Free Agent Faceoff: Wheeler Vs. Bumgarner Vs. Ryu
It doesn’t take a baseball savant to figure out that Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg are the two best pitchers on the free-agent market. Cole is on a collision course with the largest contract a hurler has ever secured, a sure bet to outdo the $217MM Boston’s David Price received four years ago, while Strasburg could come within $20MM to $30MM of the $200MM mark in his own right. After those two aces, the starting market for free agents gets a lot less interesting, but that’s not to suggest it’s made up of nothing but back-end types. Quite the contrary, actually, as MLBTR forecasts that four other starters will land guarantees worth at least $50MM this offseason.
Former Met Zack Wheeler, longtime Giant Madison Bumgarner and ex-Dodger Hyun-Jin Ryu make up the remainder of the top five free-agent starters after Cole and Strasburg. Going by projected earning power, Wheeler is easily the most desirable of the trio. We’ve got him signing for $100MM over a half-decade, Bumgarner putting pen to paper on a four-year, $72MM accord and Ryu getting a three-year, $54MM contract. But you’re well within your rights to want Bumgarner or Ryu over Wheeler. Let’s take a closer look at the touted troika, and then you can vote on who’s the most appealing…
Zack Wheeler, RHP
Age: 30 in May
Qualifying offer? Yes
- Wheeler missed almost all of 2015-17 while dealing with arm issues, including a Tommy John procedure, but he has emphatically put those days behind him. He has been one of the most productive starters in baseball over the past two seasons, having tossed 180-plus innings of sub-4.00 ERA, four-plus-fWAR ball in each year. But it’s not just the bottom-line production that has put Wheeler on clubs’ radars. It’s also his elite fastball velocity, which clocked in at a personal-high 96.7 mph in 2019. His fastball and curveball spin were also better than average, per Statcast, while his average exit velocity against (86.2 mph; 90th percentile) and hard-hit rate against (32.2 percent; 82nd percentile) were near the top of the league.
Madison Bumgarner, LHP
Age: 30
Qualifying offer? Yes
- Bumgarner’s legendary postseason exploits are well-documented, but he hasn’t pitched a playoff game since 2016. Over the past couple years, Bumgarner’s days as a front-line starter have seemingly faded away. But he remains a major asset, someone just about any team would be happy to plug into its rotation. After a couple injury-shortened seasons, Bumgarner reestablished his durability in 2019 with 207 2/3 innings of 3.90 ERA/FIP ball and 8.8 K/9 and 1.86 BB/9. And Bumgarner’s fastball/curve spin rates were near the apex of the league this season, for what it’s worth.
Hyun-Jin Ryu, LHP
Age: 33 by next season
Qualifying offer? No
- No one in this group did a better job preventing runs this year than Ryu, who’s an NL Cy Young finalist after recording a 2.32 ERA/3.10 FIP, 8.03 K/9 against 1.18 BB/9, and a 50.4 percent groundball rate across 182 2/3 innings. Terrific results are par for the course for Ryu – on a per-start basis, he may be the No. 1 pitcher here – but age and injury history threaten to hinder him to some degree on the open market. Ryu missed all of 2015 and then threw anywhere from 4 2/3 to 126 2/3 innings in each season from 2016-18.
There you have it, a quick rundown of the three premier free-agent starters not named Cole or Strasburg. Considering their histories, their qualifying offer statuses and their potential earning power, who’s the one you’d most like to sign?
(Poll link for app users)
Which starter would you sign?
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Madison Bumgarner 40% (5,623)
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Zack Wheeler 38% (5,327)
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Hyun-Jin Ryu 23% (3,191)
Total votes: 14,141
Kevan Graves, Pete Putila Under Consideration In Giants’ GM Search
10:38am: San Francisco has also considered Pirates assistant general manager Kevan Graves for the GM post, Rosenthal tweets. Graves is currently serving as the Pirates’ GM on an interim basis after the firing of longtime general manager Neal Huntington late last month, however, and Rosenthal notes that he’s a candidate for both positions.
8:33am: The Giants are considering Pete Putila in their search for a general manager to serve under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). Putila presently serves as the Astros’ director of player development.
Putila becomes at least the second known candidate for the opening, though it’s possible to surmise at least one more. As Rosenthal reported yesterday, and we discussed here, Cubs assistant GM Scott Harris is known to bee under consideration. And it appears likely that Athletics AGM Billy Owens has at least been contemplated in some manner, though the current status there is not known.
It remains entirely unclear when a hiring decision will be made. As noted yesterday, the Giants are likely planning to do so before long, given that the offseason market is now open for business. At the same time, the team doesn’t face much pressure from the executive market since most other teams are not hiring a #2 baseball ops exec at the moment. (The Pirates are still engaged in a search for their top job, which certainly could have an impact.)
Putila has helmed the Astros’ farm system for over three years now, overseeing a key component of one of the game’s most recently successful organizations. He brought a varied background to that role after five prior seasons with the Houston club. Whether or not Putila is picked up by the Giants, his involvement in this process makes him only the latest of many Astros executives to draw interest from other outfits.
Braves Reportedly Prioritizing Madison Bumgarner
Now that the offseason has begun, we’re likely in for several weeks of rumors centering on longtime Giants left-hander and current free agent Madison Bumgarner. Let’s get the ball rolling in earnest: Atlanta has “made Bumgarner a priority and planned to quickly communicate that to the left-hander,” Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports California reports. If Bumgarner doesn’t re-sign with the Giants, the Braves are the front-runners for his services, according to Pavlovic.
For now, Bumgarner has until Nov. 14 to decide whether to accept the $17.8MM qualifying offer the Giants gave him earlier this week. But rejecting it looks like a formality for the 30-year-old Bumgarner, who MLBTR projects will land a four-year, $72MM contract on the open market. Whether the numbers are exact remains to be seen, but Bumgarner’s surely in line for a substantial payday, so the main question is whether San Francisco will be the team that hands it to him.
The Giants are the lone club Bumgarner has known since they selected him 10th overall in the 2007 draft. Although he has since turned into a decorated hurler who has helped the Giants to three championships, there hasn’t been any indication that the team has seriously pursued a contract extension. The Giants did elect against selling off Bumgarner prior to the July 31 trade deadline, but it’s possible they would have gone another way had it not been for an improbable midsummer surge. The team ultimately faded after its torrid July stretch, finishing 77-85, and now it could lose Bumgarner for nothing more than draft-pick compensation if he rejects its QO and heads elsewhere.
In the event Bumgarner does leave the Giants, Atlanta looks like a reasonable fit on paper for the North Carolina native. With Dallas Keuchel now on the free-agent market, the Braves are known to be looking for at least one capable veteran starter to complement Mike Soroka, Max Fried and Mike Foltynewicz. And Bumgarner, unlike Gerrit Cole or Stephen Strasburg (the top two starters available), wouldn’t cost a bank-breaking amount or force the Braves to make an extraordinarily long-term commitment. Of course, there’s an obvious reason for that: Bumgarner, despite his past accomplishments, isn’t nearly as good as Cole or Strasburg at this point. While he was a front-line starter during his younger days, Bumgarner now looks more like a quality mid-rotation arm.
Bumgarner’s on the market fresh off a 207 2/3-inning season (his seventh year of 200-plus frames) in which he pitched to a matching 3.90 ERA/FIP with 8.8 K/9, 1.86 BB/9 and a career-low 35.8 percent groundball rate. For the most part, those numbers look closer to good than spectacular, though they’d still be welcome in just about anyone’s rotation – including the Braves’.
NL Notes: Carpenter, Giants, Mets
A quick look around the National League…
- The 2019 season was surprisingly pedestrian for Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter, a normally excellent producer who fell flat after the team signed him to a two-year, $39MM extension in April. Carpenter stepped to the plate 492 times and hit a mediocre .226/.334/.392 with 15 home runs, giving him the lowest wRC+ (95) and fWAR (1.2) he has posted over a full season since debuting in 2011. But Carpenter, who will turn 34 later this month, seemingly hasn’t lost the confidence of Cardinals brass. ”‘Carp’ obviously will have a better season, we expect. He’s highly motivated,” chairman Bill DeWitt said this week (via Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). President of baseball operations John Mozeliak echoed that sentiment, saying the Cardinals’ confidence in Carpenter is “high” and calling this year “an outlier.” Of course, the Cardinals don’t have much choice but to publicly show faith in Carpenter, whom they’re likely stuck with because of the money left on his contract and his no-trade clause.
- As of last week, Royals quality control coach Pedro Grifol was reportedly one of the finalists to become the Giants’ next manager. That no longer seems to be the case, though. Grifol is now completely out of the race, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea, who names ex-Phillies manager Gabe Kapler, current Astros bench coach Joe Espada and Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro as the last candidates standing. Grifol, Kapler, Espada and Quartaro make up four of 10-plus candidates who have interviewed with the Giants, per Shea. There’s no deadline to hire a new skipper, however, and with the Giants one of just two teams without a manager, there’s seemingly no reason to rush.
- The Mets negotiated with relievers Daniel Hudson and Jake Diekman when they were free agents a year ago, Ken Davidoff of the New York Post reports. The club ultimately didn’t land either, instead watching Hudson sign with the Angels on a minor league contract and Diekman land with the Royals for a guaranteed $2.75MM. Hudson then wound up with the Blue Jays and finished the season as a member of the Nationals, with whom he emerged as one of many key cogs during their improbable World Series run. Diekman concluded the campaign with the Athletics, who traded for him in July. Now that Hudson and Diekman are back on the open market, the Mets – who remain in need of competent relievers – could again push for one or both, though there’s no indication they plan on doing so.
Giants Considering Scott Harris In GM Search
The Giants’ search for a general manager has been a quiet one thus far, due in no small part to the fact that president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi is already fixed at the top of the ops hierarchy. (Indeed, he has operated without a GM since his hiring.) But it’s still an important executive position that offers the San Francisco organization an angle to bring aboard some new talent.
Among the candidates for the Giants GM post is Scott Harris, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). Harris currently serves as an assistant GM with the Cubs — an organization that has quite a few well-titled cooks in the kitchen. That’s not to diminish Harris. The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma profiled him last year in a subscription post, painting him as a hard-working and intelligent rising star in the game.
It seems there are others also under consideration, though identities have yet to be reported. Kerry Crowley of the Mercury News recently ran down some potential candidates. In particular, he noted that A’s GM Billy Owens — Zaidi’s former colleague — has interest in the opening. Owens was said to be under consideration this time last year, but Zaidi decided to go without a clear #2 in his first season at the helm.
It is still not evident what kind of timeline the process will take, or really where it stands at the moment. It seems reasonable to presume that the Giants (and the teams currently employing the candidates) will want to resolve things in relatively short order with the offseason upon us.
Giants Announce Series Of Roster Moves
The Giants announced a flurry of roster moves, claiming infielder Kean Wong from the Angels and right-hander Trevor Oaks from the Royals. The Giants also formally announced their previously reported claim of righty Rico Garcia from the Rockies organization. In order to open space on for the trio of new additions, San Francisco designated outfielder Mike Gerber and right-hander Ricardo Pinto for assignment.
Wong’s time in the Angels organization will ultimately last barely more than a month. The Halos claimed him from the Rays near the end of the season, and the 24-year-old went hitless in four plate appearances in the lone game for which he suited up with the team. Wong, the younger brother of Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong, was the Rays’ fourth-round pick back in the 2013 draft and made his MLB debut as a September call-up with Tampa Bay. Between his six games with the Rays and one game with the Angels, he went 3-for-18.
Wong spent the rest of the season with Triple-A Durham, where he logged his second consecutive above-average season at the plate. After hitting .282/.345/.406 with nine homers, 23 doubles, three triples and seven steals in 2018, he turned in a .307/.375/.464 slash with 10 homers, 29 doubles, six triples and six steals in 2019. Offense was elevated throughout the league in Triple-A this season, but Wong’s output checked in at 16 percent better than league average, as measured by wRC+. Primarily been a second baseman in his minor league career, Wong began logging time at third base and in the outfield beginning in 2018 as the Rays looked to enhance his versatility.
Oaks, meanwhile, is a known commodity for Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi. The 26-year-old Oaks was a seventh-round pick by Zaidi’s former club, the Dodgers, back in 2014 and was traded to Kansas City in a three-team swap while Zaidi was serving as general manager under L.A. president of baseball ops Andrew Friedman.
At the time of that trade, which sent Scott Alexander to Los Angeles, Oaks was ranked in the middle of the Dodgers’ farm system. He looked like a potential back-of-the-rotation option but has seen his prospect status derailed by hip surgery that wiped out his 2019 season. He was healthy enough to take the ball in the Arizona Fall League this year, though, where he allowed six earned runs on 14 hits and three walks with 11 strikeouts in 12 innings of work.
Oaks was hit hard in his MLB debut in 2018 but did put together 128 1/3 innings of 3.23 ERA ball with Kansas City’s Triple-A affiliate that season. Unfortunately, he averaged a dismal 4.9 K/9 against 3.1 BB/9 along the way — though his 50.8 percent ground-ball rate was a bit more encouraging. For now, Oaks will add some upper-level depth to the Giants roster.
None of the three players claimed today, however, should be considered any kind of lock to survive the winter on the Giants’ roster. Zaidi and his staff have been known to aggressively claim players off waivers in hopes of successfully passing that player through waivers themselves shortly thereafter as a means of keeping those new talents without dedicating a 40-man roster spot.
As for the players cut loose — neither is particularly surprising. Gerber, 27, went 1-for-24 in his brief time with the Giants at the MLB level, though he did author an impressive .308/.368/.569 batting line with 26 homers in Triple-A. The former Tigers prospect had never hit much in Triple-A before that, however, and he’ll turn 28 next summer.
Pinto, meanwhile, was a September waiver claim out of the Rays organization who never pitched in a game for San Francisco. He allowed four runs in 2 1/3 innings with Tampa Bay this season in addition to 123 1/3 innings of 4.23 ERA ball at the Triple-A level. The Giants have seven days to trade, release or waive Gerber and Pinto.
Giants Claim Rico Garcia
The Giants have claimed righty Rico Garcia off waivers from the Rockies, per MLB.com’s William Boor (via Twitter). It’s yet another pitching addition for the always-active San Francisco organization.
Garcia, 26 in January, briefly touched the majors in 2019. He showed only a 90.4 mph average fastball and didn’t get many swings and misses, though it’s awfully hard to read much into a six-inning sample.
It was a bit of an odd season for Garcia, who struggled in the bigs and in a 13-start stint at Triple-A. Before that, though, he was quite successful at the Double-A level, where he spun 68 innings of 1.85 ERA ball with 11.5 K/9, 3.0 BB/9, and a 49.3% groundball rate.
10 Players Receive Qualifying Offers
It appears that ten players have received qualifying offers this year. Bob Nightengale of USA Today rounds up the full slate of players on Twitter, some of whom were already reported and covered on this site.
This year’s qualifying offer value is $17.8MM for a one-year term. Players issued the offer will have ten days to assess their options. Should a player reject the offer and fail to work out a deal with their existing team, he will enter the market carrying the requirement that a signing team sacrifice draft compensation. (While the former team would not stand to lose a pick, it would not gain a compensatory pick if it re-signs that player.) Click here for a full rundown of the QO rules.
This represents a bounce back up in the number of players to receive a qualifying offer. Last year was a record-low of seven, with other offseasons ranging from nine (2012, 2017) all the way up to twenty offers (2015).
Here are the ten players:
- Jose Abreu, 1B, White Sox
- Madison Bumgarner, SP, Giants
- Gerrit Cole, SP, Astros
- Josh Donaldson, 3B, Braves
- Jake Odorizzi, SP, Twins
- Marcell Ozuna, OF, Cardinals
- Anthony Rendon, 3B, Nationals
- Will Smith, RP, Giants
- Stephen Strasburg, SP, Nationals
- Zack Wheeler, SP, Mets
There are a few notable players that were eligible for the QO but did not receive it. Those players will hit the open market free and clear of draft compensation. Didi Gregorius of the Yankees and Cole Hamels of the Cubs were perhaps the leading possibilities beyond those that received the offer. J.D. Martinez would surely have received one from the Red Sox had he opted out of his deal; Aroldis Chapman was also certain to get a QO had he not agreed to a new contract. Quite a few other prominent free agents were ineligible because they were traded during the 2019 season and/or had previously received a qualifying offer.
Giants Outright, Re-Sign Zach Green & Cristhian Adames
The Giants announced that they have outrighted infielders Zach Green and Cristhian Adames. Both players will remain in the organization after agreeing to new minor-league deals.
Green, a Northern California native whom the Phillies chose in the third round of the 2012 draft, is now in line for his second season with the Giants. He signed a minors pact with San Francisco last winter and then spent the majority of the season as a member of Triple-A Sacramento, with which he torched Pacific Coast League pitching for a .282/.380/.659 line and 25 home runs in just 297 trips to the plate. The 25-year-old Green’s stellar minor league output earned him his first major league call-up during the season, though he only mustered a .143/.250/.214 line in 16 plate appearances.
Marlins Offer Coaching Position To Hensley Meulens
Nov. 4: The Marlins have made Meulens a formal offer to join their 2020 staff, MLB.com’s Jon Morosi tweets. Meulens, however, has received interest from multiple clubs since being eliminated from the Giants’ managerial search, per Morosi, so it seems he could yet have a decision on his hands.
Nov. 1: The Marlins are in talks with current Giants bench coach Hensley Meulens about a role on their staff in 2020, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets. Meulens has been told he’s not a finalist in San Francisco’s search for a new manager, per the report, and it seems there’s now a chance the organization will lose him entirely. SiriusXM’s Craig Mish adds that Meulens would likely step into the role of hitting coach if the two sides do work out a deal. He’d pair with bench coach and “offensive coordinator” James Rowson, recently hired away from the Twins, to work on reshaping the organization’s approach at the plate.
Meulens, 52, has spent the past decade on the Giants’ coaching staff under the recently retired Bruce Bochy. He’s been bench coach for the past couple of seasons but previously served as the club’s hitting coach and is also responsible for outfield defense and positioning instruction. Meulens was the Giants’ hitting coach for each of their three World Series titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014. He also has five years of experience as a minor league hitting coach and served as the manager for Team Netherlands in both the 2013 and 2017 World Baseball Classics.
A native of Willemstad, Curacao, Meulens would bring an important bilingual presence to a Marlins club that has a number of key players from Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba both on the big league roster and rising through a rapidly improving farm system. Meulens played parts of seven seasons in the Majors — teaming with recently extended Marlins manager Don Mattingly as a Yankee from 1989-93 — and also played professionally in Japan (1994-96), Korea (2000) and Mexico (2001-02).