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Indians Activate Francisco Lindor, DFA Hanley Ramirez

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The Indians activated Francisco Lindor from the injured list today, while veteran Hanley Ramirez was designated for assignment to clear the roster spot, per MLB Roster Moves (Twitter links).

This should come as a welcome bit of news for Indians fans, who finally have their middle infield at full health for the first time this season. Cleveland performed arguably better than expected in their superstar’s absence, as the team sits one game up on the AL Central with an 11-7 record. While the team stayed afloat, offense from the shortstop position was abysmal without Lindor, as his understudies hit a combined .069/.139/.097 – that’s a full -1.0 fWAR in 18 games (-43 wRC+). Replacing that production with anything close to Lindor’s career .288/.350/.487 ought to provide a significant boost to a Cleveland offense that ranks 28th with a .266 wOBA.

For Ramirez, thus ends a second straight disappointing season for the 35-year-old Dominican. He appeared in 16 games this season, hitting only .184/.298/.327 with two home runs. The former highlight-reel shortstop has been relegated to designated hitter duties, from which he simply does not provide Cleveland with enough utility to warrant a roster spot. If this spells the end for Ramirez’s major-league career, he would finish as a career .289/.360/.486 hitter with 271 home runs and 1,834 hits across 7,127 plate appearances in 15 years.

Diamondbacks Acquire Blake Swihart

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The Diamondbacks have acquired catcher Blake Swihart from the Red Sox, per a club announcement. International pool money is also going to Arizona in the deal — $500K in spending capacity, GM Mike Hazen tells reporters including Zach Buchanan of The Athletic (Twitter links) — with outfield prospect Marcus Wilson going to Boston in return.

Swihart had been designated for assignment recently. He’s now heading to an interesting situation with the Snakes. Hazen is among several top D-Backs executives that came over from the Red Sox; needless to say, the team is amply familiar with Swihart.

The Diamondbacks are the one organization in baseball that has been most dedicated to carrying three catcher-capable players on its active roster. That’s particularly relevant for Swihart, given that his questionable abilities behind the plate have thus far limited his chances in the majors. But the plan doesn’t appear to be for the out-of-options Swihart to displace a current D-Backs receiver (Carson Kelly, John Ryan Murphy, Caleb Joseph). Rather, Hazen indicates that the club intends to utilize him in some kind of utility capacity.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the Arizona organization is better able to draw value out of Swihart than were the Sox. Prior attempts at moving him around the field didn’t work out. And his well-regarded bat hasn’t yet done much damage in the majors, though to be fair opportunities have come in fits and starts to this point. In 626 career plate appearances at the game’s highest level, Swihart carries a .255/.314/.365 slash with nine home runs, ten steals, and a combination of a 25.7% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate.

The Red Sox won’t come away with what they hoped for out of Swihart, who was once considered quite a high-end prospect. But they were able to add an interesting player in Wilson, who was taken 69th overall in the 2014 draft. He has some swing and miss in his game but also has drawn his share of walks and has produced solid numbers at times in the low minors. An intriguing athlete, Wilson is off to a nice start this year at Double-A and is seen as possessing a relatively lofty ceiling.

Yankees Sign Logan Morrison

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3:20pm: The Yankees have announced the signing.

11:16am: ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweets that Morrison’s deal comes with a July 1 opt-out and a $1MM base salary at the MLB level (though that salary would presumably be pro-rated).

11:06am: The Yankees have agreed to a minor league contract with first baseman/designated hitter Logan Morrison, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com (Twitter links). He’ll head to extended Spring Training for the time being. Roster Roundup first tweeted the two sides were talking. Morrison is represented by ISE Baseball.

Morrison, 31, belted 38 home runs with the Rays in 2017 but struggled through an injury-ruined 2018 campaign with the Twins that was ultimately truncated by surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip. That operation, performed last August, came with a roughly eight-month timetable for recovery; this contract falls right in line with the end of that rehab period. Once he’s up to speed and in game shape, Morrison will head to the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate in Scranton.

New York recently lost first baseman Greg Bird for at least a month due to a case of plantar fasciitis, although given Morrison’s own health status, it’s unlikely that he’d be able to step up as an option to help in the short-term anyhow. That said, the Yankees’ roster has generally been decimated by injuries, and having Morrison on hand as a risk-free depth option at the Triple-A level to perhaps aid the lineup starting in mid-May or early June certainly won’t hurt.

Last year with the Twins, “LoMo” hit .186/.276/.368 with 15 home runs and 13 doubles through 359 plate appearances, although the hip issue that ultimately ended his season quite likely hindered him at the plate before he underwent surgery. His 2017 season was nothing shy of excellent, as he turned in a .246/.353/.516 slash with 38 homers, 22 doubles and a triple in 601 trips to the plate.

Red Sox Place Eduardo Nunez On IL, Promote Michael Chavis, Designate Erasmo Ramirez

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The Red Sox announced a series of roster moves Friday morning, revealing that they’ve placed Eduardo Nunez on the 10-day injured list (retroactive to April 18) due to a mid-back strain). Additionally, Boston has designated righty Erasmo Ramirez for assignment and recalled infielders Tzu-Wei Lin and Michael Chavis from Triple-A Pawtucket. It’ll be the MLB debut for Chavis, a former first-round pick who is currently ranked as the game’s No. 75 overall prospect by MLBPipeline.com.

Nunez will join fellow second basemen Dustin Pedroia and Brock Holt on the injured list. There’s no word yet on long he’s expected to be sidelined. The loss of that trio facilitated the promotion of Chavis for his first look in the big leagues as well as the return of the versatile Lin, who has been up and down with the Sox dating back to the 2017 season. While Chavis has been primarily a third baseman in his minor league career, he’s played 47 innings at second base in 2019 and has experience at shortstop in the past, as well. He seems likely to step up at second base for the time being with Boston’s other options on the mend.

Selected with the 26th overall pick in the 2014 draft, Chavis posted modest numbers in his first two and a half professional seasons before breaking out with a .282/.347/.563 batting line between Class-A Advanced and Double-A in 2017. He followed that up with a similarly impressive .298/.381/.538 slash across three levels in 2018 (topping out in Triple-A but spending the bulk of his time in Double-A), though it should be pointed out that Chavis’ 2018 campaign was shortened by an 80-game PED suspension.

This season, he was off to a .250/.354/.600 start in Pawtucket. Chavis is a bat-first prospect, drawing the most praise for plus raw power and a solid hit tool. Strikeouts are part of his game but haven’t been a huge problem for him, and he’s shown improved plate discipline in recent years as well.

Ramirez’s stint with the Sox will go down as a brief and forgettable one. The veteran right-hander made only one appearance with the Boston organization, allowing four runs on four hits (including a pair of homers) and a walk with one strikeout in three inning of relief. The Red Sox will have a week to trade him, release him or pass him through outright waivers; Ramirez would be able to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency anyhow, so this move seems quite likely to end his tenure with the Red Sox organization.

Though he had a poor year with the Mariners in 2018, Ramirez isn’t far removed from a three-year stretch (2015-17) in which he logged a combined 3.97 ERA with 7.0 K/9, 2.3 BB/9 and 1.2 HR/9 in 385 1/3 innings between Tampa Bay and Seattle. He has extensive big league experience as both a starter and reliever, and a club looking at adding some depth in either area could take a look at the righty, who won’t turn 29 until early next month. The Braves are known to be on the lookout for potential bullpen arms, for instance, while the Rangers haven’t been secretive about their desire to add rotation depth.

Athletics Extend Khris Davis

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Oakland fans have cause to celebrate. The Athletics announced Thursday that they’ve extended designated hitter/outfielder Khris Davis through the 2021 season. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports (via Twitter) that Davis will earn $16.75MM in each year of the contract, meaning he’ll take home $33.5MM in new money over the next two campaigns. Davis, an Octagon client, would have been eligible for free agency following the 2019 season.

“Oakland has been a special place for me since I arrived,” said Davis in a statement accompanying the announcement. “I love playing here in front of our fans, and my teammates make this feel like a family. I never hid the fact that I wanted to stay in Oakland because that is how I feel and I’m glad that I can continue to call the city of Oakland my baseball home. This team has a bright future, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”

Davis, 31, has been a source of immense power and stunning consistency since coming to the A’s by way of trade from the Brewers. There may be no more remarkable piece of trivia in baseball than the slugger finishing four consecutive seasons with a .247 batting average. Of course, while that number doesn’t stand out as particularly impressive, Davis offsets that average with respectable on-base skills and elite power; he’s a .247/.322/.539 hitter since being acquired by the Athletics (this season included) and averaged 44 homers per year in each of his three full seasons in green and gold.

It’s not particularly surprising to see the sides line up on a new deal, especially in this year of the extension. The A’s have proven willing to commit multiple seasons to a DH in the recent past. Though they came to regret the Billy Butler signing, the club has had a lengthy opportunity already to evaluate Davis in person. He has proven capable of putting the ball over the fence in one of the game’s least homer-friendly ballparks. And he’ll continue to earn at the same level he is in 2019, a salary that the club obviously feels it can manage even with its typically bottom-barrel payroll.

From Davis’s perspective, the market has been distinctly unfriendly to defensively limited sluggers. J.D. Martinez hit free agency with a better track record and at a much younger age than Davis would have, but settled for $110MM over five years. And that’s the very top of the market. The aging but highly accomplished Nelson Cruz settled for one year and $14MM this past winter. He took down four seasons and $57MM when he hit the market in 2014, but things have clearly changed since that time.

If there was an upside scenario for Davis in the 2019-20 market, it was probably embodied in Carlos Santana’s three-year, $60MM deal. Santana was a similar age to Davis; he lacked Davis’s power abilities but was a much bigger on-base threat. That contract came in higher than MLBTR predicted; it also quickly proved undesirable for the Phillies. Santana’s contract was one of several first base/DH accords to be swapped around the league this winter. Perhaps Davis could still have earned more on the open market, in AAV if not also years, but it’s understandable that he wasn’t anxious to test his luck.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Nationals, Anthony Rendon Resume Extension Talks

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April 18: There’s still a “decent-sized gap” between Rendon’s asking price and what the Nationals are willing to offer, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (Twitter link). That said, the very fact that talks have continued into the season serves as a point of encouragement for Nats fans who are hoping to see Rendon locked up to a long-term pact.

April 16: The Nationals and third baseman Anthony Rendon met prior to tonight’s game to once again discuss a contract extension, MASNsports.com’s Mark Zuckerman first reported. Rendon met with not only general manager Mike Rizo but also managing principal owner Mark Lerner, per the report.

Like several other stars who’ve signed extensions over the past few months, Rendon is slated to reach free agency at season’s end. The increasingly prolonged nature of the free-agent process and colder-than-expected markets for even some of the game’s brightest stars have begun to push many players toward forgoing the entire process, however. Rendon would be the latest example, joining a list that includes the likes of Xander Bogaerts, Chris Sale and Nolan Arenado.

Rendon, 28, is off to an otherworldly start to his 2019 campaign, entering play Tuesday with a .400/.460/.873 batting line. He’s already clubbed six homers and eight doubles in just 63 trips to the plate, and he’s walked nearly as many times as he’s punched out (six and eight, respectively).

The Nationals and Rendon avoided arbitration this winter by agreeing to an $18.8MM salary for his final season of club control. Any extension would figure to come with a substantial raise in terms of annual value; Rendon may not quite reach the heights attained by Arenado (seven years, $234MM) or fellow third baseman Manny Machado (10 years, $300MM), but those lofty investments nonetheless underscore that a merely modest raise isn’t likely to dissuade Rendon from exploring free agency. Rendon is two years older than Machado but is only 10 months older than Arenado, so perhaps the length of Arenado’s extension will serve as a potential comp in renewed negotiations.

As of late spring, Rendon was somewhat candid in telling NBC Sports’ Todd Dybas that negotiations had “kind of come to a halt” and that the Nationals’ offer “wasn’t to where we thought we should be.” The exact size of contract that Rendon and agent Scott Boras are seeking isn’t clear. Boras clients have a reputation for testing the market rather than inking long-term deals before reaching free agency, though it’s worth noting that the aforementioned Bogaerts extension represents a notable exception to that line of thinking. So, too, does Rendon’s teammate Stephen Strasburg, who signed a $175MM extension with the Nats just under three years ago — at a time time when he was also in his final season of club control.

The Nats have been luxury-tax offenders in each of the past two seasons, but the outlook in that regard is substantially more clear in 2020. Bryce Harper’s decision to sign with the division-rival Phillies and the potential departure of Ryan Zimmerman next winter clear large numbers off the books; the Nationals will also likely see Brian Dozier, Howie Kendrick, Matt Adams, Jeremy Hellickson and Tony Sipp become free agents at season’s end. Trea Turner represents their only significant arbitration raise on the horizon.

Presently, the Nats only have about $110MM worth of 2020 salary counting against the luxury tax, leaving them nearly $100MM south of the barrier. That’d leave ample room not only for a Rendon extension but for additional offseason maneuverings next winter.

Arodys Vizcaino Undergoes Season-Ending Shoulder Surgery

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The Braves have announced that closer Arodys Vizcaino has undergone season-ending shoulder surgery. The procedure involved a labrum clean-up and the removal of scar tissue.

This news represents a major hit to a Braves relief unit that was already under fire. That’s true of many other clubs — including several division rivals — but that doesn’t make it easier to bear. A.J. Minter, the club’s other top option for the ninth inning, has scuffled out of the gates. Others in the bullpen currently include Wes Parsons, Luke Jackson, Jesse Biddle, Shane Carle and Chad Sobotka, although of that bunch, Carle and Sobotka have struggled quite a bit in the season’s first few weeks.

The Atlanta organization isn’t short on promising arms in the upper minors, though the bulk of their top-regarded arms are in rotation roles. Bryse Wilson and Kyle Wright opened the year in the big league rotation, in fact, though each has since been optioned down to Triple-A Gwinnett. Southpaws Luiz Gohara and Kolby Allard are both starting at the Triple-A level as well.

Right-hander Mike Soroka, arguably the most promising young arm the Braves have in-house, didn’t appear to be an option in the hours leading up to the news on Vizcaino’s shoulder. To the contrary, Mark Bowman of MLB.com tweeted that afternoon that it’s likely that Soroka will be recalled to start tomorrow’s game for the Braves. He’ll at least temporarily step into a rotation that is expected to get top starter Mike Foltynewicz back by the end of the month.

It won’t go unnoticed that there is still a rather prominent free agent reliever still left unsigned. Long-time Braves closer extraordinaire Craig Kimbrel held talks earlier in the winter but failed to come to terms with the value-conscious Atlanta organization. He’s still reportedly seeking a multi-year deal; the Braves will be loath to commit to a lengthy accord, but Kimbrel’s leverage may be on the rise as late-inning relief units falter around baseball.

Signing Kimbrel before the June draft would cost the Braves a pick in the 2020 draft, as Kimbrel rejected a qualifying offer from the Red Sox upon conclusion of the 2018 season. Nevertheless, the on-paper fit is now more pronounced than ever, and fan outcry for the organization to broker a reunion with an already beloved franchise icon has been audible since late in the offseason.

The Braves kicked off the winter with a high-profile signing of Josh Donaldson but then went largely dormant, negotiating only small-scale returns for Brian McCann and Nick Markakis. At the time of the Markakis signing, general manager Alex Anthopoulos spoke of the contract’s below-market rate perhaps giving the team flexibility to make further moves down the line — in addition to Braves leadership already having spoken of increased spending capacity earlier in the winter — but that has yet to come to fruition.

As for Vizcaino, the injury may well prove to be the end of his Braves tenure. The hard-throwing righty entered the season with five years, 168 days of Major League service time, meaning he’s already now surpassed the six-year service mark needed to qualify for free agency. Perhaps the Braves will look to retain him on a bargain contract next offseason, but Vizcaino will have the ability to listen to offers from any and all interested parties. He’ll quite likely be forced to settle for a one-year deal with a low base salary and plenty of incentives, if not a minor league contract, as teams throughout the league look at him as a potential bounceback candidate. He won’t turn 29 until November, though, so at the very least, Vizcaino will have age on his side in free agency.

Red Sox Designate Blake Swihart, Select Sandy Leon

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The Red Sox have designated catcher Blake Swihart for assignment, as first reported by Evan Drellich of WEEI.com (Twitter link). In his place, Sandy Leon is heading back onto the MLB roster, as Jon Heyman of MLB Network was first to tweet.

Struggling out of the gates, the defending champs have decided upon a change behind the dish. The considerations are familiar; they were weighed just weeks ago when Leon was outrighted in favor of Swihart. This move, then, constitutes a mulligan of sorts.

Swihart wasn’t off to an inspirational start at the plate, with a .231/.310/.385 slash, but it seems likely that the move was driven primarily by the club’s broader pitching issues. The Boston staff has been among the worst in all of baseball thus far. While that reflects quite a bit more than Swihart’s own performance behind the dish, the organization obviously feels it has something to gain in that regard by switching things up.

Leon was stashed down at Triple-A after clearing waivers late in camp. He lacks Swihart’s abilities on offense but is lauded for his glovework and game management skills. He had teamed with Christian Vazquez to form a defensive-oriented backstop combination in recent years, but the club opted to give Swihart a run at the position to open the season after utilizing him in a utility role last year.

The move potentially means jettisoning the upside and cheap control embodied in the control rights over Swihart. He’s earning $910K this year as a Super Two player and comes with three further arbitration-eligible campaigns. Long lauded as a potential impact bat that can line up behind the dish, those predictions haven’t yet come to fruition. Over 626 career MLB plate appearances, Swihart owns a .255/.314/.365 slash line.

Teams that believe in the bat may well give Swihart a chance at a lengthier run of consistent playing time. That could come via trade or waiver claim. If no team is interested in carrying the out-of-options 27-year-old on its active roster and he clears waivers, the Red Sox will have a chance to stash him back at Triple-A.

Dodgers To Activate Clayton Kershaw On Monday

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APRIL 15: As expected, Kershaw is now back on the active roster. The club optioned righty Jaime Schultz to open roster space.

APRIL 11: Clayton Kershaw will come off the injured list to make his season debut on Monday when the Dodgers host the Reds, manager Dave Roberts revealed to reporters Thursday morning (Twitter link via Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register).

Kershaw landed on the IL to begin the season due to a bout of shoulder inflammation that slowed his progress during Spring Training. He’s made a pair of minor league rehab starts since Opening Day — one with Triple-A Oklahoma City and a second with Double-A Tulsa — working six innings and tossing 81 pitches in the latter of the two. In total, Kershaw yielded four runs on nine hits and a pair of walks with a dozen strikeouts in 10 1/3 rehab innings.

Since it became apparent that Kershaw would require an IL stint to begin the season, the Dodgers have also lost both Rich Hill (knee strain) and Hyun-Jin Ryu (groin strain) to injuries. Those maladies pushed lauded southpaw Julio Urias into the rotation to begin the year after he’d been slated to open the 2019 campaign in the bullpen to manage his workload. He’s been limited to about 75 pitches in each of his two starts so far.

It’s not clear exactly how the Dodgers’ rotation will shake out in the coming weeks as both Hill and Ryu mend; Walker Buehler, Kenta Maeda and Ross Stripling figure to join Kershaw in the starting five for now, and it’s possible that Urias will make another start or two until one of Hill or Ryu is able to step back into the fray. At some point, Urias will have to shift to the ’pen, given that he only pitched a total of 22 innings between the Majors (postseason and regular season) and minors last year in his return campaign from major shoulder surgery in 2017.

Braves Extend Ozzie Albies

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The Braves continued to lock up their core pieces Thursday, announcing a contract extension with second baseman Ozzie Albies that’ll guarantee the 22-year-old a total of $35MM from 2019-25. He’ll earn $1MM apiece in 2019 and 2020, $3MM in 2021, $5MM in 2022, and $7MM annually from 2023 through 2025.

The contract includes a pair of club options reportedly valued at $7MM apiece; the first one comes with a $4MM buyout. If both are exercised, Albies will earn a mere $45MM over the next nine seasons — four of which would have been free-agent years.

Ozzie Albies | Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY SportsAlbies was already under control through 2023 but will now join Ronald Acuna Jr. in comprising a core that the Braves can build around beyond that point in time. Acuna’s contract was deemed by many to be bargain, but the Albies deal runs nearly the same length while checking in at just under one third of the total maximum value.

In terms of overall guarantee, Albies topped fellow second baseman Ketel Marte, though he did so only by giving away additional years of control. Historically speaking, there’s little to no precedent for a player this young and of this caliber surrendering four would-be free-agent seasons for a maximum payout under $50MM. While there’s surely something to be said for accepting a first life-changing payday — particularly with arbitration still two years away — Albies was on track to become a free agent upon completion of his age-26 season. For comparison’s sake, Scooter Gennett earned $18MM over this three arb years despite not breaking out until he was in his first arbitration season. Jonathan Schoop, who was non-tendered after his second arbitration season, signed a one-year deal with the Twins and will earn $19.475MM across what would’ve been his three arb seasons.

Setting aside second basemen and merely looking at players who signed extensions with between one and two years of Major League service, Christian Yelich (seven years, $49.57MM), Andrelton Simmons (seven years, $58MM) and Anthony Rizzo (seven years, $41MM) all topped the Albies guarantee handily — and did so more than four years ago. If Albies was dead-set on an extension, a $50MM baseline would have been at least commensurate with market trends — especially considering the multiple options over free-agent seasons. Instead, the deal checks in more along the lines of dated extensions signed by Starling Marte, Jedd Gyorko and Gregory Polanco.

Frankly, this seems like the type of deal that an agent would strongly advise his client not to take. Perhaps Albies simply wanted to take the largest guarantee the Braves were willing to offer; he received just a $350K signing bonus as a prospect, after all, and his career earnings to date may not even total seven figures. From a purely human standpoint, it’s hard for any 22-year-old player without much in the way of career earnings to rebuff $35MM under the guise that he’ll earn more on a year-to-year basis beginning 24 months down the line. Presumably, all of the points made here were spelled out to Albies before he made what amounts to a life-altering decision.

The contract serves as a reminder that the teams hold overwhelming leverage in instances such as this, and the Atlanta organization took full advantage of that reality. It’s nothing short of a coup for the Braves to land Albies for a maximum of $45MM over the next nine years just weeks after Eloy Jimenez signed a deal that can pay him as much as $75MM over eight years before he ever played a single MLB game.

Albies, meanwhile, entered his second full big league campaign in 2019 with a career .268/.317/.453 batting line to go along with 30 homers, 49 doubles, 10 triples and 22 stolen bases (in 26 attempts). He’s off to a fast start thus far, too, having posted a .929 OPS through the season’s first 11 games. Long one of the game’s top-ranked prospects, Albies earned what figures to be the first of multiple All-Star nods last year as part of a season that both Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs pegged at 3.8 wins above replacement. Given the output he’s already demonstrated to this point in his career, it seems unfathomable that Albies wouldn’t have taken home at least $10-15MM in arbitration, and the more realistic scenario (as evidenced by Schoop and Gennett) is that he’d have done quite a bit better.

The Braves may very well try to spin the Acuna and Albies extensions as big expenditures that’ll buy some good will with fans after a quiet offseason in which they did not spend at anywhere near the level they implied to fans several months ago. And Braves fans, to be clear, should be thrilled by both deals. However, these types of deals aren’t the type that a team can legitimately claim as alternatives to spending in free agency and in taking on salary via trades; rather, they’re the type of contracts that should empower a team to spend in those arenas, knowing full well that paying market rate for other talent is offset by the overwhelming bargains they’ve secured over a pair of homegrown assets.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first reported the agreement (via Twitter). The New York Post’s Joel Sherman reported the terms (Twitter links), with Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweeting the annual breakdown.

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