NL East Notes: Phillies, Bryant, Marlins, Reynolds, Marte, Jansen, Chafin, Mets
The Phillies were often speculated as a suitor for Kris Bryant this winter, and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports that the team did indeed have interest in the former NL MVP. However, Bryant wanted as much long-term security as possible in the form of “at least a seven-year deal,” and he landed that desired contract with his seven-year, $182MM agreement with the Rockies. Philadelphia’s offer topped out at five years, Nightengale writes.
Given the terms, one wonders if the Phillies’ offer to Bryant was somewhat similar to the five-year, $100MM deal the club ended up giving to Nick Castellanos. Even that deal took some additional legwork, since as The Athletic’s Matt Gelb details, the front office first had to convince owner John Middleton that adding Castellanos was worth exceeding the luxury tax threshold for the first time in franchise history. Middleton has long stated that he was willing to pay the tax for a difference-making type of acquisition, and the end result is that the Phillies are now projected to sit above the $230MM threshold with an estimated $236.46MM tax number.
More from the NL East…
- While the Marlins have long coveted Pirates All-Star Bryan Reynolds, the Fish “weren’t planning on” dealing either Max Meyer or JJ Bleday in a trade package for the outfielder, Man On Second’s Joe Frisaro writes. Bleday was the fourth overall pick of the 2019 draft and Meyer the third pick in 2020, with both youngsters considered among the top 100 prospects in baseball, let alone just in Miami’s farm system. Pittsburgh is known to have a big asking price in any Reynolds trade, so it isn’t surprising that the Bucs are aiming high in their demands from the Marlins or other clubs. The Marlins do have a lot of quality minor league depth, so a Reynolds deal can’t be entirely ruled out even if the Fish don’t move either Meyer or Bleday. Frisaro notes that the Marlins are still looking at other center field options besides Reynolds, and the club is also looking for bullpen help either in trades or available free agents.
- Starling Marte has been sidelined by injury for the last week, though both Marte and Mets manager Buck Showalter believe the veteran outfielder will be ready for Opening Day, according to Deesha Thosar of The New York Daily News and other reporters. Marte’s injury is being described by the team as left oblique soreness, and Showalter said Marte underwent several tests to make sure there wasn’t any structural damage on Marte’s left side. However, Marte said that an MRI revealed “something, not a broken rib, but something,” adding somewhat evasively that it was “something like” an intercostal muscle issue.
- Kenley Jansen and Andrew Chafin each drew some interest from the Mets before signing elsewhere, SNY’s Andy Martino reports. For all of the Mets’ moves this winter, they have been relatively quiet on the bullpen front, though Adam Ottavino was recently added on a one-year, $4MM pact. However, quite a few notable veterans (i.e. Alex Claudio, Chasen Shreve, Felix Pena) have been added on minor league deals, and whatever younger arms aren’t in the rotation could also help out in the relief corps.
Pirates Designate Eric Hanhold For Assignment
The Pirates have designated right-hander Eric Hanhold for assignment, tweets Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The DFA opens a spot on the 40-man roster for righty Adonis Medina, whom the Pirates claimed off waivers from Philadelphia this week.
Hanhold himself was a waiver claim by the Bucs, coming over from the Orioles back on Nov. 3. The 28-year-old pitched in 10 games with Baltimore this past season and yielded nine runs (eight earned) on 13 hits and three walks with six strikeouts through 10 1/3 frames.
Hanhold had a solid showing between Double-A and Triple-A back in 2019, tossing 63 1/3 innings of 3.84 ERA ball. He did so with pedestrian strikeout and walk rates but a slightly above-average 48% grounder rate. His 2021 season was a struggle both in Baltimore and in Triple-A, though, as he pitched to a 5.19 ERA in 26 innings with Norfolk last year. Hanhold throws fairly hard (95.1 mph average heater in the Majors), and he’s generally done a nice job of keeping the ball on the ground and limiting walks in the minors. That hasn’t fully offset a career 19.2% strikeout rate, however. The Pirates will have a week to trade him, pass him through outright waivers or release him.
Pirates Sign Austin Brice To Minor League Deal
The Pirates have signed right-handed pitcher Austin Brice to a minor league contract, according to Alex Stumpf of DK Pittsburgh Sports. It’s a continuation of Pittsburgh’s busy week adding depth to their pitching staff, as they claimed pitcher Adonis Medina earlier today and re-signed Chase De Jong to a minor league accord yesterday.
The 29-year-old Brice is coming off a season split between Boston’s Triple-A and big league teams, his second straight year with the Red Sox. While he made a solid impression in the minors, posting a 3.27 ERA and 34 strikeouts across 33 innings, that wasn’t the case at the Major League level. The out-of-options Brice was shuttled back and forth between Boston’s top two teams throughout the season and was left with a 6.59 ERA in just north of 13 innings for the Red Sox.
While Brice didn’t find a ton of success with Boston, he’s not far removed from a strong 2019 showing out of the Miami bullpen. Through 44 innings that season the Marlins draftee pitched to a solid 3.43 ERA, though several of his peripherals hinted that his ERA figure was a bit lucky. Furthermore, Brice has proven himself plenty adept at getting minor league hitters out, with a career 2.92 ERA at the Triple-A level that looks a lot rosier than his 5.17 ERA across six Major League seasons.
All told, it’s a low risk signing for the Pirates, as is typically the case with minor league pacts. Should Brice and his 80th percentile curveball carry his minor league success over to the big leagues Pittsburgh will have quite the nice pickup on their hands.
Pirates Claim Adonis Medina Off Waivers From Phillies
The Pirates have claimed right-hander Adonis Medina off waivers from the Phillies, according to an announcement from Philadelphia. This ends a months-long stay in DFA limbo for Medina, as he was designated for assignment on December 1st of last year when the Phillies signed Johan Camargo. Shortly after that, MLB instituted a lockout, keeping Medina’s status frozen until that lockout ended last week.
This will be just the second organization for Medina, who was signed by the Phillies as an international free agent back in 2014. As he climbed the minor league ranks, he cracked Baseball America’s list of the 100 prospects in baseball, coming in at #84 in 2018.
However, since that time, he’s mostly struggled with the competition in the upper levels of the minors and in the majors. In 2019, he made 21 starts in Double-A, along with one appearance in relief, throwing 105 2/3 innings of 4.94 ERA ball. He only struck out 17.5% of the batters he faced, well below average, but did get ground balls at an encouraging clip of 45.1%. In 2020, the pandemic wiped out the minor league seasons, though Medina was able to make his MLB debut, making one four-inning start. In 2021, he logged another 7 2/3 innings in the big leagues but mostly pitched in Triple-A, making 17 starts for 67 2/3 innings 5.05 ERA ball. Much like 2019, his ground ball rate was good at 45.7%, but the 18.5% strikeout rate was still lacking.
For a Pirates team that’s firmly in rebuild mode, there’s little harm in taking a flier on Medina, especially considering he’s still just 25 years old and has less than a year of MLB service time. He is out of options, however, meaning the club will have to keep him on the 40-man roster or else designate him for assignment again. Outside of veteran Jose Quintana, the team’s rotation currently consists of inexperienced younger hurlers. Medina will be competing against the likes of JT Brubaker, Zach Thompson, Bryse Wilson, Mitch Keller and others.
Pirates Re-Sign Chase De Jong To Minor League Deal
The Pirates appear to have resigned right-handed pitcher Chase De Jong to a minor league pact per Jason Mackey of the Post Gazette. De Jong was spotted in Pittsburgh’s Major League camp today, signaling his status as a likely non-roster invitee.
The 28-year-old De Jong returns to Pittsburgh after spending the duration of the 2021 season at the Triple-A and Major League levels for the team. While the well-traveled De Jong flashed tantalizing strikeout potential in his limited Triple-A action last season, that skillset didn’t quite translate to the big leagues after he was called up in late May of last year. An errant line drive struck De Jong in the knee in July, ultimately ending his season and leading to knee surgery. He was subsequently outrighted off Pittsburgh’s roster and elected minor league free agency in November.
All told, De Jong soaked up over 43 innings across 9 starts before his knee injury, sporting a 5.77 ERA with uninspiring peripherals. Despite the lack of results, the right-hander may serve as a source of innings for an unproven Pittsburgh pitching staff that largely remains in “let’s see what happens” mode.
A former second round pick, De Jong has yet to find much success at the Major League level but continues to get looks. Now in his sixth organization, the journeyman pitcher has pitched at least one inning at the game’s highest level in five straight seasons. He’s likely to keep that streak going if his knee proves fully recovered in the weeks to follow.
Pirates Sign Daniel Vogelbach, Heath Hembree
10:20am: Hembree’s contract guarantees him $2.125MM, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Twitter links). He adds that Vogelbach’s $1MM guarantee comes in the form of an $800K salary and a $200K buyout on next year’s $1.5MM option.
9:15am: Vogelbach’s deal comes with a $1MM base salary and up to $400K worth of incentives, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. The contract also contains a $1.5MM club option for the 2023 season. Vogelbach would remain under team control via arbitration even if the option is not picked up, although at that point, if the club opts against a $1.5MM salary, it seems likely that he’d be non-tendered.
7:07am: The Pirates kicked off their Tuesday by announcing a pair of signings: first baseman/designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach and right-handed reliever Heath Hembree have both agreed to one-year, Major League contracts, per the team. Vogelbach is repped by ISE Baseball, while Hembree is a client of the Ballengee Group. Right-handers Blake Cederlind and Nick Mears were transferred to the 60-day injured list in a pair of corresponding moves. Cederlind is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, and The Athletic’s Rob Biertempfel tweets that Mears had surgery to clean up some scar tissue in his right elbow back on Feb. 9.
Vogelbach, 29, will join Yoshi Tsutsugo in the mix for playing time at first base and in the newly created National League designated hitter slot. The 2011 second-rounder (Cubs) has spent the past two seasons with the Brewers organization after logging parts of five seasons as a member of the Mariners. He batted .219/.349/.381 in 258 plate appearances with Milwaukee during a 2021 season that saw him hobbled by hamstring tear. Vogelbach sustained the injury when scoring from second base on an RBI single; it was a bizarre play that saw the big man pull up lame about a third of the way home but still limp home as a sleeping D-backs defense appeared unaware of its surroundings.
Oddity of that play aside, Vogelbach will bring to the Buccos plenty of pop against right-handed pitching and a lofty walk rate against both lefties and righties. He’ll quite likely be platooned, as he’s just a .135/.256/.255 hitter against southpaws, but Vogelbach has walked in nearly 17% of his career plate appearances versus right-handers while putting together a .228/.357/.442 batting line. He’s only appeared in more than 100 games once in his career, but when he did so, Vogelbach swatted 30 long balls through 558 plate appearances with the 2019 Mariners.
If things go well in Pittsburgh, the Bucs will be able to retain Vogelbach for another two seasons beyond the 2022 campaign via arbitration. He currently has three-plus years of big league service time and is out of minor league options.
As for Hembree, he’ll give the Pirates a big-time strikeout arm to install in their late-inning mix. The 33-year-old punched out a massive 38% of his opponents last year while pitching for the Reds and spent a portion of the season as the closer in Cincinnati. A nightmare stretch of games from late July through mid-August saw Hembree serve up 13 runs in seven innings, however, ballooning his ERA north of 6.00. Hembree was designated for assignment, caught on with the Mets and had a nice finish to the season, pitching to a 3.45 ERA in 15 2/3 innings with New York.
Hembree’s end-of-season ERA was still an unsightly 5.59, continuing some struggles he’d experienced beginning in the shortened 2020 season (9.00 ERA in 19 innings). However, even with the recent scuffles — which seemingly stem from an uptick in home runs allowed — the right-hander has maintained big strikeout, swinging-strike and opponents’ chase rates. Hembree’s 30.9% strikeout rate and 21.3 K-BB% are actually better than the marks he posted from 2015-19, when he was a consistent presence in the Red Sox bullpen and notched a 3.59 ERA over the life of 238 innings.
As far as low-cost bullpen fliers go, Hembree is a particularly sensible one for the Bucs, who’ll hope he can sustain some of those strikeout gains while getting away from the home run troubles he had at more hitter-friendly settings in Philadelphia (2020) and in Cincinnati. Hembree figures to serve as a setup man for emerging closer David Bednar, joining righty Chris Stratton in that regard. If Hembree does manage to curtail the home run troubles that plagued him in 2020-21, he could well emerge as a nice trade chip for the Pirates this July.
Guardians Hire Neal Huntington As Special Assistant
The Guardians have hired former Pirates general manager Neal Huntington as special assistant, baseball projects, reports Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic.
This is something of a homecoming for Huntington, as he spent about a decade working for the club, then known as the Indians, as part of his ascent to becoming a GM. He got his feet wet with the Expos, working as assistant director of player development in 1995, jumping to Cleveland in 1998, becoming assistant director of minor league operations, then director of player development, assistant general manager and special assistant to the general manager.
In 2007, the Pirates hired him to be their general manager, at a time when the club hadn’t made the playoffs since 1992. With Huntington at the helm, the club eventually managed to break that streak, finishing second in the NL Central and qualifying for the Wild Card game in three straight years, beginning in 2013. Unfortunately, that was the peak of the team’s success during Huntington’s time, as they faded in subsequent seasons, which included his most infamous transaction, sending Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows and Shane Baz to the Rays in exchange for Chris Archer. The club went on a firing spree in 2019, with Huntington being one of the casualties, along with the team’s president, manager and a few coaches, as the franchise underwent a massive overhaul. Ben Cherington was hired as the club’s new GM to undertake a total rebuild that is still ongoing, with the club finishing in the basement of the division the past three years.
Huntington now returns to an organization where he got his first sizable taste of front office work, though surely in a role that will be less forward-facing than his job in Pittsburgh.
Pirates Claim Aaron Fletcher
The Pirates claimed left-hander Aaron Fletcher off waivers from the Mariners, as announced by both teams. Seattle’s 40-man roster now has two open spots, after both the Fletcher claim and the Giants’ claim of Jose Godoy earlier today.
Fletcher has eight total innings (with a 12.38 ERA) pitched in the big leagues, getting brief cups of coffee with the M’s in each of the last two seasons. Originally a 14th-round pick for the Nationals in 2018, Fletcher has some solid numbers over his three minor league seasons — a 2.69 ERA, 25.83% strikeout rate, and 5.7% walk rate in 153 2/3 innings. The southpaw has worked exclusively as a reliever for the last three seasons.
While Fletcher’s small sample size of MLB work isn’t impressive, those minor league statistics were enough to catch the Pirates’ attention, and Pittsburgh will now get another big league-ready arm into the mix in Spring Training. There isn’t much settled in terms of the Bucs’ bullpen alignment, so the opportunity is there for Fletcher to win himself a job with a good performance in camp.
NL Central Notes: Castellanos, Reds, Reynolds, Cardinals, Pujols, Kim
The bullpen, a fifth starter, bench help, and backup catching were cited by Reds GM Nick Krall as possible target areas, Krall told The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Bobby Nightengale and other reporters, and the Reds could turn to either Major League or minor league free agents to address any of those needs. In regards to one particular prominent free agent, Krall seemed to close the door on the chances of Nick Castellanos returning to Cincinnati, saying “we have not been engaged with his representatives.”
It doesn’t count as any big surprise that Castellanos will be moving on, since he was looking for a hefty new contract pre-lockout, and the Reds’ offseason moves have thus far been geared towards cutting and managing payroll (while still making some effort to contend for a playoff spot). Since Castellanos rejected the Reds’ qualifying offer and because Cincinnati is a revenue-sharing recipient, the team stands to receive an extra pick after the first round of the 2022 draft should Castellanos sign elsewhere for more than $50MM.
More from around the NL Central…
- Bryan Reynolds has drawn trade interest from at least seven teams over the last year, and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports that the Padres are yet another club looking into obtaining the Pirates outfielder. Trading for Reynolds would be a huge way for the Padres to address their outfield needs, though needless to say, San Diego would need to make a major offer to get the Pirates’ attention. Pittsburgh has set a big asking price in any Reynolds trade, and in San Diego’s case, Rosenthal figures the Bucs would ask for top prospect CJ Abrams and more.
- The Cardinals “have considered” a reunion with franchise icon Albert Pujols, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes. However, Cards chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. was more non-committal about the idea of Pujols returning to the Gateway City, as DeWitt told reporters (including the Post-Dispatch’s Rick Hummel) that “we’ve got most of our club pretty well set.” It should be noted that if Pujols is best served as a part-time first baseman and DH, such a depth role would still fit even on a Cardinals roster that has many of its positions settled around the diamond.
- As for other Cardinals pitching needs, Goold writes that the Cards are expected to pursue more relief help, even after signing swingman Drew VerHagen on Friday. St. Louis president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told reporters that the club thought about re-signing Kwang-Hyun Kim, but the left-hander instead opted to return to the Korean Baseball Organization just a few days before the lockout ended.
Phillies Hire Sean Rodriguez As Player Development Instructor
Veteran utilityman Sean Rodriguez is taking on a new job, as MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki reports that Rodriguez has been hired by the Phillies as a player development instructor. The move brings an end to the 36-year-old Rodriguez’s playing career after 18 professional seasons, including parts of 13 Major League seasons from 2008-20.
Rodriguez hit .226/.301/.379 with 81 homers over 2913 MLB plate appearances. Originally a third-round pick for the Angels in the 2003 draft, Rodriguez went on to play for six different teams in the bigs, with the majority of his 1103 career games coming with the Rays (553 games) and Pirates (384 games).
No matter the uniform, Rodriguez made himself valuable due to his ability to play virtually anywhere on the diamond. Second base was the most common of his many positions, though Rodriguez made at least 27 appearances at every position except catcher and pitcher throughout his career, and he even made a couple of mop-up appearances as a reliever in 2019.
Those two mound appearances came when Rodriguez was a member of the Phillies in 2019, as he played 76 games with the club and hit .223/.348/.375 with four home runs over 139 PA. One of those homers made Rodriguez something of an infamous figure among Philadelphia fans, Zolecki notes. Rodriguez hit a walkoff home run to lift the Phils to a 6-5 win over the Pirates on August 26, 2019, though in a postgame interview, Rodriguez described Phillies fans as “entitled.”
Discussing the incident with Zolecki, Rodriguez said that “Philly fans are just as passionate about baseball as I am. I was doing my best to try to defend two stars on our team, seeing if I couldn’t alleviate some pressure on them. It is a little funny that I’m back, but Phillies fans are passionate and I’m a passionate player.”
Rodriguez moved on from Philadelphia to sign a minor league deal with the Marlins in the 2019-20 offseason, and he played four games with Miami during the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. Rodriguez’s time on the Marlins’ big league roster was further limited by an extended stint on the injured list, as Rodriguez joined many other Miami players in being sidelined by a COVID-19 outbreak in the clubhouse.
Rodriguez will now move into the next phase of his baseball career on the instructional side, operating at the Phillies’ camp in Clearwater year-round and working with the organization’s minor leaguers on infield work and baserunning. We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Rodriguez on a fine playing career and we wish him the best in his new role.