Cubs Sign Andury Acevedo
The Cubs have signed righty Andury Acevedo to a major league deal and added him to their 40-man roster, the club announced today. He had reached the open market as a minor league free agent.
The 25-year-old Acevedo sped up the ladder in the Yankees organization last year after starting the season at High-A. He ultimately reached the Triple-A level in time to make ten late-season appearances.
Acevedo, a converted infielder, worked to a composite 2.59 ERA with 7.5 K/9 against 3.2 BB/9 over 59 total frames. He seemed to have limited the severe control issues he showed in his first couple of seasons after moving to the mound, but he did allow nine free passes in his 10 2/3 frames at the highest level of the minors.
This signing represents yet another example of the phenomenon of teams handing 40-man spots to minor league free agents. It’s not yet clear what kind of timeline the Cubs expect out of the unpolished righty, but clearly they were intrigued by his upside.
David Carpenter Elects Free Agency After Being Outrighted By Nationals
The Nationals announced today that they have outrighted veteran right-hander David Carpenter off the 40-man roster. Carpenter elected free agency rather than taking the minor league assignment, as is his right as a player with three-plus years of Major League service time. He’d have been arbitration eligible this offseason, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting a salary of $1.5MM.
The 30-year-old Carpenter has had a whirlwind calendar year. After enjoying an excellent run with the Braves from 2013-14 –2.63 ERA, 10.0 K/9, 2.6 BB/9 in 126 2/3 innings — Carpenter found himself traded to the Yankees alongside lefty Chasen Shreve in exchange for Manny Banuelos. Things didn’t go well for Carpenter in his brief Bronx stay, as he pitched to a 4.82 ERA with an 11-to-7 K/BB ratio in 18 2/3 innings. The Nationals, though, perhaps intrigued by the strong 94.9 mph average on Carpenter’s heater and increased ground-ball rate, swung a trade to acquire him from New York after he was designated for assignment.
With the Nationals, Carpenter surrendered just one run in his first six innings but quickly landed on the disabled list due to inflammation in his throwing shoulder. That injury eventually led to a transfer to the 60-day DL and would ultimately prove to be a season-ender for the right-hander.
Carpenter and his agents at Sports One Athlete Management will now have the ability to test the open market earlier than expected. As a player with four-plus years of big league service, Carpenter comes with the bonus of being controllable via the arbitration process following the 2016 season for any team that wishes to buy low on a minor league pact in hopes that he can rediscover the for he displayed in his peak seasons with the Braves. A one-year deal with a low base salary is also a possibility, though Carpenter passed through outright waivers unclaimed with a projected price tag of just $1.5MM.
Tigers Acquire Francisco Rodriguez
The Tigers have officially acquired reliever Francisco Rodriguez from the Brewers. Infielder Javier Betancourt will head to Milwaukee in the swap. Detroit will also send a player to be named in the deal. Detroit’s announcement mentions that it, too, will receive a PTBNL, but both teams’ general managers have indicated that is not a straightforward aspect of the deal. (Twitter links.)
K-Rod was something of a forgotten man in early-offseason discussions of relief trade chips, but it always seemed likely that he’d change hands. After all, new Brewers GM David Stearns has clearly been tasked with rebuilding. Rodriguez is obviously not a long-term piece, and his backloaded contract still has $9.5MM left to go (including the buyout of a 2017 option).
Detroit will pay the entirety of the remaining obligation. But with $2MM going to the buyout and another $2MM of salary deferred, some of that cost will be pushed into the future. It’s also worth noting that the $6MM option will really only represent a $4MM decision for Detroit, and could well end up being exercised.
Though he’s now nearly 34 years of age, Rodriguez has continued to be a reliable force at the back of the pen. He ended the 2015 season with 57 innings of 2.21 ERA pitching, striking out 9.8 and walking only 1.7 batters per nine along the way. Rodriguez also permitted a meager 6.0 hits per nine, leaving him with an outstanding (and career-low) 0.860 WHIP on the season.
It’s true that Rodriguez benefitted from a .234 BABIP last year, and an even lower one in the season prior, but he’s carried a .271 mark for his career and also put up a strong 46.4% groundball rate. Of greater concern, perhaps, is that Rodriguez has been increasingly homer-prone as his arm speed has dropped. He lost a full mile per hour off his average fastball velocity between 2014 and 2015, falling below 90 mph for the first time. Then again, that didn’t stop him from producing a 14.0% swinging strike rate — a level he hasn’t reached since he was with the Angels.
Rodriguez fills the stated desire of Tigers GM Al Avila to add a proven closer. He locked down 38 wins last year and has racked up 386 saves over his career, leading all active pitchers. While the value of the save as a statistic is plenty debatable, there’s little reason to fear that Rodriguez will be ruffled by high-leverage situations. And his acquisition will reduce the team’s need to spend more on the open market (or on other trade targets) to add pen help, clearing more resources to dedicate to starting pitching.
Meanwhile, the Brewers will not only shed some salary but will pick up a useful young player in Betancourt, who reached the High-A level last year at age 20. He currently sits at 11th among Tigers prospects, in the estimation of MLB.com, which says that he profiles more as a second baseman but is still capable of handling shortstop. Betancourt looks to be a contact hitter and hasn’t yet shown himself to be much of a long ball or stolen base threat. He slashed .263/.304/.336 in 531 plate appearances over the 2015 season, striking out only 44 times against 29 walks.
Venezuelan journalist Augusto Cardenas first reported the swap via Twitter. James Schmehl of MLive.com reported the inclusion of a PTBNL on Twitter, and Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com tweeted that Detroit would take all of Rodriguez’s salary.
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David Ortiz To Retire After 2016 Season
TODAY: Ortiz announced via Twitter that he’ll call it quits after the coming year. “Life is based on different chapters,” said Ortiz, “and I think I am ready to experience the next one in my life.”
YESTERDAY: Red Sox slugger David Ortiz plans to retire at the end of the 2016 campaign, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reports on Twitter. That’s not exactly shocking news, as Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe notes on Twitter that Ortiz hinted at just that possibility over the course of the 2015 season.
Boston owes Ortiz $16MM for the coming season after he maxed out his vesting option escalators, but that’s a small price to pay for his recent levels of production. His deal includes another vesting/club option with a floating value for the 2017 season, but it appears that it won’t have any practical importance.
Ortiz turns 40 tomorrow, but has shown no signs of slowing at the plate. Despite his advanced age, he slashed an outstanding .273/.360/.553 last season and swatted 37 home runs in his 614 plate appearances. The Dominican native also became the most recent MLB player to enter the 500 home run club.
The coming season will be the twentieth in which Ortiz has seen action at the major league level. He spent six seasons with the Twins, putting up solid offensive numbers, but was released by the organization after a 2002 that was his best in Minnesota.
His career took off once he signed with the Red Sox. Ortiz began putting up huge numbers as soon as he came to Fenway, reeling off a five-year run over which he carried a .302/.402/.612 batting line and landed in the top 5 in AL MVP voting after every one of those seasons (though he never won the award).
It seemed like Ortiz was beginning his decline phase thereafter, as his average, OBP, and slugging percentage all dropped to the lowest levels of his Red Sox career in 2009. That proved, instead, to be little more than a blip, as his 149 OPS+ over the six seasons since amply attests.
There’s no question that Ortiz will go down as an important member of the Red Sox pantheon. He was, of course, a key member of the organization’s 2004, 2007, and 2013 championship clubs. If anything, he’s been even better in the post-season — especially the World Series, where he owns an unfathomable .455/.576/.795 batting line over 59 total plate appearances.
Really, the only debate at this point is whether Ortiz deserves a place in the Hall of Fame. If you focus only on his offensive numbers, that is rather an easy sell. But there are other considerations that complicate things. From an on-field perspective, Ortiz has almost exclusively been a DH, which obviously limits his overall value. And doubt remains about his involvement with performance-enhancing drugs, as he was reportedly among the players who tested positive for a later-banned substance back in 2003.
There’s plenty of time to debate Ortiz’s legacy and case for Cooperstown over the years to come. For now, we’ll look forward to one last season of admiring that swing, with its high, one-handed finish, and the towering drives that result.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Athletics To Sign Rich Hill
The Athletics have agreed to terms with free agent left-hander Rich Hill, reports Robert Murray of Baseball Essential. The deal is pending a physical. Yahoo’s Jeff Passan tweets that it’s a one-year deal with a $6MM guarantee.
Yesterday, WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford reported that Hill was likely to sign a contract this week. Earlier tonight, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo listed the A’s as one of the teams in the mix for hill, noting that one official involved in the bidding considered Oakland one of the favorites (links to Twitter). Passan notes (Twitter link) that Hill turned down a more lucrative offer from another club due to the promise of a spot in the club’s rotation.
Few would’ve believed prior to — or even 75 percent of the way through — the 2015 season that a payday like this was in the cards for Hill, who at 35 years of age had spent the past several seasons bouncing around the league as a lefty reliever. Hill’s claim to fame dated all the way back to 2007, when he punched out 183 batters in 195 innings of 3.92 ERA ball for the Cubs as a 27-year-old. Hill didn’t replicate that success in 2008, though, and injuries and poor performance limited his role around the league for the next eight seasons.
Released from the Nationals’ Triple-A club this summer, Hill latched on with the Red Sox — the same organization with which he spent the 2010-12 seasons. Despite three years in the organization, Hill logged just 31 2/3 big league innings in that stretch, but a strong season at Triple-A led the 2015 Sox to give him a few starts at season’s end, and Hill capitalized in more emphatic fashion than most could’ve imagined.
In 29 innings (four starts) with the Sox, Hill allowed a grand total of five earned runs, striking out 36 batters against just five walks to complement a 48.4 percent ground-ball rate. Hill ditched his two-seam fastball and reduced the usage of his four-seamer in 2015 as well, trading in some of his 90 mph for a dramatic increase in curveballs. The results were outstanding, and the endgame will be a guaranteed payday that is six times greater than Hill’s previous career-high single-season salary of $1MM.
Hill joins a rotation picture led by ace Sonny Gray but also featuring veteran righty Jesse Chavez and a slew of younger arms including Jesse Hahn, Chris Bassitt, Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin and Aaron Brooks. Former mainstays Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin will hope to return to the fold after missing each of the past two seasons due to arm surgery, and lefty Drew Pomeranz is also an option for Oakland manager Bob Melvin (though he had greater success working out of the bullpen).
For the Athletics, it’s a risk to give $6MM to a pitcher with such a limited track record and a wide-ranging history of injuries, but the team has quite a bit of pitching depth and can reasonably absorb the blow if Hill misses a significant portion of the season on the disabled list. And, if Hill is able to deliver even a handful of starts resembling his September work in 2015, he could turn out to be one of the biggest free-agent bargains of the offseason.
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Giants Sign Brandon Crawford To Six-Year Extension
6:11pm: Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News reports the breakdown of Crawford’s contract (via Twitter). He’ll receive a $1.2MM signing bonus $5.8MM in 2016 and $8MM in 2017 before earning $15MM per season from 2018 through 2021 — his would-be free-agent years.
4:56pm: The Giants announced that they’ve signed shortstop Brandon Crawford to a six-year contract extension. The new deal will buy out Crawford’s final two arbitration seasons and four free-agent years, keeping him in San Francisco through 2021 — his age-34 season. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reports that the Wasserman Media Group client will receive $75MM and a full no-trade clause in the deal.
Crawford, 29 in January, was projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to receive $5.7MM this offseason in what would’ve been his second time through the arbitration process. If we assume something in the range of $8MM for his final arbitration salary, the Giants are buying out four free-agent seasons at a total of about $61-62MM — about $15.5MM annually.
In locking up Crawford, the Giants will secure one of the game’s premier shortstop defenders as he comes off an offensive breakout. Dating back to 2012, Crawford has tallied 42 Defensive Runs Saved — 19th in the Majors of any player at any position in that time. While he’s long been known more for his glove than his bat, Crawford’s isolated power (slugging minus batting average) has increased in each season of his Major League career, beginning at .092 in 2011 and topping out at this season’s hefty .205. Crawford slugged a career-best 21 homers in his age-28 season and tallied an excellent .256/.321/.462 batting line to complement his outstanding defense. Fangraphs valued his contributions at 4.7 wins above replacement, and Baseball-Reference weighed in at 5.6 WAR.
The Giants will hope that Crawford’s power outburst can be sustained, if not built upon, but it should be noted that Crawford doesn’t need to be a 20-homer bat at shortstop to justify the type of money committed to him in this deal. The average shortstop has been about 13 to 14 percent worse than the league-average hitter over the past four seasons, and Crawford’s bat exceeded those levels each year dating back to 2013 (when adjusting for his cavernous home park). Simply delivering better-than-average offense, relative to his positional peers, and continuing to turn in sterling defensive work should be enough for Crawford to justify, if not exceed the value of his new contract.
While Crawford, like any player who signs an extension of this nature, could have potentially earned more money by going year to year through arbitration and hitting the open market at age 30 in search of a five- or six-year deal through his age-36 campaign, he now has the security of knowing that he’ll remain with the only organization he’s ever known for the vast majority of his career. That carries plenty of weight for a player, especially one who was born and raised within about 45 miles of AT&T Park.
As for the Giants, they’ve undoubtedly done their homework in looking ahead at the players who joined Crawford in his service time bracket (between four and five years). Crawford would’ve easily led the shortstop class in free agency that season, as he’d be joined by the likes of Ruben Tejada, Danny Espinosa, Eduardo Nunez and Alexi Amarista. The Giants, with little in the way of big-league ready shortstops in the upper levels of their minor league system — most scouts feel that Christian Arroyo will need to move to third base, while Lucius Fox and Jalen Miller are probably at least four years away — have proactively addressed that need and locked down a fan favorite in the process.
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Angels Sign Cliff Pennington To Two-Year Deal
The Angels announced today that they’ve signed infielder Cliff Pennington to a two-year contract. Pennington, a client of Sosnick, Cobbe and Karon, will receive $1.5MM in 2016 and $2.25MM in 2017 for a $3.75MM guarantee, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick reports (via Twitter). Pennington can also earn up to $750K per season based on plate appearances, according to MLB.com’s Alden Gonzalez (Twitter link).
Pennington, 31, split the 2015 season between the D-Backs and Blue Jays, batting a combined .210/.298/.281 in what was the worst offensive season of his eight-year Major League career. However, Pennington entered the 2015 season with a lifetime .248/.315/.350 batting line, giving hope that he can rebound to an extent at the plate while continuing to delivery sound defensive value by way of run prevention and positional versatility.
Pennington can competently play second base, shortstop and third base, grading out as an average or better defender at each infield position according to Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved. He’s a switch-hitter that has typically fared better from the larger (left-handed) side of the platoon, and while his speed hasn’t been as apparent in recent years, he averaged 19 steals per season in 2010-12 and has generally been a positive all-around contributor on the basepaths.
Pennington can provide the Angels with a backup plan to newly acquired Andrelton Simmons, as the team’s only backup option at shortstop had been Taylor Featherston, who is probably ticketed for Triple-A to open the 2016 campaign after surviving 2015 as a little-used Rule 5 utility option. The Angels currently have uncertainty at both second base and third base, so bringing Pennington into the fold gives them a bit of depth on the Major League roster, though they’ll almost certainly look to upgrade at one of the two spots. Johnny Giavotella handled second base duties in 2015 but is a poor defender with limited offensive upside, and the Angels may not want to count on Kyle Kubitza or Kaleb Cowart to immediately step into the picture at third base given their lack of experience.
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Giants Agree To Minors Pact With Kyle Blanks
TODAY: The deal is complete pending physical, Andrew Baggarly of the Mercury News tweets.
YESTERDAY: The Giants are “close to finalizing” a minor-league deal with free agent outfielder/first baseman Kyle Blanks, John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle reports on Twitter. The oft-injured slugger is expected to have a solid shot at breaking camp with the big club, Shea adds.
Blanks, 29, has at times looked like a possible big league regular. There have been ups and downs, but he owns a useful .241/.322/.416 batting line in 933 career plate appearances at the major league level, spread widely over seven seasons.
There are other reasons to believe that Blanks is worth a roll of the dice. For one thing, he’s dominated the Triple-A level to the tune of a .300/.400/.568 slash line. And defensive metrics have generally viewed him as an average (if not slightly above average) defender in the corner outfield and at first.
The biggest difficulty to date has been health. Blanks has suffered from elbow, shoulder, and foot issues over the last five years, and most recently underwent surgical procedures on both Achilles tendons.
It appears that San Francisco has in mind to utilize Blanks as a right-handed-hitting bench bat, if he cracks the roster. He could theoretically spell Brandon Belt at first, though Buster Posey also figures to see some time there. It’s also possible to imagine Blanks spending time in left field — at least if the club does not add a big-name free agent to play there.
Nationals Sign Reed Johnson, Sean Burnett To Minors Contracts
6:23pm: Burnett stands to earn a $1MM base salary with $1.7MM in available incentives if he can crack the Nationals’ roster, MLBTR has learned.
3:20pm: The Nationals announced today that they have agreed to terms with veteran outfielder Reed Johnson and veteran lefty Sean Burnett on a pair of minor league contracts, which include invitations to Major League Spring Training. Johnson is represented by the Wasserman Media Group, whereas Burnett is a client of Munsey Sports Management. Both players have spent time with the Nationals previously.
Johnson, 39 next month, broke camp with the Nationals in 2015 but ultimately missed most of the season due to a torn tendon in his left calf. He appeared in 17 games with the Nationals but received just 24 plate appearances, hitting .227/.250/.273 in that limited time. Johnson has plenty of experience in the Majors, with parts of 13 seasons under his belt, but he’s served largely in a platoon/reserve fashion since 2009. Though he was once a premium defender in left, he’s been a tick below average over the past several seasons, and it’s tough to imagine him showing dramatic improvement in that regard coming off a serious calf injury. Historically, he’s fared quite well against left-handed pitching, batting .310/.363/.464 in his career. He’ll give the Nats some outfield depth, which the team figures to continue pursuing in the likely event that Denard Span signs elsewhere this winter.
The 33-year-old Burnett has just 10 1/3 innings in the Majors dating back to 2012 due to 2013 shoulder surgery and the second Tommy John surgery of his career in 2014. Prior to this most recent pair of surgeries, Burnett had solidified himself as a quality left-handed reliever. He inked a two-year, $8MM contract with the Angels prior to the 2013 season before suffering the shoulder injury, and that contract was earned largely based on the strength of his previous work in the Nationals organization. From 2009-12, Burnett, compiled a 2.81 ERA with 7.7 K/9 against 2.9 BB/9 in 201 1/3 innings with the Nationals. He’s held opposing lefties to a .228/.293/.336 batting line over the course of his career and represents a nice buy-low candidate for a Nationals bullpen that is in need of plenty of options.
Mariners Acquire Leonys Martin From Rangers For Tom Wilhelmsen
The Mariners have officially struck a deal to acquire outfielder Leonys Martin and righty Anthony Bass from the Rangers in exchange for right-handed reliever Tom Wilhelmsen, outfielder James Jones, and a player to be named later.
Martin had fallen out of favor in Texas after a rough 2015 season. The 27-year-old is an outstanding defender and major threat on the bases, but he slashed just .219/.264/.313 over 310 plate appearances. In the meantime, the Rangers found a Rule 5 gem in Delino DeShields Jr. While he and Martin made for a natural platoon pairing, there seemed to be some discord between Martin and the club after he was left off of the playoff roster and then refused to participate in Instructional League as a way to stay ready in case he was needed.
New Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto said that he sees Martin as a victim of bad luck — citing his .270 BABIP last year, which fell well below his .313 career mark — who ought to turn things around. (Via Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times, on Twitter.) It appears that Martin will go right to the top of the depth chart in Seattle, though Dipoto also told reporters tonight that another outfield addition could still be in the offing. It’s a good bet, though, that the team won’t now chase top free agents such as Dexter Fowler or Denard Span.
In addition to adding three years of control over Martin, Seattle will pick up three arb seasons of Bass. He represents a useful arm who will help maintain the Mariners’ bullpen depth. The 28-year-old comes with three years of arb control. He contributed only a 4.50 ERA last year, with 6.3 K/9 against 2.8 BB/9, but tossed 64 innings and drew more positive reviews from advanced metrics. While Wilhelmsen had represented a late-inning option, Dipoto had already gone out and added veteran set-up man Joaquin Benoit. But the club’s pen struggled last year, and adding Bass in this trade helps to guard against any scrambling for innings.
Texas, meanwhile, will add two seasons of Wilhelmsen, a 31-year-old righty who possesses a mid-90s heater. The veteran has thrown over 300 frames in the majors, working to a 2.97 overall ERA with 8.5 K/9 against 4.0 BB/9. He was right in that range in 2015, but continued a trend of posting earned run results that are much better than ERA estimators would expect. (For his career, Wilhelmsen has a 3.39 FIP, 3.94 xFIP, and 3.67 SIERA.)
Wilhelmsen figures to bolster a Rangers’ late-inning relief corps that has its share of questions. While pitchers like Shawn Tolleson, Keone Kela, Jake Diekman, and Sam Dyson all turned in quality seasons, there are enough question marks with that group that another good arm made sense.
And Jones is more than a throw-in, as he could ultimately be a cheaper and more controllable version of Martin. The left-handed hitter has not shown much of anything in his 400+ major league plate appearances, but has generally been rather productive at the plate in the high minors. Notably, last year, he not only put up a solid .294/.373/.423 batting line at Triple-A, but struck out only 68 times (against 53 walks) in his 501 trips to the plate — representing a huge improvement over prior seasons. While he may not possess an elite glove, Jones has swiped 28 bags in his limited MLB action. He could make for a useful pairing with DeShields up the middle.
While this deal shifts the assets between the clubs, it’s worth noting that it won’t have much impact on their respective payroll situations. MLBTR projects Martin to earn $3.75MM next year, matching his salary from 2015 — he would have only been projected at $1.6MM without that starting point — while Bass lands at $1.1MM. Meanwhile, the arb model pegs Wilhelmsen at an even $3MM.
Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reported the deal on Twitter. T.R. Sullivan first reported (on Twitter) the inclusion of Jones.
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