Giants To Re-Sign Pablo Sandoval
The Giants have reached a deal to bring third baseman Pablo Sandoval back to the organization, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. It’ll be a minor league arrangement with a $2MM base salary in the event that Sandoval makes the club. Sandoval, a Beverly Hills Sports Council client, can also earn an additional $750K via incentive pay.
Sandoval, 33, has spent the past two and a half seasons back with the Giants after being cut loose by the Red Sox at the halfway point of an ill-fated $95MM contract. While he hasn’t been the hitter he was at his peak during the Giants’ even-year dynasty, he turned in a quality .268/.313/.507 slash with 14 long balls in a part-time role in 2019. His season, however, came to an early end at the beginning of September with the revelation that he required Tommy John surgery. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area tweets that Sandoval is ahead of schedule in his rehab from that procedure.
With Evan Longoria still locked in as the everyday third baseman in San Francisco, another backup role seems likely for Sandoval. He’s surely amenable to whatever role will keep him in the Bay Area, though, as the beloved Giants fan favorite recently voiced his desire to retire as a Giant. He’d presumably step into a larger role in the event of a Longoria injury and will otherwise see occasional time at first base and perhaps even at second base in emergency situation after logging seven innings there in 2019.
Nationals Acquire Ryne Harper
The Nationals announced today that they have acquired righty Ryne Harper from the Twins. Young righty Hunter McMahon goes to Minnesota in return.
This Harper should not be confused with former Nats’ minor-leaguer Bryan Harper, who’s also a 30-year-old right-hander. The Nationals’ incoming hurler was acquired after he was designated for assignment recently by the Twins.
The Nationals obviously faced some competition to bring in Harper, as they parted with a recent ninth-round draft pick to get him. McMahon, 21, signed an at-slot deal to join the D.C. farm system. He impressed in his first 12 2/3 professional innings, racking up an 18:2 K/BB ratio and allowing just one earned run in the low minors.
It seems there’s a good chance we’ll see another Harper uniform in D.C. While Bryan never made it past Triple-A, big brother Bryce was rather a notable player with the team for a stretch.
The Nats’ newest Harper isn’t exactly a high-ceiling player but could be quite a useful asset. He reached the bigs for the first time in 2019, spinning 54 1/3 innings of 3.81 ERA ball with 8.3 K/9, 1.7 BB/9, and 1.16 HR/9 while leaning on his excellent control and heavily utilized breaking ball. If he can repeat something along those lines, the still-optionable Harper would be well worth his non-guaranteed, league-minimum salary.
As for McMahon, the 21-year-old was the Nationals’ ninth-round pick just this past summer in the 2019 draft. The Texas State product allowed one run in 12 2/3 innings of relief with an 18-to-2 K/BB ratio in his brief professional debut.
Brewers To Sign David Phelps
The Brewers have agreed to a one-year deal with free agent righty David Phelps, per Ken Rosenthal and Patrick Mooney of The Athletic (via Twitter). It’ll promise him $1.5MM and comes with a club option for another season, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand adds (Twitter link).
The deal is loaded with other earning potential as well. Phelps will play for a $1.25MM salary in 2020 but can tack on $1.9MM in incentives. The option is priced at $4.5MM, with a $250K buyout. If Phelps is picked up, there’s another $1.9MM in performance milestones available in 2021.
Phelps, 33, returned from Tommy John surgery in 2019 and showed rather well. He split time between the Blue Jays and Cubs, turning in 34 1/3 frames of 3.41 ERA ball with a 36:17 K/BB ratio. That also enabled him to trigger a clause in his contract that boosted the price of his option year to $5MM, leading the Cubs to decline and send Phelps back onto the market.
The Brewers obviously hope that Phelps can continue to make strides now that he has one post-TJ campaign under his belt. Phelps lost nearly two miles per hour on his average fastball between seasons, so it’d be nice to see some velo return. On a related note, he also managed only a 7.8% swinging-strike rate. But Phelps did show above-average fastball and curveball spin rates, which helped him limit the hard contact allowed against both of those offerings.
Phelps has at times functioned as a high-leverage setup man, but he’ll likely be in more of a middle innings role as part of a deep Milwaukee ‘pen. Josh Hader should have the closer’s role locked down, and Corey Knebel, returning from Tommy John surgery, should give manager Craig Counsell a similarly dominant late-inning option (health permitting).
Former starters Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta could both factor into the mix as well, and the Brew Crew did add Ray Black and his triple-digit fastball prior to the 2019 non-waiver deadline. Lefties Alex Claudio and Brent Suter, too, should play key roles in 2020. Phelps will bring an experienced arm that has worked as a long man and a starter in addition to his time as a setup man, which should give the Brewers flexibility in terms of how they prefer to align their relief troops.
Diamondbacks Sign John Hicks
The Diamondbacks’ top affiliate announced recently that the organization has added catcher John Hicks on a minor-league deal. He’ll participated in the MLB side of camp this spring.
Hicks was non-tendered by the Tigers, who preferred not to pay a projected $1.7MM salary. The 30-year-old is coming off of his worst showing in the majors. In addition to carrying an ugly .210/.240/.379 batting line over 333 plate appearances, Hicks did not fare well in the framing department.
There’s reason to think that Hicks can rebound to some extent from that effort. He was close to a league-average offensive performer over the prior two seasons, slashing .262/.317/.416 in 502 cumulative plate appearances. And he had previously received roughly average marks in framing, blocking, and controlling the running game.
It’s a good spot for Hicks to land. The Snakes have quite often carried three catchers since GM Mike Hazen and manager Torey Lovullo rolled into town. That’ll be easier than ever with a 26th roster spot to work with. Carson Kelly and Stephen Vogt are the clear top two options, with youngster Daulton Varsho coming quickly. But there’s a path for Hicks to crack the MLB roster out of camp or at least to serve as a top depth option.
Minor Transactions: 1/28/20
A couple minor transactions from around the game…
- The Athletics have signed utilityman Ryan Court to a minor league contract, Alex Coffey of The Athletic tweets. A 23rd-round pick of the Diamondbacks in 2011, the 31-year-old Court made his MLB debut with one of the A’s division rivals, the Mariners, last season. Court had difficulty over that 44-plate appearance showing, hitting .208/.240/.375 with 11 strikeouts. On the other hand, Court owns a much more productive .262/.355/.423 line in 1,187 PA at the Triple-A level, where he has seen action with the M’s, Red Sox and Cubs organizations dating back to 2016.
- Former Mariners outfielder/infielder Stefen Romero won’t be returning to the bigs (or even Triple-A ball) in 2020. Romero has signed with the Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball, Jim Allen reports. This season will be the fourth in a row in Japan for the 31-year-old Romero, who batted .268/.332/.494 with 69 homers in 1,256 trips to the plate as a member of the Orix Buffaloes from 2017-19.
Tony Barnette Retires
Former major league reliever Tony Barnette is calling it a career. “I’ve thrown my last pitch,” the right-hander declared Tuesday on Instagram.
It’s almost a year to the day the Cubs signed Barnette to a $750K guarantee on Feb. 1, 2019. The low-risk move didn’t work out for either side, though, as shoulder issues stopped Barnette from pitching until late June. Once Barnette did take the hill with the Cubs, he made just two appearances and threw a meager 1 1/3 innings before going on the restricted list July 1 for family reasons. The Cubs had a $3MM option on the 36-year-old for 2020, but they made the predictable decision to decline it in November.
Prior to joining the Cubs, Barnette was at times a highly successful bullpen option with the Rangers. As a rookie in 2016, Barnette pitched to a sterling 2.09 ERA across 60 1/3 innings. That was the beginning of an up-and-down Texas tenure for Barnette, who struggled in 2017 but posted great numbers the next season; however, shoulder problems cut him down that year and held him to 26 1/3 innings.
Of course, it would be unfair to Barnette to ignore the overseas success he enjoyed during his professional baseball career. He was a 10th-round pick of the Diamondbacks in 2006 who, after spending a few years in the minors, joined the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball in advance of the 2010 season. Barnette was terrific in Japan, where he posted a 3.58 ERA across 316 1/3 innings, logged 9.6 K/9 against 3.2 BB/9 and amassed 97 saves in six seasons before returning stateside.
Barnette only picked up two saves in the majors, but he’ll still end his MLB career with solid numbers – a 3.53 ERA with 8.17 K/9 and 2.66 BB/9 in 145 1/3 frames. MLBTR wishes him the best in retirement.
Royals, Greg Holland Agree To Minor League Deal
8:24pm: Holland can earn $1.25MM upon making the Royals’ roster with another $1.125MM available via incentive pay, tweets Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com.
7:53pm: The Royals have agreed to a minor league contract with right-hander Greg Holland, tweets Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. He’ll be in Major League camp this spring and look to secure a spot in the team’s bullpen. The agreement marks a reunion between the two sides, as Holland was a 2007 draftee of the Royals and starred in their bullpen from 2011-15 before undergoing Tommy John surgery.
Holland’s return from Tommy John surgery in 2017 proved to be a success, as he anchored the bullpen for a Rockies club that secured an NL Wild Card playoff berth and paced the senior circuit in both games finished (58) and saves (41). Holland logged a 3.61 ERA and averaged 11 punchouts per nine innings that year, but he showed some worrying red flags late in the summer and struggled to find the type of lucrative deal he’d hoped in free agency.
The right-hander eventually signed an Opening Day deal with the Cardinals (where current Royals skipper Mike Matheny was managing at the time), locking in a $14MM salary for the 2018 campaign. Holland sprinted through a minor league tuneup and was in the big leagues just nine days after signing, and the veteran closer never seemed to find his footing. He posted a disastrous 7.92 ERA in 25 innings as a Cardinal before being released in a summer bullpen shakeup … only to latch on with the Nationals and rattle off 21 1/3 innings of 0.82 ERA ball. A once-again resurgent Holland landed a one-year deal with the Diamondbacks last winter and posted a 4.54 ERA with 10.3 K/9 against an unpalatable 6.1 BB/9 before being released in August.
Kansas City is clearly hoping that the reunion will yield dividends, although five full seasons have elapsed since the now-34-year-old Holland turned in a full, dominant season of relief work. That said, the Royals’ bullpen is hardly a collection of juggernaut relievers, either. Starter-turned-closer Ian Kennedy is again in line for ninth-inning duties, but the entire setup is unproven. Hard-throwing Scott Barlow showed flashes of brilliance in 2019 but lacked consistency. Right-hander Kevin McCarthy was a durable middle man but struggled to miss bats. Southpaw Tim Hill has had mixed results in his two big league seasons but is coming off a quality ’19 campaign.
Other options in the K.C. ‘pen include injury reclamation Jesse Hahn, waiver claim Randy Rosario, injury-prone former first rounder Kyle Zimmer and Rule 5 pick Stephen Woods. Suffice it to say, there’s plenty of room for Holland (and others) to force his way into the mix if he can impress Royals decision-makers this spring. It’s quite arguable, in fact, that the Royals should’ve done more to address such an uncertain unit this winter, although much of the relief market has already been picked clean.
Orioles To Sign Wade LeBlanc
The Orioles have agreed to a minor league contract with veteran left-hander Wade LeBlanc, tweets ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He’ll be in Major League camp during Spring Training and would stand to earn an $800K base salary upon cracking the MLB roster.
Baltimore represents a prime location for a 35-year-old veteran on this type of contract to make a legitimate bid for a roster spot. The Orioles have already traded away Dylan Bundy this winter, leaving their rotation with a composition of John Means, Alex Cobb (health permitting) and journeyman Asher Wojciechowski. The Orioles’ only other rotation moves this winter have been to sign former Twins prospect Kohl Stewart to a big league deal and to select righty Brandon Bailey from GM Mike Elias’ former Astros organization in the Rule 5 Draft. Other internal candidates for starting gigs include right-hander David Hess, who struggled substantially in 2019, and left-hander Keegan Akin, who has yet to make his MLB debut.
It’s the sort of woeful rotation mix one would expect from an organization that is more intent on securing the first overall pick in the 2021 draft than on winning games in the upcoming season. And while that may not be good news for O’s fans, it does provide an avenue for a veteran like LeBlanc to seek out a bounceback opportunity.
LeBlanc was harmed as much as any starter in the game with last year’s juiced ball, as he yielded a staggering 2.1 homers per nine innings pitched and saw his ERA balloon by nearly two full runs over its 2018 levels (5.71 in ’19 versus 3.72 in ’18). In spite of the poor bottom-line run prevention (or lack thereof), the veteran southpaw still maintained similar K/BB tendencies to the ones he showed in a solid three-year stretch that preceded the 2019 season.
From 2016-18, LeBlanc tossed 292 innings (35 starts, 66 relief appearances) and pitched to a 3.91 ERA with 7.2 K/9, 2.1 BB/9 and 1.4 HR/9 between the Mariners and the Pirates. His soft-tossing arsenal will face a tough task in the American League East if he does land on the big league roster, as he’ll be moving from the spacious T-Mobile Park and a division that generally skews a bit more toward the pitcher-friendly side of things to the cozier Camden Yards and hitter-friendly AL East. The lack of competition for a starting spot in Baltimore, though, should give LeBlanc a legitimate chance to land a roster spot this spring.
Twins Announce Several Minor League Signings
The Twins organization has agreed to seven more minor league deals with free agents, Triple-A Rochester director of communications Nate Rowan announced Tuesday. Right-handers Juan Minaya, Austin D. Adams, Casey Lawrence, Parker Bridwell, Alec Asher and Joey Krehbiel all agreed to deals with the Twins, as did infielder Calten Daal.
Minaya, 29, spent the past four seasons with the division-rival White Sox and logged significant innings in each of the past three. From 2017-19, Minaya pitched to a 3.89 ERA (4.19 FIP) with 10.4 K/9, 4.7 BB/9 and 1.1 HR/9 in 118 innings of relief for the South Siders. His average heater was down about a mile per hour in 2019, sitting at 93.4 mph, but Minaya has a steady track record of missing bats while displaying sub-par control.
Adams, 33, made a pair of appearances with the Twins and tallied 14 frames with the Tigers but allowed 13 runs in 16 2/3 frames overall. He struggled in Triple-A as well, but this will be his third stint in the Twins organization, so the club’s decision-makers clearly see something they feel they can work with even if his recent results have been poor.
Bridwell, 28, pitched 121 innings of 3.64 ERA ball with the 2017 Angels, although his secondary numbers never really supported that mark. The righty averaged just 5.4 K/9 against 2.2 BB/9 with an elevated 1.41 HR/9 rate and 38.1 percent ground-ball rate in ’17, causing FIP (4.84), xFIP (5.07) and SIERA (5.06) to view him in a less favorable light. Bridwell has an ERA north of 8.00 in a pair of injury-shortened Triple-A seasons since that time.
The 32-year-old Lawrence had a rough season in Japan in 2019 and returns to affiliated ball after just one year overseas. He spent 2017-18 in Seattle, where he soaked up 78 2/3 innings in a long relief/spot-starting role but limped to a 6.64 ERA along the way. Lawrence does have a respectable 3.73 ERA with 7.0 K/9 against 1.7 BB/9 in 262 2/3 Triple-A innings in his career.
Asher has just three MLB innings since 2017 and, in total, has a 5.42 ERA in 119 2/3 innings between the Phillies, Orioles and Brewers. The former Rangers prospect went to the Phils as part of the Cole Hamels deal several years ago, but he’s yet to find success in the bigs while serving mostly as a fifth starter/long reliever. The 28-year-old spent most of 2019 with the Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks, working to a 3.12 ERA in 37 1/3 frames.
Krehbiel, meanwhile, has just three big league innings to his name but has averaged just under 11 strikeouts per nine innings in his minor league career. Daal, 26, is a middle infielder who never cracked the Majors after seven seasons in the Reds organization. He’s consistently posted solid batting averages but limited on-base percentages and well below-average power numbers.
Cubs Sign Steven Souza Jr.
6:04pm: The Cubs have formally announced the signing.
Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times tweets that he can earn the following incentives: $50K for reaching 200 plate appearances, $75K at 250 PAs, $125K at 300 PAs, $150K at 350 PAs and $200K for reaching each of 400, 450 and 500 PAs. Souza will also earn $200K for every 30th day on the active 26-man roster — up through 150 days.
3:50pm: The Cubs have finalized their one-year, Major League contract with free agent outfielder Steven Souza Jr., per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (Twitter link). The two sides were first reported to be nearing an agreement on Friday. Souza, who is represented by ACES, will receive a $1MM base salary and can earn another $2MM via incentives, Jordan Bastian of MLB.com tweets. The team has yet to formally announce the signing.
It’s sure to be a low-cost deal for the Cubs, as Souza missed the entire 2019 season due to a devastating knee injury and hasn’t enjoyed a full, healthy year since a terrific 2017 campaign with the Rays. That year saw Souza turn in a .239/.351/.459 slash with career-highs in home runs (30), doubles (21), stolen bases (16) and plate appearances (617). Souza was traded to the Diamondbacks that offseason and immediately hit by injuries — namely a pectoral tear that wiped out more than half of his season and limited him to a .220/.309/.369 slash when on the field.
Bringing Souza into the fray gives the Cubs another option in what already looked like a somewhat crowded outfield mix. Kyle Schwarber, Albert Almora Jr., Jason Heyward and Ian Happ are already lined up to share playing time as is. Third baseman Kris Bryant, too, has seen work in the outfield corners in each of the past five seasons. There are already plenty of question marks surrounding a potential trade involving Bryant — first and foremost centering around an ongoing service time grievance — and bringing another corner outfielder onto the roster will only spark some further speculation about other dealings.
The Souza pickup is the latest in a string of budget-friendly acquisitions from a Cubs front office that has been handcuffed both by the uncertainty surrounding Bryant’s status and by payroll constraints set forth by the Ricketts family ownership group. Chicago reportedly agreed to a tiny $850K deal with reliever Jeremy Jeffress earlier today and has otherwise made a string of minor league signings or non-guaranteed MLB deals (Dan Winkler, Ryan Tepera).