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Angels Sign Aaron Loup

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The Angels announced they’ve signed reliever Aaron Loup to a two-year, $17MM guarantee. (The team announced the contract terms). He’ll receive successive $7.5MM salaries in 2022 and 2023, and the deal also contains a $7.5MM club option for 2024 that comes with a $2MM buyout. Loup is a client of the Beverley Hills Sports Council.

A longtime member of the Blue Jays’ bullpen early in his career, Loup had seemingly settled in as a competent journeyman not too long ago. He split the 2018 season between Toronto and the Phillies, then spent the next three years playing on either minor league or one-year big league deals with different clubs.

After an injury-wrecked 2019 campaign with the Padres, he settled for a minors pact with the Rays in 2020. Loup posted strong results in Tampa Bay but didn’t boast the kind of velocity teams typically covet from back-end arms. His 2020 numbers were enough to land him a guaranteed job with the Mets, albeit on a fairly low $3MM base salary.

Loup’s deal with the Angels shatters his previous three contracts, a testament to how effective he was in Queens. The Louisiana native worked to an incredible 0.95 ERA across 56 2/3 innings, a mark bested only by Seattle’s Casey Sadler among those with 30+ frames. Teams are looking far beyond ERA to evaluate pitchers (particularly relievers), but Loup’s underlying metrics also painted the picture of an elite late-innings arm.

The 33-year-old (34 next month) fanned a solid 26.1% of batters faced, the best full season mark of his career. That’s more good than dominant, but Loup has never been a particularly overpowering hurler. Relying primarily on a 92 MPH sinker and a mid-80s cutter/slider, the southpaw has typically been a ground-ball specialist. Loup routinely induces grounders on half or more of balls in play against him, and he continued to thrive in that regard this year. He also boasts plus control, only walking more batters than average in two of his eight career seasons with at least 20 innings pitched. His 7.3% walk percentage in 2021 was almost three points lower than the 9.8% league mark for bullpen arms.

Loup’s standout skill, however, has been contact suppression. He’s typically one of the league’s harder pitchers to square up, and that was never more true than in 2021. Only six of the 218 hitters who stepped in against him recorded an extra-base hit, and he remarkably allowed just a single home run. The Angels can’t reasonably count on Loup to be that effective moving forward, but the front office is clearly banking on him inducing plenty of grounders and otherwise unthreatening contact.

Adding to Loup’s appeal is that he stymied hitters from both sides of the plate. He’s always been a tough at-bat for left-handed hitters, and he was leveraged situationally quite a bit early in his career. But Loup has proven adept at getting righties out lately as well, holding them to a meager .205/.276/.311 line since the start of 2020. An ability to handle hitters from both sides of the plate has taken on an outsized importance in the three-batter minimum era, and Loup has proven capable of taking on that expanded role.

Loup was perhaps the top option in this offseason’s left-handed relief group. Andrew Chafin, Brooks Raley and former Angel Tony Watson now stand out as the best remaining arms in a fairly thin class. The combination of market scarcity and Loup’s recent dominance leads to a very solid contract that comes in a bit higher than generally expected.

The signing pushes the Angels’ estimated 2022 player commitments a bit north of $157MM, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. Non-tenders could shave a couple million dollars off that tally, and there’s still some decent leeway before reaching the club’s near-$182MM season-opening 2021 payroll. That could give general manager Perry Minasian and his staff the chance for further upgrades, with the pitching staff and middle infield still standing out as potential target areas.

The Angels have already made one big rotation strike, signing Loup’s 2021 (and now 2022) teammate Noah Syndergaard to a $21MM deal. Even after the Syndergaard pickup, Minasian told reporters the club was hoping to further bolster the rotation (link via Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com). And while Loup should be a notable upgrade in the late innings, the club had a below-average relief corps in 2021 and is facing the potential free agent departure of closer Raisel Iglesias. An effort to retain or replace Iglesias still seems plausible, even with Loup now in the fold.

To create space on the 40-man roster, Los Angeles designated southpaw Hector Yan for assignment. The 22-year-old was highly regarded enough that the club added him to the 40-man last winter to keep him from potential selection in the Rule 5 draft. Yan struggled to a 5.25 ERA with a sky high 15.2% walk rate at High-A Tri-City, though, costing him his roster spot. The Angels will have ten days to trade Yan or place him on waivers.

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Sports.

Rangers Acquire Billy McKinney, Zach Reks From Dodgers

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The Rangers announced they’ve acquired corner outfielders Billy McKinney and Zach Reks from the Dodgers in exchange for cash considerations. Both players were designated for assignment by Los Angeles last Friday, as many teams cleared roster space for prospects whom they didn’t want to leave eligible for the Rule 5 draft.  Texas’ 40-man roster tally is up to 39.

McKinney has bounced around the league a fair amount this year. He opened the season with the Brewers but landed with the Mets via minor trade a few weeks into the season. After two months in Queens, McKinney was designated for assignment and traded to the Dodgers. The 27-year-old finished out the season in Southern California.

Between the three clubs, the left-handed hitting McKinney tallied exactly 300 plate appearances. It was a career-high in playing time, but the former first-rounder didn’t consistently perform at the plate. While he had a solid run with the Mets, McKinney struggled badly with the Brew Crew and Dodgers and ultimately managed a meager .192/.280/.358 season line with nine home runs. His 10.7% walk rate was solid, but McKinney also fanned at a higher-than-average 26.3% clip and didn’t hit for a ton of power. He’s out of minor league option years, so he’ll need to either break camp with Texas in 2022 or again be made available to the rest of the league.

Reks has essentially no big league body of work to speak of, with just ten MLB plate appearances under his belt. The 28-year-old is an accomplished minor league hitter, though, with a career .295/.383/.487 line on the farm. That includes a .282/.382/.529 showing across 764 plate appearances with the Dodgers’ top affiliate in Oklahoma City, where Reks has shown a promising combination of patience and power.

He’s a defensively-limited player with strikeout concerns, but there’s little harm for the Rangers in adding him for nothing more than cash considerations. The left-handed hitting Reks still has a pair of options remaining, so he can shuttled up and down between Arlington and Triple-A Round Rock through the end of the 2023 campaign if he sticks on the 40-man roster.

Braves Acquire Jay Jackson, Designate Yoan Lopez

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The Giants have traded right-handed reliever Jay Jackson to the Braves in exchange for cash or a player to be named later, per a pair of team announcements. San Francisco designated Jackson for assignment on Friday while setting their 40-man roster prior to the Rule 5 protection deadline. Fellow right-hander Yoan Lopez was designated for assignment in a corresponding move, per the Braves.

Jackson, 34, has found new life in the big leagues after a strong four-year run with the Hiroshima Carp in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He’s been with the Brewers and the Giants since returning, most recently pitching to a 3.74 ERA with an impressive 31.3% strikeout rate in 21 1/3 innings for San Francisco last season. Jackson also averaged 94.8 mph on his heater, pairing that with a sizable 13.3% swinging-strike rate. Those numbers are impressive, to be sure, but Jackson has also struggled with his command at times, walking 13.5% of his opponents since his return from NPB.

Command issues notwithstanding, Jackson makes for a solid, low-cost pickup for the reigning World Series champs. In addition to a good run with the Giants’ big league club last year, he also posted a 1.29 ERA with a gaudy 24-to-1 K/BB ratio in 14 Triple-A frames in 2021. And, despite the fact that he’s 34 years old, Jackson still has a minor league option remaining, so he can give the Braves a good bit of flexibility in the bullpen.

The 28-year-old Lopez was traded from Arizona to Atlanta in a late-May deal that sent minor league outfielder Deivi Estrada to Arizona. Lopez had a solid run in Triple-A Gwinnett, tallying 32 2/3 innings of 3.03 ERA ball with a 26.7% strikeout rate and an 8.4% walk rate in that time.

Once a high-profile international signing by the D-backs, Lopez has only tallied 101 2/3 innings in the big leagues to this point. He carries a 4.25 ERA with a solid 7.7% walk rate but a below-average 19.1% strikeout rate. The Braves will have a week to trade Lopez, place him on outright waivers or release him.

Cubs Acquire Harold Ramirez From Guardians

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The Cubs have acquired outfielder Harold Ramirez from the Guardians in exchange for cash, per a club announcement out of Chicago. Ramirez was one of seven players designated for assignment in Cleveland last Friday. The Cubs now have 38 players on their 40-man roster.

Ramirez, 27, made his big league debut with the Marlins in 2019 and earned quickly made himself into a Miami fan favorite with a mammoth first season in the Majors. In May 2019, Ramirez slashed .368/.419/.474 — understandably endearing himself to those who follow the Fish.

It’s been a steady decline since that point, however, as Ramirez has posted just .264/.299/.400 (86 wRC+). Ramirez has solid bat-to-ball skills but rarely walks and chases outside the zone far too often. Since 2019, Ramirez’s 43.6% chase rate on pitches off the plate is the ninth-highest mark among 340 players with at least 500 plate appearances. His .134 isolated power (slugging minus batting average) during that time ranks 281st in the same subset, placing him well shy of the league-average — particularly relative to his corner outfield peers.

Ramirez joins Michael Hermosillo as a right-handed-hitting bench option for the Cubs, though he doesn’t have the typical platoon splits one might expect. His numbers against lefties (.275/.315/.400, 92 wRC+) and righties (.270/.306/.408, 90 wRC+) are nearly identical. Defensively, Ramirez has appeared at all three outfield spots but is best-suited for work in either left field or right field.

Ramirez is out of minor league options, so the Cubs will either need to break camp with him on the Opening Day roster next year or else expose him to waivers. He’ll compete for a bench spot in Spring Training, but it also stands to reason that Chicago could be in the market for outfield upgrades this winter, which could complicate Ramirez’s path to a roster spot.

Guardians Trade J.C. Mejia To Brewers

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1:33pm: Mejia was actually granted a fourth minor league option, president of baseball operations David Stearns tells Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (Twitter link). That’s quite notable for his outlook, as he can now head to Triple-A Nashville and continue to develop as a starter and serve as some upper-level depth.

1:03pm: The Brewers have acquired right-hander J.C. Mejia from the Guardians in exchange for a player to be named later or cash, the teams announced. Mejia was one of seven players designated for assignment in Cleveland last Friday as the Guardians set their roster in advance of the Rule 5 protection deadline.

Mejia, 25, made his big league debut this past season for a Cleveland club that was rocked by injuries in the starting rotation. It wasn’t a great showing, evidenced by gruesome 8.25 ERA and 2.2 HR/9 marks through his first 52 1/3 Major League innings. His struggles weren’t confined to the Majors, either, as Mejia was roughed up for a 6.75 ERA in 39 Triple-A frames — also his debut at that level.

While the 2021 season wasn’t a strong one in terms of results, Mejia had a sharp track record prior to this rocky campaign. Even with this year’s poor Triple-A numbers, he sports a career 3.12 ERA in the minors — a mark accompanied by solid strikeout and walk rates (23.4% and 7.1%, respectively). Mejia also had a 48% ground-ball rate in the big leagues and has regularly posted grounder percentages north of 55% in the minors.

Starting pitching isn’t a major need in Milwaukee, where the Brewers have a star-studded rotation headlined by Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Freddy Peralta. Righty Adrian Houser and lefty Eric Lauer round out the mix, and the Brewers also have some homegrown alternative options in the form of Aaron Ashby and Ethan Small — the former of whom could open the 2021 season in the Milwaukee bullpen.

Given that solid group of options, Mejia seems likely to open the year in the bullpen — if he survives the winter on the 40-man roster. Mejia is out of minor league options, so he’ll need to break camp with the club or else be exposed to waivers. With a ~93mph four-seamer and sinker working as a starter, it’s possible his velocity could jump into the mid-90s working in shorter stints. For now, he’ll likely head to camp in hopes of winning a long-relief spot.

Guardians Sign Sandy Leon To Minor League Deal

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The Guardians have added some extra depth at catcher, signing veteran backstop Sandy Leon to a minor league contract with an invitation to Major League Spring Training, per a club announcement. It’ll be the second stint in Cleveland for Leon, who is represented by the MAS+ Agency.

Leon, 32, spent the 2021 season with the Marlins, appearing in 83 games and batting .183/.237/.267 with four homers and five doubles in 220 plate appearances. That marked the tenth consecutive season in which Leon has logged at least brief Major League action.

While the switch-hitting veteran posted a strong .310/.369/.476 slash back in 2016, that sample of 283 plate appearances now looks like a clear outlier. In five seasons since that time, Leon has batted just .192/.257/.298 through nearly 1100 plate appearances. It’s not a strong offensive profile, but Leon regularly posts strong framing and blocking numbers. His caught-stealing rates have dipped in recent seasons, but last year’s 27% mark was still a bit better than the leaguewide average of 25%.

Roberto Perez and Austin Hedges combined to handle the bulk of catching duties in Cleveland this past season, but Perez’s 2021 club option was declined at season’s end after a second straight year of struggles at the plate. Hedges currently projects as the starter, but there’s a clear opportunity for a veteran — be it Leon or someone else — to come in and win at least a backup job. Prospect Bryan Lavastida was added to the 40-man roster last Friday, but he’s only played seven Triple-A games to this point in his career and likely needs some more development.

Angels Acquire Tyler Wade, Designate Kean Wong

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The Yankees announced Monday that they’ve traded infielder/outfielder Tyler Wade to the Angels in exchange for cash or a player to be named later. Wade was designated for assignment Friday amid a series of moves as the Yankees set their roster in advance of the Rule 5 protection deadline. The Angels announced that they have designated utilityman Kean Wong for assignment in a corresponding move.

Wade, 27 tomorrow, has spent parts of the past five seasons on the Yankees’ bench, serving as an oft-used utility option while being frequently shuttled between the big leagues and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Last year’s 145 plate appearances were a career-high (though they were spread across 103 games), and Wade’s .268/.354/.323 slash during that small sample was the most productive of MLB stretch of his career. In all, he’s a .212/.298/.307 hitter in 491 plate appearances for the Yankees.

Of course, Wade was always more of a defensive option than a player expected to make meaningful contributions with the bat. During his half-decade run with the Yankees, he saw time at every position other than first base, catcher and pitcher. The bulk of that workload came at second base (546 innings) and shortstop (331 innings), but Wade has 33 appearances at the hot corner and 57 in the outfield.

Wong, the younger brother of Brewers second baseman Kolten Wong, was a fourth-round pick by the Rays back in 2013 but has yet to find his footing in the big leagues. The 26-year-old has seen MLB times both with Tampa Bay and the Halos but managed only a .167/.188/.218 output in an admittedly small sample of 84 plate appearances. The younger Wong is a career .293/.355/.421 hitter in more than 1600 Triple-A plate appearances, however, and he also still has a pair of minor league option years remaining.

Another club in need of some infield depth could conceivably take a chance on Wong, who’ll either be traded, placed on outright waivers or released in the next seven days. Even if Wong goes unclaimed on waivers and is outrighted to Triple-A Salt Lake, he’ll have the opportunity to reject that assignment and become a free agent, given that it would be the second time in his career that he’s been outrighted.

D-backs Sign Matt Davidson To Minor League Deal

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Infielder Matt Davidson is returning to the organization that drafted him, as the D-backs’ Triple-A affiliate announced this weekend that Davidson has signed a minor league contract with an invitation to Major League Spring Training.

Selected with the No. 36 overall pick back in 2009, Davidson has shown plenty of power in the big leagues but hasn’t solidified himself as a consistent MLB contributor despite parts of five seasons in the Majors. The MVP Sports client last appeared for the 2020 Reds, hitting .163/.234/.395 with three homers and a double in 47 plate appearances.

In a total of 1075 plate appearances from 2013-20, Davidson is a lifetime .223/.292/.433 hitter with 52 home runs but a sky-high 34.2% strikeout rate. He’s split his big league time evenly between the two infield corners, and while there was some brief consideration of making Davidson a two-way player a few years ago, he has just 7 1/3 innings on the mound in his pro career.

Davidson will add some right-handed-hitting depth to the D-backs’ infield picture, and he’s coming off a massive performance with the Dodgers’ Triple-A club in 2021. Last year, in just 356 plate appearances with Oklahoma City, Davidson slugged 28 homers and tallied 21 doubles while batting .294/.365/.629 (136 wRC+).

NPB’s Seibu Lions Sign Dietrich Enns

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TODAY: Enns is heading to Japan to sign with the Seibu Lions, the team announced.

NOVEMBER 17: The Rays are in the process of finalizing an agreement to send left-hander Dietrich Enns to a team either in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, the Korea Baseball Organization or Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (Twitter link). Enns will be placed on release waivers today and, upon clearing Friday, will be free to sign with his new club.

Moves such as this one generally benefit all parties and are, of course, made with full consent from the player in question. Whichever team held interest in Enns would first contact the Rays, who’d then gauge the player’s interest in the opportunity before proceeding to negotiate a release agreement. Tampa Bay will likely receive some financial compensation for releasing Enns, while the pitcher himself will receive a larger salary in NPB or the KBO than he’d have earned as a fringe big leaguer in 2022 — if he’d even stuck on the Rays’ 40-man roster.

Enns, 30, was quite effective in 22 1/3 frames for the Rays this past season, pitching to a 2.82 ERA with an impressive 28.4% strikeout rate against a strong 6.8% walk rate. That marked the first big league action for Enns since a brief four-inning cup of coffee with the 2017 Twins, however, and the lefty’s minor league track record generally isn’t as strong as this past season’s results. Enns did post a 2.64 ERA in 71 2/3 Triple-A frames, but he carries a career 4.26 ERA with pedestrian strikeout and walk rates in nearly 400 innings at that level.

The benefit to the arrangement for Enns could be twofold. In addition to securing a guaranteed salary of some note for the first time in an 11-year professional career, he’ll also set himself up for the opportunity to potentially return to Major League Baseball outside the constructs of the arbitration system.

Had Enns remained with the Rays, he’d have needed another three years on the roster before qualifying for arbitration eligibility as a 33-year-old (at least, as the arbitration system currently stands). However, by going to NPB, the KBO or the CPBL, Enns could impress for only a season or two and then return on a guaranteed Major League deal. Chris Flexen, Merrill Kelly, Josh Lindblom and Miles Mikolas are among the recent players to go this route, securing considerable salaries overseas before returning to the big leagues on guaranteed, multi-year contracts that typically allow them to become free agents upon completion (rather than remain under control via arbitration). It’s not a foolproof gambit, of course, but even if Enns struggles in his new environs he’d still likely come away with more than he’d have earned with a big league club in 2022.

With the removal of Enns, the Rays’ 40-man roster will have three open spots. Topkin suggests that the Rays may look to open another spot or two prior to Friday’s Rule 5 protection deadline.

Brewers To Sign Pedro Severino

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The Brewers have signed catcher Pedro Severino to a one-year, $1.9MM deal, ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan reports (via Twitter).  Another $400K in incentives are available to the 28-year-old backstop, who is represented by Republik Sports.  The contract will become official when Severino passes a physical.

After Manny Pina signed with the Braves earlier this week, Severino will now step directly into Pina’s role as the right-handed hitting complement to the lefty-swinging Omar Narvaez behind the plate in Milwaukee.  Narvaez struggles badly against left-handed pitching and he struggled in general in the second half of the 2021 season, so there should be a fair amount of playing time available to Severino with his new club.

Severino, for his part, has a very solid .262/.324/.441 career slash line against left-handed pitching, with particularly good numbers in both 2019 (.812 OPS in 155 PA) and 2021 (.818 OPS in 161 PA).  Severino didn’t do much against righties, however, and between his projected $3.1MM arbitration salary and Adley Rutschman looming as the Orioles’ catcher of the future, Baltimore chose to outright Severino off its 40-man roster earlier this month.  Severino then opted to become a free agent for the first time in his career.

Severino has a third and final year of arbitration eligibility next winter, so this extra year of control gives the Brewers some flexibility in future catching decisions since Narvaez is himself a free agent after the 2022 campaign.  Prospect Mario Feliciano made his MLB debut last year, so if the Brew Crew is optimistic about his future, Milwaukee could potentially roll with a Feliciano/Severino combination in 2023 if the club decided to let Narvaez walk.

Defensively, Severino has been a below-average framer and he has -19 Defensive Runs Saved over his career.  As noted by Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, however, there is some cause for optimism that the Brewers can get Severino turned around in the same way that Narvaez went from being a subpar defender to a very strong pitch-framer in his two seasons with the Brew Crew.

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