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Dodgers Extend Max Muncy

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1:00pm: The Dodgers have announced Muncy’s contract extension.

11:20am: Muncy’s deal will be paid out in the form of a $4.5MM signing bonus and a $1MM salary in 2020, followed by salaries of $7.5MM in 2021 and $11.5MM in 2022, DiGiovanna tweets.

10:44am: The Dodgers and slugging infielder Max Muncy have agreed to a three-year, $26MM extension that contains a club option for a fourth season, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (via Twitter). The $26MM guarantee will cover all three of Muncy’s would-be arbitration seasons (2020-22), while the fourth-year option will give the Dodgers the chance to control a free-agent year for an additional $13MM or take a $1.5MM buyout, per Mike DiGiovanna of the L.A. Times (Twitter link). Muncy is represented by Hub Sports Management.

Max Muncy | Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports

Muncy, 29, was eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter and had yet to settle on a salary for the upcoming season. His camp submitted a $4.675MM salary figure, while the Dodgers countered with a $4MM offer of their own (as shown in MLBTR’s Arbitration Tracker). Rather than go to a hearing, the two sides have instead agreed to a longer-term pact that’ll eliminate the need to ever deal with the arbitration process again while also prolonging the Dodgers’ control over the late-blooming slugger for an additional season.

Few took notice when Muncy was released by the Athletics at the end of Spring Training 2017 and quickly latched on with the Dodgers as a minor league free agent. But Muncy laid waste to Triple-A pitching in ’17 (.309/.414/.491) and found himself in the big leagues with the Dodgers early in 2018. Fast forward two seasons, and Muncy has turned in consecutive 35-homer campaigns while bashing big league pitching to the tune of a .256/.381/.545 slash with 70 home runs, 39 doubles and three triples in 1070 plate appearances (something to keep in mind when prepping the ever-clever “print the playoff tickets!” response to a minor league signing).

Not only has Muncy unexpectedly given the Dodgers a thunderous bat to add to the middle of an already deep and imposing lineup, he’s also proven to be at least a passable defender at each of first base, second base and third base, helping to give manager Dave Roberts some defensive versatility. And while he was initially used as more of a platoon player, the left-handed-hitting Muncy has seen increased opportunities against southpaws, crushing them at a .268/.365/.529 clip in 2019 and hitting a combined .263/.363/.529 in 259 plate appearances against same-handed opponents dating back to Opening Day 2018.

The guaranteed portion of Muncy’s contract runs through his age-31 season, and assuming he maintains anything close to this level of productivity, the $13MM option on his age-32 campaign will also be picked up. That’d position him to reach the open market at the relatively late age of 33, but for a player who didn’t solidify himself as a big leaguer until he’d already turned 27, it’s hardly a surprise to see a willingness to delay his path to free agency in exchange for that first enormous payday.

From the Dodgers’ vantage point, they’ll lock up a key asset on a deal that hardly breaks the bank for them, but it’s still worth noting that the extension could more than double Muncy’s luxury-tax price point in the short term. Muncy would’ve counted for either $4MM or $4.675MM against the luxury tax had he agreed to a one-year deal at one of the two submitted figures, but the average annual value of his extension ($8.667MM) will now be the figure that counts against that tax line.

Depending on how the chips fall in the yet-to-be-finalized trades centering around Mookie Betts, David Price and Joc Pederson, this extension could very well put the Dodgers slightly over the $208MM barrier. Adding Muncy’s extension, adding Betts/Price but subtracting the portion of Price’s contract paid by the Red Sox and subtracting Pederson’s salary would still place the Dodgers a couple million over the line, per the projections of Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez. Then again, the Dodgers would still have time to work to reduce that number if ownership’s goal is indeed to remain south of the tax ceiling. And, of course, as a first-time offender — the Dodgers didn’t exceed the tax threshold in 2019 — L.A.’s “penalty” would amount to a mere 20 percent slap on the wrist for every dollar north of $208MM.

Twins Win Arbitration Hearing Against Jose Berrios

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The Twins have won their arbitration hearing against right-hander Jose Berrios, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. He’d filed for a $4.4MM salary but will now be paid at the $4.025MM figure submitted by Minnesota.

Berrios, 25, just wrapped up his first 200-inning season and turned in his third consecutive sub-4.00 ERA season, working to a career-best 3.68 ERA with 8.8 K/9, 2.3 BB/9 and 1.2 HR/9. The former No. 32 overall pick has emerged as Minnesota’s most effective starter since cementing himself as a big league regular, pitching to a combined 3.80 ERA with a strikeout per frame through 538 1/3 innings and earning a pair of All-Star bids along the way.

Berrios’ relatively affordable salary for the upcoming season only serves to underscore the difficulty that first-time-arbitration-eligible starters have had in moving the needle forward. Dallas Keuchel is still the only first-time-eligible starting pitcher to topple the $4.35MM benchmark set by Dontrelle Willis way back in 2006, and it took Keuchel winning a Cy Young Award to do so. Others starters who have been in position to best that mark (e.g. Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, Aaron Nola) have instead opted for multi-year deals.

That there’s only one example of a pitcher besting Willis’ mark — and that it took extraordinary circumstances — emphatically drives home the reason that teams are willing to go to hearings over what appear to be such trivial sums. The Twins, like other clubs that have drawn a hard line in comparable situations, surely care less about immediate cost savings than they do about preserving the standards that allow arbitration salaries to remain so manageable.

If the Twins (and every other club) simply conceded and met the player in the middle, those contractual agreements would be used as data points in future arbitration negotiations. Were it not for teams continually drawing a hard line, the Twins and Berrios would’ve been arguing over figures much greater than the ones discussed in today’s hearing. That’s not to suggest that teams are in the right or wrong to take such firm stances — even against their best players — but rather to point out that their motivation for doing so is rather obvious when considering the full breadth of the arbitration mechanism.

As for Berrios, he doesn’t hold any hard feelings toward the Twins organization, Darren Wolfson of SKOR North Radio tweets. Berrios has made it clear in the past that he’s keenly aware of the business side of the equation. He said as much when revealing last spring that he turned down an extension overture from the Twins, and it’s surely no coincidence that the number he filed would’ve bested the aforementioned Willis benchmark — even if only by a narrow margin of $50,000. Again, every slight step forward would factor into future negotiations for other first-time-eligible pitchers.

The Twins and Berrios can, of course, continue to discuss a long-term deal. Minnesota controls him through the 2022 season, leaving plenty of time to broker a deal. Given his previous quotes about the financial side of the game — “I have to manage my business, too. … We’re waiting for the best for both sides,” Berrios told Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune last spring — it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll be signing on for a team-friendly discount.

Joc Pederson’s Arbitration Hearing Taking Place Today

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As the baseball world — fans and the industry alike — await the resolution in the potential hangup on the Mookie Betts blockbuster and the finalization of the reported trade sending Joc Pederson and Ross Stripling to the Angels, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets one possible holdup in the latter of those two deals: Pederson’s arbitration hearing is taking place this morning.

It’s an extremely atypical set of circumstances leading into Pederson’s hearing, as the Dodgers are reportedly in agreement on the framework of a deal that’d send him up to Anaheim at a time when they’re also set to argue his salary with an arbitration panel.

Had the two sides agreed to a swap involving Pederson earlier in the winter, the Angels could’ve prepped for a case in spite of the fact that Pederson has never played a game for them. That type of situation isn’t ideal for clubs but also isn’t unprecedented. As then-Angels-assistant-GM Matt Klentak told MLBTR several years ago in regard to Matt Joyce, whom they’d acquired in an offseason trade (and fortunately signed before heading to an arbitration hearing): “I still haven’t met Matt Joyce. I’ve negotiated his contract with his agent, we’ve traded for him, but I’ve never personally met him. … I’d really have hated for the first time I met this guy to be wearing a suit, sitting across a table, arguing over a million dollars.”

Viewed through that lens and considering the timing of the trade agreement, it’s only logical that the Angels wouldn’t be tasked with making the the case against Pederson’s camp on such short notice. They haven’t had time to prepare an argument for said hearing or even to try to come to terms on a middle ground between Pedesron’s $9.5MM filing figure and the $7.75MM figure submitted by the Dodgers.

Of course, the ultimate price point will in some ways impact how the two teams value Pederson. It’s highly unlikely that the outcome of the hearing will torpedo the trade, but it could determine which secondary pieces the Angels send to the Dodgers to finalize the arrangement. Given that additional layer of complexity, Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register tweets that an exec with another club “suspects” that MLB is having a third-party lawyer present the other side of Pederson’s case, thus entirely removing the Dodgers and Angels from the equation.

Between Pederson’s hearing and the reported medical snag in the Betts/Price/Maeda blockbuster, there are clearly numerous balls in the air that need to be accounted for prior to the completion of this series of significant transactions. A ruling on Pederson’s case should be known in the near future — arbitration results are typically known within a day of the hearing — which could bring some clarity to one of the many wrinkles in the Dodgers’ ongoing and extremely complex trade negotiations.

Reds GM Nick Krall: “Nothing On The Horizon”

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It has been an eventful offseason from start to finish for the Reds. GM Nick Krall indicated the club is likely finished with major additions, as C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic covers on Twitter.

“I would say that for right now, there’s nothing on the horizon,” Krall says. That obviously doesn’t rule anything out. And the executive also noted that the team will continue to keep seeking opportunities to improve. But it seems a fair indication that the Cincinnati outfit isn’t actively engaged in any significant pursuits.

Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams already made clear recently that the team doesn’t expect to make a move involving top young talent Nick Senzel, who is perhaps the organization’s most intriguing potential trade chip. Instead, the intention seems to be to take advantage of Senzel’s positional adaptability and hope he taps into his upside.

The question remains: is this the right stopping point? By some accounts, the Reds are now the team to beat in the NL Central. On paper, there’s good reason to believe they’ll at least be in the thick of things. But the competition remains stout and the Reds have  now dedicated enough resources that it arguably makes sense to push yet further to maximize the chances of winning in the next few seasons. It’s a quality roster, but shortstop and catcher remain areas susceptible of improvement.

Finding the right balance is always tough. The Reds previously parted with significant young talent to get to this stage — including young big leaguer Shed Long (for Sonny Gray) and top-100 prospects Taylor Trammell (for Trevor Bauer), Jeter Downs & Josiah Gray (for Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, and Kyle Farmer). Entering this winter, Williams explained, the “preference all along was to spend money and add to the club without touching our prospects.”

Domonic Brown “Ready To Call It Quits”

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It’s always interesting to catch up on the developments of notable former big leaguers, particularly when things are going well. That seems to be the case for former Phillies outfielder Domonic Brown, who was tracked down by Matt Gelb of The Athletic (subscription link).

It turns out that Gelb didn’t have to go far. Brown is working in a Philadelphia-area baseball academy. At 32 years of age, he appears to have settled in there.

Brown tells Gelb he’s “ready to call it quits” — not because he’s out of playing opportunities, but “just because I’m having so much fun here.” Though Brown could perhaps be lured back into uniform in the right circumstances, he indicates that he’s leaning firmly towards retirement.

Once billed as a future superstar, Brown seemed to find his footing with an All-Star 2013 campaign at 25 years of age. He slashed .272/.324/.494 and launched 27 long balls in 540 plate appearances. But he collapsed at the plate in the ensuing season and never got it back. Brown last appeared in the majors in 2015 and in the affiliated ranks in 2017.

What most didn’t realize is that Brown has continued to play in the meantime. He took a star turn in the Mexican League last year, driving 25 homers in just 396 plate appearances and even drawing some interest from MLB organizations before breaking his hand in the middle of the season.

Along the way, Brown lost and found his swing — and, more importantly, seems to have grown quite a bit as a person. The full story is well worth your time.

AL Notes: Yankees, Angels, Indians, Twins, Rays

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The Yankees’ rotation took a serious shot Wednesday when it was announced that they’ll go without left-hander James Paxton for three to four months on account of back surgery. General manager Brian Cashman discussed the news with Joel Sherman of the New York Post, saying Paxton first complained of back discomfort in his final regular-season outing Sept. 27. That didn’t stop Paxton from making three playoff appearances, though, and Cashman noted surgery was a “last resort.” The timing of the procedure’s not ideal, but the Yankees didn’t want to rush into a decision, according to Cashman.

One of Paxton’s fellow Yankees lefties, J.A. Happ, was a trade candidate earlier this offseason, but Cashman revealed Paxton’s injury “certainly” played a part in the team’s decision to keep him. However, there was trade interest in Happ, Cashman told Sherman. “There was a lot of knocking on our door about it,” he said.

Here’s more from the American League…

  • Angels infielder Luis Rengifo appears to be on the verge of going to the Dodgers in a trade for outfielder Joc Pederson. It’s not the first time Rengifo’s name has come up in trade talks this offseason, though. Rengifo was part of the discussions between the Angels and Indians when the two teams were weighing a Corey Kluber swap back in December, per Paul Hoynes of cleveland.com. The two clubs couldn’t come to an agreement, and the Indians ended up trading Kluber to the Rangers a few days later.
  • Twins righty Jake Odorizzi decided to forgo free agency this offseason in favor of the team’s $17.8MM qualifying offer. Odorizzi may have done better on the open market – MLBTR predicted a three year, $51MM payday – but he doesn’t regret his choice to stick with Minnesota on a short-term deal. “Not a bit,” he told Phil Miller of the Star Tribune. “I made my decision based on the best knowledge we had at the time. Money started flying around pretty quick, and the market got pretty hot, but nobody predicted that.” Indeed, there has been far more money distributed in free agency than many anticipated when the offseason began. Odorizzi’s now left to hope the cash will continue flowing next winter if he gets to free agency, though Miller writes that he remains “open to” a long-term pact with the Twins.
  • Rays outfield prospect Josh Lowe underwent right shoulder debridement surgery in November and “likely” won’t return to action until late May, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times writes. The 22-year-old Lowe, a 2016 first-round pick and the younger brother of Rays first baseman Nate Lowe, ranks as the team’s 11th overall prospect at MLB.com. Josh Lowe enjoyed a strong season at the Double-A level last year, when he slashed .252/.341/.442 with 18 home runs and 30 stolen bases in 519 plate appearances.

4 Interesting Buy-Low Starters

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With spring training right around the corner, the time for teams to make meaningful additions to their rotations by way of free agency has likely passed. There are very few starters remaining on the open market, though there’s a possibility – albeit slight – that pitcher-needy clubs could strike it rich on buy-low candidates. There are at least a handful of somewhat intriguing names left, as you’ll see below…

Taijuan Walker, RHP:

  • It’s hard to believe Walker is still just 27 years old. He’s a former standout prospect with the Mariners who was a quality major league starter as recently as 2017, when he fired 157 1/3 innings of 3.49 ERA/4.04 FIP ball as a member of the Diamondbacks. Walker also averaged a hair under 94 mph on his fastball that year. He’s now stuck without a job after injuries cut him down over the previous two seasons. Walker underwent Tommy John surgery on his pitching elbow in April 2018, thereby limiting him to 13 innings that year, and couldn’t rally back last season on account of shoulder troubles. He wound up tossing just one inning, in the Diamondbacks’ regular-season finale. Since then, the D-backs have non-tendered Walker (in lieu of paying him around $5MM), and just the M’s and Twins have been linked to him. Walker recently held a workout for teams “in front of about 20 scouts,” according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

Matt Harvey, RHP:

  • Harvey’s still relatively young (31 in March), but it seems like ancient history when the ex-Met was one of the absolute best starters in the game. Various injuries have helped destroy his career since 2015, the Dark Knight’s most recent ace-like showing. Going back to 2016, Harvey ranks third from the bottom among all qualified starters in ERA (5.65). The 5.00 FIP he has put up in the same span doesn’t inspire much more confidence, nor does the dismal showing he had with the Angels last season before they deemed him and his $11MM contract such a poor investment that the starter-light club released him in late July. That said, Harvey still threw upward of 93 mph last season and isn’t far removed from logging decent production with the Reds in 2018.

Danny Salazar, RHP:

  • Salazar has been electrifying at times, and he recently turned 30, but the former Indian only threw a combined four innings (all last season) from 2018-19. Shoulder woes have been a key culprit in knocking Salazar’s career off the rails, and it’s rather alarming that his fastball averaged around 86 mph in last season’s one-game comeback after sitting around 95-96 in prior years. However, in fairness to Salazar, he was dealing with groin troubles in that contest; problem is that it went down as the latest injury in a career loaded with them.

Aaron Sanchez, RHP:

  • Sanchez looked like a budding star in 2016, during which the former Blue Jay notched 192 innings of 3.00 ERA/3.55 FIP ball and induced grounders at a 54.4 percent clip. Little did anyone know Sanchez’s effectiveness would fade so severely after that, owing in part to multiple injuries. Last season, which he divided between the Jays and Astros, Sanchez posted a woeful 5.89 ERA/5.25 FIP over 131 1/3 frames. Sanchez underwent shoulder surgery toward the end of September, so he’ll miss some portion of the upcoming campaign. The Astros non-tendered him as a result, as opposed to paying him approximately $5.6MM in arbitration. Sanchez is still young (27), though, and continued to average around 94 mph on his fastball last season.

This Date In Transactions History: Minor Signing, Major Impact

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It was on this date six years ago that the Dodgers made one of the greatest low-risk free-agent signings in recent memory. On Feb. 5, 2014, the club agreed to a minor league contract with third baseman Justin Turner, who has gone from afterthought to household name since he first donned a Dodgers uniform.

Now 35 years old, Turner was a seventh-round pick of the Reds in 2006 who took years and multiple uniforms to blossom into a quality major leaguer. Turner debuted with the Orioles in 2009, but he played almost exclusively with the Mets through 2013. While Turner didn’t exactly set the league on fire in New York, his offensive production did hover around the league-average mark.

During his 895-plate appearance run as a Met, Turner batted .265/.326/.370 (good for a 97 wRC+) while striking out just 13.1 percent of the time. Passable? Yes. But a lack of power helped cut down Turner, who hit a mere eight home runs and posted a weak .104 ISO as a member of the Mets. They wound up non-tendering him going into 2014, reportedly because they weren’t satisfied with the effort he put forth.

Turner’s power was dormant in New York (maybe his effort was, too), which is why he had to settle for a non-guaranteed deal to join the Dodgers. That pop has come to the surface in Los Angeles, though. Turner has eclipsed the .200 ISO mark in four straight seasons, though it took some time for him to become a legitimate power threat as a Dodger.

While Turner did hit an excellent .340/.404/.493 in 322 PA during his first season with the Dodgers, skepticism was warranted because that triple-slash line was buoyed by an unsustainable .404 batting average on balls in play. Indeed, Turner’s BABIP since then has fallen almost 100 points (he owns a .314 mark dating back to 2015). Nevertheless, the right-hander’s .297/.378/.508 line (139 wRC+) in 2,579 trips to the plate over the past half-decade helped make him one of the most valuable players in the game in that span, evidenced in part by a 21.9 fWAR that only 19 position players outdid from 2015-19. Turner also smacked 105 home runs during that stretch, and he did so while striking out in just 14.6 percent of PA.

Turner can attribute a large portion of his success in LA to help from Marlon Byrd, a former Orioles teammate, and a hitting coach named Doug Latta. As covered by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik in the book “The MVP Machine” (excerpt via Slate), Byrd and Latta were instrumental in getting Turner to take a more fly ball-oriented approach at the plate. Turner, his bank account and the Dodgers have all benefited from it.

Thanks to the breakout Turner enjoyed during his first couple years as a Dodger, they re-signed him to a four-year, $64MM deal entering 2017. Needless to say, that’s quite a step up from the minors pact he settled for upon first joining the team. For their part, the Dodgers have won the NL West in every season since Turner first signed with them and taken home a pair of pennants. Turner’s obviously not the sole reason they’ve been so dominant, but he has been one of their key contributors. He’s also a reminder not to discount anyone who signs a minor league contract. You never know when a breakout’s around the corner.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Nick Hundley Intends To Play In 2020

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Veteran catcher Nick Hundley turned 36 late in the 2019 season, but he’s not yet planning to call it a career. Hundley tells Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that he’s spoken to a few teams this winter — presumably about minor league deals with non-roster invites to Spring Training (Twitter link).

Hundley’s 2019 season wasn’t exactly the finest of his 12-year career. The veteran backstop appeared in just 31 games with the Athletics, spent more than a month on the injured list with back spasms and was released by both the A’s and the Phillies. Notably for A’s fans, Hundley tells Slusser that Oakland isn’t one of the teams to which he’s spoken.

Last year’s poor showing notwithstanding, Hundley is only a season removed from hitting at a near-average clip with the Giants in 2018. That year saw him tally 305 plate appearances with a .241/.298/.408 slash (95 OPS+, 93 wRC+). Considering that the league-average catcher posted an 84 wRC+ in 2018, Hundley’s output was more than passable — particularly for a part-time/backup catcher. Overall, he’s a .247/.299/.405 lifetime hitter in the big leagues.

Hundley has never been considered a defensive standout, but his career 26 percent caught-stealing rate is only a hair below the league average. And while he’s rarely graded well in terms of pitch framing, Hundley typically posts quality marks in terms of blocking pitches in the dirt, per Baseball Prospectus. At 36 years of age, there’s little reason to expect a marked uptick in his defensive skills, but he’s generally been a capable bat relative to his positional peers, and as a depth pickup on a minor league deal, Hundley would make sense for several organizations that are still rather thin on options behind the plate.

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