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Quick Hits: Red Sox, Hill, Twins, Cruz, Rockies, Black

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Rich Hill has already emphatically stated that he’ll be back for 2022, a season in which he’ll be 42 years old. But would the Red Sox be interested in a reunion with the Massachusetts native? “There is an interest, without a doubt,” Hill told Alex Speier of the Boston Globe. “There’s a need on the other end. [But] the need for starting pitching is very apparent throughout the league — not just in Boston. It’s also many other clubs that need it.”

The lefty is certainly correct about the demand throughout the league, as starting pitchers have been flying off the shelves so far this offseason. In just over three weeks since free agency began, Eduardo Rodriguez, Justin Verlander, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, Anthony DeSclafani and Andrew Heaney have all been inked already, with Alex Wood reportedly close to signing as well. Despite his age, Hill figures to garner lots of interest as well, given his solid 2021 campaign. His tally of 158 2/3 innings was the second-highest of his career, trailing only the 195 innings he logged as a 27-year-old in 2007. Between the Rays and Mets last year, he put up an ERA of 3.86 with a strikeout rate of 22.7% and walk rate of 8.3%, producing 1.7 fWAR in the process.

The Red Sox have already lost Eduardo Rodriguez to the Tigers, leaving them with a rotation of Nathan Eovaldi, Chris Sale, Nick Pivetta and Tanner Houck, with Connor Seabold, Kutter Crawford and Garrett Whitlock among the options for the back end. There’d certainly be room to add Hill into the mix, though whether they prefer Hill to some other options on the market remains to be seen.

More tidbits from around the league…

  • After an excellent 258-game stretch with the Twins over three different seasons, Nelson Cruz was traded to the Rays before last year’s deadline. Although the club isn’t completely ruling out a reunion, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be the top of their to-do list this winter. Dan Hayes of The Athletic spoke to GM Thad Levine about the situation. “In a most ideal case, when you’re building a roster you would like to have a DH spot as an open position to rotate guys through and give them a partial day of rest,” he said. “We have chosen to go a different route in each of the last couple seasons because we felt we had an elite DH.” As noted by Hayes, the club is going to be primarily focused on pitching for now, which makes sense given that they’ve lost Jose Berrios to trade, Michael Pineda to free agency and Kenta Maeda to Tommy John surgery. Cruz also struggled after being traded to the Rays, hitting .226/.283/.442, for a wRC+ of 96, raising questions about how productive he will be as a 41-year-old in 2022. But Levine still left the door open a crack, saying they “want to keep the DH spot open to allow for a bunch of players to rotate through that position, unless something exceptional comes our way, at which point we’d have to review it.”
  • Bud Black is heading into his sixth season as the skipper of the Rockies, which is also the final year of his current contract. In a recent mailbag, Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post says he heard that extension talks were ongoing, but that he “checked that out with general manager Bill Schmidt, who told me that wasn’t true. Schmidt added, however, that talks with Black are certainly possible in the coming months.” Schmidt was the VP of scouting with the Rockies from 2007 until May of 2021. At that point, he was named interim GM, in the wake of the resignation of Jeff Bridich, before officially getting the job last month. As he enters his first offseason in the GM chair, it’s unclear whether he considers Black to be part of the future he envisions for the franchise. Black, 64, has a record of 349-359 in his time with the Rockies and an overall record of 998-1072 when combined with his nine seasons with the Padres.

Marcus Stroman Drawing Widespread Interest

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The free agent starting pitching market has gotten off to a fast start, but there hasn’t yet been any movement among the top tier of arms. There’s surely robust interest in each of the class’ top starters, particularly given that the market for mid-tier options has already proven quite strong. Some clarity has emerged on the bidding for one of those top hurlers: right-hander Marcus Stroman.

MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes reports (Twitter link) that the Red Sox, Giants, Cubs, Angels and incumbent Mets are among the clubs with interest in Stroman. The Angels were already reported to be suitors, but the other four teams represent newly-known entrants into his market. Jon Morosi of MLB.com, meanwhile, adds the Mariners as another potential suitor for Stroman.

No one in that group is particularly surprising, as each of that quintet has been known to be seeking starting pitching. The Giants, Cubs and Angels have all made one or more notable rotation pickups already, but each reportedly remained in the bidding for Steven Matz even after landing other starters. The Red Sox and Mets were also known Matz suitors, and they’re both facing rotation uncertainty this winter. Boston has already seen Eduardo Rodríguez depart, while the Mets have lost Noah Syndergaard and would need to replace Stroman were he to sign elsewhere.

Stroman’s a sensible target for any team looking to bolster its rotation. The 30-year-old has been a reliable source of above-average innings for essentially the entirety of his career. He’s started 32+ games and exceeded 175 innings in four of the past five full seasons, with his 19 starts and 102 1/3 frames in 2018 the lone exception. (Stroman also opted out of the shortened 2020 campaign). Going back to the start of 2016, he ranks fifteenth in innings pitched, consistently shouldering a heavy workload in spite of his slight frame.

Over the course of his career, Stroman typically hasn’t had an approach geared towards missing many bats. He’s coming off a career-best 11.6% swinging strike rate, though, a mark that’s a hair above the 10.9% league average for starters. Generating an average or better amount of whiffs would be more of an ancillary bonus than anything, as Stroman’s calling cards are plus strike-throwing and plenty of grounders.

The sinkerballer has induced grounders on over half the balls in play against him in each season of his career, routinely surpassing 60% ground-ball rates during his time with the Blue Jays. His 50.8% rate in 2021 was a career-low, but that figure was still eight points above the league mark. That consistency in inducing ground-ball contact has allowed Stroman to remain mostly impervious to longballs, as he’s never allowed even one homer per nine innings in a season during his big league career.

Stroman played out the 2021 campaign with the Mets after accepting the club’s qualifying offer last winter. Players can’t be tagged with a QO more than once in their careers, so Stroman hit the market this winter unencumbered. Signing clubs won’t have to forfeit a draft choice to land the former first-round pick, and the Mets wouldn’t receive any compensation were he to depart.

Between Stroman’s consistently strong track record and the lack of a QO, he profiles as one of the more appealing options in this winter’s class. Stroman doesn’t boast the swing-and-miss stuff of some of this offseason’s other top options, but he’s also proven capable of thriving in spite of below-average strikeout numbers. The Duke University product has posted an ERA under 4.00 in four of his six seasons with 100+ innings pitched, and his 3.02 mark in 2021 was a personal best. Entering the offseason, MLBTR placed Stroman eleventh on the Top 50 free agents, forecasting a five-year, $110MM guarantee.

Steven Matz Weighing Multiple Offers, Expects To Sign This Week

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Nov. 23, 10:08 pm: Matz has at least one two-year offer in hand, reports Jon Morosi of MLB.com (on Twitter).

Nov. 23, 10:01 am: Matz is weighing offers from each of the Giants, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cubs, Cardinals, Angels and Mets, Heyman tweets. The Giants’ offer remains on the table even after re-signing DeSclafani.

Nov. 22: The free agent starting pitching market has moved very quickly over the offseason’s first few weeks, and it seems another domino could soon fall. Southpaw Steven Matz is likely to pick his destination before Thanksgiving, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post (Twitter link).

Interest in Matz has been robust, with the Red Sox, incumbent Blue Jays, Mets, Dodgers, Cardinals and Angels among teams already rumored to have interest. Jon Heyman of the MLB Network adds the Tigers, Cubs and Giants to that mix. The Mets have put forth a formal offer, although they’re joined in that regard by seven other clubs, according to Anthony DiComo of MLB.com (on Twitter).

Matz is coming off a nice season in Toronto, rebounding from an awful 2020 campaign to toss 150 2/3 innings of 3.82 ERA ball. The 30-year-old didn’t miss too many bats, but he only walked 6.6% of opponents and induced grounders at a solid 45.5% clip. Matz’s 4.12 SIERA wasn’t quite as impressive as his ERA, but both his actual run prevention and peripherals have typically hovered right around 4.00.

That’s valuable mid-rotation production, although Matz has previously had some issues with the long ball. Home runs weren’t an issue in 2021, but he served up an astonishing 14 round-trippers in just 30 2/3 frames with the Mets in 2020. That showing seemingly marked for an ugly end to a generally solid tenure in Queens, but the New York front office apparently has interest in bringing him back into the fold after his bounceback showing this year.

Each of the Tigers, Cubs and Giants entered the offseason known to be targeting rotation help. The Cubs claimed Wade Miley off waivers from the division-rival Reds. Detroit has already signed Eduardo Rodríguez, while San Francisco has reunited with Anthony DeSclafani and are seemingly on the verge of a deal with Alex Wood. None of that trio has as marked a rotation need as they did just two weeks ago, but there’s enough uncertainty on all three clubs’ staffs that they can and probably will make another rotation addition of some sort this winter.

The Jays considered making Matz an $18.4MM qualifying offer but ultimately decided against it. Toronto won’t receive a compensatory pick if he were to sign elsewhere, then, while adding Matz wouldn’t cost another team a draft pick.

Bullpen Rumors: Givens, Rogers, Familia

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The Phillies have had “substantive” talks with free-agent reliever Mychal Givens as they continue their quest to bolster the back end of their bullpen, per NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jim Salisbury. The hard-throwing righty is a first-time free agent and coming off a 3.35 ERA in 51 frames between the Rockies and Reds this past season. Givens, 31, punched out a quarter of his opponents in 2021 but also walked 12.5% of the batters he faced. Givens has long been a steady reliever, as evidenced by a 3.41 ERA in nearly 400 MLB innings, but he’s seen his strikeout and walk rates trend in the wrong direction over the past couple seasons, while his HR/9 mark has more than doubled from 0.73 in 2015-18 to 1.65 from 2019-21.

Some more bullpen rumblings from around the game…

  • The Mets officially bid farewell to a key lefty reliever this week when Aaron Loup signed a two-year contract with the Angels, and one name they’re intrigued by as they search for alternatives is Twins closer Taylor Rogers, according to Mike Puma of the New York Post (Twitter link). The 30-year-old Rogers (31 next month) has been one of the game’s best lefties since a breakout 2018 season, pitching to a combined 2.91 ERA with a huge 31.2% strikeout rate and a tiny 4.9% walk rate. There’s no firm indication that the Twins would be open to moving Rogers, but he’s in his final offseason of arbitration eligibility and projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $6.7MM in 2022. That’s plenty reasonable for a reliever with Rogers’ track record, but the lefty saw his 2021 season end with a lengthy IL stint due to a damaged ligament in his pitching hand. Rogers surrendered six runs in his final 3 2/3 frames before landing on the IL just prior to the July 30 trade deadline, and he was unable to return thereafter.
  • Speaking of Mets free agent, right-hander Jeurys Familia is on the Red Sox’ radar, reports WEEI’s Rob Bradford. The 32-year-old righty enjoyed a solid season with the Mets in 2021, pitching to a 3.94 ERA in 59 1/3 frames while matching a career-high 27.5% strikeout rate. Familia also cut back on 2019-20’s career-worst 15.5% walk rate, though last year’s 10.3% clip was still well north of the league average. Familia has plenty of closing experience, evidenced by 125 career saves, but is also no stranger to pitching in a setup capacity. He’d give the Sox another viable late-inning option in the event that incumbent closer Matt Barnes’ alarming second-half decline carries into the 2022 campaign.

Red Sox Exercise 2023-24 Club Option On Alex Cora

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The Red Sox announced Monday morning that they’ve exercised a club option on manager Alex Cora that covers both the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

“I am beyond grateful for this opportunity to manage the Red Sox,” Cora said in a statement within this morning’s press release. “We experienced so many special moments as a team and as a city in 2021, but we still have unfinished business to take care of. I am excited about the current state of our organization and eager to continue my work with our front office, coaches, players, and everyone who makes this such a special place.”

Cora returned to the Red Sox dugout after a one-year absence that came about after he was banned from the game for a year after commissioner Rob Manfred’s investigation into the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scandal. Cora, the bench coach in Houston that season, was determined to have played an integral role in putting together the team’s trash-can scheme. The 2018 Red Sox, managed by Cora, were also investigated by Manfred for improper usage of the video review room. That investigation stripped the Red Sox of a draft pick, but replay coordinator J.T. Watkins was the only employee punished; Manfred’s announcement of Cora’s punishment stated that the one-year ban was due solely to his role in the 2017 Astros scandal.

The Sox temporarily elevated Ron Roenicke to manage to club in 2020 and conducted a “search” for a new manager last offseason that seemed largely for show. The Red Sox conducted a handful of other interviews, but Cora was seen as the favorite from the outset and was ultimately returned to his prior post as soon as he was eligible.

Regardless of one’s thoughts on Cora’s history, the success he’s had as Boston’s skipper is reflected in an outstanding 284-202 record. Managers are evaluated based upon far more than wins and losses in today’s game, but a .584 winning percentage and a World Series title in his first year on the job in 2018 are both surely driving factors in today’s decision. The 2021 Red Sox, in particular, weren’t expected to be World Series contenders, but they nevertheless won 92 games and made a deep postseason run, culminating in a 4-2 ALCS loss to the Astros.

“Alex’s leadership of our staff and our players was critical to all that we accomplished in 2021,” chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said in a statement of his own. “Along with the entire Red Sox front office, I am excited for many years of continued partnership as we work together to bring another World Series trophy to Fenway Park.”

Organizational Notes: Red Sox, Groopman, Orioles, Murray

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Mike Groopman is joining the Red Sox organization as an assistant general manager, per Chad Jennings and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Groopman was previously with the Brewers as VP of International Scouting and Player Personnel.

After short stints with the Reds and Mets, Groopman was hired by the Royals in 2008 and ended up staying for a decade, before moving to Milwaukee in 2017. When he joined Kansas City, the club was in the middle of a years-long tank job that ultimately proved fruitful, as they had four consecutive seasons of .500 or above from 2013 to 2016, which included back-to-back trips to the World Series, losing to the Giants in 2014 but then defeating the Mets in 2015. Since Groopman came to the Brewers, they have also had a nice run of success, having just made the postseason for a fourth straight year.

Of course, front offices are comprised of dozens of employees and no individual can take full responsibility for a club’s successes or failures. Still, the fact that Groopman has been given this new job and new title shows that his work is well regarded in the industry.

Moving across the AL East, Collin Murray will be joining the Orioles as a development coach, he himself announced on Twitter. Over the past few years, Murray has worked with some colleges, in addition to jobs with the Marlins, Angels and Tigers.

Development is going to be extremely important for the Orioles over the next few years. They are currently bottom feeders in a stacked AL East, with the other four teams each logging at least 91 wins in 2021, compared to the 52 notched by the Orioles. However, their farm system is held in high esteem by prospect evaluators, with FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline ranking theirs as the best in the league, and Baseball America slotting them second behind the Mariners. Helping those talented youngsters blossom into productive major leaguers will be extremely important for them to gain ground on their rivals and get back into contention.

Latest On Red Sox Pitching Targets

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The Red Sox are known to be looking for rotation help this winter, and the club has “had varying degrees of contact with virtually all of the top starters on the market,” The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier writes.  This includes reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray, who hadn’t previously been linked to the Sox on the rumor mill, though it naturally stands to reason that the Red Sox would have interest in such a prominent arm.

Given the wide net the Sox are casting in their pitching search, it isn’t known if Ray is necessarily at the top of Boston’s list of potential targets.  Signing Ray would come at a double cost — one of the biggest contracts given to any free agent this offseason, as well as a penalty of $500K reduction from Boston’s international draft pool and a second-round draft pick, since Ray rejected the Blue Jays’ qualifying offer.

The Red Sox might be willing to accept those penalties to sign a top-tier starter like Ray, however, as Speier notes that the team also had interest in another QO free agent in Justin Verlander.  “Talks never advanced” too far between the two sides before Verlander agreed to return to Houston on a two-year, $50MM pact, but if the Red Sox were open to surrendering a pick for a shorter-term addition like Verlander, it would stand to reason that they’d also be open to giving up a pick to add Ray on a longer-term commitment.  It should be noted that the Sox have some extra draft capital to work with next summer, as since Eduardo Rodriguez rejected Boston’s qualifying offer and then agreed to a deal with the Tigers, the Red Sox will receive an extra selection between Competitive Balance Round B and the start of the third round.

As for other now-signed free agent hurlers, Speier writes that the Red Sox were one of the teams bidding on Andrew Heaney, and the left-hander was given a one-year offer “competitive with the $8.5MM he signed for with the Dodgers.”  Speier also notes that the Red Sox didn’t have interest in Noah Syndergaard, which runs contrary to a report from The New York Post’s Joel Sherman earlier this week that suggested Boston made an “aggressive” offer to Syndergaard before the righty signed with the Angels.

Steven Matz is a pitcher known to be of interest to the Red Sox, and it is possible Matz might decide on his next team relatively quickly.  According to Speier, Matz would prefer to have an agreement in place prior to the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement on December 1, and the signing freeze that would come with a potential lockout on December 2.  Matz is hoping to get a deal done by Thanksgiving, and given the number of teams already known to have checked in on the southpaw, it certainly seems plausible that a deal could be reached this week.  Besides the Red Sox, Matz has been linked to the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Angels, plus the Blue Jays have continued to explore re-signing Matz for a longer term in Toronto.

Red Sox Select Jeter Downs, Three Others

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The Red Sox announced this evening they’ve added four players to the 40-man roster. Infielder Jeter Downs and right-handers Josh Winckowski, Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford have all been added to keep them from selection in the Rule 5 draft.

Downs has been one of the game’s higher profile prospects for a while. A supplemental first-rounder of the Reds out of a Florida high school in 2017, he’s since been involved in two blockbuster trades. Downs was part of the package sent from Cincinnati to the Dodgers in December 2018 for Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp, then got traded to the Red Sox as part of the Mookie Betts deal the following winter.

Over his first few seasons, Downs offered a steady combination of bat-to-ball skills, power and second base defense. He’d projected as a potential everyday second baseman and twice ranked among the game’s top 100 overall prospects at Baseball America. But Downs struggled through an uncharacteristically poor 2021, leaving his stock a bit more uncertain. Over 405 plate appearances with Triple-A Worcester, the right-handed hitting Downs managed just a .190/.272/.333 mark with 14 home runs. Most alarming, he struck out in a massive 32.3% of his plate appearances — his first season fanning at greater than a 21% clip.

Winckowski has been involved in a pair of trades himself, both occurring last offseason. The Blue Jays sent him to the Mets as part of the Steven Matz deal, and New York flipped him to Boston in the three-team Andrew Benintendi/Khalil Lee swap not long after. A 16th-round pick by Toronto back in 2016, Winckowski has slowly climbed the minor league ladder as a starter. He split the 2021 campaign between Double-A Portland and Worcester, working to a cumulative 3.94 ERA in 112 innings with a below-average 21.3% strikeout rate but a quality 6.9% walk percentage.

Bello, a former amateur signee out of the Dominican Republic, is considered one of the organization’s more promising young pitchers. BA slotted the 22-year-old fifth in the farm system this offseason, praising his three-pitch mix and calling him a potential mid-rotation starter. Bello split this past season between High-A Greenville and Portland, working to a combined 3.87 ERA in 95 1/3 innings. He punched out a stellar 32.8% of hitters along the way against a solid 7.7% walk rate. Bello seems likely to start next season at Triple-A and could plausibly be an option for the big league club at some point in 2022.

Crawford made a two-inning cameo at the major league level in September, showing a five-pitch mix led by a 93.8 MPH fastball. The righty had been selected as a COVID replacement, though, so he was removed from the 40-man roster not long after. He’ll now stake a more longstanding spot on the roster after combining for a 4.28 ERA with great strikeout and walk numbers (34.4% and 5.2%, respectively) between Portland and Worcester.

Red Sox Notes: Baez, Rodriguez, Matz

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The Red Sox are among the teams with some level of early interest in free-agent infielder Javier Baez, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported this week. Boston already has a high-end shortstop in place, but Xander Bogaerts can opt out of the remaining three years and $60MM of guaranteed money on his contract at the end of the 2022 season. Baez, 29 next month, is also a markedly better defender at shortstop, which could open the possibility of the Sox realigning their infield in some capacity.

Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has made it clear that his front office values defensive versatility since taking the reins in Boston — evidenced by the signings of Enrique Hernandez, Marwin Gonzalez and Danny Santana. Of course, Baez figures to be in an entirely different stratosphere from a salary standpoint, and the Sox also now have some additional needs on the pitching staff with Eduardo Rodriguez officially joining the Tigers on a five-year contract. The Red Sox already have about $173MM in projected 2022 payroll at this point, plus about $184MM of luxury-tax obligations, per Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez.

Bloom spoke this week about the difficulty of losing Rodriguez, candidly acknowledging that the left-hander’s market simply reached a point where the Sox were no longer certain that making the top offer “was the best use of our resources” (link via MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo). That said, the decision did not come lightly for Bloom and his colleagues — some of whom have been with Rodriguez since he debuted in 2015.

“We were certainly fighting our emotions on that the whole way because of how highly we think of him and how much we enjoyed having him here,” said Bloom, who went on to add that the club was happy to see the market reward Rodriguez after a trying 2020 season lost to Covid-19 and myocarditis:

“There were points in time where we weren’t even sure if he was going to be able to play again, so to see him come back this year, do what he did, and now to have the market reward him for it, it’s a really great story.”

Nevertheless, with Rodriguez out the door, the Sox figure to explore other avenues to address a rotation that currently projects to include Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi, Nick Pivetta, Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock. It’s an undeniably talented mix, but neither Houck nor Whitlock has actually produced for a full big league season while shouldering a starter’s workload. Sale, meanwhile, will be in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery, while Eovaldi has a lengthy injury history of his own. The 28-year-old Pivetta (29 in February) was solid in 30 starts last year, but his career has been punctuated by inconsistency thus far.

With those questions in mind, southpaw Steven Matz is among the free agents with whom the Red Sox are in contact, tweets Cotillo. The 30-year-old Matz just wrapped up a strong season with the division-rival Jays, for whom he pitched to a 3.82 ERA with a 22.3% strikeout rate and 6.6% walk rate through 150 2/3 frames. Toronto declined to issue a qualifying offer to Matz, meaning he won’t come with any draft compensation for the Red Sox or any other interested parties. It’s been a robust market for starters so far, which bodes well for Matz and other arms remaining on the market — particularly with quite a few big-market clubs like Boston still on the hunt for arms.

Latest On Justin Verlander’s Market

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1:47pm: The White Sox are also showing “strong” interest in Verlander, tweets USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. They’re planning an “aggressive” offseason, per Nightengale, and hoping to kick things off with a successful courtship of Verlander. Of course, the South Siders’ spring facility is in Arizona, which isn’t ideal based on Verlander’s reported preferences, but that certainly doesn’t rule them out of the bidding entirely.

12:58pm: Verlander has both multi-year and one-year offers in hand, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (Twitter link), adding that the right-hander could make a final decision as soon as this week.

11:47am: The Braves are also among the teams with interest in Verlander, tweets David O’Brien of The Athletic. Atlanta would align well with Verlander’s reported preference for an East Coast club with Spring Training in Florida, and their status as reigning World Series champions obviously helps when pursuing any older veteran prioritizing a contender. Of course, all those players inked sizable one-year deals, whereas Verlander may be seeking multiple guaranteed seasons.

The Braves had had few qualms about signing short-term veterans of this nature under under president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos — evidenced by recent short-term pickups of Cole Hamels, Charlie Morton and Josh Donaldson.

10:46am: Justin Verlander has until 5pm ET today to accept or reject a one-year, $18.4MM qualifying offer (as do all other free agents who received a QO), but the widespread expectation is that he’ll reject and fully explore his options. That’s due in part to Astros owner Jim Crane saying last month that Verlander will be looking for a “contract of some length” in free agency, but it’s also due to what’s reported to be strong early interest in the future Hall of Famer.

Verlander held a showcase for teams earlier this month — a step that would seem unlikely were he simply planning to accept the Astros’ QO — and his reps at ISE Baseball have had the past 10 days to gauge interest from other clubs. Ken Rosenthal suggested on MLB Network this morning (video link) that early indications are Verlander would prefer to sign with a club that holds Spring Training in Florida, which meshes with Joel Sherman of the New York Post reporting that several interested teams believe Verlander prefers to play with an East Coast club.

Notably, Sherman adds that both the Red Sox and Blue Jays — each of whom hold Spring Training in Florida — made “aggressive” offers to another high-upside, short-term pitcher coming off Tommy John surgery: Noah Syndergaard. Peter Gammons tweeted yesterday that Syndergaard had multiple offers at or near the $21MM price point for which he agreed to join the Angels, including one approaching $25MM in value. It’s not expressly clear that the Jays or Red Sox offered $21MM+ for Syndergaard, but it’s notable that both teams were aggressive on a fellow Tommy John reclamation play.

Verlander has drawn interest from both Toronto and Boston, per Sherman, who adds that the Yankees seem fairly serious with their interest in the 39-year-old. Verlander, somewhat notably, held his recent showcase at Cressey Sports Performance — the Florida-based training facility operated by Yankees director of player health and performance Eric Cressey. Corey Kluber did the same last offseason before ultimately agreeing to a deal with the Yankees. As noted at the time of the showcase, the location of Verlander’s audition alone doesn’t tip the scale in the Yankees’ favor, but it shouldn’t be completely overlooked, either.

Geographical preference notwithstanding, the best offer is likely to win the bidding for Verlander at the end of the day. It’s unlikely he’d leave an extra year or tens of millions of dollars on the table to spurn a West Coast team to sign in New York, Boston or Toronto. Factors like geography, Spring Training locale and familiarity with teammates (e.g. Gerrit Cole in the Bronx, George Springer in Toronto) are often, albeit not always, more tiebreakers when weighing comparable offers.

Tigers fans, of course, undoubtedly would love to see a reunion in Detroit and are surely heartened to see Verlander’s preference for Florida-based Spring Training outfits. However, Rosenthal also suggests that the Tigers may not be “in as heavily” as other interested clubs.

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