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Ildemaro Vargas

Nationals To Make Several Roster Moves

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3:07pm: In addition to the moves below, the Nats added left-hander Jose Ferrer and right-hander Jake Irvin. To create roster space, they designated right-hander Tommy Romero for assignment while outfielder Yadiel Hernandez, lefty Evan Lee and righty Jackson Tetreault cleared outright waivers and were assigned to Triple-A Rochester. Additionally, the club avoided arbitration with infielder Ildemaro Vargas by agreeing to a one-year deal. Vargas will make $975K, reports Andrew Golden of the Washington Post (Twitter link). That’s a touch below his $1.1MM arbitration projection.

3:00pm: Talk Nats adds that Alu has indeed been added. 26 in April, Alu is an infielder who had a great year at the plate. Between Double-A and Triple-A, he hit .299/.365/.506 for a wRC+ of 132.

11:57am: The deadline for MLB teams to add players to their 40-man roster in order to protect them from selection in the Rule 5 draft is tonight at 5pm Central. The Nationals are set to add at least three players, according to Talk Nats. They are right-hander Jackson Rutledge, left-hander Matt Cronin and outfielder Jeremy De La Rosa. It’s possible more moves are still coming, with Talk Nats identifying Jake Alu and Jose Ferrer as possibilities.

Rutledge, 24 in April, was the club’s first round selection in 2019, going 17th overall. He got some work in affiliated ball after that draft but then saw the minor leagues get wiped out by the pandemic in 2020. Shoulder tightness and recurring blisters then limited his workload and effectiveness in 2021. He got things back on track somewhat here in 2022 by making 20 starts, but they were in Single-A and he only posted a 4.90 ERA. His peripherals were much stronger though, with a high BABIP and low strand rate likely pushing his ERA higher than deserved, as indicated by his 3.89 FIP and 3.93 xFIP.

He has yet to reach Double-A and is still likely not close to making his major league debut. Still, based on his previous prospect stock and ability to hit triple-digits with his heater, the Nats have decided they don’t want to risk losing him in next month’s draft. With the big league club mired in rebuild mode anyway, there’s little harm in dedicating a roster spot to someone who is unlikely to contribute in 2023 if the club thinks he can provide future value some day. He’s currently ranked the club’s #9 prospect at Baseball America and #10 at FanGraphs.

Cronin, 25, was a fourth round pick in that same 2019 draft. He’s worked exclusively as a reliever since then, working his way up the minor league ladder. In 2022, he split his time between Double-A and Triple-A, throwing 52 combined innings. In that time, he posted a 2.42 ERA with a 26.9% strikeout rate and 10.6% walk rate. He’ll give the club a left-handed relief option that can potentially be optioned between the majors and minors for the next few years. He’s 17th on the BA list and 30th at FanGraphs.

De La Rosa, 21 in January, was signed as an international free agent in 2018. He started 2022 in Single-A and completely mashed, producing a batting line of .315/.394/.505 with 26 steals. A midseason promotion to High-A didn’t produce immediate results, as he hit just .195/.273/.271, though he did swipe another 13 bags. In the field, he played primarily in center field and could have a decent floor with his speed and defense. BA slots him in at #10 on their list while FanGraphs has him at #8.

Nationals Select Ildemaro Vargas

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The Nationals announced that they have selected the contract of infielder Ildemaro Vargas. He has taken over the roster spot that was vacated by Ehire Adrianza, who was traded to Atlanta earlier today.

Vargas, 31, began the season with the Cubs on a minor league deal. He hit .279/.321/.413 over 25 Triple-A games and was selected to the big league club in May. Playing second base and shortstop, he got into 10 games with the Cubbies but hit just .130/.231/.348 in that time before getting designated for assignment.

After clearing waivers and electing free agency, he landed with the Nats on a minor league deal. In 48 Triple-A games in the Nats’ org, he hit .224/.301/.322.

Vargas is capable of playing all over the diamond and should provide the Nats with some versatility. In his career in the majors and minors, he’s played all of the positions on the diamond except for pitcher and catcher. The Nats have already shipped out Adrianza and could subtract other players from the roster between now and tomorrow’s trade deadline. Juan Soto, Josh Bell and Nelson Cruz are the most headline-grabbing possibilities, but Yadiel Hernandez and others could also be on the move. If trades do come together, Vargas can move around to whatever opening needs to be filled.

Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post reported on the Vargas promotion before the official announcement.

Nationals Sign Ildemaro Vargas To Minors Deal

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The Nationals signed utility man Ildemaro Vargas to a minor league deal last week and assigned him to Triple-A Rochester, per MLB.com.

The 30-year-old Vargas spent a little less than two weeks in the Majors this year with the Cubs before being designated for assignment and released. It was his second tour of duty with  the Cubbies, having spent parts of the 2020 and 2021 seasons in Chicago. This year he managed to his just .130/.231/.348 in 26 plate appearances with the Cubs.

Vargas was originally signed by the Cardinals as an amateur free agent out of Venezuela back in 2008. Prior to his time in Chicago, Vargas appeared with the Diamondbacks (twice), Pirates, and Twins, with the brunt of his 407 career plate appearances coming with Arizona. For his career, reaching back to include every season since 2017, Vargas owns a ..227/.265/.354 line. He has primarily contributed at second base and third base, but he has also made appearances at shortstop and the corner outfield spots.

With the Nationals, he’ll serve as infield depth, especially useful given the recent injury to Alcides Escobar, Washington’s de facto shortstop. The Nationals are rolling with a 3-man bench unit right now, with Lucius Fox as the only reserve infielder.

Ildemaro Vargas Elects Free Agency

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May 26: The Cubs announced to reporters, including Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune, that Vargas has elected free agency.

May 25: Cubs infielder Ildemaro Vargas has cleared waivers and been sent outright to Triple-A Iowa, the team informed reporters (including Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune). Chicago had designated the utilityman for assignment over the weekend.

Vargas signed a minor league deal with the Cubs over the winter. He opened the season in Iowa, hitting .279/.321/.413 through 25 games. Vargas didn’t walk much or hit for a ton of extra-base power, but he only punched out in 10.7% of his plate appearances. That earned him a big league call a couple weeks ago after Nick Madrigal was placed on the injured list. That marked Vargas’ sixth straight season logging some MLB time, although it proved another fairly short stint.

The switch-hitting infielder tallied 211 plate appearances with the Diamondbacks in 2019, but he’s otherwise tallied fewer than 100 trips to the dish in every season. He hit 26 times during his recent ten-game stint with the Cubs, drawing three walks against two strikeouts but collecting just one hit.

Vargas has been outrighted before in his career, so he has the right to refuse the assignment to Iowa in favor of minor league free agency. Should he choose to remain in the organization, he’d try to play his way back onto a big league roster that has welcomed back Andrelton Simmons and Nico Hoerner from the injured list within the past two weeks.

Cubs Select P.J. Higgins, Designate Ildemaro Vargas

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The Cubs have selected the contract of catcher P.J. Higgins, per Bruce Levine of 670 The Score. In a corresponding move, utility player Ildemaro Vargas has been designated for assignment.

Higgins, 29, was a 12th round selection of the Cubs in the 2015 draft, who worked his way up to make his big league debut last year. Unfortunately, after just nine games in the majors, he landed on the injured list with a forearm strain which ultimately required surgery and finished his season. He was outrighted in the offseason and became a free agent, but quickly re-signed with the Cubs on a minor league deal. He’s evidently put the injury behind him, as he’s off to a scorching hot start this year. In 22 Triple-A games so far, he’s hitting .417/.500/.569, 193 wRC+.

The Cubs needed to add a catcher to the roster due to Willson Contreras suffering a hamstring injury yesterday. That injury doesn’t seem to be serious enough for a stint on the injured list, though Higgins will combine with Yan Gomes as the club’s catching duo until Contreras is ready to return to game action.

As for Vargas, he’s never hit much in the big leagues, as evidenced by his batting line of .227/.265/.354, 60 wRC+ over 186 career games. However, he’s often proved alluring to teams due to his extreme versatility, seeing time with the Diamondbacks, Twins, Pirates and Cubs. In addition to being a switch-hitter, he’s also slotted into the defensive alignment at every spot on the diamond outside of center field and the battery. In ten games with the Cubs this year, he’s hit .130/.231/.348 for a wRC+ of 64 while playing second base and shortstop. The Cubs will have a week to trade him or put him on waivers. If he were to clear, he would have the ability to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency, as he’s been previously outrighted in his career.

Cubs Place Nick Madrigal On 10-Day IL, Select Ildemaro Vargas, Designate Adrian Sampson For Assignment

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The Cubs announced a flurry of roster moves this evening, most prominently sending second baseman Nick Madrigal to the 10-day IL with low back tightness. The team also selected Triple-A infielder Ildemaro Vargas’s contract, designating right-handed pitcher Adrian Sampson for assignment to open up a 40-man roster spot for Vargas.

Madrigal, acquired in last season’s cross-town trade for Craig Kimbrel, was hitting a pedestrian .203/.250/.241 (43 OPS+) at the time of his IL placement. There’s still plenty of time for the 25-year-old to turn it around when he returns to the field, though a few things stick out in his early season offensive performance. Chief among them, Madrigal’s elite contact abilities have eluded him to a notable extent thus far.

His 16.7% strikeout rate, while considerably better than the league average, is more than double his career rate entering the season. The former first-rounder is hitting the ball with more authority than ever, however, which may eventually lead to a more impressive batting line than the one that is currently present. Madrigal’s defense has also remained top-notch, largely offsetting the contact hitter’s lack of offense in the eyes of most defensive metrics.

Vargas meanwhile returned to the organization this winter on a minor league deal and was hitting .279/.321/.413 in 25 Triple-A contests. Offense isn’t Vargas’s calling card though, as his promotion stems from his ability to play all around the infield, a must-have for a three-man Cubs bench.

Sampson, another offseason minor league signee, pitched to an excellent 2.80 ERA in 35 plus innings (10 games) for the Cubs last season as a swingman. Advanced metrics weren’t terribly bullish about his performance however, which helps explain the minor league pact and the right-hander’s lack of opportunity with the big league team this season. The 30-year-old has continued to have a decent run in Triple-A this year, so it will be interesting to see if the Cubs can keep him in their organization as depth or if a team hurting with injuries will seek to claim him in the coming days.

Roster Notes: Twins, Marlins, Pirates, Yankees, Cubs, Phillies

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With the season just a few days away, roster decisions around the game continue to trickle in. We’ll round up some notable non 40-man roster decisions here.

    • Twins pitching prospect Jhoan Duran has made the Opening Day roster, per a club announcement. He’ll initially work out of the bullpen. Ranked the #9 prospect in the Minnesota organization by Baseball America, Duran draws praise for an upper-90s fastball and a power splitter that have helped him run plus strikeout rates throughout his minor league career.
    • The Marlins have informed outfielder Roman Quinn he will not make the Opening Day roster, reports Craig Mish of SportsGrid (Twitter link). It comes as a bit of a surprise, as Quinn had seemed the favorite for a fourth outfield role after the Fish released Delino DeShields Jr. over the weekend. Presumably, that job will fall to utilityman Jon Berti early on.
    • Infield prospect Diego Castillo has made the Pirates’ Opening Day roster, tweets Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Castillo, acquired in the trade that sent righty Clay Holmes to the Yankees, will make his big league debut the first time he gets into a game.
    • The Yankees announced they’ve reassigned outfielder Ender Inciarte and left-hander Manny Bañuelos to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Inciarte has an opt-out clause in his minor league deal and tells ESPN’s Marly Rivera he hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll accept the assignment to Triple-A.
    • The Cubs informed pitching prospect Ethan Roberts he’ll be on the Opening Day roster, he informed reporters (including Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times). A fourth-round pick in 2018 out of Tennessee Tech, the right-hander is the #33 prospect in the organization according to Baseball America. The reliever posted an even 3.00 ERA over 54 innings between Double-A Tennessee and Triple-A Iowa last season. The Cubs reassigned non-roster invitees Jonathan Holder, Robert Gsellman, Steven Brault, Stephen Gonsalves and Ildemaro Vargas to Iowa, tweets Jordan Bastian of MLB.com.
    • The Phillies reassigned non-roster invitees Ronald Torreyes, Yairo Muñoz and Dillon Maples to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, tweets Todd Zolecki of MLB.com. Torreyes and Muñoz were competing for utility spots, while the hard-throwing Maples had been seeking a spot in the Philly bullpen.

 

Cubs Announce Seven Minor League Deals

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The Cubs announced a series of minor league deals with invitations to Major League Spring Training on Friday, signing infielder Dixon Machado, infielder Ildemaro Vargas, righty Jonathan Holder, catcher P.J. Higgins and lefty Locke St. John. The Cubs also confirmed previously reported minor league deals with lefty Stephen Gonsalves and righty Mark Leiter Jr.

Machado, 30 in February, spent parts of four seasons as a backup infielder with the Tigers from 2015-18 before spending the 2019 season with the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate in Iowa. From there, he signed on with the Lotte Giants of the Korea Baseball Organization, serving as their primary shortstop in 2020-21 and hitting a combined .280/.358/.393 with 17 home runs, 52 doubles, two triples and 23 steals (in 29 tries) over the life of 1095 plate appearances. Regarded as a quality defender, Machado hit just .227/.285/.295 in 505 Major League plate appearances in Detroit, though he posted a .261/.371/.480 slash in 102 games/393 plate appearances with the Cubs’ Iowa affiliate in 2019.

The 30-year-old Vargas spent nine game with the Cubs in 2021 — a season he split between Chicago, Arizona and Pittsburgh. A versatile defender who’s appeared at all four infield positions and both outfield corners in the big leagues, Vargas is a switch-hitter with a .233/.268/.355 batting line in parts of five MLB seasons with four teams. (He’s also been with the Twins, in addition to three already-listed clubs.) He’s had much more success in Triple-A, where he’s a .324/.368/.472 batter in 1736 plate appearances.

Holder, 28, looked to be on the path toward cementing himself in the Yankees’ bullpen as recently as 2017-18, when he logged a combined 105 1/3 innings of 3.42 ERA ball with a 22.6% strikeout rate and a tiny 6.1% walk rate. Holder had a pair of IL stints for shoulder troubles in 2019, however, the second of which ended his season in early August. He finished that year with an ugly 6.31 ERA, and he managed just a 4.98 mark in 21 2/3 innings with the Yankees a year later, posting career-worst walk and strikeout rates along the way.

This will actually be Holder’s second season in the Cubs organization. He signed a non-guaranteed, $750K Major League deal with Chicago last winter after being non-tendered by the Yankees, but recurred shoulder woes wiped out the year for him. Holder opened the season on the 10-day IL with a shoulder strain, moved to the 60-day on April 26, and never returned. He ended the season on the Major League injured list and would’ve been considered a big league free agent who was ineligible to sign, but it seems (based on Holder’s transaction log at MLB.com) that this deal was actually finalized on Nov. 19 but simply not announced until today.

It’s a similar story for the 28-year-old Higgins, who was on the Cubs’ Major League injured list at season’s end but became a free agent after being outrighted in early November. Like Holder, his player page at MLB.com indicates that this deal came together on Nov. 19 but wasn’t immediately announced. (It should be noted that it’s commonplace for teams to hold off on announcing minor league deals/Spring Training invites individually and instead announce them in batches like this.)

Higgins made his big league debut with the Cubs this past season, appearing in nine games and going 1-for-23 at the plate. A 12th-rounder back in the Cubs’ 2015 draft, Higgins has spent his entire career in the organization, batting .273/.359/.370 in just over 2000 minor league plate appearances.

As for St. John, who’ll turn 29 in January, he was a 32nd-round pick by the Tigers back in 2014 and briefly appeared in the Majors with the 2019 Rangers. He yielded four runs in 6 2/3 innings during that brief cup of coffee but has a solid minor league track record, with a 3.44 ERA, a 22.6% strikeout rate and an 8.7% walk rate in 483 1/3 innings (including 79 innings of 4.10 ERA ball with a 28.5% strikeout rate in Triple-A).

Ildemaro Vargas, Chris Devenski Elect Free Agency

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Utilityman Ildemaro Vargas and right-hander Chris Devenski have elected to become free agents, as reported by the official transaction pages for Triple-A West (for Vargas) and MLB.com (for Devenski).  The two 30-year-olds both finished the 2021 season with the Diamondbacks.

Vargas was outrighted off Arizona’s roster earlier this week, and since he’d been previously outrighted earlier this week, Vargas had the option of either accepting the assignment to Triple-A or choosing to become a free agent.  He’ll now hit the open market and could be on the move again after a whirlwind 14 months that saw Vargas play for three different teams (the Twins, Cubs, and Pirates) in between two stints with the D’Backs.

Vargas received 211 plate appearances while playing in 92 games with Arizona in 2019, hitting .269/.299/.413.  He hasn’t matched even that modest production since, posting only a .477 OPS over 137 total PA in 2020-21.

Devenski signed a minor league contract with the D’Backs last winter and made it to their big league roster, but delivered only an 8.59 ERA over 7 1/3 relief innings.  A tough season got worse due to Tommy John surgery around early June, and Devenski will now be sidelined until at least (in a best-case scenario) the 2022 All-Star break.

It is the second elbow injury in as many seasons for Devenski, who was limited to 3 2/3 innings in 2020 due to an arthroscopic procedure.  The former Astros reliever has been in decline since his 2017 All-Star season, and now faces a very uncertain winter.  Depending on when he recovers and is able to showcase himself for scouts, Devenski might conceivably have to wait until the 2022-23 offseason before landing his next contract.

Diamondbacks Outright Three Players

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The offseason roster shuffle has begun in the desert.  The Diamondbacks announced that they’ve outrighted reliever Brandyn Sittinger, outfielder Henry Ramos and infielder Ildemaro Vargas to Triple-A Reno.  The moves leave the club with 37 players on their 40-man roster.

Sending those three down comes as no surprise, given the players’ performances so far. Sittinger joined the D-backs on a minor league deal prior to the 2020 season, and saw his first big league action last month.  He tossed 4 2/3 innings over five appearances, posting an unsightly 13.03 FIP.

Arizona signed the 29-year-old Ramos to a minor league deal on May 19 of this year.  He spent most of the season at Triple-A, and was called up September 5.  In 18 games he accumulated 55 plate appearances but only posted a meager 48 wRC+.

The well-traveled Vargas appeared in the big leagues each of the last five seasons, mostly with the Diamondbacks. He also played briefly for the Twins and Cubs last year.  In 381 total plate appearances at the MLB level, he’s put up -1.2 fWAR.

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