Pirates Acquire Dustin Fowler From Athletics
5:59pm: The teams have announced the trade. To make room for Fowler on their 40-man roster, the Pirates placed southpaw Austin Davis on the 60-day injured list with a left elbow sprain.
4:28pm: The Pirates have acquired outfielder Dustin Fowler from the Athletics for cash considerations, according to Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic. Fowler spent a brief time in limbo after the A’s designated him for assignment Monday.
Pittsburgh will be the third big league organization for the 26-year-old Fowler, who began as an 18th-round pick of the Yankees in 2013. Fowler performed well as a minor leaguer with the Yankees and made his major league debut with the team in June 2017, but he suffered a brutal knee injury in his first game and never donned their uniform again. The Yankees wound up trading Fowler to the A’s a month later in the teams’ deal centering on right-hander Sonny Gray.
Fowler ranked as Baseball America’s 88th-best prospect in 2018, and he rebounded from his injury that year in Triple-A, where he batted .341/.364/.520 with four home runs in 13 stolen bases across 239 plate appearances. While Fowler also earned a good amount of playing time in Oakland that season, he slumped to a .224/.256/.354 line with six homers and a half-dozen steals in 203 PA and hasn’t appeared in the majors since. Fowler slashed .277/.333/.477 with 25 homers and 12 stolen bags over 606 tries during the most recent Triple-A campaign in 2019.
Although Fowler’s career hasn’t gone according to plan so far, there’s no real harm in taking a chance on his potential from the Pirates’ standpoint. Fowler may have a legitimate chance to earn a roster spot with outfielder-needy Pittsburgh, but with no minor league options remaining, the club won’t be able to send him down without potentially losing him.
Red Sox Designate Marcus Walden
The Red Sox have designated right-hander Marcus Walden for assignment, Steve Hewitt of the Boston Herald tweets. They did so to make room for the signing of utilityman Marwin Gonzalez, who’s now officially part of the team.
Walden, formerly with the Blue Jays, Athletics and Twins, signed with the Red Sox before 2017 and broke into the bigs with the club a year later. He was an effective piece of Boston’s bullpen from 2018-19 – a 92 2/3-inning run in which he averaged around 94 mph on his fastball, pitched to a 3.79 ERA/3.91 SIERA, forced grounders at a 54.3 percent clip, and logged strikeout and walk rates of 23.1 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively.
Walden amassed a whopping 78 innings in 2019, so the Red Sox were likely expecting another workhorse effort in last year’s truncated campaign. Instead, though, the 32-year-old threw a mere 13 1/3 frames over 15 appearances, in which he posted a horrific 9.45 ERA/5.67 SIERA with a 14.1 percent strikeout rate and a 12.7 percent walk rate. A dip in velocity (92.7 mph average fastball) factored into his decline.
As poorly as he pitched last year, Walden is due to earn a league-minimum salary this season – his final pre-arb campaign – and he has two minor league options remaining. It’s conceivable another team will take a chance on him in hopes that he’ll bounce back to his 2018-19 form.
Jerry Dipoto, Jarred Kelenic Respond To Kevin Mather Controversy
The Mariners are in damage-control mode following CEO Kevin Mather’s resignation in the wake of a bizarre video interview that brought considerable backlash on the organization. General manager Jerry Dipoto and manager Scott Servais called the entire situation “embarrassing” when meeting with the Seattle media this week (link via The Athletic’s Corey Brock). Dipoto sought to distance the organization from Mather’s comments, repeatedly emphasizing that Mather was just one individual and that his views were not shared throughout the organization.
Mather, of course, not only all but admitted to service-time manipulation of the organization’s top prospects but also called Marco Gonzales “boring,” said Kyle Seager was “overpaid” and in his last season as a Mariner — it’s not clear whether Seager expected to return after the conclusion of his current contract — and made disparaging comments about being required to pay translators for Japanese players while also slamming top prospect Julio Rodriguez‘s English-speaking skills in unprompted fashion (among many other bizarre and at-times troubling comments).
Mather indicated within his interview that top outfield prospect Jarred Kelenic rejected a long-term contract offer, and he only narrowly stopped short of plainly stating the manner in which they planned to delay his MLB debut to gain an extra year of team control. Mather stated that Kelenic would not be on the Opening Day roster, regardless of spring performance, but that he’d be in the Majors by the end of April. It’s true that most teams do this, but public admission of this nature is fuel for a grievance from the MLBPA and only further fans the flames in the looming collective bargaining talks.
Unsurprisingly, Mather’s comments didn’t sit well with Kelenic’s camp. Agent Brodie Scoffield and Kelenic himself spoke to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale yesterday, and both parties indicated that Kelenic would’ve been in the Majors last year had he been willing to sign the extension offer put forth by the Mariners prior to the 2020 season.
Scoffield told Nightengale it was “made crystal clear to Jarred” that the decision to keep him at the Mariners’ alternate training site for the 2020 season was driven by service time. “There’s no question that if he signed that contract, he would have been in the big leagues,” said Scoffield. Kelenic himself agreed, saying it was the “God’s honest truth” that fact was communicated to him multiple times. “It got old,” said Kelenic.
While Dipoto clearly wanted to distance himself from as much of Mather’s commentary as possible, he pushed back on the notion that the Mariners have set out to deliberately game the service-time mechanism.
“I’m not sure how you construe service-time manipulation with a 21-year-old who has played 20 games above A ball and has not yet achieved 800 plate appearances as a professional player,” said the GM. That’s a rather dubious assertion, however. First and foremost, using games played is a clearly flawed benchmark following a year in which zero minor league games took place. Secondly, Mather’s blunt acknowledgment that Kelenic would not open the year with the Mariners but would be up in late April only further underscores the service-time element of the situation.
Despite all the negative attention surrounding the situation and his palpable frustration, Kelenic emphasized to Nightengale that he is wholly committed to the Mariners organization. Citing a love of the fans, the city of Seattle and his teammates, Kelenic said: “If anything, I’m more motivated to bring a World Series championship to Seattle.”
It should also be stressed that the door on a potential extension with the Mariners isn’t closed as a result of this public unpleasantness. Scoffield tells MLBTR that he and Kelenic would still listen to new proposals from the Mariners, should they want to put together another offer. Whether a middle ground can ultimately be reached can’t be known at this time, but at the very least Mariners fans should be heartened that the relationship by no means appears fractured.
Specifics of the Mariners’ original proposal aren’t known, but not all contracts for pre-MLB players are created equal. Kelenic’s teammate, Evan White, inked a six-year, $24MM deal before making his debut — a very similar pact to the one signed by Philadelphia’s Scott Kingery. White Sox left fielder Eloy Jimenez and center fielder Luis Robert, on the other hand, signed six-year pacts worth $43MM and $50MM, respectively, before making their own debuts.
The question for the Mariners now is whether they’ll try for a new deal, stay the course by keeping Kelenic in Triple-A to open the season, or bite the bullet and carry him on the Opening Day roster even without a long-term deal in place. Calling him to the Majors shortly after his service time has been sufficiently held down would be, after all of this attention, one of the more brazen examples of service manipulation in recent memory. Kelenic already spoke to Nightengale of how the now-former CEO’s comments “widened the gap” between the front office and the locker room, adding that Dipoto’s attempt to smooth things over with the players was “strange” and not particularly well-received.
It’s an ugly situation all-around. However, while Gonzales acknowledged to Brock that Mather’s words were “hurtful and personal” for a lot of the clubhouse, himself included, there could in some ways have a unifying effect on the clubhouse. “Sometimes common goals can unite you,” said Gonzales. “…Sometimes a common enemy can do the same, if not greater.”
Braves Designate Jack Mayfield For Assignment
The Braves announced that they’ve designated infielder Jack Mayfield for assignment in order to open a roster spot for their previously reported waiver claim of outfielder Guillermo Heredia from the Mets.
The 30-year-old Mayfield was claimed off waivers from the Astros organization earlier in the winter despite a shaky track record at the MLB level. In 112 plate appearances as a big leaguer, Mayfield has batted .170/.198/.283.
That said, Mayfield also carries a more robust .268/.325/.472 slash through 1224 plate appearances in Triple-A, and he’s a versatile defender with minor league options remaining. He’s graded out well in limited samples of work at second base, shortstop and third base, making him a potential bench piece or Triple-A stash for another club if they have the 40-man roster flexibility to take him on.
The Braves will have a week to trade Mayfield or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. If he does go unclaimed, he could be retained by the Braves and return to camp as a non-roster invitee.
Indians Claim Harold Ramirez, Designate Jordan Humphreys
The Indians announced Wednesday that they’ve claimed outfielder Harold Ramirez off waivers from the Marlins. Right-hander Jordan Humphreys was designated for assignment to open a spot on the 40-man roster.
The 26-year-old Ramirez debuted at the MLB level with the Marlins in May 2019 and posted a superb .368/.419/.474 batting line over his first month of action before his bat cooled off. Ramirez struggled through June and July that year before rebounding, to an extent, in the final two months of the year. Overall, his .276/.312/.416 batting line through 446 plate appearances as a rookie looked to position him well for a lengthier audition in 2020.
That didn’t happen, however, as Ramirez was one of the 20 members of the Marlins organization to test positive for Covid-19 during the team’s outbreak. When he returned from that diagnosis, he sustained a hamstring injury almost immediately and didn’t return from there on. All told, he played in just three games last summer.
Ramirez adds to what has been a consistently jumbled outfield mix for Cleveland over the past few seasons. The Indians brought in former division rival Eddie Rosario on a one-year deal to play left field, and they’ll likely give Oscar Mercado a chance to rebound in center field. Beyond that, playing time ought to be largely up for grabs, and Ramirez should be squarely in the mix, alongside Josh Naylor, Jordan Luplow, Jake Bauers, Bradley Zimmer and Daniel Johnson.
All of those players in that hodgepodge, Ramirez included, have at least one minor league option remaining, so there won’t be any cases of a player winning out solely to avoid a DFA. That should set the stage for a legitimate competition during camp, though Ramirez and Luplow are the only two right-handed bats in the bunch, which could give them an advantage.
Humphreys, 24, has yet to make his big league debut but had a big 2017 season across two Class-A levels in the Mets organization before requiring Tommy John surgery. He allowed just two runs in 13 innings of Rookie ball in 2019 as he rehabbed from that surgery and likely would’ve been ticketed for a Double-A assignment in 2020 had their been a minor league season.
The Mets traded Humphreys to the Giants in exchange for Billy Hamilton, however, and Cleveland eventually picked Humphreys up off waivers. Coincidentally, both Humphreys and Hamilton are with the Indians organization at the moment, as Hamilton inked a minor league deal earlier in the winter.
Cleveland will have a week to trade Humphreys or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. If they can indeed sneak him through waivers, he’d remain in camp as a non-roster invitee and give the club an interesting depth piece. In 169 2/3 professional innings, Humphreys has a 2.60 ERA with an above-average 26.1 percent strikeout rate and a brilliant 4.4 percent walk rate.
Braves Claim Guillermo Heredia
The Braves have claimed outfielder Guillermo Heredia off waivers from the Mets, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (Twitter link). New York had designated the 30-year-old for assignment over the weekend. By claiming Heredia, the Braves will become responsible for the entirety of the $1MM salary that he’d previously agreed upon in order to avoid an arbitration hearing with the Mets.
Heredia has spent parts of the past five seasons in the Major Leagues — mostly with the Mariners. Seattle traded him to Tampa Bay for the 2019 season, after which he was non-tendered and subsequently signed with the Pirates. The Mets claimed Heredia off waivers themselves back in August after a lackluster showing in Pittsburgh, and he went on to appear in seven games before season’s end.
Overall, Heredia slashed just .212/.278/.394 in 36 plate appearances between the two clubs. It was a small sample, to be sure, but Heredia’s prior work in the big leagues doesn’t give much more reason for optimism at the plate. He’s a career .239/.316/.344 batter in 1137 plate appearances across those four teams.
Heredia, however, is capable of playing all three outfield positions, has a minor league option remaining and does have a respectable line against left-handed pitching: .274/.337/.397. His right-handed bat will give the Braves some depth and a possible bench bat, though his skill set is somewhat similar to fellow recent waiver claim Phil Ervin. With Marcell Ozuna, Ronald Acuna Jr., Cristian Pache and Ender Inciarte all ahead of him on the depth chart, it seems likelier that he’ll be ticketed for Triple-A Gwinnett to begin the season than for Atlanta’s 26-man roster.
Covid Notes: Jose Abreu, Andrew Miller
Major League Baseball announced last Friday that just 13 of the 4,336 tests performed during the first wave of Spring Training intake testing revealed positive Covid-19 results: nine players and four staff members spread across 11 big league teams. The broad-reaching hope, of course, is that the league and players will be able to navigate a full slate of games as successfully or more successfully than they did during last year’s 60-game sprint. A few updates of note on players who are or were delayed in their arrival to camp…
- Reigning American League MVP Jose Abreu will be away from the White Sox for the time being due to a positive Covid-19 test, the team announced Wednesday. GM Rick Hahn told Daryl Van-Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times and other reporters that Abreu is asymptomatic and “believes he contracted a mild case of the disease in January, which is reinforced by the presence of COVID antibodies in additional testing.” Abreu is expected to join the White Sox “in the not-too-distant future,” Hahn added. The 34-year-old Abreu posted a monstrous .317/.370/.611 slash with 19 home runs and 15 doubles while appearing in all 60 games during 2020’s shortened schedule.
- Cardinals lefty Andrew Miller detailed his own recent bout with Covid-19 to Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Miller wasn’t one of the 13 positive tests for the league, as he tested positive 10 days prior to the date on which Cardinals pitchers and catchers were set to report. His arrival was then further delayed by a few days, in accordance with league protocols. The 35-year-old quarantined in his house’s guest room, away from his wife and children, thankfully dealing with only mild symptoms (namely a loss of smell). Miller did acknowledge that he’s dealing with some fatigue now, though he believes it is “basically from being shut down” while isolating in that bedroom. “I thought I did a pretty good job of protecting myself,” said Miller. “The vaccine is right around the corner but I didn’t quite make it there.”
Royce Lewis Diagnosed With Torn ACL, Will Undergo Surgery Friday
The Twins announced Wednesday morning that shortstop Royce Lewis, the No. 1 overall pick from the 2017 draft and one of their top two prospects, has been diagnosed with a tear in his right knee’s anterior cruciate ligament and will require surgery. The procedure comes with an expected recovery time of at least nine months, so it’s likely to wipe out his entire season. Lewis is slated to undergo surgery on Friday.
As Twins president of baseball ops Derek Falvey explained to reporters (Twitter link via Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com), Lewis had been dealing with some soreness in his knee during offseason workouts. That may not have accounted for the tear, but he also recently slipped on some ice during the blizzards in Texas, where he lives during the offseason, which worsened the discomfort. It’s not known precisely when the tear occurred, but the end result is the same.
It’s a brutal blow for both the Twins and Lewis, who had a chance to break through to the Major Leagues in 2021. While his 2019 season between Class-A Advanced and Double-A didn’t go particularly well — combined .236/.290/.371 slash — Lewis rebounded from that performance with a huge showing in the 2019 Arizona Fall League. Through 22 games there, Lewis raked at a .353/.411/.565 clip, connecting on three homers and nine doubles while going 5-for-6 in stolen base attempts. That production earned him AFL MVP honors.
While some prospect rankings have seen outfielder Alex Kirilloff surpass Lewis as the Twins’ top prospect, that’s more a testament to Kirilloff’s progress than to a decline in Lewis’ stock. Lewis has been a consensus Top 30 prospect in all of MLB since the time he was drafted, landing at No. 17 on MLB.com’s 2021 rankings and No. 26 over at Baseball America.
The setback for Lewis is particularly poorly timed given the lack of a minor league season in 2020. While he spent the summer working out at the Twins’ alternate training site in St. Paul, the 2021 campaign would’ve given Lewis a chance to participate in a much more competitive setting and further his development as he continues on toward his Major League debut. He’ll now go more than two years between that huge showing in the 2019 AFL and his next at-bat in an actual game setting.
As a high school draftee, Lewis won’t even turn 22 until June, so youth is still on his side as he works to rebound from a devastating injury. Looking down the line, his ability to regain mobility in that knee will be particularly important, as there’s already been some debate about his eventual position. Lewis was drafted as a shortstop and has spent the bulk of his career there, though some in the industry feel he’d be better-equipped to play center field. He’s also spent a bit of time at third base.
There’s no guarantee that Lewis would’ve made it to the big leagues in 2021, although with some Double-A and/or Triple-A time under his belt, he’d at least have been a consideration in the event of an injury in the infield. He’s still a major part of the organization’s future, but Lewis will now have to navigate a substantial roadblock in his path to a Target Field debut.
Phillies Have “Checked In” On Jake Odorizzi
The Phillies are among the clubs to have checked in recently on free-agent righty Jake Odorizzi‘s asking price, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets. He adds that the Angels have maintained some level of interest in the right-hander throughout free agency as well. There’s still no indication that Odorizzi is in serious talks with any individual team at this point.
It’s been a slow winter for Odorizzi, who was reported several weeks ago to be seeking a three-year pact worth around $15MM per year. A contract in that range would put the Phillies well north of the $210MM luxury tax threshold, as they’re currently about $8.5MM shy of that mark.
Given that proximity, it’s tough to see any match between the two sides without the Phillies exceeding the tax. That said, the penalty for surpassing the tax in 2021 wouldn’t be all that substantial for the Phillies — a 20 percent tax on their first $20MM worth of overages — and they’d quite likely dip back below the tax line in 2022 (assuming the system remains in place after another wave of collective bargaining talks). The Phillies will see Andrew McCutchen, Odubel Herrera and several others come off the books next year; their 2022 tax obligations are currently in the $133MM range.
As for the fit with Odorizzi specifically, there’s little denying that he’d be an upgrade in the middle of the Philadelphia staff. Odorizzi’s 2020 season was more or less wiped out by a series of non-arm injuries — an intercostal strain, a line-drive to the chest and a blister on his pitching hand — but his 2019 season was quite strong. He started 30 games and tallied 159 innings with the Twins, pitching to a 3.51 ERA with a career-best 27.1 percent strikeout rate against a strong 8.1 percent walk rate. That showing prompted the Twins to make a $17.8MM qualifying offer, which Odorizzi accepted over some multi-year interest at lower annual rates.
Aside from last year’s series of injuries, Odorizzi has been among the game’s most durable starters. From 2014-19, he averaged better than 30 starts and 165 innings per season, logging a combined 3.88 ERA and 4.20 SIERA with strikeout and walk rates that were a bit better than league average.
The Phillies, meanwhile, will open the year relying on a strong one-two punch of Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, with a solid Zach Eflin holding down the third spot on the staff. After that, top prospect Spencer Howard, the talented-but-inconsistent Vince Velasquez, and offseason signees Chase Anderson and Matt Moore will be the leading candidates to round things out. Howard struggled in his MLB debut last year but is still highly regarded. However, he also skipped Triple-A entirely and still has only six Double-A starts to his name, so the organization may feel he needs some more development time.
As for the Halos, they’re about $17MM shy of the luxury threshold, so there’s certainly room to add Odorizzi without crossing that threshold if that’s ownership’s goal. The Angels actually have a fairly deep mix of rotation options at this point, with Dylan Bundy, Andrew Heaney, Jose Quintana, Griffin Canning, Alex Cobb and Shohei Ohtani all likely to factor in early.
The Angels have been decimated by injuries in recent years, however, and that group of rotation options has some question marks within its ranks. Odorizzi certainly isn’t the ace for which Angels fans have clamored for the past few seasons, but he’d quickly become one of their top starting options were the two sides to strike a pact.
At this point, there’s no clear favorite for where Odorizzi will land. He has, at times, been connected to the Twins, Blue Jays, Giants and Red Sox (in addition to the two clubs listed here), but it’s a tough winter to be a mid-rotation starter on the market. Only four starting pitchers have agreed to multi-year deals: Trevor Bauer (Dodgers), Taijuan Walker (Mets), Mike Minor (Royals) and Chris Flexen (Mariners). Bauer was in his own class, of course, while Flexen is something of a unique case himself after a breakout showing in the KBO.
Quick Hits: Suarez, Anibal, Chatwood, Choo
The Reds have failed to add an established shortstop since last season ended, leaving them with Kyle Farmer and Jose Garcia as the leading in-house candidates to handle the position at the beginning of 2021. Third baseman Eugenio Suarez played a significant amount of short at the start of his career, so perhaps he’d be able to emerge as the Reds’ solution there now, though manager David Bell said the club is not considering the 29-year-old for the spot, Mark Sheldon of MLB.com relays. While the Reds “know” Suarez is cut out for the position, they have not had “any serious discussions about it yet,” per Bell. Putting Suarez at short could enable the Reds to move Mike Moustakas from second to third, where he has played for the majority of his career, or open up the keystone for Nick Senzel.
- Free-agent right-hander Anibal Sanchez has rejected “multiple” major league offers since he held a showcase a month ago, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets. Sanchez is holding off on signing for the time being over concerns centering on COVID-19 and the protocols that accompany it, though he’s not opting out of the season as of now, per Heyman. The soon-to-be 37-year-old struggled last season as a member of the Nationals, with whom he logged a 6.62 ERA/5.03 SIERA in 53 innings.
- Blue Jays free-agent pickup Tyler Chatwood revealed that he will work as a late-inning reliever in 2021, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet relays. Chatwood, who joined the Jays for a $3MM guarantee, has started in 143 of 197 career appearances, but the righty mostly had a rough time out of the Cubs’ rotation from 2018-20. Historically, though, there hasn’t much difference between Chatwood’s work in either role. The sample size is much larger as a starter, but he has a 4.38 ERA/.337 weighted on-base average allowed in that job versus a 4.53 ERA/.332 wOBA as a reliever.
- Outfielder/designated hitter Shin-Soo Choo returned to his native Korea on Monday, signing a one-year, $2.4MM contract. But Choo indicated that he heard from up to eight major league teams that offered him more money than he’ll make in Korea, per Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In explaining why he chose to go to the Korea Baseball Organization, Choo said, “I want to play in Korea because I want to play in front of my parents and I want to give back to Korean fans.” As Wilson notes, the 38-year-old Choo’s parents have never seen him play pro ball in person. They’ll now get that opportunity.