Rays Acquire Harold Ramirez From Cubs
The Rays have acquired outfielder Harold Ramírez from the Cubs in exchange for minor league infielder Esteban Quiroz, according to announcements from both teams. Tampa Bay announced they’ve placed reliever Nick Anderson on the 60-day injured list to open space for Ramírez on the 40-man roster.
The move brings Ramírez’s Chicago tenure to an end before he ever suited up for the team. The Cubs acquired the right-handed hitting outfielder from the Guardians in exchange for cash in late November. That came after Cleveland had designated him for assignment in advance of Rule 5 protection day, part of an overhaul of more than a quarter of the Guardians’ 40-man roster.
While Ramírez didn’t play in a game with the Cubs, he has logged a fair bit of MLB action over the past few seasons. A former Blue Jays’ farmhand, Ramírez debuted in the majors with the Marlins in 2019. He hit .276/.312/.416 in 119 games as a rookie, but he missed almost all of the following season after suffering a severe hamstring strain. Cleveland picked him up off waivers in February and gave him 361 plate appearances, and his .268/.305/.398 line wasn’t much different than his 2019 performance.
The 27-year-old Ramírez has a career .271/.308/.405 mark in a bit more than 800 plate appearances. He makes a fair amount of contact, leading to a solid batting average. Yet he’s paired that with a minuscule 4% walk rate and a below-average .134 ISO (slugging minus average). Ramírez’s 47.2% hard contact percentage and 91.3 MPH average exit velocity were more impressive than those bottom line power numbers might suggest, but he negated a good bit of that batted ball authority by putting more than half his balls in play on the ground.
Ramírez adds an affordable option to the Tampa Bay outfield. He’ll play the 2022 campaign on just a $728K salary and is controllable via arbitration through 2025. The Rays could keep him around as a long-term piece, but he’s also out of minor league option years. That means Tampa Bay must either carry him on the active roster all season or DFA him themselves.
Whether Ramírez sticks long-term could be determined by what the Rays have planned for the coming weeks. The outfield is already pretty crowded, with Randy Arozarena, Kevin Kiermaier and Manuel Margot lined up as the projected starting group. Austin Meadows will see some time in the corners and at designated hitter, while the out-of-options Brett Phillips and top prospect Josh Lowe figure to be in the mix. It may be tough to carry both Phillips and Ramírez in depth capacities all season, but the former is a better defensive option off the bench. Ramírez has some experience in center field but is better suited for the corners.
Of course, it’s possible the Rays deal from the outfield logjam before the season. Meadows, in particular, has been floated in trade rumors since the lockout was lifted. The front office isn’t going to be pressured to deal one of their regulars because they picked up Ramírez in a minor trade, but today’s deal could be a preemptive move to bolster the outfield depth in case another swap on the horizon.
From the Cubs’ perspective, the pair of Ramírez trades essentially amounts to picking up Quiroz for cash. Despite never having appeared in the majors, Quiroz is actually a few years older than Ramírez. At 30 years old, the lefty-hitting infielder isn’t a prototypical prospect. Yet he has a long track record of performing well in both the Mexican League and in the high minors, one that has caught the attention of a handful of clubs.
Originally signed by the Red Sox out of Mexico, Quiroz was dealt to the Padres for Colten Brewer over the 2018-19 offseason. Tampa Bay picked him up in March 2020 as the player to be named later in the Tommy Pham, Jake Cronenworth, Hunter Renfroe deal. Listed at 5’6″, 199 pounds, he doesn’t have overwhelming physical tools. Yet Quiroz owns a .270/.391/.534 line in his Triple-A career, including a .268/.401/.526 mark with the Rays’ top affiliate in Durham last season. Quiroz won’t occupy a spot on the Cubs 40-man roster; he’ll presumably head to Triple-A Iowa and keep trying to earn an MLB debut.
Anderson’s placement on the 60-day IL was a formality whenever the Rays needed a roster spot. The righty underwent a UCL brace procedure last October that was always expected to keep him out of action past the All-Star Break.
Cardinals Select Aaron Brooks, Place Alex Reyes On 60-Day Injured List
The Cardinals have selected right-hander Aaron Brooks to the 40-man roster, the team informed reporters (including Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). He’ll break camp with the club. To clear roster space, righty Alex Reyes has been placed on the 60-day injured list.
St. Louis signed Brooks to a minor league deal in late January. The 31-year-old had spent the prior two seasons in the Korea Baseball Organization, working out of the Kia Tigers’ rotation. He pitched to a 2.50 ERA in 151 1/3 innings his first year, leading the Tigers to bring him back for another season. Brooks only made 13 starts and tallied 78 frames last season, but he posted a solid 3.35 ERA in that time.
Brooks only struck 20.1% of opposing hitters over that two-year stretch. Yet he virtually never handed out free passes, walking just 4.4% of batters faced. Of most interest to the Cardinals, he induced grounders on more than three quarters of the balls put in play against him in both his KBO seasons. St. Louis has perhaps the game’s top collection of infield defenders (Paul Goldschmidt, Tommy Edman, Paul DeJong and Nolan Arenado), and they’d set out this offseason to target pitchers capable of playing to that strength.
They identified Brooks, despite his 6.49 ERA in 170 2/3 career big league innings. The former ninth-round pick suited up with each of the Royals, A’s and Orioles before heading to South Korea but never found much success. The Cards clearly believe he’s capable of performing better with a strong defense behind him, and he can factor into either the rotation or the bullpen for first-year skipper Oli Marmol. St. Louis will be without Jack Flaherty to open the year, giving Brooks a shot to compete for the final rotation spot behind Adam Wainwright, Steven Matz, Dakota Hudson and Miles Mikolas.
It was also already known they’d be without Reyes in the early going, and he’s now officially going to miss at least the first two months of the season. The hard-throwing reliever received a stem cell injection in his shoulder last week and wasn’t expected to be available until late May or early June. Today’s IL placement rules him out until at least the second week of June.
In addition to the Brooks/Reyes news, St. Louis announced they’ve signed utilityman Cory Spangenberg to a minor league deal. The 31-year-old appeared in every big league season between 2014-19, spending the bulk of that time with the Padres. Like Brooks, he’s coming back to the U.S. after a two-year stint in an Asian league — in his case, Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.
Spangenberg, a left-handed hitter, has a fair bit of experience at each of second base, third base and left field. He owns a .256/.315/.389 line in just under 1400 MLB plate appearances. He combined for a .257/.330/.463 mark in two seasons with the Seibu Lions and will add some versatile depth to the high minors of the St. Louis system.
Outrighted: Potts, Hanhold
With transactions back in full swing, there’s a constant 40-man roster churn as teams accommodate new signings, waiver claims and more. Many of the players who are designated for assignment around the league will go unclaimed and end up sticking with their clubs as a non-roster player. We’ll keep track of today’s outrighted players here…
- The Red Sox announced Friday that infielder Hudson Potts cleared waivers and has been outrighted to the minors. Boston didn’t specify an assignment to a specific affiliate just yet. The 23-year-old Potts was a first-round pick of the Padres in 2016 and landed with the Sox by way of 2020’s Mitch Moreland trade. Potts has drawn praise for his huge raw power in the past, but the 2021 season was a discouraging one. In his second full season spent at the Double-A level, Potts managed only a .217/.264/.399 batting line with a huge 32.8% strikeout rate. Though he hit well in the minors up through Class-A Advanced, Potts now has 837 plate appearances in parts of three Double-A seasons and just a .216/.277/.385 output there.
- Pirates righty Eric Hanhold, designated for assignment last week, also went unclaimed on waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Indianapolis earlier this week. The 28-year-old gave up eight runs in 10 1/3 innings for the Orioles last year and joined the Pirates via waiver claim following the season. Hanhold’s struggles persisted in the minors, evidenced by a 5.19 ERA with Triple-A Norfolk in 2021, but he did have a solid 2019 season in the Mets’ system, pitching to a 3.84 ERA in 63 1/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A. Hanhold has been dominant in 40 career innings of Double-A ball but carries an ERA north of 5.00 both in Triple-A and in the Majors.
Cubs Designate Tommy Nance For Assignment
The Cubs announced Friday that they’ve reinstated right-hander Tommy Nance from the Covid-19-related injured list and designated him for assignment. Nance went on the Covid list earlier in the week as a corresponding move when the team finalized its one-year deals with lefties Drew Smyly and Daniel Norris. However, with no open 40-man spot to return to, Nance will now either be traded or placed on waivers within a week’s time.
Nance, 31, made his MLB debut last season and tossed 28 2/3 innings out of the Chicago bullpen. He was hit hard in that time, yielding five homers and a 7.22 ERA, but Nance impressed in Triple-A (2.35 ERA, 18-to-3 K/BB ratio in 15 1/3 frames) and has a generally solid track record in the upper minors.
Struggles during his first taste of the Majors notwithstanding, Nance could appeal to other clubs for a few reasons. He averaged better than 95 mph on a heater that had above-average spin, and the spin rate on his curveball ranked among the game’s elite, landing in the 90th percentile. He also punched out 26.1% of the opponents he faced between Triple-A and the Majors last year and has a pair of minor league option seasons remaining. If Nance does pass through waivers unclaimed, he can return to Cubs camp and would likely head to Triple-A Iowa to begin the 2022 season in hopes of pitching his way back up to the MLB club.
Guardians Re-Sign Bryan Shaw
March 25: The Guardians have formally announced the signing. In a corresponding roster move, right-hander Cody Morris has been placed on the 60-day injured list.
MLB.com’s Mandy Bell tweets that Morris recently underwent an MRI, which revealed a strained teres major muscle. He’s been shut down entirely and will be reevaluated after a period of four to six weeks without throwing. Given the length of that shutdown, Morris wasn’t likely to be ready early in the 2022 season anyhow.
March 24: It’s a one-year, $3MM deal that contains an option for the 2023 season, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman.
March 23: The Guardians have reached a deal to bring veteran right-hander Bryan Shaw back to Cleveland, Zack Meisel of The Athletic reports (via Twitter). Shaw made a league-leading 81 appearances in 2021 for Cleveland — his second stint with the organization. Shaw is repped by CAA Baseball.
A staple in the Cleveland bullpen from 2013-17, Shaw thrice led the league in appearances during that stretch and pitched to an overall 3.11 ERA through 358 2/3 innings of relief work. He reached free agency as one of the most durable and effective names on the market in the 2017-18 offseason, but a three-year deal with the Rockies quickly went south. Shaw was clobbered for a 5.61 ERA in 126 2/3 frames with the Rox, who released him in July 2020. He latched on with the Mariners for the 2020 campaign but was rocked for a dozen runs in six frames with Seattle.
A return to Cleveland on a minor league deal this past year didn’t come with high expectations following that ugly three-year stint, but Shaw generally righted the ship. In 77 1/3 inning of bullpen work, he notched a solid 3.49 ERA, picking up 20 holds and a pair of saves along the way. Shaw’s success wasn’t without its red flags, as his 21.3% strikeout rate was down about four percentage points from its peak and his 11.4% walk rate was the highest full-season mark of his 11-year big league career. Still, Shaw limited hard contact, suppressed homers and picked up swinging strikes at his best rates since the 2017 season.
Assuming he’s on the big league roster, the 34-year-old Shaw will become the elder statesman of Guardians bullpen that is packed with power arms but light on experience. Emmanuel Clase, James Karinchak and Anthony Gose can all pump 100mph fastballs with regularity, but Gose is the only member of the relief corps with even two years of MLB service time — and most of that came earlier in his career as an outfielder, before he made the switch to the mound.
Mike Fiers Signs With Mexican League’s Leones De Yucatan
Free-agent righty Mike Fiers has signed on with los Leones de Yucatan of the Mexican League, per an announcement from the team.
Fiers, 36, made just two starts in the big leagues last season, both coming with the A’s. A hip injury in Spring Training delayed his 2021 debut until late April, and Fiers returned for just two appearances before going back to the injured list with an elbow sprain that eventually proved to be a season-ender. During his 9 1/3 innings, he was tagged for eight runs on 15 hits and four walks with five strikeouts.
It wasn’t a good showing for the right-hander, clearly, but Fiers isn’t far removed from a sharp three-year run with the Tigers and A’s (2018-20) that saw him pitch to a combined 3.85 ERA through 415 2/3 innings. Fiers’ strikeout rate and velocity have continued to dip as he’s progressed toward his late 30s, but he’s maintained walk rates that are considerably better than league average and also induced plenty of harmless infield flies during that Detroit/Oakland run.
With a decent showing in Mexico, it’s possible Fiers will get another look with a big league team at some point in the 2022 season. The need for pitching is constant over the course of a given season, and in 1151 career innings at the big league level, Fiers has a 4.07 ERA with a 20.7% strikeout rate and a 7.0% walk rate.
Braves Sign R.J. Alaniz, Brandon Brennan To Minor League Deals
The Braves have signed relievers R.J. Alaniz and Brandon Brennan to minor league contracts, according to Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. Both right-handers picked up brief MLB action last season.
Alaniz made three appearances with the Reds during the final couple weeks of the year. That marked his first action at the highest level since 2019, when he combined for 12 appearances between Seattle and Cincinnati. Alaniz has allowed 18 runs in 18 1/3 career innings, but he’s coming off a nice season in Triple-A.
The 30-year-old made 33 appearances with the Reds’ top affiliate in Louisville. He tossed 39 innings of 3.46 ERA ball, punching out an impressive 26.9% of opposing hitters. He issued walks at a slightly elevated 10.2% clip, but he missed enough bats in the minors to get a late-season cameo in Cincinnati. The Reds outrighted him off their roster at the end of the year, at which point he elected minor league free agency.
Brennan, 30, was briefly a teammate of Alaniz with the Mariners in 2019. Seattle selected him out of the White Sox’s farm system in the Rule 5 draft the year prior, and he stuck on the active roster all year for a rebuilding M’s club. Brennan made 44 appearances, pitching to a 4.56 ERA with a decent 24% strikeout percentage but a 12.2% walk rate. Carrying him on the roster all season entitled the Mariners to his long-term contractual rights, but an oblique strain limited him to five appearances in 2020.
Seattle designated Brennan for assignment last April, and he landed with the Red Sox via waivers. He only made one appearance in Boston, tossing three scoreless innings but getting DFA the next day as the Sox needed fresh arms for the bullpen. He cleared outright waivers but was released in September after posting just a 5.97 ERA in 37 2/3 frames with Triple-A Worcester.
The Braves have quite a bit of their season-opening bullpen already locked in. They’ve added Kenley Jansen, Collin McHugh and Tyler Thornburg to a unit that already included Will Smith, Luke Jackson, Tyler Matzek and A.J. Minter, with Sean Newcomb and Dylan Lee perhaps factoring into the mix. There’s unlikely to be room for either Alaniz or Brennan in the early going, but they both figure to serve as experienced depth options with Triple-A Gwinnett.
Guardians Sign Jake Jewell To Minor League Contract
The Guardians have signed reliever Jake Jewell to a minor league contract, according to Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. The righty had qualified for minor league free agency after being outrighted off the Giants’ 40-man roster late last season.
Jewell split the 2021 campaign between three organizations, although he only suited up at the big league level with one. The 28-year-old began the year with the Cubs after signing a minors pact the prior offseason. He was selected to the MLB roster right around the trade deadline and went on to make ten appearances with Chicago. He allowed 12 runs, including a staggering five home runs, in just ten innings for the North Siders before they designated him for assignment.
That obviously wasn’t a productive MLB run, but Jewell had pitched to a sterling 2.78 ERA in 32 1/3 innings with Triple-A Iowa to earn the call-up. That minor league showing caught the interest of a pair of NL West rivals, as he landed with the Dodgers and Giants on successive waiver claims. Both Los Angeles and San Francisco stashed him at Triple-A without getting him into a big league game, however, and he cleared waivers once the Giants bumped him from their 40-man in September.
In addition to his time with the Cubs, Jewell pitched in the big leagues with the Angels from 2018-19. He posted a 6.99 ERA in 21 outings with Anaheim, striking out a below-average 19.2% of batters faced. He boasts a fastball that typically sits in the 95-96 MPH range, though, and his career 12.4% swinging strike rate is solid. Cleveland relievers ranked sixth last season in both ERA (3.64) and strikeout/walk rate differential (15.9 percentage points), so Jewell might have a hard time getting a look early in the season. He’ll add a fairly live depth arm to Triple-A Columbus.
Angels Sign Max Stassi To Extension
The Angels announced this evening they’ve signed catcher Max Stassi to a three-year, $17.5MM extension. The veteran backstop will earn $3MM in 2022, and $7MM apiece in 2023-24. The deal also contains a $7.5MM club option for the 2025 campaign that comes with a $500K buyout. Stassi is a Wasserman client.
The deal buys out up to three free agent years, as Stassi had been set to hit the open market after this season. He and the team had already agreed to a $3MM salary for the upcoming season. That figure remains in place, with the club tacking on $14.5MM in new money to keep him under club control through 2025.
Stassi has appeared in each of the last nine big league seasons, but he didn’t play in more than 15 games in any of the first five years. The righty-hitting backstop had never even tallied 300 plate appearances in a season until last year, as he’d spent his early days as a depth catcher with the division-rival Astros.
The Angels picked up Stassi in a seemingly minor deadline deal with Houston in 2019. He didn’t do much in 20 games with the Halos down the stretch that season, but he’s enjoyed a late-career breakout over the past two years. Stassi mashed at a .278/.352/.533 clip during the shortened 2020 schedule, rapping nine extra-base hits in 105 plate appearances. There’s little doubt the limited sample inflated his numbers that year, but Stassi continued to perform well over his largest body of work last season.
In 2021, Stassi appeared in 87 games and picked up 319 trips to the plate. He hit .241/.326/.426 with 13 homers, showing solid power and drawing a fair number of walks. Stassi struck out in an alarming 31.7% of his plate appearances, but the combination of pop and patience were more than adequate for a catcher. By measure of wRC+, Stassi’s production lined up exactly with that of a league average hitter. League average offense isn’t easy to find at the most demanding position at the diamond, with catchers overall posting a .229/.305/.391 mark last season.
Stassi pretty clearly wielded an above-average bat for a backstop, and he also rated well in the eyes of Statcast’s pitch framing metrics. Baseball Savant pegged him as six runs above average as a framer last season, his fourth straight year garnering positive marks in that regard. He didn’t do well to control the running game, throwing out only 15.4% of attempted base-stealers (against a 24.3% league average). Stassi had fared a bit better in that regard in years past, however, and the Angels are clearly comfortable in both his receiving ability and ability to handle a pitching staff over the coming seasons.
Because he didn’t establish himself as a regular until nearly a decade into his big league career, Stassi wasn’t going to hit free agency until after his age-31 season. That always figured to cap his long-term market upside, but the two years and $14.5MM in guarantees for his first couple free agent seasons is in line with the recent going rate for capable but not elite #1 catchers. The Braves signed Travis d’Arnaud to a two-year, $16MM extension last August; the Cubs added Yan Gomes for two years and $13MM just before the lockout.
d’Arnaud and Gomes were the top options in a free agent catching class that was short on #1 options this winter. Next year’s crop looks stronger, with Mike Zunino, Willson Contreras, Gary Sánchez and Omar Narváez among a handful of players set to hit the market. Rather than stick in that fairly deep class, Stassi will stick around in Orange County for at least the next couple years.
The Angels re-signed Kurt Suzuki this winter, and he’ll serve as Stassi’s back-up for the upcoming campaign. The extension won’t affect the Angels’ books for the upcoming season, given that it doesn’t change his price tag from the previously agreed upon $3MM arbitration settlement. Los Angeles is still set to open this season with a franchise-record payroll in the $188MM range. The extension brings their 2023 estimated player commitments up to around $119MM, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Rays Sign Robert Dugger To Minor League Deal
The Rays have signed right-hander Robert Dugger to a minor league contract, Baseball America’s Chris Hilburn-Trenkle notes as part of his latest transactions round-up. The 26-year-old has appeared in the majors in each of the past three seasons, suiting up with the Marlins and Mariners.
Dugger’s 12 appearances with Seattle last season marked a career-high. He started four of those games but never worked more than 3 1/3 innings, serving as more of a long relief type. Dugger posted a 7.36 ERA in 25 2/3 innings, striking out only 15.7% of opposing hitters. The Texas Tech product also had a rough season with Triple-A Tacoma, where he was tagged for a 6.10 ERA in 69 1/3 frames.
The M’s outrighted Dugger off their 40-man roster in August. He elected minor league free agency at the end of the season and will join the third organization of his career. Originally a Mariners draftee, Dugger was traded to Miami as part of the Dee Strange-Gordon deal. He debuted in the big leagues with the Marlins in 2019 but ended up back in Seattle last winter when they nabbed him off waivers from the Fish.
Dugger has made 23 big league appearances, including 12 starts. Owner of a 7.39 career ERA, he’s yet to find success at the major league level. Dugger has pitched pretty well up through Double-A, though, and he appeared among Baseball America’s Top 30 Marlins’ prospects each offseason from 2018-20. He’ll offer some swing depth to a Tampa Bay organization that is among the league’s most flexible with regards to pitcher usage.