Red Sox Acquire Colten Brewer
3:46pm: Boston has announced the deal.
3:27pm: The agreement is now in place, Rosenthal adds on Twitter.
12:55pm: Evan Drellich of NBC Sports Boston reports (via Twitter) that the Red Sox will send minor league infielder Esteban Quiroz to San Diego in exchange for Brewer.
Quiroz, 27 in February, has spent the bulk of his career playing for los Tigres de Quintana Roo in the Mexican League but signed with the Red Sox in 2017 for his first season of affiliated ball. He hit .299/.413/.598 with seven homers in 104 plate appearances against younger competition in Double-A last year. He also made a strong impression in the Arizona Fall League, hitting .267/.452/.511 with a pair of homers, three doubles and a triple in 62 PAs. He’s played second base, shortstop and third base extensively in his career in Mexico, but the Red Sox deployed him solely as a second baseman.
12:29pm: The Red Sox are nearing an agreement to acquire right-hander Colten Brewer from the Padres, tweets Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. A minor leaguer who doesn’t need to be added to the Padres’ 40-man roster to be protected before today’s Rule 5 deadline will go back in return.
It’s a minor swap designed to give the Padres some roster flexibility before 8pm ET tonight — the deadline for teams to protect players from selection in next month’s Rule 5 Draft. Brewer, a fourth-round pick of the Pirates in 2011, has just 9 2/3 innings of big league experience, all of which came with the Padres in 2018. He was tagged for six earned runs on 15 hits and seven walks with 10 strikeouts in that time, but he was much better in Triple-A El Paso. Despite the hitter-friendly nature of his home environment in Triple-A, Brewer posted a 3.75 ERA with more impressive marks of 11.8 K/9 against 2.8 BB/9 with a 55.8 percent grounder rate in 48 innings of relief.
Brewer only recently turned 26 and has two minor league option years remaining, so he’ll give the Red Sox some bullpen depth that can be shuttled back and forth between Boston and Pawtucket next season. For the Padres, the swap will open a spot on what’s currently a full 40-man roster. It’s one of multiple trades they could make today, as Rosenthal also noted that right-hander Rowan Wick could be on the move soon (in a separate deal).
Cubs Claim Ian Clarkin
The Cubs announced that they’ve claimed left-hander Ian Clarkin off waivers from the White Sox. The former first-round pick has yet to make his big league debut.
Clarkin, 24 in February, was the No. 33 pick by the Yankees in the 2013 draft but went from the Yanks to the Sox in the 2017 David Robertson/Tommy Kahnle swap. The 2018 season was an ugly one for Clarkin, however, as he was hit hard in 68 Double-A innings. In 18 appearances (10 starts) at that level he posted a 4.98 ERA and averaged just 4.6 K/9 against 4.1 BB/9. The Cubs have a general need for left-handed depth in the bullpen and will look to tap into the potential that made Clarkin a first-rounder earlier this decade. It’s far from a guarantee that he’ll stick on their 40-man roster for the remainder of the winter, but if h does, he’ll be an optionable piece for the Cubs in 2019.
Braves, Ryan LaMarre Agree To Minor League Deal
The Braves are in agreement with outfielder Ryan LaMarre on a minor league contract, tweets MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo. The Octagon client will head to Spring Training and compete for a bench role after spending the 2018 campaign with the Twins and White Sox.
LaMarre, who turns 30 tomorrow, hit .279/.322/.382 in 180 plate appearances between Minnesota and Chicago, adding a pair of homers, 11 doubles and two stolen bases along the way. That offense, though, was buoyed by a .389 BABIP that looks ripe for regression. LaMarre also whiffed in nearly 30 percent of his plate appearances, further adding some reason for skepticism.
That said, the journeyman can handle all three outfield spots and does have a .268/.336/.389 slash in parts of six Triple-A seasons. He’ll head to camp and look to crack the roster as a reserve option for manager Brian Snitker.
Cardinals Designate Conner Greene, Derian Gonzalez For Assignment
The Cardinals announced a series of roster moves in advance of tonight’s deadline to set 40-man rosters before next month’s Rule 5 Draft. Lefty Genesis Cabrera, right-hander Ryan Helsley, outfielder Lane Thomas and infielder Ramon Urias have all had their contracts selected and been added to the 40-man roster. In order to clear the two spots necessary to accommodate that quartet, the Cards designated right-handers Conner Greene and Derian Gonzalez for assignment.
Greene, 23, was acquired alongside Dominic Leone in last offseason’s Randal Grichuk trade. The former seventh-round pick’s longstanding control issues didn’t improve in his lone season with the Cards, as Greene walked 63 batters in 88 innings between Double-A and Triple-A. As for the 23-year-old Gonzalez, he pitched to a 3.51 ERA with 8.6 K/9 and 4.1 BB.9 across three levels in 33 1/3 innings during an injury-shortened 2018 season.
The 22-year-old Cabrera was one of the key pieces acquired in the summer trade sending Tommy Pham to the Rays and was a lock to be added to the roster today, though he could still be a year away from contributing in the big leagues.. Helsley, 24, is a former fifth-round pick who’s posted impressive strikeout totals in the upper minors and likely isn’t far from a look in the Majors. Thomas, too, is an upper-minors piece who could emerge as an option in the relatively near future after hitting .264/.333/.489 between Double-A and Triple-A this past season. Urias, 24, hit .300/.356/.516 in 90 games between Double-A and Triple-A this past season.
Diamondbacks Outright Braden Shipley, Artie Lewicki
The D-backs announced today that they’ve assigned right-handers Braden Shipley and Artie Lewicki outright to Triple-A Reno after the pair cleared waivers. The moves bring their 40-man roster to a total of 33 players.
It’s a disappointing outcome for Shipley, whom Arizona drafted with the 15th overall selection back in 2013. The former University of Nevada-Reno standout has accumulated exactly 100 innings at the big league level over the past three seasons but been hit hard, posting a 5.49 ERA with just 64 strikeouts against 45 walks in that time. Beyond lackluster K/BB numbers, home runs have been an issue for Shipley, who has served up 19 long balls in those 100 innings.
Shipley will turn 27 later this offseason and could yet emerge as a viable MLB arm, but he’ll have to first rebuild some stock in the upper minors. He’s coming off a pair of poor seasons in Triple-A but had some success with the Aces in 2016, when he logged a 3.70 ERA and 3.75 FIP in 119 1/3 innings of work.
The 26-year-old Lewicki (27 in April) was claimed off waivers from the Tigers earlier this offseason. He won’t pitch in 2019 after undergoing Tommy John surgery late in the year. As noted at the time, it seemed unlikely that he’d last the entire winter on the 40-man roster because of that fact, but the D-backs have succeeded in removing him from the 40-man while retaining his rights, so he could be an option for them in 2020.
Lewicki has generally turned in quality results in the upper minors but has yet to have much success as a big leaguer. In 2018, he threw 38 1/3 innings of 4.89 ERA ball with 7.0 K/9, 3.3 BB/9, 0.93 HR/9 and a 40.3 percent ground-ball rate with the Tigers. However, he posted a 2.03 ERA with terrific K/BB numbers in Triple-A in 2017 and owns an overall 3.79 ERA with 8.5 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 in 92 2/3 innings at the top minor league level.
Nationals Sign Kurt Suzuki
Nov. 20: The Nationals have formally announced Suzuki’s two-year deal.
Nov. 19, 11:10am: Suzuki’s contract is a two-year, $10MM deal that’ll pay him $4MM in 2019 and $6MM in 2020, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets.
10:24am: The Nationals have agreed to a two-year contract with free-agent catcher Kurt Suzuki, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com (via Twitter). The deal is pending a physical. Suzuki is represented by the MVP Sports Group.
Long a sturdy option, the veteran Suzuki took his offensive game to new heights over the past couple of seasons, hitting at a .276/.341/.485 clip with 31 homers over the course of 697 plate appearances while sharing time with Tyler Flowers.
Unlike many players who experience a significant jump in power production, the 35-year-old Suzuki hasn’t simply “sold out” in terms of sacrificing his typically excellent contact rate for some additional pop. He’s fanned at just an 11.8 percent clip over the past two years — the ninth-lowest among all MLB hitters in that time (min. 600 plate appearances). Suzuki upped his hard-hit rate and homer-to-fly-ball ratio in significant fashion and will look to carry that improved production over to a return stint with the Nationals, for whom he played in 2012-13.
In Suzuki, the Nats will likely find an offensive upgrade over the production (or lack thereof) that they received from Matt Wieters over a previous two-year deal of his own. Getting some help behind the plate was imperative for the Nats, who saw Wieters and a slew of backup options combine to bat just .211/.290/.319 through 1259 plate appearances in 2017-18. Even with some regression in his bat — Nationals Park, notably, is not as hitter-friendly as SunTrust Park — Suzuki should be able to provide an uptick in offensive output at the position.
Defensively, Suzuki hasn’t generated the same level of results. His throwing improved with the Braves after a poor two-year stretch with Minnesota in that regard, but Suzuki’s 21.3 percent caught-stealing rate (25-for-117) over the past two seasons still checks in well below the league average of about 27.5 percent. To Suzuki’s credit, Baseball Prospectus has graded him among the best in the game at blocking pitches in the dirt over the past two seasons, but B-Pro has also rated his framing skills to be below-average in each season dating back to 2008.
It’s not yet clear if Suzuki will represent the Nationals’ sole addition at catcher. Solid as his bat was with the Braves, Suzuki averaged 85 games caught between the two seasons and hasn’t topped 100 games behind the dish since serving as the Twins’ primary backstop in 2015. Pedro Severino, Spencer Kieboom and Raudy Read represent the organization’s other three catching options on 40-man roster, and while any could conceivably serve as a backup to Suzuki, none has experienced big league success to date. Suzuki’s excellent production in 2017-18 should assure him of a prominent role in the Washington lineup, but the rest of the outfit still looks uncertain.
The addition of Suzuki is the third notable pickup in what has been an active offseason for Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo and his front office. The Nats have already acquired righty Kyle Barraclough from the Marlins in exchange for international bonus allotments, and Washington also rolled the dice on a one-year deal with former Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal, who’ll be returning from Tommy John surgery in 2019. Of course, the biggest question surrounding the Nats will be whether they retain former NL MVP Bryce Harper in free agency or if they let him sign with another organization. Certainly, the money promised to Suzuki on this new contract won’t stand as any real impediment to those efforts, but the Nats have holes to fill in the rotation and possibly at second base, as well.
As for the Braves, they won’t receive compensation for the loss of Suzuki, and they’ll now have to watch the former fan and clubhouse favorite suit up for one of their top division rivals. Atlanta already extended Flowers through the 2019 season, but it seems quite likely that they’ll be adding a catcher of some note to step up and handle a significant chunk — if not the vast majority — of playing time for the 2019 season.
Suzuki checked in 46th on MLBTR’s ranking of the Top 50 free agents this offseason, with an estimated two-year pact worth a total of $8MM. In our corresponding Free Agent Prediction Contest, just 3.87 percent of respondents correctly guessed that he’d return to the Nats.
Marlins Claim Julian Fernandez
The Marlins announced that they’ve claimed right-hander Julian Fernandez off waivers from the Giants. Their 40-man roster now has 36 players.
The Giants selected Fernandez, 22, out of the Rockies organization with the second pick in the 2017 Rule 5 Draft. However, the right-hander suffered a UCL tear in Spring Training and underwent Tommy John surgery in early April. He never pitched in a regular-season game for the Giants, instead spending the season on the 60-day disabled list.
Fernandez should be recovered early in the 2019 season, but he’ll retain his Rule 5 eligibility next season after spending the year on the disabled list. Miami will technically be able to give him a month-long run in the minors as an injury rehab stint, but after that he’d need to be called up and spend 90 days on the active roster or else be put through waivers and offered back to the Rockies. That makes him somewhat of a long shot to actually stick with the Marlins, though as a team that won’t be in the playoff picture next season, they’re the type of club that can afford to carry an intriguing arm of this nature.
In 58 innings with Class-A Asheville in 2017, Fernandez worked to a 3.26 ERA with 8.8 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and a 47.6 percent ground-ball rate. More than his numbers to date, however, the Marlins are betting on Fernandez’s huge velocity (as were the Giants). He’s been clocked in triple digits with his heater when healthy.
Adrian Beltre Retires
After a brilliant career that spanned parts of 21 seasons, Adrian Beltre announced today that he is retiring from baseball. Via a Rangers press release, Beltre has issued the following statement:
After careful consideration and many sleepless nights, I have made the decision to retire from what I’ve been doing my whole life, which is playing baseball, the game I love.
I have thought about it a lot and although I appreciate all the opportunities and everything that baseball has given me, it’s time to call it a career. I have enjoyed the privilege of playing professional baseball since I was 15 years old. I have been blessed to have played 21 seasons at the highest level in Major League Baseball.
I want to thank God, my amazing wife Sandra for your unwavering and unconditional love, support and understanding throughout my entire baseball career, my three awesome children, Cassie, A.J and Camila for being the best baseball kids, my parents, and my entire family for all your love and support.
I also want to thank my agents, Scott Boras, Mike Fiore and the entire Boras Corp. for always believing in my talent. A huge THANK YOU goes to the numerous teammates, managers, coaches, and staff members from the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and especially the Texas Rangers. These past eight seasons playing in a Rangers’ uniform have been the best of my career and were made possible thanks to Rangers’ owners Ray Davis, Bob Simpson, and Neil Leibman, General Manager Jon Daniels, Nolan Ryan, and the late Don Welke.
I also owe a huge part of my success in Texas to the amazing Rangers’ fans. You guys are the best!
I also have to acknowledge and thank Tommy Lasorda for believing in this young kid from the Dominican Republic when others thought I was too young to be called up to the Big Leagues.
To all my fans in the Dominican Republic, the United States and Latin America, my sincerest THANK YOU for your continuous support throughout my career. While I will forever cherish the memories from my time playing the greatest game on earth, I am excited to become a fulltime husband and father, and I am ready to take on the next chapter of my life.
It’s been one hell of a ride!
Muchas gracias,
Adrian Beltre
The march to Cooperstown now begins in earnest for Beltre, one of the greatest third basemen to ever play the game. Signed by the Dodgers out of Santo Domingo in 1994, Beltre debuted in the Majors as a 19-year-old just four years later and never looked back. While his first season didn’t yield quality results, Beltre improved greatly in his age-20 campaign and cemented himself as a star in the years to follow. Beltre ultimately accrued more than 20 years of Major League service time, spending at least five years with each of the Dodgers, Mariners and Rangers (in addition to one year with the Red Sox in 2010).
Already a highly regarded player in the first half of his career, Beltre is the rare player who actually improved with his age. While most players begin to fade in their early to mid-30s, Beltre seemingly won a staredown with Father Time. Incredibly, he’d never made an All-Star team prior to his 31st birthday, but he was named to four Midsummer Classic rosters over the final nine seasons of his career. After hitting a combined .270/.325/.453 with superlative defense from 1998-2009, Beltre exploded to hit .307/.358/.514 from 2010-18. Along that remarkable 21-year journey, his glovework scarcely deteriorated, making him one of the best all-around players in the game for the better part of two decades.
Beltre will retire as a career .286/.339/.480 hitter, with 477 home runs, 636 doubles, 38 triples and 121 stolen bases on his resume. He totaled 3166 hits as a Major Leaguer, scored 1524 runs and knocked in another 1707 runs. In addition to his four All-Star nods — which, in retrospect, was far too few — Beltre won four Silver Sluggers, five Gold Gloves and a pair of Platinum Gloves. Even that considerable amount of hardware feels light — particularly on the Gold Glove front, as Beltre is the runaway all-time leader in Defensive Runs Saved at any position since the stat was introduced in 2003. No one is even close to Beltre’s towering mark of 222, with Andrelton Simmons‘ 184 DRS currently sitting in a distant second place.
Beltre earned $219MM in one of the greatest careers we baseball fans will ever have the privilege to witness. Fangraphs tallies his career at 84 wins above replacement, while Baseball-Reference pegs him at a whopping 95.7 WAR. As surefire a Hall of Famer as one can find, Beltre will take his place among the game’s elite in five years once he’s eligible for the Hall of Fame ballot.
Yankees Acquire James Paxton
The Yankees have officially struck a deal to acquire lefty James Paxton from the Mariners, as Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link) first reported. Top pitching prospect Justus Sheffield is coming to Seattle in return, per Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times (Twitter link). Completing the return are outfielder Dom Thompson-Williams and righty Erik Swanson, per Corey Brock of The Athletic (via Twitter).
This is the first major move of the winter market, bringing a top-shelf starter to a New York club that has long been rumored to be seeking to boost its rotation. Having already inked CC Sabathia earlier in the winter, the Yanks now appear unlikely to pursue more than one additional starter, though they’ll still have ample financial flexibility to go after any available pitchers.
Meanwhile, the M’s have now kicked off a winter in which they’ll attempt to walk a tightrope act of staying at least reasonably competitive while enhancing their roster’s long-term outlook. Paxton just turned 30 earlier this month, but he’s down to two more season of arbitration control, so he was one of the team’s more obvious assets to market. Previously, the club sent out regular catcher Mike Zunino, another player with two seasons to go until free agency.
In adding Paxton, the Yankees aren’t just getting a highly talented pitcher. They’re getting one at an eminently reasonable rate of pay. MLBTR and contributor Matt Swartz project Paxton to earn $9.0MM this winter; if he turns in a great year, he’ll get a nice raise on that amount, but that would also mean the club would be more than happy to pay it. Ultimately, these salary levels land a far sight shy of Paxton’s open-market value — at least, that is, assuming he’s at full health.
At his best, Paxton is among the game’s most dominant rotation pieces. Aptly dubbed the Big Maple, the Canadian southpaw has struck out 11 batters per nine over the past two seasons while averaging a reasonable 2.4 BB/9. That’s rare air for a starter. His ERA ballooned a bit this year to 3.76, owing to a few extra long balls, but he posted a 2.98 mark in 2017. Plus, ERA estimators were quite enamored of his output in the just-completed campaign (3.24 FIP, 3.02 xFIP, 2.96 SIERA).
Of course, this all comes with a caveat. Paxton has never thrown a full MLB campaign, with his 28 starts in 2018 representing a career high. He also just barely (by a third of a frame) passed the 160 innings-pitched threshold for the first time last year. Health issues remain an ever-present concern and will perhaps dictate the outcome of this swap from the Yankees’ perspective.
The Yankees will hang their hat on the fact that Paxton mostly avoided significant injury issues in 2018. He missed time after being struck by a comebacker, which was obviously just an instance of poor fortune, after previously being sidelined for lower back inflammation. Those sorts of maladies aren’t the real concern, though. Previously, Paxton has missed time with forearm, shoulder, and biceps problems.
The good news is that Paxton has delivered a pristine version of his power arsenal when he has been able to unleash it. He has averaged 95.9 mph on his four-seamer over each of the past two seasons. And his swinging-strike rate is still on the rise, moving up to a personal-best 14.3% in 2018. If he can carry that forward, even if it’s not quite for a full 32-start campaign, the Yankees will likely be quite pleased with this move.
Turning back to the Mariners side, it’s still a bit difficult to know whether this portends quite a few more moves or whether the club will mostly pick around the edges from this point forward. Certainly, the organization has other marketable assets — as well as some under-water contracts that it might look to unload. It was only two weeks ago that we first learned of the Mariners’ somewhat surprising plans to move some key MLB assets this winter. The shape of the final roster remains very much in doubt, though GM Jerry Dipoto acknowledged today that the club is focused on a 2020-2021 window. (H/t TJ Cotterill of the Tacoma News Tribune, via Twitter).
It’s worth noting that, in both this and the Zunino swap, the M’s have brought back players who figure to represent near-term MLB contributors. If things break right, then, the club could rebound quickly. Here, the key asset is Sheffield, a 22-year-old southpaw who originally went to New York along with Clint Frazier in the swap that send Andrew Miller to the Indians. Scouts and prospect hounds alike have long loved Sheffield for his stuff. But questions remain as to whether he’ll every full command the full arsenal sufficiently to reach his ceiling at the game’s highest level.
It’s not as if Sheffield tends to have difficulties finding the zone. He has averaged only 3.4 walks per nine innings over his five minor-league seasons, which is hardly elite but also isn’t a concerning number, standing alone. But an inability to fully dictate the location of your pitches can obviously tell in other ways, particularly against major-league hitters.
Thus far, Sheffield has managed just fine with his explosive three-pitch mix, which is led by a fastball that occasionally edges into the upper-nineties. In 2018, he turned in a 2.48 ERA in 116 games at the Double-A and (mostly) Triple-A level. He also briefly debuted in the bigs; while things didn’t go well in his three relief outings, that hardly means much for the future.
While he’s not nearly so well-known as Sheffield, Swanson is also a near-term possibility for the Mariners’ active roster. He’ll need to take a 40-man spot from the jump, as he’d otherwise be eligible for the Rule 5 draft. The 25-year-old joined Sheffield at Triple-A this year after a dominant stop at the penultimate level of the minors to begin the season.
After arriving at the Yanks’ top affiliate, Swanson worked to a 3.86 ERA over 72 1/3 innings. He was touched for ten long balls, but otherwise impressed with 9.7 K/9 and 1.7 BB/9. Prospect watchers tend to view Swanson as a back-of-the-rotation possibility, rather than any kind of frontline starter, but that’d certainly be a welcome outcome for the Mariners.
Thompson-Williams, meanwhile, reached the High-A level last year at 23 years of age. He did turn in an impressive output there, slashing .290/.356/.517 and racking up 17 home runs and 17 steals in 375 plate appearances. That represented a big leap forward for the former fifth-round pick, so it remains to be seen whether he can continue to develop as he reaches the high minors.
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Korea’s KIA Tigers Sign Jacob Turner, Jeremy Hazelbaker
8:02pm: The club has announced the signing of Turner as well as that of outfielder Jeremy Hazelbaker (via Yonhap News; again, as conveyed by Kurtz). Turner receives a $1MM salary ($300K via signing bonus), while Hazelbaker will take home $700K ($200K signing bonus).
The 31-year-old Hazelbaker has impressive MLB numbers in a small sample. He has also at times posted compelling numbers in the upper minors, though 2018 was not his finest effort. While bouncing between three organizations, Hazelbaker ended the most recent campaign with a .204/.298/.385 slash over 356 plate appearances.
7:24pm: Veteran righty Jacob Turner has reportedly agreed to a deal with the Korea Baseball Organization’s KIA Tigers, per Naver Sports (Korean language link; h/t Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net, on Twitter). Financial terms are not known.
Turner, who is still just 27 years of age, was once one of the brightest pitching prospects in baseball. While he raced to the big leagues in his second professional season at twenty years of age, Turner has never yet been able to find sustained success.
In recent seasons, Turner has settled in as a journeyman depth asset. He had brief stints with the Marlins and Tigers in 2018, revisiting the two organizations with which he began his career. He has also appeared briefly with the Nationals, Cubs, and White Sox.
All told, Turner owns only a 5.37 ERA in his 369 MLB frames, with 5.8 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 along with a 46.5% groundball rate. That said, Turner is still bringing 94+ mph heat on his sinker. With youth still on his side, a return stateside can’t be ruled out if he’s able to find something in the KBO.