Red Sox Plan To Select Danny Santana’s Contract This Weekend
The Red Sox are planning to have infielder/outfielder Danny Santana active for this weekend’s series against the Phillies, reports Enrique Rojas of ESPN Deportes (via Twitter). Santana, who inked a minor league deal with the Red Sox in Spring Training, was slowed by a foot infection that required surgery but has been playing well over the past week in Triple-A. Boston will need to select him to its 40-man roster, so a corresponding 40-man move will need to be made. Santana has an opt-out clause in his deal this Sunday, tweets MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo, so the move will need to take place by then.
Santana, 30, has played eight minor league games and looked sharp in his return to the field. He’s 13-for-30 with three homers and three doubles to go along with a 3-to-7 BB/K overall in 35 trips to the plate. When he’s formally added to the roster, he’ll give the Red Sox yet another versatile, multi-position option to rotate around the field — a skill set they clearly prioritized heading into 2021. Santana, Enrique Hernandez and Marwin Gonzalez can all play just about position, and like Gonzalez, Santana is a switch-hitter.
The veteran Santana will be hoping to put a miserable, injury-ruined 2020 season in the rear-view mirror and bounce back to the form he showed in a career year with the 2019 Rangers. That ’19 campaign saw Santana erupt with a .283/.324/.534 batting line, 28 home runs and 21 steals in 511 trips to the plate while playing all four infield spots and all three outfield positions. However, outside of that juiced-ball season, Santana has just 14 home runs in 1228 plate appearances.
Santana’s elbow didn’t afford him the chance to follow up on that ostensible breakout showing, as he landed on the injured list after scuffling through 63 plate appearances in 2020. He ultimately required surgery to repair an elbow strain — a procedure that came with a recovery period of seven to eight months. He’s now past that rehab timeline and looks to have put both the elbow and foot troubles behind him.
It’s been a strange career for Santana, who burst onto the scene as a Rookie of the Year candidate with the 2014 Twins when he hit .319/.353/.427 with seven homers and 20 steals in 430 plate appearances. Santana’s production absolutely cratered the following year, however, and he didn’t have a single productive season (or even close to it) in the four years between that rookie year and his out-of-the-blue 2019 campaign. From 2015-18, Santana tallied 735 plate appearances between the Twins and Braves but posted a brutal .219/.256/.319 line.
Time will tell which version of Santana the Red Sox are getting, but a bench that includes him, Gonzalez and Hernandez would be one of the most versatile in baseball. It should be pointed out that Gonzalez is struggling mightily to begin his Red Sox tenure, having batted just .205/.293/.295 through his first 150 plate appearances, so it’s possible that Santana’s arrival will come at the expense of Gonzalez’s playing time.
Hoyer: No Current Extension Talks With Cubs’ Core Players
The core of the Cubs’ 2016 World Series club is nearing the end of its tenure in Chicago, and president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Thursday that there are no current extension talks with any members of that core (Twitter link via 670 The Score’s Bruce Levine). Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javier Baez are all slated to become free agents at season’s end, while catcher Willson Contreras hits the market following the 2022 season.
For much of the offseason, talk around Bryant was focused on whether he’d even make it to Opening Day. The fact that former Rookie of the Year and NL MVP had a dismal 2020 season likely helped keep him in Chicago, as last summer’s struggles paired with a hefty arbitration raise to sap much of his trade value.
A quarter of the way through the 2021 season, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. While the entire league seems to be plagued with anemic offensive performances, Bryant is better than ever. Through his first 167 trips to the plate, he’s raking at a .301/.401/.615 pace with 10 homers, 14 doubles and a pair of stolen bases. He’s even doing so while splitting his time between third base and all three outfield positions, showing off plenty of defensive versatility.
Rizzo is also in the midst of a resurgent campaign, having increased his average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage over last year’s levels. He’s still not back to peak form, but a .250/.361/.443 slash is solid — particularly in the aforementioned era of strikeouts and near-weekly no-hitters. Rizzo is a rarity in 2021, having walked at a higher clip (14.8 percent) than he’s struck out (12.4 percent). The Cubs reportedly offered him an extension in the vicinity of five years and $70MM back in Spring Training, which checks in at about $60MM shy of the $130MM commitment the division-rival Cardinals made to Paul Goldschmidt. That deal began in Goldschmidt’s age-32 season — the same age at which Rizzo will play in 2022.
Baez, meanwhile, is enjoying a more productive season than he did in 2020, albeit with plenty of red flags. He’s raised his slash line across the board but is now striking out at a 37.2 percent clip that represents the highest non-rookie mark of his career. Even though he’s raised his average 60 points over its 2020 level, Baez’s OBP is still resting just shy of .300. He’s batting .263/.299/.526 on the whole, which is certainly sound production, but he’s needed career-highs in BABIP (.351) and homer-to-flyball ratio (32.3 percent) in order to get there. If either of those two marks regresses or his strikeouts continue to tick up, Baez’s 2.7 percent walk rate will become all the more glaring.
Contreras, the only one of the group controlled beyond the current season, is hitting .254/.349/.462, continuing a lengthy run as one of the game’s best-hitting backstops. That he’s controlled into 2022 puts a bit less of a spotlight on him, but there were some trade rumblings surrounding Contreras over the winter.
At 21-21, the Cubs needn’t yet entertain the idea of any sort of broad-reaching fire sale. They’re still just 3.5 games back of the Cardinals in the NL Central and very much in the mix as of mid-May. Should they wilt in the coming months, any of the impending free agents would make for a plausible trade candidate. There would of course be PR implications to consider with dealing from that group, but an unavoidable reality; even if the Cubs hold onto everyone through season’s end, they’ll eventually have to bid adieu to at least one, if not two or all three of Bryant, Rizzo and Baez in free agency. For now, the hope is likely that the group puts together a big showing over the next two months, positioning the Cubs as division favorites and deadline buyers.
The more interesting scenario to consider, though, will be what the Cubs will do if they’re still in precisely this spot come mid-July. A Cubs team hovering at .500, give or take a couple games, would have to weigh two sides of a difficult dilemma. Make one final run with an offensive core that really hasn’t gotten it done in October since that World Series victory, or sell off some of the most iconic players in recent franchise history? The former route could leave the Cubs with little to show in terms of compensation for a core that won’t stay intact. The latter route would be tantamount to waving a white flag while still in striking distance of a postseason bid while turning the page on a historic era of Cubs baseball.
Hoyer, it should be noted, did make clear that the Cubs maintain an “open-door” policy and aren’t ruling out future negotiations. But Rizzo said earlier this year that he’d made his peace with the lack of an extension, while Bryant has never seemed all that likely to sign before free agency. They’ve talked with Baez for the past two to three seasons without a deal ever coming together. Generally speaking, the expectation of a deal for any of the bunch coming together before free agency (save for perhaps Contreras this offseason) should be low.
D-backs Nearing Deal With Noe Ramirez
The Diamondbacks are close to wrapping up a deal with free-agent reliever Noe Ramirez, reports Zach Buchanan of The Athletic (Twitter link). He elected free agency just two days ago rather than accept an outright assignment with the Angels, who’d designated him for assignment.
Ramirez, 31, was traded from the Angels to the Reds over the winter as part of Cincinnati’s Raisel Iglesias salary dump. He returned to the Halos after the Reds cut him loose late in Spring Training, avoiding the bulk of his arbitration salary in the process. Ramirez allowed a pair of runs in 3 1/3 innings with the Angels this year before being designated for assignment.
Prior to that odd Anaheim-to-Cincinnati-to-Anaheim volley, Ramirez was a fairly steady middle reliever for the Halos. From 2017-20, he pitched 180 1/3 innings of 4.04 ERA ball while recording a 26.4 percent strikeout rate and a 10.5 percent walk rate. Unlike most pitchers in today’s game, Ramirez is a soft-tosser, sitting in the 89-90 mph range with his fastball. Ramirez relies primarily on a changeup to generate swings and misses; he’s finished off 344 plate appearances with that pitch in the big leagues, and opponents are hitting just .195/.227/.289 in those instances. His slider was a decent pitch for him earlier in his career but has been hit hard in recent seasons.
Ramirez hasn’t yet reached four years of big league service time, so in the event that he reaches the Majors and returns to form, he’d be controllable via arbitration through the 2023 season. As Buchanan further notes, this may not be a “minor league” deal for all that long, as the D-backs’ bullpen has struggled to perform while being hit with some injuries as well. Tyler Clippard has yet to throw in 2021 due to a shoulder strain, while Chris Devenski is said to be weighing surgery at the moment. Young righty J.B. Bukauskas just hit the IL due to a flexor strain as well.
Diamondbacks relievers rank 29th in the Majors with a 5.61 ERA, 27th with a 4.81 FIP and 26th with a 4.16 SIERA. They also have the game’s third-lowest collective strikeout rate (21 percent) and sixth-highest homers-per-nine mark (1.49).
Royals Sign Anthony Swarzak
Though the team hasn’t made a formal announcement to this point, the Royals have signed veteran reliever Anthony Swarzak to a minor league contract. The move is reflected on the transactions log at MLB.com, and Swarzak is listed on the roster with the organization’s top affiliate in Omaha. The Royals also inked former Rockies, Rangers and Cubs right-hander Eddie Butler earlier this month and did so without a formal announcement. Butler has tossed four innings in Triple-A with the Storm Chasers already.
Swarzak, 35, didn’t pitch in the Majors in 2019 but returned to the big leagues with the D-backs in 2021. It was a brief and unsuccessful pairing, as the well-traveled righty yielded five runs on seven hits and a walk with four strikeouts through just 4 2/3 innings. Arizona designated Swarzak for assignment on April 18 and released him a week later. Prior to that brief run with the D-backs, Swarzak’s most recent big league stint was a solid run with the 2019 Braves, during which he tossed 39 1/3 innings of 4.31 ERA ball.
While he’s pitched for nine Major League teams across parts of 11 seasons and accrued more than eight years of big league service time, Swarzak remarkably hasn’t spent consecutive seasons with a team since 2013-14 with the Twins, who selected him in the second round of the 2004 draft. Swarzak spent five seasons in Minnesota but has since spent time with the Indians, Yankees, Brewers, White Sox, Mets, Mariners, Braves and D-backs. If he makes it to the Majors with the Royals, they’ll be his tenth MLB club and his fourth AL Central team. In 645 2/3 big league innings, Swarzak has a 4.36 ERA with a 17.8 percent strikeout rate and a 7.3 percent walk rate, although his strikeout rate has spiked considerably since moving to short relief stints in the second half of his career.
As for 30-year-old Butler, he ranked as one of the game’s best pitching prospects with the Rockies after being selected with the No. 46 overall pick back in 2012. He posted strong numbers up through Double-A before struggling a bit in Triple-A, and his work at the MLB level has produced just a 5.80 ERA in 263 2/3 innings. Butler has since pitched in the KBO and on the independent circuit. He was slated to open the 2021 season with the Atlantic League’s Southern Maryland Blue Crabs before the Royals signed him earlier this month.
Reds Place Mike Moustakas On 10-Day Injured List
The Reds announced this morning that they’ve placed infielder Mike Moustakas on the 10-day injured list with a right heel contusion and recalled fellow infielder Max Schrock from Triple-A Louisville. It’s now been nearly a week since Moustakas started a game for the Reds, but because the Reds utilized him as a pinch-hitter both Monday and Tuesday, his IL placement can only be backdated to yesterday (May 19).
With Moustakas now shelved for at least the next nine days and Joey Votto still out with a fractured thumb, Cincinnati is sending Alex Blandino out at first base today. Jonathan India is lined up at second base, with Kyle Farmer at short and Eugenio Suarez at the hot corner. We’ll likely see various permutations of the infield alignment in the absence of both Moustakas and Votto, a pair of key bats in the heart of the Reds’ lineup.
Moustakas, 32, is out to a .241/.337/.437 start that actually checks in 10 percent better than league average, by measure of wRC+, in this year’s woeful offensive climate. He’s homered four times and kicked in five doubles as well while splitting his time between the infield corners. The Reds initially signed Moustakas to play second base, but the emergence of Jonathan India and the club’s decision to move Suarez back to shortstop to begin the year slid Moustakas back over to the hot corner — at least until Votto’s injury.
The 26-year-old Schrock will give the Reds an option at any of second base, third base or left field while they await the returns of Votto and Moustakas. Schrock, just 4-for-26 in a tiny sample of play at the big league level, is a career .262/.326/.351 hitter in 775 Triple-A plate appearances.
Chris Davis Out For Season
Orioles first baseman and designated hitter Chris Davis will miss the rest of the season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left hip, per Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). Recovery time is projected to be four to five months.
Shortstop Richie Martin is also out for the time being with a non-displaced fracture in the radius bone of his left wrist, per Kubatko. The Orioles expect him to return after somewhere between eight and twelve weeks.
The Orioles had already gone the first month and a half of the season without Davis because of a lower back strain. Now, in light of this news, it will go down as another lost season for the former star. Baltimore re-signed Davis to a seven-year, $161MM contract prior to the 2016 season, but the move has blown up in the club’s face. Now 35 years old, Davis hit an atrocious .196/.291/.379 with 92 home runs over 2,118 plate appearances from 2016-20. The Orioles owe him annual salaries of $23MM through 2022.
This will also count as a year to forget for Martin, whom the Orioles took from the Athletics in the 2018 Rule 5 Draft. Martin totaled 309 PA as an Oriole in 2019 and hit .208/.260/.322 with six home runs and 10 stolen bases. He hasn’t played in the bigs since then.
Blue Jays Sign Casey Lawrence
The Blue Jays have signed Casey Lawrence to a minor league contract, per an announcement from the York Revolution of the independent Atlantic League. Lawrence had signed with the indie ball club in March but is now returning to the affiliated ranks. He has been assigned to Triple-A Buffalo.
Lawrence might be a familiar name to some Jays fans. The right-hander made his MLB debut with Toronto in April 2017 but was claimed off waivers by the Mariners about a month thereafter. He went on to log a decent number of innings out of the Seattle bullpen from 2017-18. Altogether, Lawrence compiled a 6.64 ERA over 38 appearances (including two starts) in the big leagues over that two-year stretch.
Seattle granted Lawrence his release following the 2018 season so he could pursue an opportunity in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He spent much of the following year with a minor league affiliate of NPB’s Hiroshima Carp before returning stateside in 2020. Lawrence spent last season at the Twins alternate training site but didn’t get a big league call. The 33-year-old will look to work his way back to the majors for the organization with which he began his career.
Yankees Reinstate Gleyber Torres From Injured List
Before this evening’s game against the Rangers, the Yankees announced they reinstated shortstop Gleyber Torres from the injured list. Torres is in the starting lineup tonight, hitting fifth. To create active roster space, fellow infielder Rougned Odor was placed on the paternity list.
Torres has been out of action since May 11 after testing positive for COVID-19. The 24-year-old had previously been fully vaccinated and was fortunately said to be asymptomatic. He’ll now look to turn around his season line, which currently sits at .240/.331/.304 across 142 plate appearances. It’s the second consecutive year in which Torres has reached base a fair amount but not hit for power, a surprising development after he slugged .535 and popped 38 homers during his age-22 season in 2019.
Odor had just returned from an IL stint himself- in his case, due to a left knee sprain. The 27-year-old has just a .182/.280/.379 line over his first 75 plate appearances in the Bronx. Nevertheless, the Yankees have been intrigued enough by Odor to give him 19 starts at second base, and he figures to get some more work at the position when he returns. Players on the paternity list can miss between one and three games.
Angels Select Dillon Peters
The Angels announced that they have selected left-hander Dillon Peters and optioned righty Jaime Barria. The club outrighted Peters last winter.
The 28-year-old Peters appeared in the majors during the previous four seasons with the Marlins and Angels. Peters has recorded a 5.83 ERA/5.22 SIERA with a 16.7 percent strikeout rate and a 9.9 percent walk rate over 132 2/3 big league frames. He has also had trouble at the Triple-A level, where he has logged a 6.15 ERA in 169 2/3 innings.
Diamondbacks Reinstate Ketel Marte
The Diamondbacks announced that they have reinstated Ketel Marte from the 10-day injured list and optioned outfielder Nick Heath to Triple-A Reno.
Arizona has gone almost the entire season without Marte, who landed on the IL on April 8 with a right hamstring strain. The 27-year-old began the season as the Diamondbacks’ No. 1 choice in center field, and they’ve since left the position to a combination of Heath, Tim Locastro, Pavin Smith and Daulton Varsho. D-backs center fielders rank a below-average 23rd in fWAR (minus-0.2) and 24th in wRC+ (80).
Marte, 27, was red hot to begin the campaign, as he slashed .462/.500/.846 with two home runs in 28 plate appearances. That was more like the MVP-contending Marte the Diamondbacks saw in 2019, not the one who hit .287/.323/.409 with two homers in 195 PA last year.