Brian Dozier Announces Retirement
Former All-Star second baseman Brian Dozier announced on Thursday that he’s retiring after a nine-year career in the Majors and at the age of 33.
An eighth-round pick by the Twins back in 2009, Dozier was never considered a premium prospect even within his own organization, topping out as Baseball America’s No. 10 Twins prospect heading into the 2012 season. That didn’t stop the University of Southern Mississippi product from not only making it to the big leagues but to cementing himself as one of the club’s better players of the past decade.
After an inauspicious debut in 2012, Dozier claimed the everyday second base job at Target Field in 2013 and steadily improved his output at the plate over the next several years. In a brief but excellent peak from 2013-17, Dozier was one of the game’s best all-around second basemen, hitting at a .252/.333/.465 clip with 145 home runs, 81 stolen bases and solid defense. Along the way, he won a Gold Glove, made an All-Star team and took home MVP votes in three different seasons. Dozier was worth about 22 wins above replacement in that five-year stretch according to both the Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs versions of the metric.
Unfortunately for both the Twins and for Dozier, he sustained a knee injury early in the 2018 campaign that severely hampered him at the plate. He was traded to the Dodgers that summer and struggled badly down the stretch — hardly the platform any player would want for his first trip to free agency.
Dozier landed a one-year, $9MM deal with the Nationals that winter and served as the club’s primary second baseman for most of the year. In many ways, Dozier enjoyed a rebound campaign, posting a .238/.340/.430 output with 20 homers and 20 doubles alike. His playing time faded late in the year, however, as hot-hitting trade acquisition Asdrubal Cabrera saw more and more of the playing time at second base. Dozier kept his spot on the Nationals’ postseason roster and was hailed as a vital presence in the clubhouse, but he tallied just seven plate appearances during the club’s World Series run.
Dozier signed a minor league deal with the Padres prior to the 2020 season before requesting his release and turning up for a brief seven-game stint with the Mets. That proved to be the final act of Dozier’s career.
All in all, Dozier will head into retirement as a career .244/.325/.441 hitter with 192 home runs, 231 doubles, 21 triples, 105 steals, 664 runs scored and 581 runs driven in. He made an All-Star team, won a Gold Glove, and in his final full season took home a World Series ring for his role in the Nationals’ improbable Cinderella run. Dozier cleared $30MM in salary during a career that Baseball-Reference pegged at 22.7 WAR and FanGraphs valued at 23.7 WAR. Best wishes to Dozier on the next chapter.
Red Sox Claim John Schreiber, Place Chris Sale On 60-Day IL
The Red Sox announced this afternoon that they’ve claimed righty John Schreiber off waivers from the Tigers and placed left-hander Chris Sale on the 60-day injured list to open a 40-man roster spot. The Sale move shouldn’t come as a shock, given that he underwent Tommy John surgery on March 30 last year. It was reported last month that his rehab was expected to come near the back end of the typical 12-15 month recovery time. He’ll likely be an option for the Sox sometime early this summer.
Schreiber, 27 next month, has pitched 28 2/3 innings with Detroit over the past two seasons but has not fared well, logging a 6.28 ERA in that time. Other metrics are more bullish on the former 15th-round pick, however, thanks largely to an above-average 25.6 percent strikeout rate and a very manageable 6.2 percent walk rate. The sidearm-slinging Schreiber has a career 1.99 ERA in four minor league seasons, including a 2.28 mark in 59 1/3 innings at Triple-A.
Schreiber doesn’t throw particularly hard, as is common with sidearmers, but he’s been a thorn in the side of hitters throughout his minor league tenure — righties in particular. Right-handed opponents posted a laughable .192/.270/.311 slash against him in 2019. Beyond that, Schreiber has multiple minor league option years remaining, giving the Red Sox both depth and flexibility with their bullpen should they choose to keep him on the 40-man roster.
J.T. Realmuto Suffers Fractured Thumb
The Phillies kicked off Spring Training with some brutal news for fans. Star catcher J.T. Realmuto recently sustained a small fracture in his right thumb, manager Joe Girardi announced to reporters (Twitter link via MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki). The injury occurred six days ago when catching a bullpen session, tweets Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia.
Realmuto’s thumb will be immobilized for the next two weeks, and while the Phils are hopeful he’ll be ready for Opening Day, there’s no guarantee that’ll be the case. It’s certainly not the way the team or Realmuto hoped to kick off his newly inked five-year, $115.5MM contract.
Realmuto will be reevaluated after that immobilization period, at which point the club will have a better timeline for his return to games. If Realmuto is forced onto the injured list to begin the season, the Phillies would likely turn to Andrew Knapp as the primary catcher in his absence. Rafael Marchan could get a look as the backup role in that scenario, given that he’s already on the 40-man roster. If not Marchan, one of Jeff Mathis or Christian Bethancourt could get the nod. Both would need to be added to the 40-man roster, however, as they’re in Spring Training as non-roster invitees at the moment.
Reds Sign Tyler Naquin To Minor League Deal
The Reds announced Thursday that they’ve signed outfielder Tyler Naquin to a minor league deal and invited him to Major League Spring Training. The Excel Sports client and former first-round pick his spent his entire career to date with the Indians.
Naquin, 29, hit the IL early in the 2020 season due to a broken big toe in his right foot. He returned in mid-August and scuffled through one of the worst stretches of his career at the plate, batting just .218/.248/.383 with four homers and a bloated 28.4 percent strikeout rate in 141 trips to the dish. Whether Naquin simply never found his timing at the plate, had difficulty maximizing the use of his lower half due to the injury or both, the struggles resulted in him being non-tendered after the season.
Naquin has had his share of productive stints in the big leagues, including both his rookie campaign in 2016 and a solid showing in 2019. A left-handed hitter, he’s always struggled against left-handed pitching but has handled righties at a solid .281/.329/.454 clip — good for a 105 wRC+ (or production that is five percent better than league average, when weighted for park and league). A healthy Naquin posted strong defensive marks in the outfield corners in 2018-19 as well, though he rated quite poorly as a center fielder during his rookie year.
In Cincinnati, Naquin adds an experienced option to an already muddied mix. Nick Castellanos, Nick Senzel, Jesse Winker and Shogo Akiyama are the favorites for playing time, but the club also has Aristides Aquino, Mark Payton and Scott Heineman on the big league roster, plus similar non-roster invitees in Nicky Delmonico and Dwight Smith Jr.
Indians To Re-Sign Oliver Perez
The Indians and veteran left-handed reliever Oliver Perez have agreed to a new deal, reports MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (via Twitter). It’s a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training, tweets Tom Withers of the Associated Press. The 39-year-old Perez has spent the past three seasons in Cleveland. Perez is represented by the Boras Corporation.
Perez has had something of a late-30s renaissance in Cleveland, pitching to a combined 2.67 ERA and 3.22 SIERA in 91 innings since landing with the Indians back in 2018. His strikeout and walk rates trended in the wrong direction during last year’s shortened slate of games — likely a function of facing more right-handed batters than left-handed batters in a season for the first time since 2014. The three-batter minimum rule for relievers is a detriment to specialist relievers like Perez, but he held his own against righties, who managed only a tame .229/.341/.286 batting line in 41 plate appearances against him.
The Cleveland bullpen is clearly lacking in stability, though fireballer James Karinchak looked every bit the part of a dominant closer in 2020. He’ll be set up by steady Nick Wittgren and the talented but still inexperienced Emmanuel Clase. Righty Adam Plutko figures to give the team some long relief and spot-start innings, and Cleveland has also brought Blake Parker, Heath Hembree and Bryan Shaw into the fold on minor league deals similar to their pact with Perez.
Cubs Designate Sergio Alcantara For Assignment
The Cubs announced this morning that infielder Sergio Alcantara has been designated for assignment. He’d been claimed off waivers from the Tigers earlier in the month, but his roster spot will now go to righty Brandon Workman, whose previously reported one-year deal is now official.
The 24-year-old Alcantara made his MLB debut with Detroit in 2020 and had three hits, including a homer, in 23 plate appearances. The long ball was surprising, as Alcantara has shown virtually no power in seven minor league seasons (nine home runs in 2611 plate appearances).
Lack of pop notwithstanding, Alcantara is regarded as a slick-fielding option at shortstop and can handle second and third base as well. He’s yet to play in Triple-A, thanks to the lack of a minor league season in 2020, but is a .261/.340/.317 hitter in parts of two Double-A campaigns.
The Cubs now have a week to trade Alcantara, attempt to pass him through outright waivers or release him. Alcantara is out of minor league options, so any team that claims him will either need to carry him on its Opening Day roster as a glove-first utility option or again designate him for assignment.
Padres Sign Mark Melancon
Feb. 18: The Padres have announced the signing. Mike Clevinger was placed on the 60-day injured list to open a spot on the 40-man roster. Clevinger, of course, is expected to miss the 2021 season following Tommy John surgery.
Feb. 17: Melancon will be guaranteed $3MM on the deal, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. He’ll earn a $2MM salary in 2021, and there’s a $1MM buyout on a a mutual option for the 2022 season, Heyman adds. The contract allows Melancon to earn another $2MM via incentives.
Feb. 12: The Padres have agreed to a deal with free-agent reliever Mark Melancon, reports Dennis Lin of The Athletic (Twitter link). The deal with Melancon, an ISE Baseball client, will become official once he’s passed a physical.
Melancon, 36 next month, adds a former All-Star closer to an already deep Friars bullpen. He’ll give skipper Jayce Tingler another option for ninth-inning work, joining Drew Pomeranz and Emilio Pagan as closer candidates in San Diego. Based on his recent work, Melancon could well jump to the front of the line as the favorite for saves.
Melancon just finished up the final season of a four-year, $62MM contract that briefly stood as the all-time record for a reliever. (Both Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen topped that mark within weeks of Melancon signing.) The deal didn’t exactly pay dividends for the Giants, as Melancon battled injuries in both 2017 and 2018, but he bounced back with a strong showing in 2019 and was quite strong over the past season-plus following a trade to the Braves.
Melancon pitched 43 2/3 innings with Atlanta, racking up 22 saves while posting strong strikeout and walk percentages (26.3 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively). He’s also one of the game’s leading ground-ball pitchers, evidenced by a whopping 61.4 percent mark over the past two years.
Despite the success in Atlanta, there are some red flags surrounding Melancon. In addition to the fact that he’ll pitch all of 2021 at age 36, last year’s 91.7 mph average fastball represented the second-lowest mark of his career while his 8.7 percent swinging-strike rate was a career-low. He still excelled at inducing weak contact and ought to benefit from a generally strong defensive infield defense, though.
The Friars already had not only a crowded but also relatively immobile bullpen (from a roster flexibility standpoint). None of Pomeranz, Austin Adams, Pierce Johnson, Dan Altavilla, Craig Stammen or Javy Guerra can be optioned to the minors. Pagan has options but surely isn’t in danger of being sent down, and Tim Hill (who also has options) is one of the team’s three lefties. It could be tough for the Padres to continue carrying the out-of-options Guerra, a converted shortstop who has yet to find much success in Triple-A or the Majors, but they may not want to give up on him considering his heater averages better than 98 mph.
Those, of course, are the types of decisions that playoff-caliber clubs are forced to make when adding improvements, and the Padres have solidified themselves as just that. After making the postseason for the first time under newly promoted president of baseball operations A.J. Preller in 2020, the Padres have added the likes of Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Joe Musgrove and KBO superstar Ha-Seong Kim this winter while also re-signing Jurickson Profar. Melancon is the latest, and perhaps the final, piece of an active offseason that has deepened an already-talented team which looks increasingly capable of giving the World Champion Dodgers a run for their money in the NL West.
Rays To Re-Sign Oliver Drake
7:22pm: Drake will earn $775K in the deal, Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets. The contract includes a roster bonus of $325K if Drake hangs onto a spot for fifty days.
7:43am: The Rays have agreed to a Major League deal with right-hander Oliver Drake, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (via Twitter). The 34-year-old had a very strong showing with Tampa Bay in 2019 but battled forearm and biceps issues in 2020 and was ultimately removed from the 40-man roster during the postseason in order to make room for an ALDS replacement. He elected free agency after clearing waivers. He’s still recovering from the effects of that injury, it seems, as Topkin adds that Drake is expected to be ready to pitch around midseason.
Drake’s 2020 season was a rough one, as he was tagged for eight runs (seven earned) on seven hits and six walks with seven strikeouts in 11 frames. The forearm strain clearly dogged him, however, as evidenced by his fastball velocity dropping more than two miles per hour in his limited slate of work. He first hit the injured list with biceps tendinitis in early August before landing back on the IL due to a flexor strain in October.
The 2019 season was another story entirely for Drake. A year after riding the DFA carousel like none other and appearing for a record five teams in one season, Drake cemented himself in the Rays’ bullpen with a very strong showing. Through 56 innings, Drake worked to a 3.21 ERA and near-identical 3.18 SIERA while striking out 32 percent of opponents against a tidy 8.7 percent walk rate. Drake also induced grounders at a 52.3 percent clip and was, in general, something of a Statcast darling that year. He ranked in the 83rd percentile or better in each of the following categories: whiff percentage, overall strikeout percentage, expected ERA, expected batting average against, expected slugging percentage against and expected wOBA.
Whether he can return to those heights will be largely dependent on his health, but it makes good sense for the Rays to bring him back on an affordable deal to see if he can do just that. And by waiting until pitchers and catchers report to make the move, Tampa Bay can effectively stash Drake on the 60-day injured list from the jump. Had they signed him earlier in the offseason, they’d have had to boot someone else from the 40-man roster and carry him on the 40-man until camp opened and the 60-day IL was made available. Should Drake return to form, he’d be controllable through the 2022 season via arbitration.
Mets Showing Interest In Tajiuan Walker
The Mets have circled back around to free-agent right-hander Taijuan Walker and engaged his camp in “extensive” discussions, SNY’s Andy Martino reports. Walker is the club’s top target over righty Jake Odorizzi at the moment, per the report. Metsmerized’s Michael Mayer connected the two sides this week as well, adding that the righty has been looking for a multi-year deal worth $10MM+ annually.
Still just 28 years old, Walker is one of the youngest free agents on the market but has yet to find a multi-year offer to his liking. The former top prospect missed the vast majority of the 2018-19 seasons due to injuries — most notably Tommy John surgery — but returned to his original organization, the Mariners, on a one-year deal last offseason. Walker tossed 27 solid frames for the Mariners before being traded to the Blue Jays and continuing to throw well. On the whole, he turned in 53 1/3 innings with an appealing 2.70 ERA.
That said, the numbers beyond his ERA don’t look quite as rosy. Walker benefited from a .243 average on balls in play and a slightly elevated 78.5 percent strand rate. His 22.2 percent strikeout rate was a it worse than league average, as was his 39.1 percent ground-ball rate. The righty’s 93.5 mph average heater was down from its 95.1 mph peak, and his swinging-strike rate was among the lowest in the league (13th percentile, per Statcast). Fielding-independent marks like SIERA (4.60) and Statcast’s xERA (4.87) aren’t as bullish on Walker as his bottom-line ERA.
Coupled with some durability concerns stemming from his 2018-19 absence, it’s understandable that clubs might not be sold on giving Walker a lucrative multi-year deal based on 11 starts (during which he averaged fewer than five frames per outing). To Walker’s credit, he was at one point one of the game’s premier pitching prospects and is younger than virtually all of his peers on the open market, thus arguably giving him more upside than said peers.
The Mets wouldn’t need Walker to be much more than a fourth starter for them, though, and we’ve seen fourth starters get paid eight-figure salaries on multi-year deals frequently in the past. New York currently has a solid but top-heavy rotation mix at present, with two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom again set to lead the charge. He’ll be followed by Carlos Carrasco and Marcus Stroman, with former first-rounder David Peterson currently in line for the fourth starter’s gig after an impressive rookie campaign.
Beyond that quartet, the Mets have trade acquisitions Joey Lucchesi, Jordan Yamamoto and Sean Reid-Foley on the 40-man roster, as well as offseason signee Sam McWilliams. Their depth is unequivocally better than in 2020 — the Mets also have Mike Montgomery and Jerad Eickhoff in camp on non-roster deals — but there’s still some uncertainty after the top three names. Walker comes with his own question marks, but he’s also had more success at the MLB level than any of the options the Mets currently have for the back of the rotation. In 581 2/3 innings dating back to 2013, Walker has a 3.84 ERA.
From a financial vantage point, adding Walker surely wouldn’t put the Mets in any danger of surpassing the luxury threshold. They’re currently at $187.7MM in luxury obligations at the moment, per Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez, so any deal with Walker would likely leave them eight figures of breathing room with regard to the tax barrier.
Phillies Sign Brad Miller
12:22pm: Miller is guaranteed $3.5MM on the deal, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman.
11:45am: The Phillies announced Wednesday that they’ve signed utilityman Brad Miller to a one-year, Major League contract. Right-hander Seranthony Dominguez, who is recovering from Tommy John surgery, has been transferred to the 60-day injured list to create space on the 40-man roster. MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reported last week that the Phillies and Miller, an ISE Baseball client, were in talks on a one-year deal in the $3MM range.
Miller, who is returning to the Phils after a year with the Cardinals, makes for a sensible upgrade for a thin bench. With Didi Gregorius back in the fold and Jean Segura expected to serve as the everyday option at second base, the 31-year-old Miller will join versatile Scott Kingery in backing up at a number of positions around the diamond. He probably won’t get much reserve time at shortstop and won’t see action in center — both spots Kingery can handle — but Miller could see time at second base, first base, third base and in the outfield corners.
Prior to re-signing Miller, the Phillies would’ve lacked infield depth on days that Kingery was roaming the outfield. Philadelphia acquired infield prospect C.J. Chatham — a former Dave Dombrowski draftee — from the Red Sox earlier this winter but have little on the 40-man roster behind him. Ronald Torreyes is in Spring Training as a non-roster invitee, but a couple of injuries could have left the Phillies reliant on a thin farm system that lacks MLB-ready infield talent.
Miller isn’t the plus defender that Kingery is, but he’s been a much better hitter of late and has a longer track record at the MLB level. In 171 plate appearances with the Cardinals in 2020, Miller slashed .232/.357/.451, and over the past three years combined he’s a .247/.329/.468 batter with 27 homers, 27 doubles and four triples. He’s strikeout-prone (29.1 percent in that time), which limits his batting average, but Miller draws plenty of walks (10.4 percent) and makes frequent hard contact.
The Cardinals used Miller as a designated hitter more often than anything else in 2020, although he played 15 games at third base and also appeared at shortstop and second base. He lined up most frequently in left field and at third base with the Phillies in 2019, but Miller has more than 1200 at second base and more than 600 at first base as well. He’s also logged 3000-plus innings at shortstop, so while he’s only their third- or fourth-best defensive option there, he can certainly handle the position in a pinch.
The Phillies, by all indications, are angling to stay beneath the $210MM luxury tax threshold, though adding Miller on a reasonable deal doesn’t really jeopardize that goal. Assuming that roughly $3MM price point proves correct, the Miller signing will push them to just under $202MM in luxury obligations, per Jason Martinez of Roster Resource.
That leaves the club with a bit of room for some in-season maneuvering, although if either of Brandon Kintzler or Tony Watson makes the club’s roster, that figure will climb further north. Both veteran relievers agreed to minor league deals that contain $3MM base salaries upon making the MLB roster. The Phillies formally announced Watson’s deal, which was reported earlier this morning, alongside their announcement of the Miller deal.