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Mets Place Yoenis Cespedes On Disabled List

By Steve Adams | April 28, 2017 at 6:31pm CDT

6:30pm: The injury is to a different part of the hamstring than was previously impacted, manager Terry Collins told reporters including James Wagner of the Washington Post (Twitter link).

1:49pm: The Mets have announced the move to place Cespedes on the DL. Lefty Sean Gilmartin will join the team in his place.

1:37pm: The Mets will place outfielder Yoenis Cespedes on the disabled list this afternoon, reports Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports (Twitter link). There’s no word yet on the extent of the injury to Cespedes’ hamstring, but he was slated to undergo an MRI to evaluate the issue earlier today, and manager Terry Collins suggested yesterday that he expected Cespedes to hit the DL. Heyman adds that the Mets are considering calling up a pitcher from the minors as a corresponding move for Cespedes’ injury.

Cespedes missed several games over the past week with a hamstring issue, including the entirety of a pivotal series with the division-leading Nationals. The slugger returned to the lineup yesterday and went 1-for-2 with a double, but he appeared to aggravate his hamstring while running out that extra-base hit. Cespedes was helped off the field by the Mets’ training staff after hobbling into second base.

With Cespedes out earlier this week, the Mets kept Jay Bruce at first base and turned to an outfield alignment of Michael Conforto in left field, Juan Lagares in center and Curtis Granderson in right. That arrangement could well hold up now that Cespedes is once again sidelined, though Heyman notes in a second tweet that Lucas Duda is beginning a rehab assignment and could rejoin the team soon, which would allow the club to work Bruce back into the outfield mix if desired.

Mariners’ Hernandez, Haniger Each Likely Out 3-4 Weeks

By Jeff Todd | April 28, 2017 at 5:21pm CDT

The Mariners have provided an update on the recent injuries to two key players, issuing a press release with information on both righty Felix Hernandez and outfielder Mitch Haniger. Both players had already been placed on the 10-day DL, but now are said to be likely to miss three to four weeks of action.

In the case of Hernandez, the diagnosis is bursitis in his shoulder. That evidently has caused the inflammation that has hampered him recently. Given the length of the anticipated absence, it seems likely that Hernandez will need to go out for a few rehab starts. The M’s are already missing Drew Smyly from their rotation, which currently features Ariel Miranda and Chase De Jong at the back of the staff.

As for Haniger, it’s a grade 2 oblique strain. Seattle will no doubt take care to ensure that the often-tricky injury is fully healed before allowing Haniger to push back toward the majors. While he had emerged as one of the team’s best players — over an admittedly short sample — there is at least plenty of outfield depth on hand.

While the absences are surely not good news for the Mariners, it’s at least promising that they weren’t more severe. Still, the club faces the tall task of making up ground in the AL West — or, at least, not falling further back — while missing these two key cogs for as much as a sixth of the season.

Rays, Tigers Complete Mikie Mahtook Trade

By Jeff Todd | April 28, 2017 at 4:35pm CDT

The Rays have acquired righty Drew Smith from the Tigers, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (via Twitter). He represents the player to be named later from the trade that sent outfielder Mikie Mahtook to Detroit over the winter.

Smith, 23, was taken in the third round of the 2015 draft out of Dallas Baptist University. Coming into the current season, Smith rated as the Tigers organization’s 17th-best prospect, per MLB.com, owing to his solid four-seam fastball and quality curve.

Smith has risen to the High-A this year and is off to a nice start. In 11 2/3 frames over seven relief appearances, he has permitted just one earned run on four his while racking up a dozen strikeouts against four free passes. Though Smith has dealt with control issues at times and isn’t really seen as having a future in a rotation — despite the fact that he often appears for multiple innings — he seems reasonably likely to make it up to the majors in relatively short order.

The 27-year-old Mahtook, meanwhile, has struggled to a .179/.281/.321 batting line in 32 plate appearances for the Tigers. But he has generally put up good numbers in his time at Triple-A and showed well in his 2015 debut with Tampa Bay. If he can move towards a league-average batting line, Mahtook could be quite a useful player, as he is regarded as a quality up-the-middle defender.

Blue Jays Designate Jarrod Saltalamacchia

By Jeff Todd | April 28, 2017 at 2:38pm CDT

2:51pm: Toronto has announced that Saltalamacchia was designated for assignment to make way for Maile.

2:38pm: The Blue Jays have decided to make a move to swap out reserve backstops, according to Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca. The precise move isn’t yet clear, but Jarrod Saltalamacchia will be removed from the roster to make room for Luke Maile.

Saltalamacchia, who’ll soon turn 32, had struggled badly early this year. He made the club after joining on a minor-league deal, but had recorded just one hit and one walk over his first 26 plate appearances — with a dreadful 16 strikeouts on his ledger. Saltalamacchia was also struggling to control the running game, as Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith notes on Twitter.

As for Maile, he only just joined the organization in a waiver claim. The Jays’ front office suggested it was high on the 26-year-old, so it’s not particularly surprising to see him earn an opportunity. Though he hasn’t hit much in his brief time in the majors — or in his time at Triple-A since arriving from the Rays — Maile is valued for his glove.

Yankees Designate Pete Kozma, Activate Didi Gregorius

By Steve Adams | April 28, 2017 at 1:41pm CDT

The Yankees announced on Friday that they’ve activated shortstop Didi Gregorius from the disabled list and designated infielder Pete Kozma for assignment to clear a spot on the 25-man roster.

The 27-year-old Gregorius has missed the entire season to date due to a strained right shoulder. Kozma was added to the Yankees’ roster to serve as a backup to Ronald Torreyes, who has been filling in at short, though Torreyes will now presumably slide into that utility role that Kozma had held. In 11 plate appearances with the Yanks, Kozma collected one hit and a walk. Well regarded for his defense at shortstop, Kozma is a career .221/.286/.290 hitter in 699 plate appearances — the vast majority of which came with the Cardinals from 2011-15.

AL Central Notes: Renteria, Royals, Gibson

By Steve Adams | April 28, 2017 at 11:46am CDT

Though details of Rick Renteria’s contract were unreported when he was named manager of the White Sox, FanRag’s Jon Heyman now reports that Renteria received a three-year contract that runs from 2017-19. Renteria will earn $1.1MM in 2017, $1.2MM in 2018 and $1.3MM in 2019, according to Heyman’s report. The appointment of the 55-year-old Renteria, who had previously served as a bench coach with the White Sox and as the manager of the Cubs, came after an unsuccessful five-year run at the helm for former White Sox All-Star Robin Ventura. While it’s early in the season and the White Sox aren’t expected to contend following the offseason sale of Chris Sale and Adam Eaton, Renteria has the team off to a nice 11-9 start.

NL West Notes: Jankowski, Desmond, Hill, Wood, Ethier

By Steve Adams | April 28, 2017 at 9:45am CDT

Padres center fielder Travis Jankowski hit the 10-day disabled list earlier this week with what the team called a “deep bone bruise” in his right foot, but there’s now a concern that Jankowski may have a hairline fracture as well, reports MLB.com’s Barry M. Bloom. If that’s the case, the 25-year-old could be out more than a month. Bloom quotes manager Andy Green as saying the team doctors aren’t yet able to determine if there’s a fracture (perhaps due to the swelling), but they’ll be cautious either way. Even if there’s no fracture, it sounds as if Jankowski can expect to miss more than the minimum 10 days. “They told me I’d be in the boot for another week to 10 days,” Jankowski tells Bloom. Jankowski turned in a marginal performance at the plate in 2016, hitting .245/.332/.313 in 383 plate appearances, but he played strong defense in center field and provided significant baserunning value with 30 steals.

Christian Bethancourt To Continue Pitching In Triple-A

By Steve Adams | April 28, 2017 at 8:21am CDT

The Padres sent catcher/outfielder/reliever Christian Bethancourt outright to Triple-A earlier this week after he cleared waivers with the hope that he’d continue to hone his mound skills, and as Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union Tribune writes, Bethancourt has informed general manager A.J. Preller that he is indeed open to that. Bethancourt only recently began experimenting as a pitcher, and Preller tells Lin that the organization involved the 25-year-old in the decision process.

“It’s his career,” Preller tells Lin. “…Talking to him, he said, ‘I want to give it a go.’ I think he understands he can always go back to catching and he wants to see how it plays out on the pitching front if he has regular practice and outings.”

Coming up through the Braves’ system, Bethancourt rated as one of the game’s top 100 prospects as a catcher, thanks largely to his rocket arm. Multiple scouting reports, in fact, placed an 80 grade on his arm (on the 20-80 scouting scale). An issue with passed balls and his struggles at the plate, however, may have contributed to San Diego’s preference to get a look at Bethancourt on the mound; in 489 Major League plate appearances, he’s batted just .222/.252/.316.

Unsurprisingly, Bethancourt is a work in progress on the mound. Though he allowed just two runs in 8 1/3 innings in Spring Training, he also issued four walks against just three strikeouts in that time. His work as a pitcher during the regular season has been unsightly, as Bethancourt has logged a 10.13 ERA with three strikeouts against 11 walks in just 5 1/3 innings. That’s not necessarily indicative of the hard-throwing Bethancourt’s potential on the mound, though. Learning to pitch at the Major League level with scant mound experience elsewhere is obviously a daunting task, which no doubt factored into his removal from the 40-man roster. (Bethancourt was out of minor league options, thus the exposure to outright waivers.) Despite those struggles, Bethancourt did offer a glimpse of his potential on the mound during his 2017 work, as he averaged better than 94 mph on his fastball and topped out at 98 mph (per Brooks Baseball).

According to Lin, Bethancourt will continue to pinch-hit and take batting practice while in Triple-A, but the vast majority of his focus will be on his work as a reliever. “He’ll get a chance to face the next-best league to the big leagues,” says Preller of the decision to throw Bethancourt into the fire of the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. “It’s going to be a test for him, but I’m confident as far as him going out and being able to perform.”

If Bethancourt is able to successfully make the transition, he’d join Jason Motte, Chris Hatcher and, most notably, Kenley Jansen as big league relievers that opened their careers as catchers. Carlos Marmol and Troy Percival are other recent examples of relievers who found success after (much more briefly) working as catchers early in their careers.

Latest Details On Potential Sale Of Marlins

By Jeff Todd | April 27, 2017 at 11:35pm CDT

11:35pm: The group led by Tagg Romney, which reportedly also includes Hall of Fame left-hander Tom Glavine, is still alive in the bidding for the Marlins, reports Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (Twitter link).

Charles Gasparino and Brian Schwartz of FOX Business provide a slew of new information, reporting that Bush and Jeter are expected to invest “no more than $200 million combined,” leaving as much as $800-900MM to be raised to complete the purchase with what the league will term an acceptable level of debt. However, as the FOX Business duo notes, it will also be difficult for Jeter and Bush to rally that type of financial commitment while still maintaining principal ownership of the team.

Furthermore, Gasparino and Schwartz report that the Romney group — notably, they make no mention of Glavine — bid $1.1 billion for the Marlins, though that falls well shy of the $1.34 billion figure from Jeter and Bush. The Jeter/Bush group has an “exclusive negotiating window” to raise the requisite capital to complete their purchase, and that window is “expected to last at least until June,” per the report. Gasparino and Schwartz cite a “senior executive inside the commissioner’s office” in reporting that the Marlins have yet to formally approach Major League Baseball about the Jeter/Bush bid. Should that bid ultimately fall through, there are other bidders that will step in.

1:48pm: Commissioner Rob Manfred has cast doubt on certain reports that have framed the Jeter/Bush group as having a deal in place. As the Sun Sentinel reports, Manfred says “there are multiple bidders for the Marlins” at this point. Importantly, too, he made clear “there is no agreement in place” at present, with the league still “working with more than one group” of possible purchasers.

Manfred later made clear that there were two bidding groups currently involved in the pursuit of the franchise. Resolution is expected in short order. “The timeline is relatively short,” he said. “It would be measured in days, not months.”

11:35am: We learned recently that Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria had elected to try to finalize a sale of the organization with a bidding group led by Derek Jeter and Jeb Bush. As noted at the time, though, that hardly means that a deal is inevitable.

Reporting continues to emerge regarding the still-developing situation. Jon Heyman of Fan Rag writes that the Jeter/Bush group’s emergence from other bidders came as a surprise — and may not yet be backed by the needed financial commitments. The would-be owners are said to be contacting a range of sources, including some connected with other bidding groups, to bolster the amount of equity that’ll be needed to obtain MLB approval. (The league typically requires at least three-fifths of the purchase price to come from cash.)

Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald hears similarly, reporting that Bush has been on the horn with possible co-investors this week. The team, though, is apparently confident that the needed cash (and, presumably, debt financing as well) will be found in due time. As Jackson expounds further (Twitter links), that belief explains why the club struck an agreement for some form of exclusive negotiation rights — the details of which remain unknown — with the new group. Bush, who’d be the control person, will apparently sit down soon with league officials to discuss the money situation.

In the aggregate, there’s still a fair bit of uncertainty, even if the Jeter/Bush team have the inside track to move into Marlins Park. Per Heyman, a look at the books led the second-place bidders (a group led by Tagg Romney and headlined by Tom Glavine) to back down from their initial willingness to commit something on the order of $1.4B. For Jeter and Bush, convincing others to put their cash at stake will require a compelling financial argument. We have heard indication both that the league approval process ought not be a problem and that the Jeter/Bush duo can find the rest of the equity needed to lock up a deal. If not, says Jackson, Loria could circle back to other prospective buyers.

Latest On Luis Robert’s Market

By Steve Adams | April 27, 2017 at 9:31pm CDT

Nineteen-year-old outfielder Luis Robert is the top international talent that is available on the amateur market and, after recently being declared a free agent by Major League Baseball, has already begun hosting private workouts with interested teams, according to Baseball America’s Ben Badler. The Athletics hosted a workout for Robert last Friday that was attended by GM David Forst, according to Badler, and Reds GM Dick Williams was on hand to watch him this past Tuesday in a workout. Prior to that, he’d worked out for the Astros, Badler adds.

Badler notes that Robert’s camp is also expected to set up private workouts with the Padres, Cardinals and White Sox in the coming weeks. It seems that of those three clubs, the heavy-spending Padres are up first, as Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union Tribune reports (via Twitter) that Robert will work out with the Pads tomorrow. To this point, the Padres have paced all 30 teams in terms of international spending during the current signing period, as their total investment (including luxury tax penalties for shattering their allotted bonus pool) is in the vicinity of $80MM.

The willingness to spend at such an aggressive level may be key for any club that wishes to sign Robert, as FanRag’s Jon Heyman writes in his latest Inside Baseball column that one source who closely follows the international market believes Robert already has a $25MM offer “in hand,” though Heyman notes that others have suggested to him no offers have been made to this point. There could, of course, be some semantics at play there in terms of what constitutes a formal offer. A price tag in the vicinity of $25MM for Robert would come with a 100 percent luxury tax attached to it, meaning he’d cost any team that signed him at that rate a total of roughly $50MM.

As Badler writes, though Robert has been declared a free agent, he won’t formally be cleared to sign until May 20. In the interim, he’ll host at least one more open showcase for teams, in addition to the remaining private workouts his camp will orchestrate.

It’s worth noting that of the teams linked to Robert, only the White Sox have yet to exceed their current international bonus pool. In other words, while other clubs would essentially only be parting with money in order to sign Robert, the ChiSox would need to determine if Robert is worth handcuffing themselves in each of the next two international signing periods; should the Sox decide to exceed their pool in the eleventh hour — the current signing period ends on June 15 — they’d be unable to sign any individual player for more than $300K in either the 2017-18 or 2018-19 signing periods.

In a similar vein, teams that are still in the metaphorical “penalty box” for crushing their allotted pools in previous signing periods won’t be able to compete for Robert’s services, as they’re each capped at that same $300K figure on individual signings. That eliminates the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Angels, Blue Jays, Rays, Royals and Diamondbacks from serving as serious competition in the Robert market.

Though Robert is just 19 years of age, he’d already blossomed into a star, hitting a ridiculous .401/.526/.687 with 12 homers, 12 doubles, a pair of triples and 11 steals over the life of 53 games (232 plate appearances) in his final pro season in the Cuban National Series. Scouting reports on Robert note that he’s capable of playing center field right now, though he may ultimately wind up in a corner. Badler has previously written that both his bat speed and raw power are plus, and Heyman’s above-linked piece offers a number of favorable reviews of Robert’s skill set. Additionally, MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez has previously spoken to a number of international scouting directors who have heaped praise onto Robert, calling him the game’s best international prospect behind Japanese phenom Shohei Otani and labeling him one of the most talented young players on the planet.

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