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NL News & Rumors: Padres, Reds, Dodgers, Cards

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Even though the Padres non-tendered right-hander Tyson Ross last week, there’s “mutual interest” in a reunion, general manager A.J. Preller revealed Monday (via AJ Cassavell of MLB.com). Preller added that “a market didn’t develop” for a Ross trade, leading to the non-tender decision, but he did inform the 29-year-old upon cutting him that the team wanted him back – just not for an estimated $9.6MM. Ross has been a front-line starter in the past, but he suffered a shoulder injury on opening day last season and didn’t pitch again in 2016. He underwent thoracic outlet surgery in October and should return to full strength by April.

More from the National League:

  • Reds center fielder Billy Hamilton has drawn trade interest – including from the Rangers – but Cincy has a high asking price because it doesn’t believe the 26-year-old has reached his ceiling, a source told Mark Sheldon of MLB.com. Additionally, the Reds realize replacing the baserunning dynamo and defensive ace would be a daunting task. “Billy is an integral part of the defense and pitching,” commented GM Dick Williams. Along with Hamilton, “there’s definitely interest” in right-hander Anthony DeSclafani, said Williams. The team is reluctant to part with either, however, per Sheldon. DeSclafani would surely merit a sizable return, especially considering the lack of appealing starters on the open market. The soon-to-be 27-year-old is coming off two strong seasons and won’t be a free agent until after the 2020 campaign.
  • The Dodgers have talked to free agent reliever Greg Holland, according to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com. Los Angeles was one of many teams at Holland’s showcase in November, and it could now lose as many as three bullpen mainstays – Kenley Jansen, Joe Blanton and J.P Howell – in free agency. The 31-year-old Holland, formerly with the Royals, was among the majors’ best relievers before undergoing October 2015 Tommy John surgery and missing all of last season.
  • Elsewhere on the Dodgers front, they’re “aggressively” looking into third base alternatives in case they’re unable to re-sign Justin Turner, a major league source informed Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com. The hot corner’s other top free agent options – Luis Valbuena and Trevor Plouffe – are far less enticing than Turner. On the trade market, the Dodgers have reportedly discussed third baseman Yangervis Solarte with San Diego.
  • The Cardinals are in the market for a reserve catcher because they’d rather have 22-year-old Carson Kelly play regularly in the minors than sparingly in the majors, writes Jenifer Langosch of MLB.com. Starter Yadier Molina has long been a workhorse, having appeared in at least 136 games in seven of the past eight years, which hasn’t led to many opportunities for his backups. St. Louis had a veteran No. 2 catcher on hand in Brayan Pena, but it released him last month and will eat at least $2MM as a result.

Reds Outright Tony Renda

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The Reds outrighted second baseman/outfielder Tony Renda off their 40-man roster and assigned him to Triple-A, the team announced.  The Reds now have 38 players and two open spots on their 40-man roster.

Renda came to Cincinnati last winter as part of the four-player trade package the Yankees sent to the Reds in exchange for Aroldis Chapman.  He made his big league debut this season and posted a .463 OPS over his first 67 plate appearances in the Show.  Originally a second-round pick for the Nationals in 2012, Renda has a .289/.361/.378 slash line over 2347 career minor league PA in the Cincinnati, New York and Washington farm systems.

Rangers Interested In Billy Hamilton

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The Reds are willing to listen to offers for center fielder Billy Hamilton, as ESPN’s Buster Olney reported last week, and the Rangers are among the teams eyeing him, Olney tweets.

With both Ian Desmond and Carlos Gomez currently on the open market, Texas has an obvious need in the middle of its outfield. Desmond spent the lion’s share of 2016 in center, and the Rangers are now “far from optimistic” that they’ll be able to re-sign him. The interest in Hamilton makes sense, then, as the 26-year-old has been a valuable member of the Reds since becoming a full-time major leaguer in 2014. As evidenced by his .248/297/.334 batting line in 1,547 plate appearances, Hamilton hasn’t contributed much at the plate, but his defensive and baserunning excellence combine to give him a high floor.

Just seven major leaguers have saved more runs in the field than Hamilton’s 37 since 2014, while only Jason Heyward and Andrelton Simmons have bettered his 47.9 Ultimate Zone Rating over the past three seasons. Hamilton swiped the most bases in the majors (172) during the same period and is fresh off his third straight season with at least 55 steals, despite having missed a combined 91 games the previous two years. Hamilton stole a career-high 58 bags in 2016, and has only been caught a combined 16 times since 2015. That’s a vast improvement over his rookie year, when opposing catchers gunned Hamilton down 23 times on 79 attempts.

Although the Reds are in the midst of a rebuild, they’d need to be “really, really motivated by an offer” to move Hamilton, per Zach Buchanan of the Cincinnati Enquirer (Twitter link). Hamilton is under team control through the 2019 campaign and is set to make his first trip through arbitration this offseason, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting an ultra-affordable $2.3MM salary for 2017.

Minor MLB Transactions: 12/4/16

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Sunday’s minor moves from around baseball:

  • The Braves have announced a one-year major league agreement with left-handed reliever Jacob Lindgren, whom the Yankees non-tendered Friday. The 2014 second-round pick briefly cracked the majors in 2015, but elbow issues limited him both that year and this past season. Lindgren threw just seven innings in 2016 – all with the Yankees’ High-A affiliate – before undergoing Tommy John surgery in August. The 23-year-old could miss all of next season while recovering from the procedure, but the Braves will retain his rights beyond then if he’s on their 40-man roster, as ESPN’s Keith Law notes (via Twitter).
  • Two days after the Reds non-tendered Gabby Guerrero, the club has re-signed the outfielder to a minor league deal, according to Zach Buchanan of the Cincinnati Enquirer (Twitter link). The Reds claimed the nephew of former major league star Vladimir Guerrero off waivers from the Diamondbacks last week. The soon-to-be 23-year-old was a well-regarded prospect with the Mariners at one time, but he struggled with the Seattle and Arizona organizations over the past two seasons. Guerrero posted a .223/.258/.346 line in 488 Double-A plate appearances in 2015, when he was part of a trade involving Mark Trumbo and Welington Castillo, and stumbled to a combined .234/.281/.383 showing with the D-backs’ Double-A and Triple-A affiliates last season.

NL News & Rumors: D-backs, Cubs, Padres, Reds, Marlins

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The Diamondbacks are aiming to improve their bullpen and have reached out to a pair of familiar free agent relievers, Brad Ziegler and Daniel Hudson, according to Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. Ziegler previously spent parts of six seasons with the Diamondbacks, who traded him to Boston in July. New D-backs executive vice president and general manager Mike Hazen was the Red Sox’s GM at the time, of course, so he’s familiar with Ziegler. Hudson, meanwhile, has been with Arizona since 2010. The 29-year-old has recorded a 4.50 ERA, 9.07 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9 in 128 innings as a reliever over the past two seasons.

More from Arizona and a few other NL cities:

  • Along with bolstering his bullpen, Hazen hopes to add left-handed hitters, he told Piecoro. “I think being a little more left-handed could certainly help us,” Hazen said. “Pigeonholing it into one specific focus, I think, would be too complicated to try to pull off. I think we can be opportunistic about that.” The Diamondbacks have four established or potential regulars who are either lefties or switch-hitters in third baseman Jake Lamb, outfielder David Peralta, catcher Chris Herrmann and infielder Ketel Marte, notes Piecoro. They could trade outfielder Yasmany Tomas in an attempt to become less right-handed, but there’s not much of a market for him, sources informed Piecoro. While Tomas belted 29 home runs in 2016, the 26-year-old’s .272/.313/.508 line wasn’t great overall; further, he doesn’t provide defensive or baserunning value and still has $48.5MM coming his way through the 2020 season.
  • The Cubs made attempts over the past couple years to acquire right-hander Tyson Ross from the Padres and could pursue him in free agency, according to Bruce Levine of CBS Chicago. “The Padres were close to trading Ross to the Cubs for Starlin Castro,” a major league source who worked for one of the teams told Levine. “San Diego execs were mixed on asking for Castro or Javier Baez. The deal went down to the wire in late July of 2015 but never got to the point of exchanging medicals.” Ross was a front-of-the-rotation starter at that point, but he only threw 5 1/3 innings last season and is currently recovering from thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. The Padres non-tendered him Friday.
  • The rebuilding Reds are committed to giving regular playing time to young middle infielder Jose Peraza in 2017, general manager Dick Williams and manager Bryan Price told C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer (Twitter link). That’s particularly notable with two up-the-middle veterans – second baseman Brandon Phillips and shortstop Zack Cozart – in place. Cincinnati attempted to deal Phillips last offseason, but he took advantage of his ability to block a trade. Phillips, who has one year and $14MM left on his contract, is reportedly more open to waiving his no-trade clause this offseason. Cozart also has one year of club control remaining, and he nearly went to the Mariners prior to last summer’s non-waiver trade deadline. Seattle has since acquired Jean Segura, taking it out of the running for Cozart, but he could still interest other shortstop-needy teams looking for a capable and affordable stopgap. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects a $4.7MM arbitration award for Cozart.
  • With Jeff Mathis headed to Arizona, the Marlins are in the market for a veteran backup catcher, per Joe Frisaro of MLB.com. Free agents like Geovany Soto and Dioner Navarro are candidates to end up in Miami as the main reserve behind J.T. Realmuto, writes Frisaro.

Joey Votto Maintains He Wants To Stay In Cincinnati

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Reds first baseman Joey Votto, who has a full no-trade clause and $179MM remaining on his contract, maintains that he would prefer to remain in Cincinnati, as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon writes. Votto produced an outstanding .326/.434/.550 line in 677 plate appearances last season, and it sounds like he wants to remain a Red as long as the team can still find a use for him. The Reds, of course, are rebuilding, and have traded a long string of veterans in the past couple years, including Todd Frazier, Johnny Cueto, Jay Bruce, Mike Leake and Aroldis Chapman. It sounds, however, like neither Votto nor the Reds have any desire to add Votto to that list, at least not right now.

“I’ve worked really hard to not look [bad] in my career and I’ve worked really hard to be a loyal worker, and I’d like to keep that going,” says Votto. “Until I feel like I’m being shuffled out, you saw [that] last year with Brandon [Phillips], you saw it in Philadelphia with Chase Utley. Until I start feeling like the broom is on my heels, I’ll be a really nice guy. If I feel the broom on my heels, I’ll be a bit of [a jerk]. I’m not going to be a nice guy.”

Votto adds that he looks up to stars in other sports who have been able to play their entire careers with one team.  “I admire [the NBA’s] Tim Duncan in San Antonio,” he says. “Never once did you hear about him going anywhere. Or [the NFL’s] Tom Brady in New England. Never once do you hear about him going anywhere, because they hold up to their end of the bargain by performing at a certain level and teams are excited to keep them.”

Reds GM Dick Williams repeats that he has made no efforts to trade Votto this offseason. Two weeks ago, he said he had not spoken with Votto about the possibility of waiving his no-trade clause.

2016-17 National League Non-Tenders

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The deadline to tender 2017 contracts to players is tonight at 8pm ET. We’ll keep track of the day’s non-tenders in the National League in this post (all referenced arbitration projections courtesy of MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz)…

  • Departing the Rockies’ 40-man are righty Matt Carasiti and infielder/outfielder Stephen Cardullo, the club announced. Neither was eligible for arbitration.
  • The Braves non-tendered righty Chris Withrow, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweets.
  • The Pirates non-tendered lefty Jeff Locke, as had been increasingly expected, as Stephen Nesbitt of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets. Catcher Eric Fryer was also dropped; he was not eligible for arbitration.
  • The Cubs non-tendered four pre-arb players to clear 40-man space, MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat tweets. Lefty Gerardo Concepcion and righties Zac Rosscup, Conor Mullee, and Christian Villanueva were all taken off the roster.
  • Righty Louis Coleman was not tendered a contract by the Dodgers, per a team announcement.
  • The Reds have non-tendered three players, as C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer tweets. Catcher Ramon Cabrera, righty Keyvius Sampson, and outfielder Gabriel Guerrero were all dropped from the roster.
  • As expected, outfielder Ben Revere has been non-tendered by the Nationals. (The non-tender was first reported by the TalkNats blog on Twitter.) The club’s other eligible players — including shortstop Danny Espinosa — have been offered contracts. Revere projected to earn $6.3MM despite an abysmal 2016 campaign, his first in D.C. The 28-year-old still offers speed and defense, but will need to improve quite a bit upon his .217/.260/.300 slash. He has been a near-average bat in prior years, so there’s reason for some optimism, but at that rate it proved too costly.
  • The Cardinals have cut ties with righty Seth Maness rather than tendering him a contract, MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch tweets. St. Louis has tendered all its remaining players with arb eligibility. While Maness, 28, has been a steady pen presence for the Cards, he underwent surgery on his UCL in mid-August. He did manage to avoid a full ligament replacement, and comes with another year of control, but evidently the price was too high for the Cards to roll the dice. Maness had projected to receive a $1.6MM salary and would have commanded at least that again in 2018.

Olney’s Latest: Hamilton, Napoli, Sale, CBA

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The Reds are listening to offers on all of their players, including Billy Hamilton, reports ESPN’s Buster Olney (Insider subscription required and recommended). There is, of course, a distinction to be made between entertaining offers and shopping Hamilton around, but Cincinnati’s openness should pique the interest of a number of clubs looking for a center field upgrade. Hamilton had a breakout year in 2016, slashing .260/.321/.343 with three homers while delivering his third consecutive season with 55-plus stolen bases. Those rate stats are far from elite, but Hamilton is an elite defensive center fielder and far and away the best baserunner in Major League Baseball, so progressing from a sub-.300 OBP to even a roughly league-average mark is significant. Hamilton swiped 58 bags in just 460 plate appearances last year and was caught a mere eight times. He also drew a +15 mark from Defensive Runs Saved and +13 from Ultimate Zone Rating in just 119 games.

As Olney notes, Hamilton is controllable for three more years and may not have much control left by the time the Reds are good again. There’s certainly some logic behind trading him, though the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Zach Buchanan hears they’d need to be “really, really motivated by an offer” to part with Hamilton (Twitter link).

More from Olney…

  • Mike Napoli is seeking a three-year contract in free agency, reports Olney later in the above-linked piece. The Indians, meanwhile, prefer to keep their offers to retain Napoli to one year in length. At 35 years of age and in a market stocked with first base/DH types — Mark Trumbo, Edwin Encarnacion, Brandon Moss, Steve Pearce, Mitch Moreland, Adam Lind, Logan Morrison, etc. — it’s tough to see Napoli landing three guaranteed years even after hitting 34 homers. Napoli’s .239/.335/.465 line was solid but not elite. and his baserunning and defense both rated poorly in 2016 as well.
  • Also from Olney, execs with other teams tell him that they believe the White Sox “are serious about their intention to trade Chris Sale.” Chicago has told rival clubs they’re willing to trade anyone with fewer than four years of team control remaining, which would mean Jose Quintana, Carlos Rodon, Adam Eaton and Tim Anderson are off the table, but names like Sale, Jose Abreu, Todd Frazier, Melky Cabrera and David Robertson are all in play. Sale’s name figures to dominate next week’s Winter Meetings, and the wide range of options available to Chicago GM Rick Hahn should mean the White Sox will be connected to plenty of interesting trade scenarios.
  • In a separate column (Insider subscription again required and once again highly recommended), Olney writes about the ongoing struggle in the collective bargaining negotiations, which have a 12:01am ET deadline on Thursday. Per Olney’s report, differing styles of negotiation between new MLBPA head Tony Clark and the team of Commissioner Rob Manfred and chief legal officer Dan Halem have led to a slower pace in talks. And, the owners’ recent concession of dropping the demand for an international draft hasn’t really accelerated talks in the manner they hoped it would. Olney adds even more to the CBA story through a series of three tweets, reporting that the competitive balance tax is the “last big hurdle” for MLB and the MLBPA to clear in negotiations, but there’s growing pessimism about a deal getting done. Agents to whom Olney has spoken are “perplexed” by the impasse and feel the Union needs to communicate to the players more effectively why there could be a work stoppage and how it’d impact them.

Reds Claim Juan Graterol, Gabriel Guerrero Off Waivers

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The Reds have claimed catcher Juan Graterol off waivers from the Angels and claimed outfielder Gabriel Guerrero off waivers from the Diamondbacks, the team announced today. In order to clear room on the 40-man roster, the Reds have designated right-hander Keyvius Sampson and catcher Ramon Cabrera for assignment.

The 22-year-old Guerrero is the nephew of former Major League superstar Vladimir Guerrero and long rated as one of the top prospects in the Mariners’ system before being traded to Arizona in last year’s Mark Trumbo/Welington Castillo trade. Guerrero posted strong numbers as recently as 2014 in Class-A Advanced — .307/.347/.467 with 18 homers and 18 steals in 530 plate appearances — but his production has plummeted upon reaching the upper levels of the minors. He hit just .223/.258/.346 between his two organizations’ Double-A affiliates in 2015 and struggled similarly this year, hitting .234/.281/.383 between Double-A and Triple-A.

Graterol, 27, made his Major League debut and tallied 15 PAs with the Halos this past season. The former Royals farmhand spent the 2015 season in the Yankees organization before inking a minors pact with the Halos last offseason. He’s a career .274/.306/.338 hitter in parts of three seasons (95 games) at the Triple-A level and has halted stolen base attempts at a very strong 38 percent clip in the minors. Baseball Prospectus gives him average pitch-framing grades in the minors as well.

Sampson, 25, pitched 39 1/3 innings with the Reds this year across 18 games — two starts, 16 relief appearances — and logged a 4.35 ERA with 9.6 K/9 against 6.2 BB/9. Control has long been an issue for Sampson, who has walked 53 men, hit two batters and also rattled off seven wild pitches in his 91 2/3 big league innings. The former Padres farmhand pitched well in the minors up through Double-A but began to struggle at Triple-A (5.18 ERA in 231 innings) and clearly hasn’t fared much better in the Majors, where he owns a collective 5.60 ERA.

Cabrera, meanwhile, made his big league debut with the Reds in 2015 and played in a career-high 61 games for Cincinnati this season. The 27-year-old received 185 plate appearances due largely to the season-ending injury sustained by Devin Mesoraco and batted .246/.279/.357 with three homers and 10 doubles. He’s a lifetime .274/.327/.343 hitter at the Triple-A level and could end up elsewhere on waivers, though he’s never excelled at throwing out runners (23 percent in the minors) and draws routinely negative framing marks. From that standpoint, it’s not difficult to see why the Reds felt that Graterol was a superior option to function as the third catcher on their 40-man roster, behind Mesoraco and Tucker Barnhart.

Players Added To The 40-Man

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We’ll use this post to keep track of the players being added to their teams’ respective 40-man rosters today, which is the deadline to protect players from the Rule 5 draft. Players must be added to the big league roster within either four years (if they were 19 or older at the time of their original signing) or five years (if 18 or younger) of their signing year in order to be shielded from selection.

MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo took a look at some of the biggest names who face roster decisions, though most of those won’t be much in question. At the fringes, teams must also consider the major league readiness of the player, since that factors heavily into whether they’ll be taken and kept. Any drafting team, of course, must keep a player on its active MLB roster for the full season (with certain exceptions relating to the DL) in order for their control rights to vest. Adding a player to the 40-man too early can have its own risks, because it limits flexibility and could require a team to expose that player to waivers if a need arises. With 26-man rosters reportedly under consideration, the Rule 5 draft could be quite intriguing this year, and that may bleed into today’s decisions as well.

Below is a division-by-division rundown of the names that were added to each team’s 40-man roster (plus the various waiver claims that spawned from teams trying to outright players to protect Rule 5-eligible prospects). We won’t delve into each player’s background, but if you’re looking to a little more about the names that were added, I’d highly recommend this tremendous, in-depth examination of each team’s additions by Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper. If you want to see how the moves look in the context of a team’s roster, head over to Roster Resource for your club’s depth chart.

Onto the moves…

American League West

American League Central

American League East

National League West

National League Central

National League East

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