Rangers Have Met With Carlos Rodon Since Signing Jacob deGrom
One year after shocking baseball by signing both Marcus Semien and Corey Seager for a combined half-billion dollar, the Rangers appear to at least be considering a similar double dip into the deep end of the free-agent pool. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the Rangers met with Carlos Rodon just one day after signing Jacob deGrom to a hefty five-year, $185MM contract.
With deGrom in Texas and Justin Verlander having agreed to terms with the Mets, Rodon is the lone free-agent ace left on the board. He’s reportedly been seeking a six-year deal worth more than $30MM annually — a weighty sum for a pitcher with a lengthy injury history that includes both shoulder surgery and Tommy John surgery.
That said, Rodon has left little doubt in recent years that he’s among the sport’s most talented pitchers. After signing a $3MM pillow contract with the White Sox in the 2020-21 offseason, he at last made good on the expectations associated with his name dating back to his No. 3 overall selection in the draft. Through the first four months of the 2021 season, Rodon was arguably the best pitcher in baseball and looked like the clear front-runner for the American League Cy Young Award.
Shoulder fatigue limited Rodon to just 28 innings in the season’s final two months, however, and when he did pitch down the stretch in 2021, it was often with reduced velocity. The White Sox were apparently wary enough that they declined to put forth a qualifying offer, and Rodon inked a two-year, $44MM deal with the Giants that allowed him to opt back into the open market if he reached 110 innings on the season.
Not only did Rodon reach 110 innings, but he did so while again putting himself onto the periphery of the Cy Young race. The lefty tossed a career-high 178 innings with a 2.88 ERA, held his velocity late into the season and averaged better than 5 2/3 innings per start as a member of the Giants. He led the National League in strikeouts and, since Opening Day 2021, leads all Major League pitchers (min. 200 innings) with a 33.9% strikeout rate. Rodon has done all that while pitching to a combined ERA of 2.67 with similarly excellent marks in FIP (2.42) and SIERA (2.88).
Onlookers may wonder just how the Rangers could even consider continuing to spend so aggressively in such a short period of time — particularly when so many teams have been averse to paying the luxury tax in recent seasons. The increased luxury tax thresholds in the 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement surely play a role, as the first-tier threshold has climbed from $210MM in 2021 to $233MM this coming season.
The luxury tax, however, isn’t a major issue for the Rangers — at least not yet. Roster Resource projects that they currently have about $192.4MM of luxury obligations, meaning even signing Rodon at a $30MM AAV would still leave them with more than $10MM of breathing room from the first tier of penalization. It’s also worth noting that the penalty for first-time offenders is rather tepid — relatively speaking. The Rangers would owe a 20% tax on the first $20MM by which they exceed the $233MM threshold and a 30% tax on the next $20MM. Even shattering the luxury barrier by a means of $40MM would give the Rangers $10MM in penalties — about the price of signing a back-of-the-rotation starter in the current market.
Of course, signing Rodon would squarely set the Rangers up for a potential long-term status as a luxury payor. The combination of deGrom, Seager, Semien and Jon Gray amounts to $107.5MM on its own, and tacking on $30MM+ for Rodon would get Texas nearly 60% of the way to luxury territory even as far out as the 2024 campaign — and that’s not even including arbitration-eligible players and pre-arb players to round out the roster.
Texas, however, is enjoying the fruits of a newly constructed stadium that drew more than two million fans in 2022 and can surely anticipate that number will climb in 2023, with deGrom (at the very least) now on board. Ownership from all 30 clubs is also perhaps a bit more willing to spend after the league sold off its remaining 15% stake in BAMTech to Disney for $900MM, the spoils of which were divided among teams. Meanwhile, lucrative streaming deals with Apple and NBC/Peacock have only further bolstered revenues for the league’s 30 teams. Heading into the 2022 season, national television and streaming rights afforded all 30 teams approximately $65MM in revenue before factoring in local television deals, attendance, concessions and other sources of revenue.
Giants’ Offer To Aaron Judge Reportedly “In The Neighborhood” Of $360MM
The Giants’ offer to reigning American League MVP Aaron Judge is “believed to be [in the] $360MM neighborhood,” reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. The number of years on the contract aren’t clear, though recent reports have suggested Judge could push for a nine-year deal. That would put the potential average annual value on San Francisco’s offer in the $40MM ballpark, or perhaps in the $36MM range if they were comfortable extending the offer to a decade in length in order to mitigate some of the AAV and luxury tax concerns.
San Francisco has long been seen as the primary threat to sign Judge away from the Yankees, given their increasing urgency to field a winner, the team’s wide-open payroll outlook and Judge’s fandom of the team as a child growing up in Northern California. Judge has met with both teams in the past week, and outside of some loose connections to the Dodgers, there’s been no concrete reports of other teams involved in the mix.
That hardly means Judge only has two suitors, of course. Coming off a 62-homer, .311/.425/.686 season that netted him his first MVP win, it stands to reason that the majority of teams would at least inquire about the possibility of a deal. However, given the heights to which his market appears to be soaring, most clubs would surely balk at making a competitive offer.
Still, today’s revelation that the Padres offered Trea Turner a $342MM deal that would’ve given him the third-largest guarantee in MLB history — only to be rebuffed in favor of the Phillies — has at least served as evidence that another team is willing to spend at the very top end of the free agent market (albeit on a different player). There’s been no firm link between the Padres and Judge just yet, but with San Diego eyeing the corner outfield market and having displayed a willingness to commit an unprecedented third $300MM+ contract, it’s easy enough to speculate that the Friars could emerge as a viable third entrant in the bidding.
Heyman suggests that even with the Giants’ enormous offer, many in the industry still believe the Yankees to be the favorites. The Yankees, for their part, of course continue to hope that Judge will re-sign and spend his career in the Bronx, although recently extended general manager Brian Cashman told reporters last night that agent Page Odle has not given the Yankees any assurances that they’ll be afforded the opportunity to match or exceed an offer from another team before Judge accepts (link via Bryan Hoch of MLB.com).
The Giants have approximately $133MM in salary committed to next year’s books and are a projected $91MM shy of the first tier of luxury-tax penalization, so an AAV for Judge in the upper $30MMs or even reaching $40MM wouldn’t put them anywhere close to the tax line. Judge did reject the Yankees’ qualifying offer, however, so he’d cost the Giants their second-highest pick in next summer’s draft and also trigger a $500K reduction in their spending capacity on international amateur free agents.
Orioles Sign Nomar Mazara To Minor League Deal
1:09pm: Mazara will make $1.5MM if he cracks the major league roster, per Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner.
11:40am: The Orioles have signed outfielder Nomar Mazara to a minor league contract, per a team announcement. Presumably, he’ll be in Major League camp this spring. Mazara is repped by CAA sports.
Once considered one of baseball’s 20 to 30 best prospects, the now-27-year-old Mazara has settled in as a journeyman corner outfielder who’s played for four different big league teams over the past four seasons. Debuting as a 21-year-old back in 2016, Mazara belted 20 homers and hit .266/.320/.419 as a rookie with the Rangers but never advanced his offensive profile much beyond that point. He swatted exactly 20 homers in each of his first three MLB seasons and 19 in his fourth, but regularly did so with sub-par walk rates, on-base percentages and defense in right field.
Traded to the White Sox prior to the truncated 2020 season, Mazara bottomed out with a .228/.295/.294 batting line in 149 plate appearances with the South Siders. A 2021 stint with the Tigers didn’t yield much better results. He fared a bit better with the Padres in 2022, although this year’s .264/.316/.352 batting line in 171 plate appearances wasn’t exactly a standout showing. In nearly 2700 MLB plate appearances, Mazara is a .256/.315/.414 hitter — including just a .235/.295/.324 slash since leaving Texas after the 2019 season.
The Orioles have been seeking left-handed bats who can potentially help them in the outfield corners, at first base or at designated hitter, and Mazara fits that description, even if he’s been a roughly average hitter in the big leagues at his best. He’ll have to earn a spot on the team this spring, and if he’s unable to do so, he could head to Triple-A Norfolk and serve as a depth option in the event of an injury.
Yankees Sign Tommy Kahnle
10:41am: There’s no option on the contract, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post, adding that Kahnle will be paid $5.75MM in each of the next two seasons.
10:32am: The Yankees have agreed to a two-year deal with free-agent reliever Tommy Kahnle, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter link). Kahnle, a client of the Ballengee Group, will be guaranteed a total of $11.5MM on the deal, tweets Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Kahnle was reported to be in “advanced” talks with multiple clubs earlier this morning, and Alex Speier of the Boston Globe tweets that the archrival Red Sox also made a two-year offer to the right-hander.
Kahnle, 33, returns to the same Yankees team that drafted him in 2010, lost him to the Rockies in the 2013 Rule 5 Draft, and eventually acquired him alongside David Robertson in a 2017 trade with the White Sox. Injuries, most notably 2020 Tommy John surgery, put an end to Kahnle’s time in the Bronx. He was waived at the end of the 2020 season, as he was arbitration-eligible that winter but expected to miss the entire 2021 season while rehabbing from that ligament replacement procedure.
The Dodgers subsequently inked Kahnle to a low-cost, two-year contract with an eye toward paying him to rehab in 2021 and enjoying a hopeful rebound campaign at a slightly higher rate in 2022. It didn’t work out quite as well as hoped, given that Kahnle was only able to return to the mound for 13 2/3 regular-season innings in 2022 — plus a pair of postseason frames in which he served up three runs.
Kahnle’s regular-season showing was plenty promising, however. He pitched to a sharp 2.84 ERA and fanned a gaudy 30.4% of his opponents against a strong 6.5% walk rate. Kahnle’s 95.6 mph average fastball was nowhere near its 98 mph peak, but the right-hander compensated by absolutely overloading on changeups; Kahnle threw his four-seamer at just a 23% clip against a mammoth 76.4% usage rate for his changeup.
The new-look pitch selection paid dividends in that small sample, resulting in a career-high 68% ground-ball rate and a massive 17.2% swinging-strike rate. Kahnle doesn’t boast the power sinker that the Yankees regularly tend to prefer — particularly among their relievers — but that enormous ground-ball rate certainly aligns with the Yankees’ recent penchant for loading up on relievers with considerable ground-ball rates.
At his best, Kahnle has been a high-quality setup option with a blazing fastball and swing-and-miss changeup that’s helped him neutralize lefties every bit as well as he’s handled righties. While that Tommy John surgery, a shoulder injury and a lengthy bout with forearm inflammation in 2022 have limited Kahnle’s time on the mound, he carries a solid 3.44 ERA over his past 188 1/3 big league innings, during which time he’s fanned nearly a third of his opponents.
Kahnle adds a big arm and another lofty ground-ball rate to a Yankees bullpen currently led by Clay Holmes, Jonathan Loaisiga, Wandy Peralta and Lou Trivino. New York has seen a significant portion of its bullpen — Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, Chad Green, Miguel Castro — reach free agency this winter, and they’re currently dealing with injuries to two of their top relievers. Deadline pickup Scott Effross is likely out for all of the 2023 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in October, while righty Michael King is on the mend from an elbow fracture (though he could potentially be ready early next season).
Adding Kahnle’s two-year deal to the books bumps the Yankees to a projected $211MM payroll for the 2023 season and moves their luxury-tax payroll to a bit more than $227MM, per Roster Resource. That leaves the Yankees, who are still pursuing a reunion with Aaron Judge and expected to meet with Brandon Nimmo during this week’s Winter Meetings, less than $6MM from the first tier of luxury penalization. The Yankees went well over the tax line in 2022 and appear poised to do so again in 2023, with or without Judge.
Royals, Adalberto Mondesi Avoid Arbitration
The Royals announced Tuesday that they’ve agreed to a one-year deal with infielder Adalberto Mondesi, thus avoiding arbitration. Lynn Worthy of the Kansas City Star reports that Mondesi will be paid $3.045MM in 2023.
Once viewed as one of the game’s top prospects and a potential foundational piece in Kansas City, Mondesi has instead become a perennially tantalizing talent who can’t stay healthy enough to capitalize on his prodigious tool set. The now-27-year-old Mondesi turned heads back in 2018, when in just 75 games and 291 plate appearances, he turned in a .276/.306/.498 slash with 14 home runs and 32 steals. He connected on nine homers and swiped 43 bags in just 102 games the following season.
Unfortunately for Mondesi and for the Royals, that 102-game showing in 2019 marks a career-high. Those 2018 and 2019 seasons are the only times that Mondesi has appeared in even 60 games in a year, though to his credit, he did play in 59 of Kansas City’s 60 games in 2020 — albeit with a diminished .256/.294/.416 batting line and a then-career-high 30% strikeout rate.
Mondesi has appeared in just 50 games over the past two seasons due to a pair of oblique strains, a hamstring strain and, most notably, a torn ACL he suffered after just 15 games in 2022. Mondesi also suffered a pair of subluxations in his left shoulder during the 2019 season and ultimately required surgery to address the issue. In addition, he’s spent time on the injured list due to an impingement in his other shoulder and to back and groin strains.
It’s a veritable laundry list of injuries for Mondesi, who made his MLB debut as a 20-year-old back in 2016 but has played in just 358 Major League games in his career. At his best, Mondesi possesses elite speed, above-average power and the ability to play a strong defensive shortstop, but his body hasn’t allowed him to showcase that skill set nearly as much as he, the Royals and MLB fans in general would prefer to see. That said, at a $3.045MM salary for next season, the risk for the Royals is minimal.
Despite the lack of games played, Mondesi has spent so much time on the Major League injured list that many will be surprised to read he’s in his final season of club control. With five years of service time under his belt, he’s on pace to reach free agency as a 28-year-old next winter. Obviously, he’ll have plenty of motivation to remain healthy, though even if Mondesi defied the odds and enjoyed a full, healthy season, any and all interested teams would be wary of his injury history on the open market.
Mondesi’s role with the 2023 Royals figures to be somewhat up in the air, given the defensive excellence of Nicky Lopez and the emergence of top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. All three players can play the shortstop position, but Kansas City moved Mondesi to third base late in the 2021 season with an eye toward Witt potentially taking over at shortstop. However, Witt wound up playing primarily third base in his rookie campaign last season. Any of the three players could ostensibly handle any of the three positions to the left of first base, so it’ll be up to new head of baseball ops J.J. Picollo and new manager Matt Quatraro to determine their preferred alignment between now and Opening Day.
Of course, all of that is putting the cart well before the horse. First and foremost, the Royals will focus on getting Mondesi healthy and keeping him healthy enough to play in a meaningful number of games for the them next season. Michael Massey, Nate Eaton, Samad Taylor and Maikel Garcia are all infield alternatives on the 40-man roster, should the Royals need to account for an injury to Mondesi or another infielder. It’s also possible that the Royals will add to their infield depth this offseason via either the trade or free-agent market.
Yankees Expected To Meet With Brandon Nimmo
The Yankees are expected to meet with free-agent center fielder Brandon Nimmo this week, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Nimmo is attending the Winter Meetings in San Diego in order to have this very type of face-to-face meeting.
Interest in Nimmo isn’t necessarily indicative of any pessimism regarding the Yanks’ ongoing efforts to re-sign Aaron Judge. Heyman writes that the team is hoping to secure two outfielders this winter, and while Judge and Nimmo represent the two most expensive options on the market, they also represent the top two talents. It’s only natural that losing Judge would theoretically increase New York’s urgency to then lure Nimmo away from their crosstown rivals, but interest in one does not strictly depend on the other’s situation.
Nimmo, who’ll turn 30 near the end of Spring Training, is a sensible target for the Yankees, regardless of Judge’s eventual decision. The Yankees’ seven-year extension for center fielder Aaron Hicks has proven to be a misstep, as Hicks has been oft-injured throughout the life of the deal and has seen his defensive ratings in center decline. The 2022 season actually marked the first time that Judge has played primarily center field, and his shift to center was borne largely out of injuries and poor performance from Hicks. The Yankees could have turned things over to young Estevan Florial for a larger look, but despite a solid showing in Triple-A, the team gave Florial just 35 big league plate appearances, during which time he went 3-for-31 with 13 strikeouts.
Adding Nimmo would give the Yankees a clear-cut everyday option in center, where his defensive ratings have improved considerably over the past two seasons in the estimation of Defensive Runs Saved (1), Ultimate Zone Rating (2.5) and Outs Above Average (9).The former No. 13 overall draft pick would also give the Yankees a high-OBP, relatively low-strikeout option to bat atop or near the top of the order, and the appeal of taking any left-handed hitter and allowing him to reap the benefits of Yankee Stadium’s short right-field porch has obvious allure.
Over the past three seasons, Nimmo has turned in a collective .280/.384/.443 batting line with 32 home runs, 55 doubles, 13 triples, an impressive 12.3% walk rate and a lower-than-average 18.5% strikeout rate. He’s been 38% better than a league-average offensive player in that span, by measure of wRC+, due largely to his elire on-base skills. Of the 342 players to tally at least 500 plate appearances since 2020, only six have reached base at a higher rate than Nimmo: Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, Bryce Harper, Judge, Mike Trout and Paul Goldschmidt.
Injuries have been the primary knock on Nimmo throughout his career, as he’d only played in 100 games one time entering the 2022 season (though he did appear in 55 of 60 contests during the shortened 2020 campaign). He enjoyed his healthiest season to date in 2022, however, logging a career-high 151 games. The injury history on Nimmo is long, as he’s missed time with knee, foot, neck, hamstring and finger injuries in addition to a partially collapsed lung in 2017. For all those injuries, he’s only been on the 60-day IL once in his career, when he missed 104 days due to a neck injury in 2019.
Checkered health history notwithstanding, it’s an extraordinarily thin market for center fielders this winter, with Nimmo standing as the only true everyday option who’s coming off a strong season (assuming one still considers Judge more of a right fielder). Nimmo has been an excellent offensive player, a solid defender and, in recent seasons, more durable on the whole, appearing in just shy of 78% of possible games dating back to 2020. The general expectation is that he’ll secure a nine-figure contract — perhaps even one that pushes to six years in length.
Pairing Nimmo and Judge could very well tack $60MM or more in luxury-tax obligations onto the Yankees’ 2023 ledger, which currently sits at a projected $222.2MM, per Roster Resource. A Judge/Nimmo pairing would skyrocket the Yankees from a bit shy of the luxury tax all the way to the third tier of penalization and place them within arm’s reach of the newly implemented fourth tier, which kicks in at $293MM this coming season. Of course, that number could be whittled down by finding a taker for Hicks or Josh Donaldson on the trade market (though the Yankees would surely have to pay down some of their remaining commitments), or perhaps by shopping any of the team’s pricier arbitration-eligible players (e.g. Gleyber Torres, Isiah Kiner-Falefa).
Nimmo rejected a $19.65MM qualifying offer from the Mets and would thus cost the Yankees, who paid the luxury tax in 2022, their second- and fifth-highest selections in next summer’s draft, as well as a $1MM reduction in the size of their 2023 bonus pool for international amateur free agents. In addition to the Yankees, he’s been linked to the Mariners, Blue Jays, Giants, Rays and incumbent Mets.
Padres Unlikely To Pursue Other Shortstops After Missing Out On Trea Turner
The Padres’ bid to sign Trea Turner — which reportedly included a larger offer than he accepted in Philadelphia, even after accounting for California’s higher income tax — caught plenty of fans and pundits off-guard. The Padres already have Fernando Tatis Jr., Ha-Seong Kim, Manny Machado and Jake Cronenworth as options in the infield, and San Diego also has a pair of $300MM players on the roster in Machado and Tatis (though the former could opt out following the 2023 season).
There’s been speculation (here included) about whether Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller will pivot and look into the remaining All-Star shortstops in free agency, but Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Turner was viewed as a special case and that the Padres were singularly interested in him, rather than adding another shortstop to the mix. As such, it’s unlikely that the Friars will pursue any of Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts or Dansby Swanson in the wake of being spurned by Turner. The Athletic’s Dennis Lin does write that the Padres have checked in with Bogaerts this offseason, but Lin adds that Turner was the team’s “clear” preference. MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell adds that the Padres have not spoken to Kim or Cronenworth about a position change at this time.
Preller acknowledged the team’s interest in Turner and the disappointment in not landing him when speaking with Acee and others on the San Diego beat Monday evening. Part of Turner’s appeal, as Preller explained, was his athleticism and experience playing positions other than shortstop, which the Friars believed could create some more flexible lineup choices.
Even if the Padres are out of the mix (or, at best, on the periphery) for the remaining shortstops, the strong bid for Turner is still plenty notable. It underscores that even with a star-studded roster and a payroll that many expected to be reaching its maximum levels, Padres ownership is willing to spend at levels commensurate with the sport’s very biggest financial powers. The Padres paid the luxury tax in 2022, have a projected $210MM bottom-line payroll in 2023 and a projected $230MM in luxury-tax obligations, per Roster Resource, but were apparently still content to put down a $300MM+ offer on Turner.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that San Diego will pivot and dive headlong into the bidding for Aaron Judge, but it also at least opens the door for speculation about such top-of-the-market pursuits. Preller spoke of a corner bat and a starting pitcher as his top needs. Acee suggests that San Diego has looked into reunions with Josh Bell and Brandon Drury in addition to the recently non-tendered Dominic Smith, illustrating the vast breadth of possibilities the team is considering with Turner now in Philadelphia.
Dodgers, Rays Interested In Andrew McCutchen
The Dodgers and Rays are among the teams with interest in free agent outfielder/designated hitter Andrew McCutchen, tweets ESPN’s Buster Olney. As Olney points out, McCutchen could very well topple a couple of career milestones in 2023, as he’s 52 hits shy of 2000 and 13 long balls away from the 300 mark.
McCutchen, 36, spent the 2022 season with the Brewers, for whom he slashed at a .237/.316/.384 pace through 580 trips to the plate. It was an uneven season for the 2013 NL MVP, as he stumbled out of the gates with a poor two-month stretch before catching fire in June and ultimately wilting again in the season’s final seven to eight weeks.
McCutchen’s run early in the summer at least showed that there’s still life in his bat — inconsistent as the production may be. The endpoints here are arbitrary, and any player can look better when focusing only on his hottest stretch of the season, but for a period of 262 plate appearances beginning on June 5, McCutchen mashed at a .288/.370/.498 pace, slugging 11 homers and 15 doubles along the way. Of course, it’s only fair to also point out that said hot streak was preceded by an absolutely frigid spell in which he collected just one hit in a span of 39 trips to the plate.
The peaks and valleys of McCutchen’s 2022 season resulted in a 98 wRC+ and 99 OPS+, suggesting that he was just barely shy of average at the plate for the season as a whole. Part of the downturn in production for McCutchen, who batted a combined .237/.343/.444 as a Phillie from 2019-21 (109 wRC+), was that his longstanding production against southpaws evaporated in 2022. McCutchen is career .300 hitter with a .936 OPS and 154 wRC+ against lefties, even including last year’s struggles, but this past season’s .221/.303/.434 slash when holding the platoon advantage was miles shy of his career standard.
On the defensive side of the coin, McCutchen played just 434 innings in the outfield, most coming in left — although the Brewers gave him 13 innings in center and 153 in right. Defensive Runs Saved (4), Ultimate Zone Rating (1.8) and Outs Above Average (0) all thought he was at least serviceable, if not a net positive in his limited work with the glove. However, McCutchen spent 82 games as Milwaukee’s designated hitter, too. It’s possible another team would view him as a viable option to log a larger workload in the outfield, but a return to his days of pllaying 1300-1400 innings in the outfield seems like a reach, given his age and recent usage.
In Los Angeles, McCutchen could give the Dodgers a right-handed complement to lefty-swinging 25-year-old James Outman, who had a huge season in the upper minors and also impressed in a tiny MLB debut (16 plate appearances). Tampa Bay is more set in the outfield but could still use McCutchen as a right-handed option off the bench, mixing him in for occasional work in the outfield corners and at designated hitter. It’s worth noting that McCutchen is a native of Fort Meade, Fla. and attended Fort Meade High School — about 75 miles from the Rays’ Tropicana Field.
McCutchen played the 2022 season on a one-year, $8.5MM contract, and it seems quite likely that he’ll be ticketed for another one-year deal wherever he lands — be it with the Dodgers, Rays or another team.
Blue Jays Have Made Offer To Andrew Heaney
The Blue Jays are actively exploring the market for rotation help and have put forth an offer to left-hander Andrew Heaney, reports Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet. Heaney, however, has received varying levels of interest from at least 10 teams and has fielded multiple offers at this point, per the report.
Robust interest in Heaney comes as little surprise. The lefty reportedly drew interest from upwards of a dozen teams last year when he was a rebound candidate seeking a one-year deal in free agency, and while shoulder troubles limited his workload with the Dodgers in 2022, his performance when on the field could scarcely have gone better. Armed with a lethal new slider, Heaney pitched to a 3.10 ERA in 72 2/3 innings.
That’s an impressive mark in and of itself, but Heaney’s secondary metrics were even better. He remained far too susceptible to home runs (1.73 HR/9), but Heaney punched out a ridiculous 35.5% of the batters he faced in 2022 and only allowed walks at a 6.1% clip. No pitcher in baseball last year (min. 70 innings) topped Heaney’s sky-high 16.8% swinging-strike rate, and the only two pitchers who induced chases on pitches off the plate more frequently than Heaney’s 39.5% were Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase and Toronto righty Kevin Gausman.
Heaney has had more than his fair share of injury troubles over the years, undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2016 before landing on the IL twice with elbow inflammation (2018, 2019) and then missing three months this past season due to shoulder troubles. On a per-inning basis, however, he arguably turned in the best performance of any free-agent starter outside the top tier of Jacob deGrom, Justin Verlander and Carlos Rodon. The questions teams have to weigh are how much of his newfound Dodgers success is repeatable and just what they feel comfortable projecting for him, workload-wise, in 2023 and beyond.
This marks the second straight offseason in which the Jays have made an offer to Heaney, as Toronto was reportedly among the interested parties to put forth a one-year offer for him last offseason as well. However, while a one-year deal was sufficient for Heaney’s services last November, he appears quite likely to land a multi-year commitment this time around.
Starting pitching has been a priority for the Jays throughout the winter, with Toronto showing interest in starters of a wide array of quality. Nicholson-Smith writes within his Heaney column, for instance, that Toronto was in the mix for Kyle Gibson before he agreed to terms with the Orioles, and he further reports (via Twitter) that the Jays were willing to go multiple years at a high annual value for Verlander before he landed with the Mets earlier today.
As it stands, the Blue Jays have Gausman, Alek Manoah, Jose Berrios, Yusei Kikuchi and Mitch White as their primary options in the rotation. Manoah and Gausman turned in brilliant 2022 seasons and both received some recognition in Cy Young voting — Manoah finished third, Gausman ninth — but the other three struggled through dismal seasons. Berrios had been one of the game’s most consistent starters before stumbling to a 5.23 ERA in 2022. A pricey upside bet on Kikuchi’s blend of velocity and whiffs didn’t pay off (5.19 ERA), and White was tagged for a 7.74 ERA in 10 games after being acquired from the Dodgers prior to the trade deadline. Hyun Jin Ryu underwent Tommy John surgery early in the summer.
Meanwhile, right-hander Ross Stripling became a free agent on the heels of the finest season of his career. In 134 1/3 innings, Stripling posted a 3.01 ERA with a below-average 20.7% strikeout rate but an elite 3.7% walk rate. The Jays could always look to re-sign the 33-year-old, but he’s fielding interest from all 30 teams now and seems a good bet to eventually land a multi-year deal himself.
Yankees Extend GM Brian Cashman
The Yankees announced Monday that they’ve signed general manager Brian Cashman to a four-year contract extension. He’s now signed through 2026.
Now 55 years old, Cashman has been in place as the Yankees’ general manager since 1998. With Billy Beane’s recent transition to an advisory role with the A’s, Cashman became the longest-tenured baseball operations leader in Major League Baseball. The team has somewhat remarkably had a winning record in all 25 of Cashman’s seasons at the helm and made the playoffs in 21 of those 25 campaigns. However, it’s now been 13 seasons since they’ve reached the World Series, with their 2009 victory over the Phillies standing as the most recent time the Yankees advanced past the ALCS.
Cashman has become a lightning rod for criticism from Yankee fans as they continue to voice frustration over the team’s World Series “drought,” and that criticism will only grow louder if reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge departs in free agency, whether to sign with the Giants (his childhood team), the Dodgers or a “mystery team” whose presence in the Judge bidding is not yet known.
Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, however, has taken a different tack than that of his late, oft-impulsive father George, praising Cashman’s stability and the annually competitive rosters he’s put together. Granted, possessing one of the sport’s largest payrolls each year can help to paper over plenty of missteps, but we’ve seen plenty of deep-pocketed clubs with huge payrolls post sub-.500 records and miss the postseason over the years. Payroll notwithstanding, that level of consistency is indeed impressive, though the regularity with which the Yankees reach the playoff field has also inherently increased expectations; division titles and ALCS berths are not considered sufficient by a substantial portion of the team’s fan base.
The challenges for Cashman that lay ahead begin but certainly don’t end with Judge. The 2022 American League MVP carried an otherwise lifeless Yankees offense through the second half of the season and captivated a national audience along the way, chasing down and narrowly surpassing Roger Maris’ longstanding American League home run record. Re-signing Judge would send the Yankees barreling into the second tier of luxury tax penalization at a time when there are other clear needs on the roster.
Even if Judge is retained, the Yankees will have a heavily right-handed lineup in need of some balance, to say nothing of multiple undesirable contracts (e.g. Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks) driving up the actual bottom-line payroll and the team’s luxury-tax number. There’s work to do in the bullpen, too, and the Yankees could see two starters reach free agency following the 2023 season in Luis Severino and Frankie Montas. Their potential exit surely plays a role in the team’s reported interest in Carlos Rodon, who’d likely become an even greater focus should Judge depart. At that point, Cashman and his staff would need to determine whether to pivot and dive back into a shortstop market they eschewed one offseason ago. That decision, in particular, will be placed under a microscope over the next couple years as prospects Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza take center stage in the Bronx.
As with any general manager or president of baseball operations, Cashman’s tenure is checkered with hugely successful transactions and regrettable deals. Last winter’s acquisition of Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa likely didn’t provide the value the team was hoping for (particularly since it cost them a solid campaign from Gio Urshela), and August’s Montas acquisition immediately harkened back to Sonny Gray‘s disappointing tenure with the Yankees. Then again, recent trades for Jose Trevino, Clay Holmes and Anthony Rizzo have been excellent, and Harrison Bader shined with a brilliant postseason effort.
All any general manager or president of baseball ops can do is hope the successes outweigh the missteps and hope to be able to convince ownership they’re the proper person for the job. Yankee fans can have spirited debates about whether the first half of that sentence applies to Cashman, but it’s abundantly clear that Steinbrenner values the continuity, professionalism and persistent winning that Cashman has overseen in what’s now an incredible quarter century on the job.