MLBTR’s Anthony Franco held a live chat today, exclusively for Front Office subscribers!
Today's mailbag gets into Nolan Arenado's future with the Cardinals, offensive struggles for the Rangers and Red Sox, hot starts for the Angels and Giants, and much more.
Sam asks:
Arenado is off to a pretty good start with his surface level stats but his batted ball profile is still pretty bad. Barring an injury to a third baseman on a contender, is he going to be playing for the Cardinals for the next 3 years?
Arenado, 34 today, has an excellent 136 wRC+ through 74 plate appearances. His Statcast numbers have always been middling since he was traded to St. Louis four years ago. As you know, the Cardinals tried to move Arenado during the offseason, both to save money and open up playing time for younger players. Arenado wasn't willing to say yes when asked to approve a trade to the Astros in December, and no deal materialized with the four other teams on the third baseman's list.
In February, Katie Woo of The Athletic reported that the Cardinals "had conversations with at least nine organizations" about Arenado during the offseason. Woo said the other four teams on Arenado's list besides the Astros were the Dodgers, Red Sox, Padres, and Yankees. The rigidity of Arenado's list is confusing. He said, "I don’t see myself changing that list ever. I have a family now. … To be willing to pick up my family and move them, it has to be something that’s worth it." Arenado is clearly not bound entirely by geography, having chosen teams on both the East and West coast. But let's look at some playoff odds from when the season opened:
Is it fair to say that for Arenado to leave the comfort of St. Louis he needs what he considers a strong chance at winning the World Series, but he might accept a lesser chance for a team near where he grew up, such as the Padres? What makes this tricky is that Arenado seems to have developed his own playoff odds. Playoff odds are not reliable in the best case, and Arenado is probably worse at this than FanGraphs.
April tends to be relatively quiet on the transaction front. The early part of the month saw a handful of extensions as talks that had begun in Spring Training carried into the regular season. There probably won't be much more significant hot stove activity for the next couple months. That's largely because all but three teams -- the White Sox, Marlins and Rockies -- went into the season with some measure of hope about competing. The trio of clearly noncompetitive clubs had already moved most of their realistic trade candidates who'd bring back prospect talent.
Luis Robert Jr. is an exception. The White Sox held onto their former All-Star center fielder over the offseason. Robert was coming off the worst season of his career. He lost nearly two months early in the season with a hip flexor strain and was unproductive when healthy. He hit .224/.278/.379 with 14 homers in 100 games. Robert looked nothing like the player who'd finished 12th in AL MVP balloting one year earlier.
It made for a difficult evaluation. Robert has shown star upside -- not only in the aforementioned 2023 campaign but in an injury-shortened '21 season when he hit .338/.378/.567 over 68 games. Last year's White Sox were en route to the worst season in the modern era. Maybe Robert's .216/.253/.302 showing in the second half reflected some amount of mental fatigue. At 27 years old, he should remain in his prime.
MLBTR's Steve Adams hosted a chat today at 2pm CT, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers.
MLBTR will release our first Power Rankings of the upcoming free agent class in the next few days. Ordering starting pitchers is often the most challenging part of that process. Next winter's class has a few of those tricky calls -- perhaps none closer than Zac Gallen versus Michael King.
Gallen certainly has the longer track record as an above-average starting pitcher. The righty has started all 146 of his major league appearances. He has been consistently effective, working to a 4.30 ERA or better in all six years (not including this year's 5.28 mark over three starts). Gallen has only once allowed four earned runs per nine in a season. He has punched out at least a quarter of opposing hitters in each year. The result is a 3.33 earned run average with a near-27% strikeout rate in more than 800 career innings.
King has spent the majority of his big league career working out of the bullpen. The Yankees kept him in long relief for most of his first four seasons. It wasn't until the waning weeks of the 2023 season that they gave him a rotation spot, largely because of injuries elsewhere on the pitching staff. King shined in nine starts, was the centerpiece of San Diego's return for Juan Soto, and had a fantastic first full season as a starter.
Over 173 2/3 frames, he turned in a 2.95 ERA while striking out 27.7% of opposing hitters. He showed no signs of slowing down as he pushed well beyond his previous career-high workload. King managed a 2.15 ERA across 62 2/3 innings after the All-Star Break. He finished seventh in NL Cy Young balloting.
MLBTR's Steve Adams hosted a chat today at 2pm CT, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers.
This week's mailbag gets into PTBNL trades, the Brewers' recent trade history, the Mariners' inactivity, and questions about players such as Jordan Romano, Andy Pages, and Brett Baty.
Scott asks:
When a trade happens that includes a Player to be named later or cash considerations, like between the Red Sox and Brewers, how is it determined which goes - a player or cash? Seems like that would have to be predetermined to ease the negotiations, but the implication in the title implies it's a decision to be made later?
I posed Scott's question to an team executive friend, and he kindly gave a great in-depth reply. Here it is:
"There are two PTBNL / Cash constructs that are most common. The first is where one of the clubs involved in the trade gets to choose one or more players from an agreed upon list. The agreed upon list is determined at the time of the initial trade. The club receiving the PTBNL has the right to instead receive “alternative cash considerations” that cannot exceed $100k. The option to receive cash comes into play only if the club with the right to receive the PTBNL decides they don’t want any of the players within the previously agreed upon grouping. This outcome could occur if one or more of those players suffers an injury or other plight whereby they are no longer of interest to the club holding the right to acquire them. By way of example, if Team A has the right to pick either Player X or Player Y as the PTBNL, but both players have suffered significant injuries since the time the trade was agreed upon, then Team A might rather take the cash rather than an injured player.
The second primary construct where you see a PTBNL or Cash involved in a trade occurs if the trade is really just for cash, but the team set to receive the cash wants to “dress it up” a little bit. This situation could occur if the team is trading away a notable player and needs to make it look like there’s a more significant return than simply money coming back their way. In these situations, the two clubs involved in the trade can agree to phrase the trade as a PTBNL or Cash despite both clubs agreeing that the return will be cash only.
A PTBNL is not always a low-level player. The only restriction is that a PTBNL cannot be someone who has appeared on an active Major League roster between the time the trade was agreed to and the time he is sent to his new club."
Zack asks:
How long of a leash should the Phillies have with Jordan Romano? He has lost velocity on his fastball and slider and he looks shaky when on the mound. Maybe it's a mechanics issue he can work through? He looks like he's searching for his form on the mound, I hope he can figure it out as we need him!
The tough thing is that Romano arguably hasn't been an effective reliever since June of 2023. Rob Thomson hasn't used Romano in the club's highest-leverage situations thus far, but he still was Dave Dombrowski's main offseason bullpen addition.
Romano's elbow inflammation surfaced in March 2024. He debuted in mid-April last year but was done after 15 appearances once the injury resurfaced. He wound up having arthroscopic elbow surgery in early July. The Blue Jays, who knew Romano best, didn't want him back at what would've likely been his same $7.75MM salary. Around the Winter Meetings, Dombrowski gave Romano about $750K more than that.
MLBTR’s Anthony Franco held a live chat today, exclusively for Front Office subscribers.
MLBTR’s Anthony Franco held a live chat today, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers!
MLBTR is going deep into the bench for this week's mailbag. With Tim Dierkes and Steve Adams each on vacation, I'll step in to answer questions on the Braves' poor start, whether the Twins are a playoff-caliber team, this year's most improved rosters, Sutter Health Park, situational hitting, and much more!
Abner asks:
Even when the biggest concern with the NY Mets has always been their starting rotation, so far the starters have looked pretty good in general and the bullpen has performed almost perfectly. With the problems that have experienced the Atlanta Braves in the opening week (Reynaldo López injury, Jurickson Profar suspended, Ronald Acuña out at least until May, Spencer Strider is out for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the season) do you think that we are about to see a battle between Mets and Phillies the rest of the way?
I had the Phillies and Mets a little ahead of the Braves to begin the season. The past week certainly hasn't increased Atlanta's odds of winning the division. It's way too early to start digging their grave, though. Last year's Astros dropped five of their first six games and seven of nine. They bottomed out at 12 games below .500 in the second week of May; they ended up winning the AL West by 3.5 games. Most teams that dig themselves that big a hole will not make the playoffs, of course, but they also usually don't have as much talent as the Braves do.
Atlanta has started the season against arguably the two best teams in the National League. They're without their best player, one of the league's best pitchers, and their starting catcher. Even if you don't expect much out of Sean Murphy at this point, getting Acuña and Strider back within the next few weeks is massive. They've got 96% of the season remaining to put this behind them.
Losing Profar and López obviously hurts, largely because they're stressing areas where the roster already looked weak. The Jarred Kelenic left field experiment didn't work out in year one. Alex Verdugo could push Kelenic into a fourth outfield role once Acuña comes back, but he was unsigned deep into Spring Training for a reason. The rotation depth behind the top four or five is spotty. Strider, Chris Sale, Spencer Schwellenbach and some combination of AJ Smith-Shawver, Grant Holmes, Bryce Elder and prospect Hurston Waldrep is probably workable. If they lose any of their top three to injury before López is able to return, it's teetering.
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