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NL West Links: Rosario, McKenry, D’Backs

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Wilin Rosario or Michael McKenry could be traded before Spring Training is over, Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post opines, as the Rockies look for ways to solve their catching surplus behind starter Nick Hundley.  Manager Walt Weiss said that he doesn’t plan to use three roster spots on players who can only catch, so the club’s plan to give Rosario some time at first base could be a solution.  Colorado has explored trades for Rosario this offseason but if they hold onto him, he’d hold the edge on a roster spot over the out-of-options McKenry.

Here’s some more from around the NL West…

  • The Diamondbacks will have approximately $19.02MM in combined pool money for the 2015 draft class and the 2015-16 international signing period, though their international spending will be greatly limited due to overage in the 2014-15 period.  Given how Arizona’s pool is the second-highest of any team’s, Baseball America’s Ben Badler opines (via Twitter) that the D’Backs made a “questionable” decision to “handcuff themselves” in the international market until 2017 by going over their current pool limit to sign Yoan Lopez.
  • Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler was “pleasantly surprised” that GM A.J. Preller was able to make so many major trades this winter, though club ownership went into the offseason knowing changes had to be made.  “We knew we had to re-energize the community,” Fowler told reporters, including the Associated Press. “I think last year was sort of the beta test for us: OK, this is not working. It was time….After looking at our numbers in terms of attendance and looking at the interest in the marketplace, we felt we had to do some investment spending.”
  • From that same chat with reporters (including MLB.com’s Corey Brock), Padres president/CEO Mike Dee said that the club isn’t too disappointed over not landing Yoan Moncada.  “We would have loved to have had him, but we now have flexibility we might not have had [in future international spending],” Dee said.
  • Rick Renteria has been offered a number of jobs since being fired as the Cubs’ manager earlier this winter, Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times writes, including a return to the Padres.  Though Renteria is reportedly going to take a year away from baseball, manager Bud Black has been “trying to get him to pop over to Peoria [where the Padres train] and get back involved with us.  I’m trying to get him back in as soon as possible, just to help us out to whatever extent he wants to help out.”  Before being hired by Chicago, Renteria managed and coached in the Padres’ organization for a decade, including six seasons on Black’s coaching staff.
  • Yasmani Grandal’s strong pitch-framing metrics were a big reason the Dodgers acquired him in the Matt Kemp trade, Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles writes.

Minor Moves: Ransom, McCoy, Diaz, Gaudin

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Here are today’s minor moves from around the league…

  • The MLB.com transactions page lists a few new minor league deals. Infielder Cody Ransom has joined the Diamondbacks after spending some time in Japan last year. Ransom, 39, has seen action in eleven big league seasons, though he has broken the 100 plate appearance barrier only twice — in 2012-13, oddly enough. Ransom played well in that late-career run, putting up 505 plate appearances with a .207/.301/.414 slash and twenty home runs over those two seasons.
  • The Padres signed utilityman Mike McCoy. Now 33, McCoy has yet to pass the 400 plate appearance barrier at the big league level and has struggled at Triple-A in the last two seasons, but does have a better prior track record.
  • Catcher Robinzon Diaz, 31, is joining the Brewers on a minor league deal. Diaz last saw MLB action back in 2008-09 and has bounced around the upper minors since. In parts of eight seasons at Triple-A, Diaz has slashed .278/.305.387.
  • The Dodgers will sign right-hander Chad Gaudin to a minor league deal, and he will be a non-roster invitee to Major League Spring Training, tweets MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick. The 31-year-old Gaudin sat out the 2014 season as he recovered from neck surgery but was quite good with the 2013 Giants, working to a 3.06 ERA (with a 3.34 FIP and 4.00 xFIP) in 97 innings. Gaudin has experience as both a starter and a reliever in parts of 11 Major League seasons — the bulk of which have come with the Athletics. He has a lifetime 4.44 ERA with 7.1 K/9, 4.2 BB/9 and a 42.4 percent ground-ball rate in 836 1/3 Major League innings. Gaudin also worked out for the division-rival Diamondbacks recently.

D-Backs Notes: Lopez, Contracts, Payroll

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D-Backs right-hander Yoan Lopez doesn’t mind one bit that fellow Cuban (and fellow Yoan) Yoan Moncada quickly broke his record $8.27MM bonus, writes Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. Rather, Lopez is pleased to see Moncada continue a trend of Cubans realizing their dreams to play in the Major Leagues. Manager Chip Hale tells Morosi that Lopez has impressed the organization with his work ethic, charisma and explosive fastball. And while he may no longer hold the record for largest bonus for an international amateur, Morosi notes that the 22-year-old Lopez stands a much better chance of getting to the Majors in 2015 than Moncada. (Morosi’s piece also contains an amusing anecdote from Lopez detailing his dominance over now-teammate Yasmany Tomas in Cuba.)

Here’s the latest on the Diamondbacks…

  • The Diamondbacks will not be afraid to eat bad contracts in order to take their best group of 25 players to Opening Day, CEO Derrick Hall told reporters, including Jack Magruder of FOX Sports Arizona (Twitter link). The D-Backs currently have a number of bad contracts, most notably including Trevor Cahill (owed $12.5MM including the buyout on next year’s option) and Cody Ross (guaranteed $10.5MM including his own buyout). Aaron Hill’s remaining two years and $24MM also seem steep, though it’s tougher (for me, at least) to envision a scenario in which Hill is let go. (Though the team could always eat some money in a potential trade of Hill.)
  • MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert also has some notes from Hall (in these four tweets). Hall said that the team is comfortable with a payroll in the $90-91MM range, but they’re currently north of that mark (presumably including Lopez’s bonus) and may have to get “creative” to find flexibility. That could mean moves at the end of Spring Training, or the budget could grow with increased ticket sales if the team gets off to a good start. Hall emphasized, however, that the D-Backs are not looking to move players at this time.
  • Hall also said that while the D-Backs have previously had a policy against including performance bonuses in contracts, they may be open to adjusting that line of thinking in the future.
  • For those who missed it earlier this week, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reported that the team’s new TV deal is worth more than $1.5 billion and contains an equity stake in FOX Sports Arizona. However, as Hall explained to Piecoro, the D-Backs’ offseason spending — they invested heavily in Lopez and Tomas — was made under the assumption that a new deal would be reached, so the effects of that new contract won’t be seen immediately.

D-Backs Agree To New Television Contract

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FEB. 23: The total value of the contract is now believed to exceed $1.5 billion, and it also contains an equity stake in the network, Piecoro writes in a followup piece. Piecoro spoke to D-Backs CEO Derrick Hall, who said that while the team stands to benefit financially, there won’t be a sudden increase in spending late in the offseason. The Diamondbacks have been spending this offseason under the assumption that this deal would be completed, Hall explained. While there’s a signing bonus with the contract, increased rights fees won’t kick in until next year.

Hall called the contract “game-changing” for his team, adding: “It puts us on par with a lot of our colleagues. Any increase in revenues, as we’ve said in the past, will go directly toward our (organization). It will help the franchise. It will help the product on the field.”

FEB. 18: The Diamondbacks and FOX Sports Arizona have agreed to a new television contract that is believed to be worth more than one billion dollars in total, reports Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic.

Arizona’s current television contract, which expires at season’s end, has an average annual vaue of about $31MM per year, Piecoro notes. He adds that the new contract is believed to at least triple that amount. It’s unclear how much the total value of the contract is, because the length of the deal isn’t currently known, but club officials have recently said they were discussing lengths in the 15- to 20-year range. Piecoro reports that there are indications that the new deal is indeed in line with those previously discussed parameters, which would suggest the total value is at least $1.4 billion.

Piecoro writes that the impact on the team’s payroll isn’t immediately known, though as he points out, the increased revenue won’t vault the D-Backs into the division-rival Dodgers’ financial stratosphere. The Dodgers’ TV deal averages out to roughly $334MM annually, according to a Forbes report from March 2014, trailing only the Yankees, whose annual revenue from the YES Network averages out to about $385MM.

Recent examples of this type of mega-contract include the Rangers, Mariners and Phillies, each of whom have AAVs in excess of $140MM, per Forbes. Piecoro notes that since the Rangers signed their 20-year, $1.7 billion deal in 2010, nearly a third of the teams in the league have inked similar contracts. Per Forbes, the previous top 10 television revenues belonged to the Yankees, Dodgers, Phillies, Rangers, Angels, Mariners, Mets, Red Sox, Giants and Padres.

It should be noted that the increased revenue won’t necessarily be distributed evenly over the duration of the contract. As MLBTR’s Jeff Todd pointed out last year in assessing the Phillies’ new television contract, Philadelphia’s TV revenue did not immediately jump to the $100MM average of their 25-year, $2.5 billion agreement. Rather, the increase was built in incrementally, with a three- to four-percent annual bump slowly building over the course of the deal. Jeff estimated that the Phillies’ first year under the new contract produced roughly $65MM in revenue (before factoring in equity stake and ad revenue), and it’s very possible that the D-Backs’ new contract is structured in a similarly incremental fashion. So, while the roughly $60MM discrepancy between the AAVs of contracts old and new may cause D-Backs fans to envision an enormous spending spree next winter, the team’s $92MM payroll may increase in a more gradual sense than those mean figures would initially suggest.

NL West Notes: Axford, McCarthy, Diamondbacks

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Tonight is the 87th Academy Awards ceremony and a pre-eminent Oscar prognosticator is Rockies reliever John Axford, who was a perfect 18-for-18 last year and 32-for-33 the past two years. Now, Axford, who graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in Film and Television, is offering predictions in all 24 categories, according to MLB.com’s Thomas Harding and Gemma Kaneko. “I didn’t do all the categories last year, and some people were a little upset by it,” Axford admitted. “This year I’m going all the way, to see what happens. This year, since I got so much stuff last year about it, I did them all.”

And the winner is…

  • Axford and the rest of the bullpen will be key to the Rockies’ 2015 season, opines The Denver Post’s Patrick Saunders.
  • Brandon McCarthy, who inked a four-year contract with the Dodgers worth $48MM, expected to re-sign with the Yankees during the five-day signing window after the conclusion of the World Series, writes Andy Martino of the New York Daily News. “It’s so stupid, but you feel like an actor,” said McCarthy. “You sound so pretentious and stupid saying it, but you’re like, ’someone showed me attention.’ You play your whole life for people to say nice things. And one team is being aggressive, and one team is just kind of hemming and hawing about it.” McCarthy added he “certainly would have had a long discussion about” accepting a three-year deal from the Yankees, if one had ever been offered.
  • The signing of Yoan Lopez signals the Diamondbacks’ new emphasis on the Latin American market, according to Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic. “I do think it’s an area we can impact and continue to get better and grow,” said Arizona’s Senior Vice President De Jon Watson. “It subsidizes your amateur draft. If you’re able to churn out players from the Latin American market, it definitely gives you strength in volume.“

Nick Punto To Sit Out 2015 Season

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Veteran infielder Nick Punto, who had agreed to a minor league pact and a Spring Training invite with the Diamondbacks, will not report to D-Backs camp and is “shutting it down” for the 2015 season, manager Chip Hale told reporters, including FOX Sports Arizona’s Jody Jackson (Twitter links). Hale stressed that Punto isn’t retiring, but the 37-year-old has decided for the time being that he’d prefer to spend more time with his family.

A gifted defender at second base, third base and shortstop, Punto has never been known for his bat, but he slumped to one of the worst seasons of his career in 2014, hitting .207/.296/.293 in 224 plate appearances for the A’s. He still played enough for a $2.75MM vesting option to trigger, but the Athletics elected to release him when in need of a roster spot in December.

In a 14-year career between the Twins, Phillies, Dodgers, Cardinals, Red Sox and A’s, the affable Punto is a .245/.323/.323 hitter in 3,734 plate appearances. His best season came with the 2006 Twins, when he hit .290/.352/.373 with excellent defense at all three of the aforementioned infield positions (primarily at third base, however).

Via Jackson’s colleague, Jack Magruder (on Twitter), Hale said the D-Backs have no intention to add another veteran infielder for depth purposes.

Mark Trumbo Wins Arbitration Hearing Versus D-Backs

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Outfielder Mark Trumbo has won his arbitration hearing against the Diamondbacks, reports Jon Heyman of CBS Sports (on Twitter). Trumbo will earn a $6.9MM salary, which is significantly higher than the $5.3MM figure submitted by the club coming off an injury-shortened campaign. Trumbo’s agents at Wasserman Media Group did well to handily top the projection of MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz, who had pegged him for a $5.7MM salary.

Trumbo, 29, will receive a sizable $2.1MM raise despite missing roughly half the 2014 season. (Conversely, the team’s $5.3MM figure called for a raise of just $500K.) Though his first season with the D-Backs was shortened, he did post solid power numbers, hitting 14 homers and driving in 61 runs in just 88 games (362 plate appearances). While he rated as a sub-replacement-level player due to a .293 OBP and some particularly unsightly grades from defensive metrics, arbitration places greater emphasis on baseball card numbers like homers and RBIs than more modern statistics.

This marks Trumbo’s second trip through the arbitration process, and he’ll look to stay on the field for the entirety of the 2015 season and continue to post strong power numbers in hopes of an even more substantial raise next winter. He’s arbitration eligible one more time before becoming a free agent following the 2016 season. Arizona originally acquired Trumbo in a three-team trade that sent left-hander Tyler Skaggs to the Angels and center fielder Adam Eaton to the White Sox.

NL West Notes: O’Dowd, Rockies, Trumbo

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Former Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd has joined the MLB Network as a studio analyst, writes Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. O’Dowd resigned from his post after 15 years at the helm of the Rockies last October and was replaced by understudy Jeff Bridich, who worked with O’Dowd for 10 years prior to the switch.

Here’s more on the Senior Circuit’s Western Division…

  • Saunders also conducted a Q&A with Rockies skipper Walt Weiss and discussed, among many things, the club’s offseason and Weiss’ role in constructing the roster. Asked about his role in shaping the roster, Weiss said that he “certainly spent a lot of time” not only with Bridich, but with others in the front office. “I enjoyed it,” Weiss added. “We talked about how passionate we are about certain things, as it relates to our club and the game in general. There was a period there where we worked to build a working foundation for now and the future.” Beyond that, Weiss expressed excitement over Bridich’s sharing of his player development background, which gave the manager an even better grasp of the team’s minor league system and future.
  • The Diamondbacks are preparing for an arbitration hearing with outfielder Mark Trumbo, reports MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert. Arizona filed at $5.3MM after Trumbo submitted a $6.9MM figure, leaving a fairly substantial gulf. With one more season of eligibility to come, and Trumbo’s 2016 salary built off of whatever base he ends up with this year, the stakes are that much higher.

Cuba Notes: Yoilan Serce, Olivera, Dodgers, D’Backs

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There’s another middle infielder name to be aware of, per MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez (Twitter links) and Ben Badler of Baseball America (via Twitter). Yoilan Serce, 27, will put on a showcase tomorrow in Florida. The second baseman owns an attractive .325/.395/.468 slash in his nine-year run in Cuba, but his power numbers dipped significantly over the past two seasons, with his slugging percentage coming in shy of .400 for the first time in his career. If you want an early look at Serce, check the second link to Sanchez’s Twitter account above to watch a few BP cuts.

Here are a few more notes on the thriving market for Cuban ballplayers:

  • Should the Dodgers land infielder Hector Olivera, as some have suggested is likely, the plan would almost certainly be to use him at third base, Ken Rosenthal and Jon Morosi of FOX Sports report. Los Angeles would need to figure out a role or a trade for incumbent Juan Uribe in that scenario. The difficulty with stashing Uribe on the bench, of course, is that his value is tied up primarily in his glove at the hot corner. While he probably would have drawn some interest after a strong 2014, it is not clear whether there are many obvious suitors at this point.
  • As others have suggested, and Rosenthal explains, there are good reasons to think that the teams that have already blown past their international bonus pool allocations will be the ones to make most of the significant investments in young Cuban talent over the coming months. Alternatively, teams that have yet to incur the significant penalties for going well over their spending allotment are waiting to see if they can land multiple players so as to make it worthwhile.
  • The Diamondbacks, for instance, already signed Yoan Lopez and now have interest in second baseman Andy Ibanez, per the report. Sources also tell Rosenthal that Arizona is out of cash, however.

NL Notes: D’Backs, Phillies, Hamels, Kimbrel

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Though many have argued to the contrary, the Diamondbacks are internally optimistic that their club can ride its young pitching to a surprising campaign, as Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic writes. Piecoro discusses the club’s acquisitions, including a turnaround candidate in Jeremy Hellickson and advanced-level prospects Allen Webster, Rubby De La Rosa, and Robbie Ray. “It’s our belief that with the young pitching we’ve got, we think it’s the right time,” said GM Dave Stewart. “Young pitching doesn’t normally start to show itself until the age that these guys are approaching — they’re not even there yet, they’re just approaching. The scouting reports that we have on each and every last one of the guys we acquired are good reports. Now, it’s just a matter of if they’re ready to move forward.”

Here’s more from the National League:

  • Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. says that the club has made “pretty decent progress” in turning over its club into a “younger and more athletic” unit, MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki reports. “We didn’t necessarily expect to make a full transition in a two- or three-month period of time,” said Amaro. “The process doesn’t start on October 1 and it doesn’t end on February 15. It continues. … There’s still a lot of work to be done.” Amaro rejected the idea that his club had set unrealistic price tags on its veterans: “Everybody has an idea of how they should evaluate. We have certain ways we evaluate our players and other players and what’s right for the organization. I think we’re in a better position to make those decisions than others.”
  • Most of the criticism, of course, has targeted the Phillies’ inability to date to work out a deal for lefty Cole Hamels. Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer opines that Amaro ought to make the best deal he can, now, rather than risking an injury or ineffectiveness.
  • Speaking of Hamels, Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs has put together another fascinating study of pitch comps. In this one, he notes the incredible similarities between the offerings of Hamels and fellow southpaw (and former Phillies hurler) J.A. Happ. As Sullivan explains, Hamels has vastly outperformed Happ not because he has better stuff, but likely through some combination of superior control, deception, and the like.
  • The division-rival Braves, meanwhile, have not drawn the same kind of widespread scrutiny as have the Phils, even after stating that they were not interested in dealing star closer Craig Kimbrel. The outstanding righty remains entrenched in the ninth, and tells David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he still expects the team to compete for a championship and has a personal goal of converting every save chance he is given. As O’Brien notes, skeptics have suggested that the club may still hold out some possibility of trading Kimbrel if a truly massive package were dangled, but there have been virtually no reports suggesting any action. It is at least somewhat notable that Atlanta added two former closers in Jason Grilli and Jim Johnson, but at this point a hypothetical deal involving Kimbrel seems a topic that — at most — may be worth re-visiting at the trade deadline.
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