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Recapping The KBO League’s International Player Signings

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With the lockout slowing MLB-related transactions to a crawl of minor league deals, transactions involving Korean Baseball Organization teams have taken more of a spotlight on MLBTR’s pages since the start of December.  These moves have included the signings of several names familiar to North American baseball fans, as the KBO League’s clubs have looked to address their allocated three roster spots for non-Korean players.  International-born players can only sign contracts worth a maximum of $1MM in total salary, and players new to the KBO League can sign only one-year pacts.

Though the Doosan Bears have one signing that still isn’t yet official, the other 29 slots have been filled.  It is still possible this list could be adjusted in the coming weeks due to a number of factors — injuries, players returning to North America (for personal reasons or a deal with an MLB team), issues related to the pandemic, or teams just changing their minds after seeing the players in training camp.  Here is the rundown of this winter’s international signings for the 10 KBO League franchises….

Doosan Bears
Jose Miguel Fernandez (deal not yet finalized), Ariel Miranda, Robert Stock

NC Dinos
Nick Martini, Wes Parsons, Drew Rucinski

Hanwha Eagles
Ryan Carpenter, Nick Kingham, Mike Tauchman

Lotte Giants
Charlie Barnes, DJ Peters, Glenn Sparkman

Kiwoom Heroes
Tyler Eppler, Eric Jokisch, Yasiel Puig

SSG Landers
Kevin Cron, Wilmer Font, Ivan Nova

Samsung Lions
David Buchanan, Jose Pirela, Albert Suarez

Kia Tigers
Socrates Brito, Sean Nolin, Ronnie Williams

LG Twins
Casey Kelly, Adam Plutko, Rio Ruiz

KT Wiz
William Cuevas, Odrisamer Despaigne, Henry Ramos

Rio Ruiz Signs With KBO’s LG Twins

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6:25 pm: The Twins have announced the deal. It’s a one-year, $750K guarantee that contains $250K in possible incentives (h/t to Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net).

5:34 pm: Ruiz and the LG Twins are in agreement on a deal, tweets Jon Heyman of the MLB Network.

8:18 am: Third baseman Rio Ruiz is close to joining the LG Twins of Korea Baseball Organization, reports Daniel Kim.  He’ll become teammates with former big leaguers Casey Kelly and Adam Plutko, also signed by the Twins this month.

Ruiz, 28 in May, was drafted by the Astros out of Bishop Amat Memorial High School in the fourth round back in 2012.  The club won him over with a well-above slot $1.85MM bonus to forgo a USC commitment.  That high school’s claim to fame is producing longtime Rangers star Michael Young.  Ruiz was considered a 55 grade prospect after being drafted, with Baseball America drawing a comparison to Eric Chavez on the optimistic side.

Coming up in the minors, it was thought that Ruiz would challenge Colin Moran as the Astros’ third baseman of the future.  Instead, he was shipped to the Braves along with Mike Foltynewicz and Andrew Thurman for Evan Gattis in January 2015 as part of that club’s sell-off.  Ruiz made his MLB debut with the Braves by way of a 2016 September call-up.

Ruiz failed to take off with the Braves, eventually becoming Mike Elias’ first 40-man roster addition as GM of the Orioles in December 2018 via a waiver claim.  The move was fitting, as Elias had served as the Astros’ director of amateur scouting when Ruiz was chosen.  It was 2019 in Baltimore when Ruiz got his most extensive big league look, as he served as the club’s primary third baseman.  Ruiz managed only a 79 wRC+ despite often sitting against lefties.

This spring, Ruiz took up second base in an attempt to increase his versatility.  By May, the Orioles designated him for assignment.  The Rockies claimed Ruiz off waivers, eventually removing him from their 40-man roster in October.

Rockies Outright Four Players

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The Rockies announced that four players — infielders Josh Fuentes and Rio Ruiz and right-handers Yency Almonte and Tommy Doyle — have cleared waivers and been assigned outright to Triple-A Albuquerque. The moves bring Colorado’s 40-man roster tally down to 35, although the Rox will have to reinstate four players from the 60-day injured list before the start of the offseason.

Fuentes has appeared in the majors in each of the last three seasons, garnering his most significant playing time in 2021. The 28-year-old tallied 284 trips to the plate this year, but he hit just .225/.257/.351 with seven homers despite playing his home games at Coors Field. Fuentes hasn’t performed well at the big league level, but he’s a career .291/.329/.489 hitter over parts of three years at Triple-A.

Ruiz, 27, was once a fairly well-regarded prospect. He’s gotten to the majors in each of the last six years but has never hit at a particularly high level. The left-handed hitter got regular run with the Orioles from 2019-21, opening this past season as Baltimore’s starting second baseman. But he managed just a .220/.292/.380 line with the O’s before being let go.

Colorado claimed Ruiz off waivers in May, and he stuck on the 40-man roster for the entire season. He only picked up 40 big league plate appearances, spending most of his time in Albuquerque. Ruiz is a .270/.337/.423 hitter in parts of five Triple-A campaigns, including a .304/.361/.496 mark with the Isotopes this past season.

Almonte, also 27, has pitched for Colorado in each of the last four years. He worked to a 2.93 ERA with a huge 56.3% ground-ball rate in 27 2/3 innings in 2020, but the wheels fell off this year. Over 47 2/3 frames, Almonte managed just a 7.55 ERA with worse than average strikeout (21.7%), walk (13.4%) and grounder (41.9%) percentages.

Doyle made his MLB debut in 2020, getting a three-game cameo. He didn’t pitch in the big leagues this past season, instead spending almost the entire year on the minor league injured list. The 25-year-old still has just 11 2/3 innings above A-ball in his professional career — 2 1/3 MLB frames in 2020 and 9 1/3 innings with Double-A Hartford in 2021.

Fuentes, Ruiz and Almonte have all appeared in seven-plus minor league seasons. They’ll all qualify for minor league free agency this winter, assuming the Rockies don’t pivot and reselect them back onto the 40-man. Doyle does not have the requisite service time to reject an outright assignment, so he’ll stick in the organization. He’ll presumably get a Spring Training invitation in 2022 and look to pitch his way back onto the roster.

Rockies Designate Chi Chi Gonzalez For Assignment

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The Rockies announced a few roster moves today, recalling right-handed pitchers Justin Lawrence and Antonio Santos, while optioning infielder Rio Ruiz and designating right-hander Chi Chi Gonzalez for assignment.

The Rockies non-tendered Gonzalez in the offseason and then re-signed him on a minor league deal just over a week later. He had his contract at the end of spring training and stayed a part of the staff until the last day of the season. In 24 games this season, 18 of them starts, he has logged 101 2/3 innings with an ERA of 6.46. That may be somewhat inflated by Gonzalez playing his home games in the most hitter-friendly park in the league, but his underlying metrics aren’t much better. His 12.5% strikeout rate is just barely half of the MLB average, which is 23.2%. His 6.3% walk rate is pretty solid though, considering the league average of 8.7%.

Based on that middling production and the fact that he had already been non-tendered by the club once, they were probably heading down the same path this winter. For the club, they decided to just move on now and use the last day of the season to give another look to some younger arms. Lawrence, 26, and Santos, 24, have each logged their fair share of miles shuttling between MLB and Triple-A this season, each one having been optioned six times. Lawrence has a bloated 8.64 ERA over 16 2/3 MLB innings this season, but a much more palatable 4.73 ERA in 32 1/3 Triple-A innings. Santos is somehow the reverse, with an MLB ERA of 4.76 in 11 1.3 innings but a Triple-A ERA of 7.94 in 45 1/3 innings.

Rockies Release Matt Adams

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The Rockies announced Tuesday that they’ve released veteran first baseman Matt Adams. His spot on the roster will go to infielder Rio Ruiz, who has been recalled from Triple-A Albuquerque.

Adams, 32, appeared in 22 games with the Rox but was deployed largely as a pinch-hitter. He’s posted a .167/.250/.194 batting line in 40 plate appearances this season and had accumulated just five plate appearances since coming off the injured list 17 days ago.

Adams slugged 20 home runs with the 2019 Nationals but did so with a .226 batting average and a .276 on-base percentage. His last season of above-average overall production came back in 2018, when he slashed .239/.309/.477 with a career-high 21 homers. Overall, Adams is a .258/.306/.463 hitter in more than 2600 Major League plate appearances. Nearly all the damage he’s done has come against right-handed pitching, as lefties have carved him up to the tune of a .210/.241/.378 slash line.

Ruiz, 27, was a waiver pickup out of the Orioles organization in late May. Baltimore designated him for assignment after he’d struggled to a .220/.292/.380 batting line across multiple auditions from 2019-21. While he obviously wasn’t able to establish himself with the O’s, Ruiz has batted .314/.375/.523 (118 wRC+) in a hitter-friendly Albuquerque setting. The Rockies are surely encouraged by a tiny 14.1 percent strikeout rate in that time and will give him a look moving forward.

Adams’ release figures to be the first of multiple personnel changes on the Rockies’ roster this week. Colorado is widely expected to trade away some impending free agents, with Jon Gray, Trevor Story, Mychal Givens, C.J. Cron and Daniel Bard among the possible trade candidates on the roster.

Rockies Claim Rio Ruiz, Designate Bret Boswell

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The Rockies announced that that infielder Rio Ruiz has been claimed off waivers from the Orioles.  Infielder/outfielder Bret Boswell has been designated for assignment to create roster space for Ruiz.

Ruiz was a waiver claim himself back in December 2018, when the Orioles plucked him away from the Braves.  Ruiz has been a regular in his two-plus seasons in Baltimore, appearing in 213 games and receiving 718 plate appearances, but he has hit only .220/.292/.380.

Third base has been Ruiz’s primary position, both with the Orioles and in three previous seasons with the Braves.  However, Ruiz has also seen action at both second base and third base, so he brings some versatility to Colorado’s depth chart.  The Rockies have a lot of right-handed hitters on their bench, though Ruiz has actually hit lefty pitching better than righties over his career.

Boswell was selected out of the University of Texas in the eighth round of the 2017 draft.  After posting some big numbers in his first two pro seasons, Boswell spent the 2019 season with the Rockies’ Double-A affiliate, but hit a modest .219/.290/.397 over 404 PA.

Orioles Designate Rio Ruiz For Assignment

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The Orioles have designated infielder Rio Ruiz for assignment and selected the contract of infielder/outfielder Stevie Wilkerson, per a club announcement.

The 26-year-old Ruiz was a 2012 fourth-rounder of the Astros and a prospect of some note in both the Astros and Braves organizations. Baltimore claimed him off waivers from Atlanta in the 2018-19 offseason and has given him a fairly lengthy look in the infield, but to this point, Ruiz simply hasn’t capitalized on that opportunity.

Dating back to 2019, Ruiz is hitting just .220/.292/.380 through 718 plate appearances. The O’s have given him some run at each infield position other than shortstop, but he hasn’t been able to string together a particularly productive stretch. The 2021 season, in particular, has been a tough one for Ruiz, who is batting just .167/.250/.300 through 101 trips to the plate. The Orioles will have a week to trade Ruiz or pass him through outright waivers.

The 29-year-old Wilkerson is a familiar face for O’s fans, having spent parts of two seasons in a utility role for Baltimore. He’s a a .219/.279/.365 hitter in 410 plate appearances and has played every spot on the diamond other than catcher and first base — including 5 1/3 innings of mop-up duty on the mound in 2019.

AL East Notes: Kratz, Dolis, Orioles, Nunez

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“The goal this year is to win a gold medal and win a World Series. That would be a pretty good year, right?” Erik Kratz rhetorically asked The Athletic’s Rustin Dodd (subscription required), as the veteran catcher is hoping to achieve what could be an unprecedented double in professional and Olympic baseball.  Kratz was a member of the United States national baseball team’s roster last November, acting as both a player and an experienced mentor to a roster comprised mostly of minor leaguers and some of the sport’s top prospects (including Jo Adell, Andrew Vaughn, Alec Bohm and more).  The U.S. team will participate in an Olympic qualifying tournament later this month, and while the roster has yet to be announced, Kratz would seem like a solid bet based on his performance last November.

If potentially participating in the Tokyo Games wasn’t enough, there is also Kratz’s role as a depth catcher for the Yankees, as the 39-year-old signed a minor league deal with New York during the offseason.  Kratz is entering his 19th year of pro ball and is hopeful of getting some playing time at the MLB level, which would give him appearances in parts of 11 different Major League seasons.  It might also get him a World Series ring, given how the Yankees are expected to contend for a title in 2020.  A championship would be a nice milestone in Kratz’s career, though the journeyman plans to keep playing for as long as possible.  “I know I appreciate every day.  I’ve felt like it could be my last season for the last 12 seasons,” Kratz said.

More from around the AL East…

  • Blue Jays right-hander Rafael Dolis will miss at least a week of action after having his appendix removed (MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson was among those to report the news).  Dolis will be re-evaluated after that first week, and it is possible the righty might not be ready for Opening Day.  After last pitching in the majors in 2013, Dolis revived his career with four impressive seasons in Japan, and signed a one-year, Major League contract with Toronto this winter.
  • Orioles manager Brandon Hyde updated reporters (including Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com) on a few injury situations in camp.  Jose Iglesias and Ramon Urias are both day-to-day with a quad injury and shin splits, respectively.  Tommy Milone has a trap injury, with Hyde hoping that Milone can throw a side session within the next day or two.  Righty Evan Phillips has been dealing with some soreness in his throwing elbow and underwent an MRI that “came back as nothing serious,” Hyde said, though Phillips is getting a second opinion today out of due diligence.
  • In another piece from Kubatko, he notes that Renato Nunez has been diligently working out at third base this spring.  Nunez was mostly restricted to DH duties in 2019, though it should be noted that some metrics give Nunez average (0 Defensive Runs Saved) to very good (+9.5 UZR/150) grades over his 606 2/3 career innings as a third baseman.  The Orioles don’t need Nunez to wield a Brooks Robinson-esque glove at the hot corner, however, as Nunez would only be deployed as a platoon partner with Rio Ruiz.  That would create more DH at-bats for other members of the Baltimore roster, including potentially top prospect Ryan Mountcastle.  Kubatko also observes that Nunez would gain more value to the Orioles as a potential trade chip if he shows that he handle a regular defensive position.

Quick Hits: Kevin Cash, Orioles

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Good news Rays fans, Kevin Cash is rising the ranks, up to 9th from 15th on nbcsports.com’s list of most handsome managers, per Mark Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Apparently winning agrees with him. There’s not much action around the league here on the morning of Christmas Eve, clearly, but MLBTR will be here throughout the holiday season to keep your baseball appetite sated. For now, let’s check in with the Baltimore Orioles…

  • It’s a slow burn offseason for the Orioles and new decision-maker Mike Elias, writes Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com. The new Executive VP and GM has tempered expectations since taking over last month, but even after checking the first box on his to-do list in bringing new manager Brandon Hyde over from the Cubs, player acquisition remains on the backburner. Given that Elias wasn’t installed until the offseason was already underway, it’s a good sign that Baltimore seems focused on the organizational recalibration of a new regime. The work of installing new operations and philosophies organization-wide isn’t sexy work, and it doesn’t produce much fodder to keep fans interested, but as Kubatko notes, it’s more pressing than roster construction at this juncture for the Orioles.
  • That said, the additions they have made aren’t wholly irrelevant, not for a team likely to give extended tryouts to younger players at the major league level: Richie Martin, 24, is a former first rounder who hit .300 his second time through Double A last season, Drew Jackson, 25, spiked his power output to .196 ISO as he, too, repeated Double A, and Rio Ruiz, 24, has struggled at the major league level, but he’s also a known commodity for Elias, who drafted him with the first pick in the fourth round in his first season in Houston. Granted, there’s always a little smoke and mirrors when a player’s production jumps the second time through a level, and in Ruiz’s case, it’s hard to tell the difference between familiarity as a positive and sentimentality. Still, though it may not seem like much, some of Theo Epstein’s first moves in Chicago were taking Hector Rondon in the Rule 5 draft and trading for a player he’d previously drafted who had struggled to that point in the big leagues. That’s not to say Ruiz will turn into Anthony Rizzo – Rizzo was a highly touted prospect prior to his struggles in San Diego whereas Ruiz was a waiver claim – but these minor moves always have the potential to snowball into something more, and they’re the right kind of gambles for Elias and his team to be making barely a month into their Baltimore tenure.  

Orioles Claim Rio Ruiz

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The Orioles announced today that they have claimed third baseman Rio Ruiz off waivers from the Braves. Ruiz becomes the first 40-man roster addition of new O’s GM Mike Elias.

Ruiz, 24, signed for well over the slot value after the Astros selected him in the fourth round of the 2012 draft — their first under Elias’s direction. After a few seasons with the Houston organization, Ruiz was sent on to Atlanta along with Mike Foltynewicz in the deal that delivered Evan Gattis to the ’Stros.

Over the years, Ruiz has at times shown hints of his long-valued talent, but hasn’t generally produced consistently at the plate and did not take advantage of a brief shot at the majors in 2017. He spent the bulk of the 2018 campaign at Triple-A, where he slashed .269/.322/.390 with nine home runs in 541 plate appearances.

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