By Jeff Todd | at
The Cardinals have claimed righty reliever Ryan Meisinger off waivers from the Orioles, the Baltimore club announced.
Meisinger, 24, cracked the bigs last year for the first time and surrendered six long balls in 21 innings. Still, he has turned in some intriguing numbers at times in the minors. Last year, for instance, he worked to a 3.13 ERA in 46 innings in the upper minors, with 10.8 K/9 and 2.9 BB/9.
By Jeff Todd | at
The Orioles announced today that they have claimed third baseman Rio Ruiz off waivers from the Braves. Ruiz becomes the first 40-man roster addition of new O’s GM Mike Elias.
Ruiz, 24, signed for well over the slot value after the Astros selected him in the fourth round of the 2012 draft — their first under Elias’s direction. After a few seasons with the Houston organization, Ruiz was sent on to Atlanta along with Mike Foltynewicz in the deal that delivered Evan Gattis to the ’Stros.
Over the years, Ruiz has at times shown hints of his long-valued talent, but hasn’t generally produced consistently at the plate and did not take advantage of a brief shot at the majors in 2017. He spent the bulk of the 2018 campaign at Triple-A, where he slashed .269/.322/.390 with nine home runs in 541 plate appearances.
By Connor Byrne | at
It may take a three-year commitment to sign free-agent reliever David Robertson this offseason, but “the Red Sox are in for less,” a source tells George A. King III of the New York Post. Considering Robertson’s a Rhode Island resident who’d prefer to pitch in the Northeast, where he has spent most of his career, he looks like a logical fit for a Boston team which could lose Craig Kimbrel and Joe Kelly in free agency. However, if the Red Sox are only willing to hand Robertson a one- or two-year contract, a union between them and the longtime Yankee may not be in the cards.
Here’s more from the American League East:
By Jeff Todd | at
The Orioles announced that shortstop Tim Beckham and catcher Caleb Joseph have been non-tendered. Both are heading onto the open market; the former had projected to earn a $4.3MM salary, the latter $1.7MM.
Beckham seemed to have turned a corner when he landed with the O’s last year, but he fell back to earn in 2018. Over 402 plate appearances, he slashed just .230/.287/.374 and did not grade well at short. As for Joseph, he has bounced up and down with the bat in recent years but turned in a miserable .219/.254/.321 season last year.
By Steve Adams | at
The Orioles have fired farm director Brian Graham, who served as the interim general manager between the dismissal of Dan Duquette and the hiring of Mike Elias, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (on Twitter). The move comes not long after the decision not to retain scouting director Gary Rajsich for the 2019 season, as reported by Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com.
The pair of personnel changes marks the latest in a series of moves designed to bring about an organizational overhaul in Baltimore. Graham has been the team’s director of player development since the 2013 season and been with the team since 2007, while Rajsich was hired by Duquette as the team’s director of scouting back in 2011.
With Graham and Rajsich both out the door, two of the three top-ranking executives mentioned in the Orioles’ press release announcing a “transition in baseball operations leadership” are now out of the organization; of that trio, only vice president of baseball operations Brady Anderson remains. The departures of Graham and Rajsich give the Orioles another pair of significant vacancies to fill — all while the team continues its search for a replacement for the also-dismissed Buck Showalter.
Adding a manager is the organization’s top priority at present, Elias said last night in an interview on 105.7 FM The Fan in Baltimore (links via Kubatko and Jon Meoli of the Baltimore Sun). Elias declined to delve into specifics, as one would expect. However, the newly hired Baltimore GM did acknowledge that he, with assistance from new assistant GM Sig Mejdal and others in the front office, has pared the list of initial candidates down “quite a bit.” Elias added that he feels the Orioles are “well past phase one of this search.”
Once a manager is in place, that hire will work alongside Elias and the front office to fill in what will in all likelihood be a significantly revamped coaching staff for the 2019 season. Paired with the need to hire a new farm director and scouting director (and the subsequent new hires that’ll be made to work underneath that pair), Elias, Mejdal and the remnants of the prior regime face a fairly daunting amount of administrative work in the coming weeks. That, of course, is in addition to the obvious roster machinations that need to be made for a team that lost a franchise-record number of games in 2018.
Chief among those decisions is likely determining who will be selected with the top pick in next month’s Rule 5 Draft. By virtue of finishing the 2018 season with the worst record in baseball, Baltimore has the top pick, and Elias confirmed in last night’s interview that the O’s will indeed be making a selection.
By Steve Adams | at
The Orioles announced Wednesday that they’ve signed right-hander Josh Lucas to a minor league contract. The 28-year-old spent the 2018 season with the Athletics organization.
Lucas tossed 14 1/3 innings for the A’s but allowed 10 runs on 16 hits and nine walks with 14 strikeouts in that time. It was his second straight season with some degree of MLB experience, as he threw 7 1/3 frames for the 2017 Cardinals as well. In all, Lucas has a 5.40 ERA in 21 2/3 big league innings.
While he’s yet to find success at the MLB level, Lucas has posted continually strong numbers in the upper minors. The former 21st-round pick has a career 2.93 ERA and a 66-to-14 K/BB ratio in 58 2/3 innings of Double-A ball and a 3.39 ERA with 8.9 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 in 106 1/3 innings at the Triple-A level. The right-hander has also routinely posted strong ground-ball rates both in the upper minors and in his limited time in the Majors.
By Mark Polishuk | at
The latest on some coaching and front office personnel decisions from around the game…
By Mark Polishuk | at
Adam Jones hopes to keep playing “at least four or five more years,” the veteran outfielder told reporters (including MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko) this weekend at his #StayHungry Purple Tailgate charity event in Baltimore. Jones turned 33 last August and is coming off a season that saw him hit .281/.313/.419 with 15 homers over 613 plate appearances for the Orioles, making for his lowest home run and slugging average totals since 2008, and below-average run production overall (98 wRC+). Between his age and the offensive dropoff, Jones may face a difficult market as he test free agency for the first time in his 13-year career, though he is realistic about his prospects. “It’s like [being] the senior that some people want that not everybody wants, as opposed to the sophomore that everybody wants. I take it back when I was in high school and getting flirted with a little bit,” Jones said. “But at the same time, I’ve got no stress. The Orioles have been good to me financially over my career. I just know that I have a lot to offer someone else and I have a lot of gas in the tank.”
A reunion with the Orioles doesn’t appear to be in the cards for now, as Jones said that he hadn’t heard from the team since the season ended. This isn’t necessarily unusual, as Baltimore only just installed Mike Elias as its new general manager in mid-November, and Elias could have interest in re-signing a team legend to act as an on-field mentor through the Orioles’ rebuilding phase. Still, Jones’ tribute-filled final game of 2018 campaign (and his own comments following the team) certainly seemed to hint that the two sides would be parting ways.
Here’s more on some other free agents around the game….
By Steve Adams | at
The Orioles announced that they’ve hired former Astros executive Sig Mejdal as an assistant general manager with a focus on analytics. Mejdal becomes the first front office hire under new GM Mike Elias. The pair is well acquainted already, having worked together in the Houston front office.
“Sig Mejdal is one of the most experienced and accomplished analysts working in baseball today,” said Elias in a press release announcing the hire. “To have him join our Orioles organization is a major moment for this franchise, and I look forward to him charting the course for all of our forthcoming efforts in the analytics space.”
Mejdal’s baseball career began in 2005, when the Cardinals hired him as a quantitative analyst — a pronounced change from his previous work as an engineer and biomathematician for the likes of Lockheed Martin and NASA. In a front office career that has now spanned more than a decade, Mejdal has focused on the draft, Major League roster decisions and organizational process improvement. He’s also worked with minor league players and coaches in an effort to help them utilize new technology and data at the field level.
An expanded analytics department will be a key focus for Elias, Mejdal and the rest of the Orioles’ front office, though that’s just one of numerous areas the organization will be looking to improve in the coming years. Perhaps most notably, the Orioles have also fallen behind the curve in terms of international scouting and have been outspoken about the desire to add resources and facilities in that regard with an eye toward rebuilding what had become a barren farm system. MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand tied Mejdal to the Orioles organization at the time of Elias’ hiring, tweeting that Mejdal would “likely” join his former colleague in the revamped Baltimore front office.
By Jeff Todd | at
1:15pm: Baltimore has announced the signing of Peterson as well as those of three other players. Infielders Christopher Bostick and Zach Vincej will join the utility competition, with righty Jeffeson Medina also coming to the organization on a minors pact.
Bostick and Vincej have each briefly cracked the majors in each of the past two seasons and could certainly challenge Peterson and others for a job (or a spot on the depth chart). Medina, meanwhile, has yet to play past the High-A level but has turned in an intriguing showing thus far (one earned run in 14 innings) in the Venezuelan Winter League.
9:17am: The Orioles have reached a deal to bring back infielder Jace Peterson, according to Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). It’s a minor-league deal, the other terms of which are not known. He had elected free agency after being outrighted by the O’s at the end of the 2018 campaign.
Peterson, 28, has historically lined up mostly at second base. But he has expanded his repertoire in recent seasons, logging significant innings in the corner outfield and at third base while briefly stepping in at both shortstop and first.
Unfortunately, the results at the plate haven’t really changed. Peterson ended his 2018 campaign with 246 plate appearances of 78 OPS+ hitting, an exact match for the rate of production — 22% below the league mean — he has maintained through 1,524 trips to the dish over his five-year career.
The O’s surely don’t yet have a clear idea of how their reserve unit will shape up, and the picture will no doubt change as opportunities arise over the offseason. That said, Peterson figures to have a strong chance at earning a job in camp.
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