Phillies Extend GM Sam Fuld
The Phillies announced Monday that they’ve extended the contract of general manager Sam Fuld through the 2025 season. Assistant general managers Ned Rice and Jorge Velandia also received extensions through the 2025 season. Philadelphia, fresh off a World Series appearance, also recently extended president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski through the 2027 season.
“The Phillies have been nothing short of first class in my time here,” said the 41-year-old Fuld, who was named GM under Dombrowski following the 2020 season. “I’m thrilled to continue to work for such a tremendous organization in a city that my family and I love so much. We have an exceptional group of players, staff and employees that I’m excited to grow with over the next few years.”
Fuld played parts of eight big league seasons as an outfielder, the last of which came back in 2015 with the A’s. He’s been in the Phillies organization since 2017, originally joining as their Major League player information coordinator — a role in which he worked to distill data from the Phillies’ analytics staff and front office to the players on the field in a more relatable manner. He held that post until 2020 when he was elevated to GM. Along the way, Fuld interviewed for a handful of managerial opportunities around the game but eventually began turning away interviews for dugout positions as he continued to focus on his front office work.
The 39-year-old Rice is a veteran baseball operations executive at this point, having joined the Phillies in 2016 after spending more than a decade with the Orioles’ front office. He’s held the position of assistant general manager for his entire stay in Philly. Velandia, meanwhile, was promoted to assistant GM back in Dec. 2020. After an 18-year playing career (including parts of eight seasons in the Majors), he’s spent more than a decade working for the Phillies in a variety of roles. Velandia has worked with the Phillies’ player development staff, coached in the minors and served as a special assistant to baseball operations before settling into his current role.
Padres, Max Schrock Agree To Minor League Deal
The Padres have agreed to a minor league contract with free-agent infielder Max Schrock, reports Jon Morosi of MLB.com. The Icon client received an invitation to Major League Spring Training.
Shrock, 28, has spent parts of three seasons in the Majors, batting a combined .236/.292/.359 with four homers, seven doubles, a pair of triples, a 20.2% strikeout rate and a 5.1% walk rate in 237 trips to the plate between the Cardinals and Reds. The lefty-swinging Schrock has played second base, all four corner positions and even tossed a few innings of mop-up relief in his big league career thus far, though second base has been far and away his most frequent position (with third base the only other spot he’s seen more than occasional playing time).
Though he had a rough stretch in his first look at Triple-A as a 23-year-old back in 2018, Schrock has been productive there in 2019, 2021 and 2022; in that trio of Triple-A seasons he’s slashed .284/.354/.411 through 514 plate appearances.
The Padres’ starting infield is likely set, with Manny Machado at third base, Xander Bogaerts at shortstop, Ha-Seong Kim at second base and Jake Cronenworth likely sliding to first base. Fernando Tatis‘ Jr.’s eventual return will further deepen that mix, either pushing Kim to a utility role or creating a carousel where an infielder is slotting in at designated hitter most days. That said, the Padres’ bench is lacking in veteran options with MLB experience, so there could be some backup roles up for grabs. In that sense, Schrock’s experience at multiple spots and his left-handed bat (on a team with more righty-swinging starters) could work to his benefit.
Blue Jays To Sign Chris Bassitt
December 16: Bassit’s deal has now been officially announced by the team, with left-hander Anthony Kay designated for assignment in a corresponding move. The contract is split into three even salaries of $21MM, per Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. The first season will actually be a $3MM signing bonus and $18MM salary, per Jon Heyman of The New York Post.
December 12: The Blue Jays have agreed to a three-year, $63MM contract with free-agent righty Chris Bassitt, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Bassitt is represented by Meister Sports Management.
In adding Bassitt, the Jays have fortified a rotation that saw Ross Stripling reach free agency, lost Hyun Jin Ryu to Tommy John surgery early in the summer, and experienced substantial struggles from righty Jose Berrios and lefty Yusei Kikuchi in 2022. The ultra-consistent Bassitt will step into the mix behind third-place Cy Young finisher Alek Manoah and ninth-place finisher Kevin Gausman, with Berrios and Kikuchi likely to follow.
Bassitt, 34 in February, is a late-bloomer who didn’t establish himself as a consistent big league rotation piece until his age-29 season — partly due to Tommy John surgery wiping out the bulk of his 2016 season and all of his 2017 campaign. However, since a 2019 breakout with the A’s, he’s been among the sport’s most effective arms. In that time, Bassitt carries a sharp 3.31 ERA with a strong 23.1% strikeout rate, a tidy 6.7% walk rate and a 44.3% ground ball rate that’s a bit better than average.
Though Bassitt’s results have been excellent, he hasn’t quite yet solidified himself as a 30-start workhorse, although that’s not necessarily through any fault of his own. He missed the first few weeks of the 2019 season due to a leg contusion he suffered late in a spring training game but came back to make 28 appearances (25 starts) of 3.81 ERA ball. In 2020, he made 11 starts and tallied 63 innings during the pandemic-shortened 60-game schedule.
Bassitt looked well on his way to a career-best season in 2021 but was interrupted by one of the most frightening scenes in recent baseball memory, when he took a 100 mph line-drive off his face. The right-hander immediately dropped into a heap on the mound and had to be carted off the field with a towel covering his face. While there was originally some concern of long-term vision problems, Bassitt incredibly escaped with “only” fractures in his cheekbone and jawbone, with no further damage being revealed on a subsequent CT scan and no long-term vision issues. Bassitt not only avoided a worst-case scenario but returned from surgery just six weeks later and pitched 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball across two appearances to close out the season.
Traded to the Mets as part of the Athletics’ fire sale following the 2021 season — Oakland acquired righties J.T. Ginn and Adam Oller in the deal — Bassitt made a career-high 30 starts and reached a career-high 181 2/3 innings in New York. He also averaged better than six innings per start, turned in a career-best 48.8% ground-ball rate and recorded a 3.42 ERA with fielding-independent marks to match in what’ll now likely be his lone season in Queens.
The Mets made Bassitt a $19.65MM qualifying offer, which he unsurprisingly rejected, recognizing the opportunity for just this type of lucrative multi-year deal. By signing him to this contract, which lands right in line with the three-year, $60MM predicted by MLBTR at the outset of the offseason, the Blue Jays will be required to forfeit their second-highest pick in next summer’s draft. They’ll also see the cap on their international bonus pool for amateur free agents reduced by $500K.
That’s all of minimal concern to the Blue Jays, who are clearly in win-now mode as they look to keep pace in one of the game’s most competitive divisions. Adding Bassitt is a large step toward that end — one that ostensibly aligns with a push to improve the team’s run-prevention, perhaps at the expense of some offensive thunder.
Toronto kicked off its winter by trading its final year of club control over Teoscar Hernandez to the Mariners — a deal that netted them an under-the-radar but high-end reliever, Erik Swanson, and a fairly well regarded pitching prospect, Adam Macko. The Jays remained largely quiet in the weeks to come, but just this weekend struck a deal with longtime Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier — one of the premier defensive players in the sport (when healthy). Of course, staying on the field has been difficult for the oft-injured Kiermaier and his devil-may-care approach to defense in center; he’s currently on the mend from season-ending hip surgery.
While the financial specifics of Kiermaier’s contract have yet to come to light, the sequence of moves will surely bring the Jays up to a franchise-record payroll. Bassitt alone brings their projected payroll a bit north of $200MM — already a club record — and Roster Resource projects their luxury-tax ledger to check in a bit north of $225MM. It’s possible that Kiermaier alone will push them to the $233MM first tier of luxury penalization, which would mark the first time the Blue Jays have crossed that barrier.
Of course, the entire picture could still change — at least to some extent. Toronto is also in the market for a left-handed bat to add to an near-entirely right-handed lineup, and the Jays’ front office has reportedly been willing to listen to trade offers on its trio of MLB-caliber catchers: Danny Jansen, Alejandro Kirk and Gabriel Moreno. Free agents Michael Brantley and Michael Conforto are among the most obvious fits, but the Jays could also ship one-third of that catching triumvirate out as part of a deal to acquire a younger left-handed bat and/or additional reinforcements to a bullpen that could still benefit from an arm or two.
However the remainder of the offseason plays out, Bassitt’s addition to a pair of righties who generated some Cy Young love in 2022 should give the Jays a formidable rotation, even if none of Berrios, Kikuchi or sixth starter/swingman Mitch White bound back in 2023. Not only will the Jays be strong on a per-inning basis, but the combination of Manoah, Gausman and Bassitt have all averaged better than 5 2/3 innings per start in recent years, which should go a long way toward helping keep the team’s bullpen fresh.
Berrios, at his best, has been similar — averaging six-plus innings per outing in 2018, 2019 and 2021. However,, the 2022 season was a wildly uncharacteristic one for Berrios, who in many ways paralleled Bassitt in terms of consistent, year-to-year results prior to his first full campaign in Toronto. If any of Bassitt, Kikuchi or White can turn in a strong showing this coming season, Toronto’s rotation could very well rank among the best and deepest in Major League Baseball.
Athletics Sign Trevor May, Designate Cody Thomas
1:08pm: May will be guaranteed $7MM on the deal, ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweets. He can earn an additional $500K worth of incentives.
1:02pm: The Athletics have signed veteran right-hander Trevor May to a one-year contract, the team announced Friday. May is represented by the VC Sports Group. Outfielder Cody Thomas was designated for assignment in a corresponding move.
May, 33, will head to the A’s in search of a rebound campaign after an injury-plagued 2022 showing with the Mets. The 6’5″ righty missed three months of the season due to a triceps injury that seemed to hamper him on the mound, as May’s 5.04 ERA in 25 innings was his worst mark since the 2016 season. Even with those rough bottom-line results, however, May retained his velocity (96.2 mph average fastball) and posted a strong 27% strikeout rate against a solid 8.1% walk rate.
From 2018-21, May was quietly one of the top strikeout arms in the league, logging 175 2/3 innings of 3.33 ERA ball as a setup man for the Twins. In that time, May’s 32.6% strikeout rate ranked 13th among 204 qualified relievers, while his 15.1% swinging-strike rate ranked 20th. He coupled that knack for missing bats with a solid 8.6% walk rate, all of which helped May pile up 46 holds and 11 saves as he went from low-leverage innings to a frequent late-inning option for the Twins and the Mets — the latter of whom signed him to a two-year, $15.5MM free-agent deal in the 2020-21 offseason.
May will look to bounce back into form with the A’s, who have no set closer in place at the moment. Given his salary and experience, May should get frequent opportunities in high-leverage spots for Oakland, be it as a ninth-inning option or as a member of manager Mark Kotsay’s setup corps. May immediately becomes the most seasoned arm in the Oakland bullpen, as prior to his arrival the A’s had just one reliever with even two years of Major League service time: lefty A.J. Puk. In addition to May and Puk, the A’s have Zach Jackson, Dany Jimenez, Domingo Acevedo and Sam Moll likely ticketed for bullpen roles. Given the inexperienced nature of that group, it stands to reason that May could be one of multiple relief additions for the A’s this winter.
May is the third free-agent signing for the low-budget A’s in as many weeks, joining infielders Aledmys Diaz (two years, $14.5MM) and Jace Peterson (two years, $9.5MM) as newcomers. Any of the three could become viable trade chips this summer, but May’s track record and status as a one-year signee makes him seem like a particularly plausible summer trade candidate.
The addition of that trio pushes Oakland’s payroll projection to a still (very) modest $51MM. That, somewhat incredibly, is still an upgrade over last year’s Opening Day payroll (just shy of $48MM), but there figures to be some additional spending ahead for the A’s, who could still upgrade in the rotation, bullpen and outfield, among other areas.
As for the 28-year-old Thomas, he made his big league debut in 2022 but only appeared in 10 games and tallied 32 plate appearances, during which he batted .267/.313/.267. He slashed a hearty .289/.363/.665 with 18 homers in just 245 Triple-A plate appearances in 2021, but Thomas missed nearly the entire 2022 season after undergoing spring surgery to repair his Achilles tendon. His plus raw power and that huge 2021 showing in Triple-A might be enough to pique another team’s interest, and the A’s will have a week to trade him or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.
Tyler Beede Signs With NPB’s Yomiuri Giants
The Yomiuri Giants of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball announced Friday that they’ve signed right-hander Tyler Beede to a one-year contract. Beede himself announced the deal as well in a video message to his new club’s fan base (Twitter link). It’ll be the first stint overseas for Beede, a former first-round pick and top prospect with MLB’s own San Francisco Giants.
Now 29 years old, Beede was actually a two-time first-round pick, declining to sign out of high school in 2011 after the Blue Jays selected him with the No. 21 pick and then ultimately signing with San Francisco, who selected him out of Vanderbilt with the 14th pick three years later.
Beede ranked among the game’s top 100 prospects after a strong 2016 showing in Double-A, and he made his big league debut in 2018, tossing 7 2/3 innings but yielding seven runs in that small sample. He received a lengthier look in 2019 but was uncharacteristically homer-prone (1.69 HR/9) — a common trend among pitchers that season due to changes to the composition of the baseball. Beede logged 117 innings with the Giants in 2019 but yielded a 5.08 ERA.
A flexor strain and UCL strain early in spring training 2020 served as a portent for eventual Tommy John surgery, and Beede was limited to just 49 1/3 innings in 2021 (just one in the Majors) while finishing off his rehab from that procedure. After a rocky start to his 2022 season — five runs on 14 hits and six walks with four strikeouts in 9 2/3 frames — the Giants designated the now-out-of-options Beede for assignment and lost him to the Pirates on a waiver claim.
Things didn’t go much better for Beede in Pittsburgh, where he stumbled to a 5.23 ERA in 51 2/3 innings, fanning just 14.8% of his opponents against a higher-than-average 9.7% walk rate. The Pirates designated Beede for assignment themselves in September and this time successfully passed him through waivers. The right-hander became a minor league free agent at season’s end, and he’ll now look to turn his fortunes around in Japan.
Though Beede doesn’t have much in the way of big league success, he was a clearly touted arm dating back to his days as an amateur and throughout the early portion of his professional career. He carries an unsightly 5.40 career ERA in parts of five Triple-A seasons, with particularly rough showings in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League in both 2018 and 2021. Beede won’t be 30 until May, so he’s still young enough to parlay some NPB success into a big league return, as we’ve seen plenty of pitchers do in recent years.
Braves Sign Ehire Adrianza To Minor League Deal
The Braves have agreed to a minor league deal with veteran utilityman Ehire Adrianza, reports Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He’ll be invited to Major League Spring Training. Atlanta also signed infielder Mitchell Tolman to a minor league pact, per Toscano, though he won’t be in big league camp this spring. Adrianza would earn a $1MM salary if selected to the Major League roster, Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El Extra Base reports.
Adrianza, 33, has spent time with the Braves in each of the past two seasons, including a solid 2021 showing that saw him post a .247/.327/.401 batting line (95 wRC+) while logging time at five different positions. That 2021 campaign, however, has been bookended by a pair of dreary seasons at the plate, the most recent of which saw the switch-hitting Adrianza slash just .175/.264/.206 in 110 trips to the plate between the Nationals and Braves.
While Adrianza graded out as an above-average defender at shortstop earlier in his career, he’s drawn negative reviews in recent seasons and, accordingly, spent more time at third base, second base and in the outfield corners. Adrianza has at least fleeting experience at every position on the diamond other than catcher, but he’s posted just a .215/.301/.318 batting line dating back to 2020.
The 28-year-old Tolman is a defensively versatile player himself, having logged substantial time at second base, third base and shortstop in a seven-year minor league career. The bulk of that time (4406 innings) has come at second base, but Tolman also has 950 innings at the hot corner and 508 innings at shortstop under his belt. He’s a career .257/.348/.450 hitter in Triple-A and spent the 2022 season with the Guardians’ Triple-A club, where he slashed .251/.350/.425 slash in 423 trips to the plate.
Phillies Sign Taijuan Walker
Dec. 16: The Phillies have announced the signing.
Dec. 6: One day after landing Trea Turner on a stunning 11-year contract, the Phillies have bolstered their rotation by agreeing to a four-year deal with free-agent right-hander Taijuan Walker, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports (Twitter links). MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo adds that Walker, a client of the Boras Corporation, will be guaranteed $72MM on the deal.
Walker, 30, steps into a deep and talented rotation headlined by co-aces Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. He’ll join lefty Ranger Suarez in the third and fourth spots of a rotation whose fifth starter has yet to be determined. Philadelphia president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said earlier this offseason that he aimed to sign one veteran starter and leave a starting job open for one of the Phillies’ many in-house options — a list that currently includes left-hander Bailey Falter and top prospects Andrew Painter, Mick Abel and Griff McGarry.
The Phils could yet add some further depth, but based on Dombrowski’s earlier comments and the fact that they’ve committed a combined $372MM to Turner and Walker in the past day, it seems unlikely that another high-profile addition is in store. In the wake of agreeing to terms with Turner, Dombrowski voiced a desire to add a mid-rotation arm and to add a back-end reliever — ideally without signing a free agent who’d turned down a qualifying offer. The terms of Walker’s four-year deal have exceeded even the most bullish of expectations, but he nevertheless checks the former of those two boxes, ostensibly setting the stage for the Phillies to shift their sights to the bullpen market.
Walker, a once-elite pitching prospect who pitched just 14 innings from 2017-18 due to shoulder surgery and Tommy John surgery, has quickly shaken the “injury-prone” label once associated with his name. Since signing a one-year deal to return to the Mariners in advance of the 2020 season, the 6’4″, 235-pound righty has made a nearly full slate of starts: 11 games in the 60-game 2020 season followed by consecutive seasons of 29 starts with the Mets in 2021-22.
Along the way, Walker has pitched to a 3.80 ERA with a 21.5% strikeout rate, a 7.8% walk rate and 43.4% ground-ball rate in a total of 369 2/3 innings. While he’s hardly a flamethrower, Walker sits 93-94 mph with his four-seamer and complements that heater with a four-pitch mix of secondary offerings: splitter, sinker, slider and a more seldom-used curveball. He’s only averaged a bit more than 5 1/3 innings per start in recent years, but some of that could well be a function of the Mets preferring to keep him healthy.
While many teams are reluctant to allow starters to turn a lineup over three times, Walker’s third-time-through-the-order splits are actually fairly strong. Since 2020, when facing an opponent for the third time in a game, Walker has yielded only a .232/.303/.391 batting line. That translates to a .303 wOBA that’s tied with one of his new rotation-mates, Nola, for 37th among 132 starting pitchers in that three-year period.
Solid as Walker’s past few seasons have been, the $72MM guarantee he secured on his new contract remains a fairly eye-popping number. It’s been a bull market for starting pitchers thus far, to say the least, but an $18MM annual value over a four-year term represents a seismic step forward in the market for mid-rotation arms. Walker undoubtedly benefited from his relative youth and a lack of a qualifying offer, but guarantees of this size for a pitcher of this caliber, while not unprecedented, are quite rare. Moreover, while we’ve seen starters of this ilk land guarantees in this range in the past — the Royals signed Ian Kennedy for $70MM, and the Marlins inked Wei-Yin Chen for $80MM — they’ve typically been spread out over a five-year term. Precedent for an AAV of this magnitude, over a relatively long-term deal, for this caliber of pitcher is scarce.
None of that is a knock on Walker, who’s pitched well in his three years since returning from that pair of seasons lost to injury. And, if Walker can continue to pitch at a pace commensurate with his 2022 output in particular, he’ll end up justifying the deal. That said, he’s reached 150 innings only four times in his Major League career and only twice logged a sub-4.00 ERA in a 162-game campaign, so expecting a replica of his 2022 output — particularly in light of a shaky batted-ball profile — would be quite optimistic.
The Phillies, however, needed some stability with Kyle Gibson, Zach Eflin and Noah Syndergaard all reaching free agency, and the prices for arms this winter have been strong. Eflin, for instance, landed a $13.33MM AAV in a three-year deal with the low-budget Rays of all teams, and did so on the heels of a season in which he pitched just 75 2/3 innings. Gibson, who turned 35 in October and yielded a 5.05 ERA in 31 starts for the Phillies, still secured a $10MM guarantee on a one-year deal in Baltimore. The price of average-or-better innings — and the price for pitchers who can reliably provide those innings — looks to have increased in the early stages of the newly brokered 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement.
From a payroll vantage point, adding Walker will boost the Phillies to a projected $223.5MM in bottom-line payroll next year, per Roster Resource (assuming an even distribution of the salaries). Moreover, Walker’s $18MM AAV will push the Phillies into luxury-tax territory for what’ll now be a second straight season. They currently project at $235MM, just $2MM north of the $233MM barrier, but it seems fair to expect further additions will be on the horizon — in the bullpen at the very least. As a second-time offender, the Phils will pay a 30% overage on the first $20MM by which they exceed that $233MM line, and they’ll be on the hook for a 42.5% penalty for any overages between $20-40MM.
That seems to matter little to owner John Middleton, who just saw his Phillies fall to the World Series champion Astros in a competitive six-game affair. With Nola set to become a free agent next winter, the 2023 campaign could be the last time he and Wheeler comprise the dynamic one-two punch atop the Philadelphia rotation. Wheeler’s contract is up after the 2024 season, and J.T. Realmuto will turn 32 before Opening Day 2023. The time to win in Philadelphia is now, and in very on-brand fashion, their aggressive owner and similarly aggressive president of baseball operations are making high-priced, straightforward upgrades via the free-agent market to bolster the franchise’s hopes while this elite core is still together and still in its prime.
Cubs Sign Brad Boxberger
5:03pm: The Cubs have officially announced the signing.
11:03am: Boxberger will be paid a $2MM salary for the 2023 season, and his contract contains a $5MM mutual option with an $800K buyout, MLBTR has learned.
10:31am: The Cubs have agreed to a one-year deal with free agent righty Brad Boxberger, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Twitter thread). The Paragon Sports International client will be guaranteed $2.8MM on the deal.
Boxberger, 34, spent the past two seasons with the Brewers, who paid a $750K buyout on the veteran reliever rather than exercise a $3MM club option. At a combined $3.55MM between that buyout and the new Cubs deal, Boxberger will come out ahead and wind up earning more than if the Brewers had simply picked up the option.
Boxberger’s career looked to have hit a snag following a tough stretch in 2018-19 when he posted a combined 4.73 ERA and walked 13.8% of his opponents between the D-backs and Royals. That led to a minor league deal with the Marlins for the 2020 season, and he’s righted the ship nicely in the three years since. In that time, Boxberger carries a combined 3.13 ERA in 146 2/3 innings, and he’s piled up 57 holds and five saves along the way.
For the Brewers, Boxberger made 70 and 71 appearances across the past two seasons, pitching in 64 and 64 2/3 innings. He doesn’t have an overpowering fastball (93.1 mph average) but nonetheless managed a 31.2% strikeout rate in 2021 — although that mark dipped to a 25.4% in 2022 (still better than the league average). Boxberger relied heavily on called strikes over missed bats, however, as his 21.2% called-strike rate was the third-highest among 152 qualified relievers, while his 9.5% swinging-strike rate ranked as the 14th-lowest.
Given those trends, it’s fair to wonder whether further regression in terms of strikeout rate could be on the horizon, but even if that’s the case, Boxberger has been strong in terms of limiting hard contact over the past several seasons — particularly in 2022. Last year’s 86.4 mph average exit velocity (90th percentile) and 33.9% hard-hit rate (81st percentile) both ranked quite well among MLB pitchers, per Statcast.
The Cubs will be Boxberger’s seventh big league franchise, and he’ll slot into what was otherwise a generally inexperienced bullpen. Prior to this deal right-hander Rowan Wick was the only reliever on the Cubs’ roster who has even three years of Major League service time. With that in mind, it wouldn’t be a surprise for the Cubs to further pursue veteran additions, though if this signing and the Cubs’ recent history tells us anything, such additions could fall into a similar price range.
Chicago’s deal with Boxberger continues the team’s recent trend of prioritizing low-cost, one-year bullpen pickups rather than committing significant money to the bullpen. In the past three years, the Cubs have eschewed more prominent bullpen targets and and signed Mychal Givens ($5MM), David Robertson ($3.5MM), Daniel Norris ($1.75MM), Chris Martin ($2.5MM), Ryan Tepera ($800K), Brandon Workman ($3MM), Trevor Williams ($2.5MM), Dan Winkler ($750K) and Jonathan Holder ($750K) to one-year contracts. To the team’s credit, they’ve had some rather notable successes (Robertson, Martin, Tepera in particular), and even the deals that have missed haven’t really stung, given the relatively minimal nature of the guarantees.
On the other side of the coin, relying on one-year deals of this nature creates an annual need to patch together a bullpen in piecemeal fashion while simultaneously shining a light on some of the team’s struggles in developing bullpen arms who can be affordably controlled for years at a time. Righty Scott Effross was a notable exception, and the Cubs can hardly be faulted for flipping five years of control over him to the Yankees in a deadline trade for well-regarded prospect Hayden Wesneski, but in an ideal setting the Cubs wouldn’t need to set out into free agency in search of a handful of one-year bullpen stopgaps each winter.
Braves Unlikely To Trade Travis d’Arnaud
Atlanta’s acquisition of catcher Sean Murphy in a three-team trade with the A’s and Brewers led to some speculation about the possibility of trading veteran Travis d’Arnaud, whom Murphy ousted as the starting catcher the moment he was acquired. However, David O’Brien of The Athletic writes that Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos has been “adamant” that he has no intention of trading d’Arnaud, whom the team values as a veteran leader — beyond his contributions with the bat and behind the plate.
Heading into the 2023 season, then, it appears as though Murphy and d’Arnaud will hold a timeshare behind the plate, with the universal designated hitter giving the Braves the opportunity to get both catchers in the lineup at times. If the plan is to get d’Arnaud, who slashed .268/.319/.472 with a career-high 18 home runs, into the lineup as a DH with any degree of regularity, that could bode well for Chadwick Tromp‘s chances of making the roster as a third catcher in 2023.
The 27-year-old Tromp (28 in March) is the only other catcher on Atlanta’s 40-man roster now that Manny Pina and William Contreras have been traded (in the Murphy deal), though he does have a pair of minor league options remaining. Alternatively, the Braves could bring in a more experienced backup or simply carry just Murphy and d’Arnaud and run the risk of losing their DH on days when both are in the lineup.
Looking beyond the 2023 season, the Braves have d’Arnaud under club control, albeit via an $8MM team option with no buyout. That’s the same salary d’Arnaud is earning in 2023, and while the Braves were comfortable acquiring Murphy and his projected $3.5MM salary at a time when d’Arnaud was already guaranteed $8MM, it’d be a different story to pick up that option, knowing Murphy will be in line for a raise and that d’Arnaud would in all likelihood be ticketed for a lesser role than at the time he signed his current contract.
Still, even if the Braves prefer to try to work out a lower price for the 2024 season (and possibly beyond), O’Brien tweets that the Braves want d’Arnaud to be “around [the] team long term.” He further adds that in the wake of Freddie Freeman‘s departure, d’Arnaud and Dansby Swanson (who is, of course, a free agent himself at the moment) stepped into key leadership role. While dealing d’Arnaud would give the Braves some perhaps valuable breathing room between their currently projected $229.3MM luxury-tax ledger and the $233MM threshold for luxury penalization, that doesn’t appear to be an approach they’re considering.
Diamondbacks, Scott McGough Agree To Two-Year Deal
4:32pm: Robert Murray of FanSided relays the terms. It will be two years and $6.25MM with a $4MM mutual option for 2025 that comes with a $750K buyout.
4:12pm: The Diamondbacks officially announced the move, with lefty Tyler Gilbert designated for assignment in a corresponding move.
3:14pm: The Diamondbacks have agreed to a two-year contract with right-hander Scott McGough, reports Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. The former Marlins right-hander has spent the past four years pitching in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, where he’s solidified himself as a quality late-inning reliever. The 33-year-old McGough, who also won a Silver Medal pitching for the United States in the Olympics, will now return to the Majors for the first time since 2015.
McGough has just 6 2/3 innings of Major League experience, during which he yielded seven runs on a dozen hits and four walks with four strikeouts. However, he’s now spent four seasons with NPB’s Yakult Swallows, logging a combined 2.94 ERA with a 26% strikeout rate against a 7.6% walk rate. The 2022 season was his finest in Japan, as McGough notched personal bests in ERA (2.35), saves (38) and walk rate (6%). He’s also upped his strikeout rate over the past two seasons in NPB, jumping from 21% in 2019 to 26% in 2020 before peaking at a combined 28.5% from 2021-22 — his first two seasons as a full-time closer.
It’s not the first time the D-backs have tapped into the NPB and KBO markets to find relatively inexpensive pitching help. Arizona got two strong years out of righty Yoshihisa Hirano, who’d been the closer for NPB’s Orix Buffaloes, back in 2018-19. Even more impactfully, the Snakes been leaning on right-hander Merrill Kelly as a fixture in their rotation for the past four seasons after signing him on the heels of a strong run with the Korea Baseball Organization’s SK Wyverns (now known as the SSG Landers).
McGough, a 2011 fifth-rounder of the Dodgers who was traded to Miami in the 2012 Hanley Ramirez swap, averaged 94 mph with his heater in 2022 and upped the usage of his splitter to a 30.3% clip as well, tweets Sung Min Kim (previously of FanGraphs and The Athletic). The D-backs view McGough as a possible late-inning option in the ‘pen, Piecoro writes. He’ll join holdovers Mark Melancon, Joe Mantiply, Kevin Ginkel and fellow offseason signee Miguel Castro in manager Torey Lovullo’s bullpen.