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Latest On Cardinals’ Managerial Position

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The Cardinals recently shocked the baseball world by firing manager Mike Shildt, shortly after an incredible season in which a 17-game winning streak catapulted them into the postseason for a third consecutive year. Just a few days prior to that, it seemed like the club would take the opposite path and extend him beyond 2022, the last year of his contract. Instead, with the offseason now just about a week away, their plans for a Shildt-less future are not publicly known.

Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch took a look at the situation, reporting that Cardinals’ president of baseball operations John Mozeliak has internal candidates like Oliver Marmol and Stubby Clapp at the top of the list. Marmol has been with the organization as a coach for a decade now, as he became the hitting coach for the Gulf Coast League Cardinals in 2011. He then went on to manage the rookie-ball Johnson City Cardinals and the Class A-Advanced Palm Beach Cardinals. He’s been with the big league club since the 2017 season, serving as first base coach and then bench coach. Clapp spent some time coaching in the Astros’ and Blue Jays’ organizations, before joining the Cardinals as the manager for the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds for the 2017 season. He came up to the major league team as first base coach for the 2019 season. The fact that they are already in the Cardinals organization would mean Mozeliak is already familiar with their abilities, making them known quantities. However, the same was true of Shildt, who had been with the Cardinals in various capacities for over a decade before becoming manager after the firing of Mike Matheny in 2018. It’s unclear if Mozeliak wants to take that same path this time around.

Frederickson also throws out a couple of wildcards, reporting that Rick Renteria and Matt Holliday have make it known they are interested in the position. Renteria would bring some managerial experience, having been the bench boss for the 2014 Cubs then the White Sox from 2017 to 2020. Holliday, on the other hand, would bring no such experience at the big leagues, although he is currently listed as a volunteer assistant coach at Oklahoma State University, where his brother Josh is the head coach. Holliday was with the Cardinals as a player from 2009 to 2016. Hiring Holliday would come as a surprise, although it would mirror the hiring of Matheny in some ways. When Matheny was hired in 2011, he was also just a few years removed from his playing days and had no previous big league coaching experience.

Kyle Schwarber Open To Red Sox Reunion

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The Kyle Schwarber journey has been a rollercoaster over the past couple of years. It was fairly steady from 2017 to 2019, as he was in a groove as the Cubs’ regular left fielder, playing at least 129 games and hitting at least 26 home runs each year. His wRC+ was between 103 and 119 in each of those three campaigns. 2020, however, went in a completely different direction. Over 59 games in the shortened season, Schwarber’s slash line was a meager .188/.308/.393, producing a wRC+ of just 89. There was reason to think it was a fluke, however, as his BABIP on the season was .219, well below his previous campaigns. Nonetheless, the Cubs decided to move on from Schwarber by declining to tender him a contract for his final year of arbitration control, sending the lefty away from the organization that selected him fourth overall in the 2014 draft.

He then went on to have arguably the best season of his career in 2021, between Washington and Boston. He slashed .266/.374/.554, en route to a wRC+ of 145, easily a personal best. His 3.1 fWAR was just slightly below the 3.2 he produced in 2018, though he played 24 more games that season compared to 2021. Based on that excellent campaign, Schwarber is sure to decline his half of the $11MM mutual option for 2022 that was part of his deal with the Nationals, taking the $3MM buyout instead and heading to the open market in search of a big payday.

But could the Red Sox sign him and bring him back? Schwarber tells Alex Speier of The Boston Globe that he’s open to it. “It’d be pretty stupid not to think about [returning],” said Schwarber. “My team here has been unbelievable. … If they feel like they would like to talk about [a new deal], I’d be all ears. I just think it would be stupid to ‘X’ someone off for no reason. Especially for a place like this, I’d be all ears.”

As Schwarber astutely points out, it would be silly for a free agent to eliminate any potential bidders for their services, especially publicly. So, it’s not terribly surprising for him to say he’s interested in returning. However, it would make for a potentially awkward fit. Schwarber was moved from his usual corner outfield position to first base with Boston, due to the Red Sox already having Enrique Hernandez, Alex Verdugo, Hunter Renfroe and J.D. Martinez on hand as outfield options. The switch wasn’t without hiccups, as Schwarber made a few obvious flubs in his time at first, and defensive metrics seemed aligned in their disapproval of his initial attempts at the position.

Although there is the designated hitter slot to think of, Speier’s piece says that Martinez is unlikely to opt out of the final year of his contract, meaning that bringing Schwarber back would give the club two bat-first players with defensive limitations. With Hernandez, Verdugo and Renfroe also coming back for 2022, it will still be difficult to make all the puzzle pieces fit. Schwarber will be one of the premier corner outfield options in this winter’s free agent market, meaning he should get plenty of interest without having to continue the first base experiment.

The Red Sox, for their part, could also turn to more-seasoned options at first, with Freddie Freeman, Anthony Rizzo and Brandon Belt being the top names available. They could also let Bobby Dalbec have the position for now, as he’s been productive in his major league time so far. There’s also Triston Casas to think about. He’s considered a top-20 prospect in all of baseball, according to FanGraphs, Baseball America and MLB Pipeline. He finished 2021 in Triple-A and could soon force his way onto the big league roster. But a reunion between Schwarber and the Red Sox can’t be ruled out, as the slugger himself adds, “This is definitely a clubhouse that I could see myself wanting to stay in. These guys are amazing,” he said. “This is a World Series clubhouse, and I would love to hopefully see if that opportunity comes back.”

The Red Sox could have room for Schwarber from a financial standpoint as their current payroll for 2022 sits just under $160MM, per Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. Their opening day payroll in 2021 was just north of $180MM, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts. However, the Red Sox could use their resources to address things besides first base, such as a pitching staff that is seeing Eduardo Rodriguez, Adam Ottavino and Hansel Robles head into free agency.

Farhan Zaidi Discusses Giants’ Upcoming Offseason

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Giants’ president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi recently appeared on The TK Show, the podcast of The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami, and discussed a wide variety of topics pertaining to the past and the future of the club.

Broadly speaking, there’s a wide variety of paths for the Giants to take this winter. They have a lot of contracts coming off the books when free agency begins, which means they will have money to spend but also holes to fill. They could use that money to assemble a team that’s very similar to the 107-win 2021 squad, go with a completely different look, or somewhere in between. Regardless of how it plays out, Zaidi believes their success this season should help make them an attractive destination for potential signees. “We’re just going to keep trying to get better and better and better and at some point you reach the tipping point where you look up and you’re at the top of the standings, and that situation can perpetuate itself by reputation, a lot of free agents want to play for you, and you can draft off of that success if you just kind of keep grinding and trying to make the team better.”

It certainly stands to reason that free agents would be intrigued, especially given that the Giants have seemingly found a way to maximize the talents of veterans they’ve brought on in recent years, such as Darin Ruf, Anthony DeSclafani, Jake McGee and Alex Wood, who are all over 30 years old and did some of the best work of their careers in 2021. And there’s also Giants’ mainstays like Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Buster Posey, who are all 33 or older and had excellent seasons.

Zaidi elaborated on that point by giving some insight into how players approach free agency and how it’s evolved in recent years. He says that money and geography used to be the primary factors, but now, “I think guys are more aware of going somewhere they feel like there’s an infrastructure and a support system that can help them thrive from a performance standpoint. You get a lot more questions from free agents on what facilities do you have, can I speak to your pitching coach or hitting coach? And that’s a way bigger part of the recruiting process. We’ve been really focused on that pitch over the last couple of years.”

Zaidi had already discussed the rotation situation last week, which is surely going to be a big part of the Giants’ offseason as Wood, DeSclafani, Kevin Gausman and Johnny Cueto are all heading into free agency. Kawakami asked him about taking a similar approach to what they’ve done previously, giving short-term deals to talented pitchers with question marks on their records. “You look at the list of free agents and there are some names on that list who have had a lot of success in the past and maybe dealt with injuries this year or underperformed for whatever reason,” Zaidi said. “I think when you’ve got to fill out four spots in your rotation, you’re certainly going to look at that segment of the market.” The team has a $22MM club option on Cueto, but the fact that Zaidi admits they will be looking to fill four rotation spots seems to leave no doubt that they will opt for the $5MM buyout instead.

But those short-term deals aren’t the only thing on the table. “I would be surprised if we didn’t wind up doing at least one multi-year deal for a starting pitcher,” Zaidi added. “Certainly all of our guys who are free agents are going to be looking for multi-year deals based on the seasons they had. We have interest in bringing all of those guys back.”

In terms of payroll, the club should have lots of flexibility for 2022 and beyond. According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the club’s opening day payroll was just under $150MM this year, the lowest since 2014, when prorating the 2020 number. According to Jason Martinez of Roster Resource, they only have about $65MM allocated for 2022, when factoring in arbitration estimates. Assuming the club picks up its options on Buster Posey, Wilmer Flores and Jose Alvarez, that number would jump up to the $90MM range. Even if payroll stays steady for 2022, that seemingly gives Zaidi and his team $60MM to throw around this offseason. For 2023, there’s only $33MM on the books so far, with Crawford and Tommy La Stella the only guaranteed contracts. With that level of wiggle room, the club could surely find any number of ways to build a rotation around breakout star Logan Webb, for both the short and long term.

On the position player side of things, Zaidi seems to be less worried about their situation in that department. Kawakami quotes Zaidi from a press conference last week as saying, “We’re deep on the position-player side. We have a number of guys who are platoon guys, every-day guys, we have a lot of at-bats that are accounted for. And we’ve got guys like Thairo Estrada (and) Steven Duggar that we’d like to see get better opportunities. You’ve got a layer of prospects that are even closer to being big-league ready, guys like (Heliot) Ramos and Joey Bart. So we at least have some options on the position-player side. Where all those guys on the position-player side, not just Kris but Brandon Belt, Donovan Solano, these guys fit our team, we’d like to have them back, but we have some options on that side.”

Solano has had a nice run with the Giants but is about to turn 34, whereas Estrada is about to turn 26 and had a similarly-productive season, making it fairly reasonable to see that bringing Solano back isn’t the highest priority. Belt had a tremendous season at the plate but also comes with injury concerns. The club largely turned to a productive Wilmer Flores/Darin Ruf platoon when Belt was out, which they could do again in 2022. (Ruf can be retained via arbitration, Flores by a $3.5MM club option.) Bryant is a tremendous hitter but will be command a huge financial commitment this winter and is an imperfect fit on the Giants’ roster. Third baseman Evan Longoria is still under contract for one more year, at just under $20MM, meaning Bryant would likely be pushed into more outfield time, where his defensive numbers aren’t as good. The club also has a bevy of outfield options already in the fold, such as Duggar, LaMonte Wade Jr., Mike Yastrzemski, Alex Dickerson and Austin Slater. Prospect Heliot Ramos, whom Zaidi mentioned, finished his season at Triple-A and will need to be added to the 40-man roster next month in order to protect him from the Rule 5 draft, meaning he should be in the mix for an opportunity soon. Zaidi’s apparent lack of urgency around the position players seems to hold up to scrutiny. The option of a universal DH for 2022 would open things up somewhat, but that’s not guaranteed to happen.

All in all, it should be a fascinating offseason for the club. The rival Dodgers are in a similar situation, with lots of players reaching free agency, such as Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Corey Seager, Chris Taylor and Kenley Jansen. Both clubs will surely be frequently connected to free agents in rumors this offseason, meaning 2021’s fierce competition for the NL West division crown figures to continue right through the winter.

Report: Max Scherzer Won’t Start NLCS Game Six

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Max Scherzer won’t be starting for the Dodgers in the sixth game of the NLCS as planned, according to Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times. As Castillo details, Scherzer’s wasn’t feeling 100% on Sunday when he started game two. The hurler himself said his “arm was dead.” Despite that, the team’s plan was still to start Scherzer in game six tomorrow. Juan Toribio of MLB.com reports that “Scherzer’s arm just hasn’t bounced back” as the team hoped. Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times reports that Scherzer is a possibility for game seven, but it will depend on how he feels between now and then.

This is certainly a concerning development for a Dodgers team that has pushed its pitching staff to the brink of exhaustion this postseason. Since they were in the midst of a race with the Giants for the division crown all season, they had no opportunity to ease off the gas pedal and had to lean on their best pitchers right until the season’s final day. Since they came up short in that race, they had to immediately gear up for the wild card game, which Scherzer started, throwing 94 pitches as the Dodgers walked-off the Cardinals and advanced to the NLDS.

Since then, they have used their starters so much that they had to opt for a bullpen game yesterday, despite the fact that they were facing a 3-1 deficit to Atlanta. Seven different pitchers took the mound for the club and led them to an 11-2 victory that seemed to set the stage for Scherzer to take the ball in game six, attempting to even up the series and force a game seven.

Now that Scherzer is off the table, the Dodgers have a few options, although all of them less appealing than a healthy Scherzer. One would be another bullpen game, although that’s a tall ask given that they just had one. However, they do have tonight off, which should theoretically replenish all of their relievers, at least to some degree.

Another option would be turn to David Price, who was just added to the roster to take the place of the injured Joe Kelly. But Price hasn’t pitched in three weeks, with his last appearance coming October 2nd. And even then, he wasn’t stretched out to start. His last six appearances on the season were out of the bullpen and less than two innings. He was stretched out before that, with five consecutive outings of at least 3 2/3 innings, but the last of those was August 28th. That means he’s almost two months removed from carrying a starter’s workload.

Tony Gonsolin was stretched out to finish the season and could also be leaned on for some innings, though he didn’t pitch at all in the NLDS and has only thrown short stints in the NLCS. His last outing was 39 pitches over two innings on Wednesday, the same night that Julio Urias threw 92 pitches over five innings.

Another option, and probably the best one, would be to have Walker Buehler pitch on short rest. His last outing was on Tuesday, though he only threw 76 pitches after getting chased from the game in the fourth inning.

One way or another, manager Dave Roberts and the rest of the Dodgers’ staff will have to be creative. In order to make it into the World Series, they’ll need to find a way to grind through 18 innings without their best option.

Coaching Notes: McLeod, Dozier, Hillman, Rodriguez

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Cubs senior vice president of player personnel Jason McLeod is departing the organization, according to Patrick Mooney of The Athletic. Mooney says that McLeod, whose contract is up at the end of the month, “declined an offer to remain with the Cubs.” McLeod may not be a household name, but he’s been an instrumental part of baseball’s recent history. Theo Epstein was hired to be the Cubs’ president of baseball operations in October 2011, with McLeod and Jed Hoyer coming along two weeks later. The trio, who had all previously worked together in Boston, helped build the recent Cubs dynasty that broke the century-old curse with their 2016 World Series championship. The triumvirate was broken up with Epstein’s resignation a year ago. Hoyer was then promoted from general manager to take Epstein’s place as president. Although Hoyer delayed naming a replacement GM because of the pandemic, it was recently announced that it would be Carter Hawkins, who had previously been with Cleveland. In past years, McLeod has been frequently connected to other general manager positions in rumors but had stayed in his senior VP role with the Cubs until now.

Other coaching notes from around the league…

  • It was less than a year ago that Brian Dozier announced his retirement from playing, and now he wants to get right back into a dugout as a manager. In a conversation with Robert Murray of FanSided, Dozier discusses his ambitions and says, “Even though I don’t want to play anymore, I feel as if I have a lot more to give in the sense of managing. For me, I’ve always taken a lot of pride in being a leader on and off the field and learning from managers that I’ve had on things to do and not to do. I’ve always had a desire to manage.” Dozier goes on to discuss various topics related to managing, such as analytics and communication. He says that he has not yet talked to any teams about managing but wanted to put his intentions out in the open. Dozier is 34 years old, turning 35 in May, and would easily be the youngest manager in the league, if hired. (Rocco Baldelli and Luis Rojas were the youngest this year at 39.) However, there’s at least some recent precedent for a manager getting hired in his mid-30s. Baldelli was 37 when he was first hired. Kevin Cash was hired just before his 37th birthday. A.J. Hinch and Eric Wedge were both approaching their respective 35th birthdays when their hirings were first announced, Hinch with Arizona in 2009 and Wedge with Cleveland in 2002.
  • The Marlins are losing a couple members of their coaching staff, per Craig Mish of the Miami Herald. Third base coach Trey Hillman and assistant hitting coach Robert Rodriguez are both leaving to pursue other opportunities. This concludes a three-year term in the organization for Hillman, who was hired before the 2019 campaign. He has some managerial experience, having been the bench boss for the Royals, as well as the NPB’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and the SK Wyverns of the KBO. Rodriguez previously managed the Gulf Coast League Marlins and was promoted to the big league club prior to the 2020 season.

Padres To Interview Mike Shildt This Weekend

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10:15pm: Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that there’s another former manager on the list: Brad Ausmus. Ausmus managed the Tigers from 2014 to 2017 and the Angels in 2019.

7:39pm: The Padres are going to interview Mike Shildt this weekend for their open managerial position, according to Dennis Lin of The Athletic. It was recently reported that the Padres were considering Shildt but were still looking into what happened to conclude his tenure with the St. Louis Cardinals. It would appear that they didn’t find anything distressing enough to cross him off of their list of candidates, based on the fact that the interview seems to be going ahead.

It was just over a week ago that Shildt was surprisingly fired by the Cardinals, on the heels of a 90-win season that ended when they lost the wild card game to the Dodgers. Since then, he’s been repeatedly connected to the Padres position that’s been vacant since Jayce Tingler was fired the previous week.

For his part, Shildt is trying his best to stay tight-lipped about things. On Tuesday, he appeared on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio and, when asked about whether he’d been contacted about open positions, said, “There’s been some back channeling.  I don’t want to say anything.  You know, I’m really unclear how to handle it.  I’ve never really been fired from a manager job and been on the open market so I’m not sure how this exactly works, guys.  There’s been some informal conversations but nothing beyond that. Like I said, the good news is the phone has rung, I think there’s going to be opportunities to explore which is exciting.”

Shildt won’t be the only one considered for the job, of course, and Lin reports that there is a belief in the industry that Mike Scioscia “will emerge as a candidate.” Scioscia’s entire MLB managerial history has been with one club thus far, as he managed the Angels from 2000 to 2018. That tenure included a 2002 World Series victory, as well as Manager of the Year honors in both 2002 and 2009. He recently returned to bench boss duties with the United States men’s national team for the Tokyo Olympics, where the club took home silver medals.

Lin also reports that Bruce Bochy is not getting strong interest from his former club. Bochy managed the Friars from 1995 to 2006, before moving up to San Francisco and managing the Giants from 2007 to 2019, a run that included three World Series championships.

Lin adds that Ron Washington and Buck Showalter are “not believed” to be in consideration for the position. It had been reported in recent weeks that Washington was in contention, though that may no longer be the case, if it ever was. Atlanta’s third base coach, Washington can’t interview for any jobs while the club is still alive in the postseason. Showalter, for his part, said he has not been contacted about a managerial job, though that was over a week go.

Regardless of who gets the job, it appears that the decision may come down quickly, as Lin also quotes Padres’ president of baseball operations A.J. Preller as saying that it’s “realistic” to think the hiring process will be done by the general managers’ meetings, which begin in just over two weeks, on November 8th.

Brian Sabean Reportedly Interested In Mets’ President Job

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Former Giants general manager Brian Sabean is interested in the Mets’ open president of baseball operations position, according to a report from Deesha Thosar of The New York Daily News. She says that he is looking for a new challenge and is “going stir crazy in San Francisco with essentially nothing to do” and would move to New York “in a heartbeat” if given the chance. It would be a semi-homecoming for him to come to New York, as he was a scout with the Yankees before joining the Giants.

Sabean was the general manager of the Giants from 1997 to 2014 and was an integral part of their magnificent run of play in the last decade, which included three World Series championships in five years, as they got to spray the champagne in 2010, 2012 and 2014. In 2015, Sabean was promoted to executive vice president of baseball operations, with Bobby Evans becoming general manager and largely taking over the baseball decision making. In late 2018, Farhan Zaidi was hired as the Giants’ new president of baseball operations, with Sabean staying with the organization in an advisory capacity and doing some player scouting.

At the end of the 2019 season, there was some speculation that Sabean was being considered to join the Marlins organization to replace Michael Hill as that club’s president of baseball operations, though he ended up staying in San Francisco.

The fact that Sabean has such a lengthy track record would fit somewhat with previous reporting about the qualities the Mets are looking for in their next president. They have also been connected to experienced front office members such as Theo Epstein, Billy Beane and David Stearns. All three of those options appear to be dead-ends for the Mets, though, leaving the post open. However, the 65-year-old Sabean is also different than those three in some respects. Stearns is 36, Epstein 47 and Beane 59, making Sabean older than all three and significantly older than Stearns and Epstein. They’ve also all been actively participating in running baseball front offices in recent years, as opposed to Sabean, who has seemingly been operating in a fairly limited role for about seven years now.

Thosar’s report says it’s unclear if the Mets have reached out to Sabean. It’s also unclear if they’re willing to change their preferences to include someone like Sabean in their search. Although, considering that they keep crossing names off the top of their list, they may have to make adjustments to their preferences at some point.

Thosar also suggests that this could be a two-for-one deal, with Sabean’s hiring being followed by Bruce Bochy being brought in to take over the manager’s chair, which was recently left vacant when the Mets declined their option on Luis Rojas. Bochy was hired to manage the Giants in 2007, during Sabean’s time as general manager, and stayed through the 2019 season. He was recently rumored to be in consideration for the Padres’ open managerial position. Bochy is 66 years old and would buck the trend of teams hiring younger managers, though that trend has also been countered by the recent hirings of Tony La Russa (77) and Dusty Baker (72).

Injury Notes: Sawamura, Tigers, Chirinos

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In pregame scrum before tonight’s ALCS game six, Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters that reliever Hirokazu Sawamura is dealing with a hamstring injury was potentially going to be removed from the roster. (Twitter links from Chris Cotillo of MassLive and Alex Speier of the Boston Globe.) However, Ian Browne of MLB.com later relayed word from Cora that Sawamura will be sticking around.

The Red Sox have their backs against the wall, as they are down 3-2 in the ALCS and will have to win in Houston tonight and tomorrow in order to survive. The health and effectiveness of every pitcher on the staff will be integral to their success in that regard. News of this hamstring issue is certainly concerning, though the fact that Sawamura has held his roster spot implies that the club still feels he’s a better option than bringing in a fresh arm, such as Matt Barnes. Sawamura has been a solid contributor out of the pen this year, as he had an ERA of 3.06 over 53 innings in the regular season, with a strikeout rate of 26.2% and 13.7% walk rate. He wasn’t on the team roster for the ALDS but has appeared three times in the ALCS so far, logging two innings in total.

Other injury notes…

  • Chris McCosky of The Detroit News relays some updates on a few Tigers prospects from the Arizona Fall League. Infielders Spencer Torkelson and Ryan Kreidler will both miss the remainder of the league due to an ankle injury and calf injury, respectively. Meanwhile, outfielder Riley Greene has completed his concussion protocol. It had already been announced last week that Greene would miss the AFL because of a concussion sustained at the end of the Triple-A season. For a Tigers club that has been rebuilding in recent seasons, their prospects are incredibly important to turning the corner into being competitive, and that includes these three. MLB Pipeline has Torkelson, Greene and Kreidler as the club’s first-, second- and tenth-best prospects. Baseball America has the same 1-2 punch at the top but has Kreidler at 12th. FanGraphs also starts out with Torkelson and Greene at the top but has Kreidler at 25th. All three players reached Triple-A this season for at least 40 games, meaning they are right on the doorstep and knocking on the door of the majors.
  • Rays’ righty Yonny Chirinos won’t be ready for next year’s opening day, according to Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Chirinos has been out of action for more than year after undergoing Tommy John surgery in August of 2020, but has suffered a setback that will keep him out even longer. Topkin’s report says that the hurler fractured his elbow last month and that the best case scenario for his recovery would be for him to be on a rehab assignment in April or May. Before this extended absence, Chirinos was looking like he could be a foundational piece for the Rays. From 2018 to 2020, he threw 234 1/3 innings with an ERA of 3.65. Even without Chirinos, the rotation should be in decent shape, with the presence of arms such as Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen, Ryan Yarbrough, Luis Patino, Shane Baz, Josh Fleming, Brendan McKay and Dietrich Enns. The Rays have never had an opening day payroll higher than $77MM, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts, and Jason Martinez of Roster Resource estimates their payroll for next year to already be above $70MM. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for reinforcements, though they will surely non-tender a few of their arbitration-eligible players and bring that down a tad. The Rays are also always a candidate to figure out a way to move some money around, such as the contract of Kevin Kiermaier, whose name has been floated in trade talks for years and is entering the final guaranteed year of his contract, valued just over $12MM.

Justin Turner Leaves Game With Apparent Injury

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11:01pm: Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, in a postgame scrum, announced that Turner has a grade 2 hamstring strain and seemed to imply that his season is indeed over. “I think that’ll be it for him,” Roberts said, according to Hoornstra and others.

9:51pm: Justin Turner left tonight’s NLCS game four matchup against Atlanta with an apparent injury, as relayed by several reporters, including J.P. Hoornstra of the Southern California News Group. Turner grounded into a double play in the bottom of the seventh inning and limped his way to first base, then didn’t return to the field for the top of the eighth.

It has been a frustrating series for the third baseman, as he has also been dealing with a neck injury of late that caused him to be held out of the starting lineup in game two. The severity of this new injury is unclear at this point, but this raises the specter of Turner’s season being over. There are, at most, three games remaining in the NLCS after tonight, which doesn’t leave him much time to convalesce before the World Series.

Losing Turner for any amount of time would be a blow to the Dodgers, as he has been one of their best and most-reliable hitters for eight straight seasons. From 2014 to 2021, he has been a mainstay of the lineup, with a batting average between .275 and .340 each year. His wRC+ has always been between 123 and 158 during that span. He was worth at least 3.3 fWAR in each of those seasons, except for the shortened 2020 campaign, where he put up 1.3 fWAR. In 2021, he slashed .278/.361/.471 for a wRC+ of 127 and 4.0 fWAR.

This year’s postseason has been a struggle for him, perhaps due to these underlying injuries. Going into tonight’s game, he was slashing just .097/.200/.194 through 35 plate appearances.

Injury Notes: Grandal, Muncy, McCullers

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Yasmani Grandal recently underwent knee surgery, as the catcher himself relayed on Instagram, and passed along by The Athletic’s James Fegan. Fegan also says the club expects him to be ready to go for spring training.

Grandal spent almost two months on the IL this year due to a torn tendon in his knee, although it didn’t seem to hamper him at the plate at all. In 93 games, he hit .240/.420/.520, for a wRC+ of 159, easily the highest of his career. His defensive numbers trended downward in 2021, though that’s not terribly surprising given how important healthy knees are for a catcher. The switch-hitter is guaranteed $36.5MM over the next two years, making his recovery from this procedure incredibly important for the White Sox as they look to build on back-to-back postseason appearances.

More injury notes…

  • Max Muncy brought out the lineup card for tonight’s NLCS game four matchup against Atlanta and didn’t appear to be wearing a brace on his injured left elbow, according to Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. This would seem to indicate at least some superficial progress, given that Muncy was using the brace even while sleeping as recently as three days ago. The narrative around Muncy’s return figures to continue for as long as the Dodgers’ season is still alive. He hit 36 home runs this year, a personal best, on his way to slashing .249/.368/.527. His wRC+ of 140 on the campaign placed him in the top 15 among qualified hitters in all of baseball. He has missed the entirety of the playoffs so far after being injured in a collision with Jace Peterson on the final day of the regular season.
  • Similar to Muncy, the status of Lance McCullers Jr. figures to be an ongoing question as long as the Astros are still playing. The latest update comes from MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, who says McCullers is “seen as not likely” to pitch in the World Series, should the Astros qualify. Since this bout of elbow tightness put the righty on the shelf, the Astros’ rotation has been shaky in his absence. Through the first four games of the ALCS, no Houston starter lasted longer than 2 2/3 innings. However, game five saw Framber Valdez turn that ship around by throwing eight innings of one-run ball. McCullers threw 162 1/3 excellent innings this year, with an ERA of 3.16, 27% strikeout rate and 56.4% ground ball rate. He then threw 10 2/3 innings in the ALDS with an ERA of 0.84 before landing on the shelf.

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