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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.

Tigers Sign Eduardo Rodriguez

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The Tigers have made the biggest move of the 2021-22 offseason to date, formally announcing a five-year contract with free agent starter Eduardo Rodríguez. The deal comes with a $77MM guarantee and can max out at $80MM, depending upon incentives.

The contract also affords Rodriguez the opportunity to opt out of the after the second season of the deal. MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes reports that Rodriguez will earn a combined $28MM total from 2022-23 (Twitter link), meaning he’ll be faced with the decision of whether to opt out of the remaining three years and $49MM on his contract after the 2023 campaign. Rodríguez, who recently rejected a qualifying offer from the Red Sox, is represented by Mato Sports Management.

Rodríguez was seemingly in strong demand — his contract tops MLBTR’s projected five-year, $70MM estimate — drawing varying levels of interest from the Blue Jays, Angels and incumbent Red Sox. (Boston presented him with a multi-year offer in addition to the one-year qualifying offer.) Detroit will wind up topping the bidding, in the process installing a mid-rotation arm to its fairly young starting staff. That was known to be a priority for the Tigers’ front office, with general manager Al Avila frankly telling reporters after the season that adding an established starter “would be a necessity” for the club.

Detroit has also been tied to right-handers Jon Gray and Anthony DeSclafani, but it seems Rodríguez will be the Tigers’ big rotation add of the offseason. He’ll serve as the veteran anchor in a starting group that also includes young, highly-touted arms like Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning. With Spencer Turnbull expected to miss most or all of 2022 after undergoing July Tommy John surgery and Matthew Boyd looking likely to be non-tendered after undergoing a flexor procedure, it’s possible Detroit looks to add additional rotation depth later in the offseason. It’s unlikely any subsequent pick-up will be as impactful or as costly as Rodríguez, whose reported contract terms are quite strong.

Not only does he beat MLBTR’s projected guarantee by $7MM, he picks up the freedom to re-test the market two years from now. The southpaw won’t turn 29 years old until April 2022, meaning he’ll only be entering his age-31 campaign over the 2023-24 offseason. If he pitches well over the next couple seasons, it’s easy to envision Rodríguez opting out and hitting free agency in search of another long-term deal during a winter without any sort of uncertainty about the collective bargaining agreement. Yet the contract’s five-year guarantee also gives him solid stability to guard against injuries or underperformance that could crop up over the next two years.

That Rodríguez generated such strong interest and landed this kind of commitment from the Tigers serves as the latest reminder of teams’ changing methods of player evaluation. On the surface, Rodríguez wouldn’t appear to be coming off a particularly impressive season. He racked up 157 2/3 innings over 32 appearances (31 starts), but he did so with a career-worst 4.74 ERA. Not long ago, a five-year guarantee for a pitcher coming off a platform season in which his ERA was pushing 5.00 would’ve been inconceivable.

Teams are going far beyond ERA to evaluate pitchers in 2021, though, and Rodríguez’s underlying numbers were very strong. He struck out 27.4% of opponents this past season, a mark that’s nearly five percentage points above the league average for starters. Rodríguez’s 11.7% swinging strike rate is also a bit north of the 10.9% league mark, his fourth consecutive healthy season generating whiffs at greater than an 11% clip.

Rodríguez also has solid control, with his walk percentages typically hovering right around the league average. He doled out free passes at just a 7% rate in 2021, the lowest mark of his career. And despite pitching in one of the game’s most hitter-friendly home parks and divisions, he’s never really had issues preventing home runs.

More than anything, Rodríguez’s poor run prevention numbers in 2021 were the result of what happened when batters put the ball into play. Opponents had a .363 batting average on balls in play this past season, the second-highest mark among the 129 pitchers with 100+ frames. It’s not as if Rodríguez was simply getting battered night in and night out, though; opposing hitters’ 86.5 MPH average exit velocity was in the bottom ten percent leaguewide, while their 33.6% hard contact rate was in the worst fifteen percent.

Between his combination of swing-and-miss stuff, control and soft contact, Rodríguez fared quite well in the eyes of ERA estimators. While his actual ERA ranked 100th of that group of 129 hurlers, his FIP (3.32) and SIERA (3.64) checked in 21st and 24th, respectively. The Tigers are clearly of the belief that those metrics better reflect Rodríguez’s true talent level, with his ghastly 2021 run prevention attributable mostly to some combination of poor luck and a Boston defense that was the league’s worst at turning balls in play into outs. In prior seasons, Rodríguez’s peripherals and ERA aligned a lot more closely, and he posted a cumulative 3.92 ERA/3.84 FIP between 2017-19.

A deeper dive into Rodríguez’s underlying numbers explains why the Tigers were willing to put forth this kind of financial outlay, but that’s not to say the move is without risk. Long-term investments in pitchers are inherently a gamble, considering the rate of pitcher injuries throughout the league. And while Rodríguez has been a durable workhorse for the bulk of his career, he didn’t pitch at all in 2020 after a scary bout with myocarditis (essentially inflammation of the heart) that arose from a case of COVID-19.

Rodríguez was open about the toll the disease took on his body, with doctors forbidding seemingly mundane tasks like walking his dog and playing video games for months — to say nothing of a strenuous activity like pitching (link via James Wagner of the New York Times). In that context, his return to the field in 2021 was remarkable, and he didn’t look worse for wear once he could return to the diamond. Detroit’s medical staff no doubt did due diligence on evaluating how likely that unfortunate circumstance would be of affecting Rodríguez over the long term.

It’s not yet clear precisely how Rodríguez will be paid over the coming seasons. If he’s paid a flat $15.4MM sum annually, that’d push Detroit’s 2022 payroll just above $125MM, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. Non-tendering a few arbitration eligible players like Boyd, Niko Goodrum and Dustin Garneau could knock $10MM+ off that tally. The Tigers would still be far above the approximate $81MM payroll with which they entered the 2021 season (via Cot’s Baseball Contracts), but the franchise has spent nearly $200MM on players in seasons past.

The Tigers’ biggest spending days came during the tenure of late owner Mike Ilitch. The franchise drastically reduced payroll after he passed away and left primary control of the team to his son Christopher Ilitch. Detroit has been amidst a massive rebuild for essentially all of the latter’s ownership tenure, however, and Ilitch suggested in August that he’d be prepared to spend for “high-impact” players. Rodríguez certainly qualifies, and it’s generally expected the Tigers will be among the primary suitors in this offseason’s star-studded free agent shortstop class as well. Indeed, the Detroit front office has had at least cursory conversations with representatives for Carlos Correa, Corey Seager and Trevor Story, among others.

As for the Red Sox, they’ll now have to replace a player who’s been a valuable rotation member for the past six seasons. Rodríguez broke in with Boston in 2015 and has been a fixture on the starting staff ever since (excluding his missed 2020 campaign). He was a key member of the Sox’s World Series-winning 2018 team, finished sixth in 2019 AL Cy Young Award voting and pitched in the postseason for Boston in each of 2017, 2018 and 2021.

Because the Red Sox made him a qualifying offer, they will pick up a compensatory pick in next summer’s amateur draft. As a team that neither received revenue sharing nor exceeded the luxury tax threshold in 2021, Boston receives a pick after Competitive Balance Round B (typically in the 70-75 overall range).

The Tigers, meanwhile, will forfeit a pick as a penalty for signing away a qualified free agent. Detroit received revenue sharing in 2021, meaning they’ll only lose their third-highest draft choice next year. Were the Tigers to sign another qualified free agent this offseason, they’d surrender their fourth-highest pick as well.

Cody Stavenhagen of the Athletic first reported that Rodríguez was nearing agreement on a multi-year deal with the Tigers. Jon Heyman of the MLB Network reported Rodríguez and the Tigers were in agreement on a five-year contract. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the guarantee to land within the $77MM – $80MM range. Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported the presence of an opt-out clause. Heyman reported the guarantee to be $77MM, that Rodríguez’s opt-out possibility came after the 2023 season, and the possibility of incentives. Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press pegged those possible incentives at $3MM and reported the presence of no-trade protection.

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Sports.

Julio Lugo Passes Away

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Former major league infielder Julio Lugo has passed away after suffering what is believed to be a heart attack, his family tells Enrique Rojas of ESPN. He was 45 years old.

Lugo played in twelve major league seasons, suiting up for the Astros, Devil Rays, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cardinals, Orioles and Braves between 2000-11. He was the primary shortstop on the Red Sox’s 2007 World Series-winning team, part of a seven-year run as a regular at the position.

Lugo appeared in 120+ games in six of seven seasons between 2001-07 before transitioning into a utility role later in his career. Altogether, the slick-fielding infielder appeared in 1352 MLB games, hitting .269/.333/.384 with 80 home runs over 5338 plate appearances.

MLBTR sends our condolences to Lugo’s family, friends, teammates and loved ones.

Latest On Eduardo Rodriguez

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Eduardo Rodriguez has until November 17 to decide whether or not to accept the $18.4MM qualifying offer extended to him by the Red Sox, but seems to be garnering a decent amount of attention from other clubs in the meantime. MLB Network’s Jon Morosi reports that the Blue Jays, Angels and Tigers are interested in the lefty, who turns 29 in April.

The free agency of Rodriguez is an interesting case, as there’s a disconnect between his surface results and underlying numbers. In 2021, he had a strikeout rate of 27.4%, walk rate of 7.0% and groundball rate of 43.2%, all of those numbers being better than league average. Despite all of that, his ERA was a lofty 4.74. However, there seems to be quite a bit of bad luck in there, as his BABIP of .363 was much higher than his previous seasons, and all the advanced metrics seemed to think he deserved an ERA closer to the 3.50 range. MLBTR recently predicted that teams would see past that ERA, with Rodriguez getting a contract in the range of five years, $70MM, and this early interest seems to suggest that may be the case. Since extending that one-year qualifying offer, it has been revealed that the Red Sox added a multi-year offer to the table, and the interest of the Angels had been previously reported as well.

The fact that the Blue Jays are interested is hardly surprising, given their rotation situation. Fellow lefties Robbie Ray and Steven Matz have both entered free agency, leaving Toronto with a top-heavy rotation of Jose Berrios, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Alek Manoah, with two spots available for options such as Ross Stripling, Nate Pearson, Thomas Hatch and Anthony Kay. They are also very familiar with Rodriguez by virtue of his pitching for their division rivals over the entirety of his career thus far. The Blue Jays figure to consider all options to bolster their pitching staff, and have already been connected to the Justin Verlander showcase as well as making a strong offer to Andrew Heaney in the early days of this offseason.

As for the Tigers, they are looking to jump out of their rebuild and into contention for 2022. After an awful April in 2021 where they went 8-19, the club went 69-66 the rest of the way, which perhaps suggests they were a better club than their 77-85 record would indicate. It could be a very busy offseason for the Tigers, as Morosi also says they’re open to adding a shortstop and an outfielder. Their current rotation primarily consists of young and still-developing hurlers like Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning. They’ve likely lost Spencer Turnbull for 2021 due to Tommy John surgery and perhaps lost Matthew Boyd to flexor tendon surgery, creating the need for a veteran contributor like Rodriguez. Like the Blue Jays, they have also been frequently mentioned in rumors so far, being represented at the aforementioned Verlander showcase, as well as showing interest in Anthony DeSclafani and Jon Gray.

Red Sox Notes: Whitlock, Matz, Arroyo

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The Red Sox are making an effort to retain free agent starter Eduardo Rodríguez, but the club has myriad avenues to potentially address their rotation. Right-hander Garrett Whitlock could be an option, as chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom told reporters (including Alex Speier of the Boston Globe) the team is open to the possibility of stretching him out as a starter in 2022.

The 25-year-old Whitlock spent essentially his entire career in the Yankees’ system as a starter, topping out with 120 2/3 innings across three levels in 2018. After plucking him away from their archrival in the Rule 5 draft, the Sox moved him into a bullpen role. That’s typical for a Rule 5 draftee, since teams often prefer to break those unproven players in with lower-leverage innings. But Whitlock proved to be one of the better Rule 5 selections in recent memory, earning himself a role of higher import as he continued to thrive. Ultimately, Whitlock tossed 73 1/3 innings across 46 relief outings (with another 8 1/3 frames in five postseason appearances). He posted a 1.96 ERA with a strong 27.2% strikeout percentage and a tiny 5.7% walk rate.

Moving Whitlock out of the relief role in which he’s been so effective isn’t without risk, but public scouting reports have long suggested he might be a viable starter. His debut campaign offered support for that idea, as Whitlock worked with a three-pitch mix and demonstrated plus control. He did have pronounced platoon splits — lefties hit .293/.349/.475 off him, while righties managed just a .199/.243/.278 mark — that could suggest he’s better deployed situationally, but it’s sensible for the front office to keep the rotation possibility open.

Looking outside the organization, the Sox are also among the teams with early interest in free agent starter Steven Matz, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post (Twitter link). Boston is certainly one of many clubs in contact with the southpaw’s representatives at Icon Sports Management, and Sherman adds the Tigers and Angels as other potential suitors, in addition to the incumbent Blue Jays.

Matz is coming off his third solid season in the past four years, having worked to a 3.82 ERA/4.12 SIERA across 150 2/3 frames with Toronto. The Jays didn’t issue him a qualifying offer, so signing Matz wouldn’t cost a team draft pick compensation. Entering his age-31 campaign, he looks to have a strong case to land a three-year deal.

While the Sox have seemingly focused primarily on the rotation during the first couple days of the offseason, Bloom tells Speier (separate post) that Boston could look into options at second base as well. It doesn’t seem bolstering the keystone is an absolute must, though, as Bloom went on to express faith in Christian Arroyo’s ability to handle the position. The 26-year-old was limited to just 181 plate appearances this past season because of injuries, but he hit at a slightly above-average level (.262/.324/.445) in that limited time. Jonathan Villar, Josh Harrison and César Hernández are among a few of the lower-cost free agent options available.

Red Sox Have Made Multi-Year Offer To Eduardo Rodriguez

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In addition to their one-year, $18.4MM qualifying offer to Eduardo Rodriguez, the Red Sox have also made a multi-year contract offer to the free-agent lefty, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports (via Twitter). Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said earlier this week that there was mutual interest in a longer-term deal between the two parties (via Alex Speier of the Boston Globe).

Proposed terms aren’t clear at this point, but the fact that the Sox are trying to retain Rodriguez on a multi-year pact is nevertheless of some note. We’ve seen players accept a qualifying offer and still work out a subsequent extension in the past — Jose Abreu and the White Sox, for instance — but interest in Rodriguez figures to be robust. The fact that the Sox are looking at multi-year arrangements is at least a sign of a healthy market. Rodriguez has already been loosely linked to the Angels, and MLB.com’s Jon Morosi tweets this morning that the Tigers have showed some “early interest” as well.

The 28-year-old Rodriguez was viewed by some as a surprise recipient of the qualifying offer on the heels of a 4.74 ERA this season. Beyond that mark, however, everything in the lefty’s profile looks quite appealing. Rodrgiuez posted career-best marks in strikeout rate (27.4%) and walk rate (7.0%) while effectively tying career-best marks in swinging-strike rate (11.7%), called-strike rate (16.4%) and opponents’ chase rate (33.7%).

Rodriguez was also among the very best in baseball in terms of limiting hard contact (90th percentile average exit velocity, 87th percentile hard-hit rate) and finished the season on a rather strong note. The lefty posted a 3.71 ERA and 2.89 FIP following the All-Star break, including a 2.11 ERA in his final four starts of the season. Rodriguez was pulled early in his Game 1 ALDS date with the Rays after allowing a pair of runs in 1 2/3 innings, but he came back strong in his next two starts, allowing just eight hits and punching out 13 with no walks over the course of 11 innings. In all, over Rodriguez’s past three healthy regular seasons, he carries a 4.11 ERA, 3.63 FIP and 3.95 SIERA in just shy of 500 innings.

“Healthy” seasons is a key distinction, of course. The 2020 season was completely lost for Rodriguez when he developed myocarditis in the wake of a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. Rodriguez detailed the ordeal to James Wagner of the New York Times back in May, explaining that he couldn’t even get through 10 pitches in a bullpen session at one point before debilitating exhaustion overtook him. He was eventually barred from virtually any physical activity for three months, with even minor tasks like walking his dog and going to the supermarket off the table.

Given that context, it’s somewhat remarkable that Rodriguez was able to make it back for a full slate of 32 games in 2021 (including a lone, one-inning relief stint late in his final appearance). He tallied 157 2/3 innings during the regular season and tacked on another 12 2/3 in the postseason for a total of 35 games pitched. The Sox were seemingly mindful of his per-start workload, as he averaged just north of five frames per outing — a far cry from the six innings he averaged in 2019. Still, the overall workload is quite encouraging, given where Rodriguez was a year ago at this time.

All of that will be weighed by teams as they determine how aggressively to pursue Rodriguez, as will the fact that he’s tied to draft compensation by virtue of that aforementioned qualifying offer. Rodriguez has until Nov. 17 to determine whether to accept or reject that one-year, $18.4MM offer.

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