Astros Rumors

Quick Hits: Brewers, Kimbrel, Keuchel, Astros, Correa, A’s, Nats

By Connor Byrne | March 30, 2019 at 10:49pm CDT

The Brewers have reportedly engaged in “pretty serious” negotiations of late with closer Craig Kimbrel, who remains available even after the start of the season. Now, having lost closer Corey Knebel to season-ending Tommy John surgery, a union between the Brewers and Kimbrel looks even more plausible on paper. However, barring a massive drop in asking price, the Brewers aren’t in position to sign Kimbrel or the majors’ other big-ticket free agent, starter Dallas Keuchel, according to Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Both Kimbrel and Keuchel rejected a $17.9MM qualifying offer from their previous team at the outset of the offseason. But even if they wind up settling for one-year contracts, odds are those deals will approach or exceed the worth of the qualifying offer. The Brewers, for their part, probably don’t even have half the value of the QO left in their budget, Haudricourt relays, as they’re already sporting a franchise-record Opening Day payroll. As a result, Haudricourt posits they’re more likely to rely on in-house reinforcements such as injured reliever Jeremy Jeffress and on-the-mend starter Jimmy Nelson than splurge on one of the two star free agents sitting on the open market.

MLB Awards “Championship Belt” During Arbitration Symposium

By TC Zencka | March 30, 2019 at 1:16pm CDT

Major League Baseball hosts an annual symposium on arbitration wherein delegates from each team come together with the league to make recommendations for upcoming arbitration hearings. There is a ceremony near the end of the symposium when a “championship belt” is awarded to the team that best accomplished the “goals set by the industry,” per The Athletic’s Marc Carig. Passed annually from one year’s winner to the next, The Belt is a chintzy, plastic “prize,” intended as a moment of levity and morale for what can be a difficult process on all sides. In this thoughtful article, Carig digs into the arbitration process, its history, the toll it takes on those involved, and of course, The Belt.

Clearly, given the tumultuous relationship between Major League Baseball, the owners, and the Players’ Association, the optics here aren’t great. However harmless the intent (or however private), an award for essentially best limiting the earning potential for players is not likely to sit well with the MLBPA – or the public for that matter. MLB confirmed existence of The Belt, explaining it as “an informal recognition of those club’s salary arbitration departments that did the best.” This season, the finalists were the Astros, Braves, Cubs, Indians, Rays, and Twins.

Executive Director of the MLBPA Tony Clark reacted with a statement (via Twitter), saying, “That clubs make sport of trying to suppress salaries in a process designed to produce fair settlements shows a blatant lack of respect for our Players, the game, and the arbitration process itself.”

Health Notes: Kershaw, Perez, Johnson

By Steve Adams | March 29, 2019 at 9:12pm CDT

Dodgers southpaw Clayton Kershaw may not be all that far from returning to the MLB mound, but he has a few more steps to take. As Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register reports on Twitter, the star hurler could soon be cleared for a minor-league rehab assignment — if he’s able to complete a live BP session tomorrow without incident. Supposing things go well and Kershaw is ready to resume competitive action next week, he’ll still need to build up his pitch count before returning to the Dodgers roster. It’s not yet clear how many rehab starts he’d need before being activated.

More health notes from around the game …

The Tigers announced Friday that pitching prospect Franklin Perez will miss the first four to six weeks of the season due to tendinitis in his right shoulder. He’ll rehab at the team’s spring facility in Lakeland, Fla. for the time being. The shoulder tendinitis is the latest health-related setback for 21-year-old, who also missed most of the 2018 campaign with lat and shoulder issues. Perez, who threw just 19 1/3 innings last seasons, was one of the key pieces Detroit received from the Astros in the 2017 blockbuster that sent Justin Verlander to Houston. Considered at the time of that deal to be one of baseball’s premier minor league arms, Perez has seen his prospect star dim as injuries have prevented him from taking the hill. Fortunately for the Tigers, he’s still quite young and has ample time to develop, but the ongoing arm issues are a troubling trend.
There’s an even tougher diagnosis for Marlins prospect Osiris Johnson, as Wells Dusenbery of the Sun Sentinel reports on Twitter. The youngster appears to be sidelined for all of the 2019 season after undergoing surgery for a right tibial stress fracture. Taken in the second round of last year’s draft, the shortstop is considered a high-risk, high-upside talent. He turned in good results at the Rookie level but stumbled in a late promotion to the Class A level. This was to be an important year of development for Johnson, who only turned 18 last October.

Astros Extend Justin Verlander

By Jeff Todd and Ty Bradley | March 24, 2019 at 10:35am CDT

SUNDAY: Houston has announced the extension.

SATURDAY: The Astros have reached an agreement with right-hander Justin Verlander on a two-year, $66MM extension, Mark Berman of FOX 26 Houston reports. The deal will keep Verlander, a client of ISE Baseball, in Houston through the 2021 season.

It has been a remarkable few seasons for Verlander, who’s set to complete the final season of a five-year, $140MM extension signed prior to the ’13 campaign. Lagging velocity and some health issues led to messy 2014 and 2015 seasons, but Verlander recovered admirably, finishing out his Tigers tenure in good form before being shipped to the ’Stros.

Verlander has now reached his 36th birthday, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he pitched last year. Over 214 frames, he worked to a 2.52 ERA with 12.2 K/9 against just 1.6 BB/9. And it wasn’t just the work of a crafty veteran who somehow managed to squeeze out one last good season from what was left of his stuff. Verlander averaged over 95 mph with his dominating fastball and jumped to a 14.5% swinging-strike rate — easily the highest mark of his storied career.

There’s an argument to be made that Verlander was never better than in 2018. He didn’t tally the same volume of great innings that he did in the vintage seasons of his youth, but Verlander’s insane 30.4% K%-BB% was nearly twice his career average. That level of unadulterated dominance is typically reserved for elite late-inning relievers who mostly unleash their arsenal in one-inning bursts. Statcast actually felt that Verlander was unlucky to permit opposing batters a paltry .260 wOBA. The contact they made against him was so weak that the advanced system credited those hitters with a .236 xwOBA.

Locking up Verlander – the third in a series of late-spring Astros extensions – brings at least some degree of clarity to a future rotation mix that seemed hazy at best. With both Verlander and Gerrit Cole set to hit the market after the upcoming campaign, and emerging frontliner Lance McCullers Jr. on the shelf until at least Opening Day 2020, Houston’s level of concern vis-á-vis the top end of the rotation had reached urgent heights. Collin McHugh was lassoed back from the bullpen, but none of the club’s glut of emerging arms – Cionel Perez, Framber Valdez, Josh James, Forrest Whitley, Corbin Martin, and J.B. Bukauskas among them – would likely be prepared to lead a staff in the upcoming seasons, especially one with designs on another AL crown.

The club still has more to work to do, of course (old friend Dallas Keuchel is still out there), but with just $108MM on the 2020 books even with the extensions divvied to Verlander, Alex Bregman, and Ryan Pressly, there should be plenty of room with which to maneuver. A Cole deal seems further off, and riskier still given his third-starter track record in the two seasons prior to ’18, but the club’s tech-blazed path to improvement with so many of its hurlers, centered on bolstering spin rates with pitches both fast and slow, should certainly be a mark in its favor. Houston, under Jeff Luhnow, has always been loath to part from the cream of its crop, so a high-profile trade for a top-end arm wouldn’t seem to be in the cards.

Regardless, with ace now in tow, the Astros have widened their window considerably. In addition to Cole, only George Springer, among the team’s stars, is set to hit the open market between now and when Verlander’s contract expires at the end of 2021, and the team has its floodgates set wide open in hopes that another homegrown star or two will wash ashore.

MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand was the first to report the two sides were “moving toward” an extension (via Twitter). Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic was first with the proposed figures (Twitter link). Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Roster Notes: Rox, Brewers, Phils, Nats, Reds, Marlins

By Connor Byrne | March 23, 2019 at 7:31pm CDT

The latest on several teams’ rosters…

First baseman Mark Reynolds will make the Rockies’ roster, Nick Groke of The Athletic tweets. A Rockie from 2016-17, Reynolds rejoined the club on a minor league deal this past January after spending last season with the Nationals. In his return to Colorado, the 35-year-old Reynolds will back up the team’s headlining offseason acquisition, Daniel Murphy.
More from Groke, who reports catcher Brett Nicholas has requested and received his release from the Rockies. However, it’s possible the Rockies will try to keep Nicholas, Groke adds. An ex-Ranger, with whom he totaled 110 plate appearances from 2016-17, Nicholas signed a minors pact with the Rox in November. He has always faced an uphill battle to make the team, though, considering it has Chris Iannetta, Tony Wolters and Tom Murphy on its 40-man roster.
Catcher Erik Kratz won’t crack the Brewers’ roster, leaving him to await his trade/waiver fate, per Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This had been the expected outcome for Kratz, who’s stuck behind Yasmani Grandal and Manny Pina on Milwaukee’s depth chart.
Infielder Philip Gosselin won’t make the Phillies, Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia relays. It seems the 30-year-old will remain on hand as minor league depth, however. The journeyman has accrued 579 major league PAs, though he didn’t play much at the MLB level from 2017-18, and batted .263/.314/.361.
The Nationals have informed left-hander Vidal Nuno he won’t make their roster, per Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post. Nuno now has six days to decide whether to opt out of the minor league deal he signed in January. The 31-year-old has logged solid results this spring, having allowed two earned runs in 5 2/3 innings while recording six strikeouts against one walk. Nuno was similarly effective across 33 innings with Tampa Bay last year, when he put up a 1.64 ERA (with a much less impressive 4.46 FIP) and 7.91 K/9 against 2.73 BB/9.
The Reds have sent right-hander Anthony Bass to minor league camp, according to Mark Sheldon of MLB.com. Bass had been competing for a bullpen spot with the Reds after they signed him to a minors deal in December. He owns a 4.51 ERA/4.20 FIP with 6.07 K/9 and 3.31 BB/9 and a 47.9 percent groundball rate in a combined 299 1/3 innings with the Padres, Astros, Rangers and Cubs.
The Marlins are “expected” to retain Rule 5 pick Riley Ferrell, Joe Frisaro of MLB.com reports. The club took the right-hander fourth overall from the Astros in December, and he has since pitched well over 6 2/3 spring innings (two earned runs allowed on five hits and five walks, with 10 strikeouts). Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel of FanGraphs regard the 25-year-old Ferrell as “at least a big league-ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.”

Blue Jays Notes: Borucki, Stroman, Buchholz, Pentecost

By Mark Polishuk | March 23, 2019 at 11:28am CDT

Here’s the latest from the Blue Jays’ camp in Dunedin…

Ryan Borucki will miss at least one regular season start as a precautionary measure after the right-hander felt elbow pain during a recent start in minor league camp. The Athletic’s John Lott (Twitter links) was among those to report the news from Jays manager Charlie Montoyo and Borucki himself, who didn’t sound too concerned about the problem. Borucki has battled elbow problems in the past, including a Tommy John surgery, and said that injury experience allowed him “to figure out what’s good pain and what’s bad pain, and really, [the current injury] was nothing to really worry about.” The Blue Jays have Sean Reid-Foley, Thomas Pannone, Sam Gaviglio, or Trent Thornton as potential fill-in candidates for Borucki’s one start.
The Astros were one of the teams that showed interest in trading for Marcus Stroman over the winter, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports (subscription required). The Reds and Padres were also linked to Stroman in reports. Stroman is under team control through the 2020 season, though the combination of the Jays’ rebuild and Stroman’s own outspoken displeasure over a lack of extension talks and the club’s winter moves could be signs that the Blue Jays will eventually move on from the right-hander. To rebuild trade value, however, Stroman will have to rebound from a disappointing 2018 season. From Houston’s perspective, Stroman would give the team additional pitching depth beyond the coming year, since Gerrit Cole, Wade Miley, Brad Peacock, and Collin McHugh are all scheduled to hit free agency in the 2019-20 offseason. (Justin Verlander is also part of this group, though he and the Astros appear to be closing in on an extension.)
Clay Buchholz could be ready for rotation duty by early April, GM Ross Atkins told reporters, including The Athletic’s John Lott (subscription required). Buchholz was a late entry to camp, as he didn’t sign with the Jays until the start of March, plus he was also shut down by the Diamondbacks last September due to a flexor mass strain in his throwing elbow. For now, however, the veteran righty looks to be making good progress towards his eventual Toronto debut, which could be a boon given Borucki’s injury status.
Former first-round pick Max Pentecost has stepped away from spring camp to consider his future in baseball, Sportsnet.ca’s Shi Davidi reports. Pentecost was the 11th overall pick of the 2014 draft, though he has been plagued by shoulder problems throughout his young career, and also dealt with an elbow injury even prior to his draft selection. The Blue Jays had slowly been getting Pentecost re-acclimated to catching, culminating in Pentecost being behind the plate for 660 innings for Double-A New Hampshire last season.

Astros Extend Alex Bregman

By Steve Adams | March 22, 2019 at 3:35pm CDT

MARCH 22: The deal has now been announced.

MARCH 21: Bregman will be paid $11MM annually from 2020-22 before earning $28.5MM in both 2023 and 2024, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports (via Twitter). He also has a 10-team no-trade clause for the 2023-24 seasons.

MARCH 20: The deal includes a $10MM signing bonus, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network (via Twitter). That’s unusual for a pre-arb contract; Heyman even suggests it may be unprecedented. Bregman can also boost his salary through escalators based upon MVP award finishes, the details of which are not yet known.

MARCH 19, 9:12pm: The Houston Chronicle’s Chandler Rome clarifies (via Twitter) that the contract is technically a five-year, $100MM extension. The new contract does not override Bregman’s 2019 salary, but it does cover his three arbitration seasons and what would have been his first two free-agent seasons.

It’s a technicality but not an insignificant one; because Bregman’s 2019 contract is a separate entity from his 2020-24 contract, the extension comes with a $20MM luxury hit (the average annual value of the deal). Had it been structured as a six-year pact overriding his current salary, the deal would’ve come with a $16.66MM luxury hit.

However, signing Bregman to a six-year deal with that $16.66MM hit would’ve pushed Houston to just about $3.5MM shy of paying the luxury tax in 2019, leaving the Astros with minimal wiggle room for in-season additions on the trade market. Instead, they’re about $19.5MM shy of the $206MM threshold right now, which should leave them plenty of room to take on salary in midseason trades.

8:55pm: The Astros have agreed to terms on a six-year, $100MM contract with star third baseman Alex Bregman, reports Mark Berman of FOX 26 Houston (via Twitter). That contract covers the current season, three arbitration years and what would’ve been the first two free-agent seasons for Bregman. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal had tweeted not long before that the two sides had been discussing an extension.

Bregman, 25 at the end of the month, has rapidly ascended from No. 2 overall draft pick (2015) to one of the game’s premier players. The LSU product has improved in each MLB season, topping out with his first All-Star appearance and a fifth-place finish in American League MVP voting in 2018. Last season, he posted a brilliant .286/.394/.532 batting line with 31 homers, 51 doubles, four triples and 10 steals in a season that both Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs was worth about seven wins above replacement.

The contract extension comes just weeks after Bregman voiced “disappointment” with the fact that the Astros renewed his contract for the upcoming season at $640,500. “I understand that it’s a business,” Bregman told MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart at the time, “but I feel like good business would be wanting to make a player who performed at a high level on your team happy and want to feel like he wanted to be kept and feel like they wanted him to play here forever.”

Whether Bregman was referencing a desire to sign an extension or merely felt he should’ve been compensated at the record pre-arb levels attained by Mookie Betts ($950K) and Kris Bryant ($1.05MM), the point is now moot. The nine-figure extension offer emphatically makes clear that the ’Stros view Bregman as a vital part of their future. At the same time, it also affords him the opportunity to reach the open market in advance of his age-31 campaign — enough time to perhaps lock in one more significant payday before reaching his mid-30s.

Historically speaking, Bregman’s contract is the third-largest deal ever promised to a player with between two and three years of MLB service time. Buster Posey’s eight-year, $159MM pact tops the list for that service class, although unlike Bregman, he was a Super Two player and already eligible for arbitration when agreeing to that deal. He was also coming off a 2012 season in which he was named National League MVP, and beyond that, he had a National League Rookie of the Year Award on his mantle as well.

As for non-Super-Two players with between two and three years of service, Mike Trout’s original six-year, $144MM contract still stands out as the high-water mark. Like Posey, he had a more impressive resume than Bregman through his first two-plus seasons before agreeing to that deal.

This marks the second extension for the Astros on what has been an apparently busy day for president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow and the rest of the front office. Houston agreed to a two-year, $17.5MM extension with reliever Ryan Pressly earlier tonight as well.

Bregman now joins 2017 American League MVP Jose Altuve as the only Astros locked up through the 2024 season. That pair will form the cornerstones of the Astros’ impressive nucleus for the next six years, and it’s still possible that others could be locked into longer-term pacts as well. Altuve, Bregman and Pressly are the only Astros players who are guaranteed any money beyond the 2020 season, and the team does have several important pieces up for free agency in the near future. Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Collin McHugh are all free agents at the end of the 2019 season, while George Springer will hit the open market after the 2020 campaign. Carlos Correa, meanwhile is arbitration-eligible through the 2021 season. No one should expect the Astros to lock up all of those players — even securing two would be an impressive feat — but the Bregman deal likely doesn’t put an end to the team’s extension efforts.

Latest On Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole Extension Possibilities

By Jeff Todd | March 22, 2019 at 3:18pm CDT

4:27pm: Owner Jim Crane acknowledged that there are talks with at least some realistic possibility of a deal, as MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart reports on Twitter.

“I don’t think anything is final, but if it’s going to get done it’s going to get done before we get out of here,” said Crane in reference to the conclusion of spring camp.

3:17pm: Cole seems to have snuffed out any possibility of a deal coming together in his case. He says “there have been no contract negotiations,” as Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle reports.

The hurler indicated some displeasure with the situation. He tells Rome that the team asked, and he gave permission to hold a discussion with agent Scott Boras. But there was never any talk beyond that per Cole, who says “this seems more like a phone call negotiation involving the media than anyone else.”

2:50pm: The Astros are currently discussing potential extension scenarios with both Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole — a development that The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal downplayed even as he reported it earlier today. In a follow-up tweet, though, Rosenthal says that deal with Verlander “is at least possible.”

That characterization seems to nudge up the likelihood of a deal. The plausibility is boosted further by the fact that Rosenthal puts out some numbers. It seems there’s some discussion and potential for a two-year extension worth over $60MM.

Verlander will turn 37 years of age before he throws a competitive pitch in the 2020 season. At that phase of a player’s career, lengthy commitments generally can’t be achieved. We’ve seen hefty two-year deals for superior performers, though not at the kind of top-of-the-market rates that seem to be under contemplation here.

It’s hard to argue that Verlander is worthy anything less than top dollar. He has been fantastic since landing in Houston late in the 2017 season, throwing 248 innings in 39 starts and compiling a 2.32 ERA with 12.1 K/9 against 1.5 BB/9. Even for a pitcher as great as Verlander, that’s a dizzying level of output.

Verlander has indicated that he’d like to keep pitching well into his forties. For now, he’ll have to decide whether to lock in two more years in Houston or instead wait to see what the open market offers next winter. As for the Astros, Rosenthal suggests they may need to dangle something approaching the current record average annual value for a starter (Zack Greinke’s $34.4MM) to secure a deal.

Giants Return Rule 5 Pick Drew Ferguson To Astros

By Steve Adams | March 22, 2019 at 2:10pm CDT

The Giants have returned Rule 5 pick Drew Ferguson to the Astros after the outfielder cleared waivers, Maria Guardado of MLB.com tweets. Ferguson was designated for assignment yesterday when the Giants acquired another pick in this past year’s Rule 5 Draft, Connor Joe, from the Reds.

Ferguson, 26, struggled in big league camp with San Francisco this spring, hitting just .111/.294/.111 over the life of 34 plate appearances. He enjoyed a strong, albeit somewhat shortened season in Triple-A this past year prior to being taken in the Rule 5, hitting .305/.436/.429 with 46 walks against just 61 strikeouts in 292 plate appearances. He’ll return to the Astros now and won’t be required to be placed on the 40-man roster.

Extension Rumors: Cole, Verlander, Red Sox, Castellanos

By Steve Adams | March 22, 2019 at 10:05am CDT

The Astros are currently discussing extensions with starters Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (subscription required), though a deal with either seems unlikely. Rosenthal notes that the Astros may not be keen on paying market price for a multi-year extension with Verlander when that deal would begin in his age-37 season. Cole, meanwhile, is a Scott Boras client and thus likelier to test the free-agent market. Boras’ most recent extension for a starting pitcher was Nationals righty Stephen Strasburg, who (like Cole) was in his walk year when he signed a $175MM guarantee on a seven-year deal beginning in his age-28 season. Cole is in his age-28 season right now, so he’d be a year older than Strasburg at the time of a theoretical extension, but he’s also been more durable, reaching 200 innings in three of the past four seasons. Rosenthal makes a slightly less-aggressive comp than that, pointing out that Cole will reach free agency at the same age as Patrick Corbin and with better career stats. Corbin agreed to a six-year deal worth $140MM with the Nats this winter.

Since it’s officially “Extension Season” — as MLBTR’s Extension Tracker shows, there have been a virtually unprecedented 16 extension agreements during Spring Training — here’s more extension chatter from around the game…

Rob Bradford of WEEI spoke to J.D. Martinez about the opt-out clause in his contract with the Red Sox at the end of the season. Martinez, who can opt out of the remaining three years and $62.5MM on his current deal, said there haven’t been any discussions about an extension or a restructuring of the contract to this point. Unlike last summer, however, he at least left open a slight window for in-season talks in his most recent interview with Bradford. Martinez has an opt-out after the third year of his contract as well, at which point there’d be two years and $38.75MM remaining on the deal.
Red Sox left fielder Andrew Benintendi was drafted five spot behind Alex Bregman and reached the Majors barely a week after the Astros’ third baseman, but Benintendi tells Bradford that his those similarities didn’t make him take particular note of Bregman’s $100MM extension. Rather, the 24-year-old Benintendi says it’s “fun to watch all these guys sign some deals” in a nod to the bevy of extensions throughout MLB. Benintendi and his reps have not discussed an extension with the Sox this winter, though he tells Bradford that he would “definitely” listen if the Sox initiated talks.
MLB Network’s Jon Heyman spoke to Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski about the team’s current slate of extension candidates (all links to Twitter). While it’s common for players to place Opening Day deadlines on extension talks, Dombrowski somewhat unusually took a similar stance. “We’re focused on winning this year,” he said. “…Unless something unexpected happens, we’re not going to do anything once the season starts.” Heyman notes that Xander Bogaerts, specifically, has stated an aversion to in-season negotiating. Regarding Martinez, Dombrowski merely stated that the Sox are “hopeful” he won’t opt out of his contract.
The Tigers “haven’t engaged in any kind of [extension] conversations” with Nicholas Castellanos this spring, GM Al Avila told MLB.com’s Jason Beck yesterday. There’s been no formal offer or even any formal discussions on the matter with Castellanos’ agent, according to Avila, though he said the possibility of a deal is “obviously… in our minds.” Castellanos has expressed a desire to remain in Detroit on a long-term deal, though the rebuilding Tigers will undoubtedly view him as a possible trade asset this summer as well. If the two sides can eventually find a common ground in terms of price, however, Avila said he wouldn’t rule out an in-season extension. “He hasn’t said anything to the contrary,” Avila said of Castellanos being willing to negotiate beyond Opening Day. “I think he would be open to it.”

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