Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

White Sox Designate Ron Marinaccio For Assignment

By | at

The White Sox announced that right-hander Ron Marinaccio has been designated for assignment. That’s the corresponding move for left-hander Martín Pérez, whose one-year deal has now been officially announced.

Marinaccio, 29, hasn’t appeared in a big league game for the Sox. He was claimed off waivers from the Yankees with about a week remaining in the 2024 season, but was kept on optional assignment. He has held onto his roster spot for the past four months but has now been nudged off.

The righty was generally a high-strikeout and low-control guy for the Yanks. He tossed 91 1/3 innings over the 2022 and 2023 seasons, allowing 3.05 earned runs per nine. He struck out 29% of batters faced but also gave out walks at a 13.2% clip. In 2024, he got his walk rate down to 10.1% but his strikeout rate also fell to 25.3% as he posted a 3.86 ERA.

Overall, Marinaccio has a 3.22 ERA in 114 2/3 innings, with a 28.2% strikeout rate and 12.6% walk rate. It’s generally been fairly similar in the minors. Over the past four years, Marinaccio has thrown 132 innings on the farm with a 2.86 ERA, 33.5% strikeout rate and 11.5% walk rate.

The control is clearly an issue but Marinaccio is likely to draw interest based on the strikeouts. He also still has an option remaining and barely two years of service time, meaning he still hasn’t qualified for arbitration and can be sent to the minors fairly freely for another year. The Sox will have a week of DFA limbo to figure out what’s next for the righty, though the waiver process takes 48 hours, meaning any trade talks would need to come together in the next five days.

White Sox Sign Martín Pérez

By | at

January 21: The deal has now been officially announced by the White Sox.

January 8: The White Sox and left-hander Martín Pérez are in agreement on a deal, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. It’s a one-year, $5MM deal, per José F. Rivera of ESPN. That comes in the form of a $3.5MM salary and a $1.5MM buyout on a $10MM mutual option for 2026, per Jon Heyman of The New York Post. The deal is pending a physical for the Octagon client. The Sox have a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding move once this deal becomes official. Their Josh Rojas deal is also still not official, so the club now needs to open two spots.

Pérez, 34 in April, is a soft-tossing veteran innings eater. He split last year between the Pirates and Padres, making 26 starts and logging 135 frames. He allowed 4.53 earned runs per nine innings, striking out 18.1% of batters faced, issuing walks at an 8.3% clip and getting grounders on 44.4% of balls in play. He averaged 91.3 miles per hour with his four-seam fastball.

Those stats are pretty close to his career numbers. Dating back to his 2012 debut, he has thrown 1,575 2/3 innings with a 4.44 ERA, 16.2% strikeout rate, 8.3% walk rate and 48.7% ground ball rate. His fastball velocity was naturally higher when he was younger, but not by much. His highest four-seam velocity in a season was 94.2 mph, back in 2019.

He did end the 2024 season on a high note. He posted a 5.20 ERA with the Bucs before being traded to the Padres at the deadline, then went on to allow 3.46 earned runs per nine after the deal. His 20.3% strikeout rate after the trade was a few ticks higher than the 16.9% rate he had with Pittsburgh. He changed up his pitch mix a bit, throwing more changeups and curveballs with the Friars, while reducing his usage of cutters and sliders.

That’s somewhat encouraging but Pérez has previously flashed better results without sustaining them. He posted a 2.89 ERA over 32 starts for the Rangers in 2022, which prompted Texas to issue him a $19.65MM qualifying offer for 2023. The southpaw accepted that but then his ERA normalized to 4.45 that year. As mentioned, he held pretty steady in 2024, with a 4.53 ERA.

It’s not the most exciting profile but he’s a sensible fit for the South Side of Chicago. The White Sox had a poor rotation last year and it’s in worse shape now. They traded Erick Fedde to the Cardinals and the deadline and then flipped Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox last month. Chris Flexen reached free agency at season’s end. That means that Jonathan Cannon is the only guy still on the roster who made more than ten starts for the Sox last year.

Pérez has made at least 26 appearances in five straight full seasons. in 2024, he went on the injured list due to a left groin muscle strain but was back in less than a month. That was his most significant IL stint since 2018. While no pitcher is guaranteed to stay healthy, Pérez is perhaps one of the safer bets to take the ball when it’s his turn, even if the results are more passable than outstanding.

Given the uncertainty in the club’s rotation, it’s a logical pick up. The Sox also added Bryse Wilson earlier this offseason, another move designed to bolster a group fairly lacking in experience. The final three spots are up for grabs, with Cannon, Davis Martin, Sean Burke, Drew Thorpe, Nick Nastrini, Jairo Iriarte, Jake Eder, Wikelman Gonzalez, Ky Bush and Juan Carela around to battle for opportunities. Prospects Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith aren’t yet on the roster but could push into the mix during the season.

Apart from Pérez and Wilson, no one in that cluster of rotation options has even one year of major league service time. The Sox can use Pérez as a veteran anchor, at least for a few months. If he’s pitching well, he could be flipped to a contending club at the deadline, just as he was last year. That would then open up second-half starts for whichever young pitcher has earned them.

Angels, Jose Quijada Avoid Arbitration

By | at

The Angels announced Tuesday that they’ve signed left-handed reliever Jose Quijada to a one-year contract with a club option for the 2026 season, avoiding arbitration in the process. Quijada, a client of the Beverly Hills Sports Council, will be paid $1.075MM this coming season, per the team. (The Angels are one of just a few major league teams that publicly announce financial details of their transactions.) The 2026 option is valued at $3.75MM.

Quijada had filed for a $1.14MM salary in his second trip through the arb process. He was recovering from Tommy John surgery during his first trip through arbitration and thus landed on an $840K salary that wasn’t too far north of last year’s $740K minimum. The Halos countered with a $975K proposal.

Today’s agreement checks in north of the midpoint between those two sums. Because it includes a club option, it won’t be considered a true “one-year deal” for the Angels or other clubs leaguewide; that’s important with regard to arbitration specifically, as arb negotiations are based on comps for prior one-year deals for players in the same service class. Even if the Angels decline the club option, Quijada would remain under their control for 2026 and would simply be arbitration-eligible once again.

The 29-year-old Quijada finished up his recovery from that 2023 Tommy John procedure in late July. He returned to the Halos and appeared in 22 games in the season’s final nine weeks, logging 19 1/3 innings with a tidy 3.26 ERA. He set down a hearty 28.6% of his opponents on strikes but also issued walks at an alarming 20.2% clip. Command has been a long-running issue for Quijada but not to that extent; in 108 2/3 prior big league innings, he’d walked 13.8% of batters faced.

Even with that problematic command, Quijada comes at an affordable rate and brings some clearly tantalizing traits to the table. He logged a big 14% swinging-strike rate this past season, in part due to an uncanny knack for missing bats within the strike zone. Opponents made contact at just a 78.8% clip on in-zone pitches offered by Quijada — well shy of the 85.2% league average. The lefty’s velocity also strengthened over the course of his return; he averaged 93.5 mph on his heater through his first two weeks off the injured list but sat 94 mph on average thereafter. With a bit more time to continue building up, he may well have returned to the 94.5 mph average he posted in his last full, healthy season in 2022.

With Quijada’s case now resolved, the Angels have cleared up one of three pending cases. Infielder Luis Rengifo filed for a $5.95MM salary. The team countered at $5.8MM. Outfielder Mickey Moniak filed at $2MM to the team’s $1.5MM. You can read more about the reasons for teams and players go to battle over ostensibly trivial sums like this in this 2015 piece I wrote after chatting with several general managers and assistant GMs around the league.

Poll: Who Would You Elect From This Year’s Hall Of Fame Ballot?

By | at

The results of this year’s round of Hall of Fame voting will be announced at 5PM CT this evening. Ichiro Suzuki, C.C. Sabathia, and Billy Wagner appear to stand the best chance among this year’s crop of players to join the immortal ranks of Cooperstown alongside Dick Allen and Dave Parker this summer. That doesn’t mean they’re the only players worth considering, however. 28 names in total are on this year’s ballot, and while we won’t go over every single name, plenty of players have solid cases to be elected.

Suzuki has a chance to go into the Hall as its second-ever unanimously elected player, and it’s easy to see why. The ten-time All-Star won both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards in the AL back in 2001, his age-27 season, after a nine-season stint in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He went on to play parts of 19 seasons in the majors, collect 3,089 hits and steal 509 bases and win ten Gold Glove awards, three Silver Slugger awards, and two AL batting titles. Combined with his years playing overseas, Suzuki has 4,367 hits over a 28-year career in professional baseball.

Sabathia, meanwhile, won’t get in unanimously but stands a good chance of making it in during his first year of eligibility. The southpaw played 19 seasons in the majors, with a solid career 3.74 ERA (116 ERA+) to go along with 3,093 strikeouts and 251 wins at the big league level. The six-time All-Star won the AL Cy Young award with Cleveland back in 2007 and went on to finish in the top 5 of Cy Young award voting four more times throughout his career. He eventually won the 2009 World Series with the Yankees, earning ALCS MVP honors along the way as he pitched to a 1.98 ERA while striking out 32 batters in 36 1/3 innings of work across five starts during that postseason run.

As for Wagner, the lefty enters his final year of eligibility after missing election last year by just a few votes. The reliever pitched just 903 innings over his 16 years in the majors, but the seven-time All-Star was undeniably dominant when on the mound with a career 2.31 ERA (187 ERA+). He also collected 422 saves throughout his career, making him one of just eight players to record 400 saves in MLB history, while his career 33.2% strikeout rate would not only be by far the best among Hall of Fame relievers but trails only active closers Aroldis Chapman, Kenley Jansen, and Craig Kimbrel among all 265 relievers in MLB history with at least 600 innings pitched in their careers.

Aside from the top three names, the only players with a realistic shot at election this year are Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones. A nine-time All-Star and the 1999 AL Rookie of the Year, Beltrán played 20 years in the majors and during that time racked up 2,725 hits, slugged 435 homers, and stole 312 bases. During his peak seasons with the Royals and Mets from 2001 to 2008, Beltrán was worth 47 bWAR and 46.6 fWAR as he slashed .282/.363/.513 while collecting five All-Star appearances, three Gold Glove awards, and two Silver Slugger awards. However, his case may be complicated by his involvement in the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scandal.

Meanwhile, Jones is a 10-time Gold Glove award winner and is generally considered to be one of the best defensive center fielders of all time if not the very best. From 1997 to 2007, Jones combined that generational defense with strong offensive numbers, hitting .263/.343/.498 with 363 homers during that time en route to 60.9 bWAR and 64.2 fWAR.

While other players on the ballot don’t have a clear shot towards election this year, that hardly means they lack legitimate cases for the Hall of their own. Chase Utley struggled to stay on the field throughout the later years of his 16-year career, but his peak seasons from 2005 to 2011 are impossible to argue with as he slashed .293/.383/.513 with five All-Star appearances, four Silver Slugger awards, and three top-ten MVP finishes en route to 49.3 bWAR and 47.7 fWAR over that seven-year period.

Álex Rodríguez, Manny Ramírez, and Andy Pettitte all have impeccable arguments for the Hall in terms of stats but have had their candidacies bogged down by their PED usage. Félix Hernández has an unbelievable peak with a 2.90 ERA (134 ERA+), six All-Star appearances, an AL Cy Young award and five other top-ten finishes in Cy Young balloting during an eight-year stretch from 2008 to 2015 but pitched his final MLB game at the age of 33. Bobby Abreu lacks the awards and accolades of his peers on the ballot but was a career .291/.395/.475 hitter across 18 years in the majors. That .395 on-base percentage would be tied for 41st among 171 Hall of Fame hitters.

Meanwhile, a number of players are currently fighting to stay on the ballot for next year. Francisco Rodríguez, Brian McCann, Russell Martin, Ian Kinsler, and Torii Hunter have all received votes this cycle but have less than 10% of the vote among publicly revealed ballots. Anyone who finishes below 5% in the final results is kicked off the ballot, and of that quintet only Rodríguez is above that benchmark on publicly revealed ballots.

If you had a Hall of Fame ballot, who would you vote for? Have your say in the poll below, which allows you to vote for multiple players. As a reminder, Hall of Fame voters may only select a maximum of ten names on their ballots.

If you had a Hall of Fame ballot, who would you vote for this year?
Ichiro Suzuki 16.59% (11,990 votes)
CC Sabathia 11.34% (8,190 votes)
Billy Wagner 10.86% (7,844 votes)
Andruw Jones 8.74% (6,317 votes)
Alex Rodriguez 6.94% (5,014 votes)
Carlos Beltran 6.73% (4,861 votes)
Manny Ramirez 6.64% (4,799 votes)
Felix Hernandez 5.50% (3,977 votes)
Andy Pettitte 4.70% (3,399 votes)
Chase Utley 3.86% (2,786 votes)
Dustin Pedroia 2.52% (1,819 votes)
Bobby Abreu 2.07% (1,499 votes)
Omar Vizquel 2.05% (1,478 votes)
David Wright 1.95% (1,412 votes)
Jimmy Rollins 1.94% (1,401 votes)
Torii Hunter 1.48% (1,069 votes)
Mark Buerhle 1.46% (1,058 votes)
Francisco Rodriguez 1.30% (938 votes)
Brian McCann 0.60% (431 votes)
Russell Martin 0.47% (343 votes)
Ben Zobrist 0.38% (277 votes)
Troy Tulowitzki 0.38% (276 votes)
Ian Kinsler 0.36% (258 votes)
Adam Jones 0.34% (245 votes)
Curtis Granderson 0.33% (236 votes)
Hanley Ramirez 0.18% (131 votes)
Fernando Rodney 0.16% (119 votes)
Carlos Gonzalez 0.12% (87 votes)
Total Votes: 72,254

Mariners Outright Samad Taylor

By | at

The Mariners announced Tuesday that infielder/outfielder Samad Taylor, whom they designated for assignment last week, passed through waivers unclaimed and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Tacoma. He’ll remain with the organization and presumably head to major league camp as a non-roster invitee this spring.

Seattle acquired Taylor, now 26, just under one calendar year ago. He’d been designated for assignment by Kansas City, and the M’s scooped him up by trading a player to be named later (eventually announced as Natanael Garabitos) to the Royals in return.

Taylor appeared in only three games for the Mariners this past season, going 2-for-5 in that time. He spent the vast majority of the season in Tacoma, where he posted a .262/.352/.380 slash in 136 games and 599 plate appearances. Taylor’s 11.4% walk rate and hefty 50 stolen bases are both plenty appealing, but he posted bottom-of-the-scale batted-ball metrics: an 86.1 mph average exit velocity and 26.6% hard-hit rate in Tacoma. He also fanned in 26% of his plate appearances.

Defensively, Taylor has played primarily second base in his career, though has has experience at shortstop, third base and all three outfield slots. The Mariners will surely be happy to stash that versatility, blistering speed and patient approach at the plate in the upper minors as non-roster depth.

Pirates Agree To Minor League Deals With DJ Stewart, Ryder Ryan

By | at

The Pirates have agreed to minor league deals with outfielder DJ Stewart and right-hander Ryder Ryan. Stewart’s deal was first reported by Mike Mayer of Metsmerized while Ryan’s was first reported by Jon Heyman of The New York Post. Stewart is represented by Excel Sports Management.

Stewart, 31, spent the past two years with the Mets. He had a nice run for them in 2023, hitting 11 home runs in just 185 plate appearances. He struck out at a 30.3% clip but the power was enough to get him back on the team in 2024. This past year, he was only able to put the ball over the fence five times in 194 trips to the plate. He drew walks at a stellar clip of 16% but hit .177/.325/.297 overall, getting outrighted at season’s end.

When combined with his tenure as an Oriole, Stewart has 1,001 major league plate appearances now. His 12.8% walk rate is strong but he’s also been punched out at a 27.1% clip. Thanks to the free passes and his 42 home runs, he’s been a decent hitter in spite of the strikeouts. His career line of .212/.328/.401 leads to a 102 wRC+, indicating he’s been 2% better than league average on the whole.

Despite the solid overall offense, there are limits to his overall profile. Ideally, he is deployed as a platoon bat. The lefty swinger has a .214/.332/.430 line and 110 wRC+ against righties, compared to a .204/.309/.270 line and 66 wRC+ against southpaws. He’s not a burner on the basepaths and his defense has received poor grades.

Still, he’s a sensible enough flier for the Pirates. They have two outfield spots spoken for between Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz, though one corner is fairly wide open. Guys like Joshua Palacios, Billy Cook, Jack Suwinski and Ji Hwan Bae are on the roster but none of them are guaranteed a regular role and it’s entirely possible that someone like Stewart could outplay them, at least for a strong-side platoon gig. If Stewart gets a spot, he’s out of options but has less than four years of service time, meaning he could be retained beyond this year via arbitration if he still has a roster spot at season’s end.

Ryan, 30 in May, has a fairly limited track record at the major league level. He has 16 appearances, 15 of which came with the Bucs last year. He has allowed 5.40 earned runs per nine innings in his small sample of 21 2/3 career frames. The Pirates outrighted him off the roster in August and he elected free agency at season’s end. Over the past four years, Ryan has thrown 200 1/3 Triple-A innings with a 4.31 ERA, 24.3% strikeout rate and 9.7% walk rate.

He’ll provide the club with some non-roster bullpen depth. If he gets added to the roster at any point, he still has one option year remaining and could therefore be shuttled to Triple-A and back fairly freely.

Blue Jays, Astros Among Teams Interested In Jurickson Profar

By | at

It’s been a quiet winter for Jurickson Profar thus far, but with fellow outfielders Anthony Santander, Teoscar Hernandez and Tyler O’Neill all off the board now, Profar stands as the top corner outfield bat on the market. The Blue Jays, who just signed Santander for five years, and the Astros are among the teams with interest in the switch-hitting Profar, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported on the MLB Network this morning (video link). The incumbent Padres have also been tied to Profar this winter and very clearly love him as a player and person, but it’s far from clear the  front office will have that kind of spending power. The Friars have reportedly been working to scale back payroll this winter, and that was before recent ownership tumult.

Profar, 32 next month, is fresh off a career year where he improved in just about every measurable category. His .280 average, .380 on-base percentage and .459 slugging percentage all ranked as career-best marks. The former top prospect made massive gains in exit velocity, barrel rate and hard-hit rate, all while posting his best walk rate (11.4%) since 2021 and his lowest strikeout rate (15.1%) since 2020. Profar has long had a plus eye and excellent bat-to-ball skills, but the contact he made was often lacking punch. That wasn’t at all the case in 2024, as he swatted a career-high 24 homers and tacked on 29 doubles in 158 games/668 plate appearances.

The fit with Toronto isn’t as clean with Santander now in the fold on a $92.5MM contract, but there’s still room to move things around. Playing Santander regularly in right field — or having Santander and George Springer split time between right field and designated hitter — would open up left field for Profar (who could see occasional DH time himself). That’d likely come at the expense of playing time for Nathan Lukes and Will Wagner, but Profar would be a pronounced upgrade over both if he can replicate or even approximate last year’s breakout showing.

Payroll-wise, the Jays’ signing of Santander pushed them up into the second tier of luxury penalization. They very narrowly dipped under the tax line in 2024, resetting their penalty level in the process, meaning they’d be on the hook for a 32% for any dollars allocated to Profar (or another free agent). They’re currently projected by RosterResource at $237MM of Opening Day payroll, which would be a club record.

Turning to Houston, their outfield is a clear weak spot on the roster — at least on paper — following the trade of Kyle Tucker to the Cubs. Houston will have Jake Meyer in center field, where he’ll be flanked by a combination of Chas McCormick, Taylor Trammell and Mauricio Dubon. Other options on the 40-man roster include Kenedy Corona, Pedro Leon and Cooper Hummel. Clearly, an upgrade would be a worthwhile pursuit.

Ownership’s wherewithal to make such an addition is an open question. Jim Crane has said he’s open to paying the luxury tax for a second straight season — and just the second time in his ownership tenure — but there’s been mixed messaging with regard to his actions. On the one hand, Houston offered Alex Bregman a reported six-year, $156MM contract. That’s a legitimate offer, and the corresponding $26MM average annual value would’ve sent the ’Stros careening into the middle tiers of luxury penalty.

On the other hand, trading Tucker, even with an extension unlikely, represents a step in the opposite direction. Granted, that swap helped to pave the way for the signing of Christian Walker on a three-year, $60MM deal. But, it can be argued that if Crane were truly amenable to stepping over that tax threshold, he could’ve fit Tucker and Walker onto the roster. The team has also been shopping reliever Ryan Pressly throughout the offseason, and general manager Dana Brown even kicked the winter off by speaking of a need to “get creative” with payroll. None of those facts portend a willingness to exceed the tax barrier — at least not by any notable amount.

As things stand, RosterResource has the Astros over the tax threshold, but only by a narrow margin of about $3MM. A trade of Pressly or another player — e.g. McCormick, Dubon, Victor Caratini — could drop them back under that line, but it’d be tough to shoehorn Profar in under the barrier without finding a trade partner for Pressly and another player. If Crane is willing to take a small CBT hit, knowing dead-money commitments to Jose Abreu and Rafael Montero will help them reset their penalty level next offseason, then moving Pressly on its own might be enough to make things line up.

Time will tell how the market for Profar plays out, but he’s now the most-productive left fielder still sitting on the market. He’s reportedly been seeking a three-year pact. It’s unlikely that’d come with the type of AAV secured by Hernandez ($22MM) or Santander ($18.5MM), but something in the range of O’Neill’s three-year, $49.5MM contract wouldn’t have seemed too outlandish coming into the offseason. With many teams already having filled their roster needs, demand might not be sufficient to get Profar to such heights, but a multi-year deal and eight-figure AAV still seem plenty feasible.

Dodgers, Kirby Yates Reportedly Reach “Tentative” Agreement

By | at

10:55am: There’s nothing official in place yet, per reports from Jack Harris of the L.A. Times and Ken Rosenthal and Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic (among others). Harris writes that the two parties are “working toward a deal,” while The Athletic indicates “serious” negotiations are taking place. There could simply be semantics at play. Nightengale’s initial report plainly stated that a physical still needs to take place, so there’s never been firm indication of a final deal yet. A physical for a 38-year-old pitcher with Yates’ injury history isn’t necessarily a layup, but that seems to be the stage they’ve reached. If all goes well, a deal would be announced in the next few days.

9:52am: The Dodgers and reliever Kirby Yates have reached a “tentative” agreement, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today. The contract is pending completion of a physical. Yates, a client of the Beverly Hills Sports Council, would be the second high-profile bullpen addition for the Dodgers in recent days; they also inked Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72MM deal over the weekend. If the physical goes well and the deal is indeed finalized, L.A. will need to make a corresponding transaction to remove someone from the 40-man roster.

It’s the latest strike in an offseason spending blitz that has seen the Dodgers make free agent plays for Scott, Blake Snell, Teoscar Hernandez, Blake Treinen, Michael Conforto and international stars Hyeseong Kim and Roki Sasaki. Those additions come as Los Angeles looks to become the first repeat World Series champion since the Yankees’ threepeat back in 1998-2000.

Manager Dave Roberts’ bullpen has been completely remade over the past six months, beginning with the deadline acquisition of Michael Kopech. In late July, closer Evan Phillips was struggling at the time of that Kopech acquisition, and much of the bullpen was in a state of flux. Since then, the Dodgers have acquired Kopech, activated Treinen from the injured list (and, this offseason, re-signed him to a two-year deal) and now signed both Scott and Yates in free agency. A late-inning contingent of Scott, Yates, Kopech, Phillips and Treinen is very arguably the most talented quintet of any team in baseball.

It should be noted, however, that Nightengale suggests the Dodgers recently learned of an injury to Kopech that could cost him at least a month of the season. Details on said injury have yet to surface, but that revelation likely played a part in the team’s decision to close an agreement with Yates.

Yates himself isn’t without risk. He’ll turn 38 in March, and he pitched all of 11 major league innings from 2020-22 due to injuries (Tommy John surgery, most notably). The veteran closer returned with a healthy but shaky season for the 2023 Braves, logging a sharp 3.28 ERA in 60 1/3 innings but also walking nearly 15% of his opponents. He improved across the board with the 2024 Rangers, firing 61 2/3 innings of 1.17 ERA ball with a gargantuan 35.9% strikeout rate. His 11.8% walk rate was still noticeably higher than the 8.2% league average but a substantial improvement over his 2023 campaign nonetheless.

Yates ranked second among all free agent relievers in strikeout rate last year, trailing only Aroldis Chapman. He paced all qualified free agent relievers in ERA and ranked seventh or better in SIERA (2.85), K-BB% (24.1) and swinging-strike rate (15.2%). No qualified free agent reliever missed bats within the strike zone as much as Yates; his opponents’ 74.3% contact rate on pitches in the strike zone sat at the top of this year’s free agent class and sat as the third-best mark in all of baseball for pitchers with at least 60 innings pitched, trailing only Josh Hader and Mason Miller.

Dating back to his breakout with the 2018 Padres, Yates has consistently been outstanding when healthy enough to take the hill. He’s pitched 257 innings in that time and boasts a 2.21 ERA, 35.5% strikeout rate, 10% walk rate and 15.2% swinging-strike rate. He’s leaned on a lethal four-seamer and splitter pairing that’s helped him miss bats in droves while piling up 93 saves and 30 holds in 262 appearances on the mound.

The Dodgers are already well into the fourth and final tier of luxury penalization. Any dollars allocated to Yates will come with a 110% tax, as was the case with Scott. RosterResource already projects the team’s luxury tax ledger to sit at a staggering $371MM; the addition of Yates could push their CBT number close to $400MM. The Dodgers were already set to owe around $108MM in overage taxes before the signing of Yates; presuming he gets an eight-figure salary, they’ll very likely owe more than $120MM in taxes alone.

Cubs, Trevor Richards Agree To Minor League Deal

By | at

The Cubs have agreed to a minor league contract with right-hander Trevor Richards, reports Aram Leighton of Just Baseball. Richards, a client of Apex Baseball, will be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee this spring.

The 31-year-old Richards has spent the bulk of the past four seasons with the Blue Jays but was traded to the Twins just prior to the 2024 trade deadline. He posted a 4.55 ERA with a 22.4% strikeout rate and a career-high 12.6% walk rate between Toronto and Minnesota this past season and carries a 4.60 earned run average over the past four seasons.

Richards has posted a combined 29.1% strikeout rate in 266 1/3 innings dating back to 2021, showing a clear ability to miss bats. He’s battled command troubles along the way, however, both in terms of finding the strike zone at all (11.3% walk rate, 29 wild pitches) and in terms of precision when he does put the ball over the plate (1.39 HR/9).

Although Richards is right-handed, he’s been far more effective against lefties than against righties, due in large part to his top secondary offering being a plus changeup. Lefty batters have hit just .220/.315/.371 against Richards in his career, while righties have a more productive .248/.320/.433 slash.

The Cubs have worked to add to their bullpen this offseason but thus far have made primarily marginal acquisitions. Chicago bid aggressively on top closer Tanner Scott — a notable departure from president Jed Hoyer’s aversion to multi-year deals for relievers — but were reportedly the runner-up prior to the Dodgers. The Cubs have signed Caleb Thielbar and acquired Eli Morgan from the Guardians. They’ll both be in the Opening Day bullpen. Other offseason pickups include DFA additions Matt Festa (acquired for cash) and Rob Zastryzny (claimed off waivers). Richards joins a group of non-roster signings also featuring Phil Bickford, Ben Heller and Brooks Kriske.

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

hide arrows scroll to top