Continuing an active winter in the San Diego outfield, the Padres have joined the race to acquire Pirates center fielder Starling Marte, Jon Heyman of MLB Network reports. The Padres have already shuffled around their outfield quite a bit this offseason, having added two players (Tommy Pham and Trent Grisham) and subtracted another (Hunter Renfroe). They could get rid of at least one more if a team takes Wil Myers off their hands. The Padres at least tried to pawn Myers off on his first professional team – the Royals – in the clubs’ talks centering on utilityman Whit Merrifield, but KC didn’t bite, according to Scott Miller of Bleacher Report.
Pirates Rumors
Minor MLB Transactions: 12/11/19
There’s been no shortage of front page news this evening, but with the winter meetings not yet halfway through, there’s plenty more to come. For now, let’s take a look at some of the smaller moves that may have snuck beneath the radar…
- The Pirates signed reliever Hector Noesi to a minor-league contract, per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. Noesi, 33 by Opening Day, saw his first major league action since 2015 this season with the Marlins. He appeared in 12 games, starting 4, recording a 8.46 ERA/6.39 FIP over that span. The right-hander doesn’t figure to be a primary player for the Pirates, though he certainly brings a fair amount of experience having appeared in the show with the Marlins, White Sox, Rangers, Mariners, and Yankees since his debut in 2011. He performed below replacement level in four of his six major league seasons, with the high water mark coming in 2014 when he made 27 starts for the White Sox. He made very brief appearance with the Rangers and Mariners that year, but it was in Chicago where he spent the brunt of his time, registering a 4.39 ERA/4.85 FIP across 166 innings on the south side.
- The Braves have brought back outfielder Rafael Ortega on a minor-league contract, tweets Baseball America’s Gabe Burns. Ortega formerly spent time with the Rockies, Angels, and Marlins. He received some prominent playing time opportunities for the NL East Division champs down the stretch in 2019. The 28-year-old appeared in 34 games, while stepping up to the plate just 96 times, hitting .205/.271/307 in those limited opportunities. Ortega represents a depth option for Atlanta, who could still be in the market for a big bat in the outfield, should they be unable to bring back Josh Donaldson. For now, Ortega falls behind Ronald Acuna Jr., Nick Markakis, Ender Inciarte, and Adam Duvall on the depth chart, while Johan Camargo and Austin Riley could also see time in the outfield corners.
Latest On Mets, Starling Marte
The Mets somewhat addressed their need in center field last week when they acquired Jake Marisnick from the Astros, but they may not be done yet. New York remains in the mix to swing a trade for Pirates center fielder Starling Marte, per reports from Andy Martino of SNY and Jon Heyman of MLB Network. The club’s “working on” a Marte acquisition, according to Martino.
As one of the most valuable center fielders in baseball, Marte’s appeal is obvious. The fact that there’s a dearth of proven center fielders available in free agency should only add to his attractiveness on the trade market. He’s under control at more-than-reasonable prices for the next two seasons (including for a guaranteed $11.5MM in 2020 and a $12.5MM club option in ’21), so the Pirates don’t have to deal him. However, considering they appear unlikely to push for a playoff spot next season, there’s a case that it would make sense for the Bucs to sell off the 31-year-old this winter. For his part, new general manager Ben Cherington is reportedly open to fielding offers for Marte.
Should the Mets end up with Marte, it would add to an already crowded group of outfield-capable players for the team. Marisnick, Brandon Nimmo, Michael Conforto, Jeff McNeil, Dominic Smith, J.D. Davis and Yoenis Cespedes (if he returns from injury) are on hand as prominent players who have lined up in the grass. However, the Mets are “open” to parting with Nimmo to somewhat alleviate the logjam, per Martino. They shouldn’t have a tough time finding a taker for the 26-year-old, as he’s a quality major league hitter with three seasons of control remaining and is only projected to earn $1.7MM in 2020.
Rangers Exploring Outfield Trades, Pursuing Chirinos Reunion
8:58pm: The Cardinals are also in the mix for Mazara, Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. That jibes with their goal of acquiring a lefty-hitting outfielder.
6:17pm: The White Sox are “working hard to land” Mazara, as Jim Bowden of SiriusXM first reported. As for Chirinos, the Astros, Tigers, Rays and Pirates join the Rangers in the market for him, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets.
1:04pm: The Rangers have remained busy on the market, with MLB.com’s TR Sullivan reporting that the club is active on multiple fronts (Twitter links). While it stands to reason that the team is still considering moves in the rotation, the attention now is on the position player side after several notable pitching additions.
It has long seemed likely that the Rangers would explore possible swaps involving its existing outfielders. But the team now appears to be engaged in a somewhat dedicated manner. Sullivan says the intention is to “move one of their extra left-handed hitting outfielders,” with Nomar Mazara, Willie Calhoun, and Shin-Soo Choo named as possibilities.
That’s a highly varied group of players. Mazara is a mid-arbitration player that hasn’t turned the corner in the majors but remains quite youthful. Calhoun hasn’t had the same degree of opportunity (and hasn’t logged as much service) but showed well with the bat last year. He’s also still a question mark defensively, as is the aging Choo, who can still hit but isn’t worth the remainder of his big contract.
The Rangers are said to be chatting with the Diamondbacks about some of these players; the clubs were connected last night regarding Mazara. Evidently talks between the Rangers and Marlins didn’t advance. Craig Mish of MLB Network Radio tweets that the Fish were turned off by the asking price for Mazara, a former top prospect.
Meanwhile, there’s “mutual interest” in a new deal with backstop Robinson Chirinos. That’s rather an interesting development, considering the Texas organization surprisingly declined its option over him last fall. The replacement plan fell apart, as MLBTR’s Connor Byrne explored, while Chirinos flourished with the cross-state Astros.
The 35-year-old Chirinos and the Rangers are amply familiar with one another, as he played with the team for six seasons. It seems the sides carry no ill will over the way things ended. The catching market has moved rather swiftly to this point, leaving Chirinos and Jason Castro as the top available options.
Cherington: Pirates Open To Discussing Trades On Any Players
New Pirates GM Ben Cherington told reporters yesterday that he’s fielding interest in loads of players, as Rob Biertempfel writes for The Athletic (subscription link). Cherington indicated that he isn’t rebuffing inquiries on any segments of the Pittsburgh roster.
“We wouldn’t want to stop any conversation about any player,” Cherington explains. Right now, he’s gathering information in anticipation of opportunities that haven’t quite presented themselves. “The more information you have, the more clearly you can think about what makes sense for the Pirates when you’re kind of pushed to make a decision,” says Cherington.
The player the Bucs seem likeliest to end up moving is center fielder Starling Marte. It was already known that he was available. He’s in a position of demand and would surely be of greater utility to another team that’s seeking to contend. But the market situation is still taking shape.
There are some new data points to consider with respect to Marte. The Diamondbacks are among the teams showing interest in the veteran, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter links). That creates another potential landing spot to help generate offers. The full scope of interested teams isn’t clear.
If Marte is to be moved, the Pirates hope to land a controllable backstop in return, per Heyman. Of course, that sort of desire isn’t always attainable. It stands to reason that the organization will focus first and foremost on value rather than worrying too much about filling a specific need.
For that same reason, the Pirates won’t insist upon receiving high-end, far-away prospects in trade talks. Young MLB pieces could also be of interest to the Bucs, Biertempfel tweets. That’s particularly sensible since the organization does have a solid amount of young talent at or near the MLB level. While the results have obviously been disappointing of late, the roster is at the moment in much better shape than those of teams undergoing full-blown rebuilds.
Though much of the focus remains on Marte, the versatile Adam Frazier is said to be getting the most hits, per Heyman (Twitter link). Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had noted yesterday that Frazier was drawing interest. He’s a capable hitter who’d provide function to most any roster at a reasonable price.
Pirates Looking To Add Multiple Catchers
- Since Jacob Stallings is the only catcher on the Pirates’ 40-man roster, it isn’t any shock that GM Ben Cherington told media members (including Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic) that the Bucs are looking to upgrade the catching corps “in some ways.” Biertempfel notes that Cherington was “emphasizing the plural,” meaning that Pittsburgh will look to add multiple catchers for both the big league club and the farm system.
Adam Frazier Drawing Trade Interest
- The Pirates have gotten calls on second baseman/outfielder Adam Frazier, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette relays. It’s unclear how open the Pirates, led by new general manager Ben Cherington, are to trading the soon-to-be 28-year-old Frazier. He’s under control via arbitration for the next three seasons, and is projected to make an affordable $3.2MM in 2020. Frazier, roughly a league-average hitter since he debuted in 2016, is coming off a year in which he recorded a career-high 2.2 fWAR and batted .278/.336/.417 with 10 home runs across 608 trips to the plate.
Pirates Hire Don Kelly As Bench Coach
The Pirates have hired Don Kelly to serve as the bench coach on Derek Shelton’s staff, according to Jon Heyman of MLB Network. Kelly, 39, worked the 2019 season as the Astros’ first base coach, a role he accepted after beginning his post-playing career as an assistant in the Tigers’ player development department.
Kelly, a native of the Pittsburgh area, made his Major League debut with the Pirates but spent the majority of his playing days with the Tigers. Kelly will succeed Tom Prince, whom the Tigers hired to manage in their minor league system.
Many view Kelly, who has made a quick ascent up the coaching ranks, to be a future manager, but he’ll have to cut his teeth in the Pittsburgh dugout for the time being. Joining first-time manager Derek Shelton in the dugout, there’s not a lot of experience between the two. However, with the franchise in a transformative state, Shelton and Kelly should have opportunities to grow alongside the players.
Kelly’s hire continues the Pirates’ organizational overhaul under new general manager Ben Cherington, who has been able to hand-pick some of his staff given the coaching turnover. The upper ranks of the Pittsburgh organization will have a drastically different look this offseason and beyond, as Cherington and Shelton will be joined by new team president Travis Williams and assistant GM Steve Sanders.
In one last note on the Pittsburgh coaching staff, Kelly will join coaches Joey Cora, Rick Eckstein, and Justin Meccage, all of whom have been retained, per Adam Berry of MLB.com. Cora and Eckstein will remain in their current posts as third base coach and hitting coach, respectively, while Meccage will shift to a yet-undetermined role after previously serving as an assistant pitching coach. With former pitching coach Ray Searage out, the team has yet to identify a replacement.
Examining Pirates' Lack Of FA Spending
- Stephen J. Nesbitt of The Athletic (subscription link) tackles the Pirates’ lack of spending in free agency, noting they’re last in the majors in that department since owner Bob Nutting took control in 2007. The Pirates have been loath to hand out multiyear contracts under Nutting, and while they have a new general manager in Ben Cherington, their lack of spending probably won’t change much. This is a new frontier for Cherington, whose previous GM gig came with the deep-pocketed Red Sox. But Cherington did fail on a couple big-money signings in Boston, as the Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval deals went down as regrettable for the club.
Pirates Open To Offers For Starling Marte
The Pirates will listen to offers on center fielder Starling Marte, although to this point there’s no traction toward any sort of a trade, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets. That Marte would be available with two years of club control remaining comes as no surprise. If anything, prior suggestions that he wouldn’t be moved this winter (which came under the previous front office regime) were more unexpected. Marte himself has since even gone on record to state that he’d be open to being dealt to a contending club.
The $24MM Marte can earn over the next two seasons — $11.5MM salary in 2020, $12.5MM option for 2021 — is an expensive sum for the perennially low-spending Pirates but an affordable rate for many others throughout the league. The Pittsburgh organization also just overhauled its front office and field staff on the heels of a disastrous 93-loss season and doesn’t seem likely to contend in 2020. Listening on Marte is to be expected, which is why he checked in near the top of MLBTR’s most recent inventory of baseball’s top trade candidates. The Pirates, Heyman notes, would like to add a high-end catching prospect by some means this winter (although they’ll have other players to market beyond Marte).
There’s every reason to think that interest in Marte will be robust in the coming weeks (or possibly months). The best center fielders in free agency are Brett Gardner, who seems likely to return to the Yankees, and a wild card option in Japanese star Shogo Akiyama. Other trade candidates could certainly crop up on the market, but few would be able to match Marte’s level of production and relatively affordable control.
Marte will play the entire 2020 season at age 31 and is fresh off a .295/.342/.503 batting line with a career-high 23 home runs. Obligatory juiced ball caveat aside, Marte also swatted 20 long balls a year prior. Skeptics surely questioned his true offensive abilities (and perhaps still do) following 2017’s 80-game PED ban, but Marte has posted a strong .285/.336/.462 batting line in 1472 plate appearances since returning from suspension that July.
He may not quite be a superstar-level performer at the plate, but Marte has demonstrated that he’s clearly a quality hitter at a premium defensive position. He was 19 to 20 percent better than a league-average hitter in 2019 by measure of park- and league-adjusted metrics like wRC+ (119) and OPS+ (120). That’s particularly impressive when considering that center fielders, as a collective group, hit five percent worse than the league average in 2019 (95 wRC+). Add in that his 58 stolen bases over the past two seasons tie him for sixth-most in the Majors, and there’s plenty to like about Marte’s all-around capabilities on offense.
Defensive stats present more of a mixed bag. Although Statcast credited Marte with a respectable two outs above average in center this year, both Defensive Runs Saved (-9) and Ultimate Zone Rating (-7.6) felt that the 2019 campaign was the worst of his career in center. For a player entering his age-31 season, that’s not ideal, but it’s worth noting that he graded out anywhere from above-average to excellent by all three of those metrics as recently as 2018. At worst, he could be viewed as a player with another year of center field left in him before transitioning to an outfield corner. Even with substandard defensive marks, Marte was worth 3.0 fWAR and 2.9 bWAR in 2019, so he’s a plenty valuable asset and well worth his remaining contractual obligation.
The trade market should see plenty of teams with potential center field needs inquire. The Phillies, Cubs, Reds, D-backs, Padres, Giants, Rangers, Braves and White Sox all seem like clubs that could inquire and gauge the asking price on Marte. The Blue Jays could represent an on-paper fit, but recent reports indicate that they’re not planning to pursue such a swap. The Mets, too, could use a center fielder — although they did just pick up Jake Marisnick, a more cost-effective option, in a swap with the Astros yesterday. If nothing else, Pirates fans should brace themselves for the inevitability that Marte’s name will be a popular one at next week’s Winter Meetings.
