Rosenthal On Astros, Rangers, Nova, CBA
Here’s the latest from Ken Rosenthal, via a video at FOX Sports.
- Some members of the Astros are frustrated that the team didn’t deal for a top starter at the August 1 trade deadline, but GM Jeff Luhnow says the team ultimately didn’t make a big acquisition because teams were requesting big hauls in return, including players already contributing at the big-league level. Rosenthal notes that the Astros had previously had a surplus of starters, leading them to deal Dan Straily and then, months later, Scott Feldman for minimal returns (or perhaps seemingly minimal returns, since it’s way too early to get a clear read on Lupe Chavez, the very young pitcher the Astros got from the Blue Jays for Feldman). With Lance McCullers and Dallas Keuchel now hurt, though, the Astros might not have enough top starting pitching.
- The Rangers attempted to acquire Ivan Nova from the Yankees last month, with the talks occurring very close to the deadline. The Yankees, of course, sent Nova to the Pirates, where he has had tremendous success in their rotation. Nova has posted a 2.53 ERA, 6.2 K/9 and a remarkable 0.4 BB/9 in 46 1/3 innings for Pittsburgh. It’s impossible to say, of course, whether Nova would have had similar success in Texas, which is a completely different context in which to pitch, perhaps especially for someone like Nova, who struggled with allowing home runs in New York. But he might well have been able to help a team that has seen A.J. Griffin and Lucas Harrell struggle at the back of its rotation over the past month.
- MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement is due to expire at the beginning of December, but the two sides would prefer to have a new agreement in place by the beginning of November. The free agent market could unfold slowly without a new labor deal, with teams reluctant to commit to free agents without a clear idea of the rules going forward.
Stephen Strasburg Diagnosed With Flexor Mass Strain; No Ligament Damage Found
SATURDAY: Strasburg says he can’t promise he’ll return for the postseason, Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post tweets. Via MLB.com’s Jamal Collier (also on Twitter), Strasburg received a PRP shot yesterday.
THURSDAY 5:03pm: Strasburg will visit noted orthopedic surgeon Neal ElAttrache for a second opinion, Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post reports (Twitter links). That’s team protocol for an injury of this kind, which was deemed to have been acute (caused by one pitch) rather than from accumulated wear and tear.
3:15pm: Nationals right-hander Stephen Strasburg, who had an MRI today after exiting last night’s start in the third inning, has been diagnosed with a flexor mass strain, head athletic trainer Paul Lessard told reporters, including MASNsports.com’s Dan Kolko (Twitter link). On the positive side, he does not have any damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow.
While that assessment rules out Tommy John surgery, the injury is still notable, and there’s no immediate timeline for his return to action. However, the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes notes (Twitter links) that Lessard doesn’t feel the injury will end Strasburg’s season — though he also couldn’t definitely state that the key righty would be back.
The flexor mass strain is a fairly common pitching injury, but its outlook depends quite a bit on the situation. Andrew Miller, for instance, only missed about a month earlier this year — though he likely had a shorter road back as a reliever. But more severe forms of the injury can require surgery, as was the case previously for Homer Bailey. Flexor issues more or less ended Cliff Lee‘s career. And flexor mass problems can be a precursor to Tommy John surgery, as occurred this year with Carson Smith. Other pitchers who have recently had some kind of injury to the flexor tendon or muscle include Aaron Nola, Wade Davis, and George Kontos.
Clearly, the Nats will be relieved that another TJ procedure isn’t immediately on the horizon. That would have been a major blow given that the club struck earlier this year to keep Strasburg off of the market with a seven-year, $175MM extension. If Strasburg had required a second UCL replacement, odds are he’d have missed all of 2017 and possibly a bit of 2018 as well — assuming he was able to progress well.
That’s not to minimize the immediate loss. Washington obviously viewed Strasburg as a part of its postseason rotation. Though a pair of rough, recent outings inflated his ERA, the 28-year-old has been stellar for most of the season. There are plenty of candidates to take over — the D.C. depth chart shows a variety of intriguing arms — but none will hold the same promise as Strasburg. While it is still too soon to write off a return, it would be a tall order for Strasburg to heal entirely and ramp all the way back up to carry a major workload this fall.
Dodgers Designate Casey Fien, Activate Andre Ethier
The Dodgers have announced that they’ve designated righty Casey Fien for assignment. The move clears roster space for outfielder Andre Ethier, who has been reinstated from the 60-day DL.
[Related: Updated Los Angeles Dodgers Depth Chart]
The Dodgers claimed Fien from the Twins in May after four-plus years in Minnesota. He pitched 25 2/3 innings for his new team, posting a 4.21 ERA, 8.1 K/9 and 2.5 BB/9 while showing a slight increase in his velocity from previous seasons. His season was marred somewhat by a late-summer DL stint due to elbow tendonitis, however, and he allowed eight home runs. He’s making $2.28MM this season, and is eligible for arbitration again this winter. The Dodgers have evidently decided they can risk exposing him to waivers.
The 34-year-old Ethier has missed the entire season to this point after a foul ball broke his leg in March. He’s coming off a strong .294/.366/.486 season in 2015. News of his return broke earlier this week, with Dodgers manager Dave Roberts saying (via Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times) that the team would initially use him primarily as a pinch-hitter and spot-starter. As McCullough notes, the Dodgers currently have plenty of outfielders, with Joc Pederson, Howie Kendrick, Josh Reddick, Yasiel Puig, Andrew Toles and Rob Segedin also on hand.
Rangers Claim R.J. Alvarez From Cubs
The Rangers have announced that they’ve claimed right-handed reliever R.J. Alvarez off waivers from the Cubs. They’ve optioned him to the Class A+ High Desert Mavericks. To clear space on their 40-man roster, they’ve moved righty Lucas Harrell (groin strain) from the 15-day DL to the 60-day DL. The Cubs designated Alvarez for assignment earlier this week.
The 25-year-old Alvarez has spent the entire season in the minors, posting a 7.00 ERA, but with 11.7 K/9 and 4.0 BB/9, in 27 innings split between three levels in the Cubs and Athletics organizations. He spent the early part of the season recovering from arthroscopic elbow surgery.
Alvarez has also struggled in parts of two seasons in the Majors, posting a 7.39 ERA, 10.3 K/9 and 5.8 BB/9 in 28 total innings. It’s easy to see why he keeps generating interest after previously going from the Angels to the Padres in the Huston Street deal and from the Padres to the Athletics in the Derek Norris trade, however. Alvarez possesses mid-90s velocity, and he has an outstanding 12.6 K/9 in five career minor league seasons. He also has minimal service time, so the Rangers can keep him in their organization for the next several years if they choose.
Mariners Notes: Roster Expansion, Wilhelmsen, Clevenger
Mariners manager Scott Servais doesn’t mind having extra players on his roster, but the way teams are allowed to use their call-ups following September roster expansion bothers him, Matt Pentz of the Seattle Times writes. With more tactical options available, managers can slow the pace of games by making large numbers of substitutions. “I just think you should determine your 25-man roster before the game starts and play the game,” says Servais. “The game just changes in September, and it shouldn’t change. You play a certain way for five months and the last month, you play differently and it’s just not right.” M’s utilityman Shawn O’Malley disagrees, saying that everyday players can use the extra bit of rest reinforcements can provide. “Maybe it does take a little bit longer, but at the end of the day, what’s 20 minutes?” he says. “Any time you can give guys that are playing 159 games a year a five-inning break, it benefits them.” Here’s more from Seattle.
- The Mariners have announced that reliever Tom Wilhelmsen has been activated from the 15-day DL. The righty has missed the past two weeks due to low back spasms. For the season, Wilhelmsen has posted a 7.02 ERA, 5.7 K/9 and 3.2 BB/9 over 41 innings, but his performance has been much closer to his career norms since he returned to the Mariners organization in June after struggling in the early going with the Rangers.
- In other Mariners injury news, catcher Steve Clevenger‘s season is over after the organization opted to end his rehab assignment at Double-A Jackson, Ryan Divish of the Times writes. Clevenger has experienced lingering elbow soreness. The Mariners placed him on the DL in late June with a separate injury, a hand fracture for which he had surgery. The 30-year-old Clevenger collected just 76 plate appearances in his first season in Seattle, batting .221/.303/.309 with one home run. That’s a stark contrast from the performance of Orioles slugger Mark Trumbo, for whom Seattle acquired Clevenger in a salary-shedding move. Clevenger will be eligible for arbitration after the season. With Chris Iannetta having a $4.25MM club option, the Mariners will have some decisions as they attempt to determine who, besides the hot-hitting Mike Zunino, will catch for them next season.
Phillies Designate Taylor Featherston For Assignment
The Phillies have announced that they’ve designated infielder Taylor Featherston for assignment. They also selected the contract of lefty Joely Rodriguez and recalled outfielder Cody Asche and righties Luis Garcia and Phil Klein. The moves come in the wake of the end of Triple-A Lehigh Valley’s season last night.
The Phillies acquired Featherston in a minor trade with the Angels in February, and the 26-year-old played sparingly in the big leagues in 2016, collecting just 28 plate appearances. He spent the bulk of the season at Lehigh Valley, where he hit .254/.311/.428 with 13 homers in 439 plate appearances while playing third base, second base and shortstop. Featherston, who made his Major League debut in 2015 after the Angels selected him from the Rockies organization in the Rule 5 Draft, has a career .156/.207/.233 line in 120 big-league games, many of which he entered as a defensive replacement.
5 Key Stories: 9/3/16 – 9/9/16
Here’s a look back at five key stories this week at MLBTR this week.
Mets sign Tim Tebow. Scoff if you like — after all, this was a minor league signing of a 29-year-old whose chances of reaching the Majors appear remote, to say the least. But public interest in the former Jets and Broncos quarterback remains intense, and plenty of sports fans will be following Tebow’s career in the minors. Here’s a post in which Mets GM Sandy Alderson explains the signing, and here’s a note from earlier in the week, when it looked like Tebow might head to the Braves organization, not the Mets.
Alexei Ramirez changes teams. The veteran shortstop was released by the Padres last weekend following an underwhelming .240/.275/.330 performance in San Diego. In the wake of an injury to Matt Duffy, the Rays snapped Ramirez up later in the week, and he’s already played two games for Tampa Bay.
Plenty of injury news. Star-crossed Mets starter Zack Wheeler‘s season is over due to a flexor muscle strain, and Yankees starter Chad Green is done as well, thanks to a sprained right UCL and strained flexor tendon. The Angels’ Cam Bedrosian saw his dominant 2016 campaign end, as he had surgery on a blood clot in his right arm, while Athletics reliever Fernando Rodriguez had shoulder surgery. There were also important pitchers who got bad injury news that might not be season-ending — the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg was diagnosed with a flexor mass strain, while the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel was shut down with shoulder trouble. Meanwhile, a key hitting prospect, Braves shortstop Ozzie Albies, saw his season end due to a fractured elbow.
Not all the injury news was bad, however. The Marlins activated Giancarlo Stanton (groin strain) with the idea that he would pinch-hit, while Clayton Kershaw (herniated disc) returned to the Dodgers.
Brewers acquire Ryan Cordell from Rangers. The Brewers and Rangers completed the Jonathan Lucroy / Jeremy Jeffress trade, with the Rangers sending 3B/OF Cordell to Milwaukee, which already got outfielder Lewis Brinson and righty Luis Ortiz in the deal. Cordell had been rated among the Rangers’ top ten prospects and was hitting .264/.319/.484 for Double-A Frisco.
Twins weigh front office candidates. Current Dodgers exec and former Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos emerged early in the week as a candidate for a top job with the Twins, who are revamping their front office in the wake of the departure of Terry Ryan. But Anthopoulos has told colleagues the time isn’t right for him to leave Los Angeles. The Twins also appear to be considering Cubs execs Jason McLeod and Shiraz Rehman.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Jeff Luhnow Reflects On Decision To Pass On Kris Bryant
The Astros have more than their share of highly talented young players, but one player they don’t have in their system is Cubs masher Kris Bryant. Houston had the chance to take Bryant with the first pick in the 2013 draft, but they decided on righty Mark Appel instead, and the Cubs snagged Bryant with the next selection. Appel, now 25, has yet to make his big-league debut, and was traded to the Phillies in the Ken Giles deal last offseason. Bryant, meanwhile, leads the NL in home runs, runs scored and OPS+ while anchoring an intimidating Cubs lineup.
The Cubs and Astros are currently playing a series, so Astros GM Jeff Luhnow fielded questions about the Bryant-Appel decision. Here’s some of what he had to say, courtesy of Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times.
“There’s a history lesson to be learned about the risk with pitchers vs. position players,” says Luhnow, referring to the tendency of position players to be better bets in the early stages of the draft. “[T]hat’s a history lesson that’s been laid out over a long period of time. Having said that, if you want an impact pitcher, you have to gamble.”
The Astros have had plenty of experience selecting both position players and pitchers with top picks in recent years. Of their ten first-round picks from 2011 to 2016, six were position players, and three of those (George Springer, Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman) clearly look to be significant parts of their future. Another, outfielder Derek Fisher, was a later selection who doesn’t look like an impact player, but who has consistently hit well in the minors. The others, Kyle Tucker and Daz Cameron, were drafted last year and are still teenagers. Cameron has struggled so far in his pro career, but Tucker’s is off to a fast start, as he’s already advanced all the way to Class A+ Lancaster.
Meanwhile, two of four pitchers the Astros have selected in the first round, Appel and Brady Aiken, have suffered significant speed bumps even though they were both first overall picks, and the Astros famously didn’t even sign Aiken due to a disagreement regarding the Astros’ concerns about his health. One of their other first-round pitching picks was this year’s 17th overall selection, Forrest Whitley, about whom it’s way too early to pass judgment. Even granting the Astros’ success with 2012 supplemental pick Lance McCullers, their experience does seem to bear out the maxim that there are considerable risks to selecting pitchers at the top of the draft.
Nonetheless, Luhnow says the Appel/Bryant decision doesn’t keep him up nights. “We’ve got Carlos Correa. We’ve got Alex Bregman. We’ve got Lance McCullers. Our scouting department has done a nice job with the draft,” he says. “You can always look back and say I should have taken this player instead of that player, but there’s no reason to really dwell on it.”
Alex Anthopoulos Says He’s No Longer A Candidate For Twins Job
SATURDAY: Anthopoulos has told colleagues that the timing is poor for him to take a top baseball operations job elsewhere, Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press writes. That means he won’t be taking a new job with the Twins. The Dodgers exec recently had his family join him in the Los Angeles area, and his two young children are recently started school.
TUESDAY: Alex Anthopoulos is a “confirmed candidate” to take over the Twins’ soon-to-be-created position of president of baseball operations, Jon Morosi of MLB Network reports on Twitter. He becomes the first potential front office candidate clearly linked to the organization.
Minnesota has reportedly begun a search to add both a PBOp as well as a general manager, adopting some form of the two-tiered front office structure that has become popular around the league. The team has been relying upon Rob Antony as interim GM after parting ways with Terry Ryan earlier this year.
The 39-year-old Anthopoulos is best known for his turn as the GM of the Blue Jays from late 2009 through 2015. After putting together a postseason club last year — the organization’s first berth 1993 — he ended up parting ways with the club in a surprising series of events.
Toronto hired Mark Shapiro as president, reportedly promising him final authority over baseball decisionmaking. While the Jays attempted to retain Anthopoulos, offering him a five-year deal that he could have opted out of after a single season, he declined to continue with the new leadership and somewhat-altered parameters of his role.
Since that time, Anthopoulos has been working for the Dodgers as a Vice President, joining several other prominent former top baseball operations personnel in the Los Angeles front office. At the time of his hiring, Anthopoulos expressed interest in a long-term gig there — while also noting that he’d be intrigued by the idea of running his own shop again.
AL Central Notes: Verlander, Molitor, May, Milone, Salazar, Cain
In his latest column, Yahoo’s Jeff Passan chronicles Justin Verlander‘s return to prominence as one of the game’s most dominant pitchers. Passan spoke to a very candid Verlander, who explained that during the 2014 season — the worst of his career — he felt pain in his shoulder through virtually every pitch he delivered. However, as Passan notes, Verlander was keenly aware of the expectations that came along with signing a $180MM contract and was resolved to pitch so long as he was physically capable. Verlander admitted to Passan that for awhile, baseball was no longer fun for him. The Detroit ace walked Passan through his recovery, beginning with recovery from surgery to repair a torn abdominal muscle (which was, perhaps the root of all of his problems, as his mechanics were drastically altered to compensate). As Passan points out, Verlander’s velocity is sitting around 93 mph, and he’s now throwing his slider harder than in the past as a means of differentiating it from his curve. The result is one of the finest stretches of Verlander’s career: a 2.09 ERA and a 102-to-19 K/BB ratio over his past 90 1/3 innings that has firmly inserted Verlander into the mix for the AL Cy Young Award.
More from the AL Central…
- Manager Paul Molitor has given the Twins every indication that he intends to return in 2017, tweets Charley Walters of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. While that in and of itself may not be overly newsworthy — owner Jim Pohlad has gone on record as stating that he wants Molitor to remain the team’s skipper even after hiring a new president of baseball ops — Walters does report that Molitor is slated to earn $2.5MM in the final season of the three-year deal he signed with Minnesota prior to the 2015 campaign.
- Earlier today, the Twins activated righty Trevor May and lefty Tommy Milone from the DL, per a club announcement. The 26-year-old May has had an interesting season, racking up 12.5 K/9 against 3.4 BB/9 but compiling only a 4.89 ERA in his 42 1/3 innings. Milone, meanwhile, seems headed for a non-tender barring a stirring performance over the last several weeks of the year. He has posted a rough 5.68 earned run average in his 65 frames thus far.
- The Indians pulled Danny Salazar from tonight’s contest due to forearm tightness, MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian was among those to tweet. The club emphasized that it was a precautionary move, but this isn’t the first time this year that forearm/elbow issues have sidelined the prized righty. He declined to speak to reporters after the game, Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer tweets, with manager Terry Francona saying that the team hopes to “know more tomorrow when he comes to the park.” Salazar lasted only four frames in his latest outing, and hasn’t reached six innings in a start since mid-July. The 26-year-old did manage to rack up 11 strikeouts in his prior appearance, but it has been quite an uneven second half for a pitcher who could be a key part of the club’s hopeful postseason run. Entering his first year of arbitration eligibility — he’ll qualify as a Super Two — Salazar has thrown 137 1/3 innings of 3.87 ERA ball, with 161 strikeouts but also 63 walks on his ledger.
- Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain was back in the lineup this evening after sitting out several contests due to a sprained hand, as Rustin Dodd of the Kansas City Star reports (Twitter links). It “doesn’t feel good” to swing, said Cain, who nevertheless managed to reach three times on a hit and two walks. Per skipper Ned Yost, the club will keep running Cain out so long as he can tolerate playing, with hopes that his glove, legs, and savvy at the plate will make up for any limitations with the bat. Asked by MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan (Twitter link) whether he had caused any further damage by playing with the injury, Cain offered a somewhat resigned response: “It’s already torn. So I don’t know if it made it worse, unless I get another MRI.”