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C.J. Cron

AL Notes: McCullers, Cron, Schoop, Orioles

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Lance McCullers Jr. has “been dying” to return to the mound, and “is ready for the season to start tomorrow if it could,” the Astros righty tells MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart.  Recovery from Tommy John surgery in November 2018 kept McCullers sidelined for all of last season, though he said he is on track for Spring Training and Opening Day after completing his rehab last month.  McCullers’ return will be a boost to an Astros rotation that has already lost Gerrit Cole and Wade Miley in free agency, and the 26-year-old is still looking to fully break out in what would be his fifth MLB season.  Injuries have limited the former 41st-overall pick to just 453 2/3 innings in his career, though McCullers has pitched well (3.67 ERA, 10.1 K/9, 2.86 K/BB rate) when healthy and has both an impressive postseason resume and an All-Star appearance to his name.

More Christmas Day notes from the American League…

  • Jonathan Schoop and C.J. Cron are both looking forward to new opportunities in the Motor City, as the two newest Tigers told reporters (including Chris McCosky of the Detroit News).  In Cron’s case, he said the Tigers “were on me from the beginning” after the first baseman was non-tendered by the Twins.  “The thing that stood out the most was just how much Detroit wanted me….They told my agent early on they wanted me to be a part of this thing and their persistence never stopped,” Cron said.  “Anytime somebody wants you that bad, it feels good and it made my interest higher and higher.”
  • Several Orioles questions are addressed by The Athletic’s Dan Connolly (subscription required) during a reader mailbag piece, including the issue of just how much financial support GM Mike Elias has at his disposal as he rebuilds the roster.  For example, Baltimore’s decision to trade Jonathan Villar to the Marlins for a fairly minimal prospect return created the impression that the O’s were more concerned with getting Villar’s $10.4MM projected arbitration salary off the books than they were in getting full value back for the talented infielder.  In Connolly’s view, “Elias’ hands are tied more than he would have preferred,” perhaps due to such factors as low attendance at Camden Yards and the likelihood that the Orioles will have to start more evenly sharing their MASN broadcast revenue with the Nationals.  It doesn’t seem that the O’s will be able to explore such tactics as offering to take a bad contract off another team’s hands if that team also includes some prospects in the trade.  That said, it isn’t as if the Orioles are running a total bare-bones operation — Connolly notes that ownership has invested in the Orioles’ infrastructure, giving Elias more modernized analytics and international scouting departments.

Tigers To Sign C.J. Cron

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The Detroit Tigers have completed their coup of the Twins’ right side, agreeing to a one-year deal with first baseman C.J. Cron, per Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press. This deal matches the one made with Schoop, coming in at $6.1MM, per Fenech and MLB Insider Jeff Passan. The Tigers have announced the deal with Cron, represented by Moye Sports Associates.

Cron joins his third club in as many seasons after being non-tendered in back-to-back winters by the Rays and Twins, respectively. The Twins claimed Cron from Tampa and paid him $4.8MM last season, but balked at the $7.7MM salary he was projected to earn through arbitration. Cron ends up getting a raise from the Tigers, though still coming in under his projected arbitration mark.

The trepidation over paying Cron stems from the fairly limited skillset offered by the slugging first baseman. The power is legit, as Cron has put together back-to-back seasons with an ISO north of .200 – but as with his once-and-future teammate Jonathan Schoop, the power comes with below-average walk rates and a batting average consistently in the neighborhood of .250 (he’s a .258 BA career hitter).

Cron did post an above-average barrel rate rate in 2019, but he also suffered some bad luck with a .277 BABIP that fell well below his average rate of .293. In his one year in Minnesota, Cron hit .253/.311/.469 with 25 home runs and 78 RBIs while helping the Twins to the AL Central crown.

Along with Schoop, Cron brings much-needed pop to the right side of the Tigers infield and gives them some potential trade chips come July. To make room for the Cron and Schoop signings, Brandon Dixon has been designated for assignment, the team announced. Coincidentally, Dixon led the Tigers with 15 home runs last season, a mark that both Schoop and Cron topped with the Twins. The Tigers 40-man roster is currently full.

Twins Non-Tender C.J. Cron, Trevor Hildenberger

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The Twins have non-tendered first baseman C.J. Cron, according to Dan Hayes of The Athletic (via Twitter). Righty Trevor Hildenberger was also not tendered a contract, the club announced.

MLBTR had projected Cron to earn a $7.7MM salary in his final season of arbitration eligibility. Hildenberger was not yet eligible for arbitration.

That already seemed like a fairly hefty rate of pay. Any uncertainty in the decision may have been resolved when Cron underwent surgery on his thumb at the tail end of the season, introducing some health questions.

Cron has for the most part been a quality big-league hitter. He was humming along nicely last year before the thumb issue arose. After a rough stretch, he finished his season with a .253/.311/.469 slash and 25 homers in 499 plate appearances.

As for Hildenberger, who’s closing in on his 29th birthday, the past two seasons just didn’t go as hoped. He burned through the upper levels of the farm and looked strong in his 2017 debut. But he was knocked around a bit in 2018 and never caught his breath in a truncated 2019 showing at the MLB level. There’s hope yet that Hildenberger will establish himself as a quality reliever, but he may have to do it elsewhere.

Twins Rumors: Ryu, Rotation, Cron, Gibson

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The Twins, in need of rotation upgrades, have been in touch with agent Scott Boras about left-hander Hyun-Jin Ryu, Darren Wolfson of 1500 SKOR North reports in his latest podcast (audio link, Twins talk beginning at 25:10 mark). It’s hardly surprising, as Minnesota figures to gauge the prices of virtually every top starter available, but the connection is nevertheless of some note. La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune also links the Twins to Ryu, and he adds that manager Rocco Baldelli and pitching coach Wes Johnson have been involved in the early recruiting process for the team’s top pitching targets. The general goal of those efforts is to help paint a picture of the culture the Twins try to foster and the means by which they feel they can help pitchers improve. “Making sure that people are comfortable and are going to a place with the right people they want to be with and they want to work with,” Baldelli said of the process. “…I enjoy talking with guys. Some of them end up Twins and some of them don’t. All of those conversations are worthwhile in every way.”

Some more notes out of the Twin Cities…

  • Also within his podcast, Wolfson adds that there’s some internal trepidation about paying first baseman C.J. Cron at the $7.7MM rate projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz. They’ll have until 8pm ET tonight to tender Cron a contract, and it’s possible that they could try to bring him back at a lower rate. But the Twins have also continued to discuss the possibility of moving Miguel Sano from third base to first base, which would free up the possibility of acquiring a third baseman either via free agency (e.g. Josh Donaldson, Todd Frazier) or trade. If the Twins part ways with Cron, they’d be at $48.9MM in guaranteed contracts plus another $41.1MM in projected arbitration salaries and pre-arbitration contracts. That rough $90MM sum is well shy of the $130MM record payroll with which they opened the 2018 season, and the team’s 2019 attendance rose by nearly 250,000 over the 2017 season that preceded that record level of spending.
  • Longtime Twins righty Kyle Gibson will embark on the next chapter of his career with the Rangers after agreeing to a three-year, $30MM deal last Wednesday. The former first-round pick apparently bet on himself in 2019, as MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports (via Twitter) that Minnesota had tried to sign Gibson to a two-year pact worth $17MM a year ago. Gibson, however, spurned what would’ve been the first multi-year guarantee of his career and came out ahead as a result. He ultimately earned $8.125MM in his final season of arbitration eligibility and will take that home on top of the additional $30MM he’ll be guaranteed with Texas once his deal is formally announced.

Twins Looking Into Free Agent Third Basemen

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The Twins have “kicked the tires” on several free-agent third basemen, including Josh Donaldson and Todd Frazier, according to Darren Wolfson of Skor North. Speculatively, it would seem that Mike Moustakas could also belong to this group, though he wasn’t explicitly named as a target.

One member of the Twins who might not be pleased to hear this news? C.J. Cron. With Miguel Sano currently installed at the hot corner, there’s not an immediate fit there, so adding a pricey third baseman through free agency could force Sano to first base—at Cron’s expense. The 29-year-old is in his final year of arbitration eligibility, and with MLBTR projecting a $7.7MM salary for the 2020 season, he’s a candidate to be non-tendered at the December 2 deadline.

That’s not to say that Cron is not a valuable player. With a .780 OPS and 25 home runs in 125 games for the Twins, he was a nice addition last winter and $8MM is by no means unaffordable, but the front office will certainly consider whether there are other options that could match or exceed Cron’s production at a lower price. It’s the same discussion that surrounded the Rays’ decision to designate Cron for assignment after a 2018 season in which he slugged 30 home runs, rather than pay the approximate $5MM he would’ve earned in arbitration.

And with Sano expected to earn $5.9MM in his second year of arbitration eligibility and coming off a decidedly better offensive season, he may very well represent a more cost-effective replacement for Cron. After rising through the minor league ranks as a third baseman, many have projected a transition to first base in Sano’s future. And after parts of five seasons in the big leagues, it seems safe to say that Sano will never be an above-average defensive third baseman: he was credited with -5 Defensive Runs Saved in 2019, and the stat believes he has cost his team runs in every season since 2015.

The Twins have quietly amassed the financial flexibility to go after the winter’s big fish, so a player of Donaldson’s caliber shouldn’t be out of the question for Minnesota. That said, they likely won’t be players for the best option on the market, Anthony Rendon. Nonetheless, if Cron is indeed non-tendered, the club would find itself comfortably below 2019’s $120MM Opening Day payroll, so the Twins shouldn’t be financially precluded from bringing in Donaldson on the three-year, $75MM deal that MLBTR projected for him. Still, there’s an argument to be made that those resources ought to be allocated to the starting rotation, which is a glaring area of weakness after the loss of Kyle Gibson and Michael Pineda to free agency.

As Wolfson mentions, the team has also considered giving catcher Mitch Garver increased reps at first base. After an offensive breakout in which he hit 31 home runs in just 311 at-bats, one would think his bat could play there. Wolfson is quick to note, however, that that doesn’t constitute a full-time position change for Garver—of course, such a move would only diminish his comparative offensive value, given the dearth of slugging catchers. The Twins still think of him first and foremost as a catcher (indeed, Garver made strides as a defensive catcher this year after a rocky start to his career), though decreasing his workload behind the plate would allow the team to get his bat in the lineup for more games throughout the season. He was part of a formidable timeshare with Jason Castro in 2019, and the Twins seem reluctant to pencil in a single catcher for 130+ games in 2020, so a similar arrangement (whether with Castro, who’s a free agent, or a newcomer) could be in order this year.

C.J. Cron Undergoes Thumb Surgery

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Twins first baseman C.J. Cron underwent a successful procedure on his right thumb on Oct 16, according to MLB.com’s D0-Hyoung Park (link). The “surgical debridement” Cron underwent generally requires a six-to-eight week recovery period.

Cron, 29, just wrapped up a fairly pedestrian 2019 campaign that saw him hit .253/.311/.469 (101 wRC+) with 25 home runs across 499 plate appearances for Minnesota. As Park notes, Cron’s right thumb issues likely played some role in suppressing those numbers. Cron was placed on the injured list on Jul 6 due to issues with the digit, and a quick return preceded a second injured list placement on Jul 22. Following that initial placement, Cron managed just a .220/.280/.420 batting line, with just seven starts logged for the Twins after Sept 8.

The 2019-2020 offseason will mark Cron’s third pass through arbitration. Cron earned $4.8MM with Minny last season, after being acquired off waivers from the cost-conscious Rays in November. Our recent arbitration projections tag Cron with an expected salary award of $7.7MM for 2020, leaving Twins chief baseball officer Derek Falvey and GM Thad Levine with a tough offseason decision regarding Cron’s future with the club. While Cron will presumably be ready for Spring Training, any amount of injury uncertainty is unwelcome for a player who stands the risk of being non-tendered thanks to a pedestrian season and a fairly notable salary.

C.J. Cron Having Thumb Injury Reevaluated

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Twins first baseman C.J. Cron played through a thumb injury for much of the season’s second half, twice landing on the injured list, and he’ll now seek an outside opinion on the matter, chief baseball officer Derek Falvey revealed to reporters (link via Betsy Helfand of the St. Paul Pioneer Press). “There could be a potential for a procedure to help alleviate some of the stuff he’s been dealing with,” Falvey said.

Cron, 30 in January, posted a solid .266/.326/.495 slash with 17 homers through 77 games prior to the All-Star break. That production cratered as his thumb troubles cropped up, however; he hit just .229/.280/.420 in the second half as his walk rate nearly halved (from 6.9 percent to 3.6 percent) and his strikeout rate spiked (from 19.3 percent to 25.6 percent). In all, Cron’s first season with the Twins resulted in a .253/.311/.469 slash with 25 home runs. That was only a hair better than league-average production by measure of both wRC+ (101) and OPS+ (103) in 2019’s heightened offensive environment.

Cron’s health will be of particular interest given that he’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to receive a raise from this year’s $4.8MM salary up to $7.7MM in 2020. That’s a relatively steep price to pay a first baseman coming off league-average offensive output, although perhaps the Twins are confident that better health would’ve kept Cron productive and led to a second consecutive 30-homer season.

Still, the Rays cut Cron loose and ran him through outright waivers a year ago, when he had multiple seasons of club control remaining and was fresh off a .253/.323/.493 season (123 wRC+ and OPS+). Minnesota was 12th in waiver priority when Cron was claimed, meaning more than a third of the league was uninterested in picking up two years of control over him at a time when his projected arbitration salary was $5.2MM. If Cron was a borderline call for clubs at that point, that’s all the more true now with just one year of control remaining, another raise in the offing, a barking thumb and a year of diminished offense. Perhaps the two sides will cut some kind of deal at a lower price prior to the tender deadline, but Cron seems like a potential non-tender candidate this winter.

Twins Select Cody Stashak, Place C.J. Cron On IL

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The Twins have selected the contract of righty Cody Stashak and recalled fellow reliever Lewis Thorpe, per a club announcement. They’ll take the active roster places of first baseman C.J. Cron, who’s headed to the injured list with a thumb malady, and righty Zack Littell, who was optioned down.

Stashak, 25, earned his way to the big leagues with a strikeout laden showing in the upper minors to open the year. He has been particularly impressive since moving up to Triple-A, turning in 22 1/3 frames of 1.61 ERA ball with a sterling 31:4 K/BB ratio. While he has functioned primarily as a reliever in recent seasons, Stashak did get two starts at Rochester and has been tasked with multi-inning work at times.

It’s not promising to see Cron headed back to the IL so soon after his reinstatement. It seems his thumb troubles have reared up again, meaning the team will go without a hitter who has turned in 350 plate appearances of ..263/.320/.494 work at the plate this season. The Twins will go with a three-man bench for at least a stretch.

Twins Activate Rosario, Cron; Buxton Placed On IL; Morin Designated For Assignment

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4:35pm: The Twins announced that Byron Buxton has been placed on the 7-day concussion list and Morin has been designated for assignment. Rosario and Cron have also formally been reinstated from the IL.

4:12pm: Morin’s DFA will likely be one of the moves made to accommodate the returns of both Eddie Rosario and C.J. Cron from the injured list, Hayes tweets.

3:55pm: The Twins will designate right-hander Mike Morin for assignment today, reports Dan Hayes of The Athletic (Twitter links). There’s no word on what the corresponding roster move will be, although Hayes adds that a trade doesn’t appear to be pending. The Twins already had a pair of vacancies on the 40-man roster.

Morin, 28, has given the Twins 22 2/3 innings of 3.18 ERA ball, though there’s ample reason to be skeptical of that earned run average. The former Angels/Mariners/Royals righty has only whiffed 11 hitters in that time (4.8 K/9) and has benefited from a deflated .230 average on balls put into play against him. He’s done a nice job keeping the ball on the ground (47.4 percent) and avoiding walks (just two allowed), but Morin’s results have also begun to fade as of late.

In his past 11 outings, Morin has been tagged for 10 runs (seven earned) on 13 hits and two walks in 11 1/3 innings. He’s also hit a batter in that time, and two of the 13 hits he yielded have been home runs. ERA alternatives like FIP (4.49), xFIP (4.86) and SIERA (4.62) all peg Morin as a candidate for further regression, and Statcast also feels that he’s been fortunate to generate the results he’s gotten so far (.319 xwOBA vs. his actual .277 wOBA).

Minnesota will have a week to trade Morin, release him or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. He’s out of minor league options, meaning any team that picks him up either via trade or waiver claim would need to carry Morin on the MLB roster.

Twins Place C.J. Cron On Injured List

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Twins first baseman C.J. Cron has been placed on the injured list with right thumb inflammation, per a team announcement. Outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. has been recalled to take the vacated roster spot.

Cron has made good on the $4.8MM deal he signed prior to this season after being DFA’ed by the Rays. His .266/.326/.495 slash line almost exactly duplicates the line he put up last season in Tampa Bay. With 17 home runs thus far, Cron has a chance to hit the 30 long balls mark for the second straight season. He’s not alone, of course, on the power-packed Minnesota Twins, who currently roster 9 players with double-digit home runs. The Twins lead the majors in isolated power (.227 ISO) and slugging (.500 SLG), and they’re tied with the Astros with 117 wRC+ as a team.

As useful as Cron has been, he’s far from the least replaceable piece on this Minnesota contender. Miguel Sano has spent some time at first base, and Marwin Gonzalez has played the position with regularity throughout his career. Jason Castro, Mitch Garver, and Kepler could also be options for covering first while Cron is out. With the All-Star break approaching, Cron may not miss much time at all, however.

Wade Jr. had a very short stint with the big league club before being optioned back to Triple-A last Saturday. He appeared in only game in during that time. With Rochester this season, the 25-year-old Wade has hit .246/.392/.356 across 77 games.

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