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Yoshihisa Hirano Cleared To Join Mariners’ Camp

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TODAY: Hirano is still on the injured list but he has been cleared to join the Mariners’ Summer Camp.  As per the Japan Times and other outlets, Hirano revealed that he tested positive for COVID-19, and was kept from training for almost two weeks while battling virus symptoms.

JULY 14: The Mariners announced that they have placed right-handed reliever Yoshihisa Hirano on the injured list. The club didn’t provide a reason for Hirano’s IL placement, but Greg Johns of MLB.com notes that he’s the only Mariner who hasn’t been cleared to report to Summer Camp.

Hirano joined the Mariners as one of their most notable acquisitions during the winter, when the team handed the former Diamondback a one-year, $1.6MM contract in free agency. If healthy, he’s an obvious candidate to rack up a substantial number of innings in a bullpen that’s light on proven options and just lost righty Gerson Bautista to a flexor strain.

Hirano, 36, is a two-year major league veteran who emigrated from his homeland of Japan after a dominant run there. While last season didn’t go nearly as well for Hirano as his initial campaign did, he has overall been a respectable late-game option in the bigs. Across 119 1/3 innings in Arizona, Hirano recorded a 3.47 ERA/3.85 FIP with 9.05 K/9, 3.39 BB/9, a 47.7 percent groundball rate and 47 holds.

Mallex Smith Joins Mariners' Camp

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  • Mariners center fielder Mallex Smith made his Summer Camp debut Saturday, notes Greg Johns of MLB.com. The speedster had not been previously been available for undisclosed reasons. Nevertheless, manager Scott Servais says he’s “pretty confident” Smith will be ready to go for the season opener, per Johns. This could be something of a make-or-break year for Smith, who fell flat in his first season in Seattle. He figures to take the bulk of the center field playing time, presumably flanked most days by Kyle Lewis and Jake Fraley.

Julio Rodriguez Suffers Wrist Fracture

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July 18: Divish reports that while Rodriguez’s wrist fracture will not require surgery, it will prevent him from participating in baseball activities for the next four-to-six weeks. So while the Mariners’ phenom will be unable to get reps in a Major League setting, the M’s are hoping that Rodriguez will get some at-bats in the Dominican Winter League, which gets underway in October.

July 16: Exciting Mariners prospect Julio Rodriguez is going to spend some time on the mend. He has been diagnosed with a hairline fracture in his left wrist, as Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times was among those to report on Twitter.

Rodriguez is widely regarded as one of the twenty (or better) top prospects in all of baseball. The 19-year-old was invited to participate in Seattle’s 60-man player pool even though he has yet to appear in the upper minors.

The M’s had hoped to allow Rodriguez and other elite prospects to gain exposure to upper-level talent and get reps in the absence of a minor-league season. That’s all out the window now for Rodriguez, at least until he’s able to heal up.

There’s not a ton of time left for Rodriguez to get back to full speed and return to the fold, limiting his development opportunities this year. Fortunately, the Mariners won’t have to alter their MLB plans, as Rodriguez didn’t factor in the picture this year.

Mariners’ Gerson Bautista Out Indefinitely Due To Flexor Strain

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Mariners right-hander Gerson Bautista will be sidelined indefinitely due to a flexor mass strain in his right elbow, manager Scott Servais revealed to reporters Monday (Twitter link via Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times). The flamethrowing bullpen hopeful was lifted from Saturday’s intrasquad game with the injury. While he won’t require surgery, the unspecified timeline and nature of the injury obviously cast some doubt on whether Bautista will be an option for the Mariners this year.

Bautista, 25, came to the Mariners from the Mets alongside Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn in the Robinson Cano/Edwin Diaz blockbuster. He was lit up for 11 runs in nine Major League innings last year and has yet to find success in the Majors, but he’s armed with a heater that averaged 97.7 mph in last year’s brief call to the big leagues and can reach as high as 101 mph. Bautista missed most of last season due to a significant pectoral strain but dominated in the Dominican Winter League this offseason (2.18 ERA, 14 hits allowed, 17-to-5 K/BB ratio in 20 2/3 innings of relief).

The absence of Bautista will only create further opportunity for others in a wide-open competition for bullpen jobs. Offseason signees Yoshihisa Hirano and Carl Edwards Jr. should be locks for spots, and holdovers Austin Adams and Matt Magill impressed after their midseason acquisitions in 2019. Righty Dan Altavilla is out of options, so he also has a leg up in securing a spot. Other than that, the Mariners could have four to five relief jobs up for grabs.

Seattle will use a six-man rotation to begin the season. They’ll be particularly cautious building up the workloads of promising youngsters Justus Sheffield and Justin Dunn as well as veterans Kendall Graveman and Taijuan Walker, each of whom is coming back from injury. That should mean plenty of bullpen innings early in the year, giving players like Brandon Brennan, Erik Swanson, Nestor Cortes Jr., Taylor Guilbeau, Taylor Williams, Art Warren, Zac Grotz and several others the opportunity to demonstrate their long-term value to the organization.

Taijuan Walker Eager To Play This Seaso

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  • Mariners righty Taijuan Walker took the hill for the first time at camp Tuesday and was hitting 90 to 93 mph with his fastball, per Greg Johns of MLB.com. Walker has averaged 94 mph on his heater during his career, but serious arm injuries limited him to just 14 innings with Arizona from 2018-19. He’s now back in his old stomping grounds in Seattle, where he was once a top prospect and a capable starter. And as Johns explains in his piece, while many players are understandably nervous about participating this year because of the coronavirus, Walker’s champing at the bit to reestablish himself after two lost seasons. He’ll open 2020 in what figures to be a six-man M’s rotation after signing a one-year, $2MM pact in free agency.

“Small Number” Of Mariners Players Test Positive For Coronavirus

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A “small number” of players have been held out of Mariners’ camp after testing positive for COVID-19, manager Scott Servais confirmed to reporters (including Greg Johns of MLB.com). The organization declined to divulge any further information about the identities or current conditions of those player(s).

Per MLB protocols, any player who tests positive must be asymptomatic and twice test negative, with the tests administered at least 24 hours apart, before returning to the team. The Seattle organization originally invited 60 players to Summer Camp, utilizing all of the available player pool space.

 

Mariners Sign Connor Phillips

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  • The Mariners wrapped up their 2020 draft signings by inking right-hander Connor Phillips on Monday, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times reports. Phillips, the 64th pick, signed for full slot value of $1,050,300. The Mariners acquired the selection they used on Phillips from the Brewers during the offseason in a trade centering on catcher Omar Narvaez. Phillips, previously with McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas, entered the draft as MLB.com’s 94th-ranked prospect available. The 19-year-old is capable of reaching the high 90s with his fastball, though he’ll need to improve his offspeed offerings to realize his potential, per MLB.com.

MLB, MLBPA Still Discussing Vesting Options, Retention Bonuses

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The length of the season, prorated salaries and protocols for health and safety are finally all set in place, but Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are still negotiating the manner in which contractual options, performance incentives/bonuses and escalator clauses will be handled, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription required).

Fortunately, an agreement is believed to be “within reach,” per Rosenthal. The league had initially sought to prorate the value of 2021 options using the same formula as 2020 salaries, although the MLBPA obviously pushed back against that notion. There’s still some debate over the handling of vesting options — particularly those that are triggered by reaching a set number of games pitched or plate appearances over the life of multiple seasons. The two sides also must determine how those options would be treated in the event that the season is canceled at any point due to health concerns.

There aren’t too many vesting options in MLB this year, although some of the notable ones include:

  • Jon Lester, LHP, Cubs: Lester’s $25MM mutual option ($10MM buyout) for the 2021 season would become guaranteed with 200 innings pitched in a normal season.
  • J.A. Happ, LHP, Yankees: Happ’s $17MM club option for the 2021 season would’ve become guaranteed upon making 27 starts or totaling 165 innings in 2020.
  • Andrew Miller, LHP, Cardinals: Miller’s $12MM club option for 2021 would have been guaranteed if he totaled 110 games between 2019-20. As Rosenthal explores, there are various ways to interpret how many more games he’d need to pitch to trigger that option — some more beneficial to Miller and others to the Cardinals.
  • Charlie Morton, RHP, Rays: Morton’s option is another that comes with a multi-year criteria. His contract calls for a $15MM club option in 2021 if he spends fewer than 30 days on the injured list between 2019-20. The option value decreases if he spends additional time on the injured list. Morton avoided the IL entirely last year. Unlike Miller, who surely hopes the number of appearances he needs to make in 2020 can be prorated, it’d be beneficial to Morton for that number (30) to remain as is. That seems unlikely, but the disparity between the clauses of Miller and Morton illustrates that this isn’t exactly straightforward for the player side. The value of his option
  • Kelvin Herrera, RHP, White Sox: Herrera, too, needed 110 games between 2019-20 for his $10MM club option to become guaranteed. He pitched in 57 games last year, leaving him 53 shy of his target.
  • Wade Davis, RHP, Rockies: Davis’ $15MM mutual option would’ve converted to a $15MM player option in the event that he finished 30 games. He’d only need to finish out 11-12 games in the shortened 2020 season if the two sides go with a strictly prorated interpretation of the qualifiers.
  • Bryan Shaw, RHP, Rockies: Shaw has the same 110-game target for 2019-20 that Miller and Herrera have. He pitched 70 times in 2019 and needed just 40 appearances in 2020 to lock in a $9MM salary for the 2021 campaign.
  • Jake McGee, LHP, Rockies: With 60 games pitched or 40 games finished in 2020, McGee would’ve locked in a $9MM salary for the 2021 season. His contract also allowed the option to vest with a with 110 games between 2019-20, but he only pitched in 45 contests last year.
  • Stephen Vogt, C, Diamondbacks: Vogt’s contract included a $3MM club option that not only vests but increases to a $3.5MM base upon starting 45 games and appearing n a total of 75 games overall.
  • Dee Gordon, 2B/SS/OF, Mariners: Gordon would’ve been guaranteed a $14MM salary for the 2021 season with 600 plate appearances this year. That, of course, was extremely unlikely in the first place, though.

Beyond those options, there are myriad escalator clauses throughout baseball that could be impacted by the shortened schedule. It’s fairly common for club options and/or future salaries to be boosted by steady performance — particularly among players returning from injury. Take Dellin Betances, for instance. His contract with the Mets calls for the value of next year’s $6MM player option to increase by $800K upon pitching in 40 games. He’d receive additional $1MM boosts to that figure for appearing in 50, 60 and 70 games apiece.

The league and the union are also still discussing potential retention bonuses for six-year veterans on non-guaranteed deals. In a typical year, any player with six-plus years of service who finished the preceding season on a 40-man roster qualifies as an Article XX(B) free agent. Such players must either be added to the 40-man roster, released five days prior to Opening Day or paid a $100K retention bonus to remain with the club in the minor leagues. Many players in that situation are released and quickly re-signed to a new minor league deal, but that won’t be possible in 2020 due to the fact that players who are removed from a team’s 60-man pool become ineligible to return to that team this season.

Mariners Release Carlos Gonzalez, Wei-Yin Chen

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The Mariners released a pair of veterans on minor league contracts, as Shannon Drayer of MyNorthwest.com reports that Carlos Gonzalez and Wei-Yin Chen were both let go from the organization within the last few days.  Chen hinted as much in a tweet on his personal account on Saturday, while Gonzalez’s name was initially reported as being one of over 50 Seattle minor league releases in May, before later reports confirmed that CarGo was still with the team.

Gonzalez signed his minors deal in February, and didn’t seem likely to make Seattle’s Opening Day roster prior to the league shutdown.  The 34-year-old hit only .200/.289/.283 over 166 PA with the Indians and Cubs in 2019, marking new career lows in both batting performance and playing time.  While Gonzalez has posted some excellent numbers over his 12 big league seasons, he hasn’t delivered an above-average season (by wRC+ or OPS+) since 2016, and it could be difficult for the veteran to catch on with another team even with the 2020 season’s expanded rosters.

Chen joined the Mariners in January on a minor league deal, while still collecting the $22MM owed by the Marlins in the final year of his five-year, $80MM free agent deal from the 2015-16 offseason.  Injuries and inconsistency resulted in a 5.10 ERA for Chen during his 358 innings with Miami, and the Fish finally parted ways with the southpaw last November.

Between this lack of performance and his age (35 in July), Chen may also have trouble catching on with another Major League organization.  Indeed, there have already been reports out of Chen’s native Taiwan suggesting that the left-hander could catch on with a team in Japan.  Chen began his career with the Chunichi Dragons back in 2005, and posted an impressive 2.59 ERA over 650 2/3 frames in Nippon Professional Baseball.

Mariners Announce Initial 60-Man Player Pool

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Today marks the deadline for teams to submit to Major League Baseball their initial spring training player pools, which can comprise up to 60 players. Players are not eligible to participate in either a spring training or regular season game until they are included in the pool. Teams are free to change the makeup of the pools as they see fit. However, players removed from a team’s 60-man (for reasons unrelated to injury, suspension, etc.) must be exposed to other organizations via trade or waivers.

Not all players within a team’s pool are ticketed for MLB playing time, of course. Most teams will include well-regarded but still far-off prospects as a means of getting them training reps with no intention of running them onto a major league diamond this season. A comprehensive review of 2020’s unique set of rules can be found here.

The Mariners’ initial player pool consists of the following players.

Right-handed pitchers

Left-handed pitchers

Catchers

Infielders

Outfielders

Show all

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