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Phillies Agree To Minor League Deal With Phil Gosselin

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The Phillies have agreed to a minor league contract with infielder Phil Gosselin, tweets Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia. Presumably, he’ll head to Spring Training on a non-roster invitation and compete for a bench spot with his new organization.

Gosselin, 30, made 28 plate appearances with the Reds in 2018 and another 50 between the Pirates and Rangers the year prior. His most significant big league action came with the Braves and D-backs from 2014-16, taking a combined 494 plate appearances in that time. In all, he’s a career .263/.314/.361 hitter with seven home runs 27 doubles and and a pair of triples in 579 Major League plate appearances.

The bulk of Gosselin’s time in the Majors has come as a second baseman (550 innings), though he also has experience at third base (189 innings), shortstop (55 innings), first base 46 innings and in the corner outfield (41 innings). The Phillies already have a crowded infield with Rhys Hoskins, Cesar Hernandez, Jean Segura, Maikel Franco and Scott Kingery all currently penciled onto the 25-man roster. Of course, there’s been no shortage of trade rumblings surrounding Franco, and Hernandez, too, has been mentioned as a possible candidate to move at times. At the very least, it seems safe to expect that the infield mix will change between now and March, when Gosselin will be vying for a job.

Angels To Sign Matt Harvey

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7:16pm: It’s a one-year deal for Harvey, Feinsand tweets. Fancred’s Jon Heyman tweets that the deal will guarantee Harvey $11MM, and Yahoo’s Jeff Passan tweets that Harvey can earn an additional $3MM worth of incentives. Per Heyman (Twitter link), those incentives are based on games started and kick in at 15 starts before maxing out at 26 starts. Harvey’s deal is still pending a physical.

7:07pm: The Angels have agreed to a deal with free-agent right-hander Matt Harvey, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com (via Twitter). Harvey is represented by agent Scott Boras.

Matt Harvey | Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

Harvey, 29, will be the first rotation addition for an Angels club that entered the winter in significant need of innings. The 2018 Angels were decimated by injuries, as Garrett Richards, Shohei Ohtani and J.C. Ramirez each underwent Tommy John surgery, while others such as Matt Shoemaker and Nick Tropeano missed substantial time on the disabled list.

Harvey will join lefties Andrew Heaney and Tyler Skaggs as locks to start games for the Halos, but the rest of the rotation is still somewhat unsettled. Tropeano, Jaime Barria, Felix Pena and Dillon Peters are among the other candidates to start for newly hired manager Brad Ausmus, though the names to which the Angels were connected prior to the Harvey agreement perhaps underscore the remaining work that GM Billy Eppler and his staff have ahead.

Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register recently reported that the Angels made a two-year, $28MM offer to J.A. Happ before he returned to the Yankees, and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that the Halos also made a “strong” offer to Patrick Corbin before he signed a whopping $140MM contract with the Nationals. Given those targets and the still-palpable uncertainty in the Angels’ mix of starters, it’s reasonable to expect that they’ll continue pursuing upgrades to the top portion of their starting staff.

The $11MM guarantee for Harvey suggests that the Angels are not only buying Harvey’s turnaround with the Reds in 2018 but anticipating that he can take another step forward. Harvey’s Mets career was torpedoed by Tommy John surgery and the even more ominous thoracic outlet surgery — the lingering effects of which caused the Mets to ultimately cut the cord and flip the right-hander to Cincinnati in exchange for catcher Devin Mesoraco. Harvey gave the Reds 128 innings of 4.50 ERA ball with more encouraging secondary metrics: 7.8 K/9, 2.0 BB/9 and a 42.6 percent ground-ball rate. ERA alternatives like FIP, xFIP and SIERA all pegged Harvey in the low 4.00s.

With the Reds, Harvey saw his average fastball velocity trend up from 92.6 mph in New York to 94.4 mph, and his swinging-strike rate improved from 8.2 percent to 9.9 percent. Neither of those marks are close to Harvey’s peak levels from his “Dark Knight” days, but the positive trends were encouraging enough for the Angels to bet a fairly notable sum that the beleaguered right-hander can hold up over the course of a full season. If that proves to be the case, Harvey could eventually emerge as a candidate to receive a qualifying offer, creating a bit of additional upside for the Halos.

By adding Harvey on an $11MM salary, the Angels push their projected Opening Day payroll up to about $156.2MM — a sum that falls roughly $10MM shy of the $165.8MM Opening Day payroll the team has averaged over the past three seasons. MLBTR contributor Rob Huff recently took a deep dive into the Halos’ payroll, estimating that the team could have as much as $36MM to spend this winter, assuming ownership approval of a slight uptick in payroll. With only Harvey and Justin Bour (one year, $2.5MM) as new additions to the books thus far, there’s certainly room for at least one more notable rotation addition — be it via the free-agent market or via trade.

The pairing of Harvey and the Angels, in some respects, has been more than a decade in the making. The Halos selected Harvey in the third round of the 2007 draft but were unable to sign him despite offering a bonus widely reported to be greater than $1MM in total. That decision, of course, proved to be a good one for Harvey, who was selected seventh overall out of UNC in 2010 and received a considerably heftier $2.5MM bonus from the Mets. Much has changed in the decade-plus since that offer was made, but Harvey is in many ways an upside play, just as he was as a draft prospect in 2007 — albeit a far more expensive one this time around.

For Harvey, the one-year term gives him a further opportunity to distance himself from his disastrous 2016-17 results and re-enter the open market after spending a year in a relatively pitcher-friendly environment. Though he’s moving from the National League to the American League, he’ll also move from one of the game’s most homer-friendly parks to the much more spacious Angel Stadium, which could help him pare back the 1.48 HR/9 he averaged following his trade to Cincinnati. Harvey’s ultimate contract aligns with the annual value we at MLBTR predicted in our Top 50 free agents list, though our rankings projected a two-year term for the former Mets ace. Meanwhile, Harvey’s landing with the Angels won’t do favors to many who participated in MLBTR’s free-agent prediction contest; only 2.9 percent of respondents correctly pegged Harvey to the Halos.

Red Sox, Zach Putnam Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Red Sox have agreed to a minor league contract with reliever Zach Putnam, tweets MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo. The right-hander missed the 2018 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Putnam, 31, was a regular in the White Sox’ bullpen from 2014-17 before going down with an arm injury that ultimately led to Tommy John surgery. Prior to that procedure, though, Putnam turned in 139 1/3 innings with a 2.71 ERA, 9.6 K/9, 3.6 BB/9 and a 47.6 percent ground-ball rate. Putnam never lit up the radar gun, sitting at 90.4 mph with his fastball over that four-year stretch on the South Side, but he nonetheless posted a gaudy 16.1 percent swinging-strike rate in that time as well. Beyond that, Putnam excelled in terms of limiting hard contact, as evidenced by a 27.2 percent opponents’ hard-hit rate that ranked well below the league average.

Putnam joins the Red Sox organization with four-plus years of service time and will surpass the five-year mark if he logs any meaningful big league time in 2019. That means that if he’s able to return to the Majors and find success, the Red Sox will be able to control him through the 2020 season via the arbitration process.

Minor MLB Transactions: 12/18/18

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Here are Tuesday’s minor moves from around the game…

  • The Mets have signed right-hander Zach Lee to a minor league contract, as first reported by MetsMerized’s Michael Mayer (on Twitter). The once-vaunted pitching prospect was involved in one of the more lopsided swaps in recent memory, going from Los Angeles to Seattle in a straight-up deal for Chris Taylor. Lee, now 26, spent the 2018 season in the Rays’ system, where he split the year between Double-A and Triple-A and posted a 3.65 ERA with 6.6 K/9 against 2.2 BB/9 in 145 2/3 innings. However, as has been the case throughout his career, he was terrific in Double-A (career 3.22 ERA in 282 1/3 innings) but clobbered in Triple-A (5.20 ERA in 550 2/3 innings).
  • Corner infielder D.J. Peterson has been granted his release by the Reds to pursue other opportunities, tweets C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic. Peterson, the 12th overall pick in the 2013 draft (by the Mariners), was once considered to be among the game’s elite prospects. Multiple outlets considered him to be among the game’s top 100 prospects in 2014-15, but his bat stalled in the upper minors. Peterson hit .249/.318/.418 in parts of three Triple-A seasons and posted a similarly pedestrian .262/.315/.431 slash in parts of four seasons in Triple-A. It’s not clear what’s lined up next for him, though as a corner bat with some pop, he could draw interest overseas.
  • The Pirates have agreed to a minor league contract with catcher Steven Baron, per John Dreker of PiratesProspects.com. Baron, who just turned 28, has gone 1-for-16 in a minuscule sample of six big league games. He’s a career .252/.309/.331 hitter in parts of four Triple-A seasons, though, and has thrown out 43 percent of would-be base thieves in his minor league career. He’s also drawn consistently excellent marks for his pitch-framing abilities and above-average marks in terms of pitch blocking, per Baseball Prospectus.
  • The Brewers announced that they’ve signed right-hander Chris Dula to a minor league contract. The 26-year-old hasn’t pitched in affiliated ball since 2016, when he was with the Rangers, but has spent the past couple of seasons on the indy circuit and gained some notoriety for a fastball that reaches 102 mph. As one might expect, control issues are a significant factor with Dula, but the Brewers will take him on as a project, presumably in the lower to middle levels of their minor league system, in hopes of harnessing his premium velocity.

Cubs Sign Daniel Descalso

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3:54pm: Descalso’s contract comes with a small incentives package as well, Heyman tweets. He’ll earn $50K for reaching each of 425, 450 and 475 plate appearances in a given season, plus another $100K upon reaching 500 PAs.

2:02pm: The signing has now been announced. Descalso will earn salaries of $1.5MM and $2.5MM, per MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian (via Twitter).

10:42am: The Cubs have agreed to terms with veteran utilityman Daniel Descalso, according to reports from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter link) and Jon Heyman of Fancred (via Twitter). Descalso, a client of Pro Edge Sports, will be promised $5MM over two seasons, per Rosenthal (Twitter links). There’s a club option as well for the 2021 season, with a $3.5MM price tag and $1MM buyout.

This move, if completed, promises to deliver the Cubbies some of the veteran grit they felt they were missing in a 2018 season in which they came up a bit short of their own lofty expectations. It would also bring Descalso back to the NL Central division after a four-year foray into the NL West.

Descalso will help the Cubs cover for the absence of  Addison Russell over the first month or so of the season, likely seeing quite a bit of action at second while Javy Baez plays short. Once Russell returns to the club from his domestic abuse suspension, as now seems to be the plan, Descalso will in all likelihood step back into the utility role to which he’s best suited.

If that’s all that takes place, the Cubs would feature a variety of versatile position players to work with. Russell and especially Baez would occupy a fair bit of the middle-infield action, with Descalso filling in there and at third base. Presumably, Ben Zobrist and Ian Happ will spend the majority of their time in the outfield, though both have ample experience on the dirt as well. Just where David Bote will fit in all of this isn’t clear, but the Cubs certainly won’t mind having the depth and he’s optionable as well.

Of course, there could yet be further roster tweaks still to come. The Cubs have engaged the market in a surprisingly spartan manner thus far, with the club sending signal after signal that it’s not going to add much payroll. But there could still be trade possibilities to work through and it’s still reasonable to wonder whether the Chicago organization has a big strike still in it if the right opportunity arises.

Descalso, of course, spent the early portion of his career with the bitter-rival Cardinals. He earned his playing time as a gritty, pesky, versatile player who did enough in the field and on the bases to overlook his generally subpar bat.

In recent years, though, the 32-year-old Descalso has opened up some new aspects to his game. Beyond getting acquainted in the corner outfield, he has become an increasingly aggressive flyball hitter. The initial returns have been impressive, as Descalso has turned into a lite version of a three-true-outcomes hitter.

Last year, in 423 trips to the plate, Descalso popped 13 long balls. He struck out and walked at career-high rates, 26.0% and 15.1% respectively, while turning in a productive overall .238/.353/.436 slash. That was good for a 111 wRC+, a nice number for a player who had never before topped 90 in a given season. With quality baserunning added in, Descalso clocked in at 1.6 fWAR — easily a career-high.

Descalso hasn’t played much shortstop in recent seasons, though that is in part no doubt a reflection of the needs of his former teams. It’s also not a primary concern for the Cubs, who can utilize Baez and Russell at the position.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Royals Sign Terrance Gore, Designate Rosell Herrera

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The Royals announced today that they have inked a deal with outfielder Terrance Gore. Meanwhile, utilityman Rosell Herrera was designated for assignment to create roster space.

Gore has secured a one-year, MLB pact that comes with a split salary, per MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan (via Twitter). He will earn at a $350K rate in the minors and a $650K rate in the big leagues.

The 27-year-old Gore is a five-year MLB veteran, but has taken just 19 plate appearances at the game’s highest level. While he’s valued for his blistering speed and instincts on the bases and in the field, Gore has a track record of abysmal offensive numbers in the minors.

Given that profile, it’s a bit of a surprise to see the out-of-options Gore occupying a 40-man roster spot for a Royals club that seems to have little hope of near-term contention. That’s all the more true given that the club already added speed demon Billy Hamilton, who is expected to command the bulk of the playing time in center.

When the Royals inked Hamilton, they emphasized the need to cover ground at hitter-friendly Kauffman Stadium, so perhaps there’s a niche for Gore as well if the club decides to take things to an extreme position. (He’d be a platoon match for the left-handed-hitting Hamilton, it’s worth noting.) Certainly, the K.C. team knows him as well as anyone, having employed him exclusively since 2011, excepting a late-2018 run with the Cubs. If Gore does ultimately end up on the big league roster, he’ll pair with Hamilton, Whit Merrifield and Adalberto Mondesi to give manager Ned Yost a fleet-footed quartet that is unparalleled in terms of raw speed and baserunning ability.

As for Herrera, 26, he’s capable of lining up just about anywhere defensively, but hasn’t generally shown much with the bat. He slashed .234/.286/.317 in his first 302 MLB plate appearances last year. That said, Herrera has at times exhibited promising plate discipline as well as speed and even some power (16 home runs in 2013), so it’s still possible he’ll put some things together and emerge as a worthwhile MLB performer.

Carlos Beltran To Join Yankees Front Office

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The Yankees are hiring recently retired ballplayer Carlos Beltran to a front office role, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (via Twitter). Beltran will serve as a special advisor to GM Brian Cashman.

Last we heard, Beltran had declined a similar opportunity with the New York club last offseason. At the time, of course, he had only just wrapped up his illustrious, two-decade MLB career.

Beltran certainly was entitled to some time away from the game, but it has long seemed he’d remain engaged in some capacity. Indeed, the Yanks even considered him for their open managerial post, with Beltran indicating real interest in that demanding job.

It’ll be interesting to see what path the 41-year-old Beltran takes in his post-playing career, which is only just getting under way. As Feinsand notes, one of his first assignments could well be to help the Yanks lure Manny Machado, who shares an agent with Beltran.

Rangers Sign Lance Lynn

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DECEMBER 18, 12:30pm: The Texas club has announced the signing.

11:41am: Lynn will receive a $4MM signing bonus, along with salaries of $8MM, $10MM, and $8MM, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). The deal also includes a one-time $100K assignment bonus in the event that Lynn is shipped out west (to the Angels, Dodgers, D-Backs, Rockies, Padres, Athletics, Giants, or Mariners).

DECEMBER 12: The Rangers are nearing a deal with veteran free agent hurler Lance Lynn, according to MLB.com’s TR Sullivan (via Twitter). It’s said to be a rather surprising three-year arrangement with a strong $30MM guarantee, with MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand adding the financial details on Twitter.

Last winter, Lynn seemed in line for a significant, long-term deal before he settled for a pillow contract with the Twins. After turning in middling results in the ensuing campaign, it did not seem likely he’d get a terribly lengthy arrangement this time around.

MLBTR predicted a two-year, $16MM pact. That felt terribly rich to anyone that failed to look beneath his 4.77 ERA from 2018. But Lynn did show some intriguing underlying numbers, particularly after landing with the Yankees in a mid-season swap. To be sure, Lynn continued to post suboptimal bottom-line numbers in New York. But he racked up a 61:14 K/BB ratio in his 54 1/3 innings, a notable improvement in that regard over his career numbers that was perhaps linked to some changes in his pitch usage patterns. Lynn also drew grounders at a career-best 49.7% rate over the course of the season.

There’s also a broader track record to consider. The veteran righty had long turned in impressive campaigns with the Cardinals, never once averaging over four earned per nine in his six seasons in St. Louis and wrapping up his time there with a 3.38 ERA in nearly one thousand frames. Lynn was even typically effective upon returning from Tommy John surgery in 2017. But ERA estimators did not buy into that version of the hurler (4.82 FIP, 4.75 xFIP, 4.85 SIERA), which made it somewhat unsurprising to see his market collapse in the ensuing winter.

In any event, the market clearly valued Lynn’s impressive late showing with the Yanks this time around, which helps even things out for the former first overall draft pick. It’s the second consecutive season in which the Rangers have given out a reasonably aggressive three-year contract for a starting pitcher, with last winter’s Mike Minor deal working out well thus far.

Of course, the Texas staff still faces questions, but this move changes the complexion of the unit. In addition to Minor and now Lynn, the Rangers will feature TJ-returnees Drew Smyly and Edinson Volquez. All of those four veterans have had notable successes at times, but each has also endured health issues and performance lapses in the recent past. The Rangers could compete the remaining job among younger pitchers, or might continue dabbling with the utilization of an opener.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Nationals Sign Matt Adams

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DECEMBER 18: The Nats have announced the signing.

DECEMBER 15, 3:38 PM: The Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty tweets that Adams will earn $3MM in 2019, and he’s also guaranteed a $1MM buyout on a mutual option for the 2020 season.

3:18 PM: Free agent first baseman/outfielder Matt Adams has agreed to a one-year, $4MM deal (contract details via Yahoo’s Jeff Passan) with Washington, per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. Per Rosenthal, the deal is pending a physical.

Matt Adams | Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Adams, 30, was excellent in 277 plate appearances for the Nationals last seasons, slashing .257/.332/.510 (123 wRC+) before moving back to St. Louis on a late-August waiver claim. Despite poor numbers in a minuscule sample upon returning to the Cardinals, a slimmed-down Adams posted his highest hard-hit rate (39.1%) since the 2014 campaign, and displayed, for the first time, an ability to adequately handle a corner-outfield spot, earning decent DRS marks after a dreadful initiation to the spots in 2017.

Adams, though, has long been a near-automatic out against left-handed pitching (career .208/.238/.358 batting line, 59 wRC+), and did little to dismiss the notion in 32 plate appearances versus lefties in 2018. Still, he’s a solid bench option for a team in dire need of upper-level offensive depth, and should be an adequate replacement for an aging Ryan Zimmerman or the injury-prone Adam Eaton, should either fall prey to the DL and/or bouts of ineffectiveness.

The Slippery Rock University product made his MLB debut in 2012 with St. Louis after systematically annihilating minor-league pitching from 2009-12. His rookie season in 2013 was arguably his best, as the then-24-year-old joined a host of lineup-mates in demolishing NL pitching (his 135 wRC+ was third-best on the team) en route to the team’s second pennant in three seasons. Sharp decline followed, though, and an undiscerning eye (5.0 BB% from ’14-’15) relegated the 23rd-round pick to extreme part-time duty.

An increased, 7.6 BB% allowed for a slight rebound in Adams’ 2016 performance, before the slugger dropped 30 pounds and vowed to improve his versatility. There’s hope for more, too: Adams’ 107 wRC+ last season was suppressed by a career-low .245 average on balls in play, with his second-St. Louis-stint results (.167 BABIP in 60 PA despite a 56% hard-hit rate) being an obvious anomaly.

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