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Health Notes: McCann, Castillo, Polanco, Severino

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Veteran Braves backstop Brian McCann hasn’t yet decided on his future but feels great in the present, he tells David O’Brien of The Athletic (subscription link) as part of a lengthy and entertaining chat. The 35-year-old backstop would say only that “we’ll see what happens” when pressed on his intentions for playing beyond the current campaign. It certainly seems like a tempting proposition for McCann, who says he “feel[s] amazing” after undergoing knee surgery last year. While he has had some ups and downs at the plate this season, McCann carries a solid .257/.328/.427 batting line over 198 plate appearances and has been an excellent value for the Braves at $2MM. His ongoing knee health seems to bode well for the organization down the stretch.

More on a few health situations from around the game …

  • The White Sox announced today that they have activated catcher Welington Castillo. He ended up missing about a month with an oblique strain. It remains to be seen how the Chicago org will allocate playing time, but odds are James McCann will continue to receive the lion’s share of the duties behind the dish. Castillo could conceivably be moved later this month, if only because teams will be looking to stash depth in advance of the single trade deadline, but he won’t hold much appeal given his ugly .196/.289/.364 slash. The veteran backstop is also earning a hefty $7.25MM this year and is owed a $500K buyout on a $8MM club option for 2020. The White Sox may also just hang tight and see if their club can make a surprise run at a Wild Card slot.
  • Pirates outfielder Gregory Polanco won’t bounce back to the majors quite as quickly as had been hoped. As Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes, Polanco was pulled from a rehab contest with left shoulder tightness. For now, the club only intends to give him a brief rest without interrupting the rehab assignment. As Mackey notes, the timing is of some consequence to the Bucs. The club is in a tough spot as the trade deadline approaches, having slipped into the NL Central cellar. It’s arguably positioned to sell a left-handed-hitting outfielder regardless of what else it does — highly paid pending free agent Corey Dickerson seems a particular candidate — but it’ll be tough to pull the trigger on a deal if there’s uncertainly regarding Polanco’s availability.
  • As expected, Yankees righties Luis Severino and Dellin Betances resumed throwing yesterday, as MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reports. Indications are that all went well for both hurlers in limited sessions, designed only to begin reintroducing their strained lats to the rigors of the MLB mound. Severino told reporters that he’d be willing to work back in a relief capacity if that’s the organization’s preference. While that’d bring him aboard quicker, it probably isn’t the optimal outcome for a club that has a need for quality rotation pieces and can probably afford to be patient.

Keone Kela To Start Rehab Assignment; Erik Gonzalez Suffers Setback

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Pirates reliever Keone Kela has been out since May 4 because of right shoulder inflammation, though he may finally be moving toward a return. The team announced that Kela’s likely to start a rehab assignment at the Triple-A level Saturday.

This is the second time Kela has begun a rehab stint since he landed on the injured list. However, Kela’s previous attempt came to a halt May 31 because of a setback – one that has shelved him for another month and a half to this point. The shoulder woes added to a less-than-ideal early season start for Kela, who yielded six earned runs on 11 hits and four walks (with 11 strikeouts) in 11 2/3 innings before the Pirates shut him down. Those subpar numbers came with a slight velocity drop for Kela – after averaging almost 97 mph on his fastball from 2017-18, it has clocked in just below 96 mph this year. His curveball and changeup have also lost some pep in comparison to the previous two seasons.

The Pirates are almost exactly a year from acquiring Kela, whom they got from the Rangers last July 31 for left-handed pitching prospect Taylor Hearn and young infielder Sherten Apostel. Kela was terrific for the Pirates over a small sample in 2018, and came into this year having logged quality production in each season but one (2016) since making his major league debut in 2015. The usual version of Kela would be a welcome late-season addition for the Pirates, who – despite an unimposing 44-47 record – are a surmountable 4 1/2 games back in the National League Central and three behind a wild-card spot in the NL.

Along with issuing an update on Kela, the Pirates announced that injured infielder Erik Gonzalez had to stop his rehab because of a left hamstring strain. It’s a new injury for the 27-year-old Gonzalez, who has been down since undergoing surgery on a fractured left clavicle April 25. Gonzalez, acquired from the Indians in a trade for outfielder Jordan Luplow and infielder Max Moroff in the offseason, opened 2019 as Pittsburgh’s starting shortstop prior to his injury. But the Pirates have since seen rookie Kevin Newman post eye-opening production at the position, calling into question whether the out-of-options, light-hitting Gonzalez will have a place on their roster if and when he does return this year.

Latest On Francisco Cervelli

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JULY 12: Cervelli now says that he does hope to return to working behind the plate. (Post via Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on Twitter.)

“Saying that I quit from my catcher responsibilities is inaccurate,” he writes. “My hope is to catch again.”

Cervelli goes on to explain that he is merely staying out from behind the dish for the present as “part of the process of recovery from several concussions that have forced me to stop and think about my health beyond my baseball years.” The long-time receiver says he loves the game too much not to try to “reinvent” himself and keep plugging.

There’s certainly some ambiguity here. Whether he was prompted to clarify his stance based upon contractual concerns or a genuine desire to get back behind the plate, there’s no doubting Cervelli’s heart. At this point, though, it seems uncertain at best whether he will again don the mask in the majors.

JULY 7: Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli is giving up his career-long position because of chronic concussion issues. The 33-year-old told Dejan Kovacevic of DKPittsburghSports.com that he will no longer catch.

“That’s enough,” Cervelli stunningly revealed to Kovacevic. “This time is different. I can’t live like this.”

Cervelli has been on the injured list since suffering a concussion May 25. It’s at least the sixth he has incurred since his major league career began with the Yankees in 2008, Kovacevic notes. It’s unclear which position Cervelli will take next, though he emphasized to Kovacevic it was his decision – not the Pirates’ – to leave behind catching. Cervelli added he hopes to begin a rehab assignment at the Triple-A level in the coming weeks.

Cervelli, a Pirate since 2015, had been a respectable starting catcher for the club when he was healthy enough to man the position. He was at his best in 2015, a season in which he logged a tremendous 5.9 fWAR in 130 games. That compelled Pittsburgh to extend Cervelli in May 2016, when it awarded him a three-year, $33MM guarantee. Cervelli lived up to that pact as recently as last year, hitting .259/.378/.431 (125 wRC+) with 2.6 fWAR in 404 plate appearances and 104 games. Thanks in part to injuries, though, he got off to a slow start this season. As of now, he owns a .193/.247/.248 line (47 wRC+) across 123 PA.

With no obvious position anymore and Cervelli’s contract set to expire at season’s end, it seems likely this will be his final year with the Pirates. Speculatively, if he does return in 2019, he could try his hand as a reserve corner infielder. The Pirates have one of the majors’ premier first basemen, Josh Bell, and a capable starter at third in Colin Moran. Regardless of whether Cervelli shifts to either of those spots, it doesn’t seem he’ll garner much more playing time this year, and will now cede his customary position to Elias Diaz and Jacob Stallings.

Chris Archer Revamping Repertoire

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We’re nearing the one-year anniversary of Pittsburgh acquiring right-hander Chris Archer from Tampa Bay in a whopper of a trade. The Pirates, under the impression they were getting back a front-line starter, sent high-caliber prospects Tyler Glasnow and Austin Meadows to the Rays in exchange for Archer last July 31. Unfortunately for the Pirates, the deal has been a catastrophe to this point. Archer has flopped, while Glasnow and Meadows may be turning into core pieces for the Rays.

With two-plus months left in his first full season as a Pirate, Archer’s on pace for a career-worst campaign. The 30-year-old has offset an impressive strikeout rate (10.07 K/9) with control problems (4.69 BB/9) and home run issues (2.29 HR/9) en route to a 5.49 ERA/5.91 FIP in 78 2/3 innings. Stunningly, among 110 pitchers who have thrown at least 70 frames in 2019, the once-excellent Archer ranks sixth from the bottom in ERA and second last in FIP.

Now, Archer’s in the process of trying to turn around his fortunes, as he explained to Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archer will hope to do a 180 with a different repertoire. He dumped his two-seam fastball in a June 22 start against the Padres and plans to rely more heavily on his signature slider. Archer told Mackey batters’ “slugging percentage on my two-seamer was extremely high. One way to eliminate the damage is just to not throw the pitch that has the most damage. It’s not a complex thing. It was just getting banged. I got rid of it.”

Archer’s right. Hitters own a ludicrous .867 slugging percentage against the pitch – one Statcast classifies as a sinker and says he has turned to 15.8 percent of the time this season. Archer didn’t throw a sinker in any of the three full seasons before the Pirates acquired him, but it became a prominent part of the mix last year. While Archer told Mackey that “I probably tried to change too much” upon relocating to Pittsburgh, he and pitching coach Ray Searage insist the hurler – no one else – determines what he throws. Searage indicated he and Archer have a great relationship.

Whereas Archer’s two-seamer was a disaster before he scrapped it, his slider has been eminently effective throughout his career. That includes this season, during which hitters have mustered a toothless .290 weighted on-base average/.293 expected wOBA against it. Archer believes it’s “one of the best pitches in baseball.” And yet, he has leaned on it far less than usual this season, having tossed it at a 35.1 percent clip. That’s down 6.6 percent from last season and 9.5 percent compared to 2017.

Simply throwing more sliders and fewer sinkers won’t be the solution alone, according to Searage, who told Mackey that Archer also must improve his four-seam fastball command. In Searage’s estimation, that will lead to a decrease in homers against Archer, who had never allowed HRs on more than 16.2 percent of fly balls in a season until 2019. This year, he’s giving them up at a 23.8 percent rate. Only two starters have been worse in that department. Archer has had enough.

Pirates' Ask On Vazquez Would Be Extraordinarily High

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  • If the recent comments from Pirates GM Neal Huntington didn’t sufficiently quash the Dodgers/Felipe Vazquez connection, Morosi writes that Pittsburgh would require “at least two” of the four aforementioned top prospects (Lux, May, Smith, Ruiz) to headline a Vazquez deal. Between that and Huntington’s declaration that the team’s “expectation and anticipation is that Felipe will be closing out playoff games, be it this year or in the future with us,” it doesn’t seem wise to bank on Vazquez landing in Los Angeles (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Scott Boras On Potential Josh Bell Extension

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All-Star first baseman Josh Bell has broken through as the Pirates’ franchise player this season, his last pre-arbitration campaign. Considering the 26-year-old’s days of making league-minimum money are on the verge of ending, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked agent Scott Boras on Monday if Bell would have interest in signing a contract extension with the Pirates. Unless the Pirates are willing to make an expensive long-term commitment, it doesn’t seem as if it’s going to happen.

“Pittsburgh really doesn’t have a history of giving star player contracts yet,” Boras told Mackey. “Maybe they will someday. They’ve had a history of signing players before they’ve evolved into stars.”

In Boras’ estimation, the Pirates haven’t shown a willingness “to go out and invest in a great young player for a long time,” though he didn’t rule out an eventual change in policy on the franchise’s end.

Pittsburgh has still never doled out a guaranteed contract greater than the $60MM it handed catcher Jason Kendall on an extension in 2000. The team has since extended several other players it viewed as cornerstones – including Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco and Felipe Vazquez in recent years – to deals geared toward cancelling out the arbitration process and as many free-agent seasons as possible.

The Pirates haven’t gotten hurt on any of the McCutchen, Marte, Polanco and Vazquez deals, and they especially struck gold in signing McCutchen. The club inked McCutchen, then 25, to a six-year, $51MM guarantee entering the 2012 season, at which point he was coming off his first of five straight All-Star campaigns. McCutchen’s pact bought out his final pre-arbitration season, all three of his arbitration years, two free-agent years and included a $14.5MM club option for 2018. The Pirates ultimately exercised that option, though McCutchen spent the final year of his contract with the Giants and Yankees after a trade out of Pittsburgh. Still, he was among the majors’ top players on his ultra-affordable contract – including during an MVP-winning season in 2013 – and wound up as one of the best, most revered players in the history of the Pirates.

While Bell has taken the torch from McCutchen as the face of the franchise, the Pirates would be hard-pressed to lock up the former to such a team-friendly deal. The Pirates would likely love to do that, but their low-budget ways don’t sit well with Boras, who told Mackey:  “The Pirates are making a lot of money. The revenue structure of this game, you can go back and look at 2003 or ‘04, they’re probably making $100 million more than they did back then. Yet their payroll is within $20 million of where it was back then. The ability to do it is not the question. It’s the model, the choice of what they want.”

Boras isn’t wrong, as Mackey points out. The Pirates’ Opening Day payroll has climbed by just $20MM (from $54.8MM to $74.8MM) dating back to 2003. Over the same span, though, their listed revenue has skyrocketed from $109MM to $254MM. That increase didn’t lead to the Pirates keeping one of their prior high-profile Boras clients, right-hander Gerrit Cole, whom they traded to the Astros before the 2018 season. Cole was going into his second-last year of arbitration eligibility at the time.

It’s obviously too soon to write off Bell as a soon-to-be ex-Pirate. However, if the Pirates don’t present the slugger a long-term offer that at least surpasses (perhaps obliterates) the Kendall contract, keeping him in Pittsburgh for the foreseeable future may not be in the cards. For now, Bell’s on track to head to arbitration on the heels of what will go down as a career year. Having slashed .302/.376/.648 (152 wRC+) with 27 home runs in 388 plate appearances this season, Boras believes Bell “has identified himself” as one of the game’s elite players and someone “every franchise would like to have.”

Pirates Notes: Brault, Taillon, Kela

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  • Left-hander Steven Brault became the most recent Pittsburgh starter to head to the IL on Saturday. Brault will sit out with a left shoulder strain, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes. That sounds like a concerning ailment on paper, though Brault and the Pirates are optimistic he won’t miss more than one or two starts, according to Mackey. Brault exited his start against the Brewers on Friday after four innings of one-run ball because of the injury. He has now pitched to a 4.15 ERA/4.53 FIP with 7.86 K/9 and 4.75 BB/9 in 60 2/3 innings (15 appearances, nine starts) this year. Several injuries to starters, including to Pirates No. 1 Jameson Taillon, have opened the door for Brault to work from their rotation. Taillon has been out since May 4 with a right flexor strain, though in a long-awaited sign of progress, he’ll play catch Sunday, Mackey relays. Meanwhile, reliever Keone Kela threw a simulated game Saturday. Kela, also down since May 4, has been battling right shoulder troubles.

Steven Brault Exits Start With Shoulder Discomfort

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  • Pirates southpaw Steven Brault exited his start against the Brewers on Friday with an ominous-sounding issue – left shoulder discomfort – per Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The severity of Brault’s injury isn’t known yet, but he’s not feeling great at the moment, Will Graves of The Associated Press tweets. Should Brault require a stint on the IL, he’d become the fifth notable Pittsburgh starter to go on the shelf this season. Jameson Taillon, Chris Archer, Trevor Williams and Jordan Lyles have all missed various amounts of time. The onslaught of starter injuries is a key reason the Pirates have turned to the swingman Brault, who has done a decent job over 60 2/3 innings. Across 15 appearances and nine starts, he owns a 4.15 ERA/4.53 FIP with 7.86 K/9, though he has walked a hefty 4.75 per nine.

Cool Papa Bell

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No, this isn’t a piece about baseball legend Cool Papa Bell. Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a catchier title in regards to Pirates first baseman Josh Bell, who has evolved into one of baseball’s premier offensive players in 2019. It’s been something of an unexpected development considering the unspectacular start Bell’s career got off to during his first couple years in the majors.

A second-round pick in 2011, Bell soared up prospect lists in his days in the Pirates’ farm system, ranking as Baseball America’s 38th-best farmhand when the club promoted him to the bigs. Bell first got the call on July 8, 2016, almost exactly three years ago, and has been a mainstay in Pittsburgh since then. Through 2018, though, Bell looked like somewhat of a light hitter relative to his position, not the franchise-caliber masher he has become. While Bell did smack 26 home runs in 2017, he nonetheless entered this year a career .260/.348/.436 batter over 1,355 plate appearances, giving him a 110 wRC+ and a 1.4 fWAR which made him more closely resemble, say, James Loney than Freddie Freeman.

This season has been a completely different story for Bell, who, with 26 homers across 374 PA, has already tied his career high en route to his first All-Star nod. With a .306/.377/.654 line, Bell ranks fourth in the game in wRC+ (158), trailing a decent trio of Cody Bellinger, Mike Trout and Christian Yelich. The 26-year-old Bell has already racked up 2.7 fWAR, almost doubling the mark he posted during his entire career before 2019. Plus, while Bell recorded a mediocre .177 ISO from 2016-18, that number has soared to .349 this year, putting him fourth in the league.

So why the sudden epiphany? For starters, Bell’s pulling the ball more than ever and going opposite field less than at any previous point, all while hitting more fly balls and fewer grounders. That’s an easy recipe for more pop, as is his decrease in infield fly balls. Bell’s pop-up rate stood at upward of 9 percent in each of his prior seasons, but it has plummeted to just over 2 percent this season.

Unsurprisingly, Bell has hit the ball much harder in general. His hard-contact rate has risen by an eye-popping 15 percent since last season, while his soft-hit rate has fallen by almost 10 percent, according to FanGraphs. Only 11 players have outdone Bell in hard-hit percentage. With that in mind, it’s not exactly stunning he ranks near the top of the majors in weighted-on base average (.421) and expected wOBA (.404), per Statcast, which places the switch hitter in elite company in most of its offensive metrics. Bell’s expected batting average (91st percentile), barrel percentage (95th), xwOBA (96th), expected slugging percentage (96th), hard-contact rate (97th) and exit velocity (98th) are all magnificent.

Unlike 2018, when Bell logged a .284 wOBA/.257 xwOBA against breaking pitches, those offerings haven’t fooled him this year. If you’re going to throw a breaking pitch to Bell nowadays, there’s a good chance you’re going to pay. He has hit a ridiculous .455/.460 off them this season, having shown power against them in several quadrants of the strike zone, which the drastic change in FanGraphs’ heatmaps shows between  2018 and ’19.

It’s clear Bell has benefited from a more aggressive approach. He’s swinging at way more pitches, including out of the zone, which has led to less contact, an all-time worst swinging-strike percentage and more strikeouts. But when you’re producing like this, it doesn’t matter. He’s still walking and striking out at better clips than most hitters, evidenced by a K/BB ratio which ranks 50th among 158 qualified batters.

The Pirates have been waiting for a new face of the franchise to rise up since they traded away organizational icon Andrew McCutchen prior to the 2018 campaign. It appears they’ve found his successor in Bell, though the newly established slugger’s days of playing for a relative pittance are nearing an end. Now in his last season on a league-minimum salary, Bell’s on the verge of cashing in during the arbitration process. Considering his 2019 breakout, though, that’s a high-class problem for Pittsburgh.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Pirates GM Downplays Possibility Of Felipe Vazquez Trade

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Rumors of trading their star players are commonplace for the payroll-conscious Pirates, whose front office has been forced into tough decisions for budgetary reasons on numerous occasions in the past. This year, there have already been rumors of teams with interest in standout closer Felipe Vazquez — understandably so, given his excellence — but general manager Neal Huntington strongly downplayed the possibility of moving Vazquez in a radio appearance with Greg Brown on 93.7 FM The Fan this weekend.

“We will continue to look for ways to improve this organization,” said Huntington. “Felipe Vazquez is, in our minds, one of the best, if not the best young left-handed reliever in the game. He has the potential to contribute to us for this and four more years. Our expectation and anticipation is that Felipe will be closing out playoff games, be it this year or in the future with us.”

That’s the second time in the past month that Huntington has expressed a focus on adding to the club rather than trading contributors for longer-term assets. Huntington also points out within the interview that the Bucs are facing a critical stretch wherein they’ll play 20 of 23 games against divisional foes. The other three in that span are against the Phillies, whom Pittsburgh is chasing in the NL Wild Card race. Certainly, one can imagine that in the event of a nosedive in those 23 games, the Pirates could adopt a longer-term approach to this year’s trade deadline. That said, Huntington’s comments regarding Vazquez seem to indicate that even if the team were to sell off some pieces this summer, the lefty wouldn’t be among them.

Vazquez, 28 on Friday, signed an extremely club-friendly contract extension in January 2018, agreeing to a four-year deal worth a guaranteed $22MM plus a pair of $10MM club options for a fifth and potentially sixth season. He’s earning just $4MM in 2019 (with about $1.98MM of that still to be paid out) and will earn guaranteed salaries of $5.25MM and $7.25MM in 2020-21. There’s no looming free agency or imminent hike in salary that would serve as motivation for the Pirates to deal the lefty even if they fall further back than their current five-game deficit in the NL Central.

Vazquez himself is the product of a trade that was made under more conventional conditions. Back in 2016, with Mark Melancon just months from free agency, the Pirates shipped him to the Nationals in exchange for Vazquez and Taylor Hearn (later traded to the Rangers in the Keone Kela deal). Since being acquired by Pittsburgh, Vazquez has pitched to a 2.25 ERA with 80 saves and 11.7 K/9 against 3.1 BB/9 in 207 2/3 innings of work. He’s saved 19 games so far in 2019 while recording a minuscule 1.80 ERA and notching a career-best 14.1 K/9.

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