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Blue Jays, Ali Sanchez Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Blue Jays are in agreement with catcher Ali Sánchez on a minor league contract, reports Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. He’ll be in camp as a non-roster invitee.

Sánchez, 28 in January, got into 31 games for the Marlins this year. The Venezuelan-born backstop hit .167/.211/.190. That was Sánchez’s most significant stretch of big league play. His previous MLB experience consisted of seven games split between the Mets and Cardinals in 2020-21. His struggles led Miami to outright him off the 40-man roster in September.

The right-handed hitting Sánchez made 48 appearances at the Triple-A level. He split the season between the Cubs and Miami systems, hitting .226/.310/.361 across 174 plate appearances. Sánchez now carries a .267/.339/.395 batting line over parts of five Triple-A seasons. He has a solid defensive reputation and threw out a quarter of attempted basestealers in his limited MLB look.

Toronto only has two catchers on the 40-man roster: Alejandro Kirk and Tyler Heineman. It seems unlikely Sánchez will beat Heineman for the backup job out of camp, but he could begin next season at Triple-A Buffalo as Toronto’s top non-roster depth catcher.

Braves Sign Bryan De La Cruz

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December 16: De La Cruz will be paid at an $860K rate for time spent in the majors, according to The Associated Press. He’ll make $180K for his time in the minor leagues.

December 15: The Braves announced that outfielder Bryan De La Cruz has been signed to a non-guaranteed deal for the 2025 season.  De La Cruz’s deal is specifically a split contract, not a minor league deal.  The contract is an early birthday present for De La Cruz, who turns 28 years old tomorrow.

No stranger to the NL East, De La Cruz broke into the majors with the Marlins in 2021 and spent parts of the next four seasons in the Miami outfield.  A part-time role turned into essentially everyday duty by the end of the 2022 campaign, and De La Cruz hit .263/.311/.420 with 37 homers over 1200 plate appearances for the Fish during the 2021-23 seasons.

Unfortunately, the production trended downward, from a 111 wRC+ in 219 PA in De La Cruz’s rookie season to a 99 in 2022, then a 90 in 2023, and down to a 77 wRC+ in 2024.  De La Cruz hit 21 homers this past season but only with a .233/.271/.384 slash line in 622 combined PA with the Marlins and Pirates.  The bulk of the struggles came after Pittsburgh acquired De La Cruz at the trade deadline, as De La Cruz hit only .200/.220/.294 in 168 PA with his new team.

The dropoff was so drastic that the Pirates opted to non-tender De La Cruz rather than pay him a projected $4MM salary in the first of three arbitration-eligible seasons.  Given those three years of control and the fact that the Bucs gave up two prospects for De La Cruz at the deadline, it would’ve been understandable if the Pirates had kept De La Cruz around for another look, yet the $4MM price tag and his sub-replacement level play made the non-tender a justifiable call.

De La Cruz has essentially been a power-only player to this point in his career, and he has had consistently solid hard-contact numbers.  However, making contact has been a struggle since De La Cruz has a 25% career strikeout rate, and he doesn’t often take walks.  De La Cruz has experience at all three outfield positions and he has a good throwing arm but is considered a middling defender at best.

The non-guaranteed nature of the contract means that the Braves lose nothing by seeing what De La Cruz can do in Spring Training.  If he can get himself on track at the plate and more consistently translate his power into steady production, the Braves suddenly have a controllable outfielder in the fold through the 2027 season.  De La Cruz has two minor league option years remaining, adding more flexibility to Atlanta’s decision-making about whether or not to deploy him on the active roster.

The Braves’ need for outfield help is no secret.  Ronald Acuna Jr.’s recovery from a torn ACL could stretch well into May, Jarred Kelenic wasn’t particularly productive in his first season in Atlanta, and Jorge Soler (though mostly a DH) was traded to the Giants in a salary dump right at the outset of the offseason.  De La Cruz could ideally pair with Kelenic in a platoon in left field once Acuna is back, and perhaps might be viewed as a starter capable of holding the fort in right field in Acuna’s absence.  That said, De La Cruz’s contract certainly won’t preclude the Braves from continuing to seek out a more clear-cut starting outfield option in the coming months.

Mets, Brandon Waddell Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Mets are in agreement with left-hander Brandon Waddell on a minor league contract, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. While it was initially reported as an MLB deal, Murray subsequently issued a correction. The deal is pending a physical.

Waddell is the second former member of the Korea Baseball Organization’s Doosan Bears to agree to terms with the Mets today. New York added multi-positional bat Jared Young on an MLB split deal after he clubbed 10 homers in 38 games for the Bears late in the season. Waddell, a 30-year-old southpaw, spent parts of three years with the club between 2022-24.

That was a generally successful run. Waddell turned in 244 2/3 innings of 2.98 ERA ball in the KBO. That included a 3.12 mark in 75 frames this year. The UVA product fanned 23.8% of opposing hitters against a 3.5% walk rate. His season was unfortunately cut short by a rotator cuff injury in late June.

The Mets were evidently intrigued enough by Waddell’s form to give him a look as non-roster rotation or long relief depth. This will be his first stint in affiliated ball since 2022, which he spent in Triple-A in the St. Louis system. Waddell last pitched in the big leagues in 2021. He divided that season between four teams — the Twins, Pirates, Orioles and Cardinals — and allowed eight runs across 9 1/3 innings. He has 11 career MLB appearances and owns a 5.37 ERA over parts of four years at the Triple-A level.

Tigers, Brian Serven Agree To Minor League Contract

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The Tigers are in agreement with catcher Brian Serven on a minor league deal, reports Aram Leighton of Just Baseball (X link). Serven, a PRIME client, will be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee.

Serven, 29, joins the fourth organization of his career. A fifth-round pick of the Rockies in 2016, he got to the big leagues six years later. The Arizona State product appeared in 62 games as a rookie, hitting .203/.261/.332 in a backup role. He only made 11 appearances the following season, spending the bulk of the year in Triple-A on optional assignment. Colorado placed him on waivers last winter.

The Cubs claimed Serven and briefly carried him on their 40-man roster. Chicago designated him for assignment around one week later. He landed with the Blue Jays on another claim. Toronto ran him through waivers at the end of January but reselected his contract after Danny Jansen broke a bone in his wrist in Spring Training.

Serven spent the majority of the season on Toronto’s 40-man. He only made 28 big league appearances, hitting .159/.243/.222 across 71 trips to the plate. Serven showed much better on-base skills in the minors. The right-handed hitter put up a .265/.390/.379 slash over 40 Triple-A contests. His overall offensive track record is middling, though, and the Jays designated him for assignment when they claimed Tyler Heineman off waivers in September. Serven elected minor league free agency at season’s end.

Jake Rogers will open the season as A.J. Hinch’s primary catcher. Dillon Dingler is the only other catcher on the 40-man roster. He debuted this past season and struggled to a .167/.195/.310 batting line in his first 27 MLB contests. Dingler still has a couple minor league options remaining, so the Tigers could turn to a more experienced backup if they want the former second-round pick to continue playing regularly in Triple-A. Detroit could continue looking for upper minors depth, but there’s a decent opportunity right now for Serven to play his way into the backup role.

Mets Sign Jared Young To Major League Deal

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The Mets announced that they have signed infielder Jared Young to a one-year major league contract. The club has multiple vacancies on its 40-man roster and won’t need to make a corresponding move for the Ball Players Agency client. Will Sammon of The Athletic reports that it’s a split deal with “seven-figure upside.” The Associated Press reports that Young will make a prorated $1.15MM salary while in the majors and be paid at a $425K rate for his time in the minor leagues.

Young, 29, has struggled with strikeouts in his very limited major league career but has performed well in the minors and in Korea. In 2022 and 2023, he got into 22 games for the Cubs and stepped to the plate 69 times. He struck out in 29% of those appearances but tallied a few extra base hits and some walks, leading to a .210/.290/.435 line and wRC+ of 98.

He was claimed off waivers by the Cardinals after the 2023 campaign and then outrighted off their roster going into 2024. In July, he signed with the Doosan Bears of the Korea Baseball Organization. His stint in Korea seemed to go very well, as he hit 10 home runs in just 169 plate appearances over a 38-game stretch. He struck out 20.7% of the time while drawing walks at a 12.4% clip. That led to a .326/.420/.660 line and massive 172 wRC+.

His strong performance in Korea and his weak performance in the majors both come in fairly small sample sizes. His body of work in the minors is naturally larger and has been quite good. Over the past four years, he has 1,402 minor league plate appearances. In that time, he has an 11.3% walk rate, 21.5% strikeout rate, .274/.370/.488 batting line and 124 wRC+. Over the past two years, it has been a 13.7% walk rate, 20.7% strikeout rate, .299/.414/.547 line and 145 wRC+.

The Mets are apparently intrigued enough by those numbers to give Young a roster spot, though he still has options and can therefore be kept in Triple-A as a depth piece. Defensively, Young has lined up at all four infield spots, though his shortstop work consists of just nine innings at Low-A back in 2017. He’s also spent some time in the outfield corners, so perhaps there’s a path for Young to fill a utility role in Queens.

Pete Alonso is currently a free agent and could perhaps re-sign with the Mets. But under the current roster construction, Mark Vientos projects as the first baseman since he just had an offensive breakout but with poor glovework at third. Second base is also a bit of a question mark after an uneven season from Jeff McNeil. Guys like Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio or Luisangel Acuña could perhaps offers solutions at those spots but they’re not fully established majors leaguers yet. Young will give the Mets another option in that mix.

Young has less than a year of service time, which could mean the Mets can cheaply control him for years to come. However, players returning from stints overseas can often negotiate clauses in their contracts that allow them to return to the open market despite not having six years of service time. It’s unclear whether Young will definitely be a free agent again after 2025 or if the Mets can theoretically retain him as long as his service time clock is below six years.

Guardians Re-Sign Dom Nuñez To Minor League Deal

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The Guardians announced they have re-signed catcher Dom Nuñez to a minor league deal. The ALIGND Sports Agency also receives an invite to big league spring training with the Guards, just as he did last offseason.

Nuñez, 30 in January, spent the 2024 season with Triple-A Columbus. He got into 68 games at that level, stepping to the plate 263 times. He struck out in 30% of those trips, certainly a high number, but also drew walks at a hefty 16% clip. That resulted in a .202/.330/.339 batting line and 81 wRC+.

The Guards never needed to call Nuñez up to the majors, using Bo Naylor, Austin Hedges and David Fry to handle the big league catching duties. Fry didn’t really catch in the second half due to elbow problems and that will carry over into next year. He had a hybrid/internal brace and tendon reconstruction surgery in November, which is expected to have a 12-month recovery timetable. He will be able to serve as the designated hitter at some point next year but won’t be part of the catching plans.

That effectively leaves Naylor and Hedges as the two backstops on Cleveland’s roster, so the odds of needing to use a depth option will perhaps be higher next year, unless they add someone else to the roster later in the winter.

Nuñez didn’t make it to the majors in 2024 but does have big league experience, getting 347 plate appearances with the Rockies from 2019 to 2022. He was punched out 34% of the time but also earned free passes at a 12.4% clip. Unlike his 2024 season in Triple-A, the walks weren’t enough to bolster his overall numbers to respectable levels, so he currently has a career batting line of .180/.280/.373 in the majors for a 58 wRC+. His framing received strong grades from FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Statcast during his brief major league work in Colorado.

It’s not an overwhelming profile, but for a non-roster catcher, he at least has some positive attributes with the ability to take a walk and frame a pitch. If the Guards bring him up to the majors at any point next year, he hasn’t yet qualified for arbitration and still has an option year, meaning he’ll be cheap and provide roster flexibility.

Brewers Grant Release To Jon Duplantier To Pursue NPB Opportunity

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The Brewers have granted right-hander Jon Duplantier his release so that he can pursue an opportunity with the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, reports Adam McCalvy of MLB.com.

Duplantier, 30, inked a minor league deal with Milwaukee back in November and had been slated to compete for a job in spring training. It would seem that the opportunity overseas presented itself between the completion of that deal and today’s news, and the Brewers opted not to stand in the way of Duplantier’s guaranteed payday in NPB.

A former third-round pick and consensus top-100 prospect, Duplantier has only pitched in parts of two big league seasons: 2019 and 2021. Both came with the D-backs, who originally selected him in the 2016 draft. Duplantier held his own through 36 2/3 innings as a rookie in ’19 but was bombarded for 19 runs in only 13 innings in ’21. He’s posted a 6.70 ERA in 49 2/3 innings, striking out 19.7% of opponents against an 11.2% walk rate.

That was quite some time ago now. More recently, Duplantier dominated for the independent American Association’s Lake Country DockHounds in 2024, posting 18 scoreless frames with a 30-to-6 K/BB ratio. He parlayed that into Triple-A looks with the Dodgers and Mets, pitching to a combined 4.20 ERA with a 27.4% strikeout rate and grisly 16.1% walk rate in 65 2/3 innings of minor league work. In parts of four Triple-A seasons, Duplantier has a 4.85 ERA with similar strikeout and walk rates to the ones he notched in 2024.

Dodgers To Sign Matt Sauer To Minor League Deal

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The Dodgers and right-hander Matt Sauer have agreed to a minor league deal, reports Kiley McDaniel of ESPN. The Paragon Sports International client also receives an invite to major league spring training.

Sauer, 26 in January, got to make his major league debut in 2024. The Royals used the second pick of the Rule 5 draft to grab him from the Yankees a year ago. He held a roster spot for a while but allowed 14 earned runs in 16 1/3 innings, leading to a 7.71 earned run average. He gave out 11 walks while only recording nine strikeouts. The Royals returned him to the Yankees before the end of May.

The Yanks then sent him to Triple-A, a level he had never pitched at before, but he struggled there as well. He allowed 15 earned runs in 8 1/3 innings, so the Yanks sent him down to Double-A. He finished the season there on a high note, throwing 24 innings over 17 relief appearances with a 2.63 ERA, 22.3% strikeout rate, 3.2% walk rate and 46.4% ground ball rate. He was able to elect free agency at the end of the season.

Prior to 2024, Sauer had primarily been a starter. In 2023, he tossed 74 innings over 17 minor league appearances with a 3.41 ERA, 30.3% strikeout rate and 11.1% walk rate. The Royals thought perhaps that moving him to the bullpen could help unlock something, which didn’t work out initially, though Sauer’s second half in 2024 was encouraging.

Sauer is unlikely to crack the Opening Day roster for the Dodgers, given his fairly limited experience in Triple-A and in the majors. But injuries are inevitable and the club will surely have to dip into its depth at some point over a long season. If Sauer can carry over his strong finish from 2024, he could earn his way back to the majors. If he does so, he has a full slate of options and minimal service time.

Twins, Darren McCaughan Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Twins and righty Darren McCaughan agreed to a minor league contract earlier this month, per the team’s transaction log at MLB.com. He’ll presumably head to big league camp as a non-roster invitee this coming spring.

McCaughan, 28, has spent the vast majority of his career with the Mariners, who selected him in the 12th round of the 2017 draft. He made his big league debut with the 2021 M’s and also pitched briefly for Seattle in 2023. The Mariners traded him to the Marlins for cash back in February, and McCaughan pitched a career-high 42 big league innings between Miami and Cleveland this past season.

In 56 major league innings, McCaughan has been hit hard. He carries a career 6.43 ERA with just a 15.3% strikeout rate. He’s done a fine job limiting walks (8.4%) and has avoided hard contact on a rate basis, but the hard contact he does allow is often of the maximum-damage variety. He’s yielded an average of 2.09 homers per nine innings in the big leagues.

Homers have been an issue for McCaughan throughout his pro career, as one might expect from a soft-tossing righty who averages about 90 mph on his fastball. He’s displayed decent strikeout and walk rates in the upper minors (21.7 K%, 6.4 BB%), but McCaughan has been tagged for 1.60 homers per nine frames even in Triple-A. He posted a 4.73 ERA with a 25.2% strikeout rate and 8.2% walk rate in 85 2/3 Triple-A frames last year.

What McCaughan can bring is some stability and durability to the Twins’ Triple-A staff. He’s pitched at least 127 innings in all of his pro seasons (and even in his 2017 draft year, if combining his NCAA and minor league innings). McCaughan has somewhat incredibly never gone on the injured list in the minors or in the big leagues.

The Twins have enough starters that McCaughan isn’t likely to crack the roster this spring unless it’s in a long-relief capacity. Minnesota’s rotation includes Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Chris Paddack and Simeon Woods Richardson, although Paddack was widely regarded as a trade candidate even before the extremely player-friendly market for starting pitchers this winter made his $7.5MM salary look all the more affordable. David Festa, Zebby Matthews, Louie Varland, Marco Raya and Travis Adams are on the Twins’ 40-man already, giving them further options ahead of McCaughan.

Braves Sign Conner Capel To Minor League Deal

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The Braves have signed outfielder Conner Capel to a minor league deal, according to the transaction tracker on Capel’s MLB.com profile page. The deal presumably includes an invite to MLB Spring Training in 2025.

A fifth-round pick by Cleveland in the 2016 draft, Capel was traded to the Cardinals as part of the Oscar Mercado trade back in 2018. Capel spent the next few years climbing the minor league ladder but eventually made his big league debut with the Cardinals back in 2022 during his age-25 campaign. He appeared in just nine games for St. Louis before being designated for assignment in September of that year, but the then-Oakland A’s plucked him off waivers and added him to the roster down the stretch. While Capel struggled badly with the Cardinals to the tune of a .176/.211/.353 batting line, he found another gear in Oakland and slashed .371/.425/.600 in his final 40 plate appearances of the season.

Capel’s strong showing was enough to convince the A’s to put him on their Opening Day roster in 2023. He was a regular fixture in the club’s corner outfield mix early in the season but put up more pedestrian numbers than he had in his torrid September stretch the previous year, hitting just .260/.372/.329. Those on-base skills were enough to keep his overall slash line above league average, but the lack of power led the A’s to option him to Triple-A. After being sent back down to the minor leagues, Capel struggled with the club’s Las Vegas affiliate and hit just .252/.346/.402 in the Pacific Coast League’s inflated offensive environment. That led the A’s to outright Capel off the 40-man roster, allowing him to elect free agency following the 2023 campaign.

Eventually, Capel caught on with the Reds in free agency via a minor league pact. At the time, it seemed somewhat unlikely that he would impact the big league club in 2024 given the crowded positional mix in Cincinnati. Things changed rapidly for the Reds after that, however. Noelvi Marte was suspended for the first half of 2024 due to a failed PED test, and injuries to TJ Friedl, Matt McLain, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand opened up plenty of playing time in Cincinnati. That rush of injuries allowed Capel to crack the big league roster in May, though he appeared in just five games with the Reds before being designated for assignment. After going two-for-eight with a stolen base and a run scored in Cincinnati, Capel returned to Triple-A Louisville where he slashed .218/.343/.432 in 74 games before returning to free agency earlier this winter.

Now that he’s latched on with the Braves, Capel figures to provide the club non-roster outfield depth from the left side. He’ll join righty-hitting Bryan De La Cruz in that role as Atlanta looks to shore up its outfield depth. With Ronald Acuna Jr. not expected to be ready for Opening Day after suffering a torn ACL early last year, the club has little certainty in the outfield beyond Michael Harris II in center field and Jarred Kelenic as a potential option for a corner spot. The Braves figure to add at least one outfielder who can offer more certainty than either De La Cruz or Capel, but the pair could still vie for a bench role with the club this Spring or step in if additional injuries further complicate the club’s outfield plans.

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