Angels To Sign Archie Bradley
12:21pm: Bradley and the Angels have agreed to a deal, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. He’ll earn $3.75MM on a one-year contract, tweets Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.
9:38am: The Angels are close to finalizing an agreement with free-agent reliever Archie Bradley, tweets Sam Blum of The Athletic. The right-hander is headed to Arizona (where the Halos have their Spring Training facility) at the moment, Blum adds. Bradley is a client of BBI Sports Group.
Drafted by the D-backs with the No. 7 overall pick back in 2011, the now-29-year-old Bradley struggled as a starter early in his career with Arizona before seeing his career take off in 2017 when he moved to the bullpen. Bradley logged a minuscule 1.73 ERA through 73 frames that season and has since been entrenched as a quality reliever with the D-backs, Reds and — last season — the Phillies.
The 2021 season was Bradley’s first in Philadelphia. After being acquired by the Reds at the 2020 trade deadline and pitching well in his brief stint there, Bradley was non-tendered in a surprising cost-cutting move by Cincinnati. He inked a one-year, $6MM with the Phillies that exceeded the salary he’d been projected to receive in arbitration with the Reds. Bradley had a solid season in Philly, notching a 3.71 ERA over the life of 51 innings, but the year wasn’t without its red flags.
Bradley missed time with a pair of oblique strains last season, and when he was healthy, he posted his lowest strikeout rate (17.9%), lowest average fastball velocity (94.2 mph) and second-highest walk rate (9.8%) since moving to the bullpen back in 2017. It was still an effective year overall, of course, and the pair of injuries quite likely had an adverse impact on him. With the Phillies, Bradley also threw his sinker at a career-high 18.2% (double the rate of the 2020 season), which resulted in a 55.7% ground-ball rate — his best since moving from the rotation to the bullpen. In that sense, it seems there was a conscious decision to trade some whiffs for some grounders (a curious approach considering Philadelphia’s woeful infield defense last year).
If Bradley resumes throwing his four-seamer more heavily in 2022, there’s good reason to expect that his strikeout rate might creep back up a bit. And if he continues to favor his sinker more than in seasons past, he’ll at least be moving to a club that boasts a better defensive group around the infield. Each of Anthony Rendon, David Fletcher and the newly signed Matt Duffy are known for quality glovework.
Bradley has experience closing games, but the move to Anaheim will reunite him with former Reds teammate Raisel Iglesias, who he’ll surely precede as a setup man. Iglesias and Bradley were both cut loose by Cincinnati following that 2020 season — Iglesias in a salary dump trade, Bradley via the aforementioned non-tender — and will now again work together to hold late-inning leads. The Halos re-signed Iglesias to a four-year, $58MM contract earlier this winter after the Cuban-born righty enjoyed a career year in 2021. That duo, along with righty Mike Mayers and lefty Aaron Loup (signed to a two-year, $17MM deal this winter) will be counted among the primary late-inning options for skipper Joe Maddon.
Bradley’s deal boost the Angels’ actual payroll up to a projected $179.5MM — only narrowly shy of last year’s $182MM record Opening Day payroll. The Halos’ luxury-tax payroll (which is based upon the combined annual value of their contractual obligations) now jumps north of $195MM — well shy of the new $230MM luxury tax threshold.
Cardinals To Sign Corey Dickerson
11:20am: Dickerson is guaranteed $5MM on the contract and can boost that salary via incentives, tweets Feinsand.
10:52am: The Cardinals have agreed to a one-year deal with free-agent outfielder Corey Dickerson, reports Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The deal is pending a physical. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com first reported that the two sides were close to a deal (via Twitter). Dickerson, a client of Excel Sports Management, would give the Cards a nice left-handed complement to a heavily right-handed lineup.
Dickerson, 32, spent the bulk of the past two seasons in Miami after signing a two-year, $17MM deal with the Marlins in the 2019-20 offseason. The Blue Jays acquired him last summer while he was on the injured list due to a foot injury. Dickerson returned in August and hit quite well in 140 plate appearances with the Jays down the stretch, offsetting a less-productive start to his season in Miami.
Since signing that two-year deal with the Fish, Dickerson carries a .266/.321/.406 batting line with 13 home runs, 23 doubles, six triples and seven stolen bases (in 13 tries). Dickerson’s power has dipped since his peak with the Rays, which included a 27-homer effort during an All-Star 2017 season, but he remains a relatively tough strikeout who can handle right-handed pitching pretty well. In 312 plate appearances against righties last season, Dickerson slashed .277/.330/.419 (104 wRC+).
From a defensive standpoint, Dickerson has been a pure left fielder for the bulk of his career, though the Jays did trot him out for 62 innings this past season. Sometimes regarded as a defensive liability early in his career, Dickerson worked to radically improved his glovework in the middle of his career, culminating in a 2018 season that saw him post 15 Defensive Runs Saved and take home an NL Gold Glove while playing with the Pirates. His ratings have fallen off since then — as one might expect from a player entering his mid-30s and dealing with multiple foot and hamstring injuries. Still, defensive metrics felt he was a roughly average defender in 2021.
A roughly average hitter with average glovework in the outfield might not bring about tons of excitement among the fanbase, but for a Cardinals club whose only pure left-handed hitter is young Lars Nootbaar, he’ll give the lineup some needed balance. Both Dylan Carlson and Tommy Edman are switch-hitters, so it’s not as though St. Louis was entirely right-handed, but the Cardinals hit just .240/.310/.396 against right-handed pitching as a team last year with primarily the same lineup they were slated to carry prior to this agreement.
Dickerson can rotate into the mix across the outfield, either spelling right-handed-hitting Tyler O’Neill and Harrison Bader entirely or perhaps giving O’Neill the occasional breather at the newly created National League DH position. Dickerson himself could also see his share of at-bats as the DH against righties. His signing might cut into some playing time for Nootbaar and 24-year-old corner infielder Juan Yepez, but playing time tends to open up over for such players over the course of a season, particularly as injuries mount. Dickerson will provide the Cards with some veteran depth and allow them to ease some of their young hitters into the mix.
Royals Interested In Frankie Montas
March 17: Even after signing Zack Greinke yesterday, the Royals are still discussing Montas trade scenarios with the A’s, tweets Alec Lewis of The Athletic.
March 16: The Royals, who just trimmed more than $7MM in payroll in their surprising Mike Minor trade, are among the teams pursuing Athletics right-hander Frankie Montas, tweets Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. If Montas goes elsewhere, Rosenthal adds that the Royals still hope to add a veteran right-handed starter with some of their newfound payroll space.
Montas is among the most popular players remaining on the trade market, having been linked in recent days to the Twins, White Sox, Yankees and now the Royals. Other clubs are surely working diligently to pry the soon-to-be 29-year-old righty away from Oakland.
That’s hardly a surprise, given the Athletics’ clear willingness to trade veterans and the strong year Montas put together in 2021. Last year, the hard-throwing righty tossed 187 innings of 3.37 ERA ball while notching a strong 26.6% strikeout rate against a 7.3% walk rate. Projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $5.2MM this coming season, Montas is controlled via arbitration through the 2023 campaign.
The Royals, as currently constructed, would be heavily reliant on a collection of talented but largely unproven young starters in a season where they hope to return to competitive status within a relatively weak AL Central division. Brad Keller is the team’s most veteran starter now that Minor has been moved, but he’s in need of a rebound after a career-worst performance in 2021. Brady Singer, Daniel Lynch, Carlos Hernandez, Kris Bubic, Jackson Kowar and Jonathan Heasley will all be in the mix for rotation opportunities, but of that group, only Singer has had much in the way of sustained MLB success — and even he is looking to rebound after something of a sophomore slump.
Kansas City, heartened by the looming debuts of ballyhooed prospects like Bobby Witt Jr., Nick Pratto, MJ Melendez and others, hope that the strength of their young core can help lift them in the standings. Acquiring Montas would substantially boost their chances of doing so, although the mere fact that they’re in pursuit of him serves as further indication that in spite of a mostly quiet offseason, the organization believes the window to compete is opening.
Mets Sign Travis Jankowski To Minor League Deal
The Mets have signed outfielder Travis Jankowski to a minor league contract, per a club announcement. Jankowski would earn $1.25MM upon making the big league roster, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. The team also formally announced its previously reported minor league deal with lefty Chasen Shreve.
Jankowski, 30, appeared in 76 games with the division-rival Phillies last season and posted a solid .252/.364/.351 batting line through 157 plate appearances. Jankowski seldom played in a full game last year but was regularly used as a pinch-hitter or pinch-runner and as a late-game defensive upgrade for the Phils. It’s easy enough to see why, as he can play any of the three outfield slots and carries a career +15 Defensive Runs Saved and +8.5 Ultimate Zone Rating through 2356 innings of defensive work at the MLB level. Statcast pegged Jankowski’s average sprint speed in the 88th percentile of MLB players.
Originally a supplemental first-round pick of the Padres back in 2012 (No. 44 overall), Jankowski has seen Major League time in parts of seven big league seasons — five with the Padres, plus a brief 2020 look in Cincinnati and last year’s showing in Philadelphia. He’s a .239/.322/.318 hitter in 1151 plate appearances at the big league level and a .321/.411/.385 hitter in 619 Triple-A plate appearances.
Barring injuries and/or trades of current players, Jankowski won’t have an immediate path to a big league roster spot with the Mets. New York currently has Mark Canha, Starling Marte and Brandon Nimmo penciled in as the starting trio, and bench players like J.D. Davis and Dominic Smith have ample experience in the outfield (as does second baseman Jeff McNeil). Younger players like Khalil Lee and Nick Plummer are ticketed for Triple-A and are already on the minor league roster.
That said, it’s widely expected that the Mets will be open to moving either Davis or Smith in the coming days and weeks, which could lead to an opportunity for a speed- and defense-oriented role player to make the roster. Even if Jankowski winds up heading to Triple-A to begin the season, he’s a nice depth option to have on hand, as virtually no team in the league will get through the season without some injuries in the outfield.
Rays Sign Jason Adam
The Rays announced Thursday that they’ve signed right-hander Jason Adam to a one-year, Major League contract. Tyler Glasnow, who is recovering from Tommy John surgery, has been placed on the 60-day injured list in a corresponding move. Neil Solondz reports that Adam’s contract is a split Major League deal that will pay him at a $900K rate in the big leagues and a $300K rate in the minors. He can earn an additional $250K via incentives.
Adam, 30, was a quietly effective reliever with the Blue Jays and Cubs from 2019-20, pitching to a combined 3.06 ERA with a 26.2% strikeout rate and 12.1% walk rate in 35 1/3 innings between those two stops. He was particularly adept at missing bats with the Cubs in 2020, whiffing 21 of the 58 batters he faced (36.2%) while logging a sky-high 17.3% swinging-strike rate.
The 2021 season was nothing short of harrowing for Adam, however. After being optioned to Triple-A Iowa early in the season, Adam was shagging fly balls during warmups for a game when he suffered an open dislocation and fracture of his left ankle — a gruesome injury that also caused significant damage to multiple ligaments and tendons in his foot.
Adam told the Des Moines Register’s Tommy Birch last June that he had thoughts of NFL quarterback Alex Smith’s career-altering injury and the grueling sequence of surgeries and infection that followed. At one point, Adam feared he might lose his foot. He told Birch that he went into shock and that doctors had difficulty sedating him for surgery due to the excess of adrenaline his body produced in the wake of the injury. Birch’s story is well worth a full read for full context on the severity of Adam’s injury as well as quotes from Adam, teammates and coaches who were there at the time (note that there are some rather graphic details of the awful injury).
Incredibly, however, Adam not only made a full recovery but returned to the Majors with the Cubs late in the 2021 season after just a few months of rehab. Recalled to the Majors in late September, Adam made three appearances and tossed three shutout innings with six strikeouts, no walks and just one hit allowed down the stretch. His overall season ERA still checked in at 5.91 through a small sample of 10 1/3 innings, but the route he took to get there is nothing short of remarkable.
Now fully healthy, Adam will compete for a bullpen spot in the Tampa Bay bullpen alongside Andrew Kittredge, Pete Fairbanks, J.P. Feyereisen, JT Chargois, Matt Wisler and Brooks Raley, among others. Because he’s on a split contract and has a minor league option year remaining, he’s not assured that spot and could potentially be sent down to the minors. However, the Rays and other clubs that have used frequent options to maintain fresh arms in the bullpen will be a bit more limited in 2022; under the new collective bargaining agreement, an individual player can only be optioned to the minors five separate times during a given option year.
If Adam can remain healthy and solidify himself as a member of the Tampa Bay relief corps, he’ll hold plenty of value to the Rays not only in 2022 but well beyond. He currently has just a year and 129 days of Major League service time, meaning he could remain under club control all the way through the 2026 season.
Phillies Outright Scott Moss
MARCH 16: Moss has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, the team announced. He doesn’t have the requisite service time to refuse an outright assignment, so he’ll remain in the organization.
MARCH 15: The Phillies announced Tuesday that they’ve designated lefty Scott Moss for assignment. That’s one of two corresponding moves to make room for the signings of lefty Brad Hand and righty Jeurys Familia — both of whom signed one-year, $6MM contracts to join the Philadelphia bullpen. Both contracts have now been formally announced. The Phils also placed lefty JoJo Romero on the 60-day IL.
Moss, 27, is still searching for his MLB debut. The former fourth-round pick posted solid numbers with both Cincinnati and Cleveland early in his professional career, with his 2019 season in particular standing out. That season saw Moss make 26 starts between Double-A and Triple-A while working to a 2.96 ERA with an impressive 28.9% strikeout rate (against a much less-inspiring 12.7% walk rate).
Moss was in Cleveland’s 60-man player pool during the shortened 2020 season but never got a look in the big leagues. This past year in Triple-A, injuries limited him to just nine games and 20 1/3 innings, during which time he posted a 7.08 ERA. The Phillies claimed him off waivers from the Guardians back in November, but he’ll now either be traded within the week or again made available to all 29 other teams via outright waivers.
Rays Have Discussed Trades Involving Austin Meadows
Even before the lockout ended, it was reported that the Rays would be open to moving Austin Meadows once transactions were allowed to resume. That’s apparently proving to be the case, as The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal tweets that Meadows is being “prominently” mentioned in trade discussions around the league. This morning’s four-year deal between the Phillies and Kyle Schwarber is expected to help the outfield market begin to move, Rosenthal adds.
Any team that missed out on Schwarber would figure to at least have some degree of interest in the 26-year-old Meadows, who swatted 33 home runs for Tampa Bay in 2019 and 27 long balls this past season. A poor showing in the shortened 2020 season has dragged down his overall line over that three-year term, but it still checks in at a healthy .256/.334/.493.
Meadows pounded left-handed pitching in his brilliant 2019 campaign but has looked overmatched against southpaws in each of the past two seasons. Some clubs will surely view him as more of a platoon candidate, but even if that’s the case, he’s a high-quality option. In his career against right-handed pitching, Meadows is a .271/.351/.525 hitter.
From a defensive standpoint, Meadows is best-suited for work in left field, where he has serviceable if unspectacular ratings from metrics like Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating and Outs Above Average. He’s seen limited action in center and another 600-plus innings in right field but doesn’t rate well at either position.
The Rays currently control Meadows through the 2024 season, and he’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $4.9MM this coming season. That’s plenty affordable for any team, even the Rays, but Tampa Bay has a deep crop of outfield talent. Randy Arozarena, Kevin Kiermaier, Manuel Margot, Josh Lowe, Brett Phillips and Vidal Brujan (a top infield prospect who’s seen some time in the outfield) give the Rays the flexibility to make a move if the return for Meadows is convincing enough. Second baseman Brandon Lowe, too, has some experience in the outfield.
More interesting is that the Rays have been somewhat surprisingly tied to more expensive targets on the market. The Rays were linked to Oakland’s Matt Chapman before he was traded to the Blue Jays and had interest in NPB star Seiya Suzuki before he agreed to terms with the Cubs. More recently, they’ve been rumored as a long-shot landing spot for star first baseman Freddie Freeman, who penned a farewell message to Braves fans today and remains unsigned.
Clearing Meadows’ projected $4.9MM salary isn’t going to seismically change the team’s payroll outlook, but for a Rays club with designs on aiming bigger than it typically might in a given offseason, moving a roughly $5MM outfielder when the team has ample depth to replace him could free up some resources to address other pursuits. Even if the Rays don’t ultimately make a big splash with whatever resources are saved in a theoretical Meadows deal, part of the reason they remain so successful on a perennial basis is their willingness to market quality regulars like this even before their salary reaches the point that it becomes a legitimate payroll encumbrance.
Royals Sign Zack Greinke
5:44pm: To make room for Greinke on the 40-man roster, the club has placed Tyler Zuber on the 60-day IL, per various reports, including Anne Rogers of MLB.com. Zuber has right shoulder impingement syndrome and will miss the start of the season.
4:42pm: The Royals have formally announced the signing.
2:48pm: Zack Greinke is going back to his roots. The free-agent righty has agreed to a one-year deal with the Royals, pending the completion of a physical, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (via Twitter). Greinke, a client of Excel Sports Management, will be guaranteed $13MM and can earn another $2MM via innings-based incentives, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post.
The 38-year-old Greinke isn’t the fireballing ace that he was toward the end of his first run with the Royals, but he remains an effective innings eater. He’ll return to his old stomping ground as the elder statesman on what figures to be an extremely young staff who’ll no doubt want to soak up as much pitching knowledge as possible from the 18-yeasr big league veteran.
Greinke spent the past two-plus seasons with the Astros after being traded from Arizona to Houston in a buzzer-beating deal at the 2019 trade deadline. Greinke’s once blazing fastball averaged just 89 mph in 2021 and his strikeout rate dipped, but he’s maintained pristine command of the strike zone (5.2% walk rate). Since 2020, Greinke has a 4.12 ERA in 238 innings for Houston, although his 2021 season would’ve looked considerably better were it not for a late September swoon.
Through his first 26 starts in 2021, Greinke pitched to a strong 3.41 ERA. Fielding-independent metrics were still a bit down on him because of the lack of punchouts (17.5% in that stretch), but Greinke yielded a paltry 87.7 mph average exit velocity in that time and had a 33% opponents’ hard-hit rate. Greinke tested positive for Covid-19 at the end of August and went back on the IL in late September due to neck soreness. It’s not clear that either had a direct impact on his results, although it’s certainly possible that he wasn’t pitching at 100% down the stretch. The results seem to suggest as much, as Greinke was tattooed for 21 runs in his final 15 1/3 innings of work.
Even if Greinke should be projected for more of a low-4.00s ERA than the mid-3.00 range he sat for much of the 2021 season, he’ll still be a valuable and reliable source of innings for the Royals. He’s made at least 28 appearances in 11 of the past 14 seasons, with the exceptions being the shortened 2020 season (when he made all 12 of his starts) and the 2016 season (when he missed a month with an oblique injury but still started 26 games).
For a Royals club that expects to give the bulk of its innings to young and/or unproven starters — Brady Singer, Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar, Kris Bubic, Carlos Hernandez, Jonathan Heasley — the ability to confidently pencil Greinke in for around 30 starts and 170-plus frames is especially important. Brad Keller is currently the only starter on the staff with more than two years of Major League service time, but he’s in search of a rebound from a career-worst performance this past season.
The deal for Greinke ostensibly came together in fairly quick fashion. Kansas City traded Mike Minor to the Royals just this afternoon, and reports immediately following the deal suggested that they were in the hunt for rotation upgrades. Although they’re said to have checked in with the A’s about a potential Frankie Montas deal, it’ll be Greinke who joins the staff to help stabilize the group and, ideally, help guide the Royals back to a winning record
Subtracting Minor and adding Greinke’s larger salary brings the Royals up to a projected payroll of a bit more than $93MM, per Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. That’s nowhere near the franchise record $143MM from 2017, but that payroll was buoyed by a pair of consecutive World Series appearances achieved by the Royals’ former core. The fact that they felt compelled to move Minor and save some money on his salary before adding Greinke suggests that new owner John Sherman, who purchased the team in 2019, isn’t comfortable pushing payroll back to those 2017 levels at this time.
It’s possible that further additions will follow for the Royals. They’ve reportedly sought ways to trade Carlos Santana, both as a means of clearing playing time for top prospect Nick Pratto and also in order to shed the veteran’s $10.5MM salary. If president of baseball operations Dayton Moore manages to find a Santana deal similar to this afternoon’s Minor trade, additional veteran reinforcements could be on the way to help supplement a young Royals team that’ll see the debuts of Pratto and top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. early in the 2022 season.
Mets, Chasen Shreve Nearing Deal
The Mets are close to signing free-agent lefty Chasen Shreve to a minor league contract, tweets MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo. It’d be the second Mets stint for Shreve, who spent the 2020 campaign pitching in Queens as well.
Now 31, he has pitched in the past eight MLB seasons, seeing some time with the Braves, Yankees, Cardinals and Pirates, in addition to the Mets. He’s played 292 games in his career, logging 285 innings, with a 3.63 ERA. His 25.6% strikeout rate is a few ticks above average, but so is his 11.6% walk rate.
Spending last year with the Pirates, Shreve had an outlier season for him. His strikeout rate dropped to 19.1%, yet he still managed to get good results, as evidenced by his 3.20 ERA. That was largely driven by a .234 batting average on balls in play, leading advanced metrics to rank his work in less favorable light. (3.87 xERA, 4.73 FIP, 4.93 SIERA, 5.15 xFIP) However, looking at Shreve’s Statcast page, he threw his slider more at the expense of his fastball and did a good job at limiting hard contact, perhaps suggesting that it wasn’t just pure luck that kept his ERA low.
The Mets, despite a wild offseason, have a clear lack of lefties in the bullpen. There’s no one on the 40-man roster at the moment who’s likely to fill a regular relief role. However, they have signed Alex Claudio, Mike Montgomery and now Shreve to compete for a job, or perhaps jobs, as the southpaw element of the club’s relief corps. Shreve did fare better against lefties (.200/.288/.344) but wasn’t awful against righties (.221/.321/.398) last year.
GM: Reds Do Not Expect To Trade Luis Castillo, Tyler Mahle
Although the Reds’ offseason has consisted primarily of cutting payroll, general manager Nick Krall suggested to reporters this afternoon that his focus will now shift to adding to the roster rather than subtracting (Twitter link via Mark Sheldon of MLB.com). Specifically regarding sought-after right-handers Luis Castillo and Tyler Mahle, Krall stated: “I don’t see us moving any of those two players.”
Cincinnati’s offseason kicked off with Krall ominously stating that the organization needed to “align our payroll to our resources.” Those comments came in conjunction with the decision to waive Wade Miley and his $10MM salary following a strong season and to trade former Gold Glove-winning catcher Tucker Barnhart to the Tigers.
Following the lockout, the Reds traded veteran right-hander Sonny Gray to the Twins and attached third baseman Eugenio Suarez (still owed $35MM) to All-Star left fielder Jesse Winker in order to get the Mariners to take on the remaining salary. Cincinnati acquired prospects in both those post-lockout deals — pitchers Brandon Williamson and Chase Petty most notably — but the broader takeaway was that those trades trimmed nearly $50MM in payroll off the books.
There has indeed been something of a shift in philosophy today, as the Reds took on more than $7MM in salary when they flipped Amir Garrett to the Royals in exchange for veteran starter Mike Minor. They’ve also agreed to a $4.5MM deal with veteran infielder Donovan Solano. The moves certainly don’t make up for the losses of Miley, Gray and Winker, at least in terms of competitive expectations, but they do at least push back against the teardown narrative that had formed.
While some will wonder whether this is mere posturing, it’s rare for an executive to make public comments of this nature only to later walk them back. It’s possible that a team could simply overwhelm the Reds and force them to part with either Castillo or Mahle, both of whom are controlled via arbitration through the 2023 season, but it now seems likelier that they’ll open the year in the rotation alongside the newly acquired Minor.
If Castillo and Mahle are indeed off that market, that’s music to the ears of the Athletics, who surely won’t be making any such public declarations regarding lefty Sean Manaea and right-hander Frankie Montas. The A’s have already traded Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Chris Bassitt as they look to trim payroll and stock back up on young talent, and it stands to reason that with heavy interest in both Manaea and Montas, further trades will follow suit. Subtracting Castillo and Mahle from the market only reduces the supply of available starters on the market and enhances Oakland’s bargaining power.