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Nick Mears

Rockies Claim Nick Mears

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The Rockies claimed right-hander Nick Mears off waivers from the Rangers, the teams announced Friday. Texas designated Mears for assignment earlier in the week in order to open a roster spot for newly signed Nathan Eovaldi. Colorado had a pair of open spots on the 40-man roster, so a corresponding move isn’t necessary. Their 40-man roster is now at 39 players.

Mears, 26, has spent his entire pro career until this offseason in the Pirates organization. He’s begun to bounce around the DFA circuit a bit now, going from Pittsburgh, to Texas, to Colorado by way of waiver claim. The 6’2″ righty averages 96 mph with his heater but has struggled to a 4.75 ERA in 30 1/3 innings at the MLB level, dating back to 2020.

Mears’ career 9.5 K/9 in the Majors looks appealing but is a good example of why strikeout percentage tells a better story than K/9; because Mears has walked so many hitters (14.9%), his overall strikeout percentage is actually below the league average for relievers, at 22.7%. Mears throws hard, though, has strong numbers up through the Double-A level and has a minor league option remaining, so he’ll give the Rockies some optionable depth in the bullpen for the coming season if he makes it to Opening Day on their 40-man roster.

The Rockies have at least four bullpen spots locked down, with closer Daniel Bard signed through 2024 and Pierce Johnson (signed earlier this offseason), Brent Suter (claimed from the Brewers) and Dinelson Lamet all ineligible to optioned to the minors. Righty Justin Lawrence is also out of minor league options, though given his struggles over the past couple seasons, he can’t be viewed as a lock to break camp with the club in 2023.

Rangers Designate Nick Mears For Assignment

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The Rangers have designated right-hander Nick Mears for assignment, the team announced. Texas needed a 40 man roster spot after signing Nathan Eovaldi to a two-year, $34MM deal tonight. Mears spent less than a week with the team, having been claimed off waivers from the Pirates on December 23.

Mears, 26, tossed 30 1/3 innings of relief for the Pirates over the past three years, working to a combined 4.75 ERA. He’s shown solid strikeout stuff, punching out batters at an almost perfectly league-average 22.7% clip. Walks were a problem though, as Mears worked to a well below-average 14.9% walk rate over the past three seasons.

Originally signed as an amateur free agent by the Pirates back in 2018, Mears came through their system posting big strikeout numbers as a reliever in the lower levels of the minor leagues. He struggled a bit once he reached Triple-A though, maintaining a good strikeout clip but seeing the walks rise. Over the past few seasons at Triple-A, Mears has worked to a 4.98 ERA over 43 1/3 innings of work.

Mears has just over one year of service time, and still has a minor league option remaining, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a team with 40-man roster space put in a claim for him as a bullpen depth piece.

Rangers Claim Nick Mears, Designate Eli White

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The Rangers announced that they have claimed right-hander Nick Mears off waivers from the Pirates. Mears had been designated for assignment earlier in the week. In a corresponding move, outfielder Eli White was designated for assignment.

Mears, 26, will join just the second organization of his career, as he’s spent it all with the Pirates up until now. An undrafted free agent, he burst onto the scene with a 2019 campaign that saw him go from Single-A to High-A to Double-A. He threw 46 2/3 combined innings at those different stops with a 3.28 ERA, 35.9% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate. He capped that season off 8 2/3 shutout innings in the Arizona Fall League.

That strong campaign was enough to get him attention from prospect evaluators. Baseball America ranked him the #19 prospect in Pittsburgh’s system going into 2020, highlighting a fastball that averaged in the mid-to-high 90s and could even reach 101 mph. FanGraphs put him as up in the #13 slot.

Mears was added to Pittsburgh’s 40-man roster in 2020 and has served as an optionable depth arm over the past three seasons. He has 30 1/3 big league innings over those three campaigns with a 4.75 ERA and 22.7% strikeout rate but a huge 14.9% walk rate. He spent most of 2022 in Triple-A with similar control concerns, walking 16% of batters faced.

The Rangers were evidently intrigued enough by the power to put in a claim and see if they can harness it. Mears has one option year remaining, allowing the club to keep him in the minors for another season of experimentation and development, if necessary. However, the price they are paying for that privilege is potentially losing White.

Originally drafted by the A’s, White came to the Rangers in the Jurickson Profar trade. Since then, he’s struggled to produce offensively and has dealt with injuries, though he’s been strong on defense. He’s played 130 games at the big league level over the past three seasons, hitting just .185/.260/.296, wRC+ of 56. His 2021 season was ended by elbow surgery and his 2022 finished by wrist surgery. On the glove-side of things, Defensive Runs Saved has given him a grade of +11 in the outfield so far, along with a +9.7 from Ultimate Zone Rating and 10 Outs Above Average.

The Rangers will now have a week to trade White or pass him through waivers. Though the bat hasn’t been great so far, his strong defense and two remaining option years could make him attractive to other clubs looking for outfield depth.

Pirates Acquire Connor Joe From Rockies

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The Pirates have acquired first baseman/outfielder Connor Joe from the Rockies in exchange for minor league righty Nick Garcia, as announced by both teams.  To create room on the 40-man roster, Pittsburgh designated right-hander Nick Mears for assignment.

The move represents something of a homecoming for Joe, who was drafted 39th overall by the Pirates back in the 2014 draft.  Joe never suited up for the Bucs at the Major League level, however, as Pittsburgh dealt him to the Braves for Sean Rodriguez in August 2017.  After bouncing around to the Braves, Reds, Giants, and (twice) to the Dodgers over the next few seasons, Joe reached the big leagues with 16 plate appearances for the 2019 Giants, but he then sat out the 2020 season due to surgery related to testicular cancer.

Fortunately, Joe recovered and signed a minor league deal with the Rockies in the 2020-21 offseason.  It was in Denver that Joe finally got an extended opportunity, and he has appeared in 174 games and received 678 plate appearances over the last two seasons.  Joe hit .285/.379/.469 with eight homers over 211 PA in 2021, and after he got off to a great start this past year, it looked like the Rox had perhaps found a hidden gem.  However, Joe cooled off, and finished 2022 with a .238/.338/.359 slash line and seven home runs over 467 PA.

The Pirates have also added Carlos Santana, Ji-Man Choi, and catcher Austin Hedges to their mix around the diamond, and Joe now joins these other veterans in augmenting Pittsburgh’s core of younger players.  Joe has played first base and both corner outfield positions in his brief MLB career, with generally good defensive grades as a first baseman and left fielder.  This makes Joe a good complement to Calvin Mitchell and Jack Suwinski (both left-handed hitters) in the Bucs’ corner outfield picture, and Joe could also join the left-handed hitting Choi and the switch-hitting Santana in sharing the first base/DH playing time.

Adding Joe meant parting ways with Garcia and possibly Mears, if another team claims the right-hander on waivers or if the Pirates simply released Mears once his DFA period is up.  Mears has pitched 30 1/3 innings of 4.75 ERA ball for Pittsburgh over the last three seasons, with 23 1/3 of those frames coming in 2021.  After undergoing arthroscopic elbow surgery to remove some scar tissue in March 2022, Mears didn’t make his season debut in the minors until late May, and he ended up pitching in only two games for the Pirates at the MLB level.

Garcia didn’t crack MLB Pipeline’s list of the Pirates’ top 30 prospects, though he did make a good accounting for himself in two seasons in Pittsburgh’s deep farm system.  A third-round pick in the 2020 draft, Garcia has a 3.88 ERA over 187 2/3 innings and 46 games (36 of them starts) as a professional.

Garcia turns 24 in April, and is expected to move to Double-A after pitching only in high-A ball in 2022.  Anthony Murphy of Pirates Prospects recently detailed Garcia’s improvements last season, and the fact that Garcia might still be something of an untapped resource certainly holds appeal to a Rockies team that is forever looking for pitchers who can handle Coors Field.  As noted by Danielle Allentuck of the Denver Gazette, the 30-year-old Joe might have been superfluous since prospect Sean Bouchard looks ready to fill a similar role on the big league roster, and thus the Rox moved the older player to bring a new young arm into the system.

Pirates Sign Daniel Vogelbach, Heath Hembree

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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.

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