Indians Designate Kirby Yates
The Indians have designated righty Kirby Yates for assignment, per a club announcement (via MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian, on Twitter). His roster spot was needed for Mike Napoli, whose signing was made official today.
Yates, 28, was acquired from the Rays for cash earlier this winter. He has still yet to pitch for another organization. The righty surrendered a remarkable 30.3% HR/FB rate (and 18 earned runs) in his 20 1/3 MLB frames last year. There’s almost certainly some poor luck baked in there — he’s shown a propensity for the flyball in the majors, but has never allowed double-digit homers in a minor league season — but it’s certainly an issue he’ll need to overcome.
That being said, there’s a reason that Cleveland added Yates in the first place, and he figures to get another shot at the bigs at some point. After all, he’s long registered double-digit strikeout-per-nine rates in the minors and tossed 36 frames of 3.75 ERA ball in 2014, with 10.5 K/9 vs. 3.8 BB/9.
Minor MLB Transactions: 1/4/16
Here are the day’s minor moves:
- The Angels have agreed to a minor league deal with infielder Gregorio Petit, MLB.com’s Alden Gonzalez reports on Twitter. He’ll receive an invitation to major league camp this spring. Petit, 31, has appeared in 82 big league games in parts of four seasons, including a brief stint last year with the Yankees. He’s spent quite a bit of time at Triple-A, compiling a .267/.320/.370 batting line in 3,029 plate appearances spread over eight years. Petit has mostly played shortstop, but has also compiled over 1,000 frames at second and third. He figures to provide some depth and a possible utility option for a Halos club that is still looking to fill out its infield.
Astros Sign Eury Perez To Minors Deal
The Astros have announced the signing of outfielder Eury Perez to a minor league pact. Houston also added righty Cesar Valdez and invited both to major league training camp this spring.
Perez, 25, received his first chance at extended big league action last year with the Braves. Over 133 plate appearances, he slashed .269/.331/.303 and contributed three stolen bases. He was non-tendered by Atlanta earlier this winter.
While he’s always been light on power, the center field-capable Perez has shown quite a bit of speed in the minors and owns a .307/.358/.402 batting line in 1,115 Triple-A plate appearances. He was once a fairly highly-regarded prospect with the Nationals and could still have some function in the majors if he can reach base enough.
The 30-year-old Valdez saw brief MLB action back in 2010, but has pitched exclusively overseas since 2012. His return to affiliated ball was likely driven by his 2015 performance in Mexico. Working for the Olmecas de Tobasco, Valdez threw 160 2/3 innings in 23 starts and racked up 9.0 K/9 against 1.6 BB/9.
The ‘Stros also announced their non-roster spring camp invites, which include some notable names from the minor league system. Among them are recent draft picks Alex Bregman and Derek Fisher as well as prospects A.J. Reed, Tony Kemp, Colin Moran, and J.D. Davis.
Braves To Sign Kyle Kendrick
1:20pm: Kendrick’s deal will call for him to earn a $2MM base if he makes the big league roster and incentives can boost the total value to $6MM, Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com tweets.
10:09am: The Braves announced that they have signed right-hander Kyle Kendrick to a minor league deal. The pact includes a non-roster invite to spring training.
Kendrick, 31, is coming off a poor season with the Rockies after signing a one-year, $5.5MM contract last winter. As a fifth starter that doesn’t miss many bats, Kendrick and Coors Field always seemed like a poor fit, but he presumably went with the largest guarantee offered to him last winter.
In 142 1/3 innings with the Rockies, Kendrick limped to a 6.32 ERA. His K/9, BB/9 and ground-ball rates each trended in the wrong direction in his lone season in Denver, and he finished the year with respective marks of 5.1, 2.9 and 38.8 percent in those regards. While Kendrick’s season was easily the worst of his career and likely hampered his 2015-16 market, he did have a track record as a serviceable source of 25 to 30 starts per year in a different hitter-friendly environment: Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park.
From 2010-14, Kendrick worked to a 4.33 ERA with 5.3 K/9, 2.5 BB/9 and a ground-ball rate near 46 percent in 835 2/3 innings. He missed some time this past year with inflammation in his right shoulder and has previously spent time on the DL (2013) for the same injury.
Earlier this month, the Pirates were mentioned as a club with interest in Kendrick and that pairing would have made a lot of sense given the club’s reputation for restoring the values of veteran pitchers who have stumbled. Instead, however, Atlanta has picked him up on a low-risk deal.
Braves To Sign Alex Torres
The Braves have struck a minor league deal with lefty Alex Torres, Mark Bowman of MLB.com reports on Twitter. He’ll receive an invitation to big league training camp this spring.
Torres just turned 28 in December and has seen fairly consistent time in the big leagues over the past three years. But he was designated for assignment by the Mets last August.
At the surface, that was a puzzling move for New York, which had acquired Torres over the prior winter and received 34 1/3 innings of 3.15 ERA pitching with 35 strikeouts. But a closer look revealed the obvious cause: Torres also permitted 26 free passes in that span and was ineffective against opposing lefties, who touched him for a .268/.406/.393 batting line.
Atlanta will hope that Torres can return to the form he showed over 2013-14. While he was still wild at times — especially in the latter season — he did put up 112 innings of 2.49 ERA pitching while posting 9.1 K/9 against 4.3 BB/9.
The route back isn’t immediately clear. Torres hit the strike zone with just 41.0% of his pitches in 2015, but that was actually up from his 2014 campaign. The biggest issue, it seems, was a drop in his swinging strike rate — from nearly 13% in the prior two years to 9.2% — that occurred as batters made more frequent contact while chasing less of his offerings outside of the zone.
If the Braves and Torres can figure things out, there’s some potential future upside for the team — and not just through the possibility of a mid-season flip. Torres will enter the year with just 2.095 days of service, meaning he could be controlled for up to three more seasons via arbitration.
Minor MLB Transactions: 12/30/15
Here are the day’s minor moves:
- The Tigers have added righty Michael Crotta and outfielder Chad Huffman on minor league deals, per a club announcement. (Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press first tweeted the former’s signing.) Both players have briefly reached the majors in the past and spent the last two seasons playing in Japan. Crotta, 31, posted a 6.59 ERA in 28 2/3 frames last year for the Nippon Ham Fighters while struggling badly with his control (6.0 BB/9). But he allowed just 2.62 earned per nine in his 58 1/3 frames in the prior season. And the 30-year-old Huffman received only eleven turns at bat for the Chiba Lotte Marines this year, though he slashed .270/.354/.443 over 210 plate appearances for the club in 2014.
Dodgers Sign Scott Kazmir
The Dodgers announced on Wednesday that they have signed left-hander Scott Kazmir to a three-year contract. The contract will reportedly guarantee Kazmir a total of $48MM, but he also obtains an opt-out clause after the first season, and there are reportedly deferrals in the deal. Kazmir is said to receive a $5MM signing bonus and a $3MM salary in 2016, with annual payments of $8MM in each of the next five seasons (or, in the case of an opt out, a second payment of $8MM next year).
Kazmir, a client of The Legacy Agency, will fill a void in the Dodgers’ rotation and give them yet another lefty starter to pair with Clayton Kershaw, Brett Anderson, Alex Wood and, if healthy, Hyun-jin Ryu, creating the potential for an entirely left-handed starting five.
In Kazmir, the Dodgers will secure some rotation stability that has eluded them to this point in the offseason. Los Angeles aggressively pursued a reunion with 2015 Cy Young runner-up Zack Greinke but lost out on their co-ace to an eleventh-hour push from the division-rival Diamondbacks. When that deal fell through, L.A. made a strong push for Hisashi Iwakuma and agreed to terms at three years and $45MM, but concerns about his physical prompted the Dodgers to try to restructure the deal. With that hefty guarantee no longer on the table, Iwakuma returned to Seattle on a one-year deal with a pair of vesting options, sending the Dodgers back to the drawing board.
Kazmir, 32 next month, was one of the top remaining starters on the market and should provide the Dodgers with a sizable upgrade over their internal options to round out the rotation. Formerly one of the game’s most promising young pitchers, Kazmir’s career went south in a hurry last decade due to myriad injuries, and he was absent from Major League Baseball entirely from 2011-12 with the exception of 1 2/3 innings with the Angels. However, Kazmir reinvented himself on the independent circuit and emerged with the Indians in 2013 to throw 158 quality innings. That prompted a two-year deal with Oakland, which he completed in 2015 (as a member of the Astros, following a trade).
Since returning to the Majors, Kazmir has compiled a 3.54 ERA with 8.1 K/9, 2.6 BB/9 and a ground-ball rate of roughly 43 percent. He’s faded down the stretch somewhat in each of the past two seasons but delivered an overall strong body of work in that time, positioning himself for a sizable commitment on the open market. Kazmir reportedly had multiple three-year offers in the range of $13MM annually, but he was able to secure not only a larger annual value but an opt-out clause. While he was said to be hoping for four guaranteed years, the opt-out clause could potentially make this contract more valuable than a four-year pact anyhow, as Kazmir will now have the opportunity to enter the 2016-17 market as perhaps the second-best starter available, trailing Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg. If, on the other hand, injuries sideline him or he struggles in his first-ever taste of the National League, Kazmir can still collect a hefty guarantee for the 2016-17 seasons. From the Dodgers’ vantage point, the silver lining in the event of an opt-out after just one season would be compensation in the form of a 2017 draft pick, assuming Kazmir rejects a qualifying offer.
Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times reported the guarantee (Twitter link). Jon Heyman of CBS Sports was the first to report the opt-out clause (Twitter link). Joel Sherman of the New York Post tweeted that Kazmir’s salaries would be deferred evenly over a six-year term.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Rangers Sign Michael McKenry, Donnie Veal To Minor League Contracts
The Rangers announced that they have signed catcher Michael McKenry and left-handed reliever Donnie Veal to minor league contracts. McKenry will receive an invitation to Major League Spring Training, per the announcement.
McKenry served as a reserve backstop for the Rockies over the last two seasons, slashing a combined .268/.367/.464 in 344 plate appearances. That’s quite an impressive batting line, even when adjusted for Coors Field, but it’s important to bear in mind that most of the damage was done in 2014, when he carried a .381 BABIP and 18.2% HR/FB rate.
The veteran McKenry’s defensive skills aren’t held in terribly high regard, either, which helps to explain why Colorado was willing to cut him loose. But he certainly makes for a useful depth option, at least, and will join the competition this spring with Robinson Chirinos, Chris Gimenez, and Bobby Wilson.
As for the 31-year-old Veal, last year marked his fifth season of MLB action, though he received just five appearances with the Braves. Veal was quite good at Triple-A, however, as he allowed just four earned runs in 41 1/3 innings with an even forty strikeouts against just eleven walks. All told, he’s thrown 69 frames in the majors, working to a 5.48 ERA with 9.5 K/9 and 6.4 BB/9.
Dodgers Designate Daniel Fields For Assignment
The Dodgers announced that they have designated outfielder Daniel Fields for assignment in order to clear a spot on the 40-man roster for the newly signed Scott Kazmir.
Fields, 25 next month, has spent the majority of the past two seasons at the Triple-A level, where he’s batted a combined .225/.312/.358 with 13 homers and 25 steals in 825 plate appearances. Baseball America has ranked him among the Tigers’ Top 30 prospects in each of the past six offseasons (26th last winter) since he received a $1.625MM bonus to forgo his college commitment to Michigan. Their latest scouting report noted that he has fringy arm strength and is a fringe-average runner, making him better suited to play left field than center field. He does have average raw power, per BA, but he’s also prone to swinging and missing.
Orioles Sign Hyun-soo Kim
DEC. 30: Sung Min Kim of River Ave. Blues reports (via Twitter) that Kim will earn $2.8MM in 2016 and $4.2MM in 2017. His contract allows him to become a free agent upon completion (as opposed to arbitration eligibility) and also stipulates that he cannot be assigned to the minor leagues.
DEC. 23: Baltimore has announced the signing.
DEC. 16: The Orioles have agreed to sign Korean outfielder Hyun-soo Kim, Dan Connolly of The Baltimore Sun tweets. The deal, worth $7MM over two years (link), is pending a medical review. Kim, he adds (link), is on his way to Baltimore from Korea tonight.
Kim, who’ll soon turn 28, just reached free agent eligibility after nine seasons with the KBO’s Doosan Bears. He reportedly received offers from multiple MLB clubs, though Baltimore was the first club known to make an offer. The Orioles have long been said to be looking for one or more outfielders, and the $7MM commitment suggests that Kim will slot into at least a semi-regular role. Baltimore utilized a variety of platoon options in the corner last year, but Kim would “likely” feature in left if signed, Connolly said earlier this week.
Kim has put up a big .318/.406/.488 slash in the offensively robust KBO, and last year had his best-ever showing. Not only did he slash .326/.438/.541, but Kim also banged a career-best 28 home runs. But Kim’s real calling card is in the on-base arena. Unlike some other KBO players who have moved over to MLB (or have shown interest in doing so), Kim is a master of plate discipline. Last year, he struck out only 63 times while drawing 101 free passes.
At $3.5MM per season, Kim will be earning less than many had expected him to earlier this offseason. At one point,Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports suggested that Kim could get paid “toward the top of the next tier of corner outfielders” behind the four major free agents. Kim’s market didn’t unfold quite that way, but he did get a decent payday from Baltimore. If Kim succeeds over the next two seasons, he could see a salary increase as he tries the market again before his 30th birthday.