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Archives for April 2023

Angels Select Chris Devenski, Place Jose Quijada On 15-Day IL

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 2:20pm CDT

The Angels announced they’ve selected the contract of right hander Chris Devenski, and placed left hander Jose Quijada on the 15-day injured list with left elbow inflammation. To make room on the 40-man roster, catcher Logan O’Hoppe was transferred to the 60-day IL.

The 32-year-old Devenski was once a top reliever with the Astros, but has struggled in recent years. His last stint in the big leagues resulted in an 8.59 ERA across 14 2/3 innings between the Diamondbacks and Phillies last year.

That’s a far cry from his days with the Astros. Devenski burst onto the scene with Houston, putting up a 2.16 ERA over 108 1/3 innings in his rookie year and finishing fourth in AL Rookie of the Year voting. He followed that up with another quality season, posting a 2.68 ERA in 80 2/3 relief innings in 2017 and earning a trip to the All Star game. The wheels began to fall off in 2018 though, and Devenski would work to a 4.88 ERA over the next three seasons before being released by the Astros after the 2020 season.

He latched on with the Diamondbacks in 2021 but in sporadic big league stints hasn’t come close to replicating his early career form. He’ll now get a chance to do just that with the Angels.

Quijada had struggled to a 6.00 ERA in nine innings for the Angels this season. The left hander has been a mainstay in the Halos’ pen over the past few seasons, working to a 4.21 ERA over 66 1/3 innings between 2021-22 with a 12.21 K/9 and a  4.88 BB/9.

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Los Angeles Angels Transactions Chris Devenski Jose Quijada

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Cubs Place Brandon Hughes On IL, Recall Caleb Kilian

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 12:15pm CDT

The Cubs announced they’ve placed left hander Brandon Hughes on the 15-day IL (retroactive to April 27) with left knee inflammation and recalled right hander Caleb Kilian from Triple-A.

It’s a bit of a blow to the Cubs’ bullpen, as Hughes was off to a solid start working to a 3.18 ERA with nine strikeouts across 5 2/3 innings. That backed up his rookie year in which the 27-year-old pitched to a 3.12 ERA over 57 2/3 innings. The southpaw posts quality strikeout rates, and limits left handed hitters to a .208/.283/.281 batting line, giving up just one home runs in 108 plate appearances over his short career.

The left knee appears to be a bit of a problem for Hughes, who was bothered by it during Spring Training and wound up on the IL on Opening Day as a result. The Cubs will certainly be hoping a second trip to the IL is enough to eliminate the problem.

With Hughes out, the Cubs will turn to Kilian, a right hander who’s only major league experience consists of three starts for the Cubs last season. Those starts didn’t go too well, as Kilian was rocked for 13 earned runs and gave up 12 walks in 11 1/3 innings of work. He’s struggled to a 7.15 ERA in his first three starts at Triple-A this season.

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Chicago Cubs Transactions Brandon Hughe Brandon Hughes Caleb Kilian

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Yankees Option Franchy Cordero, Select Jake Bauers

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 11:46am CDT

11:46am: The team announced they have indeed selected the contract of Bauers. To make room on the 40-man roster, reliever Lou Trivino was transferred to the 60-day IL.

7:59am: The Yankees have optioned outfielder Franchy Cordero to Triple-A, the team announced. A corresponding move will come before tonight’s match with the Rangers, but there’s been some reporting that the team will select Triple-A outfielder Jake Bauers. Aaron Judge’s injury status will also likely play a part in the Yankees’ next move, with the team awaiting a report on the MRI on his hip, per Brendan Kuty of The Athletic.

Cordero, always a player with tantalizing power, belted four home runs in his first seven games for the Yankees this season, and looked to be staking a claim for the team’s problematic left field spot. However, since April 13, Cordero has gone just 1-for-28 with 13 strikeouts and no walks. That’s left him with an overall line on the season of .151/.182/.396 with four home runs.

The Yankees signed Cordero to a split major/minor league contract late in the spring which paid him $1MM in the big leagues and $180K in the minors. Cordero has bounced around a few teams since making his debut for the Padres in 2017, with teams looking to unlock the raw power which makes him such an enticing player. Yet at every stop Cordero’s struggled to make enough contact to find that power, as his career .215/.282/.387 line suggests.

With Cordero heading back to Triple-A, the team looks set to take a chance on Bauers, a player who’s struggled over three big league seasons but is hitting .304/.448/.797 with nine home runs in 87 plate appearances at Triple-A this season.

It is a little concerning that the Yankees came out of last season with a clear need in left field yet find themselves still without a clear answer one month into the new season. Oswaldo Cabrera has seen the most time there, but he’s limped to just a .213/.238/.300 line this season. Veteran Aaron Hicks has been even worse, posting a .135/.220/.135 line in 41 plate appearances.

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New York Yankees Transactions Aaron Judge Franchy Cordero Jake Bauers Lou Trivino

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Athletics Reinstate Ramon Laureano, DFA Tyler Wade

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 11:41am CDT

The Athletics announced they’ve activated outfielder Ramon Laureano from the injured list, and designated utilityman Tyler Wade for assignment.

Laureano’s return is a welcome boost for an A’s team that’s slumped to a 5-22 record entering play Saturday. The 28-year-old was hitting .218/.295/.436 with two home runs to begin the season before he hit the shelf with a left groin strain. That move came on April 19, so Laureano will be activated after spending the minimum ten days on the IL. While he’s put up ho-hum numbers at the plate, Laureano has excelled in a small sample of work in right field, collecting four Defensive Runs Saved on the young season.

The A’s will part ways with the speedy Wade, who’d picked up just one hit in 16 plate appearances. Known for his speed and defensive versatility, Wade had picked up four stolen bases and appeared at four positions for Oakland. Signed to a minor league deal, he’ll now be exposed to the rest of the league via the waiver wire, and while the hitting numbers don’t inspire a lot of confidence, there’s a chance a team puts in a claim to bring him in as a cheap pinch runner/defensive sub off the bench.

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Oakland Athletics Transactions Ramon Laureano Tyler Wade

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Can These Five Players Sustain Their Strong Starts?

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 11:20am CDT

We’re about a month into the 2023 baseball season, and as is always the case there are teams that are over-performing (that’s you, Pittsburgh) and under-performing. It’s not just on the team side either, certain players are off to better than expected starts, and while a month of play isn’t enough to make a definitive judgement on one’s season, it’s certainly enough of a sample size to have a conversation about whether a player has turned a corner.

Let’s take a look at five players who are have performed better than expectations over the first month, and try and predict whether they’ll be able to sustain their strong start. (All stats are up to date entering Saturday’s matches)

Joey Gallo: .265/.368/.796 with seven home runs 

The poster boy of the three true outcome hitter, Gallo has frustrated fans from Texas to New York to LA in recent years with his tantalizing power but sky high strikeouts and sub-optimal batting averages. Last year was one of Gallo’s worst, as he posted just a .160/.280/.357 line with a strikeout rate a touch shy of 40% between the Yankees and Dodgers and hit free agency without much fanfare. The Twins brought him in on a one-year, $11MM deal and it already seems to be paying off. Gallo’s shaved almost ten percentage points off his strikeout rate and is still walking at his usual solid clip.

Gallo appears to have a really good feel for the zone at the moment, swinging at more pitches in the zone and taking fewer called strikes. I spoke with Betsy Helfand, Twins beat reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, on the MLBTR Podcast this week and she detailed some changes Gallo had made in his stance over the off-season. Perhaps also he’s benefitting from the shift changes. Gallo is pulling the ball more than in recent years, perhaps freed up to play more of his natural style with teams unable to shift quite so aggressively against him.

In any case, there’s a lot to like about Gallo’s start to the season in Minnesota. It’s probably unlikely he continues to hit a home run every seven at bats, but there’s every chance the Twins have themselves a much better version of Gallo than we’ve seen recently.

Yusei Kikuchi: Five starts, 27 IP, 3.00 ERA, 9.3 SO/9, 2.0 BB/9

Kikuchi came into the season clinging onto the final rotation spot in Toronto, but he’s been a really solid arm for them over the first month. Last season Kikuchi posted a 5.25 ERA in 20 starts for the Blue Jays and wound up out of the rotation by the end of the season. A big reason for his turnaround this year is a significant drop in his walk rate. Last season, Kikuchi was handing out free passes 12.8% of the time. This season? Just 5.7%. He’s also tweaked his pitch mix a bit, leaning less often on his fastball and bumping up the usage of his slider and splitter.

Yet a peak under the hood of Kikuchi’s performance does raise some red flags. He is still giving up far too many home runs, conceding about two every nine innings, much the same as his rate last year. He’s also carrying a sky high 97.2% left on base percentage, which is bound to drop some.

All in all, I’m skeptical Kikuchi holds on to the sort of numbers he’s putting up over his first five starts and expect a decent amount of regression. Maybe that still results in an improvement on last year and provides the Jays with enough to feel comfortable running him out every fifth day, but I still think he ends up with an ERA somewhere in the fours rather than the threes.

Cody Bellinger: .298/.475/.560 with five home runs 

After winning the NL MVP in 2019 with the Dodgers, Bellinger has descended into a below average hitter since, putting up a wRC+ of just 78 between 2020-22. That led the Dodgers to non-tender him at the end of last season, and he latched on with the Cubs on a one-year, $17.5MM deal. It looked like an expensive gamble at the time for Chicago, but it appears to be paying off.

Bellinger has almost halved his strikeout rate from a year prior, bumped up his walk rate but still isn’t hitting the ball nearly as hard as he was during his MVP season. In fact his HardHit% is at 31 this year, and was as high as 45.6 in 2019 and 38.1 last year. The huge drop in strikeouts really is the most impressive aspect though, as that’s where Bellinger had come undone in recent years. In 2019 his K rate was just 16.9%, but it rocketed up into the 27% range over the past few seasons, so to bring it back down to an elite rate is a firm indication of some meaningful change in Bellinger’s performance.

So with all that considered perhaps he’s sort of back? Mostly back? Or maybe on the way to being back? Either way, it’s still a hugely productive player for the Cubs and the signs are there that even if he’s not peak-Bellinger he’s still very much turned a corner.

Johan Oviedo: Five starts, 29 2/3 IP, 3.03 ERA, 8.8 SO/9, 3.3 BB/9

Little was made of the return the Pirates received for Jose Quintana when they dealt him to the Cardinals at the deadline last summer. Yet in Oviedo, with a few changes, they may have unearthed a really solid mid-rotation arm. Oviedo had been a ho-hum arm in the Cardinals system getting mixed results and it didn’t appear as though his departure would really change much in St Louis.

Yet since coming over the Pirates, Oviedo has blossomed, and I’ll borrow from my colleague Steve Adams’ analysis in a broader Front Office piece on Pittsburgh’s impressive start to the season, which includes this on Oviedo:

Oviedo has upped his fastball velocity, doubled his curveball usage and morphed from a fringey swingman to what looks like a legitimate Major League starter. He’s not an ace, but the tangible changes here and immediate results are intriguing.

Oviedo’s fastball velocity may be up to 96.6 mph on average, but he’s throwing the pitch at a career-low 33.7% clip, instead heavily favoring his slider and curveball, both of which have a 34% whiff rate in 2023, per Statcast. Fewer fastballs and more breaking pitches have led to a stark increase in ground-ball rate – a well above-average 55.7% in 2023 – and a glut of weak contact. He’s yielded just an 85.6 mph average exit velocity and a paltry 31.1% hard-hit rate.

Steve’s piece is well worth a read, but the key here is that Oviedo and the Pirates coaching staff have made meaningful change to his pitching repertoire and are seeing results. With that in mind, it’s hard not buy this start from Oviedo. Perhaps there’s a bit of regression from the 3.03 ERA, but even if the Bucs have landed themselves a solid third or fourth starter who gives them a chance to win each time he takes the mound, it’s a huge win.

Jarred Kelenic: .325/.380/.663 with seven home runs

Is it finally happening? Kelenic has been one of the game’s top prospects for a number of years now but has failed to make an impact at the highest level. That may be changing. Kelenic has been one of the best hitters on a struggling Seattle team to start 2023, and could be blossoming into the sort of player the team dreamed on when they acquired him from the Mets.

Sure, Kelenic will see some regression from the .385 BABIP he holds right now, but the guy is hitting the ball and hitting it hard. He’s already barreled up ten balls and his HardHit% sits at 57.6%, a full 22 percentage points higher than last year and his exit velocity has shot up from the previous two campaigns.

As Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic details, Kelenic spent the winter in Arizona revamping his swing with Tim Laker, a former Mariners hitting coach and the results are clear. A career .168/.251/338 hitter in the big leagues, Kelenic looks to have finally broken out in 2023. Even if his strikeout and walk rates are largely in line with his previous numbers the fact that he can do more – a lot more – with the contact that he is making is the difference.

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Chicago Cubs MLBTR Originals Minnesota Twins Pittsburgh Pirates Seattle Mariners Toronto Blue Jays Cody Bellinger Jarred Kelenic Joey Gallo Johan Oviedo Jose Quintana Yusei Kikuchi

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MLBTR Chat Transcript

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 10:05am CDT

Click here to read a transcript of this morning’s live chat with Simon Hampton.

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MLBTR Chats

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Pirates Recall Miguel Andujar

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 9:00am CDT

The Pirates have recalled Miguel Andujar to the team, Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic reports. The Pirates had outrighted him off the roster in January, but he’ll return after a month in Triple-A. Wil Crowe has been transferred to the 60-day IL while Drew Maggi has been optioned to the minors, but will stay with the team as the 27th man for today’s double header in Washington.

Andujar has made a solid start to the season at Triple-A Indianapolis, slashing .284/.364/.500 through his first 99 plate appearances. The former AL Rookie of the Year runner up is earning $1.53MM this year as an arbitration-eligible player. He came over to the Pirates from the Yankees last season, but hit just .250/.275/.389 in 40 plate appearances down the stretch. Andujar will likely provide cover off the bench as an option to play first and third base as well as corner outfield. He’s in the lineup for today’s game, batting sixth and starting in right.

Maggi, 34 next month, was one of the feel good stories of the season after getting his first big league callup following 13 seasons in the minor leagues. Drafted in the 15th round of the 2010 draft, Maggi had toiled away in the Pirates system ever since but was finally rewarded with a big league call. He only tallied four plate appearances across two games, failing to notch a big league hit and striking out once. He may well get one more chance at that, with Maggi sticking around to serve as the team’s 27th man for the double header against the Nationals today.

As for Crowe, he landed on the IL with shoulder discomfort during the week but the fact that the team has quickly transferred him to the 60-day indicates that the issue may well be more serious than first thought. Crowe had worked to a 4.66 ERA across 9 2/3 innings out of the Bucs’ bullpen this season.

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Pittsburgh Pirates Transactions Drew Maggi Miguel Andujar Wil Crowe

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Twins Place Kenta Maeda On IL, Recall Bailey Ober

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 8:56am CDT

The Twins have placed struggling starter Kenta Maeda on the 15-day IL with a right triceps strain and recalled right hander Bailey Ober to start today’s game, the team announced.

It’s been a difficult return from Tommy John surger for Maeda, who’s struggled to a 9.00 ERA in his first four starts, but it’s already been reported that this injury is not related to the surgery. Given the soreness Maeda has been experiencing to start the season, it’s difficult to know quite how much stock to put in Maeda’s woes to begin the year, but the Twins will be hoping some time out will be enough to get him back healthy.

In his absence, they’ll turn to towering right hander Ober. He’s already made one start for the Twins this season, giving up a single earned run in 5 2/3 innings. Since making his debut for Minnesota, Ober’s compiled a 3.74 ERA in 32 starts, with quality strikeout (24.1%) and walk (5.3%) rates. He also has a 2.55 ERA in four starts at Triple-A this season.

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Minnesota Twins Transactions Bailey Ober Kenta Maeda

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Tigers Select Andy Ibanez, Place Kerry Carpenter On IL

By Simon Hampton | April 29, 2023 at 8:55am CDT

The Tigers have made a series of roster moves this morning, placing outfielder Kerry Carpenter on the 10-day injured list with a right shoulder strain and selecting the contract of infielder Andy Ibanez. To make room on the 40-man roster for Ibanez, right hander Matt Manning was transferred to the 60-day IL.

Ibanez was outrighted off the Tigers’ roster in January, but returns after hitting .297/.418/.609 with five home runs this year at Triple-A. The 30-year-old made his big league debut for the Rangers two years ago and has slashed a combined .258/.306/.384 with eight home runs across 400 plate appearances. The Tigers claimed him off waivers at the end of last season. The majority of his playing time has been spent at second and third, but he has filled in in the outfield as well as at first.

Carpenter’s hitting .217/.280/.464 with four home runs to begin the season, his second big league campaign. The 19th round pick from 2019 showed a bit more promise last year, but has struggled to start 2023. The 25-year-old broke out in Triple-A last year, slashing .331/.420/.644 with eight home runs in 138 plate appearances, and so while he’s yet to hit a great deal at the big leagues there is a bit of promise there.

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Detroit Tigers Transactions Andy Ibanez Kerry Carpenter Matt Manning

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Is The White Sox’ Season Already Lost?

By Steve Adams | April 28, 2023 at 11:59pm CDT

The White Sox’ catastrophic start to the season has all but eliminated the team’s playoff  hopes before the first month of the schedule has even concluded. The South Siders sit at 7-19 with a -58 run differential. FanGraphs has already dropped their projected playoff odds to 4.8%. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA is even more bearish, at 3.6%.

Unsurprisingly, general manager Rick Hahn and executive vice president Kenny Williams have come under fire for the calamitous beginnings of the 2023 season, though the team’s struggles date even further back than that. The Sox dropped eight in a row last September to fall from three games out of the division lead to 11 back and a .500 finish. Hahn was candid in discussing his struggles with the team’s beat yesterday (link via Steve Greenberg of the Chicago Sun-Times).

“I think that makes it clear that my job is potentially on the line,” Hahn said of the team’s awful start to the season. The 11-year GM emphasized that the team’s struggles “sure as heck isn’t on [manager Pedro Grifol] and his coaching staff” and repeatedly said of the team’s struggles: “Put it on me.”

It has indeed been a brutal start for the Sox in just about every sense. Their collective .231/.289/.373 batting line translates to an 84 wRC+ that sits 26th in the Majors. The Sox are 23rd in team batting average, 28th in on-base percentage, 22nd in slugging percentage, 28th in walk rate (6.6%) and 16th in strikeout rate (23.7%). They’ve dealt with their share of injuries, but that’s increasingly looking more like an undesirable feature of this team’s core rather than a bug. The Sox’ depth behind the core group — or rather, the lack thereof — was far from unforeseeable. I wrote about that topic back in late January in a piece for MLBTR Front Office subscribers. It’s been a perennial issue for the team.

So too has the lack of defense. Hahn, Williams & Co. sought to remedy that issue in 2023 by making the tough decision to move on from clubhouse leader Jose Abreu, opening first base for Andrew Vaughn and paving a path to improved outfield defense with Andrew Benintendi in left, Luis Robert Jr. in center and top prospect Oscar Colas in right field. The team’s overall defense is better in 2023 but is still far from a strength; they’re sitting at a combined -10 Defensive Runs Saved, -2 Outs Above Average and, most charitably, a scratch grade from Ultimate Zone Rating. Their 12 team errors tie them for 12th in Major League Baseball. Colas, meanwhile, has looked overmatched at the plate so far.

Chicago’s pitching staff — specifically the rotation — was supposed to be its great strength, but things simply haven’t panned out in that regard. Every member of the rotation, including last year’s Cy Young runner-up Dylan Cease, has an ERA north of 4.00. Veteran Lance Lynn and once-vaunted prospect Michael Kopech are both north of 7.00. The options beyond the top quintet of Cease, Lynn, Kopech, Lucas Giolito and free-agent signee Mike Clevinger aren’t much more encouraging; the Sox’ sixth starter, Davis Martin, posted a 4.83 ERA in 63 1/3 MLB innings last year. He’s out to a nice start through three turns in Triple-A this season but also turned in a 6.11 ERA in 13 starts there in 2022.

In the bullpen, the Sox have baseball’s second-worst ERA at 6.06, leading only the hapless Athletics. There was no foreseeable way to plan for Liam Hendriks’ absence, and the Aussie closer’s announcement that he’s cancer-free and eyeing a return to the mound sooner than later is one of the game’s great feel-good stories at the moment.

Even with Hendriks sidelined, the Chicago relief corps should be vastly better than this, however, particularly given the weighty contracts to which they’ve signed free agents like Kendall Graveman (three years, $24MM) and Joe Kelly (two years, $17MM). The Sox are spending more than $42MM on their bullpen in 2023, and while Hendriks accounts for $14MM of that (and has been every bit as excellent as expected when healthy), that still leaves more than $28MM in salary committed to a group that has delivered the second-worst bottom line results in all of baseball.

It’s a dismal look top-to-bottom at the moment, and it calls into question the team’s direction at the trade deadline at a stunningly early juncture of the season. The White Sox would need to play at a 74-62 pace (.544) just to finish the season at .500. If we were to set the hypothetical bar for a playoff berth at 90 wins, they’d need to go 83-53 (.610) from here on out to reach that threshold. Put another way, they’d need to play at the rough equivalent of an 88-win pace (over a 162-game season) just to get to .500 and at the equivalent of a 99-win pace to reach 90 wins.

Based on everything we’ve seen thus far, that’s decidedly unlikely. The overwhelming likelihood is that the Sox will enter the summer as a sub-.500 club with minimal playoff hopes. Even if they were able to claw back into within arm’s reach of the AL Central or a Wild Card chase, the team’s farm system is once again fairly barren, and owner Jerry Reinsdorf hasn’t appeared keen on taking payroll much beyond its current levels.

The greater likelihood would be one of selling off some veteran pieces, though that comes with its own questions. It seems doubtful Reinsdorf would want to commit to a full rebuild so soon after emerging from a yearslong effort to do just that. The Sox could trade off players who are only controlled through the end of the 2023 season or perhaps through the end of the 2024 campaign, but outside of Tim Anderson and Lucas Giolito, they don’t have many appealing players in that group. And, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic rightly pointed out this morning, trading away only impending free agents would need to signal that the team feels it can compete in 2024, which would probably require the type of bump in payroll that Reinsdorf resisted heading into the current season — when he actually lowered payroll on the heels of a disappointing 2022 season.

There’s still a possible avenue to better days with that approach, however. The team’s commitments to Lynn, Grandal, Kelly, Clevinger, Diekman, Elvis Andrus and Hanser Alberto are all up at season’s end. That’s about $65MM in combined salary. Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, notably, are free agents as well. The Sox currently have about $109MM committed to next year’s club, per Roster Resource, with a tiny arbitration class (Cease, Kopech, Vaughn, Garrett Crochet).

The Sox could have as much as $60MM to work with this coming offseason before they get back to their current Opening Day payroll levels. That’s quite a bit to work with, but they’ll also need to add multiple starting pitchers, try to fix the bullpen and address multiple spots in a deficient lineup and defense — and do so with greater success than their last waves of free-agent investments (e.g. Grandal, Graveman, Kelly, Dallas Keuchel).

Ultimately, there’s no easy path to salvaging the 2023 season, and the long-term questions are every bit as confounding, if not more so. Hahn surely knows he’s on the hottest of seats, but even with a change atop the baseball operations pyramid, the team will be facing bigger-picture questions. Will Reinsdorf push payroll to previously unseen levels in an effort to spend his way out of the current mess? Would he green-light another rebuild at 87 years old and only a couple years removed from a four-year step back from competitive baseball? The White Sox are in one of the least-enviable spots in all of baseball right now, and the questions will only grow louder if the team can’t quickly begin to correct course.

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Chicago White Sox

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