Cubs Claim Rylan Bannon From Braves
The Cubs have claimed infielder Rylan Bannon off waivers from the Braves, according to a club announcement. Atlanta had designated him for assignment last week.
Bannon has moved around the league over the past couple months. A longtime Orioles farmhand, he was designated for assignment by Baltimore in early August. He moved to the Dodgers and Braves in rapid succession via waivers. He didn’t play in the majors with L.A. and only suited up once for Atlanta, appearing as a late-game defensive substitution. Bannon only has five games of big league experience overall, but he’s attracted interest from a number of teams as infield depth.
The 26-year-old has had some decent showings in the high minors. He’s a career .227/.337/.415 hitter at the Triple-A level. That includes a more impressive .249/.367/.421 line across 411 plate appearances this year. Bannon strikes out a fair amount, but he hit 13 home runs and walked in a stellar 14.4% of his trips to the plate. He’s also capable of playing either second or third base, making him a versatile depth piece.
With one minor league option year remaining, Bannon can be freely moved between Chicago and Triple-A Iowa next season if he holds his 40-man roster spot. His claim brings the Cubs 40-man roster tally to 39.
Angels Acquire Gio Urshela From Twins
The Angels bolstered their infield depth on non-tender day, announcing the acquisition of Gio Urshela from the Twins. Pitching prospect Alejandro Hidalgo lands in Minnesota on a one-for-one swap.
It’s the second consecutive offseason in which Urshela finds himself on the move. Minnesota acquired him alongside Gary Sánchez in the Spring Training blockbuster that sent Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the Yankees. The deal was in large part about offloading the final three years of Donaldson’s contract, but Sánchez and Urshela each played key roles on the 2022 club.
Urshela, 31, spent the year as the Twins’ primary third baseman. He hit .285/.338/.429 with 13 home runs and 27 doubles across 551 trips to the plate. It was a step up from the .267/.301/.419 showing he’d posted during his final season in the Bronx, particularly when one considers offense around the league dropped from 2021 to ’22. Urshela cut his strikeout rate from a career-worst 24.7% to just 17.4%, making contact on an above-average 81% of his swings.
The Colombian-born infielder now owns a .290/.336/.463 line in over 1600 plate appearances since breaking out in 2019. He’s a quality contact hitter with solid gap power who has twice topped 25 doubles in a season. Urshela has only once topped 14 longballs, when he hit 21 during a 2019 season that featured an especially lively ball, and he doesn’t draw many walks. Yet he consistently hits for solid batting averages with enough doubles to make a decent impact from a power perspective. Overall, his offensive production over the last four years has been 18 percentage points better than the league average, in the measure of wRC+.
Urshela has a strong defensive reputation, although he’s gotten mixed reviews from public metrics for his glovework. Defensive Runs Saved has typically been fond of his work, pegging him as a cumulative five runs better than average at the hot corner over the last four seasons. Statcast has been far more bearish, rating him as below average each season and pegging him a total of 14 runs below par. Its Outs Above Average metric has docked Urshela for his lateral range in both directions.
The general perception of Urshela’s glovework seems to lead more towards him being an average to slightly above-average defender. It’d appear the Halos feel similarly, as it’s possible he ends up assuming a more demanding position in Anaheim than he has in his previous stops. The Angels have Anthony Rendon locked in at third base, and while the two-time Silver Slugger award winner has battled his share of injury issues in recent years, he’ll surely be in the lineup most days when healthy.
That’d seem to point towards Urshela getting more action in the middle infield, particularly at shortstop. The Angels got almost no offensive production at shortstop this past season, with Andrew Velazquez taking the bulk of the workload. Anaheim has David Fletcher to man one of the middle infield positions, with the bulk of his MLB experience coming at second base. Urshela looks as if he’ll be penciled in as the primary shortstop, where he has just 288 career innings at the highest level. That’d push Luis Rengifo into a utility role, but Urshela would be capable of kicking back over to third base if Rendon battles renewed injury concerns.
Urshela’s a short-term solution, as he has between five and six years of major league service. He’s in his final season of arbitration eligibility and will be a free agent at the end of the 2023 campaign. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him for a $9.2MM salary, which’ll bring the Halos’ projected payroll up past $181MM, per Roster Resource. That’s not far off their approximate $188MM Opening Day mark from this past season, which was a franchise record. With owner Arte Moreno exploring a sale of the franchise, it’s not clear how much budgetary space is available for general manager Perry Minasian and his staff. They’re clearly attempting to reload in an effort at snapping their playoff drought, previously adding starter Tyler Anderson on a three-year, $39MM free agent deal that also cost them a draft choice.
The Twins subtract from the big league roster, but they figure to allocate the money they would have had to commit to Urshela to upgrades elsewhere on the roster. As MLBTR explored last month, dealing the veteran to free some payroll space looked like a possibility in light of their infield depth.
Minnesota has young corner infielder José Miranda capable of stepping in at the hot corner after a .268/.325/.426 showing in 483 plate appearances as a rookie. The 24-year-old has some defensive question marks, but he came up through the minor league ranks as a third baseman. He spent the bulk of his innings at first base this year, but kicking him back up the defensive spectrum could allow them to incorporate players like Alex Kirilloff and Luis Arraez more often at first. It also opens the possibility of the Twins dipping into free agency or trade for a traditional first base/DH slugger.
Minnesota also adds a young arm to the lower levels of the farm system. Hidalgo is a 19-year-old righty out of Venezuela. He made 10 starts with the Angels’ Low-A affiliate in Inland Empire, allowing a 4.62 ERA across 39 innings. Hidalgo struck out an excellent 33.1% of opposing hitters, but a 10.9% walk rate demonstrates he’s still battling control issues common for teenage hurlers. Baseball America slotted him 18th in the Angels system midseason, praising a potentially plus curveball and writing that his fastball reaches into the mid-90s. He’s a lower-level developmental flier who’ll need to be added to Minnesota’s 40-man roster or be exposed to the Rule 5 draft at the end of the 2023 season.
Jeff Passan of ESPN first reported the Angels were acquiring Urshela for Hidalgo.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Rockies Extend Tyler Kinley
3:47pm: It’s actually a $6.25MM total for the three years, Alexander clarifies, noting that the $750K buyout on the 2026 option is part of that sum. Kinley will be paid $1.2MM in 2023, $1.3MM in 2024 and $3MM in 2025. The 2026 option is valued at $5MM and comes with a $750K buyout. The 2025 and 2026 seasons contain escalators and incentives based on games finished.
2:34pm: The Rockies announced Friday that they’ve agreed to a three-year contract extension with reliever Tyler Kinley, spanning the 2023-25 seasons. The contract also contains a club option for the 2026 season. Kinley underwent elbow surgery in July that was expected to sideline him for around one year. Ari Alexander of KPRC first reported the agreement, adding that it’ll guarantee Kinley $7MM — $6.25MM in total salary from 2023-25, plus a $5MM option with a $750K buyout.
Kinley, 32 in January, appeared to be in the midst of a breakout season in Colorado prior to his injury. In 24 innings, he held opponents to just two earned runs on 21 hits and six walks with 27 strikeouts. That was good for a 0.75 ERA, 27% strikeout rate and 6% walk rate, and Kinley’s sky-high 16.7% swinging-strike rate seemed to portend the potential for even more strikeouts.
The hard-throwing Kinley, whose fastball averaged just shy of 96 mph in 2022, has steadily improved upon his command each season since 2019, dropping his walk rate from a ghastly 16.3% all the way to this year’s 6% mark. Unsurprisingly, the improved command has radically bolstered his results.
Whether Kinley can sustain that level of command remains to be seen. In addition to the general uncertainty that comes with any elbow surgery for a pitcher, Kinley’s 57% first-pitch strike rate in 2022 was actually worse than the 58.8% mark he posted back in 2019, when he walked more than 16% of his opponents. Sustaining such massive gains in walk rate while getting ahead in the count at a lesser rate than when he posted one of baseball’s highest walk rates will be a challenge.
Even if Kinley is able to sustain most of the improvements in his walk rate, there’s still surely some regression in store. The right-hander excelled at limiting home runs in 2019-20, but he didn’t yield a single long ball in this season’s 24 innings. It’s not realistic to expect any pitcher to completely avoid the home run ball, and even a regression to the strong 0.86 HR/9 mark Kinley yielded in 2019-20 would cause a notable uptick in his otherwise pristine ERA.
There’s obviously great risk in extending a 32-year-old reliever — particularly one who’ll miss at least half of the contract’s first season while recovering from elbow surgery. That said, the $7MM term of the three-year deal presents fairly minimal risk. Kinley would’ve been arbitration-eligible for the contract’s first two seasons, with the third year and the potential club option season representing would-be free agent campaigns.
MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected a $1.3MM salary for Kinley in 2023, and if he returned in good health late in the summer, he’d likely have earned a modest bump on that number. If we assume his final two arb seasons would’ve cost something in the neighborhood of $3MM combined, the Rox are effectively paying $4MM for the right to control his first two free-agent years — only one of which is actually guaranteed to him. Viewed through that lens, the Rox are effectively guaranteeing Kinley’s final two arb seasons for the right to pay him about $8.25MM in his first two free-agent seasons. If Kinley is able to emerge as even a solid middle reliever, that’ll be a justifiable price tag. If not, the sting will be generally minimal, given the affordable nature of the guarantee.
Yankees Claim Junior Fernandez From Pirates
The Yankees announced they’ve claimed reliever Junior Fernandez off waivers from the Pirates. Pittsburgh has designated him for assignment on Tuesday.
Fernandez will bring a blistering fastball to the Yankees — albeit one that has been difficult for the 25-year-old to command and that has not resulted in many strikeouts. Through 54 Major League innings to date, mostly with the Cardinls, Fernandez carries a tepid 5.17 ERA with a pedestrian 18.7% strikeout against a 13.9% walk rate. He’s generated a strong 13.6% swinging-strike rate in his career, however, and his average heater has crept up from 97 mph as a rookie in 2019 to a whopping 99 mph in this past season’s 18 2/3 frames.
Prior to the 2022 season, Fernandez relied exclusively on a four-seamer as his fastball. In 2022, however, he shifted away from that four-seamer in favor of a sinker, holding his sweltering velocity and enjoying an uptick in an already strong ground-ball rate. He’s induced grounders at a 49.4% clip in his career but sat at a gaudy 58.9% clip in 2022. The newly adopted power sinker and massive ground-ball rate is a profile for which the Yankees, in particular, have shown an affinity in recent seasons.
Fernandez is out of minor league options, so the Yankees will either need to attempt to pass him through waivers themselves at some point between now and Opening Day — or else commit to carrying him on their Opening Day roster. If he makes it through the winter on the 40-man roster, Spring Training will serve as an audition for him. In 83 career innings at the Triple-A level, Fernandez has a 4.12 ERA with a 27% strikeout rate against a 10.5% walk rate.
Tigers Claim Bligh Madris
The Tigers have claimed outfielder Bligh Madris off waivers from the Rays, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Tampa Bay designated Madris for assignment earlier in the week.
Madris, 26, made his big league debut in 2022, splitting the season between the Pirates and Rays. He didn’t appear in the Majors with Tampa Bay following a mid-September waiver claim but did log 39 games with the Pirates, struggling to a .177/.244/.265 batting line through his first 123 Major League plate appearances.
The lefty-swinging Madris, however, has been far better in Triple-A Indianapolis, where he notched a combined .297/.366/.510 batting line with 11 homers, 22 doubles and four triples. Because he was just selected to the 40-man roster this season, Madris has two option years remaining, so he can give the Tigers some optionable depth. Madris handled right-handed pitching particularly well in 2022, batting .272/.345/.492 between the big leagues and Triple-A. He’s played primarily right field but does have some experience in the other two outfield slots and at first base.
The Tigers don’t have a ton of outfield depth on the 40-man roster. Austin Meadows, Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter loosely project as the starters, though Detroit will likely add some outfield reinforcements in some capacity this winter. Akil Baddoo and Parker Meadows — Austin’s younger brother — are the only other pure outfielders on the 40-man roster for Detroit at the moment, so Madris will give them another lefty bat with a nice Triple-A track record and a bit of defensive versatility.
Mets Expected To Non-Tender Dominic Smith
The Mets are expected to non-tender first baseman/outfielder Dominic Smith prior to tonight’s deadline, according to Anthony DiComo of MLB.com.
The news is not shocking now though it would have been two years ago. Smith was a first round draft pick, selected 11th overall by the Mets in 2013. He was one Baseball America’s list of top 100 prospects in the league in 2014, 2016 and 2017. In 2019 and 2020, he delivered on that hype by hitting .299/.366/.571 for a wRC+ of 150 over 139 games. The only problem was that Pete Alonso burst onto the scene at the same time, taking over Smith’s natural first base position. That forced Smith into left field, a position that he wasn’t well-suited to play. His poor work out there on the grass took some of the value away from his strong performance at the plate.
The situation got even worse over the past couple of seasons, as Smith played through a partially torn labrum in his shoulder in 2021 and hit just .244/.304/.363 for a wRC+ of 86. He struggled out of the gates in 2022 while jockeying with J.D. Davis for a role and got optioned to the minors, openly admitting that he felt he would benefit from more playing time. He finished the year with a batting line of .194/.276/.384 in the majors for a 67 wRC+, but a .284/.367/.472 in the minors for a 122 wRC+.
MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected Smith for an arbitration salary of $4MM but it seems the Mets aren’t willing to pay that kind of money for him. If it indeed comes to pass that he is non-tendered, he will make for an intriguing addition to the first base free agent market. It seems like his bat might still be in there and a team willing to give him regular playing time could benefit, especially if they can put him back at his natural home of first base. He has between four and five years of MLB service time, meaning he could be retained for 2024 via arbitration if he has a successful season somewhere in 2023. Once a free agent, he would be competing for jobs with the likes of Jose Abreu, Josh Bell, Trey Mancini and Yuli Gurriel.
Yankees, Isiah Kiner-Falefa Avoid Arbitration
The Yankees and shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa have avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year, $6MM deal, per Robert Murray of FanSided.
The Yankees were expected to be big players in last year’s free agent shortstop sweepstakes, for fairly logical reasons. First of all, they had given up on Gleyber Torres taking over the position, bumping him to second base. Secondly, there was a huge crop of exciting free agents, which included Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, Trevor Story, Javier Baez and Marcus Semien. However, reports indicated that the Yanks liked their shortstop prospects and just wanted to find a placeholder for 2022.
To that end, they acquired Kiner-Falefa, a defensive specialist with a below-average bat and two years of arbitration control remaining. The idea went according to plan, to a degree. Kiner-Falefa posted 10 Defensive Runs Saved at short as the club vastly improved its overall defense, at least by that metric. Their 129 DRS was easily the best in baseball, as the Dodgers came second with 84. Outs Above Average and Ultimate Zone Rating were a bit less enthusiastic about the work of Kiner-Falefa and the team as a whole, but they still achieved their goal of being better at run prevention. Their 3.5 runs allowed per game was their lowest since 1981.
IKF’s bat was still below league average, as he hit .261/.314/.327 for a wRC+ of 85. That’s 15% below league average but roughly in line with his previous work. The Yanks surely would have loved for him to take a step forward but they probably didn’t expect him to suddenly become a middle-of-the-order slugger.
Nonetheless, there were some reasons to think that a non-tender or a trade would be possible. For one thing, those aforementioned prospects that IKF was a placeholder for, they got one year closer to taking over. Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe were considered the two prime candidates to be the shortstop of the future in the Bronx, but they still needed more time coming into 2022. Peraza had only played eight Triple-A games coming into the year, but he added another 99 this year and also got into 18 MLB games. Volpe finished 2021 at High-A but got into 110 Double-A games in 2022 and then was promoted to Triple-A for 22 more contests. Adding to the crowded dance floor, Oswaldo Cabrera cracked the majors and played well in 44 games. He bounced around and seems ticketed for a utility role, but that’s another shortstop option in the mix.
Kiner-Falefa also seemed to fall out of favor with the club in the postseason, as a few defensive miscues led to a decrease in playing time. He was also due for a raise on his $4.7MM salary, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting a bump to $6.5MM. Given those factors, it seemed within the realm of possibility that IKF could have been non-tendered or traded but he’ll instead stick around.
Keeping IKF also has its merits, even with all the kids seeming ready to take over at shortstop. The Yankee infield is broadly uncertain, though at least Anthony Rizzo is now re-signed and locked in at first base. Torres is still lined up to play second base, but his $9.8MM projected salary makes him a trade candidate. Josh Donaldson and DJ LeMahieu are question marks after the former had a disappointing season and the latter finished the year on the IL. Kiner-Falefa is capable of playing multiple positions and could be bounced around based on how all the other situations play out. But agreeing to a salary also does nothing to prevent the Yanks from working out a trade in the months to come.
Zach Reks Re-Signs With KBO’s Lotte Giants
Outfielder Zach Reks is staying with the Lotte Giants for another year, according to @jhpae117 on Twitter, relayed an translated by Dan Kurtz of MyKBO. He first joined the KBO club in July of this year. He’ll earn a $1MM salary plus a $200K signing bonus and will be able to unlock a further $100K in incentives.
Reks, 29, spent years in the system of the Dodgers and one with the Rangers, making many minor league pitchers weep. He posted an above-average batting line at every step up the minor league ladder, including a slash of .290/.388/.537 over three different Triple-A seasons. Despite always mashing in the minors, he only got to play 22 big league games over 2021 and 2022.
Players in that position are generally best suited for a trip overseas so that they can prove their mettle while getting a higher rate of pay than they would in the minors. He got $310K for just the final few months of the schedule, roughly equivalent to the prorated MLB minimum, which was $700K for a full season in 2022. Reks took the opportunity and ran with it, as he posted a line of .330/.410/.495 with the Giants.
Based on that strong showing, the Giants were impressed enough to give him a pay bump to stay in Korea for another year. Reks can bank some nice cash and perhaps consider a return to MLB down the road if he keeps hitting in the KBO. Players like Eric Thames and Darin Ruf have shown that it’s possible to pivot from a breakout in Korea to a North American return, with a nice contract to go with.
Dodgers Claim Jake Reed
The Dodgers have claimed right-hander Jake Reed off waivers from the Red Sox, per announcements from both teams. Boston designated Reed for assignment earlier in the week, and he’ll now head back to L.A. for a third stint as a Dodger. With the addition of Reed, the Dodgers’ 40-man roster is now at 38 players (though one of the two vacancies will go to Clayton Kershaw, once his reported deal is finalized).
Reed, 30, has been with six different teams since June 2021, when he was released by the Angels. Upon being cut loose, he signed with the Dodgers and has since bounced to the Rays, to the Mets, back to the Dodgers, to the Orioles, to the Red Sox and now back to Los Angeles via a series of waiver claims.
It’s a dizzying sequence of transactions for Reed, who along the way has pitched just 26 2/3 innings at the MLB level. He’s been tagged for a 5.74 ERA in that time and posted a 19.2% strikeout rate, an 8.3% walk rate and a 39.8% ground-ball rate.
Even with those pedestrian numbers, Reed continues to intrigue clubs thanks to an atypical delivery and arm slot that’s helped him to confound right-handed batters. He also had a strong showing in Triple-A this past season and carries a solid 3.84 ERA and 25.6% strikeout rate at that level. Reed still has one more minor league option year remaining, so if he survives the offseason on the Dodgers’ 40-man, he can give them some flexible depth in the bullpen next season.
Braves Sign Tyler Matzek To Two-Year Contract
The Braves announced that they have signed lefty Tyler Matzek to a two-year deal worth $3.1MM. There’s also a $5.5MM club option for 2025 with no buyout. He’ll make $1.2MM in the first year and $1.9MM in the second, according to Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Matzek had Tommy John surgery in October and will likely miss the entire 2023 season.
Matzek, 32, has been a feel-good story in recent years, as he was away from baseball for a while due to “the yips.” He pitched for the Rockies in 2014 and 2015 but then dealt with control problems so bad that he was relegated to the minors for chunks of the 2016-2019 period, including missing the 2017 season entirely and pitching in indy ball in 2018. He eventually made his way back to the majors and established himself as a useful piece of the Atlanta bullpen. From 2020 to the present, he’s thrown 135 2/3 innings with a 2.92 ERA, 38.2% ground ball rate and 27.4% strikeout rate, despite a high 13.4% walk rate.
Unfortunately, his story hit a snag at the end of this season, as he was left off the club’s NLDS roster due to elbow discomfort. The next day, it was announced that he would require Tommy John surgery. Given the typical 12-18 months required to recover from such a procedure, Matzek will almost certainly miss the entire 2023 campaign.
He went into this winter with just over four years of MLB service time, meaning he still had two more years of club control via the arbitration process. Given the lengthy absence he’s facing, Atlanta could have considered non-tendering him before tonight’s deadline, but they have instead agreed to a contract that will cover both his remaining arb seasons and potentially one free agent year as well. Matzek made $1.4MM in 2022 and was projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz, prior to the Tommy John news, for a bump to $1.8MM. Atlanta will pay Matzek around the same rate he got in 2022 and won’t get anything for that investment in 2023 but could see it pay off down the line. For Matzek, it’s possible that he could have found a somewhat similar deal in free agency, as teams occasionally give two-year deals to injured pitchers even when they know they won’t be healthy for the first one. But he’s decided to stick with an organization he knows, continuing to earn a paycheck while rehabbing with the knowledge that he has a job waiting for him once he’s healthy.