White Sox To Release Jeff Keppinger
MAY 21: The White Sox have requested unconditional release waivers for Keppinger, tweets Colleen Kane of the Chicago Tribune.
MAY 14: The White Sox have announced that infielder Jeff Keppinger has been reinstated from his injury rehab and designated for assignment (Twitter link).
Clearly, this is a disappointing outcome for the White Sox, who signed Keppinger to a three-year, $12MM contract in the 2012-13 offseason. However, the versatile 34-year-old batted just .253/.283/.317 in 451 plate appearances last season and hasn’t played in the Majors this season as he’s been rehabbing from a shoulder operation performed last September.
Keppinger is just one full season removed from an excellent 2012 in which he batted .325/.367/.439 in 418 plate appearances for the Rays. A career .282/.329/.384 hitter, Keppinger seems likely to draw interest from other teams if he is ultimately released. A trade or waiver claim both seem highly unlikely, given the roughly $7.5MM that Keppinger is owed through the 2015 season.
Red Sox GM Cherington On Drew Signing
If the offseason felt long to you, imagine how Stephen Drew must have felt. Today, the shortstop’s extended spring officially came to a close when the Red Sox announced that they signed him to a one-year deal, reportedly worth the prorated portion of the $14.1MM qualifying offer ($10.1MM). The Red Sox, who had a significant need on the left side of the infield and didn’t have to forfeit a pick to sign their own free agent, have been regarded as a frontrunner for months, but there wasn’t a lot of foreshadowing in recent days. On a conference call this afternoon, I asked General Manager Ben Cherington when the talks got more serious between him and agent Scott Boras.
“I would say that talks picked up over the weekend and into the early part of the week,” the GM said. “We know Stephen well. He did a great job for us last year and he’s a very good Major League shortstop and a good teammate and does a lot of good things that we value…We have a high degree of respect for Stephen, what he can do on the field, and what he can do for our team. We’re happy to have him back on the team.”
The signing of Drew will have a reverb effect for other Red Sox players. Xander Bogaerts, who was charged with manning shortstop in 2014, will shift over to third base, bumping the injured Will Middlebrooks out of the starting lineup. Drew’s arrival also backs things up for well-regarded third base prospect Garin Cecchini. When it comes to Bogaerts, Cherington says that after this season, his future could still very well be at shortstop.
“We believe that he can play shortstop well, things have stabilized there. I know he made a couple of errors last night but we believed last year and during Spring Training that he can play shortstop, we still believe that. This move with Stephen is not in any way about a lack of belief that Xander can play short,” Cherington said. “Xander’s ability to play short and third base allowed us to consider different options and alternatives. Stephen just happened to be the one we pursued.”
When asked if Drew’s arrival could signal some sort of position change for Middlebrooks, Cherington was non-committal and said that his main focus was getting the 25-year-old healthy.
As for Drew himself, Cherington confirmed that he’ll be on the Major League roster tonight but won’t be in the lineup against the Blue Jays. Drew will ultimately have a stint in the minors to warm up to big league action, but because of “administrative steps” that need to take place, there’s not an exact timetable for that just yet.
Presumably, Cherington is referring to the fact that Drew needs to pass through optional waivers, which take 48 hours, as the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo reported earlier this afternoon (Twitter link). Cafardo noted that Drew has consented to head to the minors to pick up 25 at-bats before playing with the big league club.
Red Sox Sign Stephen Drew
The Red Sox have officially announced the re-signing of Stephen Drew to a one-year deal that is reportedly worth the pro-rated portion of the $14.1MM qualifying offer. In other words, the Scott Boras client will be paid roughly $10.1MM for the remainder of the 2014 season before again being eligible for free agency.
Drew’s value this offseason was weighed down by a number of factors. He rejected a $14.1MM qualifying offer last November, meaning that any team (other than Boston) that wished to sign him would have to forfeit its top unprotected pick. Additionally, there were a lack of teams that were willing to spend and had a clear need for an upgrade at shortstop. The asking price of both Drew and Boras likely also weighed on interested parties.
Boston appeared to be a ready to move on from Drew and go with a left side of the infield that included Will Middlebrooks at third base and Xander Bogaerts at shortstop. However, Middlebrooks is hitting just .197/.305/.324 and is on the disabled list for the second time this season already. Bogaerts hasn’t excelled with the bat as they’d hoped, hitting a solid but unspectacular .269/.369/.379. The bigger issue with Bogaerts, however, has been his glove at shortstop. Though he’s made just four errors, his range has been below average, and both Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved feel he’s played well below-average defense.
Boston likely expected to receive a compensatory draft pick to go along with their youth movement, but the fact that Drew clearly wasn’t going to sign elsewhere prior to the draft presented GM Ben Cherington with two options: sign Drew now or see him sign elsewhere while receiving nothing in return. Given the club’s deficiencies on the left side of the infield, the Sox opted for the external upgrade rather than hoping that their young infielders would heal up and pick up the pace at the plate.
Drew, 31, enjoyed a nice bounce-back campaign with the Sox in 2013, slashing a solid .253/.333/.443 with 13 homers in 501 plate appearances. He played solid defense at short, per Ultimate Zone Rating (+6.7 UZR/150), though Defensive Runs Saved (-2) wasn’t as big of a fan. The Red Sox loved Drew’s glove at short, however (particularly in the playoffs), and his ability with the leather was enough to keep him from being platooned despite a .196/.246/.340 batting line against southpaws.
Drew will play short for Boston, Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal tweeted yesterday, which of course means that Bogaerts will shift to third. Drew will go directly onto the active MLB roster but spend a week or more getting back up to speed in the minors, according to Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe (Twitter links). (As Joel Sherman of the New York Post explained on Twitter, Drew has to join the active roster because he signed a major league deal.)
The team “back-channeled” with Drew over the course of the season and met with him at least once in April, tweeted Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports. Ultimately, the signing came together within the last two days, a source told Alex Speier of WEEI.com (Twitter link).
While a pro-rated one-year deal is hardly an ideal scenario for Drew, the fact that he won’t be on Boston’s roster for the entire season means that he’ll be ineligible to receive a qualifying offer next offseason, which should improve his chances of landing a strong multi-year deal considerably. Of course, he’ll also face steeper competition on the shortstop market than he did this past offseason and will be coming off a shorter season than if he’d simply signed earlier in the year. Hanley Ramirez, J.J. Hardy, Jed Lowrie and Asdrubal Cabrera are all set to hit the open market following the 2014 campaign.
Drew is the first case of a player waiting to sign until after the start of a season to avoid a qualifying offer the following year. Kyle Lohse and Ervin Santana came close by signing in Spring Training in 2013 and 2014, respectively, and Kendrys Morales figures to wait until after the draft in order to avoid such an offer and shed the draft pick that is currently attached to his name (he rejected a qualifying offer from the Mariners).
Boras has used the troubles of Drew and Morales to voice considerable displeasure with Major League Baseball’s qualifying offer system this offseason. While many will be quick to point out that Boras has a clearly biased take, MLBTR’s Zach Links spoke with a number of executives earlier this spring, and even they agreed that the qualifying offer system was advantageous to teams. We at MLBTR even predicted a four-year deal was possible for Drew in spite of a qualifying offer. Morales, Lohse, Santana and Nelson Cruz are examples of additional players that have seen their value likely diminished by their attachment to draft pick compensation.
Ultimately, Drew cost himself roughly $4MM and two months of playing time in order to shed the possibility of being saddled with a qualifying offer again next offseason. If he’s able to land a lucrative multi-year deal, it’s still possible that he could come out ahead in the long run, financially speaking.
Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports first reported the agreement (Twitter link), and Jon Heyman of CBS Sports tweeted the terms.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Mets Still Targeting Trade For Young Shortstop
Though they were never that interested in Stephen Drew, finding a solution at shortstop remains a priority for the Mets, reports Andy Martino of the New York Daily News. While the upcoming free agent class features prominent names such as Hanley Ramirez, J.J. Hardy, Asdrubal Cabrera and Jed Lowrie, Martino hears that the team isn’t looking at that market yet. Rather, the Mets are focused on adding a young, controllable shortstop on the trade market this summer.
Martino lists Brad Miller and Nick Franklin of the Mariners as possibilities, though one source tells him that the two sides haven’t been in contact recently. Arizona’s Didi Gregorius is hitting very well at Triple-A Reno, and Martino says the Mets are continually monitoring him, but the front office shakeup in Arizona makes trading with them a bit confusing at this time, he adds. Martino writes that other teams, at this point, aren’t even sure whether to contact GM Kevin Towers or new Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa regarding trades, though Mets GM Sandy Alderson has a good relationship with both.
He continues by stating that the Mets were only interested in Drew on a one-year deal, as they didn’t want to be responsible for 2015 and beyond if he struggled this season. The team currently wants to see if Wilmer Flores can handle the position, but his defensive question marks have been well-documented.
From this point on, I’m purely speculating, but I wonder if a name like Hak-Ju Lee could be available on the trade market now that the Rays have extended Yunel Escobar‘s contract through at least 2016. Lee is struggling thus far in his return from multiple ligament tears in his knee last season, but he’s a former Top 100 prospect that could be blocked on the big league roster.
The Rangers also have some middle infield depth with Luis Sardinas likely blocked from a starting role due to the presence of Elvis Andrus and Jurickson Profar. The pitching-hungry Twins also have a solid shortstop prospect in Danny Santana, though their own lack of a quality long-term option at short might make them hesitant to deal the 23-year-old.
The Mets possess enviable pitching depth with Matt Harvey on the mend from Tommy John surgery and a group of young starters including Jon Niese, Zack Wheeler, Dillon Gee, Rafael Montero, Jacob deGrom and top prospect Noah Syndergaard. With such a wide range of arms under team control, the Mets could conceivably use that depth to entice a rival club to part with a controllable shortstop.
Reactions To And Fallout From Drew Signing
The Red Sox ended the long Stephen Drew saga today, agreeing to re-sign the shortstop at a pro-rated annual salary equivalent to the $14.1MM qualifying offer that he declined before the season. Certainly, the signing is interesting on many levels, not least of which because it came with the team staring at the very real possibility of losing the compensatory draft pick it probably hoped to pick up. Drew now joins Ervin Santana and Nelson Cruz in taking one-year deals at or below the QO rate. In Drew’s case, the timing also seemingly reveals something about the present and future market assessment of his agent, Scott Boras. It seems that either or both of the following is likely true to some degree: first, that Boras did not believe Drew would garner an attractive multi-year offer after the amatuer draft passed; and second, that Boras believes Drew can achieve such a deal on next year’s free agent market. Notably, while Drew will not be eligible to receive a qualifying offer, he will be joined in free agency by some or all of Hanley Ramirez, J.J. Hardy, Jed Lowrie, and Asdrubal Cabrera.
Here’s more on Drew’s signing:
- Part of the Red Sox’ calculus in making the move for Drew involved his alternate landing spots, Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald reports on Twitter. Several American League competitors could have looked to add him after the draft, including the Tigers and division rivals like the Yankees (if not also the Orioles and Blue Jays).
- Exactly what kind of interest Drew would have received after shedding draft compensation may never be known, but at least two oft-cited suitors downplayed their interest in the aftermath of the signing. Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said that the move “really hasn’t been discussed internally,” reports Tom Gage of the Detroit News (via Twitter). And Mets GM Sandy Alderson said that his club would not have paid Drew what he received from Boston, tweets Marc Carig of Newsday. Indeed, neither the Mets nor the Yankees were ever really serious pursuers of Drew, according to Andy Martino of the New York Daily News.
- From the Red Sox’ perspective, adding Drew raised questions about the team’s plans for younger players Xander Bogaerts and Will Middlebrooks. Drew is expected to play short, at least against right-handers, reports Tim Britton of the Providence Journal (Twitter links), who says the team will at least consider keeping Middlebrooks on the MLB roster in some form of an indirect platoon with Drew when he comes off the DL. Presumably, Bogaerts would take short against lefties in that scenario, but as Jason Mastrodonato of MassLive.com reports, statements from manager John Farrell indicate that Drew will handle most of the load at shortstop. Adding to the intrigue, Farrell also said that the team’s lineup would “depend upon who’s on this team” and “what the roster looks like,” Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal reports (Twitter links). As MacPherson suggests, that could suggest that the team views Middlebrooks as expendable. Certainly, it would not be surprising to hear his name arise in trade talks over the summer.
- The deal is a win for Boston, which needed an upgrade at the left side of the infield and did not pay a big price to do so, writes Dave Cameron of Fangraphs. But it is not a bad result for Drew either, Cameron says, because his loss of salary this year (as against taking the QO at the beginning of the year) could still be offset by gains from re-entering the market without compensation attached. Addressing the same point, Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com agrees that things could still work out in the end for Drew, while noting that the vagaries of the market could decide that question.
- MacPherson writes that the Red Sox did well to shore up their defense and add another bat to play against righties. While the team may have expected, or even hoped, that Drew would sign elsewhere and return a draft pick, that ship had sailed and the team was able to follow through with an attractive back-up strategy when the need arose.
- The key to the deal for Boston is the short-term nature of the commitment, writes Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. Prospects Deven Marrero and Garin Cecchini join Bogaerts as near-future options on the left side of the infield, says Rosenthal, and the signing does nothing to change the club’s bright outlook in that respect.
Reds To Sign Jair Jurrjens
4:30pm: Jurrjens would earn a $800K annual rate should he crack the big league roster, tweets Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com.
7:38am: The Reds have agreed to to a minor league contract with free agent right-hander Jair Jurrjens, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today (on Twitter). The Scott Boras client was said recently to be eyeing a comeback after undergoing knee surgery last fall.
It’s been a rapid decline for Jurrjens, who is still just 28 years of age. The Curacao native was dominant for the Braves in 2011, posting a 2.38 ERA through his first 19 starts of the season. He suffered a knee injury shortly thereafter and would make only four more starts in 2011, allowing 16 runs in 23 1/3 innings.
It’s been downhill for Jurrjens since that time, as he’s posted a 6.63 ERA in 55 2/3 innings since and has undergone multiple knee surgeries as he attempts to revive his once-promising career. While his brilliant 2011 campaign was likely aided by a deflated batting average on balls in play (.267) and an elevated strand rate (81 percent), he still had the makings of a solid big league starting pitcher in his first four seasons with Atlanta.
Jurrjens spent much of last season in Triple-A with the Orioles and Tigers (the organization which originally signed him), pitching to a 4.57 ERA with 5.1 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9 in 134 innings. He’ll serve as additional rotation depth for the Reds, who also have Chien-Ming Wang in their Triple-A rotation. Jeff Francis also occupied a role with that team until he was claimed off waivers by the Athletics this past weekend. Cincinnati has been without Mat Latos all season, but Alfredo Simon has surprisingly stepped up and filled that role masterfully, pitching to a 2.45 ERA in 51 1/3 innings out of the rotation.
Velocity Changes Among Free Agent Starters
With more than six weeks behind us, nearly every team has completed a quarter of its games this season. Impending free agents have a significant amount of their platform years in the books, though it’s certainly not too late to change the opinions of potential offseason suitors.
One way in which free agent pitchers can raise their stock is to up their velocity, although the opposite of that can hold true as well. A resurgence in velocity helped to save Scott Kazmir‘s career last season and took him from a minor league contract to a two-year, $22MM guarantee. On the other side of the spectrum, a rapid decline in velocity dropped Tim Lincecum from a lock to receive $100MM+ to a two-year, $35MM contract that looks to be a questionable investment.
A look at the coming free agent crop of starters shows that several arms could be improving their stock by turning up the heat on their fastballs, while several free-agents-to-be have seen troubling declines in their velocity that have contributed to poor results. Some will be quick to point out that many starters’ velocity increases over the course of a season. Because of this, I’ve included a comparison of each pitcher’s 2013 and 2014 April velocities as well. This should give a rough indicator of where each pitcher is right now compared to this point in the 2013 season.
I’ve included any pitcher who is working as a starter and has a chance at free agency next season, even if it’s a virtual lock that their club option will be exercised (e.g. Johnny Cueto). Additionally, potential starters who are working out of the bullpen (e.g. Chris Capuano) have been omitted, as their velocity spikes are likely due to a change in role (pitchers typically see increased velocity when switching to a relief role). Here’s the list, sorted by the most positive change to most negative change from 2013 to 2014:
As J.A. Happ is a testament to, a noticeable velocity increase doesn’t guarantee improved performance. Though his ERA is down, his command has suffered greatly, making his 3.57 mark unsustainable without improvement in that area. However, most starters with a positive change have demonstrated improvements in their swinging-strike rate and overall strikeout percentage. Ryan Vogelsong has cut his ERA by more than two full runs. Brandon McCarthy and Jorge De La Rosa, while they haven’t seen their ERAs dip, have seen notable improvements in sabermetric ERA estimators such as xFIP and SIERA.
A dip in velocity, on the other hand, is often a precursor to an arm-related injury, and could ultimately serve as a red flag for interested teams on the free agent market if paired with declining results. There is, of course, still time for each pitcher on this list to see his velocity change in one direction or the other, but the above velocity changes are something to keep an eye on as it relates to the free agent stock of each. Names like Justin Masterson, who currently ranks sixth on MLBTR’s Free Agent Power Rankings but has seen the largest decline of any free agent, will be of particular interest as the season wears on.
*=Velocity data from May 2014 was used, as Floyd did not pitch this April.
**=Velocity data from April 2012 was used, as Lewis didn’t pitch in the Majors last season.
***=Velocity data from May 2013 was used, as Liriano didn’t pitch in the Majors last April.
****=Velocity data from May 2012 was used, as Paulino didn’t pitch in the Majors in either of the past two Aprils.
Data from Fangraphs was critical to the creation of this post.