Shohei Ohtani Underwent MRI On Pitching Arm
Two-way star Shohei Ohtani expressed discomfort in his right arm following today’s start against the Astros, per various reporters (including Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com). He’s been sent in for an MRI, the results of which have not yet come back.
There’s surely hope disaster will be avoided. But it’s tough not to be at least somewhat alarmed. Ohtani worked his way back to the mound this season following October 2018 Tommy John surgery. Yet he certainly hasn’t looked as dominant as he’d been.
Ohtani battled control problems throughout Summer Camp, and his two regular-season starts have been unmitigated disasters. He’s walked eight of sixteen batters faced, allowing seven runs in 1.2 innings along the way. Perhaps more worrisome, Ohtani’s velocity plummeted by the end of today’s outing, Bollinger points out (via Twitter). While he touched his customary 97 MPH at one point, his fastball was into the 89-90 MPH range before he departed, Bollinger notes. Of course, that could simply reflect fatigue at the end of a long, stressful inning or mere minor discomfort.
There’s little overstating the 26-year-old’s general importance in Anaheim. He’s proven an elite hitter since coming over from NPB. Even as he worked his way back to pitching from surgery, he didn’t miss a beat at the plate. He was similarly brilliant on the mound over his first 10 MLB starts (3.31 ERA/3.57 FIP in 51.2 innings), making him a key member of an uncertain Angels’ rotation. Surely, the hope remains his body will enable him to regain that remarkable form.
Yoenis Céspedes Opts Out Of 2020 Season
3:23pm: Céspedes will indeed opt out of the season, Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen confirmed to reporters including Heyman. Thankfully, Céspedes is safe and healthy, but concerns about the risks of COVID-19 informed his decision to sit out the remainder of the year.
Thus concludes one of the more confusing and concerning stories of the 2020 season thus far. As Tim Britton of The Athletic reports, Van Wagenen and the Mets were unsure of Céspedes’s safety or location at the time of their initial statement, which was issued in the interest of transparency. After dispatching a security outfit to Céspedes’s hotel room, they discovered that he had left, and it was only when contacting his agent that the team learned of his decision not to play the rest of the season.
With his decision, Céspedes’s Mets tenure has reached its presumed conclusion, with his contract set to expire at season’s end. And perhaps today’s nebulous saga was the only fitting way to wrap up the 34-year-old’s Mets career, which has been a captivating spectacle for Mets fans, from his 2015 heroics to the contentious injuries that cost him nearly two whole years.
Céspedes becomes the 20th player to opt out of the season (not counting Nick Markakis, who reversed his decision and will play this year), and the latest in a string of players to have done so since COVID-19 outbreaks within the ranks of the Marlins and Cardinals over the last week.
It doesn’t appear that Céspedes has opted out in relation to an existing health condition, and if he isn’t considered a “high-risk” individual, he will forfeit the prorated amount of his base $11MM salary for the season, and will reach free agency in the offseason. To be sure, Céspedes is comparatively well-positioned to absorb a year without pay, given his hefty career earnings; still, it’s significant given the precipitous decrease in salary he’s seen over the last two years, with his 2019 and 2020 salaries both taking hits due to the circumstances surrounding his ankle injuries.
From a baseball perspective, the Mets will be nicely equipped to deal with Céspedes’s absence for the rest of the year, with a stocked position player group that includes a handful of DH and left-field options. Céspedes had been off to a slow start this year, striking out 15 times in 34 plate appearances and batting just .161/.235/.387 for the season. His departure should in fact give some clarity to the Mets’ lineup, with Dominic Smith likely handling the bulk of DH duty from now on, while J.D. Davis settles into a regular role in left field.
We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds for Céspedes, who will hit the open market this winter for the first time in his career. Of course, he has a track record of great success since defecting from Cuba in 2012, but injuries have sullied the last few years of his career, making it difficult to detect whether he’s still capable of producing like he did in 2015, for example. This would have been his year to prove that, but prospective suitors will instead have to take a gamble on a polarizing player.
1:18pm: As their Sunday matchup with the Braves got underway, the New York Mets announced that outfielder Yoenis Céspedes‘s whereabouts are unknown. The Mets released the following statement:
“As of game time, Yoenis Céspedes has not reported to the ballpark today. He did not reach out to management with any explanation for his absence. Our attempts to contact him have been unsuccessful.”
Obviously, this is a concerning situation for all involved, even more so given the stringent nature of COVID-19 protocols. Further details are not known at this time. We’ll provide any updates as they come in.
The Mets, as one would expect, are doing what they can to locate Céspedes. For what it’s worth, SNY’s Andy Martino has heard that the team has “no reason to believe that Céspedes’ safety is at risk” at this time.
Per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, there’s speculation across the league that Céspedes intends to opt out of the 2020 season, which would certainly offer some insight into his absence today. However, if that is indeed Céspedes’s decision, he has not yet declared it to the Mets, according to an earlier report from Bob Nightengale of USA Today.
Cardinals Have “Multiple” New Positive COVID-19 Tests
The St. Louis Cardinals have “multiple” new positive tests for COVID-19, according to a report from MLB insider Robert Murray. The exact number of positive tests isn’t yet known.
The news marks the third consecutive day the Cardinals have discovered more than one new positive test result, with the team discovering as many as five new cases among players and staffers yesterday. Those results were accompanied by a number of inconclusive tests, so it’s possible that positive tests today shed light on those unclear results. Because of the outbreak within the Cardinals organization, this weekend’s series with the Brewers was postponed.
The Cardinals’ next game is scheduled for Tuesday in Detroit, though that arrangement seems to be in jeopardy in light of the burgeoning virus among the Cardinals.
The Cardinals appear to have found themselves in a situation not too dissimilar from that of the Marlins, who saw a few positive cases snowball into a much larger, more dire situation within several days. Miami’s club, set to resume play on Tuesday, was out of action for more than a week following the discovery of the initial cases, so if the Cardinals’ situation continues to balloon, the upcoming week of games might go by the wayside.
Marlins To Resume Season On Tuesday; Updates on Cardinals, Phillies
9:42AM: Yesterday’s testing of Phillies personnel revealed no new positive cases, according to a team press release.
TODAY, 9:04AM: For the second straight day, the group of Marlins players currently in Philadelphia haven’t had any positive COVID-19 test results, the Miami Herald’s Jordan McPherson reports (Twitter link). The team is planning to head to Baltimore today in advance of Tuesday’s series opener.
AUGUST 1: Major League Baseball released a statement this afternoon providing updates on a number of clubs, including the Marlins, who have been out of action for the last week after a COVID-19 outbreak within the organization. As of now, Miami is set to resume its season on Tuesday with a four-game series against the Orioles in Baltimore, which will take place over three days and include a doubleheader. The Marlins will be the designated “home” team for two of those games.
MLB’s announcements, which also include the latest on the Cardinals and Phillies, can be found in their entirety here, courtesy of MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand.
For a second consecutive day, the scheduled Brewers-Cardinals matchup has been postponed. The decision comes after this morning yielded news that the Cardinals have several more positive tests on their hands. As of now, there’s no word on when the Cardinals can be expected to take the field again.
Meanwhile, the Phillies and Yankees will begin a four-game home-and-home series on Monday. The Phils were also sidelined this week after potential exposure to the coronavirus during last weekend’s series against the Marlins. However, it appears that Philadelphia has avoided the worst-case scenario, with MLB revealing that two of the three positive tests in the Phillies organization appear to have been false positives. No players have tested positive for COVID-19 since the team’s last contact with the Marlins on Sunday.
The proliferation of the virus within the Marlins organization has posed an early threat to MLB’s plans to conduct a baseball season amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and the developing outbreak within the Cardinals could be similarly crucial to the outlook for the remaining two months of play.
These intra-team infections mean that the MLB schedule is fluid and evolving, with postponements forcing on-the-fly adjustments to the schedule. This can have a ripple effect throughout the league, as several other teams in MLB’s East division have been forced into schedule alterations despite maintaining comparatively good health. Health concerns notwithstanding, teams like the Phillies and Marlins might be faced with especially demanding schedules as they attempt to squeeze more games into a shorter time period for the remainder of the season.
Additionally, extended “break” periods like those endured by the Phillies and Marlins over the last week could interrupt players’ mojo during an already irregular season; whereas daily games allow players to establish a rhythm, a “stop-and-start” schedule means that players will be expected to jump right back into competitive games after several days off, perhaps akin to a team awaiting an opponent after handily winning a playoff series. We’ll have to see whether that produces any noticeable effects, and even then it will be an imprecise science, but it’s one of many difficult circumstances unique to the 2020 season.
Eduardo Rodriguez Out For Season
Red Sox lefty Eduardo Rodriguez has been shut down for the 2020 season as a result of the myocarditis he has experienced following a bout with COVID-19, according to Alex Speier of the Boston Globe. While the Red Sox are confident that Rodriguez will make a full recovery in the long term, his heart issues have persisted and will prevent him from pitching this season.
Since going on the injured list in early July due to COVID-19, Rodriguez has dealt with mild heart inflammation that developed as a result of the illness. Thankfully, the condition hasn’t negatively affected the function of Rodriguez’s heart, though it has not subsided to the point where he’s expected to recover in time to pitch this year.
Needless to say, the outlook for the Red Sox rotation sans Rodriguez is a rather bleak one. Even with the 27-year-old southpaw in the mix, the rotation looked like a thin unit, but it was certainly a bit more inspiring than the patchwork unit Ron Roenicke will henceforth have to count on. With Chris Sale on the shelf for the year, Rodriguez was expected to shoulder a bigger load atop the Red Sox rotation, which currently consists of Nathan Eovaldi, Martin Perez, Ryan Weber, and Zack Godley.
Rodriguez emerged as one of the hottest pitchers in baseball late last year, authoring a career-best season on virtually every measurable front. He posted his best marks yet in wins, innings pitched, strikeouts, and ERA. And if that wasn’t enough reason to be excited for another year of progress, he was at his best in the final month of the season, averaging 12.7 K/9 over his last six starts—his highest rate in a single month of his five-year career (minimum three starts).
Of course, the focus right now shouldn’t be on the on-field consequences of Rodriguez’s absence, but on his long-term health and recovery. We hope to see E-Rod make a swift return to full health and back on the mound in 2021. For now, his situation is a reminder that even young, world-class athletes are not immune to complications from COVID-19.
Lorenzo Cain Opts Out Of 2020 Season
Brewers center fielder Lorenzo Cain has opted out of the rest of the 2020 season, according to a team press release. President of baseball operations David Stearns commented on the situation in the release, saying “Lorenzo Cain has informed us that he will not participate for the remainder of the 2020 season. We fully support Lorenzo’s decision, and will miss his talents on the field and leadership in the clubhouse.”
Cain becomes the 18th player to opt out of playing in 2020, not counting Nick Markakis who initially opted out but chose to resume playing for the Braves. Cain is certainly one of the biggest names on that list, a long-time veteran with a decorated resume that includes two All-Star appearances, a Gold Glove, and a World Series ring as a member of the 2015 Royals.
There hasn’t been any word as to whether or not Cain was opting out due to any personal medical reason, and if Cain isn’t at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19, his decision will mean that he is walking away from the prorated portion of his original $16MM salary for the 2020 season. It’s no small amount of money, obviously, though less of a financial cost for a player who has already banked well over $50MM in career earnings, and is slated to earn $33MM over the 2021/22 seasons as per the terms of the five-year, $80MM deal he signed with Milwaukee in January 2018.
Like all teams, the Brewers have had their share of COVID-19 cases, with Luis Urias and Angel Perdomo both testing positive before the start of Summer Camp. (Eric Lauer also missed time after exposure to someone who was COVID-positive, though Lauer himself didn’t have the virus.) It’s fair to wonder whether Cain’s decision was prompted not necessarily by his own team, but rather the wider scope of coronavirus cases around the National League in particular, with the Marlins and Cardinals. Milwaukee, in fact, was supposed to be the Cardinals’ opponent this weekend before an outbreak within the St. Louis clubhouse led to two postponed games and almost certainly will prevent the two clubs from playing on Sunday.
From a baseball perspective, losing Cain is certainly a blow to a Milwaukee team that had aspirations of another postseason appearance, at minimum. While Cain was coming off an injury-hampered 2019 season that saw post only a .697 OPS over 623 plate appearances, he still managed to generate 1.5 fWAR due to his typically excellent center field defense. Prior to 2019, Cain has been a solidly above-average offensive performer over his previous five seasons, hitting .301/.361/.433 over 2805 PA from 2014-18 with the Royals and Brewers.
Without Cain, Ben Gamel now looks to be the Brewers’ primary center fielder. Gamel has shown decent potential as both an everyday player with the Mariners and a part-timer with the Brewers, hitting a respectable .266/.336/.391 over 1199 PA from 2017-19, though the jury is still out on his center field glovework. Gamel has a -5.0 UZR/150 and minus-1 Defensive Runs Saved over only 181 career innings in center, as the vast majority of his big league playing time has come as a corner outfielder. Avisail Garcia is the only other realistic center field candidate on Milwaukee’s active roster, so the Brew Crew could turn to one of the other options (Keon Broxton, Corey Ray, or Tyrone Taylor) within their 60-man player pool.
Multiple Cardinals Players/Staffers Test Positive For COVID-19
9:47AM: One Cardinals player has tested positive, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jared Diamond, while The Athletic’s Mark Saxon (Twitter link) reports three of the positive tests were from the coaching staff.
9:10AM: Multiple Cardinals players have tested positive for the coronavirus in the wake of the club’s most recent tests. The exact number isn’t yet known, though SportsGrid’s Craig Mish (Twitter link) reports “more than five” positive results amongst the players, while The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports that “between four and six” of a “combination of staff and players” tested positive. Former big leaguer Trevor Plouffe tweeted earlier this morning that “at least four” St. Louis players tested positive.
This ominous news indicates that a second team is now in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak, following the 20 total reported cases between Marlins players and the club’s coaches and training staff. Yesterday’s Cardinals/Brewers game was postponed due to positive coronavirus tests for two St. Louis players.
The Marlins haven’t played since last Sunday, and it now seems inevitable that the Cardinals will face a similar schedule pause of at least a week following today’s results. Most immediately, today’s game with the Brewers has been postponed, according to Heyman. Aside from the weekend series with the Brewers, the Cards were also set to play the Tigers four times (twice in Detroit, twice in St. Louis) from August 3-6, and then continued the homestand with three games against the Cubs on August 7-9, and three against the Pirates on August 10-12.
The Cardinals were also supposed to face the White Sox in the “Field Of Dreams” game in Iowa on August 13 and then have August 14 off before embarking on another long stretch of games, without another off-day until August 27. The sheer volume of games involved will mean a mass overhaul of not only the Cardinals’ schedule, but the schedules of several other teams. In a best-case scenario (if such a term even applies to this situation), “only” the 10 games against the Brewers, Tigers and Cubs, would have to be reworked if St. Louis is able to resume play next week.
In the bigger picture, however, the Cardinals’ outbreak raises even more serious questions about whether Major League Baseball as a whole can feasibly continue a 2020 season in its current form. With two teams now in outbreak situations after barely more than a week into the season, a wider-scale shutdown (either temporary or otherwise) could be in order. Commissioner Rob Manfred reportedly told MLBPA executive director Tony Clark that such a halt may be necessary.
Manfred Warned Clark Of Possible Season Shutdown
4:29pm: Teams have been issued a memo with new regulations, Scott Miller of Bleacher Report reports (Twitter links), including the requirement of a compliance officer who will monitor on and off-field personnel decisions.
The league investigated the Marlins situation, Miller adds. It determined that the club was “very lapse” in avoiding settings with a greater risk of transmission.
MLB also announced its most recent testing results. Twenty players and nine staff members have tested positive in the past week. Twenty-one of those positive results came from one organization, which is obviously by this point known to be the Marlins.
4:05pm: It sounds as if there’s serious contemplation of a potential end to the just-launched 2020 MLB campaign. Per Jeff Passan of ESPN.com, commissioner Rob Manfred informed MLBPA chief Tony Clark that the league could halt the campaign if problematic recent developments aren’t turned around.
While this could and may yet become a contentious matter, it doesn’t sound as if the message was intended as a threat. Passan labels it, instead, as a “reality check” for the sport. Both owners and players would obviously suffer financially if the season is punted.
The concerns are by now well-known. More than half of the Marlins’ active roster has come down with COVID-19 and the team isn’t playing presently. The Phillies are also on ice since they recently played the Miami org. And now two members of the Cardinals have tested positive.
It sounds as if the commissioner’s office could contemplate a cancellation or pause as soon as Monday. The hope is that the Marlins-related outbreak will be contained and that the Cards won’t have further positive tests. The worst-case scenario would be for members of still other organizations to come down with infections.
It seems there’s also a broader concern with the way players are behaving on and off the field — with some government officials evidently conveying issues to the league. Rule-breaking behavior captured on cameras doesn’t make for a good look, though in many cases it’s not especially risky for transmission. But it sounds as if league officials have identified high-risk actions occurring elsewhere in the ballpark and away from the field of play.
There’s ample blame to go around for this situation. Player responsibility is an easy target, and may well be at play in some cases, but there’s far more to it than that. Travel poses obvious transmission opportunities, even for those that strictly adhere to protocols. And the Marlins-Phillies fiasco — in which informally ascertained player sentiment was inexplicably allowed to drive decisionmaking — shows that there have been leadership and planning failures from the highest levels of the league on down.
Of course, the largest factor in the difficulty of pulling off a season isn’t really in the control of Manfred, Clark, or any of those they’re paid to lead. With tens of thousands of Americans testing positive every day, and many more surely coming down with uncounted infections, it’s awfully difficult to keep the virus from infiltrating traveling baseball teams and/or the many people involved in staging games.
Astros Sign Fernando Rodney
JULY 31: The club has announced the signing. Rodney will go to the team’s alternative training site.
JULY 28: The Astros are nearing a deal with veteran right-hander Fernando Rodney, Adam Spolane of SportsRadio 610 in Houston reports. The Octagon client is currently playing for the independent Sugar Land Skeeters, and the Astros have been negotiating a buyout of that arrangement. The deal is till pending a physical for Rodney, MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart tweets.
Rodney, now 43 years of age, would join his 12th MLB club if he ultimately gets into a big league game with the Astros. The longtime late-inning reliever split the 2019 season between the A’s and Nationals, struggling with the former but serving as a steadying presence in what had been a tumultuous bullpen with the latter. Rodney has a reputation for making any given appearance a rather adventurous outing, but his overall body of work with the World Champion Nationals was solid. In 33 1/3 frames, he logged a 4.05 ERA with 9.5 K/9, 4.3 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9 and a 48.3 percent ground-ball rate. Rodney’s heater still averaged 94.2 mph with the Nats last year.
The Astros’ bullpen has some notable names at the back of the mix, including Roberto Osuna and Ryan Pressly, but the pitching staff on the whole lacks experience. That’s particularly true with Justin Verlander currently shelved. Other Astros arms on the sidelines include Brad Peacock (shoulder), Austin Pruitt (elbow), Rogelio Armenteros (elbow) and Jose Urquidy (no reason provided). Rodney would add some depth and experience to a pitching staff that right now is carrying an eye-opening seven rookies.
White Sox Promote Nick Madrigal, Designate Kelvin Herrera
The White Sox have called up second baseman Nick Madrigal, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN.com (via Twitter). His promotion had been anticipated but was not yet confirmed to be imminent.
Reliever Kelvin Herrera was designated for assignment to create 40-man and active roster space. He was in the second season of a two-year, $17MM deal.
Madrigal, the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft, will not have a chance to accrue a full season of MLB service. He will, however, be on track to ultimately qualify for arbitration after the 2022 season as a Super Two player.
It’ll certainly be fun to watch the 23-year-old in the majors. He has quite an unusual skillset, with negligible power but otherworldly contact ability and plate discipline.
A consensus top-50 prospect leaguewide, Madrigal have to keep hitting and walking at a tremendous rate to be an above-average MLB hitter. Last year, over the three highest levels of the minors, he logged 532 plate appearances of .311/.377/.414 hitting. Though he managed only four home runs, Madrigal amazingly struck out only 16 times while drawing 44 walks.
As exciting as it is for the Sox to welcome Madrigal, bidding adieu to Herrera represents an acknowledgement of a disappointment. The 30-year-old signed his contract after recovering from a major foot procedure but just hasn’t returned to form.
As MLBTR’s Connor Byrne examined in depth recently, the once-excellent reliever has struggled mightily in Chicago. He limped to a 6.14 ERA in 51 1/3 innings in 2019 and was shelled for four earned runs over his first two outings in 2020. Worst still, his typically upper-nineties fastball velocity has drooped to about 94 mph thus far this season.
With the decision, the White Sox will owe Herrera the remainder of the pro-rated portion of his $8.5MM salary this year. They’ll also still have to pay him a $1MM buyout on a 2020 vesting/club option.