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White Sox To Non-Tender Matt Davidson

By Jeff Todd | November 30, 2018 at 2:52pm CDT

The White Sox will non-tender infielder Matt Davidson, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter). Eligible for arbitration as a Super Two, the slugger was projected by MLBTR & Matt Swartz to earn $2.4MM.

Davidson, 28, made some positive strides with the White Sox last season, as he more than doubled his walk rate from 4.3 percent in 2017 to 10.5 percent in 2018. Davidson managed to cut back on the alarming 37.2 percent strikeout rate he posted in 2017 as well, though his 2018 rate of 33.3 percent was still far too high. Although the slugger’s overall offensive output improved from .220/.260/.452 to .228/.319/.419, his markedly improved on-base skills came with a noted downturn in his power production.

Defensively, Davidson played a respectable first base, per both Defensive Runs Saved and Ultimate Zone Rating, but he saw limited action at his original position, third base, and was primarily a designated hitter when in the lineup. A player with such limited defensive value and questionable contact skills was apparently a tough sell in the White Sox’ front office, but Davidson could hold some value as a corner-infield bat off the bench elsewhere. He did post impressive platoon numbers, clobbering lefties at a .289/.382/.500 clip. That, however, was accompanied by a corresponding .206/.296/.391 slash against righties.

Dodgers Avoid Arbitration With Tony Cingrani

By Jeff Todd | November 30, 2018 at 2:48pm CDT

The Dodgers have struck a deal with lefty Tony Cingrani to avoid arbitration, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). It’ll include a guaranteed, $2.65MM salary, per the report.

Standard arbitration contracts are not fully guaranteed, so obviously something spurred the Dodgers to do so in this case. The salary does not fall far from the $2.7MM MLBTR projection, but his reps at the Bledsoe Agency may have been able to argue for more.

The 29-year-old Cingrani only managed to throw 22 2/3 MLB innings in 2018, and carried an unsightly 4.76 ERA. It sounds funny to say it, but he was otherwise quite impressive. Cingrani racked up 14.3 K/9 with just 2.4 BB/9 while drawing grounders on half of the balls put in play against him. And he drew swings and misses at a career-best 13.8% rate.

Reds To Non-Tender Billy Hamilton

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 2:23pm CDT

The Reds are planning to non-tender center fielder Billy Hamilton, reports C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic (via Twitter). He’ll become a free agent and will be eligible to sign with any team once the move is official.

Hamilton, who turned 28 in September, was arbitration-eligible for the final time this winter and had been projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $5.9MM in 2019. Instead, he’ll hit the open market in search of a new organization after spending the first 10 seasons of his professional career in the Cincinnati organization.

It’s a surprising bit of news for Hamilton even in spite of the defensive standout’s ongoing struggles at the plate. Reds owner Bob Castellini has previously gone on record to state that he hoped Hamilton would be a Red “forever” (Twitter link via Jerry Crasnick), and the organization has rebuffed trade interest in the speedster in each of the past two offseasons.

It seems, however, that the organization simply no longer feels that the benefit of Hamilton’s glove and premium baserunning skills are worth the lack of offense that has become synonymous with Hamilton’s name. Though he was long touted as one of the game’s premier prospects due to his 80-grade speed, Hamilton has mustered just a .244/.297/.332 batting line in five seasons since becoming a regular with Cincinnati back in 2014. That production is even more questionable when considering the fact that Hamilton plays his home games in Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, which is one of baseball’s most hitter-friendly settings; both OPS+ and wRC+ indicate that when adjusting for that hitter-friendly home park, Hamilton’s offense has been a full 30 percent worse than that of a league-average hitter.

To his credit, Hamilton has stolen more than 50 bases on four different occasions and, even in a “down” year in that regard, swiped 34 bags last season. He’s also delivered a whopping 51 Defensive Runs Saved in Center Field, which is largely backed up by a +45.5 Ultimate Zone Rating in his big league career. Statcast’s newest outfield defensive metric, Outs Above Average, only goes back three seasons but still feels that Hamilton has recorded a staggering 52 outs more than a league-average center fielder would generate, based on catch probability data.

At 28 years of age, it seems unlikely that Hamilton will ever develop into a bona fide offensive threat, though it’s certainly not out of the question that a change of scenery could bring about some improvement at the plate. He’ll likely have no shortage of interested teams inquire with his representatives at Wasserman, and the sheer extent of his baserunning and defensive value makes him a likely candidate to land a big league deal elsewhere.

For the Reds, the move opens up roughly $6MM of payroll next season — a relatively small but not insignificant sum as the organization aggressively pursues rotation upgrades. Cincinnati is reportedly even intrigued by top-of-the-market options, most recently being tied to Dallas Keuchel, though it remains to be seen if they can convince a top-tier name to sign on to pitch at Great American Ball Park for a club that hasn’t had a winning season since 2013. Certainly, the added payroll space can’t hurt.

Of course, the Reds now also have a need in center field that may need to go outside the organization to fill. There’s been talk of moving top prospect Nick Senzel to the outfield, though injuries limited the former No. 2 overall pick to 44 games in 2018 and his pro experience has come exclusively in the infield. Scott Schebler has a bit of experience in center field but has traditionally been more of a corner option, while Jesse Winker has been regarded primarily as a left fielder himself. Phil Ervin and Jose Siri represent other options, but given that the Reds hope to take a step toward being more competitive in 2019, it seems likely that they’ll pursue a more established option.

Cubs Tender Addison Russell Arbitration Contract

By Jeff Todd | November 30, 2018 at 2:22pm CDT

The Cubs announced today that they have tendered a contract to embattled shortstop Addison Russell. Like any other standard arbitration situation, it’s a non-guaranteed deal.

Russell’s status with the Chicago organization was (and to some extent still is) in doubt. He is slated to sit out the first month of the 2019 campaign as he finishes serving a 40-game suspension under the MLB-MLBPA Joint Domestic Violence Policy. That punishment was handed down following allegations from Russell’s ex-wife, Melisa Reidy. (She spoke with ESPNChicago.com’s Jesse Rogers about the situation recently, for those unfamiliar with the details.)

Many wondered whether the Cubs would trade or non-tender Russell as a result of the troubling allegations, which involved conduct during his time with the organization. Instead, the club will take at least a partial step toward retaining the shortstop, though certainly he could still be cut loose or traded. Russell and president of baseball operations Theo Epstein each issued statements through the team’s Twitter feed. Russell is projected by MLBTR to earn $4.3MM via arbitration; his salary has yet to be determined, so far as is publicly known.

Rangers Sign Jesse Chavez

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 2:02pm CDT

Nov. 30: The Rangers have formally announced their two-year deal with Chavez.

Nov. 27: The Rangers are and right-hander Jesse Chavez are in agreement on a two-year contract worth a total of roughly $8MM, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Mark Feinsand of MLB.com had previously tweeted that the two sides were close to a deal. It’s the second straight offseason that the Sosnick, Cobbe & Karon client landed with the Rangers, as Chavez signed in Texas last offseason before being flipped to the Cubs in a midseason swap.

Chavez, 35, enjoyed the finest season of his career in 2018 after joining the Rangers as an unheralded, $1MM signing late in Spring Training. The journeyman righty posted a 3.51 ERA in 56 1/3 innings with Texas before joining the Cubs and turning into an absolute bullpen juggernaut. In 39 innings, Chavez allowed just five runs on 26 hits and five walks with 42 strikeouts out of Joe Maddon’s bullpen. He also chipped in a scoreless inning in the NL Wild Card Game against the Rockies.

Chavez’s unforeseeable ascension from mop-up man to a high-leverage hammer for Maddon was tied, in part, to a significant uptick in the usage of a cutter. With the Cubs, Chavez relied almost entirely on cutters and sinkers — largely abandoning his changeup, slider and curveball. The results speak for themselves and helped push a player who a year ago struggled to find a 40-man roster spot into a multi-year free-agent agreement (albeit at a relatively modest rate).

Many Cubs fans, of course, will remember Chavez’s proclamation that he’d retire if he didn’t return to the Cubs in 2019. That comment came in the emotional fallout of Chicago’s loss in the aforementioned Wild Card Game, though, and it’s also not clear how far the Cubs were willing to go in order to retain the righty. The Cubs, to the surprise of many, are reported to have substantial payroll concerns this winter — so much so that they felt it necessary to trade Drew Smyly before exercising Cole Hamels’ 2019 option. If funds are indeed as tight as it seems in Wrigleyville, then perhaps president of baseball operations Theo Epstein and GM Jed Hoyer simply balked at the notion of a multi-year deal for the 35-year-old journeyman on the heels of a career year.

For a Rangers pitching staff that was in shambles for much of the 2018 season, Chavez will bring some versatility to the table. He can certainly start for Texas, should rookie manager Chris Woodward desire, but Chavez can also be deployed in a more nontraditional setting. He’s already familiar with multi-inning relief stints, and for a Rangers club that seems likely to utilize the “opener” strategy in 2019 and beyond, there’d be some appeal in using Chavez as the “primary pitcher” to piggyback on an opener’s short stint. Alternatively, if the Rangers are able to amass enough depth elsewhere on the staff, Chavez could simply be used in a high-leverage capacity late in the game, helping to bridge the gap between the starters and burgeoning bullpen star Jose Leclerc.

Of course, if Chavez can replicate the success he experienced in 2018 (or at least approach those levels), he’ll quite likely find himself on the trade block once again this summer. The Rangers aren’t likely to find themselves even on the fringes of the playoff picture in 2019, given the team’s general dearth of pitching depth, which would make Chavez and any other short-term veteran assets fairly obvious trade candidates come June and July of next season.

Chavez ranked 44th on MLBTR’s list of the Top 50 free agents of the offseason and was projected to sign a two-year, $10MM contract. His comments prompted a whopping 39.6 percent of participants to pick Chavez to return to the Cubs in MLBTR’s Free Agent Prediction contest; only two percent of respondents correctly forecast his Rangers reunion.

Latest On Patrick Corbin’s Market

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 2:01pm CDT

The teams that have already met with free-agent lefty Patrick Corbin have been given the impression that he’s hoping to be the first major free agent to sign a long-term contract this winter, tweets Jayson Stark of The Athletic. Corbin met with the Phillies, Nationals and Yankees this week, though he’s surely been in contact with other clubs as the consensus top starting pitcher available in free agency. Stark suggests that a Corbin signing “will almost certainly” happen before the Winter Meetings, which are already only nine days away from beginning.

The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal wrote yesterday that early interest in Corbin is robust, with some teams believing he’ll receive offers of six years in length. (MLBTR projected Corbin to sign a six-year, $129MM contract.) Notably, Rosenthal cites one source in suggesting that Nationals GM Mike Rizzo is “seriously focused” on acquiring Corbin, though Washington’s history of baking heavy deferrals into long-term contracts isn’t always well received by free agents.

More anecdotally, Rosenthal tweets that at Corbin’s offseason wedding, his younger brother donned a Yankees hat during his best man speech and joked that he hoped the groom would soon be moving closer to home. (Corbin, a childhood Yankees fan, is from Syracuse.) The New York Post’s Ken Davidoff spoke to Yankees general manger Brian Cashman about the team’s meeting with Corbin, though Cashman unsurprisingly declined to reveal much, simply stating that Corbin “left here knowing a lot more about us than when he arrived.” The GM did, however, imply that the organization won’t necessarily wait for Corbin to make a decision before moving on. Based on Stark’s report, however, it doesn’t sound as if Corbin will be making interest parties wait all that long.

The 29-year-old Corbin is the second-youngest and very arguably the best starting pitcher on the free-agent market. He turned in his second career 200-inning season in 2018, his second straight season with 33 appearances and ranked seventh among qualified starting pitchers in strikeout percentage as well as second in swinging-strike rate.

If there’s a knock on Corbin, it’s that he doesn’t have a lengthy track record of performing at this level — largely because he underwent Tommy John surgery midway through his Diamondbacks tenure, missed one and a half seasons, and struggled in his first full year back. He’s been a quality hurler over the past two seasons, though, and D-backs pitching coach Mike Butcher tells Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer that he believes Corbin can maintain his 2018 transformation for years to come. Butcher and Lauber discuss the changes to Corbin’s arsenal — including the refinement of his slider and altered usage of his curveball — that brought about Corbin’s breakout season in 2018 in an interview that’s well worth a full read-through for fans hoping their preferred club will land the lefty.

Mariners Trade Alex Colome To White Sox For Omar Narvaez

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 1:03pm CDT

The Mariners announced Friday that they’ve traded reliever Alex Colome to the White Sox in exchange for catcher Omar Narvaez.

Colome, 29, is arbitration-eligible and projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $7.3MM in his second trip through the process. He’s controlled through the 2020 season and will give the ChiSox a high-caliber option at the back of the bullpen. The right-hander spent two and a half seasons as the Rays’ primary closer before being flipped to Seattle alongside Denard Span this past summer in a trade for minor leaguers Andrew Moore and Tommy Romero.

Rising through the minor leagues as a starter, Colome was considered one of the Rays’ top pitching prospect. However, he quickly found his footing as a reliever in the Majors, and the organization never really looked back. From 2016-18, Colome has pitched to a pristine 2.78 ERA with with 9.5 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 0.8 HR/9 and a 47 percent ground-ball rate. Along the way, he’s racked up 96 saves and been named to the American League All-Star team on one occasion. He can either close games or function as a high-end setup man for the Sox for the next two seasons.

While there’s been plenty of talk about a shift in direction for the White Sox, the acquisition of Colome is perhaps the first earnest win-now move that has come as the Chicago rebuild reportedly begins to wind down. The Sox did add veteran catcher Welington Castillo on a two-year contract last offseason, another move that could be viewed through a win-now lens, but they only invested money ($15.5MM) to bring Castillo to Chicago’s South Side. By trading Narvaez, the Sox are flipping another four years of control in exchange for two seasons of control of Colome. It stands to reason that other moves that place an emphasis on winning in 2019 and 2020 will follow as the winter progresses.

Narvaez, 27 in February, enjoyed a breakout season at the plate in 2018 and will give Seattle a cost-effective replacement for Mike Zunino, who was traded to the Rays earlier this month as part of what has become an aggressive restructuring of the Mariners’ roster.

In many ways, Narvaez is the polar inverse of Zunino. While the latter is known an exceptionally powerful backstop with noted OBP deficiencies but strong defensive skills, the former is an on-base machine with limited power and more questionable defensive abilities. A career .274/.366/.379 hitter, Narvaez smacked a career-high nine homers in 2018 and posted an overall line of .275/.366/.429 in 322 plate appearances. It’s not clear if he can sustain that power output, especially moving from Guaranteed Rate Field to the more spacious Safeco Field, but Narvaez has long displayed a keen eye at the dish (career 12.3 percent walk rate) and ridden that skill to strong on-base marks. He’s also struck out at just a 16.9 percent rate in his career — another notable difference from his Seattle predecessor.

Defensively, Narvaez is, at best, a work in progress. He caught 24 percent of would-be base thieves in both 2017 and 2018 but has rated terribly in Baseball Prospectus’ pitch-framing and pitch-blocking metrics. Chicago general manager Rick Hahn recently voiced confidence to The Athletic’s James Fegan that the organization could improve Narvaez’s defense, though that responsibility will now fall on the Mariners.

Narvaez will immediately become the top catching option in Seattle, with David Freitas currently standing out as the lone backup option. The move likely lessens the White Sox’ urgency to add bullpen pieces to an extent, though Hahn & Co. still figure to be involved in that market as it develops. It’ll also be interesting to see whether the Sox make a splash at catcher, where Yasmani Grandal and Wilson Ramos are the top free-agent options, though perhaps the safer bet is that they’ll merely look to add a veteran backup type to pair with Castillo now that Narvaez is no longer in the fold.

This marks the third significant trade of the offseason for Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto, who has moved Zunino to the Rays and James Paxton to the Yankees. Both of those swaps, like today’s Colome deal, have seen Seattle deal players who came with just two remaining seasons of control and a fairly sizable arbitration projection in exchange for MLB-ready help with multiple years of control. Mallex Smith was the key piece in the Zunino trade, while the Paxton swap netted the Mariners top pitching prospect Justus Sheffield.

Of course, the bigger question with Seattle is whether (or when) the Mariners will formally complete the widely reported blockbuster that’d send Robinson Cano and closer Edwin Diaz to the Mets. Unlike the Mariners’ other deals, that franchise-altering trade would be centered more around adding a pair of high-end prospects and shedding a significant portion of Cano’s remaining $120MM — at the expense of one of the game’s best young relievers.

Marlins Re-Sign Bryan Holaday To Minor League Deal

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 12:10pm CDT

The Marlins have agreed to re-sign veteran catcher Bryan Holaday to a minor league contract, tweets Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. He’ll be invited to Major League Spring Training and again compete for a roster spot.

Holaday, 31, spent the 2018 season as the primary backup to star catcher (and trade candidate) J.T. Realmuto. The well-traveled veteran appeared in 61 games for Miami and tallied 166 plate appearances, though he struggled considerably, hitting just .205/.261/.258 in that time.

Holaday has long struggled to get on base, but his defensive contributions in 2018 were readily apparent. He threw out a league-leading 45 percent of would-be base thieves (17-for-38) and, per Baseball Prospectus, delivered above-average marks in terms of both pitch framing and blocking.

Chad Wallach is the only catcher other than Realmuto who is presently on the Marlins’ roster, so they’ll need some additional depth whether Realmuto is traded or retained. In the event of a trade, it’s unlikely that Holaday would be in line for regular work in Miami — he’s never topped 171 PAs in a big league season — but he’ll likely be in the race for a roster spot regardless of how Miami’s offseason shakes out.

Cardinals, Chris Beck Agree To Minor League Deal

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 11:59am CDT

The Cardinals are in agreement with right-hander Chris Beck on a minor league contract, tweets Jenifer Langosch of MLB.com. He’ll presumably compete for a bullpen spot in Spring Training and serve as Triple-A depth if he doesn’t crack the roster.

Beck. 28, posted a 4.50 ERA in 34 innings between the White Sox and Mets in 2018, though his 21-to-20 K/BB ratio in that short time was obviously cause for some concern. Beck, a second-round draft pick of the ChiSox in 2012, has yet to find his footing at the big league level, as he’s struggled to a 5.88 ERA through 130 innings.

Beck did average better than 95 mph on his heater last season and has fared a bit better in the minor leagues, where he’s logged a 4.05 ERA, 7.3 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 and 0.5 HR/9 in 188 2/3 innings across parts of five seasons.

Craig Kimbrel Reportedly Seeking Six-Year Contract

By Steve Adams | November 30, 2018 at 11:51am CDT

Teams that have spoken to Craig Kimbrel’s camp early in the offseason have been told that the right-hander “is looking for a six-year deal,” tweets ESPN’s Buster Olney. It’s likely that there’s some degree of tactical negotiating at play here; free agents will always set out seeking a sum larger than the one they perhaps hope to find, and a six-year pact for Kimbrel would be precedent-setting.

At 30 years of age, Kimbrel is already older than both Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman were when they signed their five-year contracts worth $80MM and $86MM, respectively. Those are the two largest deals for any reliever in MLB history, and Kimbrel is presumably aiming to topple both. His ability to do so, of course, is far from a certainty. Though he comes with as much name value as any reliever in the game, Kimbrel had already displayed some red flags in 2018 even before struggling in the postseason.

Through 62 1/3 regular-season innings in 2018, Kimbrel posted a 2.74 ERA which, while strong, was the second-highest of his career. Few clubs place much of an emphasis on that figure in today’s game, but Kimbrel also saw his walk rate spike to 12.6 percent, the second-highest full-season mark of his career. Beyond that, Kimbrel also averaged a home run per nine innings pitched for the first time and turned in a career-worst 3.13 FIP.

Unfortunately for Kimbrel, his most pronounced struggles came under the national spotlight of the 2018 postseason. He surrendered runs in five of his nine playoff outings, issuing eight walks and hitting another two batters in just 10 2/3 innings of total work. It’s worth noting that he’d allowed all of two earned runs in 10 postseason innings coming into the 2018 season, but his late struggles didn’t leave a favorable final impression.

All of this, to some extent, is a matter of splitting hairs. The 2018 version of Kimbrel wasn’t the superhuman entity that Red Sox fans enjoyed in 2017, but Kimbrel was still one of the game’s top relievers. His 97.1 mph average fastball velocity is a dead match for his career mark in that regard, and his 17.2 percent swinging-strike rate was actually an improvement over his 16.5 percent career mark. He ranked sixth among 151 qualified relievers in overall strikeout percentage, fifth in swinging-strike rate and 12th in K%-BB%. A control issue was his primary downfall in 2018, evidenced not only by the increased walk rate but by the decreased first-pitch strike rate and overall percentage of pitches he threw in the strike zone.

As for the postseason difficulties, those are hardly a death knell for Kimbrel’s free-agent stock. Yu Darvish, for instance, landed a $126MM guarantee last winter on the heels of some of his own World Series struggles, and the opposite effect (or lack thereof) can hold equally true; speculation that Daniel Murphy had emphatically bolstered his free-agent stock with his 2015 postseason heroics never manifested into reality. He signed a three-year, $37.5MM deal with the Nationals that was generally in line with pre-October expectations.

As for the six-year ask, that could well be a ploy to get down to a more realistic target of five years or even four at a record-setting average annual value — Wade Davis’ $17.33MM mark currently holds that distinction — which is generally where most projections have pegged Kimbrel this winter. We at MLBTR predicted a four-year, $70MM deal for Kimbrel, which would fall shy of the overall record guarantee for a reliever but would set a new high-water mark in terms of AAV at $17.5MM. Kimbrel already rejected a qualifying offer that would’ve paid him $17.9MM in 2019. As such, any team that signs him will face draft pick and/or international pool forfeitures (the specifics of which can be seen here).

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