MLBTR Poll: Stripping The Astros’ 2017 Title
It doesn’t take a die-hard baseball fan to know the past few weeks have been an utter nightmare for the Astros. The club was among the game’s elite from 2017-19, but its accomplishments from that span are now in question as a result of a sign-stealing scheme. That scandal has forced major changes in the front office and in the dugout, with the Astros having let go of suspended GM Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch in favor of James Click and Dusty Baker, respectively. At their most successful, Luhnow and Hinch oversaw the Astros’ first-ever World Series-winning team in 2017. But that seven-game victory over the Dodgers is now tarnished in the eyes of many around the game.
Dodgers outfielder Cody Bellinger, a member of the 2017 runners-up and the reigning NL MVP, went so far as to declare last week that the Astros “stole” a championship from him and his teammates. However, Major League Baseball did not formally strip the Astros of the title they won (it obviously would have been a drastic measure for MLB), and commissioner Rob Manfred explained why over the weekend.
“First of all, it had never happened in baseball,” Manfred said. “I am a precedent guy. The 2017 World Series will always be looked at as different, whether not you put an asterisk or ask for the trophy back. Once you go down that road as for changing the result on the field, I just don’t know where you stop.”
Manfred went on to state, “The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act.” That didn’t sit well with one of Bellinger’s teammates and another member of the Dodgers’ 2017 team, Justin Turner. The third baseman fired back that Manfred set “a weak precedent” with his punishment of the Astros, continuing: “For him to devalue [the trophy] the way he did yesterday just tells me how out of touch he is with the players in this game. At this point, the only thing devaluing that trophy is that it says ’Commissioner’ on it.”
“Now anyone who goes forward and cheats to win a World Series,” Turner added (via Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times), “they can live with themselves knowing that, ‘Oh, it’s OK. … We’ll cheat in the World Series and bring the title back to L.A. Screw [manager] Dave Roberts and screw [general manager] Andrew [Friedman]. It’s just those guys losing their jobs. I still get to be called a champion the rest of my life.’ So the precedent was set by him yesterday in this case.”
Strong comments, to say the least. Which side are you on here? Would Manfred have gone too far in taking away the Astros’ championship?
(Poll link for app users)
Should MLB have stripped Houston of its 2017 title?
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Yes 76% (23,331)
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No 24% (7,352)
Total votes: 30,683
Latest On Francisco Lindor’s Future
After an offseason of trade rumors, the Indians still employ superstar Francisco Lindor. This is the time of year for extension talks and there are indications of mutual interest. But it’s far from clear there’s a match to be made.
Both Lindor and Cleveland president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti addressed the shortstop’s contract situation today, with ESPN.com’s Alden Gonzalez covering. He’s slated to earn $17.5MM this year with one more year of arbitration eligibility remaining, though the only hope of him remaining in town for the long run would be a new deal of some kind.
Lindor left no doubt he sees Cleveland as “home” and expressed a strong desire to stay and win with his sole professional organization. The 26-year-old also suggested he thinks a long-term contract is possible — and not just in the perfunctory way we sometimes hear from players.
“If the negotiations or whatever makes sense, it’s gonna happen,” Lindor said of a potential blockbuster extension. “The team is not broke. The league is not broke. There’s money.”
So, if Lindor truly wants to stay and feels the economic bridge can be spanned … is there a chance? Antonetti was rather less sanguine, his comments leaving the sense that player and team may well be fated by broader forces to part.
While he says there have been “meaningful efforts” to reach a deal in the past and acknowledges Lindor’s sincerity, Antonetti struck a realistic tone. While the team would also “love for Francisco to be here long-term,” Antonetti explained, it just isn’t that simple.
“It’s not because of a lack of desire on our part, or not because of a lack of desire on Francisco’s part. But more when you look at the economics of baseball and the realities of building championship teams in a small market, it gets really tough. The interest is there, the desire is there, on both sides, to try to get something done. And whether or not that’s possible we just don’t know.”
That stance jives with prior comments of Indians owner Paul Dolan, who has made clear he doesn’t find $300MM+ contracts plausible in the near future for his organization. Dolan also has advised fans to enjoy Lindor while he’s still with the club.
Mariners Sign Cody Anderson
FEBRUARY 17, 5:42pm: Cowgill’s signing has also been announced, along with the previously reported deal with Carlos Gonzalez.
11:13am: Seattle has announced its deal with Anderson. Cowgill’s deal has yet to be finalized, it seems.
FEBRUARY 15: The Mariners are nearing agreements with right-hander Cody Anderson and outfielder Collin Cowgill, reports Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times (via Twitter). Once finalized, both players will get invitations to MLB spring training on minor-league pacts, Divish adds.
Anderson, 29, had spent his entire career in the Indians’ organization. He had an impressive run in Cleveland in 2015, working to a 3.05 ERA in 91.1 innings across 15 starts. His 12.1% strikeout rate that season suggested that level of run prevention was a mirage, but he limited walks and airborne contact and looked to have a shot at sticking in the back of Cleveland’s rotation. That never came to fruition, as Anderson was bombed in limited action the following year and was forced to undergo Tommy John surgery in March 2017. That procedure largely wiped out his next two seasons.
While Anderson returned to the mound in 2019, he was mostly limited to minor-league duty in the season’s first half. Another elbow surgery- this time to repair his flexor tendon- last July marked the end of his tenure in Cleveland. Anderson is taking his physical with the Seattle organization today, Divish reports. Assuming all goes well, he may take a shot at cracking a Mariners’ rotation that could also feature injury returnees Kendall Graveman and Taijuan Walker. Alternatively, he could be an option for a Seattle bullpen lacking much certainty.
As for Cowgill, the 34-year-old is hoping to crack the majors for the first time since 2016. He’s largely made the rounds at Triple-A the past half-decade with middling results. Last season, he took 280 plate appearances for the Nationals’ top affiliate and hit .228/.330/.440. In 759 MLB plate appearances over parts of six seasons, Cowgill has compiled a .234/.297/.329 line (79 wRC+).
Red Sox Ownership Downplays Role Of Luxury Tax In Mookie Betts Trade
Apparently not content to let Jim Crane draw all the headlines for ownership comments worthy of skepticism, Red Sox principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner and president/CEO Sam Kennedy on Monday all denied that the trade of Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers was driven by a desire to dip south of the luxury tax barrier.
In a lengthy prepared statement released on Twitter, Henry appealed directly to Red Sox fans, speaking of the “extraordinary challenges” with which the team was faced this winter and praising the work of chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, general manager Brian O’Halloran and the rest of the team’s baseball operations department.
Henry attempted to connect to the fan base by reminding that everyone in the ownership group was first a fan, thus making them empathetic toward the pain and frustration fans have voiced in the days since the trade. “I grew up a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals,” said Henry. “My favorite player was Stan Musial. My heart would have been broken if Stan the Man had ever been traded — for any reason.”
Sticking with the Musial thread, Henry went on to lament the unfair system that prevented Musial and other players from generations past from being paid at their market rate and present the decision to part with Betts as the type of choice all clubs are forced to make “in this economic system.” To quote Henry at greater length:
“We were faced with a difficult choice. You can talk about dollars. You can talk about metrics and value. But in the end, even though we are consistently among the highest-spending clubs in baseball — with this year being no exception — we have to make hard judgments about competing for the future as well as the present. … In today’s game there is a cost to losing a great player to free agency — one that cannot nearly be made up by the draft pick given. We’ve seen other examples of this recently. … We felt we could not sit on our hands and lose [Betts] next offseason without getting value in return to help us on our path forward. We carefully considered the alternative over the last year and made a decision when this opportunity presented itself to acquire substantial, young talent for the years ahead.”
Werner suggested that the team had other ways to shed salary if that had been the main goal, noting that they could “hypothetically” have traded Price without moving Betts as well (Twitter link via WEEI’s John Tomase). Kennedy at least appeared to acknowledge that the financial element of the trade played a role, noting that the trade wasn’t “exclusively” about resetting the team’s penalty level (Twitter link, with video, via NBC Sports Boston):
“There are clearly certain advantages by resetting and getting under [the luxury tax], but we’ve tried to be clear that this was not exclusively about the CBT and getting under that CBT threshold. There would’ve been other ways to have done that. You don’t trade Mookie Betts to get under the CBT. We traded Mookie Betts and David Price and got back significant value in return.”
Of course, all of this comes fewer than five months after Henry said unequivocally that the Red Sox “need to be under” the $208MM luxury tax threshold for the upcoming 2020 season (link via the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier). “We’ve known for some time now we needed to reset [the penalties by staying under the threshold], as other clubs have done,” Henry said as recently Sept. 27.
Months later, Henry tried to walk that statement back, emphasizing that the team was more focused on “competitiveness” than resetting its luxury penalty in 2020. Red Sox brass will surely argue that the team is indeed better-poised to compete over the next half decade with Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong now in the organization, but there’s no doubt that the Boston club is a demonstrably worse team in 2020 without Betts in right field and without Price in the rotation. Perhaps the Red Sox could chase a Wild Card spot if things break right, but they look to be squarely behind the Yankees and Rays, at the very least, and the competition for the Wild Card spots in the AL will be steeper after active offseasons from the White Sox, Blue Jays, Rangers and Angels.
It seems particularly important to point out that Red Sox brass has sought to paint this as an either-or scenario: either trade Betts (and, ahem, $48MM of the $96MM owed to Price) now or risk losing Betts as a free agent this winter. That seems to ignore the possibility of taking aim at a rebound effort in 2020 with Betts and Price in the mix, then trading Betts at the deadline if the division looks out of hand. The return, of course, would be diminished, but the Sox would surely have been able to extract some long-term pieces while endeavoring for a competitive 2020 season.
It would be inaccurate to call the Betts/Price trade a pure salary dump. Henry, Werner, Kennedy and other Red Sox officials have a legitimate point when highlighting the long-term value they received in dealing away that pair of highly paid stars. But it also feels disingenuous not to acknowledge that dropping below the CBT threshold was a key — perhaps even the key — in making this deal. After all, Boston has previously let key players walk as free agents for minimal or no compensation — Craig Kimbrel and Jacoby Ellsbury come to mind — and they traded Jon Lester midseason in 2014 after spring extension talks didn’t come to fruition.
As for where they stand in the 2020 season, Henry didn’t want to concede that the Sox might be taking a step back, instead rhetorically asking reporters (Twitter link via the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato: “Don’t you think this would be a record payroll for a bridge year?” That’s not exactly a declaration that the team is all-in on winning in 2020, but it’s also less than an acknowledgment that this diminished version of the Red Sox is clearly something less than a division contender.
Francis Martes Suspended Full Season For PED
Astros righty Francis Martes has been suspended for 162 games after testing positive for the banned performance enhancing drug baldenone. It was his second such test; he had previously served an 80-game suspension during the 2019 season.
Martes was once considered a high-grade prospect and still owns a 40-man roster spot. He was working back from Tommy John surgery, which would’ve cost him all of last year even were it not for the suspension.
It has now been quite some time since Martes enjoyed success on the field. He reached the majors in 2017 but didn’t stick after throwing 54 1/3 innings of 5.80 ERA ball with 11.4 K/9 and 5.1 BB/9. Martes has only made it through 25 minor-league frames over the past two campaigns.
Martes’s future is now very much in doubt. At the same time, he only reached his 24th birthday in November. He’ll obviously need both to reevaluate his decisionmaking process and rediscovery his form on the mound if he’s to carve out a big league career.
Dodgers Outright Tyler White
The Dodgers outrighted first baseman Tyler White, MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick reports on Twitter. He cleared waivers after recently being designated for assignment.
White is slated to participate in MLB camp as a non-roster player. He’ll still have a shot at an Opening Day job, but that’ll likely only come to fruition if there’s an injury or unforeseen development involving a player ahead of him on the depth chart.
The Dodgers obviously still think there’s some potential in the bat of the 29-year-old, as they carried him for a long stretch on the 40-man. But he’s far from a sure thing after a rough 2019 showing.
White, who is out of options, had a mammoth 2018 season at both the MLB (143 wRC+) and Triple-A (166 wRC+) levels. But he limped to a .208/.308/.304 batting line in 279 plate appearances last year.
Mike Trout, Justin Turner Offer Strong Opinions On Astros Scandal
Some may have scandal fatigue, but there are good reasons this one isn’t dying a quick death: the high level of anger from rival players and a still-running string of questionable statements and (non-)actions from those in positions of power. Today’s comments from two prominent, respected players — Mike Trout and Justin Turner — served to highlight those points and ensure we’ll see further rounds in this controversy.
Trout, the best player the game has seen in quite some time, is reserved to the point that he was once publicly chastised by commissioner Rob Manfred for not making himself marketable. How’d he respond to Manfred? “Everything is cool between the commissioner and myself.” Suffice to say he’s not easily ruffled.
It was rather remarkable, then, to see Trout unleash some venom in comments to reporters regarding the Astros’ sign-stealing escapades. As Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register was among those to cover, Trout said not only that he “lost some respect” for certain Astros players, but also that he did not “agree with the punishments” meted out by Manfred. In particular, Trout was not pleased that players were not punished for their misdeeds.
Trout’s comments stand out less for their content — we’ve heard similar sentiments from many others — than for the speaker. Many of the game’s other very best players have reacted similarly, but it’s rather different to hear those words come from Trout, who rarely expresses a public opinion on much of anything and seems destined not only for Cooperstown but a place on a very short list of the game’s greatest-ever players.
Then came Justin Turner, whose words stood out because they landed direct hits on Manfred. We’ve seen some other challenges to the commissioner — from Trevor Bauer, for instance — but Turner was responding especially to Manfred’s interview yesterday in which he attempted to defend his handling of the crisis. Lending added weight is the fact that Turner earned his veteran standing through years of grinding.
Turner directly contested several of Manfred’s points. The commissioner called himself “a precedent guy” in explaining why he didn’t want to strip a team of a title for the first time. Turner employed a tidy bit of legal jujutsu on that point, observing that this was a novel issue on which Manfred “just set the precedent” — “a weak precedent.” Similarly, Turner challenged Manfred’s explanation that he had prioritized ascertaining and publicizing the truth of the underlying matter. Per Turner, players are frustrated in large part because “the commissioner didn’t do a good job of revealing all the facts to us.”
The elbow drop was set up by Manfred’s ill-conceived characterization of the World Series trophy as “a piece of metal.” Per Turner: “For him to devalue [the trophy] the way he did yesterday just tells me how out of touch he is with the players in this game. At this point, the only thing devaluing that trophy is that it says ‘Commissioner’ on it.”
White Sox Sign Gorkys Hernandez To Minor League Deal
The White Sox have signed outfielder Gorkys Hernandez to a minor league contract, Hernandez himself tells Daniel Parra of SportsVenezuela.com. He’ll head straight to minor league camp it seems.
Hernandez, 32, spent the 2019 season in the Red Sox organization but in a tiny sample of 57 Major League plate appearances (.143/.218/.243) and in a larger body of work for Triple-A Pawtucket. In 504 trips to the plate with Boston’s top minor league affiliate, Hernandez hit just .219/.319/.377.
Hernandez is only a season removed from hitting 15 home runs in a part-time role with the Giants, though. His overall .234/.285/.391 slash from that season aligns closely with his career stats in 1091 MLB plate appearances. Hernandez has had much better luck in Triple-A — even with last year’s numbers dragging him down — where he’s compiled a career .266/.342/.380 slash. He has experience playing all three outfield positions, and while his marks in center aren’t as sharp as those in the corners, he’s a capable glove at all three. Over the past four years, Hernandez has a cumulative 3.0 Ultimate Zone Rating, 11 Outs Above Average and -1 Defensive Runs Saved.
Chicago’s offseason extension of Luis Robert all but ensured that the ballyhooed 22-year-old will open the season as the Major League center fielder. With Robert ticketed for the big leagues, the White Sox’ outfield mix in Triple-A will likely feature prospects Luis Alexander Basabe, Luis Gonzalez and some combination of offseason minor league signees Daniel Palka, Nicky Delmonico and Jaycob Brugman. Hernandez adds a righty bat to an otherwise heavily left-handed mix and can capably give the White Sox’ Charlotte affiliate reps anywhere in the outfield.
Marlins Will Try Jonathan Villar In Center Field
The Marlins have talked about Jonathan Villar as a potential center field option since the day they acquired him, and manager Don Mattingly confirmed to reporters today that the organization’s plan is to work the speedster out as a potential center fielder this spring (Twitter link via Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald). Villar will still get some work in the infield, and the club has other options to fall back on if the results aren’t favorable.
Villar, 29, started six games in center field for the Brewers in 2017 and has only 39 career innings at the position. He’s traditionally been a middle infielder, but with Miguel Rojas penciled in at shortstop, well-regarded prospect Isan Diaz hopefully emerging at second base and Brian Anderson lined up at the hot corner, the Marlins will hope that Villar can make the transition to the outfield.
The situation, of course, is still fluid. Diaz has yet to establish himself as a Major Leaguer, and if he doesn’t show well this spring, a move back to second base could be sensible for Villar. The mix in right field also features several unproven players — Lewis Brinson, Monte Harrison, Jesus Sanchez, Harold Ramirez — so the team could opt to move Anderson back to right field. In that case Villar could also yet be infield-bound. Alternatives in center include Brinson, Harrison, Sanchez, Jon Berti and Magneuris Sierra.
If Villar is able to make the move to center field, he could position himself quite favorably heading into free agency next winter. The switch-hitting Villar batted .270/.338/.438 with Baltimore in 216 games from 2018-19 before the tanking Orioles dumped in late November. Dating back to his first full season in 2016, Villar is a .268/.336/.423 hitter through 2344 plate appearances. He’s been able to provide league-average offense — and more, at times — in addition to excellent baseruning value. If he can add capable center field defense to his resume, that’d serve as a notable boost to his earning power.
Dodgers Sign Terrance Gore To Minor League Deal
The Dodgers announced Monday that they’ve signed outfielder Terrance Gore to a minor league deal and invited him to Major League camp this spring.
Gore, a client of the L. Warner Companies, seems to land on a postseason contender late every season one way or another. His blistering speed made him an ideal pinch-running specialist under the previous roster expansion rules, which allowed clubs to bring anyone on their 40-man roster to the Majors after Aug. 31. That’ll change in 2020, as September rosters will only grow to 28 players. However, the standard roster size will grow from 25 to 26 as well.
The 28-year-old Gore is out of minor league options, so the Dodgers — who utilize every edge possible in creating roster flexibility — seem unlikely to carry him in the Majors for the bulk of the season. He could be a 27th or 28th man in September, however, and could even be a postseason option if they deem such a move necessary.
Gore split the 2019 season between the Royals and Yankees organizations after Kansas City signed him to a surprising Major League contract last winter. Gore appeared in 37 games with the Royals but only came to the plate on 58 occasions. His lack of at-bats in the Majors is a testament to his typical role as a baserunning specialist; Gore has appeared in 100 regular-season games and another nine postseason contests but only come to the plate a combined 79 times. As a frequent pinch-runner, however, he’s swiped 45 bases (in 54 tries).
While Gore’s speed is tantalizing, his lack of Triple-A production is glaring; in 181 games there, he’s managed only a .213/.307/.261 slash line.