, Moustakas could be a good candidate for slotting into the DH role. There’s also the possibility of a platoon, as Moustakas hits from the left and Solano from the right. Solano’s career spits aren’t drastic, but he did put up a wRC+ of 121 against lefties last year, compared to just 96 against righties.

As for Farmer, the 31-year-old has spent his entire big league career up until now with the Tigers, who drafted him in 2013. Over the past seven seasons, he has appeared in 241 games, mostly as a reliever, throwing 320 2/3 innings with a 5.33 ERA, 20.3% strikeout rate and 10.6% walk rate.

The club released him in August, at which point Farmer signed a minor league deal with the Rangers but never cracked their big league roster. Presumably, his deal with the Reds is a minor league deal as well.

Rays Have Discussed Trades Involving Austin Meadows

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Even before the lockout ended, it was reported that the Rays would be open to moving Austin Meadows once transactions were allowed to resume. That’s apparently proving to be the case, as The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal tweets that Meadows is being “prominently” mentioned in trade discussions around the league. This morning’s four-year deal between the Phillies and Kyle Schwarber is expected to help the outfield market begin to move, Rosenthal adds.

Any team that missed out on Schwarber would figure to at least have some degree of interest in the 26-year-old Meadows, who swatted 33 home runs for Tampa Bay in 2019 and 27 long balls this past season. A poor showing in the shortened 2020 season has dragged down his overall line over that three-year term, but it still checks in at a healthy .256/.334/.493.

Meadows pounded left-handed pitching in his brilliant 2019 campaign but has looked overmatched against southpaws in each of the past two seasons. Some clubs will surely view him as more of a platoon candidate, but even if that’s the case, he’s a high-quality option. In his career against right-handed pitching, Meadows is a .271/.351/.525 hitter.

From a defensive standpoint, Meadows is best-suited for work in left field, where he has serviceable if unspectacular ratings from metrics like Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating and Outs Above Average. He’s seen limited action in center and another 600-plus innings in right field but doesn’t rate well at either position.

The Rays currently control Meadows through the 2024 season, and he’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $4.9MM this coming season. That’s plenty affordable for any team, even the Rays, but Tampa Bay has a deep crop of outfield talent. Randy Arozarena, Kevin Kiermaier, Manuel Margot, Josh Lowe, Brett Phillips and Vidal Brujan (a top infield prospect who’s seen some time in the outfield) give the Rays the flexibility to make a move if the return for Meadows is convincing enough. Second baseman Brandon Lowe, too, has some experience in the outfield.

More interesting is that the Rays have been somewhat surprisingly tied to more expensive targets on the market. The Rays were linked to Oakland’s Matt Chapman before he was traded to the Blue Jays and had interest in NPB star Seiya Suzuki before he agreed to terms with the Cubs. More recently, they’ve been rumored as a long-shot landing spot for star first baseman Freddie Freeman, who penned a farewell message to Braves fans today and remains unsigned.

Clearing Meadows’ projected $4.9MM salary isn’t going to seismically change the team’s payroll outlook, but for a Rays club with designs on aiming bigger than it typically might in a given offseason, moving a roughly $5MM outfielder when the team has ample depth to replace him could free up some resources to address other pursuits. Even if the Rays don’t ultimately make a big splash with whatever resources are saved in a theoretical Meadows deal, part of the reason they remain so successful on a perennial basis is their willingness to market quality regulars like this even before their salary reaches the point that it becomes a legitimate payroll encumbrance.

Royals Sign Zack Greinke

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5:44pm: To make room for Greinke on the 40-man roster, the club has placed Tyler Zuber on the 60-day IL, per various reports, including Anne Rogers of MLB.com. Zuber has right shoulder impingement syndrome and will miss the start of the season.

4:42pm: The Royals have formally announced the signing.

2:48pm: Zack Greinke is going back to his roots. The free-agent righty has agreed to a one-year deal with the Royals, pending the completion of a physical, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (via Twitter). Greinke, a client of Excel Sports Management, will be guaranteed $13MM and can earn another $2MM via innings-based incentives, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post.

The 38-year-old Greinke isn’t the fireballing ace that he was toward the end of his first run with the Royals, but he remains an effective innings eater. He’ll return to his old stomping ground as the elder statesman on what figures to be an extremely young staff who’ll no doubt want to soak up as much pitching knowledge as possible from the 18-yeasr big league veteran.

Zack Greinke | Stan Szeto-USA TODAY SportsGreinke spent the past two-plus seasons with the Astros after being traded from Arizona to Houston in a buzzer-beating deal at the 2019 trade deadline. Greinke’s once blazing fastball averaged just 89 mph in 2021 and his strikeout rate dipped, but he’s maintained pristine command of the strike zone (5.2% walk rate). Since 2020, Greinke has a 4.12 ERA in 238 innings for Houston, although his 2021 season would’ve looked considerably better were it not for a late September swoon.

Through his first 26 starts in 2021, Greinke pitched to a strong 3.41 ERA. Fielding-independent metrics were still a bit down on him because of the lack of punchouts (17.5% in that stretch), but Greinke yielded a paltry 87.7 mph average exit velocity in that time and had a 33% opponents’ hard-hit rate. Greinke tested positive for Covid-19 at the end of August and went back on the IL in late September due to neck soreness. It’s not clear that either had a direct impact on his results, although it’s certainly possible that he wasn’t pitching at 100% down the stretch. The results seem to suggest as much, as Greinke was tattooed for 21 runs in his final 15 1/3 innings of work.

Even if Greinke should be projected for more of a low-4.00s ERA than the mid-3.00 range he sat for much of the 2021 season, he’ll still be a valuable and reliable source of innings for the Royals. He’s made at least 28 appearances in 11 of the past 14 seasons, with the exceptions being the shortened 2020 season (when he made all 12 of his starts) and the 2016 season (when he missed a month with an oblique injury but still started 26 games).

For a Royals club that expects to give the bulk of its innings to young and/or unproven starters — Brady Singer, Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar, Kris Bubic, Carlos Hernandez, Jonathan Heasley — the ability to confidently pencil Greinke in for around 30 starts and 170-plus frames is especially important. Brad Keller is currently the only starter on the staff with more than two years of Major League service time, but he’s in search of a rebound from a career-worst performance this past season.

The deal for Greinke ostensibly came together in fairly quick fashion. Kansas City traded Mike Minor to the Royals just this afternoon, and reports immediately following the deal suggested that they were in the hunt for rotation upgrades. Although they’re said to have checked in with the A’s about a potential Frankie Montas deal, it’ll be Greinke who joins the staff to help stabilize the group and, ideally, help guide the Royals back to a winning record

Subtracting Minor and adding Greinke’s larger salary brings the Royals up to a projected payroll of a bit more than $93MM, per Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. That’s nowhere near the franchise record $143MM from 2017, but that payroll was buoyed by a pair of consecutive World Series appearances achieved by the Royals’ former core. The fact that they felt compelled to move Minor and save some money on his salary before adding Greinke suggests that new owner John Sherman, who purchased the team in 2019, isn’t comfortable pushing payroll back to those 2017 levels at this time.

It’s possible that further additions will follow for the Royals. They’ve reportedly sought ways to trade Carlos Santana, both as a means of clearing playing time for top prospect Nick Pratto and also in order to shed the veteran’s $10.5MM salary. If president of baseball operations Dayton Moore manages to find a Santana deal similar to this afternoon’s Minor trade, additional veteran reinforcements could be on the way to help supplement a young Royals team that’ll see the debuts of Pratto and top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. early in the 2022 season.

Latest On Rockies’ Outfield Search

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The Rockies are known to be looking for outfield help, and Jorge Soler and Corey Dickerson are among the names under consideration, according to MLB.com’s Thomas Harding (Twitter links).  Nearer the top of the free market, Harding notes that Colorado continues to be interested in Kris Bryant, though Joc Pederson is apparently behind “other targets” on the team’s list.  Harding reported yesterday that the Rox were looking at Pederson.

Multiple teams were known to be looking into Soler, who is fresh off winning World Series MVP honors after a remarkable turn-around.  Soler was hitting only .192/.288/.370 over 360 plate appearances with the Royals when he was traded to the Braves at the deadline, and Soler was then sparked to a .269/.358/.524 slash in his 242 PA for Atlanta during the regular season.  Though a positive COVID-19 test kept him from most of the NLCS, Soler made up for it by posting a 1.191 OPS over 23 PA in the World Series, helping lead the Braves to the championship.

The idea of Soler’s power bat in Coors Field is surely tempting to a Rockies team that has been surprisingly lacking in consistent hitting over the last few years.  As last season and even his 2020 campaign with the Royals would indicate, Soler is not exactly the picture of consistency himself, yet he isn’t far removed from a 2019 season that saw him lead the AL with 48 home runs.

Adding Soler to the outfield may also not be Colorado’s chief goal, as Soler has never been a defensive plus in right field.  Theoretically, the Rockies could install Soler mostly at the new DH spot and only sparingly use him on the grass, while then acquiring another player as more of a regular outfield option.

Dickerson could potentially be a fit for such a role, even if the Rockies already have Charlie Blackmon and Raimel Tapia as left-handed hitting outfielders.  While Dickerson is no longer the standout defender he was during his Gold Glove-winning 2018 season, he can at least play some center field and right field in a pinch, as well as his customary left field role.

The Rockies are very familiar with Dickerson, as he was an eighth-round pick for the team in 2010 and he spent his first three big league seasons in the purple pinstripes.  Colorado dealt Dickerson to the Rays in January 2016 as part of what became a key trade in recent Rockies history, as German Marquez came to Denver as part of the return.

After posting a 118 wRC+/121 OPS+ and hitting .288/.329/.508 over 2701 PA from 2014-19, Dickerson’s production has been closer to league average over the last two seasons, though his bat did perk up after being dealt to the Blue Jays in June.  Between a broken foot and some off-the-field personal tragedy, “the last two years really, really weighed on me,” Dickerson recently told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi, though his brief stint with the Jays “lit my fire again.”  Dickerson has also been employing a new training approach in the offseason to improve both his fielding and his hitting.

Nationals Place Joe Ross On 60-Day Injured List

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The Nationals placed right-hander Joe Ross on the 60-day injured list today, in order to create roster space for their now-official signing of Sean Doolittle.  Ross underwent surgery last week to have a bone spur removed from his throwing elbow, and Nats GM Mike Rizzo told reporters (including NBC Sports Washington’s Matt Weyrich) that Ross was expected to miss 6-8 weeks of action.

It represents another unfortunate setback for Ross, who has missed significant time over the last five seasons due to injuries.  A Tommy John surgery in 2017 was the biggest issue, and Ross’ 2021 campaign was cut short in August when a partial UCL tear was discovered in his throwing elbow.  The tear wasn’t quite serious enough to merit another TJ procedure, yet there was plenty of uncertainty about Ross’ status even before this latest bone spur issue emerged.

Ross had been only tentatively penciled into the Nationals rotation given his UCL concern, and now the club knows the righty will be unavailable until at least the back end of April.  The Nats recently signed Anibal Sanchez, Aaron Sanchez, and swingman Erasmo Ramirez to minor league contracts, so any of those veterans could now have a clearer path to winning some starts in Washington’s rotation.

Mets, Chasen Shreve Nearing Deal

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The Mets are close to signing free-agent lefty Chasen Shreve to a minor league contract, tweets MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo. It’d be the second Mets stint for Shreve, who spent the 2020 campaign pitching in Queens as well.

Now 31, he has pitched in the past eight MLB seasons, seeing some time with the Braves, Yankees, Cardinals and Pirates, in addition to the Mets. He’s played 292 games in his career, logging 285 innings, with a 3.63 ERA. His 25.6% strikeout rate is a few ticks above average, but so is his 11.6% walk rate.

Spending last year with the Pirates, Shreve had an outlier season for him. His strikeout rate dropped to 19.1%, yet he still managed to get good results, as evidenced by his 3.20 ERA. That was largely driven by a .234 batting average on balls in play, leading advanced metrics to rank his work in less favorable light. (3.87 xERA, 4.73 FIP, 4.93 SIERA, 5.15 xFIP) However, looking at Shreve’s Statcast page, he threw his slider more at the expense of his fastball and did a good job at limiting hard contact, perhaps suggesting that it wasn’t just pure luck that kept his ERA low.

The Mets, despite a wild offseason, have a clear lack of lefties in the bullpen. There’s no one on the 40-man roster at the moment who’s likely to fill a regular relief role. However, they have signed Alex Claudio, Mike Montgomery and now Shreve to compete for a job, or perhaps jobs, as the southpaw element of the club’s relief corps. Shreve did fare better against lefties (.200/.288/.344) but wasn’t awful against righties (.221/.321/.398) last year.

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