MLB Rumors - MLBTradeRumors.com

Shutdown Notes: Undrafted Players, Pitcher Usage, Blue Jays

By Anthony Franco | May 24, 2020 at 11:38am CDT

As MLB prepares its proposal to the MLBPA on economics issues next Tuesday, let’s take a look at some other notes related to the league’s shutdown.

In the wake of massive revenue losses, MLB has instituted a five round draft in 2020, down from its usual forty, with undrafted players’ signing bonuses capped at $20K. Limiting the selection pool will no doubt push many talented prep prospects to college, but it could also spur some to take a less traditional route. Alex Speier of the Boston Globe argues the shortened draft and spending limits could push some undrafted players to pursue immediate pro opportunities in Japan or South Korea, where their earning potential would be significantly higher. Indeed, at least one team in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball is already preparing for an unusually high volume of undrafted talent, Speier reports. Such a move wouldn’t be entirely without precedent. Right-hander Carter Stewart signed a six-year deal with NPB’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in lieu of reentering the MLB draft after medical issues derailed his talks with the Braves, who had selected him in the first round out of high school in 2018.
More from Speier, who also examines the potential repercussions of the shutdown on pitcher usage this season. He spoke with Dr. Christopher Ahmad, who warned earlier this month that play stoppages at all levels could lead to a spike in Tommy John surgeries if pitchers attempt to ramp back up too quickly. Ahmad reiterated to Speier that the risks may not be as prevalent for MLB players, whose personal training has been better regimented and supervised remotely by club staff, than they are for amateur players who have had less oversight in recent months. Nevertheless, MLB players won’t be immune from consequences if the league is able to return. An abbreviated Spring Training 2.0 and likely expansion of rosters will cause teams to curtail their pitchers’ workloads whenever possible, Speier feels.
Yesterday, the Blue Jays guaranteed their employees there would be no furloughs or layoffs through at least October 1. Team president Mark Shapiro tells John Lott of the Athletic the organization’s ability to keep people on-board enables them to deploy staff in unconventional ways. Most notably, minor-league coaches and analysts, who in a normal setting would have daily gameday responsibilities, have been brought into the Blue Jays’ draft process this year. Those coaches and player development staff have taken on a larger than normal role in evaluating potential selections’ mechanics and projections, Shapiro tells Lott.

The Blockbuster That Brought The Tigers Their Most Valuable Trade Chip

By Anthony Franco | May 24, 2020 at 9:46am CDT

The Blue Jays were the talk of the 2015 trade deadline. A few days after bringing in star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki from the Rockies, the Jays struck for the top rental starting pitcher on the market: Tigers’ left-hander David Price. Amidst a seven-year run of pristine durability and general excellence, 2015 was perhaps Price’s peak season. At the time of the deal, he was sitting on a 2.53 ERA over 146 innings.

It was a fascinating swap for a number of reasons. The 52-51 Jays were only 1.5 games above the Tigers in the standings, making the organizations’ decisions to take diverging approaches at the deadline particularly interesting. At the time, Fangraphs gave the talented, but to that point underperforming, Toronto club a 48.9% shot of reaching the postseason, while the Tigers’ playoff odds sat at a lowly 9.7%. In that context, it makes sense then-Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopolous considered the time right to push his chips in; it’s equally sensible then-Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski pivoted his organization toward a rebuild.

Just as notable was the steep acquisition cost. The Jays sent the Tigers a trio of left-handed pitching prospects, led by Daniel Norris, who had entered that season as Baseball America’s #18 overall prospect. He’d had some strike-throwing issues in the minors, but Norris looked the part of a potential power mid-rotation starter.

Unfortunately, Norris has never really made good on that immense promise. In four-plus seasons in Detroit, the former second-rounder has a cumulative 4.56 ERA/4.41 FIP in 396.1 innings. His once-dominant stuff has waxed and waned in that time. Norris quietly had a strong second half in 2019, particularly after being limited to three innings per start in August. Perhaps there’s hope yet for the 27-year-old to find his niche.

Even if Norris hasn’t turned out the way Detroit fans may have envisioned, the Tigers have gotten plenty of long-term value from the Price deal. Matthew Boyd was arguably viewed as the third piece at the time, behind Norris and Jairo Labourt. (Labourt, then a well-regarded low minors starter, never panned out, even after moving to the bullpen). Boyd had already reached the majors but was viewed as a back-of-the-rotation type. Suffice it to say most didn’t envision him emerging as one of the game’s premier strikeout artists, but that’s exactly what he did in 2019. Among pitchers with at least 100 innings, Boyd ranked thirteenth in strikeout rate (30.2%) while maintaining his long-lauded control (6.2% walk rate).

Boyd’s 4.56 ERA didn’t match up with those strong peripherals, mostly due to an abundance of home runs. Indeed, he’s a fly ball pitcher who may always serve up a few too many longballs to be a top-of-the-rotation arm. As much as any pitcher in baseball, Boyd could stand to benefit if the ball is less lively than it has been in recent seasons. More than ever, though, teams covet pitchers with swing-and-miss stuff. Between his four-seamer and slider, Boyd has a pair of bat-missing weapons.

With the Tigers yet to emerge from the rebuild the Price trade symbolically kicked off, Boyd himself could be on the move in the near future. Detroit didn’t actively look to trade him last offseason, but the club also seems unlikely to contend by 2022, his final season of team control. He’ll no doubt pique contending teams’ interest and would bring back a much stronger return than his ERA might otherwise suggest.

As for the Jays, their story has been told many times, although their fans may not mind hearing it once more. They stormed back in the second half, not only securing a playoff berth but erasing a seven-game deficit to win the AL East. Toronto knocked off the Rangers in the ALDS that year in one of the more memorable series in recent history. Their magical second-half run came to an end in the ALCS at the hands of the eventual World Series champion Royals. Price was instrumental to that success, tossing 74.1 innings of 2.30 ERA ball in the season’s final two months. He parlayed his longtime excellence into a seven year, $217MM deal with the Red Sox that offseason.

All told, the trade looks like a win for both sides. The Blue Jays got an elite two months from an ace to help propel them to a division title. The Tigers have gotten plenty of valuable innings over the longer term. Indeed, they got their high strikeout, mid-rotation southpaw out of the deal, even if it wasn’t the player anyone expected to it be.

AL East Notes: Paxton, Rays, Iglesias, Martin

By Mark Polishuk | May 23, 2020 at 9:16pm CDT

After undergoing back surgery in early February, Yankees southpaw James Paxton was given a timeline of three-to-four months before he could return to the field. As we approach the end of that estimated recovery period, Paxton described his back as “a non-issue” in an interview Friday on the YES Network (hat tip to ESPN.com). “I feel totally healthy, so I’ll be ready to go as soon as the season comes about….I think I’m back to full strength,” Paxton said, noting that he has already thrown an estimated 12-14 bullpen sessions.

If there is any silver lining for the Yankees in this league-wide shutdown, the lack of game action has allowed several injured Yankees to recover without missing any time. As such, should the 2020 season begin in early July as rumored, New York could have Paxton, Giancarlo Stanton, and possibly Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks all available for the roster. It will be a particularly important season for Paxton, who is scheduled to hit free agency this winter and projects to be one of the top starters available on the open market. While the back surgery only adds to Paxton’s not-insubstantial injury history, a big performance in whatever consists of a 2020 season would certainly help Paxton’s case at a healthy multi-year contract in the offseason.

Have The Royals Found Another Rule 5 Gem?

By Mark Polishuk | May 23, 2020 at 7:30pm CDT

After selecting Joakim Soria out of the Padres’ farm system in the 2006 Rule 5 Draft, it could be argued that the Royals are still in the “playing with house money” honeymoon phase of the Rule 5 process. After all, even landing a Rule 5 player who can stick on a Major League roster for an entire season is a success, never mind landing a two-time All-Star like Soria through his 2007-11 heyday as Kansas City’s closer.

Eleven years after drafting Soria, it seems like the Royals again struck gold via the Rule 5 process. While Brad Keller has yet to reach All-Star levels, the right-hander has already enjoyed enough success over his first two MLB seasons that he looks like a solid building block for a young K.C. team.

Keller was an eighth-round pick for the Diamondbacks in the 2013 draft, and through five pro seasons had compiled some decent but unspectacular numbers in the Arizona farm system. Over 130 1/3 innings for Double-A Jackson in 2017, Keller posted a 4.68 ERA, 7.6 K/9, and 1.95 K/BB rate, which wasn’t quite good enough for him to make the grade amidst something of a 40-man roster crunch for the D’Backs.

Coming off a 93-win season and a NLDS appearance in 2017, the Diamondbacks were focused on using much of their available 40-man spaces on players who could potentially provide immediate help in 2018, as GM Mike Hazen explained to the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro two years ago. “Our scouts liked [Keller]. We liked him,” Hazen said. “We made the conscious decision not to add him because of where he was in proximity to the Major League team, where we were in the cycle, what we wanted to use our 40-man spots for, we wanted to be aggressive in the offseason in claiming guys…that were closer to the big leagues in our mind.”

So, the D’Backs left Keller unprotected in December 2017 draft, and it didn’t take long for another team to pounce on the right-hander. However, that other team wasn’t actually the Royals, whose spot in the Rule 5 draft order didn’t fall until the #18 spot that year. Instead it was the Reds who took Keller with the fifth pick, and then promptly dealt him to Kansas City for cash considerations. (The Royals swung a similar move just one pick later, acquiring sixth pick Burch Smith for cash from the Mets after New York selected Smith out of Tampa Bay’s farm system.)

Smith also ended up spending the entire 2018 season on the K.C. roster, though he was cut loose after posting a 6.92 ERA over 78 innings. Keller, on the other hand, was much more of an immediate success. After posting a 2.01 ERA over his first 22 1/3 frames of work out of Kansas City’s bullpen in 2018, Keller was promoted to the rotation and continued to succeed. The righty had a 3.28 ERA over his 20 starts, striking out 83 batters (against 43 walks) over 118 innings.

Keller’s sophomore year wasn’t quite as impressive, though he still managed a quite respectable 4.19 ERA, 1.74 K/BB, and 6.6 K/9 over 165 1/3 frames, all as a member of the Royals rotation. It could be argued that Keller was perhaps fortunate to manage that 4.19 mark, as some ERA predictors (4.94 xFIP, 5.23 SIERA) were significantly higher, and batters made much more solid contract off him in 2019 than in 2018. The Statcast metrics also took a dim view of Keller’s 2019 performance, with a whole lot of blue — as in, below-average — numbers for Keller in comparison to other pitchers in exit velocity, xwOBA, strikeout percentage, and several other categories.

That said, advanced metrics don’t tend to favor low-strikeout hurlers like Keller who specialize in keeping the ball on the ground. Among pitchers with at least 300 innings tossed over the last two seasons, Keller has the lowest (8.4%) home run rate in baseball, and the second-highest (52%) grounder rate. These outstanding numbers are particularly valuable in this era of the lively ball, and Keller could further benefit from some improved defense behind him, should Maikel Franco provide any sort of upgrade at third base.

All told, 4.8 fWAR over two seasons already represents a very nice return on the Royals’ initial minor cash outlay to Cincinnati. Keller doesn’t turn 25 until July, and he doesn’t reach arbitration eligibility until this coming offseason, putting him under the Royals’ control through the 2023 campaign. Under normal circumstances, Keller could be a player the Royals might have already locked up to a contract extension, and while all extension talks are halted under the current transactions freeze, it wouldn’t be a surprise if K.C. began some talks with Keller’s representatives once regular business gets back underway.

While truly major Rule 5 Draft success stories are relatively few and far between these days, a team only needs to hit on one pick to make the enterprise worthwhile. Finding a big league talent for virtually nothing is a win for any team, and if that talent is a mid-20’s starting pitcher who looks like he can hang in at least the middle of a big league rotation, the Royals got a valuable boost to their latest rebuilding effort.

MLB Will Propose Financial Plan To Players On Tuesday

By Jeff Todd | May 23, 2020 at 6:15pm CDT

TODAY: Though the league’s proposal is still days away, there is “more optimism” that a deal can be reached to launch the 2020 season, according to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (Twitter links). While many details still stand in the way of an agreement, both the league and the MLBPA are aware of the stakes, both the financial cost if no games are played, as well as the “understanding on both sides what cancellation of [the] season would do to” damage baseball as a whole. To this end, Heyman writes that the “belief is, both sides will compromise” in some fashion from their current positions — the owners’ desire for a 50/50 revenue split and the players’ desire for prorated salaries.

MAY 22: There’s been an awful lot of debate surrounding the financials of a prospective 2020 MLB campaign, but the league has yet to issue a formal proposal to the MLB Players Association. That will finally take place on Tuesday, per Evan Drellich of The Athletic (via Twitter).

What isn’t yet known is just what sort of concept the league will ultimately put in front of the players. Prior talk of a 50/50 revenue-sharing plan for salaries was met with quite some angst from the labor perspective. That set off a round of bizarre debate regarding the meaning of the sides’ late-March preliminary agreement on resuming play in 2020.

The MLBPA position remains that the players have already agreed to a pro rata reduction of pay and shouldn’t be forced to give up more — unless, at least, the league comes forward with additional information demonstrating it would not be economically feasible to stage a season otherwise. The league side believes the original agreement really didn’t address the matter of salaries in the event that games are played without attending fans (as seems all but certain).

At the end of the day, regardless of the interpretation of the prior agreement, the sides will need to find common ground on salaries to get an already-challenging 2020 campaign rolling. And there are immense incentives for both sides to figure things out. It’d be a true shocker to see a stalemate hold up a resumption of play. The effort to avoid that mutually disastrous outcome — and to jockey for the best position short of it — will begin a new chapter upon the presentation of this new proposal on Tuesday.

The Rangers’ New-Look Rotation Has Big-Time Upside

By George Miller | May 23, 2020 at 4:47pm CDT

Historically, pitching has not been a strength of the Texas Rangers. The franchise has consistently found itself sorely lacking true aces; outside of Nolan Ryan, there aren’t really any iconic pitchers that come to mind when you think of the Rangers. Kenny Rogers, anyone?

That trend held true once again last year, with the Rangers posting an overall 5.09 ERA that ranked seventh-worst in baseball. That said, Lance Lynn and Mike Minor anchored the top of the rotation admirably, each garnering Cy Young consideration and holding the staff intact during the hot Texas summer.

But when the 2020 season boots up, Lynn and Minor will have some help, and starting pitching may indeed be a strength for this year’s iteration of the team. GM Jon Daniels and company made a concerted effort in the winter to acquire starting pitchers—and they did so at relatively little cost, meaning that a bit of short-term ambition likely won’t impeach on the franchise’s future plans.

Corey Kluber is the big-name addition, and the two-time Cy Young winner should do plenty to bolster the Rangers’ staff. Even so, the team didn’t mortgage the future to bring him aboard: Kluber is only guaranteed a contract for this year, with a vesting option that could keep him in Texas through 2021. Coming off a season in which he could pitch in just seven games, he was acquired in exchange for Delino DeShields and Emmanuel Clase, a move that was widely praised at the time and looks even worse for Cleveland in light of Clase’s PED suspension.

But the smaller-scale signings of Kyle Gibson and Jordan Lyles, while not deserving of the same attention as the acquisition of a decade-defining pitcher like Kluber, could together have just as great an impact on the Rangers’ success as Kluber. In the offseason, Lyles signed on with a two-year, $16MM deal, while Gibson earned himself a three-year contract worth $28MM. Together, they’ll make $19MM in 2020, just a hair more than Kluber’s salary.

Lyles has been around forever, it seems, breaking in as a young arm with the Astros and Rockies, but it took until his age-28 season for him to put it all together as a starter. After a slow start with the Pirates earned him a trade to Milwaukee, he put up career-best numbers, striking out 146 batters in 141 innings, an unprecedented rate for Lyles.

How come? The simple version is that Lyles began relying less and less on his sinker, a staple in his repertoire throughout the early stages of his career. His sinker usage dropped to a minuscule 1.7% last year while he threw four-seam fastballs 50.2% of the time, more than he ever had before. The curveball also became a more important weapon in his pitch mix.

That isn’t too unlike the formula that Lance Lynn rode to his career-best 2019 season. Just like Lyles, Lynn’s sinker usage hit a career low last year, replaced almost entirely by four-seam fastballs—largely in the upper part of the strike zone. This isn’t unique to the Rangers—the Astros’ unparalleled pitching brilliance hinges on this philosophy—and it’s a trend that has redefined the way we look at pitching in MLB.

It’s an approach that worked for the Rangers last year, Lynn’s first in Texas, and perhaps Daniels is confident that his staff can use it to produce similar results with Lyles and Gibson this year. Sure enough, the sinker has been Gibson’s most-used pitch through his first five years as a big-leaguer. Sound familiar? Granted, Gibson’s four-seamer hasn’t been a great pitch for him, but throwing fewer sinkers could in turn lead to a jump in his slider usage, a high-spin pitch that may be a hidden gem.

Still, pitching at the MLB level is not as simple as flipping a switch and saying, “sinker bad, four-seam good.” That approach can’t be uniformly applied to every pitcher in baseball with the same results; there’s a reason careers have been forged around the sinker. And yet, the proliferation of the high fastball in MLB lends credence to its value, and the Rangers may have pursued the likes of Gibson and Lyles with that style in mind.

But that’s only half the battle; the burden then falls on the coaching staff and players themselves to accept and implement adjustments. It’s why we still play the games when there’s such a wealth of knowledge out there. So we’ll anxiously await the 2020 season to see whether the on-field results look as good as the ideas that underpin them.

The Rays Left An Asset Unprotected And A Division Rival Noticed

By TC Zencka | May 23, 2020 at 12:02pm CDT

It’s no secret that the Baltimore Orioles need pitching. While GM Mike Elias and company work on building a development pipeline, the O’s are spending a lot of time scouring other organizations for excess talent to skim off the top.

Take 30-year-old right-hander Cole Sulser. Baltimore’s waiver claim in early October doesn’t jump out as an impact move, but there’s potential beneath the surface for Sulser and the birds. Before digging into Sulser’s prospects, let’s cover the backstory.

In December of 2018, the Indians, Mariners, and Rays engaged in a three-way deal that shuffled around first baseman candidates. In this rare three-way challenge trade, each team came away with a major-league first baseman. The Rays chose Yandy Diaz, the Mariners Edwin Encarnacion, and the Indians actually snagged two first basemen in the deal: Jake Bauers and Carlos Santana. Tagging along, Sulser went from the Indians to the Rays, for whom he made 7 scoreless appearances last season. But the Rays are no longer in line to be the beneficiaries of a potential Sulser breakout.

Granted, it’s suspect that the Indians and Rays – two organizations with strong reputations for identifying and developing pitching – both passed up on the opportunity to roster Sulser. Sulser isn’t locked into a roster spot with the Orioles either, but he should have an easier time carving out a role with the pitching-needy Orioles than he did with either of his previous organizations. The short season very well may expand rosters, too, giving Sulser a greater opportunity to toe the rubber in Baltimore.

So where does the optimism for Sulser come from? Last year Sulser made 49 appearances (4 starts), spanning a robust 66 innings with a 3.29 ERA. His peripherals look good with a 12.1 K/9 to 3.3 BB/9. He put together similar numbers the year prior while in the Indians system (3.86 ERA over 60 ⅔ innings with 14.1 K/9 to 2.5 BB/9). Those numbers were helped by including a 9-inning scoreless stint in Double-A, without which a 4.53 ERA in Triple-A doesn’t look quite as impressive.

It is, however, a positive sign to see Sulser improve year-over-year when repeating the level. The Dartmouth grad doesn’t have overwhelming stuff, but he’s made himself into a double-digit strikeout-per-nine guy over the last couple of seasons. Sulser could yet turn himself into a late-blooming bullpen piece. He’s probably not Nick Anderson, but there’s value to unearth from an arm like Sulser. Breakouts for players on the wrong side of thirty aren’t exactly commonplace, of course, but late bloomers often emerge in the bullpen. Sulser doesn’t have to become the next Kirby Yates to add value to the O’s organization. With 5 appearances in spring training with a 1.53 ERA and 8 strikeouts in 4 ⅔ innings, he was off to a good start.

The Orioles may not have a lot of crucial innings to lockdown, but if they can help Sulser establish himself as a reliable arm, he could become the type of cost-controlled asset teams in contention ask after. For the Orioles these days, that’s more-or-less the goal.

Wilmer Flores Changes Representation

By TC Zencka | May 23, 2020 at 10:23am CDT

Infielder Wilmer Flores has new representation. Flores, 28, will now be repped by Cesar Suarez of the Beverly Hills Sports Council, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. Flores’ change in representation will soon be reflected in MLBTR’s Agency Database. Flores had previously been repped by the McNamara Baseball Group.

Suarez is a former player himself, though he never reached the majors after signing with the Yankees as a 16-year-old, per his bio on the BHS Council’s website. He hails from Flores’ native Venezuela, as do other notable Suarez clients such as Rougned Odor and Salvador Perez. Heyman did not mention any specific impetus behind Flores’ decision to make a change at this time.

Flores, 28, is coming off a one-and-done year in Arizona. The utility infielder made the most of his time in the desert. After signing a one-year, $4.25MM guaranteed deal with the Diamondbacks, he appeared in 89 games, slashing a robust .314/.361/.487, good for a career-best 120 wRC+. Flores also missed more than a month of playing time after a foot contusion in late May pushed him to the injured list. Arizona declined a $6MM player option, making him a free agent for a $500K buyout instead.

When he was on the field, Flores performed. If you’re looking to poke holes in Flores’ 2019 output, a .332 BABIP is a good place to start, but Flores has long been a strong offensive contributor, so it’s not totally a smoke show. Still, career norms of a .268 BA and .277 BABIP point to some regression. Statcast credits Flores’ 2019 with a .329 xwOBA (league average is .318 xwOBA).

As for his new agent, there’s no immediate contractual work pending after Flores signed a two-year deal with the Giants this offseason. He made back the $6MM he was in line for in Arizona, only it’s spread out across two seasons. Flores will make $3MM in each of 2020 and 2021, while the Giants hold a $3.5MM option for 2022. If Flores can flourish in San Francisco, he should have the opportunity to net another major league contract either before his age-30 or age-31 season.

The Giants haven’t been all that active in free agency recently, so their signing of Flores was notable, especially since there’s not an obvious place to put the contact-oriented infielder. Veterans like Evan Longoria, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt are entrenched around the infield on big-money deals that run concurrently to Flores’. There should be at-bats for Flores at second base, but he’s not alone there either, as Mauricio Dubon offers the Giants a higher ceiling with more team control as a pre-arb player, and Donovan Solano is coming off a mini-breakout of his own (.330/.360/.456 in 81 games last year). The presence of local hero Pablo Sandoval also muddies the waters for Flores – if Kung Pu Panda ends up making the team.

The potential for a Universal DH should give Flores some hope for grabbing a few extra PAs, but the Giants are actually pretty set on that front after bringing back the hugely popular Hunter Pence. Fans will be happy to see Pence’s name back on the lineup card, but even from a baseball standpoint, Pence is coming off a year when he unexpectedly put together an All-Star campaign at age-36. Pence finished the year hitting .297/.358/.552 with 18 home runs in 83 games as the Rangers’ DH. Like Flores, Pence also missed a fair amount of time due to injury. Given the ages of Longoria (34), Pence (37), Crawford (33), Belt (32), Sandoval (33) and even Solano (32), Flores is actually one of the young guys in the infield mix, despite his status as a 7-year MLB veteran. It’s not obvious where his playing time will come from, but there are many paths that lead to Flores seeing time as a regular infielder.

Coronavirus Notes: Upcoming Negotiations, Furloughs, Angels, Brewers, KBO

By TC Zencka | May 23, 2020 at 9:15am CDT

It’s make-or-break time for MLB and the MLBPA on forging a path to baseball in 2020. With some significant negotiations looming this week, ESPN’s Jeff Passan runs through some of the biggest questions facing the league. The battle between players and owners is rife with potential roadblocks, and it’s not just the conditions of 2020 that are at stake. With the CBA renegotiation still in the (what-now-feels-like distant) future, both sides are aware of the impact any concession can make to the bigger picture. The way this week’s negotiations are handled could reveal the potential the two sides have of forging an effective working relationship moving forward. One would think now would be an ideal time for opposing sides to come together, and yet it’s just not as simple as that when billions of dollars are at stake. There are countless people and opinions to take into account on both sides of the aisle. While we await a loaded week of negotiations, let’s check in on how teams are handling their non-player-and-coach employees…

Teams are taking a variety of approaches when it comes to their employees in the wake of COVID-19, but the Angels have come under fire for taking a more drastic approach than most, per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. The Angels will be furloughing employees from nearly every department, including, in the words of Rosenthal, “weakening its amateur scouting department heading into the draft.” The optics aren’t great here for the large-market Angels, especially when clubs like the Brewers, Giants, and Phillies have made commitments to retaining their staff at least through October. The Blue Jays also recently made the decision to keep employees’ on their full-time salaries through October 1, tweets John Lott, a frequent contributor to The Athletic. The Brewers have been the most aggressively pro-employee, per Rosenthal, committing to keeping their staff on through the entirety of the baseball season. The pro-employee approach is laudable, though not necessarily all that shocking coming out of Milwaukee. The Brewers have increasingly stepped into the spotlight in recent years as a progressive organization, from the supportive atmosphere provided players to making special efforts to get Milwaukee residents in to see games to their very team-building approach. The Angels, meanwhile, might find tough sledding ahead when it comes to signing undrafted amateur players. Without their typical scouting infrastructure in place, those relationships will be harder to build in an open market, and it’s possible the decisions being made by ownership today will have far-reaching consequences for the organization’s future.
The Rays, meanwhile, are readying to return to the field. Camp will re-open on Monday for a small collection of 15 to 20 players, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Those players involved will still be keeping a separation of six feet from other players, and workouts will be limited. Still, it’s a positive sign to see players start to congregate again around a playing field. It’s also, no doubt, a risky proposition, but so long as safety precautions are followed and we don’t see a breakout of cases among these players, these workouts could be a harbinger of more baseball to come.
Baseball is back already in some places of the world, of course. The KBO is about 17 games into their 2020 season, and they’re about to get a lot more popular. A new deal was announced for ESPN to become the English-language home of KBO games set to broadcast around the world, per ESPN’s Santa Brito. Play-by-play announcers will continue to provide commentary while social distancing. ESPN will soon be broadcasting KBO games “throughout Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean (including the Dominican Republic), Europe, Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia.”

1990 AL Rookies Of The Year: How Many Hall Of Famers?

By Connor Byrne | May 23, 2020 at 1:31am CDT

After reviewing the careers of 1990s National League Rookies of the Year, let’s move over to the AL…

1990 – Sandy Alomar Jr., C, Indians:

Kevin Appier, John Olerud and Robin Ventura were among the rookies Alomar beat out for the award that year. While those players had better careers than Alomar, he did turn in a few solid seasons, including in 1990. He was a .290/.326/.418 hitter with 2.4 fWAR then. He wound up playing through 2007 and totaling 13.2 fWAR in almost 5,000 plate appearances.

1991 – Chuck Knoblauch, 2B, Twins:

The rookie version of Knoblauch was a capable contributor on a Twins team that won the World Series in 1991, when he batted .281/.351/.350 with 2.2 fWAR and 25 steals during the regular season and put up even better offensive numbers in the playoffs. Knoblauch made his first of four All-Star trips the next season, but he really came into his own from 1995-97. During that three-year span, Knoblauch trailed only Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza in position player fWAR (20.6). Nevertheless, after the last of those seasons, the Twins traded him to the Yankees for Eric Milton, Danny Mota and Brian Buchanan. Knoblauch was a member of three World Series winners and four straight AL pennant teams as a Yankee, though his overall production fell and he developed an awful case of the yips as a second baseman. His defensive troubles forced him to move to the outfield for the tail end of his career – which came to a close with the Royals in 2002. Still, Knoblauch was quite successful in the bigs, where he slashed .289/.378/.406 with 39.8 fWAR.

1992 – Pat Listach, SS, Brewers:

Listach beat out fellow speedster Kenny Lofton for this award, hitting .290/.352/.349 with one homer, 54 steals and 3.4 fWAR. But Lofton ended up a far superior big leaguer to Listach, who only played through 1997. Also an ex-Astro, Listach batted .251/.316/.309 with 1.5 fWAR.

1993 – Tim Salmon, OF, Angels:

This was the first of five 30-home run seasons for Salmon, who put up 31 en route to 4.7 fWAR. For the most part, Salmon was an excellent offensive player during his career – all of which he spent with the Angels from 1992-2006 – evidenced by his .282/.385/.491 line and 299 HRs. He put up 35.4 fWAR along the way and is considered one of the top players in franchise history. However, with Mike Trout now in the fold, Salmon’s no longer the best Angel with a fish for a last name.

1994 – Bob Hamelin, 1B, Royals:

Hamelin upended eventual greats Manny Ramirez and Jim Edmonds in the voting that season, but it was hardly the start of a storied career. While Hamelin hit .282/.388/.599 with 24 homers and 2.4 fWAR as a rookie, he never reached the 20 mark again through his last season in 1998, and he was a replacement-level player (0.0. fWAR) after his first year. But he’ll always have this, arguably the worst baseball card ever.

1995 – Marty Cordova, OF, Twins:

Cordova had a few productive campaigns from 1995-2003, but Year 1 was his best. He debuted with a .277/.352/.486 line, 24 homers, 20 steals and 3.6 fWAR. He ultimately finished his career a .274/.344/.448 hitter with 122 dingers, 57 stolen bases and 6.5 fWAR.

1996 – Derek Jeter, SS, Yankees:

Never heard of him. Seriously, though, 24 years after winning AL ROY, Jeter can be considered one of the most recognizable athletes in history. He went on to a Hall of Fame career, all of which he spent from 1995-2014 with the Yankees (who retired his number), with 14 All-Star nods and five titles. The Captain was a .310/.377/.440 hitter with 260 homers, 358 steals and 73.0 fWAR. As a first-year man, Jeter batted .314/.370/.430, totaling 10 HRs, 14 SBs and 2.2 fWAR.

1997 – Nomar Garciaparra, SS, Red Sox:

A year after the Red Sox saw an archrival Yankee win the award, they found a shortstop capable of going to to toe with Jeter. Garciappara’s greatest four-year stretch spanned from his rookie season through 2000, during which Jeff Bagwell and Barry Bonds were the only position players to outdo his 27.5 fWAR. A good portion of that (6.4) came during Garciaparra’s first year, when he slashed .306/.342/.534 with 30 homers and 22 steals. Unfortunately, peak Garciaparra didn’t last nearly as long as he should have because of injuries. But he did still manage extremely effective overall production (.313/.361/.521; 229 HRs, 95 SBs; 41.5 fWAR; six All-Star appearances) before his career ended in 2009.

1998 – Ben Grieve, OF, Athletics:

Grieve was a good hitter throughout his career, which ended in 2005, though never more productive than he was a rookie. He hit .288/.386/.458 with 18 HRs that season. Four years later, the A’s sent Grieve to the then-Devil Rays as part of a trade for Johnny Damon. However, Grieve didn’t provide a ton of value in Tampa Bay. He left the game as a .269/.367/.442 hitter with 118 homers and 6.7 fWAR.

1999 – Carlos Beltran, OF, Royals:

The start of a Hall of Fame career? Depends on how you view Beltran in light of his sign-stealing issues with the Astros and his fleeting stint as the Mets’ manager. In terms of production, though, he has a strong case, and it all began during a ’99 campaign in which he slashed .293/.337/.454, went 20/20 (22 HRs, 27 SBs) and accrued 4.3 fWAR. Beltran went on to account for 67.9 fWAR as a member of several different teams through 2017, bat .279/.350/.486 with 435 homers and 312 steals, and earn nine All-Star trips.

« Previous Page

Load More Posts

Headlines

Navigation

MLBTR INFO

Connect