Rockies Notes: Kauffmann, Rolison, Anderson
The Rockies don’t have a starting pitcher listed for Friday’s game against the Rangers yet, as the team’s rotation has been decimated by injuries through the first quarter of the season. MLB.com’s Thomas Harding tweets that 25-year-old righty Karl Kauffmann was scratched from his most recent Triple-A start, however, and is expected to make his big league debut Friday. He’d need to be added to the 40-man roster, though the Rockies could easily accommodate that by moving German Marquez to the 60-day injured list.
Colorado entered the 2023 season with one of the weakest starting pitching groups in all of baseball, and they’ve quickly been stretched even thinner. Marquez is done for the year after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Antonio Senzatela returned from last year’s ACL tear but pitched just 7 2/3 innings before heading back to the IL with an elbow strain. The Rox are also without Ryan Feltner, who suffered a concussion and small fracture in his skull over the weekend when he was hit in the head by a comebacker. Righty Noah Davis is on the shelf with elbow inflammation, and the Rockies already released one member of their Opening Day rotation, Jose Urena, after a dismal start to the season.
That sequence has already prompted the Rockies to claim Chase Anderson following his DFA with the Rays — Anderson was excellent in last night’s team debut — and it’ll now ostensibly set the stage for Kauffmann’s MLB debut. He’ll join Anderson, Kyle Freeland, Austin Gomber and Connor Seabold if he indeed is called up and given a legitimate run in the rotation.
Kauffmann was the Rockies’ Competitive Balance (Round B) pick in the 2019 draft, coming off the board with the No. 77 overall selection. The right-hander had a decent showing in Double-A last year, posting a 4.06 ERA with more impressive strikeout and ground-ball rates (25.6% and 46.3%, respectively), but he’s been hit hard since moving up to Triple-A midway through that ’22 campaign. In 101 Triple-A frames dating back to last year, Kauffmann has a 6.68 ERA with an 18% strikeout rate against an 11.9% walk rate. The Rockies’ Albuquerque affiliate plays in a notoriously hitter-friendly setting, but it’s still been a rough showing.
That said, Kauffmann’s most recent start was sharp (six innings, seven hits, two runs, no walks, five punchouts), and the Rockies are thin on alternatives. General manager Bill Schmidt recently told Danielle Allentuck of the Denver Gazette that the team tried to add more rotation depth throughout the offseason but was generally unsuccessful in those pursuits. Pitching at Coors Field, of course, is no pitcher’s first choice, and even minor league depth options might bristle at the notion of playing home games in Albuquerque (and the Pacific Coast League at large).
The Rockies could soon have some reinforcement on the way, as left-hander Ryan Rolison embarked on a rehab assignment this week and tossed three shutout innings with three strikeouts and a walk for the Rockies’ Class-A affiliate. While the 25-year-old Rolison has never pitched in the Majors, he climbed to Triple-A in 2021 and likely would’ve been an option in 2022 had it not been for a torn labrum that required surgery and wiped out his entire season.
Rolison was the Rockies’ first-round pick back in 2018, going with the No. 22 overall selection. He’s been limited to just 234 2/3 professional innings thanks primarily to the canceled 2020 minor league season and last year’s shoulder surgery. In that time, he’s pitched to a 4.30 ERA with more encouraging ratios: 24.8% strikeout rate, 7.2% walk rate, 45% ground-ball rate.
Baseball America ranked Rolison second, third and fourth among Rockies prospects from 2020-22, respectively, calling him a potential “steady, reliable starter at the back of the rotation” in their 2022 report. How Rolison recovers from last year’s surgery is an open question, and his workload will likely be monitored this year — but that’s precisely the type of arm the Rockies could use with their starting staff currently in shambles. One would imagine that Rolison could be an option before too long if he can avoid any setbacks in his recovery.
In the meantime, it seems the Rockies will continue to give Anderson opportunities in the rotation, which is no surprise after he blanked the Reds — who traded him to the Rays for cash last month — and allowed just one hit through five innings in his team debut. Anderson told Allentuck that the Rockies “want me to start here” and added that he’s grateful for the opportunity to step back into a big league rotation. Interestingly, Anderson told Harding that both the Rockies and Reds hoped to claim him following his DFA with the Rays, but the Rockies had higher priority given their inferior record. At least for the time being, it seems the 35-year-old veteran will be leaned on to stabilize the starting staff.
Mets To Recall Mark Vientos
The Mets are set to recall infield prospect Mark Vientos from Triple-A Syracuse, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Twitter link). It’ll be Vientos’ first appearance at the MLB level this season, though he did have a brief 16-game call to the Majors late in the 2022 campaign as well.
The 23-year-old Vientos was the Mets’ second-round pick in 2017 and has ranked among the organization’s top prospects regularly since that selection. He’s out to a massive .333/.416/.688 start through 166 Triple-A plate appearances, during which he’s already slugged 13 home runs and tallied 11 doubles. Vientos has drawn a walk in 11.4% of his plate appearances and, after fanning at a 28.6% clip in 101 Triple-A games last season, punched out in just 20.5% of his trips to the plate in 2023.
The Mets have underperformed to begin the season and are currently in the midst of a woeful 6-16 stretch that has seen them plummet to fourth place in the National League East standings. They’re currently six and a half games behind the division-leading Braves and also trail both the Marlins and Phillies by margins of one and one and a half games, respectively.
While starting pitching has been a bigger issue for the Mets, due in no small part to considerable injury troubles, the offense is hardly a juggernaut. The Mets rank 21st in MLB with 179 runs scored, and their collective .240/.322./382 slash line leaves them sitting 19th in batting average, 14th in on-base percentage and 24th in slugging percentage. Veterans Tommy Pham, Starling Marte and Eduardo Escobar, in particular, have struggled at the plate.
With fellow prospect Brett Baty hitting decently at third base and Pete Alonso entrenched at first base, Vientos’ two positions are largely spoken for. However, he could still mix in at designated hitter, provide a right-handed complement to the lefty-swinging Baty at the hot corner, and perhaps occasionally spell Alonso at first base. The Mets have taken a short look at Vientos in left field in the past as well, though he has just 109 career innings there and hasn’t played the position since the 2021 season, when he was still in Double-A.
The Mets have received just a .220/.327/.340 slash line out of their DH spot so far in 2023, with a considerable amount of that production coming from Alonso, who’s gone 3-for-10 with a homer and two walks out of the DH slot. Daniel Vogelbach has logged a .247/.370/.364 line out of the designated hitter spot, showing his characteristic keen eye at the plate but hitting for less power than is typical for the slugger. New York has also mixed in Pham, Mark Canha, Brandon Nimmo and Tim Locastro (one plate appearance) for varying levels of action at DH. When facing a left-handed pitcher, Mets designated hitters have combined for a miserable .180/.250/.320 output, so that’s one easy area to view Vientos as an upgrade.
Regardless of where Vientos plays, manager Buck Showalter figures to mix him in with a good bit of regularity, particularly with the Mets struggling as a whole lately. Over the past two weeks, the team carries just a .236/.297/.360 batting line.
As far as service time is concerned, while Vientos picked up 26 days during the 2023 season, that still left him 146 days shy of a full year. At this stage of the season, the most service time he could accrue would be an additional 137 days, meaning he’ll wind up shy of one year even if he’s in the big leagues to stay. Were he to stick on the roster for the rest of the year, he’d be on track to be a slam-dunk Super Two player, making him arbitration-eligible four times rather than the standard three, beginning in the 2025-26 offseason (barring future optional assignments). The earliest he can become a free agent would be in the 2029-30 offseason.
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Click here to read a transcript of Tuesday’s chat with MLBTR’s Steve Adams.
Injury Notes: Seager, Buehler, Maeda, Hiura
Rangers shortstop Corey Seager is expected to be activated prior to tonight’s game, per Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. The 29-year-old Seager, playing in the second season of a decade-long $325MM contract, has missed the past month due to a hamstring strain. He burst out of the gates with a .359/.469/.538 showing through his first 49 trips to the plate and went 2-for-8 with a double, a walk and no strikeouts in a brief three-game rehab assignment at Double-A. In Seager’s absence, 23-year-old Ezequiel Duran has filled in admirably at shortstop, batting .293/.328/.474 on the season, though his bat has cooled off in the past week or so. Manager Bruce Bochy has been impressed enough that he’s pledged to find “creative” ways to keep Duran in the lineup frequently even after Seager’s return.
A few more injury situations of particular note to keep an eye on around the league…
- Right-hander Walker Buehler is with the team at Dodger Stadium and will throw in the bullpen for the Major League staff to take a look at his progress in recovering from Tommy John surgery, tweets Juan Toribio of MLB.com. Walker is still a ways from being an option in the big leagues. The 28-year-old’s surgery was performed late last August, and the general expectation surrounding him has been that he’ll at best be an option in the final month or so of the season. Still, the fact that Buehler has already had multiple bullpen sessions in Arizona and is slated for more mound work this week at Dodger Stadium is encouraging for both the Dodgers and their fans.
- The Twins hope that right-hander Kenta Maeda can resume throwing off a mound by the end of the week, tweets Dan Hayes of The Athletic. Maeda hit the injured list with a triceps strain after being tattooed for 10 runs in three innings against the Yankees. He’d previously allowed six runs on 12 hits with a 12-to-1 K/BB ratio in 13 innings (4.15 ERA) after missing the entire 2022 season. The Twins’ rotation depth has been tested early, with Bailey Ober and Louie Varland stepping in for the injured Maeda and Tyler Mahle (Tommy John surgery). A healthy Maeda would again give the Twins six candidates for rotation work, but injuries tend to sort these issues out. And, if everyone is healthy at the same time, the Twins could opt to use Maeda in relief as a means of monitoring his workload after not throwing a pitch last season.
- Brewers infielder Keston Hiura, currently playing with their Triple-A club, will miss several weeks due to a posterior cruciate ligament injury in his left knee, tweets Adam McCalvy of MLB.com. Hiura won’t require surgery, but the expectation is that he’ll be out of game action until late next month. It’s a tough blow for the former top prospect, who was hoping to play his way back onto the big league roster after clearing outright waivers earlier this year. He’s out to a .331/.396/.678 start with a dozen home runs through 134 plate appearances with Nashville this season and has trimmed his strikeout rate there to 24.6%. Hiura has had similar stretches in Triple-A before, however, and his familiar strikeout woes have regularly resurfaced upon being promoted back to the big leagues. He batted .226/.316/.449 with the Brewers last year (115 wRC+), but because of a staggering 41.7% strikeout rate, he needed a .355 average on balls in play to get to that middling .226 batting average.
Orioles Recall Cole Irvin
Left-hander Cole Irvin is back with the Orioles, as the team announced Tuesday that he’s been recalled from Triple-A Norfolk. Right-hander Logan Gillaspie has been optioned to Norfolk in a corresponding move.
Baltimore’s decision to option Irvin to Norfolk came as something of a surprise earlier this season. The Orioles’ acquisition of Irvin was one of just two moves made to fortify the starting rotation over the winter (along with the Kyle Gibson signing), and the team parted with an infield prospect of some note (Darell Hernaiz) in order to acquire him. There’s no getting around how rough Irvin’s start to the season was — 15 earned runs in 12 2/3 innings through three starts — but his track record and the manner in which the O’s acquired him led many to presume he’d have a longer leash to get back on track.
To Irvin’s credit, he’s largely done that in Norfolk. The lefty took the ball five times for the Tides and pitched 31 innings with a sharp 3.19 ERA. His 13.4% strikeout rate is still a red flag, but Irvin also only walked 3.1% of his opponents in Triple-A.
Strikeouts have never been a big part of Irvin’s game anyhow. He’s spent the past two seasons anchoring the Athletics’ rotation in Oakland, making 62 starts with a 4.11 ERA, 16.8% strikeout rate and 5.2% walk rate. Irvin, who’s averaged 90.9 mph on his fastball in his career, has succeeded more with precision and command than by overpowering his opponents.
The role Irvin will occupy with the O’s this time around hasn’t been formally laid out. Nathan Ruiz of the Baltimore Sun tweets that he could provide some length out of the bullpen for the time being, although one would imagine that a return to the starting staff could be in order if Irvin pitches well in a long relief capacity. Baltimore starters have combined for a 5.08 ERA this season, although Irvin’s own struggles weigh into that number. Over the past month, the O’s have used Gibson, Dean Kremer, Tyler Wells, Kyle Bradish and top prospect Grayson Rodriguez in the rotation, and that quintet has combined for a more palatable 4.28 mark. Rodriguez (6.51 ERA), Gibson (5.08) and Bradish (4.88) have all posted lackluster bottom-line results in that time.
From a service time vantage point, Irvin’s demotion isn’t likely to change his trajectory. He entered the season with two years, 120 days of big league service time, meaning he needed only 52 days in the Majors to reach three years of service and become arbitration-eligible following the current season. It’s highly likely he’ll hit that mark this year even with a month-long stay in Norfolk. That’ll keep him on pace to become a free agent following the the 2026 season. This is Irvin’s final minor league option year, so the team can technically shuttle him between Norfolk and the Majors throughout the season if they like, but if Irvin can round back into his 2021-22 form he’ll have a clear role on the big league staff.
Reds Release Luis Cessa
The Reds have released right-hander Luis Cessa following last week’s DFA, per C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic (Twitter link). The 31-year-old righty will now be free to sign with any club.
Cessa pitched 26 innings with the Reds this season and was tagged for 26 earned runs on the strength of 46 hits and 12 walks. He generally kept the ball in the yard — just three of those 46 knocks were home runs (1.04 HR/9) — but Cessa also only managed 11 strikeouts in his seven appearances (six starts). A .410 average on balls in play and 60.2% strand rate surely contributed to Cessa’s disastrous ERA, but he was also too hittable and didn’t miss anywhere close to even a league-average number of bats.
Cessa has spent the majority of his career working out of the bullpen, though he started 10 games for Cincinnati in 2022 and posted a 4.30 ERA — albeit with less-encouraging peripheral marks (5.02 FIP, 17.1% strikeout rate, 7.7% walk rate, 1.64 HR/9 mark). In 160 1/3 career innings out of the rotation, Cessa has a 5.44 ERA, but he’s been a solid multi-inning reliever — evidenced by a lifetime 3.81 ERA, 4.35 FIP, 19.9% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate out of the bullpen.
Cincinnati originally acquired Cessa alongside lefty Justin Wilson at the 2021 trade deadline, sending a player to be named later (Jason Parker) to the Yankees in that swap. Injuries have already forced the 25-year-old Parker out of the game; he underwent Tommy John surgery in 2021 and reinjured his elbow the following season before calling it quits earlier this year, per Brian North of WTCI Channel 12 News. Wilson pitched just 19 2/3 innings with the Reds before his own Tommy John surgery. Cessa was the lone member of that three-player swap who remained healthy and, until this season, had given the Reds a good bit of value (3.95 ERA in 107 innings from 2021-22).
The Reds and Cessa avoided arbitration this past offseason by agreeing to a one-year, $2.65MM deal for the 2023 campaign. That was slated to be his final season of arbitration eligibility before reaching free agency. Now that he’s been released, Cincinnati will be on the hook for the remainder of that sum, with a new team only owing Cessa the prorated portion of the league minimum for any time he spends on the big league roster. That amount would be subtracted from what the Reds still owe the veteran righty.
Tyler Mahle To Undergo Tommy John Surgery
Twins right-hander Tyler Mahle will undergo Tommy John surgery, manager Rocco Baldelli announced to reporters Thursday (Twitter link via Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com). Mahle, who’s scheduled to become a free agent at season’s end, will miss the remainder of the 2023 campaign and the early portion of the 2024 season as well.
It’s a brutal blow for a Twins team that traded three prospects to acquire the final year-plus of Mahle’s arbitration eligibility at last summer’s trade deadline. The 28-year-old Mahle has pitched well for the Twins when healthy, notching a 3.64 ERA in nine starts, but shoulder troubles limited him to just four appearances post-trade last year and he’s now done for the season in 2023 after just five starts. Given his impending free agency, it could spell the end of Mahle’s time with the team entirely — hardly what the front office had in mind when sending Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Steven Hajjar to Cincinnati in that swap.
There’s still the possibility that the Twins could try to work out some type extension that’d keep Mahle in Minnesota beyond the current season. They’ve previously shown a willingness to work out that type of deal with pitchers rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. Michael Pineda‘s original two-year, $20MM free-agent deal with the Twins was signed knowing he’d miss the bulk of that first year recovering from a Tommy John operation. Minnesota also extended right-hander Chris Paddack — another trade acquisition who wound up requiring Tommy John — on a three-year deal earlier this year. Paddack won’t return until this summer.
Regardless of where things go with Mahle’s contract status, his injury leaves an unquestionable hole in the Twins’ rotation. Minnesota is deeper in starting pitching this season than at any point in recent memory, but Mahle will now join Kenta Maeda on the injured list. Right-handers Bailey Ober and Louie Varland began the season with Triple-A St. Paul and might well have been guaranteed rotation spots with many other clubs, given their 2022 success. They’ll both likely be locked into the Twins’ starting staff now, following a strong trio of Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan and Sonny Gray.
Further injuries to the group could truly begin to test the Twins’ depth. Prospects Simeon Woods Richardson and Brent Headrick have had tough starts in St. Paul — though Headrick excelled in a brief big league look — and former top prospect Jordan Balazovic is just now moving back into a starting role after his 2022 season was ruined by a knee injury. Prospects Josh Winder and Cole Sands were rotation options last year in Minnesota, but both have been primarily working out of the bullpen in 2023.
As it stands, the Twins’ starting five still looks like a strong group. Ober has been brilliant in 2023 (0.98 ERA and 18 1/3 innings through three starts) and now boasts a career 3.51 ERA in 166 2/3 MLB frames. Varland has a 4.32 ERA through three turns and, paired with last year’s handful of starts in his debut season, carries a 4.01 ERA in 42 2/3 big league innings. The previously mentioned Paddack isn’t yet ready to join the group, but he’s nearing the one-year anniversary of his own Tommy John operation. He could be ready for a return mid-summer, and the team is also hopeful that Maeda can avoid a prolonged stint on the injured list — though they’ve not yet placed a hard timetable on his return.
Matt Chapman Is Mashing His Way To A Massive Payday
From 2018-19, the short list of baseball’s best all-around players would’ve unequivocally included then-Athletics third baseman Matt Chapman. The 2014 No. 25 overall pick graduated from top prospect status to everyday big league third baseman in the second half of the 2017 season, and by 2018 he’d thrust himself into the fringes of the American League MVP conversation. Chapman finished sixth in AL MVP voting in 2018 and seventh in an All-Star 2019 season. He batted a combined .263/.348/.507 with 60 home runs between those two seasons, winning Gold Gloves at third base each year. Chapman ranked eighth among all position players with 12 Wins Above Replacement from 2018-19, per FanGraphs.
The A’s had a star third baseman on their hands and were seeing a young core that included Chapman, Matt Olson, Marcus Semien, Frankie Montas, Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt and Ramon Laureano blossom into the foundation of a perennial contender. That group never advanced beyond the ALDS but did respectively win 97, 97, 34 and 86 games in 2018-21 before the front office tore things down in the 2021-22 offseason as Athletics ownership embarked on a Rachel Phelps-esque plan to push the team out of Oakland.
Part of the reason the A’s missed the postseason in that 86-win 2021 campaign was undoubtedly that Chapman had taken a step back in production following 2020 hip surgery. That’s not to pin the team’s playoff miss solely on the star third baseman, of course, but Chapman’s production dipped in 2020 as his strikeout rate soared to 35.5% while he played through tendinitis and a torn labrum in his hip. His 2021 campaign saw Chapman post a career-worst .210/.314/.403 batting line with a 32.5% strikeout rate — a far cry from the MVP-caliber output he flashed in 2018-19.
Though they were selling at a low point, Oakland still traded Chapman to the Blue Jays amid that 2021-22 offseason teardown, receiving top pitching prospect Gunnar Hoglund, infielder Kevin Smith, left-handed starter Zach Logue (whom they lost on waivers the following winter) and left-handed reliever Kirby Snead. Chapman’s first year in Toronto was solid but still nowhere close to his previous heights; he played top-shelf defense, as always, but his .229/.324/.433 batting line (117 wRC+) was good — not great. He swatted 27 home runs and succeeded in lowering his strikeout rate back beneath the 30% level, but it still sat at a well above-average 27.4%.
Chapman was a good player, to be sure, but from 2020-22 he hit .221/.314/.432. His plus power (64 homers, .211 ISO in 1395 plate appearances) and standout defense still made him a valuable, above-average regular at third base, but he no longer looked like the budding superstar he did during that 2018-19 peak — at least… not until 2023.
We’re just six weeks into the season, but Chapman has not only rebounded substantially from that 2020-22 downturn, he’s eclipsed even his peak levels of production thus far. Through his first 153 trips to the plate, Chapman is hitting .338/.425/.579 with five home runs. His 17 doubles are already more than he hit in the entire 2021 season. The strikeout rate that spiked north of 30% and sat at 27.4% a year ago is down to 25.5%, with reason to believe it could improve further.
Chapman’s 9.7% swinging-strike rate and 25.5% chase rate on pitches off the plate are both markedly better than the respective league averages of 10.9% and 31.4%. That doesn’t guarantee his strikeout rate will come down, but chasing bad pitches and whiffing less often than the league-average hitter should, in theory, eventually push his strikeout rate south of the league average.
Beyond the gains in strikeout rate and contact rate, Chapman is simply decimating the ball when he puts it into play. No one in baseball has a higher average exit velocity than Chapman’s 95.3 MPH mark, and his ludicrous 28.7% barrel rate is the best in MLB by an enormous margin of six percentage points. Aaron Judge is second at 22.7%, and there are only six total hitters in MLB at 20% or higher. An astonishing 67% of Chapman’s batted balls have left the bat at 95 mph or more.
Given the authority with which Chapman is hitting the ball, it’s actually a bit surprising he’s only connected on five home runs. His launch angle is right in line with his 2018-19 levels, and he’s hitting the ball in the air more often than he did in his previous peak years. After hitting a fly-ball in 41.3% of his plate appearances in 2018-19, Chapman is at 47.9% in 2023. A smaller percentage of those fly balls are of the infield variety (8.9% versus 15.9%), too. He’s curiously seen just 11.1% of his flies become home runs this year, compared to the 16.6% rate he enjoyed during his career with Oakland. That’s despite hitting the ball harder now and playing in a more homer-friendly venue; it stands to reason that Chapman’s home run output will be on the upswing sooner than later, provided he maintains this quality of contact.
Maintaining this pace, of course, will be difficult to do. Chapman’s clearly enjoying some good fortune right now, evidenced by a massive .449 average on balls in play. He’s already begun to see some regression, hitting .206/.308/.265 in 39 plate appearances since the calendar flipped to May. That dip in production is attributable not only to a drop in his BABIP, but more concerningly a spike in his strikeout rate. We’re looking at a small sample within a small sample, and the endpoints are admittedly arbitrary, but Chapman has fanned in exactly one-third of his plate appearances this month.
It was never reasonable to expect Chapman, a career .240/.329/.469 hitter entering the season, to sustain a batting average in the high-.300s, of course. But he’s regularly shown an ability to make high-quality contact in the past, so the big thing to keep an eye on with him as he approaches his first trip to free agency at season’s end was always going to be his contact rates.
If Chapman can avoid allowing his recent uptick in whiffs to snowball, then a return to peak levels or even the establishment of a new peak output is firmly in play. He’s still walking at an excellent 11.8% clip, after all, and his glovework at third base remains well-regarded. Statcast currently has him at one out below average but also tabs him in the 83rd percentile in terms of arm strength. He’s been credited with five Defensive Runs Saved already, and he’s sporting a 3.1 Ultimate Zone Rating. To date, Chapman has only made two errors this season.
His ability to sustain his elite contact and avoid reverting to his bloated strikeout rates over the next five months will be particularly telling. While Chapman once looked like he’d be the third-best free agent at his own position, the equation has changed substantially. Both Rafael Devers and Manny Machado signed long-term extensions to keep them in Boston and San Diego, respectively, leaving Chapman as the clear No. 1 third baseman on the market.
At this rate, however, Chapman won’t be just the clear top option at third base — he looks like he’ll be far and away the best position player on the market (excluding two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani, who’s in a free-agent tier unto himself). The upcoming free-agent class is utterly devoid of impact bats. Teoscar Hernandez, a resurgent Cody Bellinger, a somewhat resurgent Joey Gallo, and Hunter Renfroe look like the top bats who’ll be available. There’s still some time for that to change — a torrid summer from Javier Baez or Josh Bell could alter the calculus, for instance — but right now the market for position players is decidedly bleak.
When we were first kicking around thoughts and ideas for the initial installment of our 2023-24 Free Agent Power Rankings, MLBTR owner Tim Dierkes floated the idea of Chapman surpassing a $200MM guarantee. That was on April 4. The number felt jarring and unrealistic, and he received plenty of pushback on the idea due to Chapman’s hip surgery, uptick in strikeouts and general downturn in production since 2020.
Just a few weeks later, that type of contract feels far, far more plausible. Chapman has been the best hitter in baseball for nearly a quarter of the season, and the market surrounding him will be among the thinnest in recent memory. Perhaps that’ll lead to an uptick in trade activity throughout the league, but for teams looking to pad their roster without depleting the farm system (and without spending half a billion dollars on Ohtani), Chapman currently looks like he’ll be the best bet. Add in his defensive prowess and the fact that he won’t turn 31 until late next April — plus last year’s spike in ultra-long, CBT-skirting contracts — and it increasingly looks like Chapman and agent Scott Boras will be in prime position to break the bank.
The Rangers’ Quietly Excellent Catcher
A five-player trade between the A’s and Rangers in February of 2021 grabbed immediate headlines due to the recognizable names at the top of the deal. Texas sent stalwart shortstop Elvis Andrus to the division-rival A’s in a swap that brought baseball’s most consistent .247-hitting, 40-homer slugging designated hitter, Khris Davis, to Arlington. It was an exchange of players who’d become lineup fixtures but also had seen their respective contract extensions turn sour for their organizations. The Rangers kicked in $13.5MM to make the trade happen. They also sent backup catcher Aramis Garcia to the A’s and received minor league righty Dane Acker and a catching prospect of their own.
Fast forward two years, and that prospect, Jonah Heim, has become a centerpiece of the Rangers’ roster.
Heim’s development certainly wasn’t immediate. A fourth-round pick by the Orioles back in 2013, the now-27-year-old backstop was traded twice — first for Steve Pearce, and second for Joey Wendle — before making his debut seven years later, during the shortened 2020 season. Heim hit .211/.268/.211 in 41 plate appearances as a rookie and was ranked between eighth and fifteenth in Oakland’s system at the time he was traded to Texas.
That shaky age-25 debut could certainly be attributed to a small sample and the general strangeness of the 2020 campaign, but Heim received a heftier 285 plate appearances with the Rangers in 2021 and turned in a dismal .196/.239/.358 batting line. He managed to swat 10 home runs, but Heim rarely walked and even though he struck out at a better-than-average 20.4% clip, he rarely made great contact (87.1 mph average exit velocity, 37.3% hard-hit rate). Defensively, he was excellent, but Heim’s lack of offense made him look like a backup or part-time option behind the dish.
The Rangers seemed to agree, as they entered the 2021-22 offseason in search of catching upgrades and, just after the lockout ended, swung a deal to acquire slugging catcher Mitch Garver from the Twins. Heim started 12 of the Rangers’ first 28 games behind the plate, but an injury to Garver opened up the door for a larger role. Even when Garver returned relatively quickly from a flexor strain, the Rangers kept him at designated hitter. Prospect Sam Huff came up from Triple-A and saw some of the workload at catcher, but Heim’s early performance at the plate and his excellent defense earned him the larger portion of playing time.
From May 9 through season’s end, Heim started 70% of the Rangers’ games behind the plate. He didn’t sustain the torrid .342/.457/.658 line he’d compiled through his first 12 games, of course, but he finished out the year with a .227/.298/.399 batting line and 16 home runs. His walk rate jumped from 5.3% to 9.1%, and he cut his strikeout rate by a percentage point (19.3%). Heim also upped his average exit velocity by more than two miles per hour and increased his hard-hit rate by two percentage points. It was a series of small gains, but when paired with Heim’s defense, it resulted in a highly valuable all-around player. Heim trailed only the Yankees’ Jose Trevino in pitch-framing value, per Statcast, and Defensive Runs Saved (which doesn’t include framing) credited him with a plus-8 mark. Baseball-Reference pegged him at 2.5 wins above replacement. FanGraphs had him at 2.8 WAR.
That’s enough to consider Heim a starting-caliber catcher in and of itself, but the switch-hitter is in the midst of an offensive breakout that’s further elevating his profile in 2023. Through his first 123 trips to the plate, Heim has turned in a ridiculous .318/.382/.555 batting line with six home runs — already 37.5% of the way to his 2022 total despite having accumulated just 27% as many plate appearances.
Heim has undoubtedly benefited from a .354 average on balls in play, but there’s more than just good fortune at play. Heim has upped his contact on pitches in the strike zone from 88% to 90.1%. His average exit velocity has jumped another 2.2 miles per hour, and he’s seemingly made a more concerted effort to elevate the ball. After posting a 40% grounder rate in 2021 and a 39.1% rate in 2022, he’s hitting the ball on the ground in just 29.5% of his plate appearances this season. Heim has improved his launch angle in each of his big league seasons, and he’s nearly doubled last year’s barrel rate. Statcast ranks him in the 94th percentile or better in “expected” batting average, slugging percentage and wOBA.
Whether Heim can sustain that pace is up for debate. He had similarly encouraging batted-ball metrics during last year’s hot start to the season, though that came in a smaller sample of plate appearances by virtue of the fact that he was playing less often. By the time Heim had reached his current number of plate appearances, he was sitting on roughly average exit velocity and hard-hit rates. At the very least, he’s maintained a high-caliber batted-ball profile over nearly double the sample of his hot start in ’22 — and he’s done so while again grading out as a premier defender at his position.
Dating back to the 2021 season, Heim is now a .246/.312/.426 hitter — about 12% better than league-average by measure of wRC+. The league-average catcher hit .226/.295/.367 in 2022 (89 wRC+) and is hitting .242/.314/.389 (94 wRC+) so far in 2023. Heim is comfortably ahead of that pace even if he reverts to a mirror image of his 2022 production for the remainder of the season, and if he can sustain any of his new flyball-oriented approach and hard-contact gains, he’ll cement himself as one of the best catchers in the league.
Heim isn’t even eligible for arbitration yet — that’ll come this offseason — and the Rangers control him all the way through the 2026 season. Three different organizations have felt comfortable trading him to this point in his career, and never in exchange for a marquee player. Heim never ranked among the game’s top 100 prospects and never climbed higher than 13th on any of his four organizations’ top-30 rankings at Baseball America.
Despite that lack of fanfare in the minors, Heim has emerged as an everyday option on an ascendent Rangers club and improbably looks like one of baseball’s best all-around catchers. Texas doesn’t have a catcher in its top-30 prospects at Baseball America or MLB.com right now. They control Heim for another four years, so there’s hardly any urgency to explore an extension, but if he’s willing to sign on for a team-friendly deal right now, it’d be worth looking into the possibility of securing a core piece whose affordable salaries could help balance out the huge sums they’ve paid to their recent free-agent signings.
On that note, critics of the Rangers often like to scoff at the team’s efforts to buy a championship. They spent more than half a billion dollars in the 2021-22 offseason when they signed Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Jon Gray. They followed up with nearly a quarter-billion more this past offseason when adding Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi and Andrew Heaney in addition to re-signing Martin Perez (among other, smaller-scale moves).
There’s little denying that a large portion of the team’s core has been acquired via free agency, but that’s only been a piece of the puzzle. They hit the jackpot in simultaneously acquiring Heim and shedding some of the Andrus contract, and they’ve done well to land both breakout slugger Nathaniel Lowe and Brock Burke in separate trades with the Rays over the past four years. The Rangers haven’t drafted well — Josh Jung‘s excellent start to the 2023 season notwithstanding. Perhaps that played a role in the team moving on from longtime president of baseball operations Jon Daniels, but several of Daniels’ trade acquisitions have panned out, and Heim’s breakout has been a large part of that.
Athletics Select Zach Neal, Place Mason Miller On IL With Forearm Tightness
4:10pm: The A’s announced Neal’s selection, along with the recall of right-hander Luis Medina. In corresponding moves, righty Rico Garcia was optioned to Triple-A Las Vegas while righty Mason Miller was placed on the 15-day injured list. Catcher Manny Piña was transferred to the 60-day injured list to make room on the 40-man for Neal. Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle relays that Miller’s IL placement is due to right forearm tightness. Pina has been on the IL all year due to a lingering wrist issue and was recently pulled off his rehab after suffering a setback. He won’t be eligible to return until 60 days from the initial IL placement, which would be late May.
10:04am: The A’s are set to select the contract of righty Zach Neal prior to tonight’s game, reports Martin Gallegos of MLB.com (Twitter link). He’s expected to make a spot start tonight against Nathan Eovaldi and the Rangers. Neal inked a minor league deal with the Athletics last month.
It’ll be the second stint with Oakland for Neal, who also pitched there in 2016-17, logging a combined 4.89 ERA in 30 appearances (six starts). That accounts for the vast majority of Neal’s big league experience, though he also tossed one inning for the Dodgers in 2018. Overall, he carries a 4.94 ERA, 10.5% strikeout rate and 2% walk rate in 85 2/3 innings at the MLB level.
Now 34 years old, Neal hasn’t pitched in the Majors since that one-off appearance with the ’18 Dodgers. He spent the 2019-21 seasons with the Seibu Lions of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, working to a combined 4.49 ERA with a 12.4% strikeout rate against a 5.6% walk rate. Neal logged a 2.87 ERA in 100 1/3 innings in his first year with the Lions but was north of 5.00 in his second and third seasons in Japan.
Neal spent the 2022 season with the Rockies’ Triple-A affiliate but was tagged for a 6.87 ERA in that hitter-friendly setting. He’s opened the 2023 campaign with similarly shaky results in another hitter-friendly setting, Las Vegas, allowing seven runs on eight hits and five walks with 11 punchouts in 11 1/3 innings (5.56 ERA).
The A’s have a full 40-man roster, so they’ll need to make a corresponding transaction to get Neal onto the roster. They’ve already turned over nearly their entire bullpen since the season began and could make yet another move there to accommodate Neal’s addition. Righty Zach Jackson and lefty Sam Moll are the only two members of Oakland’s Opening Day relief corps who are still currently in the bullpen.