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Blue Jays’ Erik Swanson Away From Team While Son Recovers From Accident

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Blue Jays reliever Erik Swanson is taking time away from the team after his four year-old-son Toby was struck by a car, manager John Schneider announced this morning (link via Shi Davidi of Sportsnet). The accident occurred on Sunday in the Clearwater area. Toby was airlifted to a local hospital.

Schneider said that Toby “is on the road to recovery” but understandably didn’t provide many specifics. Swanson will be away from the team to be with his family. “The guys have been great. Erik and his wife Madison are very thankful for the support. And we’re going to continue to give it as long as we need to,” Schneider told reporters. “Again, baseball is secondary when you’re talking about family and life. We’re going to continue to support him. The guys have been absolutely phenomenal with him so far and you can’t forget about players’ wives and significant others that have reached out as well. It’s been a rough couple of days, but it’s really, really nice to see the support for Erik.”

The Blue Jays released a brief statement on X sending “love, support and prayers (to) the entire Swanson family.” MLBTR joins countless others throughout the game in sending our best wishes to the Swanson family.

Toronto acquired Swanson from the Mariners last offseason. He turned in a 2.96 ERA in 66 2/3 innings during his first season with the club.

Giants Remain Involved On Snell, Chapman

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The Giants continue to explore the markets for Blake Snell and Matt Chapman as March draws near, reports Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. One source tells Slusser there’s roughly a 50-50 chance that San Francisco comes away with one of those players.

Snell would address the bigger need, at least in the short term. San Francisco has a patchwork rotation behind Cy Young runner-up Logan Webb. The Giants signed longtime reliever Jordan Hicks to a four-year deal with the promise of a rotation job. Hicks’ personal high in innings at the MLB level is 77 2/3 from his 2018 rookie season. He hasn’t reached the 70-inning mark since then.

The options beyond Hicks are even less established. Kyle Harrison is one of the sport’s most talented pitching prospects, but he has seven MLB games under his belt. The southpaw averaged fewer than four innings per appearance over 20 Triple-A starts a year ago. That was partially to keep his workload in check but also reflected his inefficiency. Harrison struck out an excellent 35.6% of Triple-A opponents but walked upwards of 16% of batters faced.

Webb, Hicks and Harrison are the three locks for the Opening Day staff. Alex Cobb will begin the year on the injured list as he works back from hip surgery. Robbie Ray won’t be ready until around the All-Star Break at the earliest during his rehab from last year’s Tommy John procedure. Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck entered camp with the presumed edge on the fourth and fifth rotation spots. They’ve each been set back by injury during exhibition play. Winn was delayed by elbow soreness, although he maintained over the weekend he expects to be ready for Opening Day. Beck just left the team to undergo testing after experiencing discomfort in his right hand.

A starting five of Webb, Hicks, Harrison, Winn and Beck is already not ideal for a team that hopes to compete for a playoff spot. Losing either Winn or Beck would require dipping further into depth options like Sean Hjelle, Ethan Small, prospect Kai-Wei Teng or a non-roster invitee like Daulton Jefferies or Tommy Romero.

While Snell hasn’t been a consistent source of volume throughout his career, he’s coming off his second 180-inning season. He’d upgrade any rotation and would afford the Giants the luxury of plugging in the top two finishers in last year’s NL Cy Young voting. There’d still be some questions about the staff’s durability, but a top three of Webb, Snell and Harrison would have one of the highest ceilings in the league.

Of course, the question is whether they’ll line up on an agreeable price point. No team has yet met Snell’s ask. Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote this afternoon that the southpaw may be open to considering a short-term offer that allows him to opt out and retest free agency. Fellow Boras Corporation client Cody Bellinger took that route on a three-year, $80MM pact with the Cubs over the weekend. It’s hard to envision Snell turning in a better platform season than the one he had in 2023, though. He allowed only 2.25 earned runs per nine over the course of the year and turned in a 1.23 mark from June onward.

The Yankees have reportedly had an offer out to Snell for weeks. Heyman reported this morning that his camp spoke with New York brass again yesterday but didn’t have any kind of breakthrough. The Angels have also been loosely linked to Snell.

Chapman, on the other hand, doesn’t play a position of strict need. The Giants have a solid third baseman in J.D. Davis. Were they to land Chapman, they’d likely flip Davis to a team with a more pressing desire for help at the hot corner. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and new manager Bob Melvin both have ties to Chapman from their days with the A’s. He’d markedly upgrade the infield defense, although it’s debatable whether he’s enough of an offensive improvement on Davis to make that move worthwhile.

Zaidi recently suggested the team was unlikely to make any more free agent splashes this offseason. Perhaps that was simply public posturing or the recent health uncertainty surrounding Winn and Beck could change the calculus. In any case, San Francisco should have payroll flexibility. Roster Resource projects their 2024 spending around $164MM. They’re at roughly $213MM in luxury tax obligations. That puts them about $24MM shy of both the base CBT threshold and last year’s Opening Day payroll.

Signing Snell, in particular, would likely push them into luxury tax territory — especially if they added him on a higher-AAV deal to avoid a lengthy commitment. It’d be easier to fit Chapman onto the ledger without going into CBT range, since they’d then have reason to shed Davis’ $6.9MM salary in trade.

The fees for surpassing the luxury tax would be relatively modest if they edged past $237MM. They’d only owe a 20% tax on spending between $237MM and $257MM. The Giants last paid the CBT in 2017. Snell and Chapman each declined the qualifying offer; signing either player would cost the Giants their second-highest pick in the upcoming draft and $500K in international bonus pool space.

Latest On Cubs’ Bullpen Plans

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Though Spring Training is underway, this offseason business is ongoing. The Cubs just reached an agreement to bring back Cody Bellinger over the weekend, a three-year, $80MM pact with a couple of opt-outs.

Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic took a look at what could be next for the Cubs and suggested they may be done making notable additions, including in the bullpen. The club had been connected to right-hander Ryne Stanek last month and Sharma reports that the interest was mutual. However, Stanek’s asking price didn’t drop to the point that the Cubs felt it was worth it to bring him aboard and sacrifice some roster flexibility.

The club’s current bullpen projection doesn’t feature a lot of optionable guys. Adbert Alzolay still has one option but he emerged as the club’s closer last year and will certainly be up with the big league club. Then there’s Héctor Neris, Mark Leiter Jr., Julian Merryweather, Drew Smyly and Yency Almonte, all of whom are either out of options or can’t be optioned by virtue of having more than five years of big league service time.

As Sharma points out, clubs generally like to have a couple of optionable guys in the bullpen so that fresh arms can be summoned during the season when the staff is taxed. The Cubs already have five spots taken by guys who can’t be sent down and Alzolay makes six. Stanek is a veteran with over six years of service time, meaning he wouldn’t be able to be optioned either. If they were to add him into the mix, they would have seven of their eight bullpen slots locked up.

Stanek, 32, is coming off a decent three-year run with the Astros. He made 186 appearances over that time with a 2.90 ERA and strong 27% strikeout rate, though a high walk rate of 12.2%. He got that walk rate down to 9.9% last year but his strikeout rate also fell to 23.9%. He’s arguably the best reliever still on the open market but it seems no club has been willing to meet his asking price, including the Cubs. He’s also received interest from the Mets and Red Sox this offseason.

What also might be an issue for the Cubs is the competitive balance tax. Roster Resource lists their CBT number just over $234MM, meaning they are less than $3MM from the base threshold of $237MM. Sharma reports that “there is an understanding that they’re essentially over it” due to inevitable moves that will come over the course of the season. A club’s CBT status isn’t calculated until the end of the season, so the Cubs could always change the calculus throughout the year if they want to. But perhaps they would rather stay where they are so that they have some wiggle room to assess things as the season progresses.

Cubs Re-Sign Cody Bellinger

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Cody Bellinger is back with the Cubs. Chicago officially announced his re-signing on a three-year deal that allows him to opt out after each of the first two seasons. The team has scheduled a press conference for Wednesday to welcome him back to the fold. Chicago cleared the necessary 40-man roster spot with this afternoon’s trade sending Bailey Horn back to the White Sox.

Bellinger, a client of the Boras Corporation, is reportedly guaranteed $80MM. The deal pays him $30MM for the upcoming season. He’ll have a $30MM salary for 2025 and be paid $20MM if he remains on the contract in 2026. The deal contains an approximate $26.67MM average annual value for luxury tax purposes.

Bellinger returns to the Cubs after signing a one-year deal with the club last winter and delivering an excellent platform campaign. In 556 trips to the plate, the 28-year-old slashed .307/.356/.525 with 26 home runs and 20 stolen bases while splitting time between center field and first base for Chicago. That performance earned Bellinger a Silver Slugger award and a top-10 finish in NL MVP voting and seemingly left him poised to cash in this winter with a major contract. MLBTR ranked Bellinger as the #2 free agent in this year’s class behind only two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, predicting a 12-year, $264MM deal for the outfielder in our annual Top 50 MLB free agents list.

As Bellinger’s offseason dragged on, it became apparent a $200MM+ commitment would not be in the cards. In his recent Wednesday mailbag, MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes predicted a three-year, $90MM deal with a pair of opt-outs. While Bellinger entered the winter with plenty of big market clubs seemingly in the running for his services including the Giants, Yankees, and Blue Jays, each pivoted in other directions throughout the month of December: San Francisco landed KBO star Jung Hoo Lee to patrol center, Juan Soto was shipped to the Bronx to fill the left-handed void in their outfield mix, and the Blue Jays changed course after missing out on Shohei Ohtani to instead focus on smaller deals for players such as Kevin Kiermaier and Isiah Kiner-Falefa. That left Bellinger with few clear suitors outside of the incumbent Cubs, though his free agency continued into Spring Training as his camp held out for a long term deal while the Cubs and president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer remained steadfast in waiting out the market. Ultimately, Chicago was rewarded for its patience, as the club will retain Bellinger’s services for at least the 2024 campaign on a relatively low-cost deal similar to the three-year, $105MM deal fellow Boras Corporation client Carlos Correa signed with the Twins two offseasons ago.

A number of factors beyond his relatively small number of suitors likely contributed to Bellinger signing a short-term deal. Excellent as he was in 2023, the slugger struggled badly while contending with shoulder issues and a fractured fibula during the 2021 and ’22 seasons. Though he managed to take the field for 900 plate appearances across the two seasons, he hit a paltry .193/.256/.355 during that time, a far cry from the career .273/.364/.567 slash line he entered the 2021 season with that earned him Rookie of the Year and MVP honors in 2017 and 2019.

While Bellinger’s strong and healthy 2023 campaign certainly helped to assuage the concerns brought on by his dismal campaigns in the prior two seasons, a look at his advanced metrics reveals some cause for concern that the 28-year-old’s 2023 campaign may not be entirely sustainable. While Bellinger’s career-best batting average last season was supported by a career-low 15.6% strikeout rate, it was also propped up by a .319 BABIP that eclipsed his career .277 mark entering the 2023 season by more than 40 points.

That leap in good batted ball fortune came in spite of unusually low contact quality peripherals. Per Statcast, Bellinger’s average exit velocity, barrel rate, and Hard-Hit percentage were all well below average, landing in the 22nd, 27th, and 10th percentile respectively among qualified major leaguers. Taken together, those peripheral numbers left Bellinger with a roughly league average xwOBA of just .330 last year, 40 points below his excellent .370 wOBA. Between his pronounced struggles in recent seasons and the concerning peripherals underlying his 2023 return to form, it’s not a complete shock that Bellinger would land a short-term, opt-out heavy deal that preserves flexibility rather than a lengthy deal that maximizes guarantee.

Such a contract could set Bellinger up for a much more significant payday in the future. As noted by MLBTR’s Steve Adams in his recent look at the possibility of a short-term deal for Bellinger, the slugger is unusually young for a free agent and, as such, may be uniquely suited for a short-term arrangement. If Bellinger can maintain a similar level of production to his 2023 rebound, he’ll be a near lock to opt out of the remaining two years and $50MM on his deal and return to free agency, where he would be marketing his age-29 campaign and be unimpeded by the Qualifying Offer, which the Cubs extended to Bellinger this winter. Next year’s free agent class is also likely to benefit from additional certainty regarding the ongoing Diamond Sports bankruptcy, which has impacted the TV deals of some contenders such as the Rangers and Twins. Those clubs were joined in mostly standing pat by big spending clubs such as the Padres and Mets that faced exorbitant luxury tax bills last year and took this offseason as an opportunity to reset.

In the meantime, Bellinger will return to Chicago, where he immediately improves the club’s lineup and odds of contention in a crowded NL Central dramatically. Bellinger’s 134 wRC+ and .525 slugging led all Cubs hitters with at least 100 trips to the plate last year, while he ranked fourth in terms of on-base percentage. The slugger also provides a much-needed lefty bat to a lineup who complements righty hitters in the lineup such as Dansby Swanson, Seiya Suzuki, Christopher Morel, and Nico Hoerner. In addition to providing the club’s lineup with potentially impactful offense, Bellinger’s versatility offers the Cubs flexibility as they look to incorporate their bevy young hitters into the big league lineup on a regular basis.

Infielder Michael Busch is likely to enter the season as the club’s regular first baseman after the club acquired him from the Dodgers in a deal last month, leaving Bellinger to begin the season as the club’s everyday option in center field. With that being said, top prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong lurks after making his big league debut last September and sports 80-grade defense in center field. The club’s reunion with Bellinger takes pressure off Crow-Armstrong, who went hitless in 19 plate appearances during his cup of coffee last fall, to immediately produce at the big league level and allows the Cubs to continue his development at Triple-A to open the year.

Should Crow-Armstrong prove himself ready to take on the everyday job in center sometime this season, Bellinger could shift to an outfield corner, first base, or even DH depending on the health and production of the rest of the lineup. One possibility for the Cubs would be either Busch or Morel establishing themselves as a capable defender at third base, allowing the other to handle DH duties. In that case, Bellinger would be able to move to first base and make room for Crow-Armstrong to get regular playing time in center, though that’s just one possible option for a Cubs team that could even see 2023 first-round Matt Shaw or top corner outfield prospect Owen Caissie debut sometime this year after strong performances in Double-A last season.

The reunion with Bellinger likely serves as a capstone for an offseason that saw Chicago also land left-hander Shota Imanaga and veteran relief arm Hector Neris in free agency. Club chairman Tom Ricketts recently indicated that the club was unlikely to exceed the Competitive Balance Tax threshold this winter, and RosterResource projects the club for a $234MM payroll in 2024 for CBT purposes, less than $3MM below the first $237MM threshold. That means a reversal of the stance would be nearly mandatory for the club to make further additions this winter, barring a trade that clears salary elsewhere on the roster.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the Cubs and Bellinger had agreed to a three-year, $80MM contract with opt-outs after the first two seasons.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

A’s Notes: Coliseum, Wood, Spence

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The Athletics are set to meet with the African American Sports & Entertainment Group next week to discussing selling their 50% stake in the Oakland Coliseum, reports Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The city currently owns the other 50% of the Coliseum complex. Oakland’s AASEG also offered to purchase a stake in the Coliseum last year but were rebuffed, Akers adds.

A’s fans will want to check out the report for full details, but the A’s could sell off their share of the Coliseum complex entirely, with the AASEG looking to develop potential sites for expansion franchises in the NFL and WNBA. Akers adds that the A’s are “open” to sharing the Coliseum with the Oakland Roots and Oakland Soul soccer clubs and selling their share of the facility if it can facilitate an agreement wherein the city of Oakland allows the club to extend its lease at the Coliseum from 2025-27 — the interim years between the current lease expiration (at the end of 2024) and the planned opening of their new Las Vegas ballpark.

Turning to the team itself, the ’24 Athletics will feature a largely revamped rotation. The team’s hope had been that an aggressive fire sale of talents like Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Chris Bassitt, Sean Manaea, Sean Murphy and others would create a base of controllable young talent around which to build. That hasn’t played out. Most of the young pitchers acquired thus far in the rebuild have failed to progress. That led the front office to look outside the organization, signing Alex Wood to a one-year deal worth $8.5MM and swinging a trade to acquire Wood’s former Giants teammate, Ross Stripling.

Wood spoke with John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle about both his excitement to be back into a full-time starting role and some frustration with the manner in which the Giants handled last year’s staff. Wood made three starts to begin the season, briefly landed on the injured list, and was surprised to be asked to pitch in relief upon returning.

“When I came back [from the injured list] four weeks later, it was like, ‘Hey can you throw an inning out of the bullpen against Arizona Friday, and we’ll start you on Monday in Philly?’” Wood explained. “It was from the beginning of the year we were doing stuff like that. It definitely wasn’t the easiest thing.”

The Giants used 13 starting pitchers in 2023, but that included a handful of relievers who were regularly used as openers. Ryan Walker, Scott Alexander (also an Athletic now) and John Brebbia were the most frequent openers for a Giants club that deployed that tactic a whopping 35 times in 2023 despite rostering several veteran rotation pieces. Wood, Stripling, Sean Manaea and Jakob Junis have all worked as starters in the past but were used in similar hybrid roles in ’23, with the results ranging from pedestrian to sub-par. Finding a more stable rotation role was a priority in free agency, Wood told Shea.

Further down the rotation pecking order is right-hander Mitch Spence, the top pick in December’s Rule 5 Draft. Spence, selected out of the Yankees organization, is in camp with the A’s competing for a spot on the roster, ideally in the rotation. But with four spots spoken for — Wood, Stripling, Paul Blackburn and JP Sears — securing a spot is a tall order. Manager Mark Kotsay spoke highly of Spence in chatting with Martin Gallegos of MLB.com, however, and suggested that there could be a long relief role available for Spence even if he doesn’t seize a spot on the starting staff.

“He’s going to compete for a rotation spot,” said Kotsay of Spence, “and we’ll probably entertain looking at a long role for him if the rotation doesn’t make sense or if he doesn’t make it.”

The 25-year-old Spence paced all minor league pitchers with 163 innings over the course of 29 starts in 2023. He posted a 4.47 ERA with the Yankees’ top affiliate in Scranton, fanning 21.8% of his opponents against a sharp 7.3% walk rate. Spence notched an already impressive 50% ground-ball rate last season, but he tells Gallegos he’s also working to incorporate a sinker into his repertoire this spring, in an effort to up that grounder rate even further. Kotsay likened Spence to his new teammate, Blackburn, noting that he’s not overpowering and is more location-focused while praising his ability to pitch inside.

If Spence doesn’t make Oakland’s roster, he’ll need to be exposed to waivers and, if he clears, offered back to the Yankees for a nominal sum of $50K. So far, the right-hander has made just one appearance in camp, pitching two innings and allowing a run on three hits with no walks and three punchouts. Spence will compete with names like Luis Medina, Joe Boyle, Joey Estes, Adrian Martinez, Freddy Tarnok, Kyle Muller and Osvaldo Bido for either a rotation or swingman spot with the A’s.

Red Sox Sign Jason Alexander To Minor League Deal

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The Red Sox have signed right-hander Jason Alexander to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. The righty is a client of Apex Baseball.

Alexander, 31 on Friday, was able to make his major league debut with the Brewers in 2022. He tossed 71 2/3 innings over 11 starts and seven relief appearances. He posted a 5.40 earned run average in that time with a subpar 14.3% strikeout rate but a strong 50.6% ground ball rate and an 8.7% walk rate that was right around league average.

Last year, he was shut down in the spring due to a shoulder strain and began the year on the 60-day injured list. He was activated off the IL in July but then optioned to the minors. A few weeks later, he was outrighted off the 40-man. He tossed 55 1/3 innings at Triple-A last year with a 5.86 ERA, 13.8% strikeout rate, 7.5% walk rate and 46.1% ground ball rate. He was not added back to the roster at season’s end and was able to elect free agency.

The righty’s performance in recent years has largely resembled his previous body of work. He’s never racked up tons of strikeouts but has avoided walks and kept the ball on the ground. He has a 4.75 ERA in 407 1/3 innings minor league innings in his career overall. He has only punched out 19.3% of batters faced but has only walked 6.4% of them while getting heaps of ground balls.

The Red Sox posted a team-wide ERA of 4.52 last year, a mark that was better than just nine other clubs. They came into this winter looking to upgrade the pitching staff but haven’t done too much. They signed Lucas Giolito to take a spot in their rotation but also traded Chris Sale to Atlanta. They’ve also made marginal additions, adding guys like Cooper Criswell, Greg Weissert and Isaiah Campbell.

Alexander will be looking to earn his way onto the roster alongside other non-roster players like Joely Rodríguez and Lucas Luetge. If Alexander is added at any point, he still has a couple of options and less than a year of service time.

Cardinals Designate Buddy Kennedy For Assignment

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The Cardinals have designated infielder Buddy Kennedy for assignment, per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That opens up a roster spot for shortstop Brandon Crawford, whose previously-reported deal is now official.

Kennedy, 25, has never appeared in a game as a Cardinal, having just been claimed off waivers from the Athletics in October. The A’s themselves had only claimed him from the Diamondbacks the month prior. The infielder has 40 games of major league experience, all of it with the Snakes over 2022 and 2023. He’s hit .206/.293/.299 in his big league career thus far, though in a small sample of 123 plate appearances.

He’s generally fared better in the minors, including last year. In 463 Triple-A plate appearances in 2023, he drew walks at a 16.4% clip and slashed .307/.432/.455 for a wRC+ of 124. He also brings defensive versatility to the table, as he has played all three non-shortstop infield positions in his career as well as spending some brief time in left field.

The Cards will have one week to trade Kennedy or pass him through waivers. He may be able to garner interest from other clubs based on his strong work at the plate in Triple-A last year, defensive flexibility and the fact that he has one option year remaining. If he were to pass through waivers unclaimed, he would have the right to elect free agency by virtue of having a previous career outright.

Cardinals Sign Brandon Crawford

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February 27: The Cardinals made the deal official, announcing it today. Per Slusser, Crawford will make a salary of $2MM.

February 26: The Cardinals are reportedly in agreement with shortstop Brandon Crawford on a major league deal, pending a physical. Financial terms have not yet been reported. Crawford is a Wasserman client. The Cardinals will need to make a 40-man roster move once the deal is finalized.

St. Louis has been looking for a veteran infielder who could take on the backup shortstop job. Crawford was perhaps the top unsigned player who could fill that role. It’ll assuredly be a low-cost flier on the 13-year big league veteran, who’ll take on a depth job for the first time in his career. Crawford has been a starting shortstop since debuting with the Giants back in 2011.

The UCLA product had an excellent run over his time in the Bay Area. Crawford helped the Giants to World Series titles in 2012 and ’14. He was one of the sport’s preeminent defensive infielders during the last decade. Crawford won three consecutive Gold Glove awards in 2015-17 and took a step forward with the bat in his late-20s. He earned a Silver Slugger in 2015 and turned in average or better offensive production in six of the eight seasons between 2014-21.

Crawford inked a six-year extension over the 2015-16 offseason. That put him on track to reach free agency after the 2021 campaign. He surprisingly turned in the best season of his career that year, hitting .298/.373/.522 en route to a fourth-place finish in NL MVP balloting. The Giants kept him around for another two years at $16MM annually on an extension signed towards the end of that season.

While an understandable decision during Crawford’s resurgent season, the latter extension did not pan out. Crawford’s offensive production plummeted beginning in 2022. He hit .231/.308/.344 two seasons ago. His production fell off further last year. The left-handed hitter put up a personal-worst .194/.273/.314 slash line in 320 trips to the plate. Crawford punched out in more than a quarter of his plate appearances for the first time in his career.

Injuries have sent him to the shelf on a few occasions over the last two years. Since the start of 2022, he has had IL stints related to his left knee (twice), right knee, right calf, left forearm and right hamstring. None of those required a long-term absence, but it’s possible that playing through any number of those issues has taken a toll on his performance.

The Cardinals can’t expect much from Crawford offensively as he enters his age-37 campaign. Public metrics are split on how valuable he remains on the other side of the ball. Crawford isn’t the elite defender he was at his peak. Statcast still grades him as a solid gloveman, giving him above-average marks every season since it began tracking in 2015. That includes an estimated four runs above average a year ago.

Defensive Runs Saved has been far less forgiving. DRS has graded Crawford as a well below-average defender two years running. It marked him 14 runs below par in 725 2/3 innings last season. Among shortstops, only Tim Anderson and Amed Rosario fared more poorly by that estimate.

St. Louis will be hopeful of at least passable glovework in a rotational role. The Cards are going to turn the position to rookie Masyn Winn. The 21-year-old struggled in a very limited MLB look at the end of last season, hitting .172/.230/.238 in 37 games. Prospect evaluators have praised his defensive acumen and power upside, though, and the Cards haven’t made any effort to block his path to MLB playing time.

Winn’s presence pushed last year’s Opening Day shortstop, Tommy Edman, to center field. While he’s still capable of handling the middle infield, the Crawford signing will allow manager Oli Marmol to keep Edman in the outfield even on days when Winn needs a breather. It also affords the Cardinals some security in case Edman isn’t available early in the season. The switch-hitter is working back from an arthroscopic right wrist procedure. He’s hopeful of being ready for Opening Day but has yet to begin taking live batting practice with less than a month until the regular season.

Aside from Edman, St. Louis didn’t have a clear backup shortstop on their 40-man roster. Neither Brendan Donovan nor José Fermín is a great fit there. Crawford takes that role. Roster Resource projects the St. Louis payroll around $182MM, pending the Crawford deal. He shouldn’t add more than a couple million dollars to that ledger.

As for the Giants, they’ll officially bid farewell to one of the faces of the franchise’s recent history. It became clear towards the end of last season that things were headed in this direction. San Francisco is going to turn shortstop over to a top prospect of their own, Marco Luciano. They signed longtime division rival Nick Ahmed to a minor league deal to serve as glove-first veteran depth. Crawford returned from the injured list on the final day of last season so he could receive a proper send-off from the San Francisco fanbase. He’s the final player from their 2012 and ’14 World Series teams to depart the organization, although Pablo Sandoval has since returned on a non-roster pact.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle first indicated Crawford and St. Louis were in talks. Katie Woo of the Athletic was first to report the sides had reached an agreement. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported it was a major league deal.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Jesse Scholtens To Undergo Tommy John Surgery

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The White Sox officially announced their previously-reported trade with the Cubs, acquiring left-hander Bailey Horn. To open a spot for Horn on their 40-man roster, they have moved right-hander Jesse Scholtens to the 60-day injured list with torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. James Fegan of Sox Machine was among those to relay that Scholtens will have Tommy John surgery on Friday.

Scholtens, 30 in April, was able to make his major league debut last year. He made 26 appearances, including 11 starts, logging 85 innings in the process. He had a 5.29 earned run average in that time, striking out 15.4% of opponents while issuing walks at an 8% clip. His work in Triple-A was stronger, as he made nine starts at that level with a 4.44 ERA, 23.4% strikeout rate and 6.8% walk rate.

He was likely going to be serving in a depth role for the club this year, given that he still has a couple of options remaining. The Sox have remade a lot of their pitching staff over the last year. They have traded Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly, Lucas Giolito, Gregory Santos, Kendall Graveman, Aaron Bummer, Reynaldo López, Yohan Ramírez and Keynan Middleton since last summer, while pitchers like Mike Clevinger and Liam Hendriks departed via free agency. They have also added guys like Erick Fedde, Chris Flexen, John Brebbia, Tim Hill, Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster and others, but there should be plenty of opportunity for a depth arm or two to step up and fill a role this year.

Unfortunately, Scholtens won’t be able to take advantage of that opportunity. He will miss the entire 2024 campaign and likely some early portions of the 2025 season as well, given that Tommy John rehabs generally run more than a year in length. He’ll remain on the injured list for all of 2024, collecting major league service time and pay.

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