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Latest On Mets Front Office

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Freshly minted Mets owner Steve Cohen seems to be having a blast in his new role atop the organization, but that doesn’t mean it’s all coming easy. While the club looks to be a prime landing spot for industry executives, Cohen and president Sandy Alderson have not had the easiest time of recruiting new baseball operations leadership.

Cohen acknowledged as much in comments this evening, as Mike Puma of the New York Post covers on Twitter. “I thought it would be a little bit easier than it has been,” Cohen said of his efforts to build out a new staff, including a replacement for outgoing general manager Brodie Van Wagenen.

The problem, per Cohen, is that it’s tough to get qualified candidates in the door for a chat. “Baseball is kind if funny,” he says, “where you have to ask for permission and we are not getting a lot of permission.”

It’s interesting to wonder whether the deep-pocketed Cohen is facing stiffer-than-usual headwinds in his rookie offseason. Regardless, it appears that the Mets have been stymied at least in holding exploratory talks with several intriguing potential targets.

That explains why the club recently decided to drop the concept of hiring a president of baseball operations in favor of pursuing a GM. Then again, it may not only be a matter of being thwarted by fellow teams. Zack Meisel of The Athletic indicates (subscription link) that Indians GM Mike Chernoff elected on his own accord not to pursue the president of baseball ops opening in New York.

At the moment, relatively little is known about the Mets’ preferred candidates for the top remaining baseball ops openings. Former hurler and league executive Chris Young is known to have interviewed recently, but he’s the only publicly identified GM possibility. (Michael Hill is also known to have interviewed, though it may be that he was being looked at for the now-abandoned president of baseball operations gig.)

There is one new name to keep an eye on. Former club exec J.P. Ricciardi is on the radar of Cohen and Alderson, according to SNY.tv’s Andy Martino. Ricciardi is certainly a familiar face, having served as a special assistant to Alderson for the entirety of the latter’s original tenure as GM.

Though the market is open, it doesn’t seem the Mets feel much urgency in this arena. Martino says the organization is active in pursuing improvements but isn’t yet close to making significant additional front office hires.

Twins Sign Derek Law

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The Twins have agreed to a deal with Derek Law, the righty himself announced on Twitter. Details aren’t yet known, but it seems likely to be a minors pact with an invitation to Spring Training.

Law, 30, cracked the majors in 2016 and appeared in each of the ensuing three campaigns. That run came to an end in 2020, when he spent the year training with the Rangers as part of their 60-man player pool.

Though he found quite a lot of success in his debut season with the Giants, Law struggled to replicate it. He was entrusted with 58 appearances for the Blue Jays in 2019, but managed only a 4.90 ERA with 9.9 K/9 and 5.9 BB/9 over 60 2/3 innings of action.

Aaron Brooks Re-Signs With KBO’s KIA Tigers

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Righty Aaron Brooks will remain in Korea for a second season. He has inked a new deal to remain with the KIA Tigers, the club announced (h/t Dan Kurtz of MyKBO, via Twitter).

Brooks is slated to take home a $200K signing bonus and $1MM payday — the reward for a productive 2020 season. Over 151 1/3 innings in his debut KBO showing, Brooks worked to a 2.50 ERA with 130 strikeouts and 24 walks.

If he’s able to repeat that effort in 2021, Brooks could look to follow some other players in moving back to the majors from Korea. He didn’t find much success in his first four seasons at the game’s highest level, carrying a 6.49 cumulative ERA over 170 2/3 frames.

DeWitt: Cards Have “Fluid” Budget For 2021

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The Cardinals have given clear signals of a coming payroll reduction, but the extent of the paring remains to be seen. Team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. discussed the matter further with Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

DeWitt characterized the Cards’ player salary situation as “fluid,” adding that there’s still quite a lot of “uncertainty” pervading the sport. A major component of that, of course, is a still-muddled public health outlook for 2021. Even if more was known about the course of COVID-19, there’d still be a broader grey area in the player market on the heels of an unprecedented, shortened season.

It seems certain that the Cardinals and their rivals will have a much better idea what to expect of the 2021 season in a few months time. As DeWitt notes: “The good news is that we have a number of months to go here.” Perhaps a slow-moving market won’t portend financial devastation for the player’s side, so much as reflect a mutual need to wait and see.

As Goold explains, the St. Louis organization is especially reliant upon live attendance to support its usually robust revenue. With a wider band of potential revenue projections, it seems the Cards’ ultimate budget for player salaries could yet move up or down by a significant amount depending upon which direction the winds blow.

DeWitt did make clear he intends to field a “competitive” roster, even if the team did kick off its offseason by declining a club option over solid second baseman Kolten Wong. That call, DeWitt says, was designed primarily to create “flexibility” entering a murky winter.

White Sox To Hire Miguel Cairo As Bench Coach

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The White Sox will hire Miguel Cairo as their new bench coach, Lindsey Adler of The Athletic reports on Twitter. He had been working in the Yankees organization as minor league infield coordinator.

This’ll represent a new challenge for Cairo, who spent 17 years in the majors during his playing days. He briefly served as interim bench coach with the Reds back in 2013, but has otherwise remained out of a big league uniform since hanging up his spikes.

Cairo will serve as the top lieutenant to newly hired manager Tony La Russa, who’ll face intense scrutiny as he makes his own return to the MLB dugout. No doubt the 46-year-old Cairo will be tasked with helping to connect the 76-year-old La Russa to a generally youthful Chicago roster.

Minasian, Hollander Finalists For Angels GM Job

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11:29pm: Minasian is seen as the “front-runner,” Rosenthal tweets.

11:03pm: The Angels have narrowed their search for a new GM. They’ll choose between Braves assistant GM Perry Minasian and Mariners AGM Justin Hollander, according to Ken Rosenthal and Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic (via Twitter).

Other serious candidates included Jason McLeod of the Cubs and Jared Porter of the Diamondbacks. Both were among the finalists recently removed from consideration, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post (Twitter link). Another Arizona exec, Amiel Sawdaye, was also among the finalists, Rosenthal adds.

It seems we’ll soon know which of the remaining candidates will get the gig. The Halos will likely announce their choice tomorrow, Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Registers reports on Twitter.

The top baseball operations position came open in late September, on the heels of another disappointing season. Owner Arte Moreno elected to cut bait on GM Billy Eppler despite recently extending his contract by one additional year.

Despite a five-year run of losing campaigns under Eppler, the Angels aren’t expected to present a rebuilding opportunity for a new front office leader. The club still features some premium talent, headlined by living legend Mike Trout, with the payroll commitments to match.

Though the Angels reportedly considered a wide array of potential hires, including some with previous experience in a GM seat, the team clearly homed in on a certain archetype as its search progressed. The five finalists are all relatively youthful, rising-star types who’ve yet to run their own department.

Tigers Interested In Taijuan Walker

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The Tigers have expressed interest in free agent righty Taijuan Walker, according to Jon Morosi of MLB.com (via Twitter). While the Detroit club has an array of young pitching on hand, Morosi says the intention is to ink at least one veteran hurler.

Walker’s career has been hampered by injury issues, but he was at full health for the partial 2020 campaign. He compiled 53 1/3 innings of 2.70 ERA pitching over 11 starts.

Alas, the results look a lot better than the underlying numbers. Opposing hitters registered only a .286 wOBA but produced contact quality suggesting a much more robust .325 xwOBA (though Walker did land in the 74th percentile in hard contact rate). Fielding-independent pitching measures weren’t terribly optimistic; Walker checked in with a 4.56 FIP, 4.82 xFIP, and 4.60 SIERA. He managed only a 7.8% swinging-strike rate last year.

Suffice to say, teams considering Walker will likely not be chasing upside so much as hoping for reasonably priced, solid innings. And there’s reason to think he can serve as a useful back-of-the-rotation starter. Walker was healthy enough in 2020 to average 93.5 mph with his fastball, not far off his career average, and he won’t turn 29 until August. MLBTR graded him the 23rd-best available free agent, predicting that he’d land a two-year, $16MM contract.

Mets Interview Michael Hill

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The Mets have interviewed Michael Hill for the role of president of baseball operations, Andy Martino of SNY.tv reports on Twitter. The chat occurred over the weekend.

It’s an especially interesting time to follow the rarely dull New York franchise. New owner Steve Cohen raised already lofty expectations for his first offseason at the helm in a recent talk with the media, but he’ll first need to add baseball operations leadership before attacking the player market.

Cohen brought back Sandy Alderson in the team president role, with intentions of overhauling the front office. Now Alderson is leading the search for someone to take over his former role atop the baseball ops hierarchy.

It wasn’t long ago that Hill and Alderson were doing battle in the NL East, with the former heading up the Marlins front office. Though Hill survived an ownership change in Miami and helped put together a successful 2020 roster, he ended up departing at season’s end.

No doubt the Mets are strongly considering other candidates as well as Hill, who has also been linked to the Angels. The full slate of candidates isn’t yet clear. It’s quite an appealing opportunity now that the deep-pocketed Cohen is aboard. Alderson has stated that he’ll delegate primary decisionmaking authority to the baseball operations president.

Trade Candidate: Trevor Story

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There’s a strong case to be made that the Rockies out to auction off the rights to star shortstop Trevor Story this winter. While it’s tempting to hold tight and hope he can help lead a renaissance, it’s a fair sight easier to imagine that backfiring than working out.

The Rockies had a taste of short-season contention, but had a dreadful 2020 run deficit (275-353) and have played decisively sub-.500 ball since the start of 2019. There’s still a strong core of talent, but the path to contention is awfully questionable given the Rockies’ meager supporting cast and injury questions (Jon Gray, David Dahl, Scott Oberg) … not to mention the quality of the NL West competition.

The Colorado organization has a number of needs and unclear means to address them all sufficiently. The team has mostly finished paying for its recent swings and misses in free agency and has already begun drawing down payroll. But it’s still on track to spend north of $130MM (assuming they tender most arb-eligibles) even before making any additions. Owner Dick Monfort didn’t exactly suggest he’ll be buying up new talent, writing to season ticketholders that “there will be nothing normal about this offseason as the industry faces a new economic reality.”

It’s a scenario in which many teams will explore their options with quality veterans. But who to deal? The Rox dabbled in some major scenarios last winter but ultimately kept third baseman Nolan Arenado. It’d be awfully difficult to strike a reasonable deal now, given his hefty salary and subpar offensive season. Charlie Blackmon is too expensive to foist onto another team after a middling season. They could certainly move German Marquez, but that’d mean giving up a 25-year-old rotation building block with a good contract situation.

Enter Story, a mid-prime star shortstop who is still youthful (28 in ten days) but entering his final season of team control. It’s much the situation that Arenado was in a few years back, except that Story will command a rather less onerous salary ($17.5MM) than Arenado had lined up for his final season of arbitration.

Arenado ended up inking a monster extension rather than testing free agency. That’s an avenue here, too … in theory, anyway. Monfort certainly didn’t sound like he was plotting out another nine-figure deal. While Story would never have commanded Arenado-like money, and certainly won’t now during a pandemic, he’d still cost a pretty penny.

Make no mistake: Story is a truly elite position player. If anything, he’s underrated, perhaps due to his roller-coaster first two seasons in the majors. Since he settled in, Story has compiled the tenth-most fWAR in baseball over the past three years.

We honestly don’t need to dive in too far to understand the point here. Story once had big pop and a ton of strikeouts, but he figured out the latter problem without sapping his power. He drove his K rate down to 24.3% in the just-completed season and is still driving the ball with authority. He’s in the top 5% leaguewide in speed and plays outstanding defense.

How about the demand side? Story isn’t cheap, but he’s an absolute bargain who would instantly elevate a lineup. Acquiring him would only require a one-year commitment and bring with it the likelihood of a qualifying offer (with anticipated draft compensation) this time next year. There’s always the potential for an extension as well.

Demand may not be widespread — it’ll tick up next winter when several big-time shortstops hit the open market — but it’s not hard to envision teams having keen interest. The Angels, Reds, Phillies, and Yankees all make particular sense on paper. Story is good enough that a team could consider acquiring him and playing him at third base, or instead moving an existing shortstop to another spot on the diamond.

It’ll be hard for the Rockies to go forward with moving Story. Keeping him at least until mid-season would at least give the club a chance. Then again, it would also mean paying half his salary, risking injury or decline, and taking the qualifying offer off of the table (which will reduce the value that an acquiring team would anticipate receiving in a swap). Unless Monfort and GM Jeff Bridich are able to mount a surprise run at an extension with Story’s reps, biting the bullet and getting a trade done this winter looks to be the best option.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Latest On Justin Turner

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The coda to an unforgettably weird 2020 baseball season came when Justin Turner celebrated with his Dodgers teammates in the wake of a mid-World Series COVID-19 diagnosis. That incident led Major League Baseball announce a “full investigation into this matter” in a statement that flatly panned Turner for his recklessness.

Now, the league and MLB Players Union are “moving closer to a resolution” of the case from a disciplinary perspective, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter links). Just when we’ll learn of the outcome isn’t known; neither is it clear what range of punishment is under contemplation.

The league and union typically interact regarding disciplinary matters. There’s a reason that most PED or domestic violence-related suspensions are announced alongside the player’s decision not to challenge the result.

That was all the more necessary here. The league’s coronavirus protocols were jointly developed and obviously required significant buy-in from union officials and the players they represent. And Turner’s covid-shedding celebration presents a situation without any obvious precedent.

It seems we’ll have a final determination — and an opportunity for Turner to make some amends — before free agency begins in earnest (whenever that may be). Turner is one of the top available players on the open market this winter. It’s an open question whether and how the surreal scene will impact his free agency.

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