Collective Bargaining Issues: Service Time, Arbitration
As covered at length by MLBTR’s Anthony Franco, Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic published a relatively bleak account of the state of negotiations between players and owners yesterday. With the scheduled start of Spring Training fast approaching, the MLBPA — widely viewed among players as having negotiated the short end of the agreement that ran from 2016-2021 — views the owners’ most recent proposal as worse than the prior arrangement. Giants player representative Austin Slater summed up the union’s view when he told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that MLB’s present stance on questions of core economics were “disingenuous” and “a smokescreen” and implied that players viewed owners’ pre-lockout behavior as unprofessional.
Per Rosenthal’s and Drellich’s report, players and owners remain at loggerheads on most — if not all — of the core issues in play. These issues — each of which bear directly on some combination of total revenue, the way revenue is shared between players and owners, and labor conditions — include playoff expansion (a major priority for owners), an international draft (which the players have made clear they’d only agree to in exchange for a significant concession), the competitive balance tax threshold (players view it as a major hindrance to salary growth and would like to see it grow substantially), the minimum salary (which all players make at some point in their career and sets the ‘replacement’ cost for veterans), revenue sharing (players see it as supporting tanking), and draft order (players want a lottery for top picks to disincentivize tanking).
While an on-time start to Spring Training looks like a pipe dream and Opening Day seems to be in increasing jeopardy, owners and players appear to have made at least some progress on one issue: the treatment of players prior to arbitration eligibility. Under the previous agreement, the great majority of players with less than three years of service time were paid the league minimum ($570,500 in 2021) or thereabouts before becoming eligible for salary arbitration (wherein team and player could negotiate but would have a salary set by an arbitrator should they fail to reach a deal) and remain under team control for three further seasons. (Players in the top 22 percent among those with between two and three years of service time, known as ‘Super Twos,’ were granted arbitration rights a year early, giving them four years of eligibility.)
In November, owners proposed eliminating salary arbitration entirely, instead creating a performance-based (by fWAR) salary pool (a solution with the potential to pay young high-end performers a great deal more but that shifts the bulk of injury and performance risk from team to player), while players proposed lowering the arbitration eligibility bar from three years to two (thereby diminishing a year of extraordinary surplus value generated by players entering their primes). Unsurprisingly, both proposals were non-starters.
Recent negotiations appear to have yielded a potential compromise in principle, if not in monetary value. Though the union has not yet dropped its demand for an additional year of arbitration eligibility, each side has proposed the creation of a salary pool for pre-arbitration players — owners have offered $10MM, players have asked for $105MM — to be distributed according to performance, with the biggest bonuses awarded according to MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year voting results. As Rosenthal and Drellich note, owners agreeing to a pool value closer to nine digits than seven might persuade players to accept the continuation of the arbitration status quo.
Some common ground appears to exist on the related topic of service-time manipulation, an issue that rose to prominence in 2015 when the Cubs stashed consensus top-5 prospect (and eventual NL Rookie of the Year) Kris Bryant in the minors for just under two weeks in order to ensure an additional year of club control. Though Bryant’s grievance against the Cubs was ultimately denied, owners appear to agree that such manipulation is a bad look for the game, but their solution differs substantially from the union’s. Both owners and players have proposed somewhat convoluted systems. The union plan would grant a full year of service to a) any player who finishes in the top five in either league’s Rookie of the Year voting, the top three for reliever of the year, or made first- or second-team All-MLB; b) finished in the top 10 at their position in an average of bWAR and fWAR if a catcher or infielder; or c) finished in the top 30 at their position in the same average if an outfielder or pitcher. MLB’s plan would reward teams rather than players, granting a draft pick (after the first round) to any team that keeps a pre-season top 100 prospect on its roster for a full season should that player also finish in the top three in Rookie of the Year balloting or in the top five in MVP balloting in any of his first three seasons.
Owners reportedly view the players’ proposal as affecting a much wider pool of players than they’d like, and there’s no doubt that the union’s scheme would cut into teams’ ability to generate surplus value (in short, the difference between the salary of a player generating a given quantity of on-field value and the cost of that value on the open market). It would do particular damage to teams operating on the model associated with the Rays and A’s of the last several decades, whereby teams generally either lock up players early in their careers for below-market rates (a la the deal Evan Longoria signed with the Rays in 2008, which gave the team nine years of control) or trade them for a maximal return before they reach free agency (as the A’s are likely to do with Matt Olson this offseason). In the 2021 season, for instance, Wander Franco would have been granted a full year of service time under the players’ proposal despite not making his debut until late June — keeping him under team control only through the 2026 season rather than through 2027 — while under the owners’ proposal the Rays would have only received a draft pick had they kept the twenty-year-old on their roster from Opening Day.
How much progress these apparent areas of agreement actually represent is a matter of some debate, and fans should bear in mind that even in these comparatively productive areas of discussion, significant and material gaps persist. Whether or not the 2022 season will begin on time remains an open question, but progress — or a lack thereof — on matters that affect the earning power of all players in the early years of their careers will go a long way toward providing an answer. In any event, the owners’ present proposals aren’t likely to cut the mustard with an MLBPA that feels it’s held the short end of the revenue stick for years.
Cardinals Looking For ‘High-Leverage’ Bullpen Arms
In a Monday chat with readers, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch addressed the approach of the Cardinals front office to upgrading the team’s bullpen — a known priority for the club. In response to a question regarding potential interest in longtime Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, Goold suggested that, during the free agent bonanza that preceded the lockout, the Cards had looked less for a closer per se than at other ‘high-leverage’ arms — “ones who could be used as a closer, but not only a closer.”
The 2021 Cardinals bullpen finished roughly middle-of-the-pack in most statistical metrics (11th in ERA, 8th in FIP, 24th in xFIP, 11th in fWAR) and could see some significant improvements without making a move. High-octane righty Jordan Hicks, who new manager Oliver Marmol will stretch out for an expected multi-inning role in Spring Training, is reportedly healthy after missing most of 2021 with elbow inflammation; and Ryan Helsley, who was shut down in mid-August with knee and elbow issues, is expected to regain a primary set-up role alongside Genesis Cabrera. Giovanny Gallegos will likely retain the closer role he inherited from 2021 All-Star Alex Reyes following Reyes’ substantial second-half struggles.
Goold notes former Cardinal Joe Kelly as a likely target and had previously cited interest in former Blue Jays, Cubs, and White Sox reliever Ryan Tepera; both relievers fit the bill of a versatile, high K-rate late-innings arm. Each is likely to seek a multi-year deal with a meaningful financial commitment (MLBTR projects Tepera to sign for two years and $12MM, for instance), though neither is likely to exceed the Cardinals’ budget — particularly if they remain committed to some combination of Paul DeJong and Edmundo Sosa at shortstop. Potential targets Andrew Chafin and Collin McHugh fall in roughly the same market stratum as Tepera and Kelly, while the club could also look for bounce-back candidates on one-year or minor league deals. The list of free agent relievers with a history of big-league success but who won’t command a significant investment includes Brad Hand, Chris Martin, Archie Bradley, Adam Ottavino, Sergio Romo, Yusmeiro Petit, Mychal Givens, Sean Doolittle, Pedro Strop, Richard Rodriguez, and Tyler Clippard.
Beyond Gallegos, Cabrera, Reyes, Helsley, and Hicks, the Redbirds will return journeyman and 2021 revelation T.J. McFarland (who re-signed on a one-year, $2.5MM deal in November) as well as Kodi Whitley and potential long-man Jake Woodford. Current minor leaguers Andre Pallante (who posted a 3.91 ERA in 99 1/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A in 2021, his age-22 season) and Jake Walsh (who’ll play at age 26 in 2022 but posted 2.86 ERA in 22 innings across the same levels) could also be asked to contribute at some point in 2022.
Should they add a high-leverage arm to what’s already a talented group, the Cards’ bullpen could prove a substantial strength in 2022, particularly if a starting rotation bolstered by the addition of Steven Matz can continue to eat innings at the pace it did in 2021 (the Cardinals’ bullpen covered 584 1/3 innings in 2021, 9th fewest in the majors). Indeed, St. Louis could showcase one of the National League’s deeper pitching staffs in 2022, particularly if Hicks and starter Jack Flaherty can both stay healthy and return to their respective 2019 forms. And though the Cardinals play in the comparatively soft NL Central, with a roughly league-average offense returning essentially intact from 2021, they’ll likely need their pitching staff to perform at a high level to return to the playoffs in 2022.
Latest On Nick Castellanos
The crop of unsigned corner outfielders remains strong, with Kris Bryant, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, Seiya Suzuki and Michael Conforto still yet to put pen to paper. There’s a case that Castellanos is the best pure outfielder still available, although interest from what appeared to be one of his primary suitors may be more muted than expected.
Reports from before the institution of the lockout suggested the Padres were among the teams with “strong interest” in Castellanos. However, as part of a reader mailbag this week, Dennis Lin of the Athletic writes the club doesn’t seem to be “terribly high” on the 29-year-old. While San Diego was at least in contact with Castellanos’ representatives at the Boras Corporation before the lockout, Lin downplays the possibility of San Diego committing either a five-year or a nine-figure investment to Castellanos coming out of the transactions freeze.
Unsurprisingly, he and his reps came out aiming higher, reportedly seeking seven or eight guaranteed years. Something of that length (especially eight years) would register as a surprise but a strong five or six year pact would align with broader expectations; we at MLBTR predicted a five-year term at a total of $115MM on our Top 50 Free Agent rankings to begin the offseason.
No doubt part of San Diego’s reluctance to spend at that level is their already-cluttered payroll. Manny Machado ($32MM), Will Myers ($22.5MM), Eric Hosmer ($20.625MM) and Yu Darvish ($20MM) are all slated for hefty salaries in 2022, parts of a projected $199MM player payroll (via Jason Martinez of Roster Resource) that’d top last season’s franchise-record mark by by around $25MM. Lin writes that some within the organization have suggested there may not be a ton of room to take on additional salary this offseason.
San Diego has tried to save some payroll room by moving Hosmer and/or Myers in trade. Shedding much or all of Hosmer’s money ($61.5MM through 2025) would likely require attaching significant young talent, further thinning a farm system that has depleted as the Padres have pushed their chips in to compete over the past few seasons. It’d probably be easier to find a taker for Myers, who’s entering the final year of his deal. Yet that would also require paying down some money or surrendering young talent, and it’d further deplete an already lacking corner outfield group.
Also complicating matters, the Padres narrowly exceeded the luxury tax threshold last season. The previous collective bargaining agreement contained escalating penalties for teams that surpassed the tax in multiple consecutive seasons. Where the thresholds are set and whether escalating penalties for repeat payors will persist in the next CBA is to be determined but could affect the Padres willingness to push their payroll higher after the transactions freeze.
San Diego exceeding the tax is also relevant to their chances of pursuing a free agent who rejected a qualifying offer from his previous team, as Castellanos did from the Reds. As a tax payor, the Friars would relinquish their second-highest and fifth-highest selections in the 2022 amateur draft as well as $1MM in international signing bonus pool space were they to sign a qualified free agent.
So, if not the Padres, where might Castellanos and Boras turn? The Marlins have been reported to harbor interest in Castellanos, a Miami-area native, since before the offseason even began. The Fish already committed four years and $55MM to Avisail Garcia, but they’re still in the hunt for another bat. Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald wrote recently that Castellanos “would welcome” a homecoming deal with the Marlins … but only “if the terms were right.” Fish fans hoping for a hometown discount should probably temper their optimism.
Still, there’s reason to believe that if the Marlins are truly intent on bolstering their lineup, they could at least make the financials on a Castellanos signing work. Miami currently projects to have a payroll just shy of $69MM, and there’s only $27MM in guaranteed contracts on the books for the 2023 season. In terms of a positional fit, they’re already rife with corner outfield options, but GM Kim Ng has told reporters this winter that the team is comfortable utilizing Garcia in center field. It’s also possible, if not likely, that a designated hitter will be added to the National League, which would only give the Marlins — or any other NL club — more at-bats to give to Castellanos.
MLB, MLBPA Still Far Apart As Scheduled Start Of Spring Training Nears
Over the past couple weeks, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have returned to the negotiating table on core economics issues. They’ve been the first notable collective bargaining discussions since MLB instituted a lockout early on December 2. Yet fans’ hopes that talks might quickly thereafter lead to a resolution of the work stoppage that’s soon to enter its third month are unlikely to be realized.
As Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic explained this afternoon, the sides remain divided on myriad key issues. According to Rosenthal and Drellich, the possibility of Spring Training commencing as originally scheduled “is clearly in jeopardy.” Of more import to most is the threat of a delayed start to the regular season. Multiple reports over the course of the lockout have suggested March 1 could serve as a soft deadline for a new CBA to be in place if the season is to open on the currently-slated March 31. With the calendar flipping to February in a few hours, there’ll need be rapid progress over the coming month.
According to Rosenthal and Drellich, the MLBPA views the proposals thus far made by MLB as less favorable to players than were the terms of the 2016-21 CBA. That’s an ominous development. The players union entered this round of collective bargaining talks less than enamored with that CBA and in search of a few significant changes (i.e. dramatically expanded luxury tax thresholds, a path to free agency after five years of service, a $100MM cut to revenue sharing), some of which it has since stopped pursuing.
Nevertheless, it’s not particularly surprising to hear of the union’s ongoing displeasure with negotiations given some players’ public comments on the matter. For instance, Giants player representative Austin Slater told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle last week that he considered MLB’s most recent economics proposal “disingenuous” and “a smokescreen,” although he did characterize that set of talks as more “professional” than prior meetings had been.
Unsurprisingly, The Athletic writes that MLB believes it has made player-friendly concessions. The league acquiesced to a union proposal for a salary pool to award exceptional performers who haven’t yet reached arbitration eligibility — at least in concept. Yet there’s a massive separation in the amount of money each side would like to see involved. The union proposed the creation of a $105MM pool; MLB offered to set aside $10MM. And as Rosenthal and Drellich explain, the gap is actually larger than those numbers might suggest since the parties continue to haggle about the number of players who should qualify for arbitration.
Throughout negotiations, the MLBPA has pushed for arbitration eligibility after two years of service time. The league has considered that a non-starter, preferring to keep the previous system in place. Under that setup, most players required three years of service to reach arbitration, while a certain subset of players with between two and three years — those in the top 22% of service among their class — also qualified through the Super Two provision.
The union’s proposed $105MM pool for pre-arb players, then, would only be divided among players with less than two years of MLB service, with anyone in the 2+ service bucket reaching arbitration. MLB’s $10MM counteroffer was tied to the previous arbitration setup, to be divided among players with less than three years of service (aside from Super Two qualifiers). So, not only is the union seeking a significantly larger sum than MLB was willing to offer, the PA’s vision was to divide that money among a comparatively smaller group of players than MLB has in mind. (According to Rosenthal and Drellich, MLB is also unwilling to expand the number of players in the 2-3 year service bucket who could qualify as a Super Two in addition to its steadfast opposition to universal two-year arbitration).
As MLBTR has covered in recent weeks, numerous gaps between the parties persist. MLB and the MLBPA have differing goals on such topics as playoff expansion, an international draft (which Rosenthal and Drellich write the union is unlikely to agree to “unless it is part of a significant tradeoff”), the competitive balance tax, the league minimum salary, revenue sharing and the amateur draft order. That they’ve resumed discussions of late is a welcome development, but they remain far apart on enough important topics there doesn’t appear to be an imminently forthcoming resolution. Barring rapid progress, the specter of lost gameplay seems to loom larger than ever. The parties’ next set of economics discussions is slated for tomorrow, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN (on Twitter).
Rangers, Joe McCarthy Agree To Minor League Deal
The Rangers have signed corner outfielder Joe McCarthy to a minor league contract, reports Conor Foley of the Scranton Times-Tribune (on Twitter). Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News adds that he’ll receive an invitation to big league Spring Training. As a minor league free agent, McCarthy was eligible to sign a non-roster pact during the ongoing lockout.
McCarthy, the older brother of D-Backs outfielder Jake McCarthy, has the briefest of MLB experience. He appeared in four big league games with the Giants during the shortened 2020 season, going hitless in ten at-bats. The left-handed hitter has otherwise spent the entirety of his seven-year professional career in the minors.
Originally selected by the Rays in the fifth round out of the University of Virginia in 2015, McCarthy was flipped to San Francisco as part of a rare prospect-for-prospect swap at the 2019 trade deadline. The Giants were no doubt intrigued by his huge minor league walk rates, including a massive 16.2% mark at Double-A in 2017 and a 15.9% figure during the first half of the 2019 season in Triple-A.
McCarthy struggled with the Giants’ top affiliate down the stretch in 2019, though. Due to the cancelation of the 2020 minor league season, he couldn’t log any action on the farm and wound up being outrighted off San Francisco’s 40-man roster following his big league cup of coffee. He rebounded to put up an impressive .305/.384/.542 line with 15 homers, a 10.2% walk percentage and a lower than average 19.4% strikeout rate in 315 plate appearances with Triple-A Sacramento last season. That still wasn’t enough to earn another big league call to a 107-win team, and the Pennsylvania native elected free agency at the end of the year.
While McCarthy has essentially no big league track record, there’s no harm for the Rangers in giving him a look in Spring Training. He’s a .255/.355/.464 hitter in parts of three Triple-A campaigns, and Baseball America slotted him among the top 30 prospects in a perennially strong Tampa Bay farm system every year between 2017 and 2019. With a solid showing in Spring Training, he might be able to work his way into a corner outfield mix that includes Kole Calhoun, Nick Solak, Zach Reks and Eli White.
Ohtani: “No (Extension) Talks Yet” With Angels
Shohei Ohtani is coming off an MVP-winning season, the kind of showing Angels fans dreamed of when he chose to sign in Anaheim during his highly-publicized posting process over the 2017-18 offseason. It’s widely expected the Angels will try to work out a long-term deal with the two-way star, but those discussions didn’t get underway prior to the lockout.
Ohtani tells Sam Blum of the Athletic (via an interpreter) the team and his representatives at CAA Baseball have had “no talks yet” regarding an extension. Last October, the 27-year-old expressed openness to a long-term deal. He didn’t go into detail regarding the chances of eventually signing an extension when speaking with Blum, instead noting that he’s “in the second year of my two-year deal coming up this season” and “just trying to complete that last year of the two-year contract.”
As Ohtani noted, he signed a two-year contract last February that guaranteed him a total of $8.5MM to avoid arbitration through 2022. He’ll make $5.5MM this year and is scheduled to go through arbitration a final time before reaching free agency two seasons from now. Ohtani would be entering his age-29 season during his trip to the open market. That’s relatively young for a free agent, setting him up for a megadeal if he stays healthy and continues to perform at an elite level.
The parameters of a potential Ohtani extension are essentially impossible to predict. There are, of course, no contractual precedents for players with his skillset. Ohtani’s coming off a .257/.372/.592 showing with 46 home runs and 26 stolen bases. That overall offensive output checked in 52 percentage points above the league average by measure of wRC+, the fifth-highest mark among 135 batters with 500 or more plate appearances. While he didn’t perform particularly well in the abbreviated 2020 season, Ohtani has a wRC+ of 120 or better in his other three big league campaigns.
In addition to that middle-of-the-order offense, Ohtani has flashed at least middle-of-the-rotation upside. He’s worked 183 2/3 innings across 35 MLB starts, posting a 3.53 ERA/3.75 SIERA with a very strong 29.2% strikeout rate, albeit with an elevated 9.7% walk percentage. The majority of those frames came last season, when he put up a 3.18 ERA in 23 starts. He averaged north of 95 MPH on his fastball, backed up by an elite swing-and-miss secondary offering in his high-80s split.
Given Ohtani’s unique ability to produce at a high-end level on both sides of the ball, it stands to reason the Angels would love to keep him in the fold beyond the next couple seasons. The team does already have a pair of long-term investments in star position players on the books. Mike Trout is slated to make a bit north of $37MM annually through 2030, while Anthony Rendon will earn over $38MM per season from 2024 through 2026 under the terms of his backloaded deal. The Angels also owe Raisel Iglesias $16MM in both 2024 and 2025, while David Fletcher will make at least $14MM combined between 2024 and 2025.
Between those commitments, the Angels already have around $100MM guaranteed in the first two seasons of what are currently slated to be Ohtani’s free agent years. Anaheim set a franchise record with an outlay in the $182MM range to start last season. An Ohtani extension would probably require owner Arte Moreno to stretch his longer-term payrolls a bit further if the front office is to have the requisite payroll flexibility to supplement a Trout – Ohtani – Rendon core group.
Cardinals Sign Aaron Brooks To Minor League Deal
The Cardinals announced Monday that they’ve signed righty Aaron Brooks to a minor league deal. The Paragon Sports International client received a non-roster invitation to Major League Spring Training. He was eligible to sign a minor league during the lockout by virtue of the fact that he was a minor league free agent returning from a stint overseas.
Brooks, 31, is a veteran of four big league seasons but has spent the 2020-21 seasons in the Korea Baseball Organization, where he’s notched a tidy 2.79 ERA in 229 1/3 innings for the Kia Tigers. While Brooks hasn’t missed many bats pitching overseas — he posted a rather pedestrian 20.1% strikeout rate — he’s demonstrated excellent command and posted practically inhuman ground-ball rates. Brooks has walked just 4.4% of his opponents in the KBO, and it’s hard to think of a much better team to take advantage of his outrageous 78.4% ground-ball rate than the defensively stout Cardinals.
This past season, St. Louis had a staggering five Gold Glove winners, including three in the infield: first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, second baseman Tommy Edman and third baseman Nolan Arenado. Shortstop Paul DeJong had a rough season offensively that cost him some reps in the infield as the Cards looked to get more offense into the lineup, but DeJong is regarded as a standout defender himself — evidenced by last year’s plus-6 Defensive Runs Saved and a career plus-36 mark in 4366 innings at the position.
Royals, A’s and Orioles fans may remember Brooks for his big league work across those three franchises. A ninth-round pick by Kansas City back in 2011, he made his MLB debut with K.C. in 2014-15 but was traded to the A’s alongside Sean Manaea in the swap that brought Ben Zobrist to the 2015 World Series champion Royals.
The A’s wound up trading Brooks to the Cubs in exchange for Chris Coghlan back in 2016, setting off a sequence of scenery changes for Brooks over the next several years. He went from Chicago to Milwaukee via waivers, and the Brewers traded him back to Oakland in exchange for cash. Brooks’ second stint with the A’s lasted about a half season, as the Orioles claimed him on waivers the following summer and, after the 2019 campaign, released him to allow him to pursue his KBO opportunity.
While making the rounds on the trade/waiver circuit, Brooks appeared in 47 big league games and tallied 170 2/3 frames with an uninspiring 6.49 ERA. He was never much of a ground-ball pitcher during his prior stints in the big leagues, so it seems he’s done some work to reinvent his approach on the mound while pitching in South Korea. If he’s able to replicate that KBO success in Triple-A, it’s likely the Cardinals will find a way to get him onto the big league roster in 2022.
The Cards already have a full rotation, but adding some depth along these lines was a clear need. Jack Flaherty, Adam Wainwright, Dakota Hudson, Miles Mikolas and offseason signee Steven Matz are set to occupy the top five spots in the St. Louis rotation, but a lack of starting depth nearly sunk the 2021 Cards when they saw their entire rotation outside of Wainwright hit the IL by June. Brooks joins in-house options like Jake Woodford, Johan Oviedo, T.J. Zeuch and Angel Rondon on the depth chart, and the Cards are surely also hopeful that prospects Matthew Liberatore and Zack Thompson can reach the Majors in 2022.
Read The Transcript Of Today’s Fantasy Baseball Chat With Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson has been writing about fantasy baseball for more than a decade and has considerable experience in Roto, H2H, dynasty, DFS, and experimental formats. As an expert in the field, Brad participates in the Tout Wars Draft and Hold format and was crowned the league’s winner in 2020. Brad’s writing experience includes RotoGraphs, NBC SportsEDGE, and right here at MLB Trade Rumors. He’s also presented at the First Pitch Arizona fantasy baseball conference.
We’ll be hosting fantasy baseball-focused chats with Brad every other Monday at noon CT between now and the beginning of the regular season (whenever that is), so mark your calendars for those and feel free to drop him some questions on Twitter @BaseballATeam as well.
Click here to read a transcript of today’s fantasy baseball chat with Brad!
Latest On Mets’ Post-Lockout Plans
The Mets have already had one of the most active offseasons of any team, signing Max Scherzer to a record-setting contract and inking a trio of bats — Starling Marte, Mark Canha and Eduardo Escobar — to multi-year deals. The combined outlay on that quartet of additions was $254.5MM, pushing the team’s payroll to a projected $263MM (via Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez).
SNY’s Andy Martino wrote last week that the Mets are likely to target more rotation help — listing Yusei Kikuchi as one candidate — but have likely completed most of the heavy lifting on the position-player side of the roster. Sports Illustrated’s Pat Ragazzo tweets today that pitching is indeed expected to be the team’s priority, while MLB Network’s Jon Heyman adds that the team isn’t completely closed off to bringing in another impact hitter. A payroll approaching $300MM isn’t out of the question in Queens, Heyman notes.
A pitching addition would be far more straightforward than signing another bat. The quartet of Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker is immensely talented but also laden with injury risk. Fifth starter candidates David Peterson and Tylor Megill are solid enough options, but as currently constructed, the Mets would be one injury away from needing to lean on both (and two away from having to tap into a shaky group of Triple-A options).
Carlos Rodon and Clayton Kershaw stand out as two of the most prominent starters who have yet to sign, though Martino noted last week when linking the Mets to Kikuchi that they did not have any contact with Kershaw’s camp prior to the lockout. There are, of course, myriad trade scenarios to consider as well. The A’s (Frankie Montas, Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt) and Reds (Sonny Gray, Tyler Mahle, Luis Castillo) have starters who could conceivably change hands. The Padres have a wealth of young arms if the Mets are simply looking to add some depth, as they did last year when acquiring the now-injured Joey Lucchesi from San Diego.
On the pitching side of the coin, things are far muddier for the Mets — due in no small part to that aforementioned pre-lockout spending spree. The advent of a universal designated hitter might help to alleviate any logjams, but Mets already have crowded outfield and infield pictures alike. Marte, Canha Brandon Nimmo figure to get the bulk of the work in the outfield, while the infield mix will feature Pete Alonso, Robinson Cano, Francisco Lindor, Escobar and Jeff McNeil. Beyond that group of nine, the Mets have both J.D. Davis and Dominic Smith as capable corner options in the infield/outfield mix.
There’s already talk that the Amazins will be open to moving McNeil and/or Smith once the lockout lifts, which would make some sense given the lack of regular at-bats available. McNeil, Smith and Davis (more on him here) seem to be the likeliest change-of-scenery candidates, and moving multiple names from that group could pave the way for another addition.
With such a crowded roster already in place, there isn’t necessarily one glaring position the Mets need to feel compelled to shop. If the team is comfortable with Cano and Luis Guillorme logging the bulk of the work at second base, for instance, that’d free up the ability to trade McNeil and perhaps add an impact bat who could primarily serve as a DH (e.g. Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, Nelson Cruz). The Mets could also play Escobar at second base in that scenario and pursue help at the hot corner. Frankly, with so many players who have experience at multiple positions, Mets fans could dream on innumerable speculative scenarios. Martino has even suggested that despite having signed multiple outfielders, a Mets pursuit of Seiya Suzuki cannot be expressly ruled out.
Today’s reports don’t necessarily indicate anything that contradicts prior reporting but rather serve to reinforce the idea that the Mets aren’t likely to rest on their laurels after an active November/December. Pitching still seems likeliest to be the focus of their efforts, but the potential trades of some combination of McNeil, Smith and Davis could leave the team with the flexibility to add a bat of note — particularly if one of the prominent sluggers on the market is struggling to find a deal to his liking. Owner Steve Cohen certainly has the financial chops to swoop in and opportunistically sign such a free agent to a pillow deal, at the very least.
Giants Sign Jorge Guzman To Minor League Deal
The Giants have agreed to a two-year minor league contract with free-agent righty Jorge Guzman, his agents at PNY Sports announced earlier this month on Instagram.
It’s rare to see two-year minor league pacts, which are typically agreed upon when it’s known that a player will miss a portion of the upcoming season. Guzman missed nearly all of the 2021 campaign with the Marlins due to elbow issues, which landed him on the 60-day IL in August. I’m told he ultimately required elbow surgery in September, from which he’s still rehabbing. An exact timetable for his return to the mound hasn’t been established, but because Guzman isn’t on the 40-man roster, he’s able to head to the team’s spring complex and work out with the training and medical staff even during the lockout.
Once viewed among the game’s Top 100 prospects over at Baseball America, Guzman was the headline prospect in the trade that sent Giancarlo Stanton from Miami to the Bronx. Prior to that deal, he was involved in another swap of note, going from Houston to New York in exchange for Brian McCann. At the time of the Stanton deal, Guzman was coming off a 2.30 ERA and an 88-to-18 K/BB ratio through 66 innings with the Yankees’ short-season Class-A affiliate. He went on to have a pair of solid seasons in the middle levels of the Miami system, including a career-high 138 2/3 innings of 3.50 ERA ball in 2019.
Unfortunately, owing to elbow troubles and the canceled 2020 minor league season, Guzman has pitched just 18 total innings since that time. Those injuries eventually led to Guzman being jettisoned from the Marlins’ 40-man roster, and he elected minor league free agency after clearing outright waivers.
Health issues notwithstanding, it’s easy to see why any club would want to take what’s more or less a zero-risk flier on this type of arm. Guzman has averaged better than 96 mph in his limited big league action and can reach 101-102 mph with his heater. His slider has received above-average or better grades on scouting reports, and he only just turned 26 over the weekend. He still has just 18 total innings above the Double-A level, so beyond any necessary rehab work, the Giants may prefer to get him a look at the Triple-A level once healthy.