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Kelvin Herrera Announces Retirement

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Two-time All-Star and 2015 World Series champion Kelvin Herrera announced today, via Twitter, that he is retiring after spending parts of 10 seasons in the Major Leagues.

Kelvin Herrera | Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

“I want to thank everyone who has been a part of my career, starting with the Kansas City Royals organization who believed in this kid from Tenares, Dominican Republic and gave him a chance to do something meaningful with his life,” Herrera wrote in his announcement. “From ownership, to the Front Office, the staff, my teammates and last but not least, the fans, I owe you guys everything.”

Herrera goes on to thank both the Nationals and White Sox organizations for welcoming him as well. For the time being, Herrera says he plans to focus on his family and the next chapter of his life.

It’ll no doubt surprise some readers to see that Herrera is still just 31 years old. He’s been around the Majors for a decade due to the Royals calling on him for his Major League debut at just 21 years of age.

Herrera pitched in just two games late in that 2011 season, but the right-hander was an immediate success in 2012 — his first full season at the MLB level. In 84 1/3 innings, he worked to a pristine 2.35 ERA with 19 holds, three saves and a heater that averaged a blistering 98.5 mph. In a normal year, that overwhelming success would’ve no doubt garnered Rookie of the Year consideration, but 2012 happened to also be the rookie season for Mike Trout, Yoenis Cespedes and Yu Darvish, who commanded nearly every top-three vote on the ballot that year.

Even without any Rookie of the Year love, Herrera had established himself as a dominant late-inning arm in short order, and that’s the exact role he’d over the next half decade as a steady presence at the back of some elite Kansas City bullpens. From 2012-16, Herrera pitched 354 1/3 regular-season innings with the Royals and notched a collective 2.57 ERA with 106 holds and 17 saves.

The bullpen was in many ways the backbone of the Royals’ back-to-back World Series runs in 2014-15, and Herrera joined teammates Wade Davis, Greg Holland and (in 2015) Ryan Madson in forming a juggernaut late-inning group that gave opposing lineups absolute fits. Each of Herrera, Davis and Holland posted ERAs south of 1.50 and appeared in at least 65 games during the 2014 season. Herrera was as untouchable during the postseason as he was in the regular season, combining for 28 2/3 innings of 1.26 ERA ball in his playoff career.

With the Royals out of contention during Herrera’s final year of club control in 2018, they made the decision to trade him to the Nationals for a package of young players including Kelvin Gutierrez, Blake Perkins and Yohanse Morel. Herrera was injured for part of his time with the Nats, going down with a Lisfranc tear in his foot, but he gave them 18 1/3 innings of 4.34 ERA ball before reaching free agency and signing a two-year pact with the White Sox. Things didn’t pan out in Chicago, as Herrera was tagged for 39 runs in just 53 2/3 innings across his two seasons there.

Herrera’s peak was brief but absolutely dominant, and he’ll go down in Royals lore as an absolutely vital member of a bullpen that fueled a baseball renaissance in Kansas City and brought home the club’s first title in three decades. He’ll hang up the spikes with a career 3.21 ERA, 119 holds, 61 saves and 510 strikeouts in 513 2/3 innings of regular-season work — plus the aforementioned sterling postseason track record. Best wishes to Herrera and his family in whatever the future holds.

Braves Sign Terrance Gore To Minor League Deal

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The Braves have agreed to a minor league deal with outfielder Terrance Gore, as first indicated on the Triple-A transactions log at MLB.com. Gore is represented by the L. Warner Companies.

Gore, 29, appeared in two games with the Dodgers in 2020 and played in 37 games with the Royals a year prior. He’s best known for the blistering speed that has made him such a valuable weapon off the bench for the Royals, Cubs and Dodgers during playoff drives and in the postseason itself.

Gore has appeared in 102 Major League games but has only 77 plate appearances due to his heavy use as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement. In that brief sample of work at the plate, he’s a .224/.325/.284 hitter. Despite the lack of plate appearances, he’s racked up 40 stolen bases in the big leagues and another five in postseason play (despite only having two actual playoff plate appearances to his name).

Gore won’t be in big league camp with the Braves, but he’ll give them some elite speed to stash in Triple-A, where he’s a career .213/.307/.269 hitter in 492 plate appearances. During that 2019 season, Statcast measured Gore’s average sprint speed at a whopping 29.9 feet per second, tying him for ninth-best among 568 Major Leaguers.

Diamondbacks Designate Travis Bergen, Keury Mella For Assignment

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The Diamondbacks have designated left-hander Travis Bergen and right-hander Keury Mella for assignment, per a club announcement. Their roster spots will go to right-hander Tyler Clippard, whose previously reported one-year deal is now official, and to right-hander Luis Frias, who has been reinstated from the Covid-19 list.

Bergen, 27, was acquired from the Blue Jays last summer in the trade that sent Robbie Ray to Toronto. He tossed 6 2/3 innings with the Snakes and yielded just three runs, though he also issued eight walks in that brief time. Bergen, a former Rule 5 pick, has pitched 28 innings in the Majors with three different clubs, logging a combined 4.82 ERA with a 24 percent strikeout rate and an unsightly 14.9 percent walk rate.

It’s surely a disappointing outcome for the D-backs to ultimately receive little in the way of a return for one of the organization’s better arms in recent years. But Ray struggled immensely with Arizona in 2020, and his $9.43MM salary (prorated to about $3.4MM in 2020) only further weighed down his trade value. The Blue Jays did take on the majority of the $1.42MM that remained on Ray’s contract at the time of the trade.

Mella, also 27, signed a minor league deal with the D-backs last offseason and was called up for 10 innings of relief. He allowed just two runs in that time and struck out 10 of the 42 hitters he faced (23.8 percent) while walking just three (7.1 percent). Mella doesn’t have much of a track record at the MLB level otherwise, however. His only other big league work came with the Reds from 2017-19, during which time he allowed 15 runs in 17 innings of work.

Mella was at one point considered to be one of the better prospects in both the Giants and the Reds organizations. He and Adam Duvall were packaged together by the Giants in the trade that brought Mike Leake to San Francisco at the 2015 trade deadline.

The Diamondbacks will have a week to trade both pitchers or attempt to pass them through outright waivers. Mella is out of minor league options, while Bergen has multiple option years remaining. If either passes through waivers unclaimed, they can be retained by the D-backs and returned to Major League camp as non-roster invitees.

Cubs To Re-Sign Ryan Tepera

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10:15am: Tepera can earn an additional $800K via performance incentives and $150K via active roster bonuses, MLBTR has learned. The deal can max out at $1.75MM.

9:45am: Tepera is guaranteed $800K on the deal, tweets NBC Sports Chicago’s Gordon Wittenmyer. The deal is still pending a physical.

9:25am: The Cubs have reached an agreement to re-sign free agent right-hander Ryan Tepera, reports MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (via Twitter). It’s a Major League deal, per the report. Chicago non-tendered Tepera earlier in the winter rather than pay him a raise via arbitration, but he’ll now return for a second season on a new deal. Tepera is represented by All Bases Covered Sports Management.

Tepera, 33, was a regular in the Blue Jays’ bullpen from 2015-19 before being non-tendered and latching on with the Cubs last offseason. Many have had fun with the fact that Tepera received a lone tenth-place MVP vote, and while that was surely unexpected, the righty did give Chicago a fairly strong season. Through 20 2/3 innings of relief, Tepera turned in a 3.92 ERA (3.51 SIERA, 3.34 FIP) with a career-high 34.8 percent strikeout rate and a 13.5 percent walk rate that he’ll want to curb in 2021.

This makes three Major League additions to for the Cubs’ bullpen this month, as the club has also signed righty Brandon Workman and lefty Andrew Chafin to help fortify the relief corps. It’s still a shaky looking group that lacks proven depth, but Tepera unequivocally gives them another solid option. He’s tallied 236 innings as a Major Leaguer and logged a combined 3.66 ERA with a 24 percent strikeout rate and a 9.1 percent walk rate. That alone makes him a nice add for the Cubs, but if he can maintain last year’s huge boost in strikeouts while returning closer to that career walk rate, he’d be a substantial upgrade.

Tepera has five-plus years of Major League service time, so unlike last year when the Cubs signed him, they won’t have the option to keep him through arbitration this coming offseason. He’ll be a free agent at season’s end and return to the open market. That’s also true of Workman, Chafin, Dan Winkler and Craig Kimbrel — Chafin and Kimbrel have options that aren’t likely to come into play — so the Cubs will once again have some work to do to fill out their bullpen next winter.

Blue Jays, Tommy Milone Agree To Minors Deal

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The Blue Jays have agreed to a minor league contract with free-agent left-hander Tommy Milone, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com tweets. The deal includes an invitation to major league spring training.

Milone has garnered a significant amount of big league experience with several teams since he first came into MLB in 2011 as a National. Although he has only averaged 87 mph-plus on his fastball, Milone has hung around to make 183 appearances (145 starts) and total 913 2/3 innings of 4.56 ERA/4.28 pitching.

The 34-year-old divided last season between the Orioles and Braves, and though he put up some of the finest strikeout and walk percentages of his career (22.1 and 3.3, respectively), opposing offenses victimized him. Milone ultimately surrendered 29 earned runs and 55 hits (including nine homers) across 39 innings. That amounted to an unsightly 6.69 ERA, though Milone did notch a much more respectable 4.12 SIERA.

All nine of Milone’s appearances last year came as a starter, and he could now at least push for a depth role in Toronto’s rotation. The team’s slated to enter the season with Nate Pearson, Robbie Ray, Tanner Roark and Steven Matz complementing Hyun Jin Ryu in its starting five.

Mets, Caleb Joseph Agree To Deal

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The Mets have agreed to a deal with free-agent catcher Caleb Joseph, MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reports (via Twitter). It’s a split contract, per Morosi, which would register as a bit of a surprise given that such a deal would place him on the 40-man roster (albeit with separate rates of pay in the Majors versus in Triple-A). Barstool’s Eric Arditti first suggested the two sides had reached a deal last night (Twitter link).

Joseph, 34, spent the 2020 season with the Blue Jays organization but was on the taxi squad for most of the season. He did log three games in the big leagues and go 1-for-8 — his long hit of the season standing as a home run.

The vast majority of Joseph’s career has come in an Orioles uniform. The former seventh-round pick made his big league debut with Baltimore back in 2014 and spent time as a backup with them each year until 2018. Joseph, who also had a brief stint with the 2019 D-backs, is a career .222/.270/.351 hitter in 1367 plate appearances.

Clearly, Joseph has never been a huge threat at the plate, but he’s thwarted 31 percent of stolen-base attempts against him over parts of seven big league seasons and is generally regarded as above-average with regard to pitch framing. He’s also a .256/.311/.393 hitter in his career at Triple-A, although that’s a sample of just 489 plate appearances. Adding Joseph will help the Mets to replace some of the depth lost when they designated Ali Sanchez for assignment earlier this month and subsequently traded him to the Cardinals.

Angels Acquire Jack Mayfield, Designate Robel Garcia

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The Angels announced Thursday that they’ve acquired infielder Jack Mayfield from the Braves in exchange for cash. Fellow infielder Robel Garcia was designated for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot. Atlanta designated Mayfield for assignment yesterday.

Mayfield, 30, is something of a familiar face for the Angels, as his lone big league experience has come over the past couple seasons with the division-rival Astros. He landed with Atlanta earlier in the offseason after being designated for assignment in Houston. New Angels general manager Perry Minasian previously worked with the Braves as an assistant GM under Alex Anthopoulos, so it seems likely that both Anthopoulos and Minasian were fans of Mayfield’s versatility and glovework during their time together in Atlanta.

The Astros gave Mayfield 112 Major League plate appearances across the past two seasons, but the resulting .170/.198/.283 batting line was obviously rather underwhelming. It’s a tiny sample of work, however, and Mayfield’s career .268/.325/.472 slash in parts of four Triple-A seasons (1224 plate appearances) creates some more reason for optimism.

With the Astros, Mayfield  served as a right-handed-hitting backup at second base, shortstop and third base, grading well defensively at each position. He also still has minor league options remaining, making him a possible Triple-A stash for an Angels club that looks quite strong defensively with Anthony Rendon, Jose Iglesias and David Fletcher lined up around the infield.

Garcia, 27, has gone from the Cubs to the Reds to the Mets to the Angels on waivers since last summer. He’s an interesting story, having washed out of affiliated ball for about four years before resurfacing with a pro club in Italy back in 2019. He caught the Cubs’ attention while playing in Europe and, after signing a minor league deal with Chicago, skyrocketed through their system while showing light-tower power but a huge susceptibility to strikeouts.

In 98 minor league games with the Cubs in ’19, Garcia posted a monstrous .284/.369/.586 slash with 27 home runs in 388 plate appearances. The power was clear to see, and it earned him a ticket to the big leagues just months after he’d been playing in Italy. The Cubs gave him 80 plate appearances at the MLB level, and he punched out in 35 of them, highlighting his contact issues. However, while Garcia only hit .208 with a .275 on-base percentage, he also slugged .500 on the strength of five homers, two doubles and two triples in that brief 80-plate appearance cup of coffee.

The fact that he’s been passed around the league this much already shows that many clubs are intrigued by the power but wary enough of the strikeouts that they can’t commit to a lasting 40-man spot. He does have minor league options remaining, so it’s possible he’ll land with yet another club after his latest DFA. The Angels have a week to trade him or try to pass him through outright waivers.

Giants Sign Jeremy Walker

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The Giants have signed right-hander Jeremy Walker, he announced Wednesday on Instagram (h/t: Mark W. Sanchez of KNBR). It’s presumably a minor league contract for Walker, whom the Braves released Feb. 12.

Walker was a 2016 fifth-round pick of the Braves who made his major league debut with the team in 2019, when he put up 9 1/3 innings of two-run ball with six strikeouts, four walks and a 57.1 percent groundball rate. He wasn’t able to follow up on that solid performance last year, though, owing in part to a shoulder impingement that sidelined him for 2020.

At the minor league level, Walker has also kept runs off the board while inducing plenty of grounders and limiting walks. In 2019, for instance, he recorded a 2.88 ERA with more than a strikeout per inning and a little over one walk per nine across 81 1/3 frames between Double-A and Triple-A ball. Based on Walker’s production as a pro, he seems like a worthwhile buy-low addition for the Giants.

Pirates Acquire Dustin Fowler From Athletics

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5:59pm: The teams have announced the trade. To make room for Fowler on their 40-man roster, the Pirates placed southpaw Austin Davis on the 60-day injured list with a left elbow sprain.

4:28pm: The Pirates have acquired outfielder Dustin Fowler from the Athletics for cash considerations, according to Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic. Fowler spent a brief time in limbo after the A’s designated him for assignment Monday.

Pittsburgh will be the third big league organization for the 26-year-old Fowler, who began as an 18th-round pick of the Yankees in 2013. Fowler performed well as a minor leaguer with the Yankees and made his major league debut with the team in June 2017, but he suffered a brutal knee injury in his first game and never donned their uniform again. The Yankees wound up trading Fowler to the A’s a month later in the teams’ deal centering on right-hander Sonny Gray.

Fowler ranked as Baseball America’s 88th-best prospect in 2018, and he rebounded from his injury that year in Triple-A, where he batted .341/.364/.520 with four home runs in 13 stolen bases across 239 plate appearances. While Fowler also earned a good amount of playing time in Oakland that season, he slumped to a .224/.256/.354 line with six homers and a half-dozen steals in 203 PA and hasn’t appeared in the majors since. Fowler slashed .277/.333/.477 with 25 homers and 12 stolen bags over 606 tries during the most recent Triple-A campaign in 2019.

Although Fowler’s career hasn’t gone according to plan so far, there’s no real harm in taking a chance on his potential from the Pirates’ standpoint. Fowler may have a legitimate chance to earn a roster spot with outfielder-needy Pittsburgh, but with no minor league options remaining, the club won’t be able to send him down without potentially losing him.

Red Sox Designate Marcus Walden

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The Red Sox have designated right-hander Marcus Walden for assignment, Steve Hewitt of the Boston Herald tweets. They did so to make room for the signing of utilityman Marwin Gonzalez, who’s now officially part of the team.

Walden, formerly with the Blue Jays, Athletics and Twins, signed with the Red Sox before 2017 and broke into the bigs with the club a year later. He was an effective piece of Boston’s bullpen from 2018-19 – a 92 2/3-inning run in which he averaged around 94 mph on his fastball, pitched to a 3.79 ERA/3.91 SIERA, forced grounders at a 54.3 percent clip, and logged strikeout and walk rates of 23.1 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively.

Walden amassed a whopping 78 innings in 2019, so the Red Sox were likely expecting another workhorse effort in last year’s truncated campaign. Instead, though, the 32-year-old threw a mere 13 1/3 frames over 15 appearances, in which he posted a horrific 9.45 ERA/5.67 SIERA with a 14.1 percent strikeout rate and a 12.7 percent walk rate. A dip in velocity (92.7 mph average fastball) factored into his decline.

As poorly as he pitched last year, Walden is due to earn a league-minimum salary this season – his final pre-arb campaign – and he has two minor league options remaining. It’s conceivable another team will take a chance on him in hopes that he’ll bounce back to his 2018-19 form.

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