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Cardinals Discussing Multi-Year Extension With Tyler O’Neill

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Tyler O’Neill is the Cardinals’ only arbitration-eligible player who has yet to reach an agreement for the 2022 season, and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (Twitter link) that O’Neill’s arb hearing will take place in the first week of May.  However, the possibility exists that the hearing could be avoided, as the two sides are still in talks about a multi-year extension.

It was less than two weeks ago that the Cardinals reached an extension with another outfielder, as Harrison Bader inked a two-year, $10.4MM deal that also allowed both sides to sidestep an arbitration hearing.  Bader’s deal covered his final two years of arbitration eligibility, whereas O’Neill is only in the first of three arb-eligible years.  It isn’t known whether or not the negotiations are centered around a two- or three-year pact to just address O’Neill’s arbitration years, or if perhaps a longer-term contract could be under discussion.

The Cardinals have been proactive in extending building-block players over the years, and O’Neill’s 2021 breakout makes a good case that he is worth such a long-term extension.  O’Neill hit .286/.352/.560 with 34 home runs over 537 plate appearances last season, translating to a whopping 144 wRC+ and 150 OPS+.  Between that offensive pop, plus baserunning (O’Neill stole 15 bases in 19 attempts), and his second consecutive Gold Glove in left field, O’Neill was somewhat quietly one of baseball’s best all-around players, and only 12 players topped O’Neill’s 5.4 fWAR in 2021.

This big season didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, as O’Neill was a top-100 ranked prospect.  However, he had hit a far more modest .229/.291/.422 in 450 big league PA prior to the 2021 season, and strikeouts have been a continual problem for the Canadian slugger.  O’Neill posted a 31.3% strikeout rate in 2021, putting him in the fourth percentile of all players according to Statcast.

With this in mind, St. Louis could opt to just explore a shorter-term extension for now, in order to gain cost certainty over at least one more of O’Neill’s arbitration years but still coming short of a lengthy commitment.  As noted, this is only O’Neill’s first trip through the arb process, and since he isn’t scheduled to hit free agency until after the 2024 season, the Cardinals may not feel an immediate rush to work out a big extension.  O’Neill is looking for a $4.15MM salary in 2022, while the team submitted a $3.4MM figure.  (MLBTR’s Matt Swartz projected O’Neill to land $3.5MM.)

Phillies Announce Five Roster Moves

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The Phillies announced five roster moves in advance of today’s game with the Marlins.  The Phils have selected the contract of right-hander Andrew Bellatti from Triple-A and also reinstated James Norwood from the bereavement list.  Righty Connor Brogdon and left-hander Damon Jones were optioned to Triple-A, while Sam Coonrod was moved to the 60-day injured list to create 40-man roster space for Bellatti.

Coonrod has been dealing with a shoulder strain that initially shut him down at the end of March.  The right-hander tossed only 1 2/3 innings of Spring Training action, so between the injury rehab and then making up for his lost preseason work, it was already expected to be a while before Coonrod made his 2022 debut.

The 60-day IL placement means that Coonrod won’t make it back until mid-June at the earliest, which represents another injury setback for the 29-year-old.  Coonrod missed over two months last season due to forearm tendinitis, and over three weeks of the shortened 2020 season due a lat strain.  That same season also saw Coonrod hit the IL late in the year with another shoulder strain.

Between Coonrod’s injury absence and Brogdon’s demotion, the Phillies find themselves without two of their better relievers from last season.  However, since Brogdon has pitched in three of Philadelphia’s last four games, the move is probably just a way to get a fresher arm into the bullpen than indicative of a long-term stint in Triple-A for the right-hander.  Brogdon had a rough outing last night, allowing two earned runs and two more inherited runners to score over two-thirds of an inning in a 9-6 loss to the Mets.

Bellatti signed a minor league deal with the Phillies in December after being outrighted off the Marlins’ 40-man roster at the end of last season.  After tossing 23 1/3 innings for the Rays in his 2015 rookie season, Bellatti bounced around the minors before finally returning to the majors last year, pitching 3 1/3 innings of relief work out of Miami’s bullpen.  Bellatti has a 3.77 ERA and 24.03% strikeout rate over his 547 career frames in the minor leagues.

Royals Release Daniel Tillo

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TODAY: Tillo is now officially a free agent after clearing waivers, the Royals announced.

APRIL 13: The Royals announced this morning they’ve requested unconditional release waivers on left-hander Daniel Tillo. Kansas City had designated the 6’5″ southpaw for assignment last week when setting the Opening Day roster.

Tillo has never appeared in a major league game, although he did accrue 99 days of MLB service last season while on the injured list. Kansas City selected the Iowa native onto the 40-man roster over the 2020-21 offseason. He was still rehabbing from a Tommy John surgery he’d undergone the prior season, and he spent much of last year recovering.

Upon being reinstated from the IL in August, Tillo was optioned to Double-A Northwest Arkansas. He pitched 23 1/3 innings there, working to a 4.63 ERA with a 21.6% strikeout percentage and an elevated 14.7% walk rate. Assuming he clears release waivers, Tillo will be a free agent and could look for a minor league deal with any of the league’s 30 teams.

Details On Jose Ramirez’s Contract Extension

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Shortly before Opening Day, the Guardians and star José Ramírez agreed to an extension that’ll keep him in Cleveland through the 2028 campaign. Ramírez was already under club control for two seasons at a combined $26MM via a pair of options, and it was initially reported the team would lock in those options while tacking on $124MM over five subsequent years.

That’s not quite the case, as Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports (on Twitter) that Ramírez will be guaranteed $141MM over seven seasons. That comes out to $115MM in new money (assuming the Guardians would’ve exercised their 2023 option). It’s treated as a seven-year deal with an average annual value of approximately $20.1MM for competitive balance tax purposes, although it seems likely Cleveland’s payroll won’t approach luxury tax levels anyhow.

Heyman specifies the year-by-year breakdown of the extension:

2022: $22MM
2023: $14MM
2024: $17MM
2025: $19MM
2026: $21MM
2027: $23MM
2028: $25MM

Ramírez’s deal contains a full no-trade clause, as initially reported. It also includes various incentives upon awards finishes. While the guarantee is a bit lighter than initially believed, the three-time All-Star makes more money up-front than he would’ve had the Guardians simply tacked on five seasons of new money in 2024 and beyond.

He’d initially been set to play this season on a $12MM salary, but he’ll nearly double that figure with this new agreement. The deal brings Cleveland’s player payroll for this season up to around $69MM, per Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. That’s well above last season’s approximate $50MM mark, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts, although it still checks in 27th league-wide.

White Sox, Scott Blewett Agree To Minor League Deal

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The White Sox have agreed to a minor league contract with right-hander Scott Blewett, according to the club’s transactions tracker at MLB.com. He has been assigned to Double-A Birmingham.

Blewett has spent his entire career in the AL Central, but this’ll be his second organization. He entered pro ball as a second-round pick of the Royals in 2014. Despite progressing up the minor league ladder fairly slowly, he was placed among Baseball America’s top 30 Kansas City prospects every season between 2015-19 and again heading into 2021. BA wrote early in his career that Blewett could develop into a mid-rotation starter, but struggles against high minors hitters eventually changed his projection to that of a depth starter or long relief option.

The New York native got to the big leagues for the first time in 2020, making a pair of relief appearances. He also pitched in three games last year, tossing eight innings of three-run ball over his first five MLB outings. Blewett worked solely as a reliever in the majors, but he started 10 of 23 games with Triple-A Omaha last season. In 69 innings with the Storm Chasers, he posted a 6.39 ERA with a below-average 20.1% strikeout rate. He allowed 19 home runs, an untenable 2.48 longballs per nine innings.

The Royals outrighted Blewett off their 40-man roster last September, at which point he elected minor league free agency. The 26-year-old has yet to find his stride even at the Triple-A level, but he has a solid track record of throwing strikes up through Double-A and can work as either a starter or multi-inning reliever. Blewett will hope a change of scenery can allow him to miss a few more bats and tamp down on homers to earn another crack in the big leagues.

Red Sox, Bogaerts/Devers Were Far Apart In Spring Extension Talks

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In the days leading up to the start of the regular season, the Red Sox had extension discussions with star infielders Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers. The team didn’t reach a long-term deal with either player, and it’s not believed they want to continue negotiations during the season.

Jon Heyman of the New York Post now sheds more light on the respective talks, characterizing the sides as being $100MM or more apart in both instances. Heyman reports that Boston offered Bogaerts around $90MM over four seasons. Boston’s offer to Devers isn’t clear, but Heyman suggests there was a rather notable gap on the length of the commitment, with the young star seeking a much longer guarantee than the team put on the table.

Bogaerts’ and Devers’ situations aren’t analogous, so it’s worth considering them separately. The excellent shortstop is the more immediate concern, as Boagerts can reach free agency at the end of this season. The right-handed hitter is signed for $20MM annually between 2023-25, but he can opt out of the final three years on his deal at the end of this season. According to Heyman, the Red Sox offered to tack on around $30MM in 2026 while keeping his salaries for the next three years the same.

It’s no surprise that wasn’t an appealing proposition for the three-time All-Star. He’s just six months away from having a chance to test the open market in advance of his age-30 season. Bogaerts wouldn’t receive the kind of decade-long commitment the younger Corey Seager did, but he could be in position for a deal of seven or even eight years if he performs as expected in 2022.

This offseason, the Rockies signed Kris Bryant to a seven-year deal worth $182MM heading into his age-30 campaign. The Rangers signed Marcus Semien for seven years and $175MM for his age-31 through age-37 seasons. Trevor Story and Javier Báez — each of whom was headed into their age-29 seasons — inked six-year pacts worth $140MM with opt-out opportunities.

It’s fair for Bogaerts and his representatives at the Boras Corporation to argue for a deal that tops all those contracts. Going back to the start of 2019, the four-time Silver Slugger Award winner owns a .302/.375/.523 slash line that translates to a 135 wRC+ (indicating offensive production 35 percentage points above the league average). That’s much better than the respective marks for each of Bryant (123), Semien (128), Story (113) and Báez (104). Bogaerts also has the edge if one looks back two seasons, while Semien was similarly productive last year.

A deal matching Semien’s $25MM average annual value that takes Bogaerts through his age-37 campaign would pay him $200MM over eight seasons. He’ll need a typically strong platform year to land that kind of money on the open market, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Bogaerts isn’t the caliber of defender that Semien, Story or Báez are, but he has a longer track record of offensive excellence than any of those players.

Of course, it’s possible that Bogaerts gets injured or underperforms in 2022. In that instance, the remaining $60MM on his deal affords him plenty of security, since he could elect not to opt out. (The deal also contains a $20MM vesting option for 2026). Forgoing an opportunity at $175MM — $200+MM to raise the floor of his existing contract from $60MM to $90MM isn’t a particularly appealing concept. Heyman writes that Bogaerts’ camp decided not to make a counteroffer, with a friend of Bogaerts calling the team’s proposal “a slap in the face.”

Nothing prevents the Sox from upping their offer after the season if Bogaerts tests the open market, and they’d presumably have to do so significantly to keep him in the fold. Whether they’ll have interest remains to be seen, but Boston signed Story to the aforementioned $140MM deal this past offseason. Story was a career-long shortstop with the Rockies, and while he moved to second base in deference to Bogaerts, the Sox could kick him back to his old position next year. Boston has one of the game’s top second base prospects, Nick Yorke, at High-A. Former top prospect Jeter Downs is coming off a rough season in Triple-A but was nevertheless added to the 40-man roster last November.

That could be a precursor to Bogaerts’ eventual departure, but chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom tells Heyman the Story signing “doesn’t change our desire to keep” Bogaerts and Devers. He added “we’re hopeful we can keep both guys,” but declined to discuss the specifics of the team’s offers.

Unlike Bogaerts, the team can unilaterally keep Devers around in 2023. The slugging third baseman is arbitration-eligible once more next winter, when he’ll be due a raise on this year’s $11.2MM salary. With notable earnings already in the bank, Devers shouldn’t have much financial pressure to accept a team-friendly deal. He’s coming off his first All-Star campaign and Silver Slugger after hitting .279/.352/.538 with 38 home runs.

Devers, who debuted in the big leagues as a 20-year-old, is on track to reach free agency in advance of his age-27 campaign. He’ll face some questions about his ability to stick at the hot corner over the long haul given his subpar defensive metrics, but there’s little doubt about his offensive capability. Devers ranks 28th in wRC+ among 159 hitters with 1000+ plate appearances over the past three seasons, with his .290/.350/.537 line translating to a 129 mark.

The Red Sox, it should be noted, have plenty of long-term payroll flexibility. Until last month’s Story pickup, Bloom and his staff had shied away from making free agent splashes since he was hired in October 2019. Boston opened this season with a payroll in the $220MM range, but they’d have just $72MM in 2023 guaranteed commitments (before accounting for arbitration) if Bogaerts opts out. That number would drop to about $57MM in 2024, with Story and Chris Sale the only significant expenditures that year. (Sale himself can opt out after this season, but he looks less likely to do so after his last three years have been dampened by injuries). That sets up some interesting decisions for the front office around which players they’d like to build over the long haul.

John Means Leaves Start For “Precautionary” Reasons With Forearm Tightness

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Orioles left-hander John Means left tonight’s start against the Brewers after four innings, with the team announcing he’d experienced some forearm tightness. That’s always an ominous-sounding development, given how often forearm tightness can be a precursor to serious elbow issues, yet neither Means nor O’s manager Brandon Hyde sounded overly concerned.

Hyde called the early exit “precautionary” when speaking with reporters after the game (via Dan Connolly of the Athletic). The southpaw began feeling tightness in the third inning, according to the skipper, before raising the attention of the trainers after the fourth. Means said it was the second consecutive start in which he’d had some discomfort (via Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com) but indicated he wasn’t particularly worried and hoped to resume throwing within a few days.

The team will know more about the issue after receiving the MRI results, although it’s a bit of a relief to hear both Means and Hyde express optimism in the immediate aftermath. Means missed more than six weeks last season after straining his shoulder. At the time he landed on the shelf, he owned a 2.28 ERA/4.20 FIP; after returning in July, he pitched to a 4.88 ERA/5.01 FIP.

It’s too simplistic to attribute Means’ second-half struggles solely to the shoulder issue, but it seemed as if the injury were having some amount of deleterious effect. Obviously, it’s not clear his current forearm discomfort is tied at all to his prior shoulder issues, but it’s at least moderately alarming to hear of Means again dealing with arm troubles.

If healthy, the 28-year-old (29 later this month) could be one of the top arms available on the midseason trade market. Means is controllable through 2024 via arbitration, but the O’s are still firmly amidst a rebuild and reportedly floated him in discussions with other clubs over the winter.

His 2022 salary is still yet to be determined, as he and the Orioles are likely headed to an arbitration hearing after he filed for $3.1MM versus the team’s offer of $2.7MM. The MRI results won’t have any bearing on that hearing, which will be a backwards-looking process based on his pre-2022 body of work.

Deolis Guerra Undergoes Tommy John Surgery

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The A’s announced this evening that reliever Deolis Guerra underwent Tommy John surgery today. That’ll obviously end his season and seems likely to sideline him for a decent chunk of the 2023 campaign as well.

Guerra left a late-spring appearance after feeling some forearm tightness, an ominous development that often proves a precursor to Tommy John. Martín Gallegos of MLB.com reported earlier this month that Guerra would require a procedure of some kind, but it hadn’t been clear whether he’d need a full UCL reconstruction. Unfortunately, that has proven to be the case.

Coming into the year, the 32-year-old (33 this weekend) looked as if he’d take on a notable role for first-year manager Mark Kotsay. Among returning relievers, only Lou Trivino (73 2/3) worked more innings for the A’s than Guerra, who tossed 65 2/3 frames. He posted a capable 4.11 ERA, striking out an average 23% of opponents on a 12.3% swinging strike rate. It wasn’t an overwhelming performance, but the Venezuela native showed the ability to work more than one inning and pounded the strike zone en route to decent numbers.

Guerra has appeared in the majors in each of the past six seasons (albeit just once in 2019), suiting up with the Pirates, Angels, Brewers and Phillies before landing in Oakland. He has worked 168 2/3 innings of 4.54 ERA ball altogether, compensating for a 20.4% strikeout percentage with a stingy 6.2% walk rate.

The A’s and Guerra agreed to an $815K salary over the offseason to avoid arbitration. He’ll collect that salary and service time while on the injured list, bringing him up over four years of service by the end of the season. Guerra remains controllable for another two years, but it’s possible the A’s non-tender him rather than carry him on the 40-man roster throughout next offseason.

Mariners Select Matt Koch

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The Mariners announced they’ve selected righty Matt Koch onto the big league roster. Veteran reliever Sergio Romo has been placed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to April 12, due to shoulder inflammation. To create space on the 40-man roster, Seattle transferred Casey Sadler to the 60-day IL.

Koch is back in the majors for the first time since 2019. A former 3rd-round pick of the Mets, he was traded to the Diamondbacks in August 2015. Koch made his MLB debut the following season, the first of four straight in which he’d pick up some big league time. The majority of his work came in 2018, when Koch started 14 of his 19 outings and tossed 86 2/3 innings of 4.15 ERA ball for the Snakes.

Underlying numbers didn’t support Koch’s capable run prevention figure that season, though, and he couldn’t replicate it in nine outings as a multi-inning reliever the following year. The Louisville product allowed eight home runs in 20 2/3 innings in 2019, and Arizona outrighted him off the 40-man roster that May.

Koch spent the 2020 season with the Yakult Swallows in Japan before returning to affiliated ball last season. He worked 63 1/3 frames as a long relief option for the Indians’ top affiliate in Columbus, posting a 5.83 ERA with a subpar 18.8% strikeout rate. Cleveland never gave him an MLB look, but he signed a minors pact with the M’s this past offseason. Assigned to Triple-A Tacoma to open the year, the 31-year-old has punched out five of the six batters he faced to earn a return call to the big leagues. Koch is out of minor league option years; now that he’s back on the 40-man roster, Seattle has to keep him in the majors or designate him for assignment.

The Mariners signed Romo to a $2MM deal in March. The reliable veteran has tossed a pair of scoreless outings to start his tenure in the organization, but that’ll be put on hold while he recovers. The team didn’t provide a timetable for his return. Sadler, meanwhile, is out for the season after undergoing shoulder surgery last month. His eventual placement on the 60-day IL was a mere formality.

Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times first reported the move.

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