“There’s been some trade talk of late involving Mets reliever Jerry Blevins,” Fancred Sports’ Jon Heyman reports in his weekly roundup of baseball notes. Blevins has posted a 2.65 ERA and 38 strikeouts (against 13 walks) over 34 innings since May 1, and even his inflated April ERA was largely due to one disastrous outing against the Braves. He is eligible to be dealt since he cleared revocable trade waivers in August, and the veteran southpaw could provide a boost to a team looking for left-handed relief help (though Blevins is actually in the midst of a reverse-splits season, dominating right-handed batters and getting hit hard by lefty batters). While Blevins could help get a team into the playoffs, however, he wouldn’t be eligible for postseason play himself due to being dealt after the August 31st deadline. Blevins is a free agent after the year and is owed roughly $583K in remaining salary.
Here’s more from Heyman’s notes…
- In more Mets news, the team has over 30 names on its list of general manager candidates, though the interview process has yet to begin. As Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported earlier this week, the Mets plan to have their new hire in place before the GM Meetings begin on November 4.
- Even with the Dodgers in jeopardy of missing the postseason, it doesn’t appear that manager Dave Roberts, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, or GM Farhan Zaidi are in any danger of losing their jobs. It seems as if this season could be seen as an aberration, given that L.A. has been beset by injuries yet still leads the National League in run-differential. (The Baseball Reference standings page notes that the Dodgers are eight wins behind their expected Pythagorean win-loss record.) While management changes don’t seem to be afoot, there will likely be some type of contract talks among Dodgers brass this offseason since Friedman is only under contract through the 2019 season. Roberts is already in the last guaranteed year of his deal, though the Dodgers have a club option on his services for 2019.
- The Red Sox didn’t put much focus on relief pitching at the trade deadline, with president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski noting that “If we addressed the bullpen, then there’d be other needs we’d have. It wasn’t that we weren’t open to some moves. But we addressed some of our other priorities.” Boston was linked to multiple relievers in trade rumors but didn’t find a fit anywhere. In regards to one name in particular, Dombrowski said that “we couldn’t touch” Roberto Osuna, who the Astros acquired from the Blue Jays in a deal that generated quite a bit of controversy, given the domestic assault charges still pending against him. The bullpen has been seen as a possible Achilles’ heel for an otherwise dominant Red Sox team, though as Dombrowski observed, Boston’s relief corps still ranks within the top ten in most major categories.
- Heyman expects the Yankees to try and re-sign J.A. Happ in free agency. The southpaw has done nothing but impress since coming to New York from the Blue Jays in a midseason trade; Happ has a 2.70 ERA, 8.3 K/9, and 4.78 K/BB rate over 46 2/3 innings in the pinstripes. MLBTR’s Jeff Todd recently projected that Happ’s next contract could exceed $40MM over three years, as the veteran is still posting strong numbers even as he approaches his age-36 season. Retaining Happ would go a long ways towards solidifying a Yankees rotation that has only Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka as certainties for 2019.
- With the Marlins still years away from contending, they could consider trading Dan Straily or Jose Urena this offseason even though the two starters still have two and three years, respectively, of arbitration control remaining. This added control, of course, could also entice suitors to give up more in a potential deal. Straily has been mentioned in trade rumors ever since Miami began its fire sale last year, though the team held onto him through the deadline and pulled him back from revocable waivers in August after an unknown club submitted a claim.