Catching Notes: Ramos, Lucroy, A’s, Herrmann, Vogt
While rumors about J.T. Realmuto continue to dominate the catching market, we’ve already seen such notable backstops as Yan Gomes, Kurt Suzuki, and Brian McCann switch teams this offseason. Here’s the latest on some other catchers….
- The Athletics have checked in with Wilson Ramos, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports, as the club explores its options on the catching front. It would be something of a surprise if the A’s went to the top of the market to find a catcher, as Ramos would require a pretty pricey multi-year commitment (MLBTR projects three years and $36MM) that could stretch Oakland’s traditionally limited payroll. While the A’s could boost payroll in an effort to return to the postseason, their pitching staff has enough holes that it probably deserves the lion’s share of dollars if the team did increase its spending. Committing multiple years to Ramos would also block catching prospect Sean Murphy, one of the Athletics’ better minor leaguers. It could also be that the A’s were simply doing their due diligence in talking to Ramos, just to see if a minor bargain could be found.
- A reunion with Jonathan Lucroy also isn’t out of the question for the Athletics, though Slusser reports that other teams have shown interest and the A’s are only offering Lucroy a one-year deal worth under $5MM. Lucroy is amenable to a one-year pact but wants a larger salary. Lucroy only hit .241/.291/.325 over 454 PA for the A’s last season, though he drew praise for his clubhouse leadership and handling of a pitching staff that was near-decimated by injuries.
- Chris Herrmann is one of several veteran catching options the Tigers are considering for next season, MLB.com’s Jason Beck reports (via Twitter). Grayson Greiner, John Hicks, and recently-acquired veteran Bobby Wilson comprise Detroit’s current catching core, with top prospect Jake Rogers waiting in the wings but still in need of more minor league seasoning. Herrmann was recently non-tendered by the Astros after being claimed off waivers from the Mariners after the season. The 31-year-old is perhaps known as much for his ability to play first base and left field than he is for his work specifically as a catcher, and Herrmann has a career .633 OPS over 898 PA with the Twins, D’Backs, and Mariners since 2012.
- Seven teams have been in contact with free agent Stephen Vogt, MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo reports (Twitter link). The bigger story here is that Vogt plans to play in 2019, which is good news for the veteran catcher in the wake of shoulder surgery that kept him off the field last season and threatened to end his career. Now, however, Vogt is hoping to be ready for Spring Training at the earliest and April or May at the latest, and he is now throwing from 70 feet.
Trade Rumors: Rockies, Santana, Castellanos, Jays, Pirates, Realmuto
Before the Phillies traded Carlos Santana to the Mariners as part of the Jean Segura deal, Rockies GM Jeff Bridich told reporters (including The Athletic’s Nick Groke and Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post) that his team had also been in talks about the veteran first baseman. We heard this morning that Colorado was likely to be an interested party if and when the Mariners explore flipping Santana as part of their ongoing fire sale. In other first base news, Bridich also said the Rockies checked in with the Diamondbacks about Paul Goldschmidt prior to Goldschmidt being dealt to the Cardinals. It seems like it may have been a short conversation, as the D’Backs “made it clear” that Goldschmidt wouldn’t be dealt to the Rockies.
With this reminder that divisional rivalries can still play a big factor in trade talks, let’s take a look at some other deal-making buzz from the Winter Meetings…
- As the Mariners continue their teardown, GM Jerry Dipoto said that he has received a lot of calls about outfielder Mitch Haniger, though the team is much less interested in dealing such a controllable and inexpensive asset. “We just weren’t willing to go there. I tell them if you want to blow me away, give it a shot,” Dipoto told the Seattle Times’ Ryan Divish and other reporters. “We’ve had [a] handful of teams try, but they haven’t quite gotten to where we would even consider it.”
- The Dodgers have interest in Tigers right fielder Nick Castellanos, MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi tweets. Castellanos “is not their highest priority,” however, as L.A. is exploring a wide range of other trade options. MLB.com’s Jason Beck also reported things were quiet on the Castellanos front, suggesting that Detroit could get more interest after some of the free agent hitters start coming off the board. As you might expect for a rebuilding team, the Tigers are open for business on the trade front, with GM Al Avila telling media (including Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press) that no player on the 25-man roster is untouchable.
- Interest is “significant” in Blue Jays right-handers Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, GM Ross Atkins told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi and other reporters. Despite the buzz, it would be “very difficult” for the Jays to find a good deal for either pitcher. It was a busy day in general for the Jays, who met with representatives from five different teams and five different agencies while exploring various trade and free agent options.
- Ivan Nova, Francisco Cervelli, and Corey Dickerson have all been mentioned as possible trade candidates for the Pirates, though “it’s going to have to be something that makes sense for us in the big picture to have us entertain” offers, GM Neal Huntington told MLB.com’s Adam Berry and other media. The trio will all be free agents after 2019, so it makes sense that Pittsburgh would explore trades if none seem likely to sign extensions or re-sign after the season. That said, since the Bucs are aiming to compete this year, quality players on short-term commitments aren’t necessarily a major issue, even though payroll concerns are always a factor for the team.
- With so many teams linked to J.T. Realmuto in trade rumors, Fancred Sports’ Jon Heyman lists seven teams as having “the best chance to land Realmuto” at this moment. The list includes the Astros, Braves, Dodgers, Mets, Padres, Phillies, and Yankees, even if some of those clubs have denied interest in the Marlins catcher. New York is one such team that has poured cold water on its involvement in the Realmuto talks, though Heyman wonders if the Yankees could only be part of a Realmuto trade if it was a three-team effort.
Tigers Sign Tyson Ross
6:08PM: The Tigers have officially announced the signing.
2:58PM: The Tigers have struck a deal with free agent righty Tyson Ross, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter link). It’s a $5.75MM guarantee over a single season, with a readily achievable roster bonus that would add another $250K, per Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter).
Ross, 31, finally got back on track last year after a pair of injury marred campaigns. He ended up throwing 149 2/3 innings of 4.15 ERA ball, with 7.3 K/9 against 3.7 BB/9 along with a 45.9% groundball rate.
Clearly, that’s not quite a vintage Ross showing. He was a 3.07 ERA hurler over a 516 2/3 inning run from 2013 to 2015. For a pitcher who once steadily worked in the mid-nineties, it’s hardly promising to see a career-low 91.7 mph average fastball. And he was far shy of his peak strikeout and groundball rates.
All that being said, it’s still rather impressive that Ross was able to turn in a full season after shoulder issues and eventual thoracic outlet procedure sidetracked his career. His prior effort, in 2017 with the Rangers, had fallen notably flat as he struggled to stay in the zone.
For Detroit, Ross will join the recently inked Matt Moore to help fill out the rotation and perhaps provide the club with a summer trade chip. That approach yielded dividends this past season with Mike Fiers.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Central Trade Rumblings: Indians Starters, Castellanos, Cervelli
Let’s round up the latest trade chatter from the central divisions:
- Though he had previously indicated otherwise, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (subscription link) that the Indians are exploring trade scenarios in which they’d dump a big contract (likely Jason Kipnis or Edwin Encarnacion) while dealing a top starter (Corey Kluber or Trevor Bauer). Clearly, the Indians are still working through scenarios that’ll increase their roster flexibility. Infusing young talent and enhancing payroll flexibility would both be of interest, and it’s not clear that either is a particular priority. It’ll certainly be fascinating to see how the market develops for those high-end righties.
- In talks with the Dodgers, per Jon Morosi of MLB.com (Twitter link), the Indians are showing interest in highly regarded prospect Alex Verdugo. The Los Angeles outfielder is clearly due for a full crack at the big leagues after turning in consecutive strong seasons at the Triple-A level. Still just 22 years of age, Verdugo is noted for his high-end left-handed hit tool and contact ability — not unlike Michael Brantley, who recently wrapped up a successful tenure with the Cleveland organization and who is expected to land a large contract elsewhere.
- The Tigers are “determined to move on” from outfielder Nicholas Castellanos, Antony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press reports. There’s initial interest from other clubs, per MLB.com’s Jon Morosi (via Twitter). It seems the Braves have at least “checked in” on the 26-year-old, who is projected by MLBTR to earn a $11.3MM salary in his final season of arbitration eligibility. The Atlanta organization has an opening in right field and has plenty of assets that’d be of interest to Detroit. Castellanos certainly has produced the kind of offensive output that’d be of interest — he’s slashing .285/.336/.495 over the past three seasons — but comes with anything but a sterling defensive reputation.
- Pirates backstop Francisco Cervelli emerged recently as a possible trade chip, but Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets that the market situation may not be ripe for a move. With a $11.5MM salary and history of concussions, Cervelli seems not to be drawing the kind of interest that the Bucs would need to see to make a deal. While the Pirates obviously have confidence in their internal replacement options, Elias Diaz and Jacob Stallings, they surely also value Cervelli. After all, he just turned in one of the best seasons of any backstop in the game in 2018 and the Bucs made a notable pair of win-soon moves at the ’18 trade deadline.
Giants Claim Mike Gerber
The Tigers announced today that the Giants have claimed outfielder Mike Gerber off waivers. He’ll head onto the San Francisco 40-man roster — representing the first such addition of new president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi.
Gerber, 26, only briefly touched the bigs last year and struggled for much of the year at Triple-A. Previously, though, he had been a steady producer on the Tigers farm. Indeed, he produced .800+ OPS figures over each of his first four seasons as a professional.
Tigers Sign Louis Coleman, Bobby Wilson, 2 Others
The Tigers announced today that they have inked four players to minor-league deals with invitations to Spring Training. Righty Louis Coleman, catchers Bobby Wilson and Kade Scivicque are among them, along with and infielder Kody Eaves.
Coleman tossed 51 1/3 frames in the majors for the rebuilding Tigers last year, working to a 3.51 ERA. Despite the good results, Coleman was outrighted after the season, as the club recognized that his underlying mix of 7.2 K/9 and 4.2 BB/9 did not portend the kind of success that would warrant an arbitration deal. The seven-year MLB vet should compete for a bullpen job in camp.
As for Wilson, the 35-year-old has appeared in nine MLB seasons over his career, though he has only ever recorded more than two hundred plate appearances with a single club in one of those (2012 with the Angels). He has compiled exactly one thousand plate appearances, over which he owns a less-than-enticing .208/.263/.313 slash line. Of course, Wilson’s appeal lies not in his bat but in his sturdy reputation behind the dish. He could conceivably crack the Opening Day roster but seems most likely to take up residence at Triple-A.
Scivicque, 25, is still looking for his first shot at the bigs. He was a fifth-round pick of the Detroit org back in 2015. He returned to the organization in 2018 after a stint with the Braves that began when he was sent to Atlanta via trade. Scivicque has a .667 career OPS in both 305 Double-A plate appearances and 218 trips to the plate at the highest level of the minors.
That leaves Eaves, who’s likewise slated for a return to the Tigers organization. The 25-year-old had a nice offensive season in 2017 but scuffled last year, slashing just .198/.283/.298 in 377 plate appearances in the upper minors. He was originally an Angels draft pick who came to Detroit in a 2016 swap.
Tigers Sign Matt Moore
DECEMBER 4: The deal has now been announced.
NOVEMBER 27, 7:06pm: The guarantee is $2.5MM, Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com tweets. The contract also includes $1MM in potential incentives.
12:18pm: The Tigers and left-hander Matt Moore are in agreement on a one-year deal, reports Yahoo’s Jeff Passan (Twitter link). Mark Feinsand of MLB.com had indicated that the two sides were in talks just prior to that report (also via Twitter). Specific parameters aren’t clear, but Feinsand and Passan both suggest Moore would be looking at a guarantee in the range of $2-3MM. The deal is pending a physical. Moore is represented by Sosnick, Cobbe & Karon.
Moore, still just 29, has struggled through a pair of awful seasons and would be a buy-low option for the Detroit rotation. Once considered the best pitching prospect in the game — Baseball America rated Bryce Harper, Moore and Mike Trout the game’s top three overall prospects prior to the 2012 season — Moore’s career came to a screeching halt in 2014 when he underwent Tommy John surgery.
To that point, Moore had amassed 347 big league innings with a 3.53 ERA, 8.8 K/9, 4.3 BB/9 and 0.9 HR/9 all before celebrating his 25th birthday. Moore struggled in his return from the ligament replacement procedure late in the 2015 campaign but gave some reason for optimism when he tossed a career-high 198 1/3 innings of 4.08 ERA ball in 2016. His velocity hadn’t quite returned to its peak levels but was on the upswing, and Moore looked to be on the path to reestablishing himself.
Unfortunately for both Moore and the Giants — who acquired him from the Rays midway through that solid 2016 campaign — the left-hander completely unraveled in 2017. Since Opening Day that season, he’s been clobbered for a 5.99 ERA in 276 1/3 innings of work. Moore has averaged 10.7 hits and 1.5 home runs per nine innings pitched during that time, and his strikeout rate has fallen sharply (7.5 K/9). Over the past two seasons, he ranks 123rd of 125 pitchers in ERA (min. 200 innings), 107th in FIP and 117th in xFIP.
Those struggles won’t matter much to the Tigers, who are hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with the once-vaunted left-hander. Moore will slide into the back of a rotation that will be devoid of any expectations. Michael Fulmer, Jordan Zimmermann, Matthew Boyd and Daniel Norris are the top candidates to join Moore in manager Ron Gardenhire’s rotation next year, though the Detroit organization has an extremely promising wave of starting pitching prospects on the horizon. Matt Manning, Franklin Perez, Beau Burrows and 2018 No. 1 overall draft pick Casey Mize are all rising through the ranks and could soon arrive to give the rebuilding Tigers some hope for years to come.
In the meantime, Detroit will turn to low-risk stopgaps like Moore (and, a year prior, Mike Fiers and Francisco Liriano) in hopes of extracting some quality innings at a reasonable price point. Should they succeed in this instance, Moore will quickly become a trade chip next June or July.
Tigers Non-Tender James McCann, Alex Wilson
6:06pm: McCann and righty Alex Wilson will both be non-tendered, Fenech tweets.
3:55pm: The Tigers are likely to non-tender catcher James McCann before tonight’s deadline, per Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press. MLB.com’s Jason Beck offers a similar sentiment, tweeting that McCann will be non-tendered “barring a last-minute surprise.”
McCann, 28, hit .253/.318/.415 with a career-high 13 home runs as recently as 2017, but his offense cratered in 2018 as he slashed just .220/.267/.314 with eight home runs in 457 plate appearances as Detroit’s primary catcher. More troubling, perhaps, was the fact that while the right-handed-hitting McCann had previously been a force against left-handed pitching, he batted a woeful .176/.229/.284 when holding the platoon advantage in 2018.
On the defensive side of the coin, McCann has continually been sensational in terms of controlling the running game. He’s registered at least a 30 percent caught-stealing rate in each of his four full big league seasons, including a 36 percent mark in 2018 and an overall rate of 37 percent. He’s been well below-average in terms of pitch framing across the past two seasons, though, and has struggled similarly in terms of blocking balls in the dirt.
MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz had projected McCann to earn $3.5MM in arbitration, but it seems he’ll instead hit the open market and join a top-heavy but nonetheless crowded crop of free-agent catchers. Yasmani Grandal, Wilson Ramos, Martin Maldonado, Jonathan Lucroy, Robinson Chirinos, Devin Mesoraco, Matt Wieters, Nick Hundley and Rene Rivera are among the available options, to say nothing of trade candidates like J.T. Realmuto and Francisco Cervelli. Suffice it to say, McCann will have competition as clubs weigh their options — especially considering he’s likeliest to be looked at as a candidate to fill a backup role.
Players Added To The 40-Man Roster
Tonight marks the deadline for players to be added to their respective organizations’ 40-man rosters. Over the nine hours, there’ll be a flurry of moves, ranging from minor trades (like the one the Indians and Rays made yesterday), waiver claims and players being designated for assignment or outrighted. Each will be made to clear room for players who need protection from this year’s Rule 5 Draft. As a reminder, players who signed at 18 years of age or younger and have five professional seasons are eligible, as are players who signed at 19 or older and have four professional seasons under their belts.
Here’s a rundown of players who’ve been added to their respective 40-man rosters (which will be updated throughout the day)…
- There are three additions for the Twins: outfielder LaMonte Wade and infielders Nick Gordon and Luis Arraez.
- The Giants announced that they have added a trio of righties: Melvin Adon, Sam Coonrod, and Logan Webb.
- Lefty Justin Steele is now a member of the Cubs‘ 40-man, per an announcement.
- The Rangers announced that they are protecting veteran hurler Edinson Volquez, who’s returning from Tommy John surgery, along with outfielder Scott Heineman, righty Wei-Chieh Huang, and lefty Taylor Hearn.
- Righties Mitch Keller and JT Brubaker, infielder Cole Tucker, and outfielder Jason Martin are all joining the Pirates‘ 40-man, per Tim Williams of Pirates Prospects (via Twitter).
- The Blue Jays will add righty Patrick Murphy to their 40-man, per Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca (via Twitter). Toronto has announced his addition, along with those of fellow righties Trent Thornton, Yennsy Diaz, Hector Perez, and Jacob Waguespack.
- Three Indians players have been boosted up to the 40-man, the club announced: first baseman Bobby Bradley, southpaw Sam Hentges, and righty Jean Carlos Mejίa.
- Righty Joe Harvey is joining the Yankees‘ MLB roster, the club announced.
- The Phillies have added shortstop Arquimedes Gamboa along with righties Edgar Garcia and Adonis Medina to the 40-man, per a club announcement.
- Former first-round draft pick Dillon Tate, a right-handed pitcher, was selected to the Orioles‘ 40-man.
Warwick Saupold, Chad Bell Sign With KBO’s Hanwha Eagles
The Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization announced that they’ve signed right-hander Warwick Saupold and left-hander Chad Bell to one-year contracts (hat tip: Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net, on Twitter). Saupold will earn a total of $1MM — $300K signing bonus and $700K salary — while Bell will receive a $200K signing bonus and a $400K salary. As Kurtz further notes, the KBO recently amended some rules preventing first-year foreign players from signing for more than a total of $1MM. Saupold is repped by the Ballplayers Agency, while Bell is a client of the Bledsoe Agency.
Saupold, 29 in January, has spent parts of the past three seasons with the Tigers. The Australian-born righty has compiled 106 2/3 innings at the big league level to this point in his career, working to a 4.98 earned run average with 70 strikeouts against 46 walks out of the Detroit bullpen. His work in the minors has been considerably more impressive, as he sports a 3.39 ERA with 7.0 K/9 against 3.1 BB/9 in 188 2/3 frames with the Tigers’ top affiliate. He’s been with the Tigers organization since the age of 22, and he spent the two seasons prior to that pitching for his hometown Perth Heat of the Australian Baseball League.
Bell, 30 in February, was Saupold’s teammate with Detroit from 2017-18, though he finished out the ’18 campaign as a member of the Braves organization after being claimed off waivers in mid-May. He’s been knocked around for a 7.11 ERA in 69 2/3 MLB innings but managed a more palatable 4.27 ERA with 7.7 K/9 against 3.6 BB/9 in 270 Triple-A innings.