Nationals To Sign Fernando Abad
The Nationals are in agreement with lefty reliever Fernando Abad on a minor league contract, tweets Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The Octagon client will presumably be in Major League camp once Spring Training opens.
Abad, who turned 34 yesterday, appeared in 21 games with the Giants in 2019, totaling 13 innings of 4.15 ERA ball with nine strikeouts against three walks. He was terrific in the exorbitantly hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League as well, logging a 3.07 ERA with 10.0 K/9, 0.8 BB/9, 0.61 HR/9 and a 44.4 percent ground-ball rate in 44 innings of work there.
This will be the second tour of duty with the Nats for Abad, who tossed 37 2/3 innings of 3.35 ERA ball over the life of 39 games for Washington back in 2013. Abad has bounced all over the league for the better part of a decade, pitching with the Astros, Nationals, Athletics, Twins, Red Sox and Giants in a career that began with Houston in 2010. He didn’t pitch in affiliated ball in 2018 thanks largely to an 80-game PED suspension.
While he’s never really settled in as a steadying presence in any one club’s bullpen, he’s generally been an effective reliever; Abad has a career 3.67 ERA in 330 2/3 innings as a big leaguer — including a 3.18 ERA (3.97 FIP) with 7.9 K/9 against 3.0 BB/9 dating back to the aforementioned 2013 season. He’s held left-handed opponents to a lifetime .234/.238/.378 batting line, while right-handers have handled him a bit better with a .257/.338/.412 slash to show for their efforts.
Phillies, Mikie Mahtook Agree To Minor League Deal
The Phillies have agreed to a minor league contract with outfielder Mikie Mahtook, tweets USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. The CAA client will be in Major League Spring Training and would earn an $850K base salary upon making the big league roster.
Mahtook, 30, showed well through 115 plate appearances as a Rays rookie in 2015 and posted a solid season with the Tigers in 2017 (.276/.330/.457 in 379 plate appearances). Outside of those two efforts, however, he hasn’t performed well in parts of five seasons in the Majors. The former first-rounder is a career .235/.292/.405 hitter with a 6.1 percent walk rate and a 26.4 percent strikeout rate through 965 trips to the plate at the game’s top level.
Mahtook will give the Phils an experienced right-handed-hitting option at all three outfield positions — one who does have a more solid .269/.342/.441 career line in parts of five Triple-A seasons (1818 plate appearances). The outfield in Philadelphia will assuredly feature Bryce Harper and Andrew McCutchen in the corners, but center field lacks clarity after Odubel Herrera was suspended for half the season under MLB’s domestic violence policy. Alternative in-house options include Adam Haseley, Scott Kingery (if he’s not deployed at third base) and Roman Quinn.
White Sox To Sign Ross Detwiler
The White Sox have agreed to a minor league contract with veteran left-hander Ross Detwiler, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter link). He’ll return to the ChiSox after appearing in 18 games for them during the 2019 campaign.
Detwiler, 33, was once the No. 6 overall pick in the draft and, earlier in his career, was a fine back-end starter for some competitive Nationals clubs. His 2012 season included 164 1/3 innings of 3.40 ERA ball, and his overall body of work between the rotation and bullpen from 2010-14 was sound: 394 1/3 innings with a 3.61 ERA, 4.14 FIP, 5.5 K/9 and 2.8 BB/9.
Things have gone south for Detwiler since, however. He’s floundered through brief stints with Texas, Cleveland, Atlanta, Seattle and the White Sox, pitching to a combined 6.60 ERA in 182 2/3 innings of work since being traded away from the Nationals prior to the 2015 campaign. Detwiler did pitch well in eight Triple-A starts for the White Sox in 2019 and has had successful indie ball stints in 2018-19, but it’s been a half decade since his last solid run in the Majors. He’ll give the Sox some depth in both the rotation and in the bullpen for the upcoming season, but the Chicago front office surely remains in pursuit of more impactful additions.
Marlins Sign Ryan Lavarnway, Josh A. Smith
The Marlins announced a series of nine minor league signings on Wednesday, each of which contains an invitation to Major League Spring Training. In addition to confirming their previously reported signing of former All-Star Matt Kemp (more on that here), the Miami organization will bring two former big leaguers to camp: catcher Ryan Lavarnway and right-hander Josh A. Smith. Rounding out the list of non-roster invitees are catchers Brian Navarreto, Santiago Chavez and BJ Lopez; infielders Gosuke Katoh and Christian Lopes; and right-hander Aaron Northcraft.
Lavarnway, 32, has appeared in the Majors in eight of the past nine seasons — 2016 being the lone exception — but never tallied more than 166 plate appearances in a single MLB campaign. He’s a career .211/.270/.343 hitter in 445 trips to the plate at the big league level, and he owns a lifetime .272/.364/.426 batting line in 2055 Triple-A plate appearances spread across nine seasons. Lavarnway boasts a 31 percent caught-stealing rate in Triple-A but has struggled more in the Majors (20 percent).
Lavarnway has typically hovered around average in terms of pitch-framing in the upper minors (with the 2018 season being a notable outlier that saw him rate rather poorly). Miami has Jorge Alfaro and Chad Wallach on the 40-man roster but was thin at catcher beyond that, so the quartet of Lavarnway, Navarreto, Chavez and Lopez will add an influx of depth at the position.
Smith, also 32, pitched in 31 innings for the Red Sox in 2019 and has compiled 158 1/3 frames in the Majors between the Reds, A’s and Red Sox dating back to 2015. He has a career 5.40 ERA and a near-identical 5.37 FIP with averages of 7.5 K/9, 4.0 BB/9 and 1.65 HR/9 to go along with a 40.6 percent ground-ball rate.
The overall profile on Smith isn’t particularly appealing at first glance, but his curveball may have caught the attention of the Marlins. Smith ramped up the usage of his hook to a career-high 23.1 percent in 2019 and logged a career-high 12.1 percent overall swinging-strike rate (15.3 percent on the curve). Statcast pegged the spin rate on Smith’s curve in the 95th percentile among MLB hurlers, so perhaps the Marlins will look to more aggressively utilize that offering in hopes of coaxing better results out of the journeyman 32-year-old.
Cardinals Designate Adolis Garcia For Assignment
The Cardinals announced Wednesday that they’ve designated outfielder Adolis Garcia for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to lefty Kwang-Hyun Kim, whose two-year contract with the club is now official.
Garcia, 27 in March, appeared in 21 games with the Cards in 2018 but went just 2-for-17 in a tiny sample of work at the plate. Garcia signed for a $2.5MM bonus with the Cards in 2017 after leaving his native Cuba and was ranked ninth among St. Louis farmhands by Baseball America that winter. However, his blend of raw power, speed and arm strength has yet to generate the offensive results the Cardinals had hoped in the upper minors.
This past season, Garcia spent the entire year with Triple-A Memphis, where he batted .253/.301/.517 with 32 home runs, 22 doubles, six triples and 14 steals. While the counting numbers may look solid, the juiced ball in Triple-A led to a leaguewide home run spike that makes Garcia’s power output worth raising an eyebrow toward. He hit 10 fewer home runs in 100 fewer plate appearances a year prior. Beyond that, Garcia was highly inefficient in terms of stealing bases (14-for-24), and he struck out in 30.1 percent of his plate appearances while walking at a lowly 4.2 percent clip.
It seems clear that there’s some raw and perhaps yet-untapped ability in Garcia, who does have minor league options remaining. As such, he could hold appeal to another club in a minor trade or via a waiver claim if he reaches that point. The Cardinals have a week to deal Garcia or run him through waivers in hopes that he’ll clear and be able to continue on as a depth piece in the minors.
Even with Garcia subtracted from the outfield mix, the Cardinals still have a deep reservoir of options from which to draw — although much of the group is largely untested in the Majors. Dexter Fowler, Harrison Bader, Tyler O’Neill and Randy Arozarena are all options in 2020, as are more versatile infielder/outfielder types Yairo Munoz and Tommy Edman. The Cards also have a pair of well-regarded prospects on the cusp of readiness for a prolonged look: Lane Thomas and Dylan Carlson.
That said, adding a veteran to supplement that unproven mix still seems plausible. The Cardinals stand to potentially lose Marcell Ozuna to free agency, and their aggression in replacing him will speak volumes about the level of confidence they have in that internal slate of options.
Nationals, Daniel Hudson Remain Apart On Contract Length
3:30pm: It seems the Nats are potentially willing to offer more than one season, Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post reports via Twitter. But with Hudson already sitting on multi-year interest from other clubs, it’s not clear how far the D.C. organization will chase the market.
12:18pm: The Nationals are still hoping to bring right-hander Daniel Hudson back for the 2020 season, but the two sides remain apart on the length of the contract, reports Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post (Twitter links). Hudson’s reps at Jet Sports are seeking a multi-year deal after the 32-year-old flamethrower stabilized the Nats’ bullpen and eventually closed out the World Series, but the team has been more focused on a one-year arrangement.
Hudson, who’ll turn 33 in March, was a somewhat quiet deadline pickup for the Nationals but was thrust into the closer’s spotlightwhen Sean Doolittle went down with an injury. Hudson thrived as he was placed into higher-leverage situations, ultimately pitching to a 1.44 ERA with a 23-to-4 K/BB ratio (two intentional walks) in 25 regular-season frames to finish out the year. He tacked on another 9 2/3 innings in the postseason, yielding four runs with a 10-to-4 K/BB ratio (with almost all of the damage against him coming in one three-run outing). Along the way, he averaged 96.4 mph on his fastball.
A multi-year deal for Hudson doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask — particularly given the market for free-agent relievers to this point. Six relievers — Drew Pomeranz, Will Smith, Chris Martin, Joe Smith, Jake Diekman and Joely Rodriguez — have already inked multi-year contracts this winter, and Hudson is among the most obvious multi-year candidates that has yet to sign. MLBTR predicted a two-year, $12MM pact for Hudson to return to the Nationals at the outset of free agency.
Dougherty suggests that the Nationals’ general preference is to keep relievers over 30 to one-year contracts, though the Nats haven’t exactly demonstrated a strict adherence to that apparent preference in recent years. Washington acquired Doolittle and Ryan Madson in July 2017 when both were over 30 and had an additional year remaining on their contract, for instance, and in the past four years they’ve handed out multi-year free-agent deals to right-handers Brandon Kintzler (two years, $10MM) and Shawn Kelley (three years, $15MM). Hudson’s injury history, of course, has to be taken into consideration when weighing a multi-year deal. The right-hander already has a pair of Tommy John surgeries on his record (although that was also true of Kelley when he signed).
Twins To Hire Mike Bell As Bench Coach
The Twins will hire Diamondbacks farm director/vice president of player development Mike Bell as their new bench coach, per Ken Rosenthal, Zach Buchanan and Eno Sarris of The Athletic (Twitter link). He’ll be stepping into the void left by Derek Shelton when he was hired as manager of the Pirates. Bell, the younger brother of Reds manager David Bell, was a managerial candidate himself this winter. He interviewed with the Mets and was also reportedly considered for the Pirates gig that eventually went to Shelton.
The 44-year-old also interviewed with both the Rangers and the Orioles last offseason, so it stands to reason that the Twins could be making a hire who’ll draw managerial interest again in the near future. The 2019 season was his third as the Diamondbacks’ farm director, but Bell previously served as the team’s director of player development and spent another three years as a minor league manager. In all, he’s been with the D-backs as a minor league skipper or a front office executive for a total of 13 years.
A former third baseman, Bell was a first-round pick of the Rangers back in 1993 and is the son of five-time MLB All-Star Buddy Bell, who also managed in parts of nine MLB seasons with the Tigers, Rockies and Royals.
Bell isn’t the only notable hire for the Twins in recent days, however. Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com tweets that Minnesota has hired UC Santa Barbara hitting coach Donegal Fergus as their new minor league hitting coordinator. The Twins haven’t been shy about dipping into the college coaching ranks to fill out key positions in their organization recently, with second-year pitching coach Wes Johnson (formerly the pitching coach at Arkansas) standing out as the most notable hire to date.
Royals Sign Braden Shipley
The Royals announced Tuesday that they’ve signed right-hander Braden Shipley to a minor league contract. The former first-rounder and top prospect will presumably be in Major League Spring Training as a non-roster invitee. MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan tweets that he’ll make $600K if he cracks the MLB roster.
Now 28 years old, Shipley was the 15th overall pick by the D-backs in the 2013 draft and ranked among baseball’s 100 best prospects in each of his first three pro seasons, per Baseball America, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus. But after strong showings up through the Double-A level, Shipley’s strikeout rate began to deteriorate while his walks increased. He received big league looks from the Diamondbacks each season from 2016-18 but scuffled in each showing, ultimately compiling a 5.49 ERA with 5.8 K/9, 4.1 BB/9, 1.71 HR/9 and a 42.9 percent ground-ball rate through an even 100 innings in the big leagues.
Shipley has worked both as a starter and a reliever during his pro career, showing greater velocity and swinging-strike tendencies when working out of the bullpen. He’ll give the Kansas City organization some depth in either role and will likely head to Triple-A Omaha to begin the season if he doesn’t crack the roster.
AL East Notes: Jays’ Rotation, Orioles, Rays
While the Blue Jays weren’t known to be in pursuit of either Madison Bumgarner or Corey Kluber, Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet explores how Bumgarner’s deal with Arizona and Kluber’s trade to Texas nevertheless impact Toronto’s search for rotation help. The Dodgers and Angels missed out on both pitchers, leaving both Southern California clubs with an even shorter supply of potential upgrades to ponder. Given the Jays’ interest in Hyun-Jin Ryu, that’s not great news, as both L.A. clubs could now look more aggressively at Ryu. (The same could also be true of the Twins, who also pursued Bumgarner to no avail.) The Blue Jays entered the winter determined to improve their rotation, and while the additions of Tanner Roark and Chase Anderson undeniably help, options that align with GM Ross Atkins’ stated desire for “significant” upgrades are beginning to dwindle.
More from the division…
- Orioles skipper Brandon Hyde tells Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com that catcher Pedro Severino is going to “get a lot of innings behind home plate and get a lot of at-bats next year.” Hyde stopped short of firmly declaring Severino the starter over former top prospect Chance Sisco and defensive-minded Austin Wynns, but the 26-year-old Severino was clearly Baltimore’s best option in 2019, when he slashed .249/.321/.420 in 341 plate appearances. Unlike Sisco and Wynns, he’s also out of minor league options, which should afford him a lengthier leash in the event of some early struggles. Kubatko notes that the O’s are still in the market for some catching depth, although one would imagine that with three backstops already on the 40-man roster, that could simply be a minor league pact for a veteran receiver.
- After adding Yoshitomo Tsutsugo on a two-year deal, the Rays are still considering countryman Shogo Akiyama as a potential addition, writes Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Akiyama would add another center field option to the fold and likely bring some on-base skills to the table, although he’s also a left-handed hitter and Topkin spends some time focusing on the Rays’ desire to add a right-handed bat to the roster as well. Specifically, the Rays hope to add a right-handed hitter with some defensive versatility — hence the earlier interest in Howie Kendrick — but such options are rather rare in this winter’s free-agent market. Of course, plenty of options could manifest on the trade market; speculatively speaking, the Rays seem like a fine fit for switch-hitting Tigers super utilityman Niko Goodrum.
Rays Sign Yoshitomo Tsutsugo
DECEMBER 16: Tampa Bay has announced the signing. Interestingly, it characterizes him as a third baseman and outfielder, which obviously suggests that Tsutsugo will be in the mix at the hot corner.
DECEMBER 13: The Rays are finalizing a two-year contract with Japanese slugger Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports (via Twitter). The contract being discussed would guarantee the first baseman/outfielder about $12MM total, per Topkin. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman indicates that a deal has been agreed upon (Twitter links).
Because he was posted by the Yokohama DeNA BayStars and is not a pure free agent, Tsutsugo would require the Rays to pay a posting/release fee to his former team. Under the current iteration of that system, a fee equal to 20 percent of a player’s first $25MM in guarantees is owed to his former team. That’d be $2.4MM on a $12MM contract, meaning a deal of this type for Tsutsugo would cost the Rays a total of about $14.4MM.
Tsutsugo, who turned 28 on Nov. 26, has been one of Japan’s most prominent sluggers for the past four seasons, hitting a combined .293/.402/.574 with 139 home runs, 116 doubles, five triples, a 15.1 percent walk rate and a 20.4 percent strikeout rate. His best season came back in 2016, when he launched a career-high 44 home runs and slashed .322/.430/.680. It’s worth noting that Tsutsugo’s 2019 season was his weakest of the past four (.272/.388/.511, 29 home runs) and saw his strikeout rate climb to 25.3 percent.
Listed at 6’0″ and 209 pounds, the left-handed-hitting Tsutsugo has played some third base in his career but primarily has been deployed as a left fielder and first baseman. He’ll presumably become an option at first base and DH with Tampa Bay, although the Rays’ fluid rotation of defensive players could afford the slugger some reps in the corners as well, particularly if the team wants to give newly acquired Hunter Renfroe a day off against a tough right-handed opponent. Renfroe hit just .208/.274/.459 against righties in 2019. On the surface, the signing of Tsutsugo appears to be bad news for first base prospect Nate Lowe, who also hits from the left side of the dish but never got a full look in 2019 despite huge numbers in Triple-A and a solid showing in 169 MLB plate appearances.
There’s little doubting Tsutsugo’s power, but his glovework is a much more considerable question. FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen wrote a bit more than a month ago that Tsutsugo is a potential everyday player but one with “no margin for error because of defensive limitations” even at first base. Sports Info Solutions’ Will Hoefer wrote in September that Tsutsugo has a plus throwing arm and could be “hidden” in an outfield corner with some proper positioning work. Those in the industry who’ve spoken to MLBTR about Tsutsugo offered similar concerns about his defensive home but praised his power as a legitimate tool.
Tsutsugo will now be added to an ever-changing cast of characters in a Tampa Bay lineup that has added Renfroe but subtracted Tommy Pham (Renfroe trade), Avisail Garcia (free agency) and Jesus Aguilar (waivers) to this point in the offseason. The signing of Tsutsugo could well put an end to any potential for a fit with free-agent slugger Edwin Encarnacion, who’d previously been a rumored target. Tsutsugo was also connected to the Tigers, Blue Jays, White Sox and Twins prior to today’s agreement with the Rays.
From a payroll vantage point, the deal should be a manageable one for the perennially low-spending Rays, who shed about $7.7MM in swapping out Pham for Renfroe and placing Aguilar on waivers. An even distribution of Tsutsugo’s $12MM guarantee would put the team’s Opening Day payroll at about $70.7MM (not including the posting fee), which would check in a bit south of last season’s $76MM Opening Day mark. The Rays have never opened the season with a payroll greater than 2014’s $77MM total.