Tigers Claim Dixon From Reds, Fernandez From Blue Jays
The Tigers announced Friday that they’ve claimed infielder Brandon Dixon off waivers from the Reds and left-handed reliever Jose Fernandez off waivers from the Blue Jays.
It stands to reason that the Detroit organization will continue to look for ways to find value from roster castaways from other organizations. In this case, they’ll take a look at a pair of players who earned first-time MLB promotions in 2018 but failed to impress at the game’s highest level.
Dixon, 26, raked in his second attempt at Triple-A but racked up 43 strikeouts and limped to a .574 OPS in his first 124 plate appearances in the big leagues. The former third-rounder is capable of playing the corners in both the infield and outfield but also has experience at second base, potentially making him a versatile piece if he can earn a shot with the Tigers.
As for Fernandez, he’ll turn 26 right as camp opens, just in time to push for a job in the Detroit pen. He’s exclusively a reliever and occasionally threw multiple innings in the upper minors last year, working to a 2.97 in 60 2/3 frames over 44 appearances. Though he has allowed a few too many free passes in recent years, Fernandez gets some swings and misses. He also showed a 94+ mph heater from the left side.
Reds Hire Pitching Coach Derek Johnson Away From Brewers
4:57pm: MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy tweets that Milwaukee general manager David Stearns has confirmed that Johnson is leaving the organization. The Brewers had “extensive” negotiations in an effort to retain Johnson, Stearns said, but it seems the two sides ultimately could not reach an agreement.
4:50pm: The Brewers are set for yet another coaching change, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets that pitching coach Derek Johnson is leaving the organization to join the Reds in the same capacity. Milwaukee previously saw hitting coach Darnell Coles step down, and he was announced as the new hitting coach for the Diamondbacks earlier today.
To this point, the entirety of Johnson’s coaching career in pro ball has come in the National League Central. He spent the 2013-15 seasons as the Cubs’ minor league pitching coordinator and has served as Milwaukee’s pitching coach from 2016-18 before jumping ship to the division-rival Reds. Prior to that, he spent 11 seasons as the pitching coach at Vanderbilt, working with numerous future big leaguers, including first-rounders David Price, Mike Minor and Sonny Gray.
Johnson will be the first staff hire under newly minted skipper David Bell on a Reds staff that figures to see its own fair share of turnover following the early-season dismissal of Bryan Price and the recent departure of interim manager Jim Riggleman.
Reds Part Ways With Jim Riggleman
4:07pm: Pat Kelly, who was Cincinnati’s interim bench coach under Riggleman, is likely to return to the team’s minor league system, a source tells Nightengale. Kelly was the Reds’ Triple-A manager before joining Riggleman’s staff. He was among those who interviewed for the Reds’ managerial opening prior to Bell’s hiring.
2:22pm: The Reds won’t be keeping Jim Riggleman in the organization in 2019, Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports (Twitter link). The interim manager for much of the 2018 season, Riggleman interviewed for the full-time job before the Reds hired David Bell as their next skipper earlier this week.
Riggleman has spent the last seven years within the Reds organization, managing at the Double-A and Triple-A levels, and then working as a third base coach and bench coach for the Major League team. He took the managerial reins on April 19 when Bryan Price was fired in the wake of a brutal 3-15 start to the season, and Riggleman did right the ship to some extent, leading Cincinnati to an even 45-45 record over the next 90 games. As the team faded down the stretch, however, Riggleman was left with a 64-80 record as skipper. Nonetheless, there still appeared to be a solid chance that Riggleman would lose the interim tag, as his performance reportedly impressed owner Robert Castellini and many in the Reds’ front office.
There was some speculation that Riggleman could remain with the Reds in some capacity, possibly as a minor league manager again or potentially even his old bench coach role (if the team had stayed in-house and hired John Farrell to manage). Instead, the 65-year-old will now look elsewhere to continue a coaching and managing career that has lasted since 1983. Riggleman is one of a select group who have managed five different Major League teams, with different stints running the dugouts for the Reds, Nationals, Mariners, Cubs, and Padres.
NL Central Notes: Murphy, Brewers, Reds
While Daniel Murphy was largely viewed as a rental when the Cubs acquired him, president of baseball operations Theo Epstein hasn’t closed the door on retaining the veteran infielder, writes MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat. “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” said Epstein. “He did a lot to right our offense right after he got here and contribute while being asked to play a bigger role than we envisioned when we got him because of injuries and because of a lack of performance offensively and because of the schedule.” Murphy stumbled out of the gates in 2018 upon returning to the from offseason knee surgery, but he hit .322/.358/.502 from July through season’s end — including a .297/.329/.471 slash after the Nats traded him to the Cubs. Addison Russell‘s suspension has clouded the Cubs’ middle-infield picture, though Murphy’s defense at second base has graded out terribly over the past two seasons, which the Cubs will have to consider.
It seems plausible that some clubs will prefer Murphy as a first baseman rather than a second baseman, though the Cubs have Anthony Rizzo locked in at first, so they’d have to be convinced he can play second base on a fairly regular basis.
Here’s more from the division …
- New Reds skipper David Bell discussed his approach to the position, as Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer writes. He acknowledges being relatively new to the application of analytics to the field, but says he has “gone through a process the last five years of asking a lot of questions, understanding the information, understanding how to utilize it and how to factor it into all decisions.” That experience will surely help Bell in his current role, in which he says he’ll be open to incorporating all manner of information. Indeed, he indicated that he finds it “a very exciting time in baseball” with whole new approaches to deploying rosters percolating around the game.
- The Brewers undeniably had a successful 2018 campaign, but it occurred despite of the struggles of righty Chase Anderson, who inked a short-term extension at the end of the prior season. As Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, Anderson wrapped up the current year saying he has plans to get back on track for 2019. GM David Stearns, meanwhile, says the organization expects the same. Anderson, who’ll soon turn 31, did finish with a solid 3.93 ERA in 158 innings. But ERA estimators including FIP (5.22), xFIP (4.79), and SIERA (4.68) were not impressed, and Anderson failed to sustain the slight but notable velocity bump from the season prior.
Reds Hire David Bell As Manager
The Reds have hired Giants vice president of player development David Bell as their manager, per a team announcement. Cincinnati awarded Bell a three-year contract with a club option for 2022.
The move represents a homecoming for the 46-year-old Bell, a Cincinnati native with deep ties to the organization. Bell’s grandfather (Gus Bell), father (Buddy Bell) and brother (Mike Bell) all played for the Reds, and Buddy is a former Reds coach who now works in their front office. David Bell didn’t play for the club during his long career as a major league infielder, but he did manage in its minor league system from 2008-12, running its Double-A team for three years and its Triple-A squad for one.
Bell hasn’t garnered any managerial experience at the big league level, though he did work in multiple capacities with a few organizations in between his Reds stints. He was a third base coach with the Cubs in 2012 before serving on then-manager Mike Matheny’s staff in St. Louis from 2013-17. Bell first worked as the Cardinals’ assistant hitting coach before becoming Matheny’s bench coach. He left last fall to join the Giants, whose farm system he wanted to modernize.
“There’s incredible information, and it has to factor into everything we do,” Bell explained to Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle last March. “It’s there. If we don’t access, utilize and implement that information, we’re going to fall behind.”
While it’s unclear how beneficial Bell was to the Giants’ farm system during his brief time with them, his modern outlook helped him land on other teams’ radars this month before the Reds hired him. Bell interviewed for both the Blue Jays’ and Rangers’ vacant managerial posts prior to joining the Reds, who counted him among roughly a dozen candidates for their job. Bell quickly emerged as the favorite for the position, beating out other serious candidates in Brad Ausmus and Rocco Baldelli. It helped Bell’s cause that Joe Girardi withdrew from contention Friday in a move that “surprised” Cincinnati, Jon Heyman of Fancred tweets.
As he begins the next phase of his life in baseball, Bell will be tasked with helping to turn around a Reds team that hasn’t earned a playoff berth or even finished .500 since 2013. While the Reds showed flashes in 2018 under interim manager Jim Riggleman, who took over for the fired Bryan Price, they still ended up with fewer than 70 victories (67) for the fifth consecutive season. There is some enviable position player talent on hand, though, especially in the infield – where the Reds boast first baseman/franchise cornerstone Joey Votto, second baseman Scooter Gennett, shortstop Jose Peraza and third baseman Eugenio Suarez. The club’s pitching staff is a problem, on the other hand, but there are at least a few potential building blocks in the fold in starters Luis Castillo and Anthony DeSclafani and closer Raisel Iglesias.
It’s likely the Reds, who plan to increase payroll in 2019, will spend the offseason trying to improve their pitching staff. Regardless, the Bell-led Reds will be in for another tough test next year in the NL Central, which featured four plus-.500 clubs and two playoff teams in 2018.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Reds’ Managerial Search Enters Second Round
The Reds are well into their search for a new manager, as has long been anticipated. Interim skipper Jim Riggleman took over after Bryan Price was fired and was at the helm for most of the 2018 season, but the club is determined to consider an array of candidates before naming the next full-time dugout leader. As we did last year with other openings of this kind, we’ll use this post to track the early developments in the hiring process in Cincinnati.
Latest Update — Oct. 20
- Per Fox Sports’ Jon Morosi (Twitter link), Giants VP of Player Development and former MLB third baseman David Bell is the now the favorite to be offered the job.
- The Reds informed Jim Riggleman today that he will not return as manager, according to William Ladson on Twitter.
Earlier Update — Oct. 17
- Ausmus and Girardi are also still under consideration, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). Both are slated for additional interviews, MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon adds on Twitter. It seems they’ll join Bell to make up a group of three finalists, per Jon Heyman of Fancred (Twitter link).
- The Reds conducted interviews with the 12 candidates listed below and won’t speak with anyone else, per John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer. ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick tweets that there’s a growing sense that David Bell “has the inside track,” though he notes that Rocco Baldelli’s interview went “extremely well,” too, placing Baldelli “strongly in the mix.”
Click to view full overview of managerial search:
Joe Girardi Withdraws From Reds’ Managerial Search
Joe Girardi has withdrawn from the Reds’ managerial search, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). He had the inside track on the job, per the report, but will instead continue working as a television analyst for the time being.
It is not clear at this point how the Reds will adjust to the news. The organization was said to have narrowed down its search to three candidates, with David Bell and Brad Ausmus also reported as finalists.
In the past, Bell has been seen as the favorite to take the reins in Cincinnati. But he’s also interviewing with multiple other clubs. Plus, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle tweets that Bell is even being whispered about as a possible candidate to advance in the Giants’ baseball operations department after just one season working in the club’s player development system.
Girardi, who previously managed the Yankees and Marlins, is still interested in returning to the dugout in the future, per Rosenthal. In fact, he’s said to be under consideration by the Rangers, if not other organizations seeking new skippers.
Central Notes: Kluber, Greene, Cubs
Indians ace Corey Kluber has earned $3.5MM of a possible $4MM in contract escalators, according to Jordan Bastian of MLB.com (via Twitter). All that remains is an all-but-certain top-10 finish in this year’s Cy Young award voting to raise Kluber’s salary in 2019 from $13MM to the full $17MM. His contract options in 2020 and 2021 will increase to $17.5MM and $18MM respectively. Despite a disappointing loss to Justin Verlander and the Astros in the ALDS, Kluber put together another stellar campaign in 2018. He won twenty games for the first time, going 20-7 with a 2.89 ERA in 215 innings. Kluber’s run of dominance began in his age-28 season, and he’s been one of baseball’s true number-one starters in the five years since (2.84 FIP, 152 ERA+ over that time). He more than earned his pay raise, but it does make an already-tight financial situation even tighter for Cleveland this offseason as they try to fill holes in their lineup and rebuild their bullpen around July acquisition Brad Hand.
Some notes from the Senior Circuit’s central division…
- Encouraging news for Reds fans from Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer, as 2017 number two overall pick Hunter Greene rehabs his elbow at the Reds’ Spring Training complex in Arizona. Greene sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow – and though injuries to this ligament often result in Tommy John surgery – Greene elected the non-surgical route and is progressing as planned. Before ending his season in July, the 6’4″ right-hander was 3-7 with a 4.48 ERA in 18 starts at Class-A Dayton. Advanced metrics paint a more impressive picture for the 19-year-old flamethrower — 11.72 K/9, 3.29 FIP, 3.13 xFIP. Greene hopes to get back to hitting triple digits when he resumes throwing in December or January.
- Cubs players seemed unclear in exit interviews about the organization’s hitting philosophy. Theo Epstein, Joe Maddon and whoever replaces Chili Davis as Maddon’s hitting coach will strive for greater harmony in organizational messaging about their offensive strategy moving forward, but the track record isn’t great writes the Athletic’s Patrick Mooney as he reviews Chicago’s hitting coaches since 2013 – a list that will be one name longer by Opening Day 2019. Current Phillies hitting coach John Mallee survived the longest, a three-year stretch that included the 2016 World Series and ended after the 2017 season. Some names Mooney suggests the Cubs could consider include current assistant hitting coach Andy Haines, former assistant hitting coach Eric Hinske (who worked under Mallee for three seasons) and former special assistant in player development Anthony Iapoce, who spent last season as the Rangers’ hitting coach.
Nick Senzel To Undergo Elbow Surgery, Miss Arizona Fall League
Reds top prospect Nick Senzel lost much of the 2018 season due to injury, and it seems another health issue will cost him an opportunity to play in the Arizona Fall League. Senzel tells Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer that he’ll undergo surgery to remove two bone spurs from his left (non-throwing) elbow and be sidelined for up to six weeks as a result.
It’s the latest setback for Senzel in a year that has featured all too much unwelcome injury trouble. The former No. 2 overall draft pick (2016) was out for nearly half the 2018 season owing to vertigo symptoms and a fractured finger that required surgical repair earlier this summer. On the plus side, Senzel still expects to be ready to go when Spring Training rolls around.
Still, Senzel’s absence from the AFL isn’t without consequence. With Eugenio Suarez now locked up as the Reds’ long-term third baseman following last spring’s seven-year extension, and Scooter Gennett possibly in line for an extension of his own, the Reds have shifted Senzel from the infield to the outfield. Senzel got some outfield work during instructional league play, and there’s general optimism that he’s athletic enough to handle the outfield; farm director Shawn Pender told C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic yesterday (Twitter link), “I don’t think there’s a position on the field he couldn’t play.”
Nonetheless, the AFL would’ve given Senzel the opportunity to accrue some valuable outfield experience in advance of Spring Training 2019. “…I wanted to get out in the outfield and do some reps,” Senzel tells Nightengale. “That was the plan to play in the Fall League. I couldn’t further risk more injury because I knew my elbow has been bothering me for the last 10 months. I played through it for as long as I could. “
To his credit, the 23-year-old Senzel didn’t play like someone whose swing was hampered by elbow pain. He raked at a .310/.378/.509 clip through 193 plate appearances in his first exposure to Triple-A earlier this season, despite the fact that he was facing considerably older competition. That marked a followup from Senzel’s terrific age-22 season in 2017, during which he hit a combined .321/.391/.514 while splitting the year between Class-A Advanced and Double-A.
Given his offensive upside, it’s not surprising to see Senzel’s name included in most top 10 overall prospect rankings from around the industry. The upcoming procedure will deprive him of some outfield experience, potentially delaying his path to the big leagues, but it still seems likely that he’ll have the opportunity to impact the Reds at the Major League level in 2019.
Reds Claim Juan Graterol
The Reds announced Wednesday that they’ve claimed catcher Juan Graterol off waivers from the Twins after he’d been placed on outright waivers. Cincinnati already had a pair of open 40-man roster spots, so not corresponding move is necessary.
Graterol, 29, only appeared in three games with the Twins after having his contract selected in late September. He’d previously appeared in 58 games at the Major League level with the Angels organization and is a lifetime .217/.227/.274 hitter in 111 plate appearances as a big leaguer. He’s notched a more respectable .289/.316/.346 slash in 572 plate appearances at the Triple-A level, but Graterol is known more as a defensive-minded backstop than a threat at the plate. He’s halted 38 percent of stolen-bases attempts against him in parts of 13 minor league seasons and thrown out 12 of 36 potential base thieves in the Majors (33 percent). He’s also routinely posted average or better framing numbers, per Baseball Prospectus.
Despite his shortcomings at the plate, Graterol’s defensive capabilities have made him a popular target on the waiver wire in the past. In the 2016-17 offseason, for instance, he went from the Angels, to the Reds, to the Diamondbacks, back to the Angels and then to the Blue Jays via waiver claim in a span of two months. After opening the season in the Jays organization, he was then flipped back to the Angels in a minor trade. Graterol still has a minor league option remaining beyond the 2018 season, so if he survives the winter on a 40-man roster (be it with the Reds or another organization), his team in Spring Training will be able to send him to the minors without first exposing him to waivers.