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Major League Rule 5 Draft Expected To Take Place After Lockout

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The 2021-22 major league Rule 5 draft is expected to take place shortly after the signing of the next collective bargaining agreement, tweets JJ Cooper of Baseball America. Originally scheduled to take place this week, the major league Rule 5 draft was postponed indefinitely as part of the leaguewide transaction freeze once MLB instituted a lockout upon the expiration of the previous CBA on December 1.

Still, it’s a noteworthy development that it’s expected to happen at all. The Rule 5 had seemingly been on thin ice, with reports last week initially suggesting it’d be canceled entirely. Instead, it now seems the draft is on track to happen at some point. That’s a continuation of a more than century-old trend, as the Rule 5 has taken place each offseason since 1920.

For those unfamiliar, the big league Rule 5 draft is an acquisition process designed to give opportunities to players who might be buried on the depth chart in their current organizations. Players with either four or five years of professional experience (the exact threshold depends upon the player’s age at signing their first contract) have to either be added to their club’s 40-man roster or exposed in the Rule 5.

If they’re left exposed, they’re subject to selection by other organizations. If selected, players must remain on the active roster or major league injured list for the entirety of the upcoming season. Otherwise, they’re made available to the rest of the league and then — if not acquired by another team — offered back to their original club. After a full season on the big league roster or injured list — including a minimum of 90 days on the active roster — the player becomes a full-fledged member of his new team.

There is also a minor league phase to the Rule 5 draft, in which eligible players not included among an organization’s protected Triple-A group can be selected by another club. The minor league phase, which does not contain any roster restrictions for the acquiring teams, is scheduled to proceed tomorrow. Players selected in the minor league Rule 5 draft will not be added to teams’ 40-man rosters, so that process will continue in spite of the lockout affecting 40-man players.

Mets To Interview Buck Showalter

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The Mets are scheduled to interview Buck Showalter tomorrow as part of their managerial search, reports Jon Heyman of the MLB Network (Twitter link). That’s hardly a surprise, as Showalter was reported to be on New York’s radar last week. Perhaps of more interest is that Heyman adds that some around the industry see Showalter as the favorite, although he notes that other candidates are expected to sit down in the coming days.

Few around the game can match Showalter’s experience and credentials. He landed his first big league managerial job with the Yankees nearly three decades ago. Showalter spent the 1992-95 campaigns in the Bronx and went on to log stints leading the D-Backs from (1998-2000), the Rangers (2003-06) and the Orioles (2010-18).

Now 65, Showalter is a three-time Manager of the Year award winner, claiming that honor in each of 1994, 2004 and 2014. He’s overseen five playoff clubs (including three division winners), leading the 2014 Orioles to the AL Championship Series. Baltimore posted a winning record in five of his first seven seasons at the helm, but the club nosedived in 2017, leading to the complete rebuild from which the organization still has yet to emerge. That’s not entirely or even primarily the fault of Showalter, but the O’s nevertheless dismissed him after the 2018 campaign. He hasn’t managed since, yet he’s continued to express openness to a return to the dugout.

Showalter will become the fourth known interviewee with the Mets. New York has also spoken or scheduled interviews with Rays’ bench coach Matt Quatraro, former Tigers’ and Angels’ skipper Brad Ausmus and Dodgers’ bench coach Bob Geren. Ausmus and Geren both have prior MLB managing experience, but neither has as extensive a resume as Showalter.

The latter’s long list of accomplishments figures to hold some weight in the clubhouse, and Pat Ragazzo of Sports Illustrated reports (on Twitter) that newly-signed ace Max Scherzer has indicated to the club he’d prefer Showalter land the position. It’s not clear the front office will place much or any stock into the reported preferences of individual players, but Scherzer is certainly an important figure in the organization both from an on-field and locker room perspective.

Interestingly, the Mets aren’t the only New York team to consider a pursuit of Showalter this offseason. Heyman adds that the Yankees kicked around the possibility of making a run at bringing him back earlier in the winter. That ultimately proved not to be, as the Yankees decided to stick with incumbent skipper Aaron Boone, signing him to a three-year extension in mid-October.

Tim Federowicz Retires

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Former big league catcher Tim Federowicz announced this evening that he’s retiring (on Twitter) after a 14-year professional career. That included parts of eight seasons in the big leagues, as the right-handed hitting backstop logged MLB action each season from 2011-19 aside from 2015.

Federowicz functioned as a second or third catcher for essentially the entirety of his big league tenure. His 173 plate appearances with the 2013 Dodgers marked a career-high, the only season in which he tallied at least 100 trips to the dish. Yet Federowicz consistently hung around as a priority depth option for clubs. That’s a testament both to his well-regarded work with pitching staffs and an impressive .293/.364/.483 line over parts of ten seasons in Triple-A.

Over the course of his career, Federowicz appeared with the Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, Astros, Reds and Rangers. He steps away as a .192/.241/.328 hitter in 443 plate appearances spread over 163 big league games. He hit twelve home runs and threw out a solid 30.7% of attempted base-stealers. In addition to his time in affiliated ball, Federowicz earned a Silver Medal as part of the U.S. National Team at this past summer’s Tokyo Olympics.

The 34-year-old is set to jump right into the next phase of his career, as Federowicz announced he’ll take over as manager of the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma in 2022. MLBTR wishes Federowicz the best in his post-playing days.

Cubs Sign Stephen Gonsalves To Minor League Deal

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The Cubs recently signed Stephen Gonsalves to a minor league contract, according to the MLB.com transactions tracker. The southpaw was removed from the Red Sox’s 40-man roster in September and elected minor league free agency at the end of the season, making him eligible to sign a minors pact during the lockout.

Gonsalves made three relief appearances with Boston this past season, his first big league action in three years. A well-regarded prospect during his early days in the Twins’ system, the former fourth-round pick ran into some strike-throwing issues upon reaching Triple-A and has yet to establish himself in the majors. Between 2018 and 2021, Gonsalves has worked 29 innings across ten MLB outings, posting a 6.21 ERA/6.27 SIERA.

The Southern California native has had a lot more success preventing runs in the minors. Gonsalves owns an ERA below 3.00 at every stop through Double-A, and he sports a 3.91 mark over 198 innings at the minors’ top level.

That includes a 4.68 mark with the Red Sox’s Worcester affiliate in 2021, where Gonsalves punched out a stellar 31.2% of opponents but issued walks at an alarming 15.8% clip. He has a fair bit of experience starting in the minors and could be a depth option for the Cubs’ rotation, but the 27-year-old’s continued control problems might hint at a future as a full-time relief option.

Collective Bargaining Issues: Expanded Playoffs

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Last week, we covered what figures to be one of the top priorities for the MLB Players Association during collective bargaining discussions — alterations to the service time structure. Today, we’ll look at what should be one of the most important issues for Major League Baseball: potential postseason expansion.

An expanded playoff has looked to be a key issue for the league for quite some time, as MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes discussed in January with labor advisor Eugene Freedman. More playoff teams simply means more games for MLB to offer television partners — deals which have proven extremely profitable for the league in recent years. Under past collective bargaining agreements, playoff TV revenue has gone exclusively to the league. The creation of additional rounds to sell to FOX, Turner or any other broadcast partner would figure to provide the league and its owners another windfall.

The league and Players Association already agreed to one playoff expansion, bumping to 16 teams during the 2020 truncated season. That was a one-off agreement, but commissioner Rob Manfred publicly voiced support for a permanent playoff expansion last year. Manfred has previously floated 14 teams as the league’s ideal number, and Jesse Rogers of ESPN reported last week that MLB has had a 14-team playoff format on the table during its early collective bargaining proposals.

According to Rogers, MLB’s proposal would contain seven postseason teams from each of the American and National Leagues. In addition to the three division winners, each league would feature four Wild Card clubs. The team with the best record in each league would receive a first-round bye, while the remaining six teams in each league would participate in a three-game Wild Card series.

Under MLB’s vision, the two division winners in each league that don’t receive the bye would choose their Wild Card series opponents. The division winner with the second-best record would choose its opponent from the bottom three Wild Card clubs; the remaining division winner would have its pick of the bottom two Wild Card teams still available; the remaining Wild Card winners would face one another. The higher-seeded team in each league would host all three games of the opening series.

While potential postseason expansion looks to be an obvious positive for MLB, its effects on the players could be more mixed. The introduction of a playoff round would have a direct financial benefit for some players. Under the terms of previous CBAs, players on postseason teams received varying shares (dependent on team finish) of gate revenues in October. More playoff games would mean more gate revenues, which would stand to benefit some players each year.

That alone doesn’t seem enough to convince the players to wholeheartedly embrace postseason expansion. For one, the league’s interest in larger playoffs is greater than that of the MLBPA, giving the union a powerful bargaining chip to possibly extract concessions on other issues (i.e. service time structure, luxury tax thresholds) of more import to the players. And the MLBPA no doubt has concerns about playoff expansion’s potential indirect effects on team spending habits.

A bigger playoff field inherently means a greater possibility for every team to make the postseason. With increased odds could come complacency. A club with an already-strong roster may not be as motivated to improve under a 14-team field as they’d be under the current system, reasoning that they’re already comfortable with their current odds. Removing the Wild Card game reduces the incentive for teams to win their divisions, since division winners and Wild Card clubs alike would find themselves in an opening round three-game series (although the potential bye for the top seed would increase the incentive for clubs to pursue the league’s best record).

That’s particularly true in MLB, a league with a comparatively high level of variance in small samples. Playoff series in MLB are less predictable than they are in leagues like the NBA and NFL, a trend reinforced in 2021 when the playoff team with the worst regular season record (the Braves) won the World Series. Based on that high level of playoff volatility, many teams could be content to make the postseason — even as one of the lower seeds — and simply hope for a hot stretch once there. Lowering the bar to entry could make it easier for organizations with already strong big league rosters to be less active in free agency, an obvious concern for the players union.

MLB could counter that possibility would be offset by higher desire to improve among mid-tier clubs. After all, that small sample volatility gives teams with even average or marginally above-average rosters an opportunity to go on a lengthy playoff run. Improving from, say, a 76-win roster to an 84-win roster would be significantly more impactful under this vision than it is under the current system.

Still, the MLBPA has seemingly had reservations about the competitive incentives that come with potential playoff expansion. That’s reflected in their counterproposal, as Rogers reported that the union’s most recent offer involves a 12-team postseason, not MLB’s desired 14 clubs. Details on the MLBPA’s offer aren’t clear, although Rogers noted that proposal involved a significant restructuring that would see each league modified from the current three division setup to two divisions apiece (one containing eight clubs, one with seven).

With the MLBPA already showing openness to a 12-team playoff, it’d be a surprise if the next CBA didn’t involve some form of expansion. Keeping the 10-team status quo seems unlikely, since MLB would presumably prefer a 12-team setup to the current system even if the MLBPA doesn’t go for a 14-team tournament. Union amenability to playoff expansion could go a long way towards landing more favorable outcomes in some other areas the MLBPA finds more pressing.

As for fans, playoff expansion seems largely to be a matter of aesthetic preference. Some will naturally recoil at the idea, which would likely eventually result in a new mark for worst regular season record for a World Series champion (currently held by the 83-78 Cardinals of 2006). MLB has traditionally had a smaller postseason field than other major leagues, a point of great appeal for some fans. On the other hand, some viewers are likely to relish a bigger field. Greater opportunity to reach the postseason means more teams remaining in contention. That’s likely to keep more fanbases invested in August and September each season, which will be a feature for many observers.

Matt Quatraro Interviews With Athletics; Interview With Mets Likely To Follow

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The A’s have interviewed Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro within the past few days as part of their search for a new manager, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. He becomes the first known candidate to sit down with Oakland brass.

Quatraro, 48, has been regarded as a potential manager of the future for the past few years. Kevin Cash’s top lieutenant over the last three seasons in Tampa Bay, he interviewed with the Pirates and Giants over the 2019-20 offseason and sat down with the Tigers last fall. Quatraro, who played professionally for seven seasons and topped out at Triple-A, has never managed in the majors. He does have nearly two decades of coaching experience in the Rays’ organization (in addition to a 2014 stint as Indians’ assistant hitting coach). That includes four years managing in the low minors in the Tampa Bay system.

Oakland is on the hunt for a new manager after Bob Melvin’s surprising departure to take over the dugout in San Diego. For the first time in more than a decade, the A’s will go into a season without Melvin leading the charge. Former bench coach Ryan Christenson is departing to assume the same role under Melvin with the Padres, removing one potential in-house option from the mix.

The A’s are one of two teams in search of a new skipper. The other club, the Mets, has also expressed interest in Quatraro. Buster Olney of ESPN reported this morning (on Twitter) that New York was requesting permission from the Rays to interview him. Topkin reports that Tampa Bay has granted that request, writing that Quatraro could sit down with members of the New York front office as soon as tomorrow.

Giants Sign Mauricio Llovera To Minor League Deal

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The Giants have signed reliever Mauricio Llovera to a minor league contract, according to his transactions log at MLB.com. The right-hander elected minor league free agency at the end of the season after being outrighted off the Phillies’ 40-man roster in August, making him eligible to sign a minor league deal during the lockout.

Llovera’s stint in San Francisco will be his first outside the Philadelphia organization. The 25-year-old has appeared briefly at the big league level for the Phils in each of the last two years, tallying 7 2/3 combined innings of relief. Llovera didn’t find much success during his six MLB appearances this past season, but he averaged a solid 94.5 MPH on his four-seam fastball.

The Venezuela native hasn’t amassed much of a track record in the majors, but Llovera’s coming off a 2021 campaign in which he logged 52 Triple-A frames across 32 appearances. His 3.46 ERA with the Phillies’ top affiliate in Lehigh Valley was solid, but his 21.4% strikeout rate and 10.7% walk percentage at the level were both a bit worse than average. Nevertheless, the Giants will take a no-risk flier to see if Llovera can pitch his way into the bullpen mix over the coming months. He has one minor league option year remaining, so San Francisco can shuttle him between the majors and Triple-A Sacramento next season even if he earns a spot on the 40-man roster.

Nationals’ Under-The-Radar Deadline Pickup Off To Strong Start In D.C.

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The Nationals had a high-profile teardown this past July. The biggest splash sent Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers, while other notables like Kyle Schwarber, Yan Gomes and Daniel Hudson were flipped to contenders. Almost buried amidst that flurry was a lower-profile swap announced less than an hour before the deadline: acquiring outfielder Lane Thomas from the Cardinals for veteran starter Jon Lester. While that trade didn’t grab nearly as many headlines as some of the Nats’ other moves, the early returns look very promising.

Thomas has been around for a few seasons, but he never got an extended look with St. Louis. Between 2019-21, he struggled to a .172/.289/.336 line across 142 scattered plate appearances. Generally regarded by prospect evaluators as a fourth outfield type and turning 26 years old in August, it’s easy to understand why the Cardinals’ front office was willing to make him available. Yet Thomas picked up everyday run on a depleted Washington roster down the stretch, putting up quietly excellent numbers.

Over 206 plate appearances in the nation’s capital, the former fifth-round pick posted a .270/.364/.489 slash line, hitting seven home runs and stealing four bases. He spent the bulk of that time in center field, playing well enough to supplant former top prospect Víctor Robles on the depth chart. That offensive output was 27 percentage points above the league average, by measure of wRC+. More encouragingly, it was largely backed up by strong plate discipline and batted ball metrics.

During his end-of-season run, Thomas demonstrated an enviable combination of patience, bat-to-ball skills and power on contact. The right-handed hitter had an extreme willingness to work deep counts, a continuation of a trend he’d shown in St. Louis. Thomas swings far less often than most at pitches both inside and outside the strike zone, a plan of attack that allows him to draw plenty of walks but also puts him at risk for his share of strikeouts. Yet he kept the punch outs manageable during his time in Washington by making contact on a robust 82.4% of his swings (about six percentage points higher than the league mark).

That patience and contact frequency gave Thomas a strong floor from an on-base perspective, but his contact authority was particularly impressive. The Tennessee native had an average exit velocity of 91.7 MPH, more than three ticks harder than the 88.1 MPH league average. According to FanGraphs, he made hard contact on 45.1% of his batted balls with the Nats. The average MLB hitter (excluding pitchers) had a 32.5% hard contact rate in 2021.

That’s a rare set of skills, even in a limited sample of work. Among the 463 players with at least 100 plate appearances, only sixteen managed a hard contact rate north of 40% while striking out in fewer than a quarter of their trips to the dish. Other than Thomas, every player in that group posted a wRC+ of 122 or higher (indicating they were at least 22 percentage points more productive than average offensively). Removing Thomas’ poor 58 plate appearances with the Cardinals early in the season puts him right among that very impressive list of names, both from a results and process perspective.

That’s not to say Thomas is absolutely an elite hitter now, or even that the Cardinals made a mistake in giving him up. Lester was a reliable source of decent innings down the stretch, helping St. Louis to a fantastic second-half run to the postseason. And Thomas needs more than two months of strong performance to cement himself as a core member of the Nats’ future.

His first couple months in a Washington uniform couldn’t have gone much better, though. At the very least, he’s earned an extended opportunity to try to cement himself alongside Juan Soto in the long-term outfield. The Nationals are likely to take a step back in 2022 as they audition younger players like Thomas, but they prioritized near-MLB returns during their deadline sell-off and aren’t about to embark on a rebuild while Soto is under club control. Washington may need some things to fall into place to be realistic contenders in what should be a competitive NL East by 2023. Thomas settling in as a productive regular would be one those pluses, and he’s started off on the right foot with his new club.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

KBO’s SSG Landers Sign Kevin Cron

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The SSG Landers of the Korea Baseball Organization announced an agreement with former big league first baseman Kevin Cron (h/t to Dan Kurtz of MyKBO). The 28-year-old will receive $750K guaranteed with an additional $250K in possible incentives.

It’s the second consecutive season Cron will spend overseas, although it’ll be his first in South Korea. The former Diamondback spent the 2021 campaign with the Hiroshima Carp of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, slumping to a .231/.270/.431 line over 137 plate appearances.

Cron, the younger brother of Rockies first baseman C.J. Cron, will try to right the ship in his first crack at KBO pitching. He’s certainly capable of better than he showed with the Carp as the owner of a .319/.405/.651 line across two seasons at Triple-A. Cron has briefly appeared in parts of two major league seasons, combining to log 98 plate appearances over 47 games with Arizona from 2019-20.

Latest On Mets’ Managerial Search

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10:04 pm: Martino tweets that while Granderson’s name had come up in initial discussions, he is not expected to interview for the position.

9:49 pm: Robert Murray of FanSided reports (on Twitter) that longtime big league outfielder Curtis Granderson is also under consideration for the Mets. The 40-year-old announced his retirement from playing in 2020 following a 16-year big league career that included a trio of All-Star appearances and a Silver Slugger Award.

Granderson had emerged as a respected veteran presence in clubhouses over the course of his career. He currently serves as the president of the Players Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at increasing accessibility within the sport for Black athletes. Granderson played four seasons with the Mets during team president Sandy Alderson’s time as the club’s GM. Prior to that, he spent four years with the Yankees — a stint that overlapped with Eppler’s time in the club’s front office.

6:35 pm: The Mets declined an option to bring back skipper Luis Rojas shortly after the end of the 2021 season. Two months later, they remain without a manager. After spending a significant chunk of the early offseason in the search for a new GM that eventually landed Billy Eppler, the Mets turned their attention to the player market last week in advance of the lockout. With clubs barred from making major league transactions for the duration of the work stoppage, the Mets and the Athletics, the other team currently without a manager, figure to zero in on those respective searches in short order.

Andy Martino of SNY reports some preliminary candidates, naming Astros bench coach Joe Espada, Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro, Pirates bench coach Don Kelly and former MLB managers Buck Showalter and Brad Ausmus among those under early consideration. Martino cautions that’s not an exhaustive list, and it’s not clear whether everyone in that group will get an interview.

No one from that group registers as much of a surprise. None of Espada, Quatraro or Kelly has managed at the big league level, but they’ve all been rumored as part of searches elsewhere. Espada, 46, has been the bench coach in Houston for the past four seasons, working underneath both A.J. Hinch and Dusty Baker. He’s interviewed for a few different managerial openings in recent years and at one point even looked to be the favorite for the Giants job that eventually went to Gabe Kapler.

Quatraro’s name has come up a few times over the past couple offseasons. Kevin Cash’s top lieutenant over the last three years in Tampa Bay, the 48-year-old Quatraro has interviewed with the Giants, Pirates and Tigers in winters past and was reportedly a finalist for the Pittsburgh job that went to Derek Shelton. Kelly has worked underneath Shelton in the Steel City over the past two seasons. The 41-year-old interviewed with the Tigers and Red Sox last offseason and was reported to be among the top handful under consideration for the job that went to Alex Cora.

Showalter and Ausmus, meanwhile, come with significant managerial experience. The former has been one of the more accomplished skippers of the past couple decades. Showalter, now 65, landed his first big league managerial job with the Yankees in 1992. He spent four years in the Bronx, managed the D-Backs from 1998-2000, the Rangers from 2003-06 and the Orioles from 2010-18.

Over his career, Showalter won Manager of the Year Awards at three of those four stops. He’s overseen five playoff clubs (including three division winners), taking the 2014 Orioles to the AL Championship Series. Showalter hasn’t managed since being dismissed by Baltimore after the 2018 campaign, but he’s continued to express openness to a return to the dugout.

Ausmus, meanwhile, has managed at two separate stints. He spent the 2014-17 campaigns at the helm of the Tigers, then managed the Angels in 2019. That stint in Anaheim overlapped with Eppler’s tenure as Angels’ GM, fueling immediate speculation upon the latter’s hiring with the Mets that he could look to bring Ausmus to Queens.

Prior to that stint as skipper, Ausmus spent the 2018 season as a member of the Los Angeles front office. Eppler’s Angels fired Ausmus after just one season in the managerial chair, but it was reported at the time that call was made by owner Arte Moreno (perhaps not coincidentally just one day after it was announced Joe Maddon was leaving the Cubs).

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