Twins Acquire Jaime Garcia, Anthony Recker
The Twins have acquired lefty Jaime Garcia and catcher Anthony Recker from the Braves, per a club announcement. In return, Atlanta acquires young righty Huascar Ynoa.
As part of the swap, the Braves will send $100K to cover a piece of Recker’s remaining salary, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag tweets. Minnesota is absorbing all of Garcia’s remaining salary, per MLB.com’s Mark Bowman (via Twitter); that represents just over $4.5MM of the original $12MM salary.
While these two clubs had seemingly been nearing a deal involving Garcia just days ago, those talks broke down — at least temporarily — when an issue arose in the medicals of Twins righty Nick Burdi. When that fell through, the southpaw ended up making another start for the Braves. It was a good one, which helped buttress the club’s position, though obviously Atlanta did not have an enormous amount of leverage here.
Garcia is a useful pitcher, to be sure, but no team was going to give big value to get him. That was especially true of a Minnesota organization that is looking to stay in the postseason hunt, but has little interest in mortgaging the future to do so. The Twins have said all along their preference was to add a controllable starter, but perhaps that was going to cost too much in prospect capital. Instead, the team will take on a bit of payroll and give up a far-away prospect to help boost its rotation in the near-term.
While he’s no ace, Garcia will represent a pretty significant improvement for this particular staff. Indeed, he’ll probably slot in as the club’s third-best starter behind Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios. Assuming that Adalberto Mejia will hold a rotation spot and Bartolo Colon will receive at least a few more outings, it seems Kyle Gibson is most likely to lose his rotation spot as a result of the move.
Since arriving over the winter from the Cardinals in a deal that sent young hurlers John Gant, Chris Ellis, and Luke Dykstra to St. Louis, Garcia has largely been a steady presence. He has continued to stay healthy after years of shoulder woes, throwing 113 innings over 18 starts, and has turned in a solid 4.30 ERA. Garcia is carrying only 6.8 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9, but does have an excellent 55.4% groundball rate.
Minnesota also adds Recker, who provides some depth behind the dish. He has received scant MLB action thus far in 2017, but hit quite well last year for Atlanta. Over 156 Triple-A plate appearances thus far in 2017, Recker is slashing .223/.301/.381.
The Braves aren’t likely to make a postseason push, so the club could now safely part with Garcia. Of course, there have also been whispers that Atlanta is looking at adding a controllable starter as soon as this summer. That remains a somewhat low-likelihood proposition, at least as viewed on paper, though it’s worth noting that this deal will free up some finances, which may conceivably aid the team’s efforts to add a pitcher who can be retained past the present season.
Atlanta will also pick up a prospect that has value. Ynoa (the younger brother of Michael Ynoa) just turned 19 years old and has yet to advance out of Rookie ball. This year, he has struggled through just 25 2/3 innings in the Appalachian League, allowing 15 earned runs with 23 strikeouts and 14 walks. MLB.com rates him as the Twins’ 22nd-best overall prospect. Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs, meanwhile, tweets that he sees Ynoa’s upside as at most a #4 type of starter — an outcome that’d be plenty valuable, but perhaps still remains a best-case scenario.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Quick Hits: Drew, Nelson, Smith, Marquis, Hall, July 2
As expected, recently signed Red Sox shortstop Stephen Drew has cleared waivers and appeared in his first minor league game for the organization, reports Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe (via Twitter). The procedural move of placing Drew on revocable outright waivers — a mechanism through which claims are rarely made — was needed since he inked a big league deal. Here’s the latest from around the game:
- The Brewers will call up top pitching prospect Jimmy Nelson to start Sunday to take the rotation turn of Yovani Gallardo, tweets Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. At this point, at least, it seems that Nelson may only get one start, as Gallardo is not expected to miss significant time. As I explained back in April, Nelson already has 27 days of service to his credit. Accordingly, if he did stay in the bigs from this point forward, he would accrue enough service time to set himself up to become eligible for an additional year of arbitration as a Super Two player, though he will not be able to pass the one-year service mark by the end of the year.
- Milwaukee’s decision to deal for reliever Will Smith (in exchange for outfielder Norichika Aoki) has been a key element in the team’s success this year, writes Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. The team’s pro scouting staff gave Smith high marks, leading GM Doug Melvin to pull the trigger on the trade. He has allowed just one earned run in 21 2/3 innings of work, posting 12.9 K/9 against 4.2 BB/9.
- Pitcher Jason Marquis was scheduled to throw for scouts today, Rosenthal reports in the same piece. The 35-year-old had Tommy John surgery last summer after tossing 117 2/3 innings of 4.05 ball for the Padres.
- Another former big leaguer looking to make a return is infielder Bill Hall, who tweets that he is on the comeback trail. The 34-year-old has spent time at third, short, second, and all over the outfield in his 11 seasons of MLB action, and owns a career .248/.308/.436 line. He spent last year with the Angels’ Triple-A affiliate, putting up a .225/.321/.407 mark with 17 home runs in 452 plate appearances.
- Ben Badler of Baseball America has the latest updates on the July 2 market. Yesterday, Badler ticked through the top ten expected bonuses among players eligible to sign for the 2014-15 period, along with the clubs expected to land them. Leading the way is infielder Gilbert Lara, who has been linked to the Brewers and could earn $3MM. Four of the players are expected to go to the Yankees, with the Rays, Red Sox, and Blue Jays also said to be set up for some large outlays among AL East clubs. (The American League could also be in line to pick up the other two players on that list, with the Mariners potentially in position to sign outfielder Brayan Hernandez and the White Sox predicted to land righty Huascar Ynoa.) And today, he profiles a set of field position prospects who figure to be among the best available players, headlined by Venezuelan shortstop Kenny Hernandez, who Badler says could get a nine-figure bonus.
- Meanwhile, the Yankees are reportedly prepared to ink Korean shortstop Hyo-Jun Park for a $1.1MM bonus, according to a report from Korean outlet Naver (Korean language link; translated article; hat tip to River Ave. Blues ). Jason Cohen of Pinstripe Alley recently compiled the available information on Park, who is said to be a solid all-around player.
Badler On Top July 2 Prospects
We’re less than two months from the kickoff of the 2014-15 international signing period, during which Major League clubs will spend a combined hundreds of millions of dollars on amateur talents from Latin America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Many of these players will be as young as 16 years old, and Ben Badler of Baseball America has penned a pair of articles in the past two days highlighting some of the top players and their potential landing spots. A subscription is required and highly recommended in order to read the full scouting report that Badler has on each player. Here are a few of the highlights from his work…
- Huascar Ynoa, the younger brother of A’s righty Michael Ynoa, could land also land a seven-figure bonus and has been scouted by White Sox vice president Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn. The Red Sox have also been tied to Ynoa, and some sources of have told Badler that they expect the Twins to be involved as well. One scout told Badler that Ynoa has the tools to be a frontline starter but lacks consistency. Badler points out that his older brother’s $4.25MM signing bonus from Oakland reduces some of the urgency for Ynoa to sign immediately on July 2.
- The Blue Jays look like the strong favorites to ink Venezuelan right-hander Juan Meza, who could command a bonus as large as $1.5MM. Meza works out at Carlos Guillen‘s baseball academy in Venezuela and has a three-pitch mix (fastball, changeup, curveball).
- Fellow Venezuelan right-hander Frankin Perez is also likely to land seven figures and has been most prominently linked to the Astros. Houston is also oft-connected to Venezuelan shortstop Miguel Angel Sierra, whose bonus could reach $1MM, and Dominican outfielder Rafael Ronny, who could be the second-most expensive Dominican outfielder in this year’s class, writes Badler.
- The Yankees, who are reportedly planning to shatter the international spending limitations this signing period, are heavily linked to Venezuelan catcher Miguel Flames, Venezuelan outfielder Jonathan Amundaray and Venezuelan shortstop Diego Castillo, says Badler. Flames and Amundaray should top $1MM, while Castillo could get close to that figure, he adds.