Mets Claim Sam Coonrod, Designate Khalil Lee
The Mets announced that they have claimed right-hander Sam Coonrod off waivers from the Phillies. The righty had been designated for assignment by the Phils last week to create room on their roster for infielder Josh Harrison. To create space on the roster for Coonrod, outfielder Khalil Lee has been designated for assignment.
Coonrod, 30, posted a 5.74 ERA with the Giants in 2019 and 2020 but had a nice breakout in 2021 after getting traded to the Phillies. He threw 42 1/3 innings that year with a 4.04 ERA, 25.9% strikeout rate, 8.1% walk rate and 57.1% ground ball rate. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to keep the momentum of that season going into 2022, getting shut down in Spring Training with a shoulder strain. He eventually returned but posted a 7.82 ERA over 12 appearances down the stretch.
For the Mets, they will be taking a shot on a bounceback from the righty, with reasons to believe that’s possible. There was surely some ill fortune at play in his rough results last year, as his 48.5% strand rate was well below the 72.6% league average. ERA estimators like FIP and SIERA had his work graded much lower, coming in at 4.61 and 4.41, respectively. His fastball velocity could also tick up now that he’s further removed from his injury, since it was at 97 mph last year after being between 98 and 99 in the previous two years.
Coonrod has an option and won’t even need to be guaranteed an active roster spot, allowing him to serve as depth in the minors until needed on the big league club. The club’s bullpen chart is topped by Edwin Díaz, Adam Ottavino, David Robertson and Brooks Raley, while Coonrod will be trying to earn a spot further down against guys like Drew Smith, John Curtiss, Stephen Nogosek and others.
Lee, 25 in June, has served as an optionable depth outfielder for the club recently, getting into 13 MLB games in the past two seasons. He spent most of last year at Triple-A, hitting .211/.326/.366 for a wRC+ of 89 in 100 games. Last week, it was reported that he’s under investigation by Major League Baseball under the league’s domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy. His ex-girlfriend filed a federal lawsuit that alleges that Lee assaulted her physically and verbally in May of last year.
Anthony DiComo of MLB.com reported the transactions prior to the official announcements.
Read The Transcript Of Our Chat Hosted By Former MLB Pitcher And Current Scout Tim Fortugno
Tim Fortugno‘s path to a Major League life was an unlikely one. He’d played in high school, but didn’t seem to have much shot at the Majors. But as Danny Knobler told it in a Bleacher Report article, Tim threw around a tennis ball during his lunch hour on a construction job as a 20-year-old, which led to him joining the baseball team at Southern California College.
He was drafted multiple times, but didn’t end up signing due to shoulder pain. After a bout of acupuncture seemed to heal Tim’s shoulder, he landed with the Mariners on a $500 signing bonus.
Fortugno was eventually traded to the Phillies, who went on to sell his contract to the Brewers for $2,500 and 12 dozen baseballs. The Angels snagged the lefty in the Rule 5 draft, and in 1992 Fortugno made his MLB debut at the age of 30.
In his second big league appearance, Tim pitched the game of his life: a complete game, 12 strikeout, 129 pitch masterpiece against a vaunted Tigers lineup featuring Tony Phillips, Travis Fryman, Cecil Fielder, and Mickey Tettleton. Toward the end of that season, Tim gave up George Brett’s 3,000th hit – only to pick him off first base.
Tim bounced around after that, eventually finishing his career in Taiwan. Despite pitching only 110 1/3 innings over three seasons with the Angels, Reds, and White Sox, Fortugno can list Brett, Roberto Alomar, Don Mattingly, and Edgar Martinez among his strikeout victims.
After his pitching career, Fortugno moved into scouting. He spent seven years with the Rangers and 14 with the Mets, and has worked for the Rays since October 2019.
Tim chatted with MLBTR readers today, providing many interesting answers about a life in scouting. Click here to read the transcript.
If you’re a current or former MLB player, join us for a one-hour live chat! It’s easy and fun and you get to choose which questions you publish and answer. Click here to contact us.
Mets To Hire Carlos Beltran As Special Assistant To The GM
Carlos Beltran is back with the Mets in a new front office role, according to Jon Heyman, Joel Sherman, and Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. Beltran will work as an assistant to Mets GM Billy Eppler, SNY’s Andy Martino tweets. Beltran hasn’t officially signed a contract yet, though “it’s far enough down the line” that Beltran felt secure in leaving his broadcasting job at the YES Network.
The news comes a little over three years after Beltran stepped down as the club’s manager in the aftermath of the Astros sign-stealing scandal, as Beltran ended up resigning without ever actually managing the Mets in a regular-season game. The scandal created plenty of fallout around baseball, with the Red Sox also firing Alex Cora (who was the Astros’ bench coach in 2017) from his managerial post, and Houston fired both manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow. However, more than three years removed from the scandal, only Luhnow has yet to resurface in a new baseball-related role. The Red Sox re-hired Cora after the 2020 season was over, while the Tigers hired Hinch as their new skipper in advance of the 2021 campaign.
For Beltran, he returned to the fold last year, covering the Yankees as part of the YES Network’s team. Marchand reports that YES was going to shift Beltran from calling games into a studio position for pre-game and postgame coverage heading into 2023, though Beltran recently told the network that he wasn’t returning next season.
In terms of on-field jobs, the Padres had some interest in Beltran for a coaching role last winter. There were also speculative rumblings about a possible reunion between Beltran and the Mets last year, and Heyman, Sherman, and Marchand write that Beltran was indeed under consideration to be New York’s assistant hitting coach.
Instead, Beltran will now be working in the Amazins’ front office. This marks the second front office job of Beltran’s career, as he worked as a special assistant to Yankees GM Brian Cashman in 2019. The Yankees also considered hiring Beltran as manager before Aaron Boone got the job in the 2017-18 offseason, which would’ve marked an even quicker transition for Beltran given that he had only just ended his playing career when the Astros won the 2017 World Series.
While it raised some eyebrows when the Mets hired a manager who had never managed or coached at any level before, it wasn’t an entirely shocking move, given how much respect Beltran commanded around the game. Even before he retired, Beltran was often cited as a possible future manager, or a future front-office executive after he took the advisory role with the Yankees. Of course, that natural leadership ability was a double-edged sword, given that Beltran was reportedly the player who had the biggest role in the Astros’ sign-stealing methods, both helping to mastermind the plan and influencing teammates to follow suit.
No Astros players faced any punishment for their roles in the scandal, as the league gave players immunity in exchange for their details and information about the sign-stealing activities. Of course, Beltran did end up being unofficially punished via the loss of his managerial job, just two months after being hired. It is also fair to assume that the scandal impacted Beltran’s first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot — while Beltran received a solid 46.5% of the vote and seems on pace to eventually be inducted, it is still a sharp drop for a player considered a shoo-in choice at the time of his retirement.
Mets Prospect Matt Allan Undergoes UCL Revision Surgery
Matt Allan‘s wretched run of injuries has continued, with the Mets announcing their pitching prospect underwent UCL revision surgery last month. The recovery typically has a similar timeframe to Tommy John surgery, which Allan was just recovering from, meaning he’ll likely miss the entire 2023 campaign and possibly some of the 2024 season as well.
It’s been a brutal run for Allan, 22 in April, since being drafted out of high school in the third round of the 2019 draft. The 10 1/3 innings he pitched in 2019 mark the only innings he’s thrown as a pro, meaning he’s now set to go four straight seasons without throwing a pitch in a game.
First, the 2020 minor league season was cancelled due to the pandemic, then Allan underwent Tommy John surgery at the start of the 2021 season – a year in which he featured on a number of publication’s top-100 prospect lists. That sat him out for the remainder of the season and most of 2022, and while he was recovering well from Tommy John surgery, he underwent ulnar nerve transposition surgery in January of 2022 to further setback his recovery.
He did indeed miss the entire 2022 season, and now will miss the entire 2023 season as well. Baseball America still had him as their tenth-ranked prospect in the Mets system this winter, and their third-ranked pitcher.
Quick Hits: Narvaez, Gallo, Monfort, Tatis Jr., Mets
Omar Narvaez signed a one-year, $8MM deal (with a $7MM player option for 2024) with the Mets just before Christmas, and Will Sammon of The Athletic shed a little more light on the market for the veteran backstop before he eventually wound up in New York. Sammon notes that the Giants strongly considered a move for Narvaez while the Twins, Tigers and Reds all had varying levels of interest.
The Giants have since inked Roberto Perez, the Reds are set with the trio of Tyler Stephenson, Curt Casali and Luke Maile while the Twins signed Christian Vazquez to the position. The Tigers are an interesting one though, as they’ve only added Triple-A backstop Donny Sands in a trade with the Phillies. They’re set to use some combination of Eric Haase, Jake Rogers and Sands in 2023 but it’s interesting to hear they were at least interested in a higher profile addition there this winter. If they do still look to add an external catcher, Gary Sanchez, Robinson Chirinos and Kevin Plawecki are the remaining notable catchers on the market.
Here’s some more bits and pieces from around baseball:
- Joey Gallo could be set to see a bit of time at first base in 2023. As Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic noted in a recent mailbag, Gallo could well be the back up first baseman to Alex Kirilloff. That’s not to say Gallo will be on the bench, as the former Ranger, Yankee and Dodger will get plenty of reps in the outfield, but if Kirilloff’s struggles extend into 2023 the Twins could utilize Gallo a fair bit at the position. He rates well as a defender in the outfield, and has made just one appearance at first since 2018 but he’s also graded out solidly defensively at first in his time there.
- Rockies owner Dick Monfort made headlines recently when he boldly stated he thought the Rockies could play .500 ball this season. That’d be a big ask in a competitive NL West, and the Rockies have done little to improve on their 68-94 record in 2022. Whatever record they wind up with this year, Monfort – in an interview with Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post – said they wouldn’t go down the rebuilding path: “I guess the connotation on rebuilding is you just get rid of everybody. You try to draft low, which we’re not [going to do]. We’re not trying to get the first pick. We’re not going to tank. We never have, never will,” Monfort said.
- With the Padres adding Xander Bogaerts on a long-term deal and still having Manny Machado under contract for at least the next season, the left side of their infield appears set. Of course, that led to an expectation that Fernando Tatis Jr. would head to the outfield moving forward. That still looks to be the case, although the player didn’t commit to a position and said he’s been working out in both the infield and outfield this winter (via Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Tribune-Review). It’s been a challenging few seasons for Tatis, but he also added that he’s feeling “as close to 100%” as he’s been the past few seasons after dealing with wrist and shoulder injuries, and is expecting to be a full participant in spring training.
- Sammon’s report in The Athletic also includes details on the Mets plans for Tylor Megill and David Peterson. Both players figure to be in and around the team at some stage over the course of the season, but Sammon reports that the team’s ideal scenario would be to have both players go to Triple-A to start the season and work as starters there, rather than starting the season in the big league bullpen. Of course, injuries in the spring could force one or both of them into rotation spots to begin the season anyway, but it seems the Mets are hoping to avoid using them in relief roles to begin the season.
Big Hype Prospects: Cowser, Bleday, Alvarez, Outman, Steer
Pitchers and catchers report in 10 days, at which point we’ll have more to discuss in virtually every facet of the sport. Until then, let’s review more prospects tangentially connected to the news. Today’s episode coincidentally includes a number of left-handed hitters with holes in their swing.
Five BHPs In The News
Colton Cowser, 22, OF, BAL (AAA)
(A+/AA/AAA) 626 PA, 19 HR, 18 SB, .278/.406/.469
In a recent radio spot, Orioles general manager Mike Elias indicated a belief Cowser will debut later this season. A recent review of the Baltimore farm system published by FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen offers modest cause for concern. There are now questions about Cowser’s ability to perform against low-in-the-zone breaking balls and inside fastballs. Those are two very large holes for a big league hitter, indicating Cowser might require a carefully managed role once he is promoted. The lower-half stiffness noted by Longenhagen is a new issue and might relate to the workload Cowser shouldered last season. In order to improve and adjust, Cowser could require a long stint in Triple-A.
JJ Bleday, 25, OF, MIA (MLB)
(MLB) 238 PA, 5 HR, 4 SB, .167/.277/.309
The left-handed hitting slugger has two massive issues to overcome – a weakness against up-and-away fastballs and a pulled, fly-ball-oriented approach lacking in high-quality exit velocities. Both issues were on full display in Bleday’s first season, and he has used up his rookie eligibility. Bleday is currently expected to compete with Jesus Sanchez and Bryan De La Cruz for playing time in left field. Unless he improves upon both shortcomings, the former fourth-overall pick will be limited to heavily scripted usage against right-handed sinkerballers. Achieving such an adjustment will likely require a new swing and a return to Triple-A to digest the changes.
Francisco Alvarez, 21, C, NYM (MLB)
(AA/AAA) 411 PA, 27 HR, .260/.374/.511
A burly backstop who frequently draws hitting comps to Salvador Perez, Alvarez will need to play his way onto an Opening Day roster that already includes catchers Omar Narvaez and Tomas Nido. While neither player is expected to block Alvarez, he also has a second pathway onto the roster – designated hitter. As we learned yesterday, the Mets are carrying a veteran tandem of Daniel Vogelbach, Darin Ruf, and Tommy Pham in part to leave a door open for Alvarez and Brett Baty (covered last week) to get at-bats as part of the revolving door at DH.
As a hitter, Alvarez appears primed for the Show. There is near-term concern about his rate of contact and occasional lapses into over-selectivity. Even so, these are small issues to polish rather than fatal flaws.
James Outman, 25, OF, LAD (MLB)
(AA/AAA) 559 PA, 31 HR, 13 SB, .294/.393/.586
Although the Dodgers have made peace with crossing the first luxury tax threshold, they’ve done little to fortify their left field mix. Outman will compete with the likes of Chris Taylor and Jason Heyward for a regular role this spring. Outman’s approach could serve as a roadmap for Bleday. The left-handed hitting Outman makes frequently pulled, fly ball contact, but he isn’t nearly as extreme as the similarly built Marlins outfielder. Outman also consistently delivers line drives which allows him to post above-average BABIPs. Toss in above-average plate discipline, and he has a chance to hit for average, OBP, and power despite expectations of a 30 percent strikeout rate.
Spencer Steer, 25, 3B, CIN (MLB)
(AA/AAA) 427 PA, 23 HR, 4 SB, .274/.364/.515
Acquired as part of the return in the Tyler Mahle trade, Steer looks the part of a future second-division starter or frequently-used utility man. The Reds are in a year of transition with Steer eyeing a role as the regular third baseman. Long-term, he’ll need to contend with the likes of Elly De La Cruz, Edwin Arroyo, Noelvi Marte, and Matt McLain – whichever among those doesn’t take over at shortstop. Steer is considered a well-rounded hitter with a feel for contact, above-average plate discipline, and an ability to pop mistakes. The cozy confines of Great American Ballpark should help his power production. One question he’ll need to answer relates to his consistency of contact quality. In a 108-plate appearance trial last season, Steer posted an 84.7-mph average and 104.4-mph max exit velocity, which were well below Major League average.
Three More
George Valera, CLE (22): After managing a league-average batting line at Triple-A last season, Valera is on pace to debut at some point in 2023. He won’t be making the Opening Day roster due to a recent hamate injury. Such injuries are hard to predict, as the recovery is speedy in some cases, but some players are left with lesser bat control for weeks or months after returning. Occasionally, as with Alex Kirilloff, a secondary issue can linger indefinitely.
Kyle Stowers, BAL (25): Currently in the outfield and designated hitter mix for Baltimore, Stowers has a brief window to cement a role as a righty-masher before a flood of high-ceiling prospects joins the roster. Stowers is patient, strikeout-prone, and powerful, rendering him a Three True Outcomes option. Such hitters are volatile as they’re heavily reliant on hitting home runs at just the right time.
Grayson Rodriguez, BAL (23): General manager Mike Elias reiterated his belief that Rodriguez will make the Opening Day rotation. There’s still the messy part of actually navigating Spring Training, especially since Rodriguez’s stuff had declined at last look, though he was returning from a lat injury at the time. Even the September version of Rodriguez looked like a future rotation mainstay.
Mets Notes: Senga, DH, McNeil, Extensions
One of the bigger moves of the Mets’ active offseason was the signing of starter Kodai Senga to a five-year, $75MM guarantee. The 30-year-old righty is making the jump from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, where he posted a 2.59 ERA across 11 seasons. Senga was one of the highest-upside hurlers available in free agency, though there’s naturally some amount of performance risk until he translates his production against MLB competition.
Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports the Mets also expressed some concern about Senga’s medical evaluations before finalizing the contract in December. Further details aren’t clear, though Heyman notes Mets personnel have expressed confidence in Senga’s health prognosis for the upcoming season. That’s hardly surprising, as whatever concerns the organization had raised didn’t deter them from agreeing to the fourth-largest deal for a free agent pitcher this offseason. That contract also affords Senga an opportunity to opt out and retest the market after the 2025 season, though the Associated Press reports that’s contingent on the righty throwing a combined 400 innings over the next three years.
In other news out of Queens:
- The Mets never pursued a full-time designated hitter upgrade this offseason partially out of a desire to preserve a path to at-bats for their younger hitters, writes Andy Martino of SNY. Top prospects Francicso Álvarez and Brett Baty each reached the majors late in the 2022 season. Each is a polished hitter but faces questions about their defense at catcher and third base, respectively. That’s also true of corner infielder Mark Vientos, who’s not quite the same caliber of prospect as Álvarez or Baty but earned an MLB look with a .280/.358/.519 showing at Triple-A Syracuse. Martino suggests the Mets aren’t likely to give them early-season looks at DH in hopes of each continuing to show progress defensively, though there could be a path to bat-only reps later in the year — or for veteran Eduardo Escobar to slide to DH if Baty seized the third base job at some point. Lefty-swinging veteran Daniel Vogelbach earned the larger share of a DH platoon to open the year with an excellent .261/.382/.497 showing against righties anyhow. Offseason signee Tommy Pham or last summer’s deadline pickup Darin Ruf are righty bats who could shoulder the load against southpaws. Ruf’s second-half struggles give Pham the upper hand in that regard, but Martino writes the Mets are at least likely to carry Ruf on the roster into Spring Training.
- New York locked up one of their homegrown stars last Friday, signing Jeff McNeil to a four-year, $50MM extension to potentially buy out a trio of free agent years. General manager Billy Eppler addressed the deal earlier this week, expressing broad openness to negotiations with other important players who are early in their careers (link via Anthony DiComo of MLB.com). First baseman Pete Alonso is the most logical candidate for those kinds of talks as he enters his penultimate season of arbitration control, though neither Eppler nor Alonso’s representatives at Apex Baseball have indicated publicly whether discussions might take place over the coming weeks. Discussions with McNeil, at least, were a long time running before culminating in a deal. Will Sammon of the Athletic reports Eppler and McNeil’s camp at Paragon Sports International first opened extension talks in November 2021, just before the lockout froze communications between teams and 40-man roster players until March.
Mets Sign DJ Stewart To Minor League Contract
The Mets announced a number of non-roster Spring Training invitations this evening. Among those included was corner outfielder DJ Stewart, indicating he’s signed a minor league contract with the club.
Stewart joins the second organization of his career. A first-round selection of the Orioles in 2015, he hit well in the minors and reached the big leagues roughly three years after being drafted. Stewart appeared in parts of five seasons with the O’s, working mostly as a role playing left-handed bat in the outfield rotation. He played in 100 games and tallied 318 plate appearances in 2021 but otherwise didn’t top 44 MLB contests in any season.
Altogether, Stewart has taken 622 trips to the dish at the big league level. In a bit more than one season’s worth of playing time, he’s hit 26 home runs and walked at an excellent 13.2% clip. That’s been largely offset by a higher than average 26.8% strikeout percentage and a modest .256 batting average on balls in play. Overall, he owns a .213/.327/.400 line against MLB pitching. He has rated as a below-average defender in both left and right field.
Baltimore outrighted the 29-year-old off their 40-man roster last April after he’d tallied just three big league plate appearances on the season. He was on and off the minor league injured list throughout the remainder of the year, only getting into 29 games for Triple-A Norfolk. He hit .256/.390/.488 in limited action for the Tides, bringing his career Triple-A mark up to .255/.358/.449 in a little under 900 plate appearances.
Stewart brings a patient plate approach and some power upside to the Mets’ organization. He joins Tim Locastro, Abraham Almonte and former Reds’ farmhand Lorenzo Cedrola among non-roster outfielders who’ll be in big league camp. If Stewart gets to the 40-man roster at any point, the Mets could bounce him between Flushing and Triple-A Syracuse for the rest of the season by virtue of his remaining minor league option year.
Mets’ Khalil Lee Under Investigation Following Assault Allegations
Mets outfielder Khalil Lee was named in a federal lawsuit filed by his ex-girlfriend this week, which alleges that Lee assaulted her physically and verbally last May, Anne Hayes of Syracuse.com reports. The alleged victim went to law enforcement the day after the purported incident, and Hayes writes that an arrest warrant charging Lee for criminal obstruction of breath was signed by a judge back in August. Hayes’ report has a timeline and more specific details on the allegations against Lee, which include choking and kicking the plaintiff during an argument.
SNY’s Andy Martino tweets that Lee is also being investigated by Major League Baseball under the league’s domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy. That policy, jointly agreed upon by MLB and the MLBPA, affords commissioner Rob Manfred the authority to levy disciplinary action against a player even in the absence of a criminal conviction.
The Mets issued a statement acknowledging that the team “immediately notified MLB upon becoming aware of the allegations,” adding that they will “fully comply with MLB’s policy and cannot comment until the completion of the league’s investigative process.”
Lee, 24, is on the Mets’ 40-man roster. The team acquired him from the Royals in 2021’s three-team trade that sent Andrew Benintendi from Boston to Kansas City. Lee has spent the past two seasons in the Mets organization, appearing in 13 Major League games but spending the vast majority of his time with their Triple-A affiliate in Syracuse.
Mariners Claim Tayler Saucedo, Designate J.B. Bukauskas
The Mariners announced that they have claimed left-hander Tayler Saucedo off waivers from the Mets. He was recently designated for assignment when the Mets signed Tommy Pham. In a corresponding move to get Saucedo onto Seattle’s roster, right-hander J.B. Bukauskas was designated for assignment.
Saucedo, 30 in June, was a Blue Jays draftee who cracked that club’s roster midway through the 2021 season. He’s since logged 28 1/3 innings in the big leagues with a 5.40 ERA. He’s gotten much better results in the minors, having posted a 2.11 ERA over the past two years while striking out an incredible 35.7% of batters faced. He’s put up strong ground ball rates in both the majors and minors but the strikeouts are the major difference maker so far as he’s only punched out 15.3% of big league hitters.
Despite the lack of results in the majors to this point, teams seem to be willing to take a shot on Saucedo based on his strong work down on the farm. The Mets claimed him off waivers from the Jays in November but he lost his spot last week with the Mariners now the beneficiary. Saucedo still has a couple of option years remaining and can be sent down to the farm, if needed. He’ll join Gabe Speier and Brennan Bernardino as southpaw relief arms on the club’s roster.
As for Bukauskas, 26, this ends a very short stay on Seattle’s roster, as he was just claimed off waivers from the Diamondbacks two weeks ago. A former first round pick and exciting starting pitching prospect, he struggled with control and was moved to a relief role in recent years. He made 21 major league appearances in 2021 but struggled and posted a 7.79 ERA in that small sample. He’s had much better results in the minors over the past couple of years but hasn’t been able to log significant time due to injuries. He threw 35 minor leagues innings over 2021 and 2022 with a 3.09 ERA, with most of that time spent in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. He struck out 27.5% of batters faced while walking 5.8%. That small workload is due to a strain in his throwing elbow in 2021 and a strain in the teres major muscle in his shoulder last year.
The Mariners will now have a week to trade Bukauskas or pass him through waivers. He still has one option year left, meaning that an interested club could put him on their 40-man and wouldn’t necessarily have to keep him on the active roster. Based on that fact, as well as his youth and previous prospect pedigree, it’s possible that he could have a new club yet again before Spring Training kicks off in two weeks.