2019 Non-Tender Candidates
At the start of the offseason, 277 players were on 40-man rosters and eligible for arbitration. That number has been pared back substantially as all 30 teams have worked to trim the fringes of their rosters. For those who remain, the non-tender deadline is this coming Monday at 8pm ET. By that point, teams must inform arbitration-eligible players whether they will receive a (non-guaranteed) contract for the 2020 season, or else become free agents. Once a player is tendered a contract, the two sides will have another roughly two months to work out salaries before arbitration hearings kick off in February. Non-tendered players immediately become free agents who can sign with another team for any amount.
As we do each year at MLBTR, we’re providing a list of players whose teams could potentially elect not to tender them a contract, thus sending them into the free-agent pool earlier than expected. It should be emphasized that we’re not indicating that each of these players is likely to be non-tendered (though that’s certainly the case with some of them). Typically, we list any player for which we can envision at least a 10-20 percent chance of a non-tender.
It should also be noted that some of these non-tender candidates will be traded in the next few days rather than simply cut loose. Some could also be claimed by another team on waivers. Orioles second baseman Jonathan Villar, for instance, is currently on outright waivers and may land with another team. Other borderline candidates may be presented with an offer that is notably lower than their projected salary and could accept the “take it or leave it” ultimatum rather than being non-tendered.
Onto the list, with salary projections (included in parentheses below) coming courtesy of MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz.
Position Players
Tim Beckham, INF, Mariners ($3MM — Beckham still has 32 games remaining on an 80-game PED suspension)
C.J. Cron, 1B, Twins ($7.7MM)
Charlie Culberson, INF/OF, Braves ($1.8MM)
Cheslor Cuthbert, 3B, Royals ($1.8MM)
Elias Diaz, C, Pirates ($1.4MM)
Wilmer Difo, INF, Nationals ($1.2MM)
Brandon Drury, INF/OF, Blue Jays ($2.5MM)
Maikel Franco, 3B, Phillies ($5.7MM)
Erik Gonzalez, INF, Pirates ($800K)
Cesar Hernandez, 2B, Phillies ($11.8MM)
Caleb Joseph, C, D-backs ($1.2MM)
Jake Lamb, 1B/3B, D-backs ($5MM)
Luke Maile, C, Blue Jays ($800K)
Sandy Leon, C, Red Sox ($2.8MM)
John Ryan Murphy, C, Braves ($1.2MM)
Jose Peraza, INF, Reds ($3.6MM)
Josh Phegley, C, Athletics ($2.2MM)
Chad Pinder, INF/OF, Athletics ($1.8MM)
Kevin Pillar, CF, Giants ($9.7MM)
Jurickson Profar, INF, Athletics ($5.8MM)
Joey Rickard, OF, Giants ($1.1MM)
Addison Russell, 2B/SS, Cubs ($5.1MM)
Tyler Saladino, 2B/SS, Brewers ($1MM)
Domingo Santana, OF/DH, Mariners ($4.4MM)
Travis Shaw, 3B/1B, Brewers ($4.7MM)
Steven Souza Jr., OF, D-backs ($4.125MM)
Tony Wolters, C, Rockies ($2MM)
Starters
Tyler Anderson, LHP, Giants ($2.625MM)
Kevin Gausman, RHP, Reds ($10.6MM)
Aaron Sanchez, RHP, Astros ($5.6MM — Sanchez is recovering from shoulder surgery that’ll sideline him into 2020)
Jose Urena, RHP, Marlins ($4MM)
Relievers
Scott Alexander, LHP, Dodgers ($1MM)
Adam Conley, LHP, Marlins ($1.6MM)
Chris Devenski, RHP, Astros ($2MM)
Yimi Garcia, RHP, Dodgers ($1.1MM)
Javy Guerra, RHP, Nationals ($1.3MM)
Koda Glover, RHP, Nationals ($700K)
Derek Law, RHP, Blue Jays ($1.3M)
Chaz Roe, RHP, Rays ($2.2MM)
Hunter Strickland, RHP, Nationals ($1.9MM)
Blake Treinen, RHP, Athletics ($7.8MM)
Diamondbacks Sign Stephen Vogt
Nov. 29: Vogt will be paid $2.5MM in 2020 and has a $500K buyout of a $3MM option for the 2021 campaign, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports. That option can trigger automatically depending on playing time, and the contract contains escalators (based on games started) that would boost Vogt’s salary in 2021.
Nov. 26: The Diamondbacks made a low-cost strike on the free-agent market, adding catcher Stephen Vogt on a one-year contract, the team announced Tuesday evening. The deal will reportedly promise Vogt a total of $3MM, and it also contains a vesting option for the 2021 season. Vogt is represented by All Bases Covered Sports Management.
Vogt, 35, feared his career could be over following a 2018 shoulder surgery with the Brewers, but he landed with the Giants on a minor league pact and proved himself with a quietly strong rebound season. In 280 plate appearances spread over the life of 99 games, the former All-Star hit .263/.314/.490 with 10 home runs.
Arizona’s need for a backstop isn’t necessarily acute, but Vogt’s left-handed bat will pair nicely with the up-and-coming Carson Kelly, who hits from the opposite side of the dish — and does so quite well (.356/.462/.667 versus lefties in 2019). Vogt will also give the 25-year-old Kelly another veteran mentor under whom to study, replacing fellow free agent Alex Avila, who remains unsigned but now appears destined to land elsewhere.
The D-backs also have veteran catcher Caleb Joseph on the 40-man roster as a third option, and given the fact that they’ve previously carried three catchers at a time even with a 25-man roster, it seems plausible that they’ll do so again now that rosters are set to expand to 26 players for the 2020 season. Alternatively, Vogt’s acquisition could also spell the end of Joseph’s time with the Arizona organization. He’s arbitration-eligible this winter and projected to receive a $1.2MM salary, which the club may feel too steep to pay a third catcher who falls behind both Kelly and Vogt on the depth chart.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the agreement (via Twitter). Joel Sherman of the New York Post (Twitter link) and Zach Buchanan of The Athletic (Twitter links) added details on the financial structure.
Justin Bour To Sign With NPB’s Hanshin Tigers
Free agent first baseman Justin Bour has reached an agreement with the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, Tigers GM Osamu Tanimoto tells the Japan Times. Bour had been outrighted by the Angels at season’s end and elected free agency.
The 31-year-old Bour signed a one-year, $2.5MM deal with the Halos last winter but turned in a career-worst .172/.259/.364 batting line in his short time with the organization. He continued to display above-average walk tendencies (10 percent in 2019; 11.2 percent career) and also showed above-average power (.192 ISO), but Bour’s 30.6 percent strikeout rate this past season was far and away the highest of his career. Ultimately, he played in just 52 games as an Angel and tallied 170 plate appearances.
Bour will head to Japan as a career .253/.337/.457 hitter with 92 home runs, 71 doubles and a pair of triples in 1950 Major League plate appearance — most of which came with the Marlins. He’s never handled left-handed pitching particularly well (.215/.302/.324), but he owns a stout .262/.345/.490 career batting line against right-handed pitching.
Orioles Reportedly Place Jonathan Villar On Waivers
The Orioles have placed infielder Jonathan Villar on outright waivers after being unable to find a trade partner for the fleet-footed switch-hitter, Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com reports (via Twitter). Villar’s projected $10.4MM arbitration salary apparently served as too substantial a roadblock to overcome when marketing him to other teams.
It’s an extreme cost-cutting measure for the tanking Orioles — one that frankly looks unnecessary. Even with Villar in the fold, the Orioles’ Opening Day payroll projects to come in south of $80MM, so it’s not as if there is (or should be) any real pressure to shed salary.
Beyond that is the simple fact that Villar has been a fine player in Baltimore — arguably the organization’s best in 2019. The 28-year-old batted .274/.339/.453 with 24 home runs, 33 doubles, five triples and a whopping 40 stolen bases (in 49 attempts) this past season. Defensive metrics soured on his work at second base but gave him passable marks at shortstop — and Villar does have a track record as a useful glove at second prior to the 2019 season.
Both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com valued Villar at four wins above replacement this past season. Clearly the Orioles aren’t the only team in the league that doesn’t value Villar at his current price point — hence the lack of trade interest — but there’s virtually no way off spinning this as a move that makes Baltimore a better team in 2020.
Even if the Orioles reinvest that roughly $10MM sum, there’s little reason that with their current level of financial commitment they couldn’t simply have kept Villar and spent an additional $10MM anyhow. And it’s unlikely that Villar’s eventual replacement will give them superior on-field results. It looks to be a move designed to lose more games next season, and it’s surely a tough blow for a fanbase that has had few quality performances to cheer over the past couple of seasons.
Villar will be available for any club to claim at this point, though the new team would be on the hook for the same projected salary in arbitration. If he goes unclaimed, he’ll surely opt for free agency, at which point he’ll be able to sign with any team for any amount. Given the lack of trade interest in Villar, it’s certainly possible that he will indeed pass through waivers, but he should draw plenty of interest on Major League deals — perhaps even a two-year pact at a lower annual rate. For the Orioles, meanwhile, the optics of letting him go for no return aren’t great, and the move will be tough to sell to the fans.
Rangers, Rob Refsnyder Agree To Minor League Deal
The Rangers have agreed to a minor league contract with infielder/outfielder Rob Refsnyder, Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com reports (via Twitter). He’s represented by PSI Sports Management.
Refsnyder, 29 in March, split the 2019 season between the Reds and D-backs organization but didn’t appear in a big league game. That marked the first time in five years that the versatile utilityman hadn’t appeared at the MLB level. Despite the lack of a big league call-up, Refsnyder was productive in the minors, batting a combined .312/.374/.492 with 10 homer, 22 doubles and a pair of triples across 88 games and 348 plate appearances.
At one point, Yankees fans had hope that Refsnyder could be a long-term piece at second base. Those days have long since passed, but Refsnyder has settled in as an up-and-down bench piece and an AL East veteran, logging big league time with both the Blue Jays and Rays in addition to his time with the Yankees. He’s a lifetime .218/.308/.302 hitter in 423 plate appearances as a Major Leaguer and has appeared at second base, first base, third base, left field and right field in the Majors.
The right-handed-hitting Refsnyder owns a career .296/.372/.436 line in parts of six Triple-A campaigns, making him a nice depth piece for Texas to have on hand. If the Rangers can strike gold with Refsnyder in the same manner they did with Danny Santana in 2019, he’d technically be controllable through the 2023 season.
Royals Release Jorge Bonifacio
Nov. 27: Bonifacio has cleared waivers and is now a free agent. Additionally, the team announced that catcher Nick Dini and right-handers Conner Greene and Arnaldo Hernandez, who were designated for assignment at the same time as Bonifacio, have cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Omaha.
Nov. 25: The Royals announced that they’ve requested unconditional release waivers on outfielder Jorge Bonifacio. He was designated for assignment last week.
Bonifacio, 26, was the team’s primary right fielder in 2017 and gave fans some cause for optimism, hitting .255/.320/.432 with 17 homers, 15 doubles and a triple in that rookie campaign. He’s since been tagged with an 80-game PED suspension, however, and has generally struggled to produce at the plate. Over his past 291 plate appearances in the Majors, Bonifacio hit .234/.317/.371.
Were he a proficient defender in the outfield, perhaps the Royals would’ve been more inclined to keep Bonifacio in the fold. However, he’s limited to the corners and has posted -6 Defensive Runs Saved and -7 Outs Above Average in his big league career to this point. He’s also out of minor league options, meaning he’d need to break camp with the team in Spring Training or else be designated for assignment then. The Royals opted not to wait to make that move, thus giving themselves more 40-man roster flexibility this winter.
If Bonifacio goes unclaimed, he’ll become a free agent in 48 hours.
Mariners Sign Patrick Wisdom To Major League Deal
The Mariners announced that they’ve signed infielder/outfielder Patrick Wisdom to a Major League contract. Seattle’s 40-man roster is ow up to 39 players.
Wisdom, 28, has minimal MLB experience, having appeared in 32 games for the Cardinals in 2018 and nine games for the Rangers in 2019. He’s a career .224/.306/.408 hitter in 86 MLB trips to the plate, but the former No. 52 overall draft pick (Cardinals, 2012) has a solid track record in Triple-A. Wisdom has played in parts of four Triple-A campaigns and posted a .252/.328/.478 batting line with 82 home runs in 1674 plate appearances.
Most of Wisdom’s career has been spent as a corner infielder, but he also appeared at all three outfield positions with the Rangers’ Triple-A club last season. He also has minor league options remaining, so the move to get him on the 40-man roster is likely more about adding some versatile depth with power upside — he hit 31 home runs in 107 Triple-A games in 2019 — than it is about penciling him in as a lock for the 2020 roster.
Cubs Claim C.D. Pelham
The Cubs announced that they’ve claimed left-hander C.D. Pelham off waivers from the Rangers. The move brings Chicago’s 40-man roster to a count of 38 players. Texas has also announced the move, adding that right-hander Taylor Guerrieri went unclaimed on waivers and has accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Nashville.
Pelham, 24, boasts a blistering fastball that averaged better than 96 mph in his 2018 MLB debut, but the former 33rd-round pick struggled through a poor season in the upper minors in 2019. Pelham allowed 43 runs in 32 1/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A this season and walked more batters (40) than he struck out (37).
The waiver claim is likely about the appealing nature of Pelham’s raw pitch arsenal, but there’s clearly an enormous amount of work to be done in order to refine the lefty. Still, with a pair of open spots on the 40-man roster, there’s little harm in placing a claim — and the Cubs could always try to pass Pelham through waivers themselves in order to keep him in the organization without committing a 40-man spot.
As for Guerrieri, he once ranked as one of the game’s premier pitching prospects in his days with the Tampa Bay organization, but injuries have largely derailed much of the promise he once showed. The 26-year-old (27 next week) posted a 5.68 ERA in 26 1/3 innings at the MLB level in 2019, although his 3.47 ERA, 9.7 K/9, 3.8 BB/9 and 55.7 percent grounder rate in Triple-A offer more encouragement.
Marlins Release Wei-Yin Chen
The Marlins announced that left-hander Wei-Yin Chen has cleared waivers and been released. This move boils down to little more than a formality, as Chen was designated for assignment last week and no team was ever going to claim the remaining $22MM on his contract (which expires at the end of the 2020 season).
Chen, now 34, was a steady source of quality innings from 2012-15 in Baltimore, pitching to a 3.72 ERA in the hitter-friendly AL East while averaging 29.25 starts and 176 innings per year. That durability and reliability led the Marlins to invest a whopping five-year, $80MM contract in the lefty when he hit the free-agent market, but the deal went south almost immediately.
Chen barely kept his ERA under 5.00 and tossed just 123 1/3 innings in his first year with the Marlins. A UCL injury wiped out nearly all of his 2017 season and much of the 2018 campaign, and he pitched just 68 1/3 innings of ineffective relief work in 2019. Overall, he recorded a dismal 5.10 ERA in 358 innings with Miami.
Now that he’s a free agent, Chen is free to sign with any club, and a new team would only owe him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the Major League roster. That sum would be subtracted from the $22MM owed to Chen by the Miami organization, but at this point the Marlins have accepted the fact that they’re on the hook for the vast majority of his remaining guarantee.
Mets To Hire Jeremy Hefner As Pitching Coach
NOVEMBER 27: Hefner and the Mets are in agreement on a deal, per Heyman (Twitter link).
NOVEMBER 26: Twins assistant pitching coach Jeremy Hefner “is the Mets’ choice” to be their new pitching coach, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets. SNY’s Andy Martino tweets that the deal isn’t quite yet finalized but could be by next week. If and when a deal is complete, Hefner will replace interim pitching coach Phil Regan, who stepped up when the club parted ways with veteran coach Dave Eiland back in June.
Hefner, still just 33 years old, pitched for the Mets as recently as 2012-13 but called his playing career quits after a 2016 run with the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate. He joined the Twins the following season as an advance scout. Hefner held that role for two seasons in Minnesota, helping to establish game plans for pitchers, devise defensive shifts and also use his experience as a recently retired player to best boil down data from the team’s analytics department for the players and coaching staff. Minnesota made Hefner its assistant pitching coach for the 2019 campaign, and that marks his lone season of experience on a Major League coaching staff to date.
Still, Hefner has been viewed as a rising star in the coaching ranks since latching on with the Twins and will seemingly get his first look at a top coaching spot with the only team for which he ever pitched at the MLB level. Hefner’s embracing of newer data and his recent experience as a player has become an increasingly desirable skill set for clubs both in terms of managerial and coaching searches.
Assuming the agreement does indeed go through, Hefner will be the second member of the Twins coaching staff to be hired away by another club this winter. Hitting coach James Rowson has already been plucked away by Miami, and it’s still possible that bench coach Derek Shelton could be hired as the next manager of the Pirates. Minnesota elevated an internal replacement, Edgar Varela, for Rowson yesterday.
MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo writes that the Mets plan to formally announce their new-look coaching staff all at once — perhaps sometime next week.