Athletics Designate Paul Blackburn For Assignment
The Athletics have designated right-hander Paul Blackburn for assignment, the team announced Tuesday. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to first baseman/designated hitter Mitch Moreland, who has passed a physical and thus made his one-year agreement with Oakland official.
Blackburn, 27, has seen time in the big leagues with the A’s in each of the past four seasons but has yet to consistently put together strong results. He did notch 58 2/3 innings of 3.22 ERA ball as a rookie in 2017, but that was accompanied by a paltry 9.2 percent strikeout rate that served as a clear indicator he’d have difficulty maintaining that output. While Blackburn has succeeded in upping his strikeout rate a bit — it’s still well below league average — he’s nevertheless been hit quite hard in the three years since that debut. Over his past 41 innings in the big leagues, he’s yielded 44 earned runs.
Overall, Blackburn carries a 5.69 ERA in 99 2/3 MLB frames to date, although there are certainly some intriguing aspects to the righty’s track record. He’s induced grounders at a rather hefty 53.2 percent clip thanks to a low-spin sinker, and he’s walked just 6.5 percent of opponents he’s faced in the Majors. Blackburn has a sub-4.00 ERA at every minor league level and a 3.47 ERA mark in parts of eight minor league seasons overall. He’s also out of minor league options, however, meaning he’d have to break camp with another club in order to avoid again being designated for assignment.
The A’s will have a week to trade Blackburn, try to pass him through outright waivers or release him. Should he go unclaimed on waivers, he’ll remain with the club and presumably head to Major League Spring Training as a non-roster invitee. At that point, he’d have a chance to force his way back onto the MLB roster or could be sent to Triple-A to open the year as a relatively seasoned upper-level depth piece.
Athletics Sign Mitch Moreland
The Athletics added some left-handed pop to their lineup, announcing on Tuesday that they’ve signed first baseman/designated hitter Mitch Moreland to a one-year deal. The Paragon Sports International client will reportedly be guaranteed $2.25MM on the deal and can earn another $250K worth of incentives.
Moreland may be 35 years old, but he’s turned in the best work of his career at the plate over the past two seasons. In 487 plate appearances between the Red Sox and Padres in that time, Moreland has slashed .256/.333/.521 with 29 home runs, 26 doubles and a triple. He’s also boosted his walk rate north of 10 percent in the past few years after previously sitting around seven percent for the bulk of his career, and the uptick in power and free passes hasn’t come with any discernible increase in strikeouts (21.8 percent).
At this point in his career, Moreland’s glovework likely isn’t as good as it was at its Gold Glove peak, but that’s not much of an issue in Oakland, where Matt Olson is among the game’s best defenders at the position. He’ll give them a veteran with a solid defensive track record in the event that Olson misses any time, but Moreland figures to see time as the primary designated hitter for the A’s now that Khris Davis has been traded to Texas in a trade that brought Elvis Andrus to Oakland.
Moreland has never hit left-handed pitching well and is typically shielded from facing southpaws too much, so he’ll likely be deployed in a platoon setting. The A’s don’t have an obvious right-handed-hitting platoon partner at the moment — Chad Pinder likely in a platoon at second base — so it’s possible they could yet look to the market to bring in an affordable righty bat or switch-hitter to pair with Moreland.
Moreland joins Trevor Rosenthal, Yusmeiro Petit and Sergio Romo as recent additions on one-year deals, bringing the Oakland payroll up to a still-modest $85MM in total. It had been a near-silent offseason for the A’s, but it seems their ability to shed the Davis contract and a flooded free-agent market still full of veterans seeking deals has pushed ownership to begin spending a bit.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the deal (via Twitter). Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com first reported the financials.
Athletics Designate Dustin Fowler For Assignment
The A’s have designated outfielder Dustin Fowler for assignment. This was the corresponding move to create roster space for Trevor Rosenthal, whose deal with Oakland has now been officially announced.
Perhaps best known for his inclusion as part of the trade package sent by the Yankees to the A’s in the July 2017 Sonny Gray trade, Fowler hit .224/256/.354 with six home runs over 203 plate appearances with Oakland in 2018. His only other MLB experience was a single game with the Yankees in 2017, as Fowler’s big league debut was ruined after he ruptured his right patellar tendon after running into an electrical box while chasing a fly ball at Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field.
It was a particularly damaging injury for a player known for his speed while coming up through the minor leagues, though Fowler still managed some respectable (25-for-31) stolen base totals with the Athletics’ Triple-A affiliate in 2018 and 2019. Ramon Laureano‘s emergence turned Fowler into a somewhat expendable part of Oakland’s future plans, though Fowler is still 26, and he has posted some strong post-injury hitting numbers at the Triple-A level.
Athletics Sign Trevor Rosenthal
TODAY: The A’s have officially announced the signing.
FEB. 18, 8:37pm: While it’s only a one-year pact, the Athletics will pay Trevor Rosenthal for three seasons, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets. He’ll earn $3MM in both 2021 and ’22 and another $5MM in ’23.
8:59am: In a surprising move, the A’s have agreed to a one-year deal with free-agent righty Trevor Rosenthal, reports MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (via Twitter). The Boras Corporation client will earn $11MM in 2021 and presumably slot in as Oakland’s primary closer before returning to the open market next winter.
It’s a rather stunning development to see the Athletics of all clubs strike this pact. Oakland has spent the offseason in a veritable state of dormancy, only jumping into the free-agent market after first shedding a notable chunk of cash in the deal that shipped Khris Davis and his $16.75MM salary to Texas. Even then, the additions made by the club have been small-scale in nature: one-year deals with Yusmeiro Petit ($2.55MM), Sergio Romo ($2.25MM) and Mitch Moreland ($2.25MM).
The only indication to date that the A’s have been willing to spend near this level on a single player has been their $12.5MM offer to shortstop Marcus Semien, although The Athletic reported that offer came with as much as $10MM deferred over the course of an entire decade. The extent of deferrals in the Rosenthal deal isn’t yet known, but ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweets that a portion of that $11MM is indeed deferred beyond the 2021 season. Passan adds that Rosenthal and agent Scott Boras initially set out seeking a four-year pact, but when the multi-year interest they received didn’t meet those lofty expectations, Rosenthal eventually opted for a higher-value one-year deal.
Rosenthal, 30, was among the game’s most dominant relievers in 2020 — a remarkable rebound from a 2018-19 downturn that had brought his very future in the game into question. From 2012-17, Rosenthal was one of the National League’s best relievers, tossing 325 innings of 2.99 ERA ball and punching out 31.2 percent of his opponents while closing down games in St. Louis. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2017, however, causing him to miss the entire 2018 season.
When he returned in 2019 with the Nationals, Rosenthal walked 15 of the 43 batters he faced and plunked another three while mixing in five wild pitches. He went to the Tigers and walked more than a quarter of his opponents there, too, before landing with the Yankees’ Triple-A club. Rosenthal faced five batters with the Yankees’ Scranton affiliate, walking three of them and hitting another.
The sudden case of the yips had many questioning whether he’d ever make it back from Tommy John surgery, but Rosenthal parlayed a minor league deal with the the Royals into the aforementioned dominant 2020 campaign that brought about this sizable one-year arrangement. Armed with a triple-digit heater and a rediscovered control of the strike zone, Rosenthal tossed 13 2/3 innings of 3.29 ERA ball as Kansas City’s closer before being traded to the Padres, where he closed out the year with 10 shutout innings of relief. Overall, the flamethrowing righty posted a 1.90 ERA and 2.31 SIERA with a powerhouse 41.8 percent strikeout rate and a strong 8.8 percent walk rate.
If Rosenthal can replicate that success in 2021, he could hit the market as a 31-year-old on the heels of a similar resurgence to that of the man he’ll effectively replace in Oakland: Liam Hendriks. The Aussie buzzsaw went from clearing outright waivers in 2018 to breaking out as one of MLB’s most dominant relievers in 2019-20. Hendriks cashed in on a $54MM guarantee this winter, and it stands to reason that another dominant year will position Rosenthal for that type of commitment and the lengthy multi-year deal he coveted as well.
It’s been a remarkable week for the Oakland bullpen, which not long ago looked to be a collection of question marks anchored by veteran lefty Jake Diekman. In the past seven days, however, they’ve acquired ground-ball machine Adam Kolarek from the Dodgers, re-signed iron man Yusmeiro Petit and inked slider specialist Sergio Romo as well. The A’s bullpen now looks like a deep, formidable group with the highly underrated J.B. Wendelken and the talented-but-still-inconsistent Lou Trivino now sliding down the ladder into lower-leverage spots.
The Athletics’ payroll, meanwhile, will rise to nearly $85MM — a fraction of what many clubs will spend in 2021 but at least within striking distance of their 2019-20 levels of spending. It’s hard to praise ownership too much when this recent spending spree was preceded by a salary dump and an insulting offer to their longtime clubhouse leader, but it’s better late than never to act like the contenders they should be.
Oakland won the American League West in 2020 and captured Wild Card berths in both 2018 and 2019. However, they’ve yet to ride this talented core — anchored by Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Ramon Laureano and Semien — beyond the divisional round of postseason play. The core group is morphing a bit, with Semien now in Toronto and Jesus Luzardo perhaps emerging to lead the Oakland rotation, but the A’s still have control of Chapman, Olson and Laureano for multiple years. Adding Rosenthal, Petit, Romo, Moreland and Kolarek in a week’s time only supplements that core and gives the club a shot at its first full-season division crown since 2013.
Athletics Re-Sign Yusmeiro Petit
Feb. 19: The A’s have officially announced the signing. Oakland opened a 40-man roster spot by placing right-hander Frankie Montas on the Covid-19 related injury list. A’s manager Bob Melvin revealed this week that Montas had tested positive for Covid-19 (link via Shayna Rubin of the San Jose Mercury News). He’s been dealing with symptoms and will be delayed in his arrival to Spring Training.
Feb. 14: The Athletics have re-signed right-hander Yusmeiro Petit to a one-year contract, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports (Twitter link). The deal will be official once Petit passes a physical. MLBTR’s Steve Adams reports that Petit will earn $2.55MM in guaranteed money, with another $450K available in incentive bonuses. Petit is represented by Godoy Sports.
Petit returns for his fourth season with Oakland, a tenure that has been nothing but successful for both parties. Petit has a 2.73 ERA over 197 2/3 innings in an A’s uniform, and has been a workhorse out of the bullpen — 154 appearances in 2018-19 and then 26 appearances during the shortened 2020 season.
Petit is far from a Statcast darling and doesn’t record many strikeouts, as evidenced by his below-average K% over the last three years. However, Petit’s 4.14% walk rate over that same stretch is elite, and he doesn’t allow much hard contact. All in all, Petit has continually outperformed his peripherals; his 3.89 SIERA from 2018-20 is over a run higher than his actual ERA over his past three seasons.
Not that many free agent relievers drew a ton of attention this winter, but there wasn’t much in the way of public buzz about Petit, perhaps due to his advanced metrics and his age (36). The righty previously inked a two-year, $10MM deal with Oakland in November 2017 that ended up being a three-year, $14.5MM pact after the Athletics exercised their club option on Petit for the 2020 season.
Between Petit and new acquisitions Sergio Romo and Adam Kolarek, Oakland has suddenly added a lot of bullpen reinforcement over the last three days. Relief pitching was a major strength for the A’s in 2020 but it was a position that needed to be addressed since Liam Hendriks and Joakim Soria departed in free agency.
Athletics To Sign Sergio Romo
The Athletics have agreed to a one-year deal with Sergio Romo, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal (Twitter link). Romo will be paid $2.25MM, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Romo is represented by Meister Sports Management.
Romo hit the open market after the Twins bought out their $5MM 2021 club option on the right-hander for $250K back in October. Originally acquired by Minnesota in a deal at the 2019 trade deadline, Romo will now head back to the Bay Area, where he starred on the other side of the Bay Bridge pitching out of the Giants’ bullpen from 2008-16.
Since leaving the Giants following the 2016 season, Romo hasn’t been quite as dominant as he was during his San Francisco heyday, with some increase in his home run and walk rates over the last four seasons. But overall, Romo has still been an effective reliever as he approaches his 38th birthday, including posting a 4.05 ERA and an above-average 26.4K% and 18.4K-BB% over 20 innings with Minnesota in 2020. Statcast graded Romo as a plus contributor (if not really elite) in every category across the board last season, and his 3.82 SIERA indicates that Romo was perhaps even slightly unlucky from an ERA standpoint.
Between Romo and the re-signed Yusmeiro Petit, the Athletics have added two veteran workhorses for the bullpen in a single evening. Petit leads all pitchers in appearances since the start of the 2017 season, while Romo averaged 56 innings and 63 appearances per season from 2010-19. Romo worked as a regular closer with the Rays in 2018 and the Marlins in 2019, and he could pick up some save opportunities should Jake Diekman (the favorite for ninth-inning duty in Oakland) run into any difficulties. For now, Romo looks to slot in as a set-up man.
Dodgers, Athletics Swap Kolarek For Neuse In Four-Player Trade
11:45am: The two teams have announced the trade.
11:02am: The Athletics and Dodgers are in agreement on a trade that’ll sent lefty Adam Kolarek and minor league outfielder Cody Thomas from L.A. to Oakland in exchange for infielder Sheldon Neuse and minor league righty Gus Varland, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports (via Twitter).
Kolarek, 32, will be an immediate boost to an Oakland bullpen that has lost Liam Hendriks and Joakim Soria this winter and could yet lose Yusmeiro Petit (still a free agent) as well. Kolarek has emerged a ground-ball specialist capable of utterly overwhelming left-handed hitters in recent years, pitching to a combined 3.07 ERA and 3.61 SIERA with a below-average 17.4 percent strikeout rate but strong walk (5.7) and ground-ball (63.3) percentages. He’s controllable for four seasons and won’t be eligible for arbitration until next winter, so he’s a cost-efficient add for an A’s team that has aggressively slashed payroll this winter while eschewing any real expenditures.
The near-term piece headed back to L.A. is the 26-year-old Neuse, who made his MLB debut with Oakland in 2019 but didn’t appear in the Majors this past season. Neuse saw sparing action in his brief debut, taking 61 trips to the plate and batting .250/.295/.304 with a 31 percent strikeout rate. It wasn’t a particularly encouraging debut, but Neuse posted big numbers in his last season of Triple-A ball, hitting .317/.389/.550 with 27 big flies — good for a 126 wRC+.
Neuse has seen some time at second base, but his best position is probably third base, which left him blocked by Matt Chapman in Oakland. His presence gives the Dodgers something of a fallback option in the event that Justin Turner ultimately decides to sign elsewhere, but it’s unlikely that Neuse’s acquisition in any way closes the door on a reunion with Turner. Neuse has a pair of minor league options remaining, making him the type of depth the Dodgers tend to stockpile: a formerly high draft pick who’s a bit old to be a prospect now but has some defensive versatility and a solid upper-minors track record at the plate.
Turning to the minor league pieces in the swap, the A’s will acquire Thomas, a 26-year-old corner outfielder with plenty of power but some swing-and-miss tendencies that limit his overall upside t the plate. The former 13th-round pick hit .236/.308/.443 (108 wRC+) in a Double-A environment that proved to be a hitters’ wasteland in 2019 and batted .285/.355/.497 a year prior in Class-A Advanced.
Thomas went unselected in this year’s Rule 5 Draft, illustrating that he’s far from a premium prospect, but he’s a near-MLB bat with a career .219 ISO (slugging minus average) in the minors. It’s conceivable that he could emerge as a big league option in 2021-22.
Varland, 24, was the Athletics’ fourth-round pick back in 2018 and still has just 64 1/3 professional innings under his belt. He didn’t rank prominently among Oakland’s top prospects, though Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs gives him the potential for an above-average heater and slider — albeit with work to do in terms of control and improvement of a third pitch. Varland pitched just 26 1/3 innings at the Class-A Advanced level in 2019, working to a 2.39 ERA and 4.00 FIP with a 27-to-8 K/BB ratio and 37 percent ground-ball rate.
Athletics Sign Jed Lowrie To Minor League Deal
The Athletics announced Wednesday that infielder Jed Lowrie is returning to the organization on a minor league contract. The Excel Sports client will be in Major League Spring Training and compete for a job.
Lowrie, 37 in April, rejoins the A’s on the heels of a disastrous two-year stint with the Mets — one which fans would surely prefer to forget. It was an unexpected match at the time, but now-former general manager Brodie Van Wagenen signed Lowrie to a two-year, $20MM contract in his first season in charge of baseball operations for the Mets. New York already had a largely full infield mix, but Van Wagenen nevertheless brought in one of his former clients — surely in hopes of cultivating the type of depth that is so often seen on today’s championship clubs. As a switch-hitter capable of playing all four infield slots, it was reasonable to expect that Lowrie could provide value in a semi-regular role, even if there wasn’t a clear-cut starting position available to him.
As it turned out, though, Lowrie only tallied seven plate appearances over his two years with the team. A knee injury suffered in Spring Training 2019 wound up costing him nearly the entire season. It also set in motion a bizarre chain of non-updates on Lowrie’s medical status.
Even with a new front-office regime and new manager in place, the Mets were as vague and nebulous as ever in divulging information about Lowrie’s ailments. Timelines were always presented in muddy fashion, and the eventual reveal of Lowrie’s diagnosis proved similarly perplexing when Van Wagenen revealed this past summer that Lowrie had “posterior cruciate ligament laxity” in his left knee. Lowrie did not play in 2020.
While the circus-like nature of his tenure in New York is something both Lowrie and the Mets surely hope to put behind them, it should of course be pointed out that a healthy Lowrie is a very fine player. Lowrie landed that $20MM deal with the Mets after turning in a .272/.356/.448 batting line in 1325 plate appearances with Oakland from 2017-18. That performance earned him an All-Star nod in ’18.
Injuries have slowed Lowrie throughout his career, but from 2012-18 he was a decidedly above-average hitter, slashing .264/.338/.415 in more than 3500 plate appearances despite the bulk of those PAs coming at Oakland’s cavernous home park. He’s never been an especially strong defender at any position but has been playable at shortstop, second base and third base throughout his career. It’s unlikely that he can still handle shortstop at age 37 and with two seasons of knee injuries behind him, but Lowrie ought to be in the mix to win a roster spot and take at-bats at second base.
Rangers, Athletics Swap Elvis Andrus, Khris Davis As Part Of Five-Player Deal
In a rather stunning swap of veterans, prospects, and cash between divisional rivals, the Rangers are sending long-time shortstop Elvis Andrus, catching prospect Aramis Garcia, and $13.5MM in cash to the Athletics for outfielder/designated hitter Khris Davis, catcher Jonah Heim, and right-handed pitcher Dane Acker. In announcing the deal, the Rangers note that Andrus leaves as one of just five players to spend 12 seasons in Texas.
While the roster implications are significant for both teams, the financial aspect is no less fascinating. Andrus is owed $14MM in each of the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Per the original terms of the deal, Andrus also has a vesting option for $15MM in 2023 that, because of the trade, will now become a player option. Still, to make that player option vest, he’ll still need to either accrue 550 plate appearances in 2022 or 1,100 appearances combined in 2021 and 2022. Previously the plate appearance threshold would have triggered a mutual option instead of a player option.
Andrus has only reached that marker in one of the previous three seasons, so there’s at least a reasonable chance he reaches free agency after the 2022 season. If that proves to be the case, the A’s will have freed themselves from the $16.75MM owed to Davis, while essentially remaining on the hook for about $7.25MM in each of 2021 and 2022. Andrus is also getting an $800K assignment bonus, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (via Twitter), though it’s unclear which side will be responsible for it.
In terms of the Rangers’ financial motivations, they take on more money up front for later payroll flexibility. Davis will be a free agent after the season, so instead of paying out $14MM in each of the next two seasons, they’ll either pay $30.50MM this season and be totally free the future payroll commitment, or perhaps at least lessen it if the money paid to Oakland is given in installments.
On the field, this ends Andrus’ 12-year run as the Rangers’ starting shortstop. The last remaining connection to their back-to-back pennant-winning teams in 2010 and 2011, the two-time All-Star leaves as the franchise’s all-time leader with 305 stolen bases, second all-time with 1,652 game played, and third all-time in both hits (1,743 hits) and runs (893 runs scored). Though he came to be seen as an albatross contract in recent years, Andrus more than earned his keep over the years, producing $205.8MM worth of value through 28.1 fWAR — a full $100MM over the $105.67MM of actual pay he has thus far banked.
Nevertheless, he was set to lose his starting shortstop job to Isiah Kiner-Falefa this season. Andrus admits to some hard-hardheadedness when it comes to changing his approach at the plate, which may have held him back in recent seasons. He will now have the opportunity to re-boot his career in Marcus Semien‘s vacated seat as Oakland’s primary shortstop. Consider the challenge accepted, as Andrus waived the no-trade protection attached to his 10-and-5 status to make the trade happen.
As for the other piece heading to Oakland, Garcia hit .229/.270/.419 over 111 plate appearances with the Giants between 2018 and 2019. The Rangers claimed the former second-round pick off waivers from San Francisco this past November. His inclusion doesn’t likely move the needle much in terms of the overall value of the deal, though he does give the A’s a cheap option to take over as for Heim as Sean Murphy‘s backup. Though A’s fans may bristle at seeing Heim included in the deal given his success last season, if the A’s are committed to Murphy as their regular backstop, then including a backup catcher to achieve their goal of moving off the money owed to Davis this season would seem a calculated risk on their part. Notably, the A’s have another fairly well-regarded backstop in Austin Allen who could also step in to back up Murphy.
With Semien and Tommy La Stella already moving on to new teams this season, it’s hard to view the acquisition of Andrus as a significant win for the A’s. Never much of a slugger, Andrus has only twice exceeded 100 wRC+ and hasn’t topped 76 wRC+ since 2017. A three-year slash line of .260/.306/.378 won’t go far in trying to replace Semien, who was, after all, a legitimate MVP candidate as recently as 2019.
Andrus’ glovework should be his selling point, but he’s scored -7 defensive runs saved in 1,521 innings since 2019 and -3 outs above average in 2020. Statcast credits him with 5 outs above average in 2019, however, and a total 0.5 UZR over the past two years suggest Andrus can at least provide average defense for the A’s at short.
The Rangers take on Davis, famed for his preternatural consistency in batting exactly .247 for four season in a row, which he followed up with matching 82 wRC+ seasons in 2019 and 2020. Davis’ power significantly dissipated these past two seasons, as the A’s saw his isolated power drop from .302 ISO in 2018 to .166 ISO and .1229 ISO the past two seasons. Davis hasn’t played much outfield in recent seasons, but the Rangers are fairly set in that regard anyhow with David Dahl and Joey Gallo expected to start regularly in the corners. Davis could steal some at-bats from Willie Calhoun at designated hitter, specifically against southpaws, whom Davis has continued to hit well with 135 wRC+ in 2020 (though his power saw an even more precipitous drop against lefties than righties in 2020).
The Rangers’ long-term value in this deal will come from Heim and Acker. The latter was a fourth round pick in 2020, and because of the pandemic, the 21-year-old has yet to make his professional debut.
Heim, meanwhile, has the potential to develop into a regular catcher for the Rangers. He made just 41 plate appearances last season, but earned rave reviews from the pitching staff for his ability to manage a game, per the Athletic’s Eno Sarris (via Twitter). Heim was the A’s No. 9 ranked prospect per MLB.com in 2020, No. 13 by Fangraphs, and No. 8 by Baseball America. Because of Oakland’s depth, Heim’s addition should mean more to the Rangers than his subtraction will for Oakland.
The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal broke the initial news of the deal, as well as the inclusion of Heim and Acker. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News tweeted news of Garcia’s inclusion in the deal, initially reported to be David Garcia instead of Aramis Garcia. ESPN’s Jeff Passan had the deal expanding beyond the initial framework of Andrus for Davis. Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram added the exact amount of cash heading to Oakland.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
AL West Notes: La Stella, Mariners, Heim, Rangers, Andrus, A’s
Before Tommy La Stella signed a three-year, $18.75MM deal with the Giants, the infielder drew some attention from the Mariners, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports (Twitter link). La Stella would’ve been an intriguing add for Seattle, providing a mostly right-handed hitting lineup with some addition balance from the left side. La Stella likely would have slotted in as the everyday second baseman — supplanting the planned Ty France/Shed Long/Dylan Moore timeshare at the position — and also seen some activity at first base or even third base when Kyle Seager required an off-day.
It isn’t known if the M’s were specifically keyed in on La Stella, or if they could still be looking for another regular infielder. There isn’t much in the way of infeld options remaining in free agency that would provide as clear an upgrade over the France/Long/Moore trio, though one would suspect Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto is as open as ever to trade possibilities. Surprisingly, “Trader Jerry” has only swung one deal this offseason, acquiring Rafael Montero from the Rangers.
More from the AL West…
- Athletics GM David Forst spoke to reporters (including Shayna Rubin of the Bay Area News Group and Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle) about today’s big five-player trade with the Rangers. Oakland first touched base with the Rangers about Elvis Andrus back in November, and quickly circled back to Andrus after the A’s top shortstop option (re-signing Marcus Semien) was no longer a reality. Catcher Jonah Heim had drawn interest from Texas for the last two years, Forst said, so the young backstop was a natural inclusion in the trade.
- While Forst didn’t confirm today’s reports of an agreement between the Athletics and Mike Fiers, he did say that “pitchers are a target for us right now” in both the rotation and bullpen. “I made a lot of calls on relievers today. There’s a lot of talent at the end of the bullpen and not a lot of experience, and we feel like there’s some options that can add to the experience,” Forst said. “We are shopping a little late, but we have some targets in mind and are excited to add to the team.” As for other positions, Forst said the team is pretty satisfied with its current second base mix of Chad Pinder, Tony Kemp, Vimael Machin and Sheldon Neuse heading into Spring Training, so another infield addition doesn’t appear to be in the cards.
- In other division news from earlier today, the Astros and Carlos Correa avoided an arbitration hearing by agreeing to a contract for the 2021 season.