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Waiver Claims Helping Their New Teams

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The Rays claimed Brandon Allen off waivers from the Athletics two days ago, improving their bench with some left-handed power. Most waiver claims have little impact, but every so often a team will dig up a useful piece. With some help from our Transaction Tracker, here's a list of players who have been claimed off waivers since the start of the offseason and are now contributing to their new team at the big league level…

Brian Bixler had one hit and one walk in seven plate appearances with the Astros after being claimed from the Nationals, but he's since been removed from the 40-man roster and assigned to Triple-A.

Team Facebook/Twitter/RSS

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If you prefer your MLBTR fix limited to only your favorite team, we've got you covered.  Below are links to our team Facebook, Twitter, and RSS pages and feeds.

AL East

AL Central

AL West

NL East

NL Central

NL West

Transactions only: Twitter / RSS

Free $400 Fantasy Baseball Contest (Sponsored Post)

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Looking to flex your fantasy baseball genius on a single night?  Try DraftStreet, where you can put together a new fantasy team every night and compete against other users for real money.

Right now DraftStreet has a freeroll for MLB Trade Rumors readers, meaning you can take a shot at a chunk of the $400 prize pool for free, with no strings attached.  Here's how it works.

The MLBTR freeroll is for Friday night's games (the afternoon Reds-Cubs and Yankees-Red Sox games are not included), so you have until 6:00pm central time to create your team.  You're given a $100K salary cap, and each player is assigned a price by DraftStreet.  For Friday, Cole Hamels is considered the most valuable player since he starts against the Padres, but he'll cost you over $17K.  Your roster will cover these positions: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OF, 2 utility, 2 SP, 1 RP, 1 P and 2 Reserves (14 starters).  You get points based on how your team performs Friday.  For example, you'll get 0.75 points for each strikeout Hamels racks up and 1.5 points if he gets the win.  The teams with the most points get the prize money.  You can apply all kinds of strategy in building your roster – for example, check out the chance of rain at Comerica Park Friday before you decide to add Rangers and Tigers players.  Below I've taken a screenshot of my roster: 

Draftstreet

If you're interested, sign up and create a roster prior to Friday's night games (6:00pm central time).  It's quick, easy, fun, and the MLBTR league gives you a free chance to win some of the $400 prize pool.  If you enjoy the competition you can try other leagues for free and earn credits, or deposit real money.

MLBTR Seeks Part-Time Writers

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We’re looking to add to the MLB Trade Rumors writing team. The position pays on an hourly basis. The criteria:

  • Exceptional knowledge of all 30 baseball teams, no discernible bias. Knowledge of hot stove concepts like arbitration and free agent compensation.
  • Availability to regularly work a 1-5pm CDT shift or 5-11pm CDT shift every Sunday is required. Weeknight shifts may also become available.
  • Writing experience is necessary and online writing experience is preferred.
  • Attention to detail and ability to follow the MLBTR style and tone.  
  • Ability to analyze articles and craft intelligent, well-written posts summing up the news concisely. 
  • Ability to use Twitter and an RSS feed reader such as Google Reader. In general, you must be able to multi-task.
  • If you're interested, email mlbtrhelp@gmail.com and explain how you stand out in a couple of short paragraphs. Hundreds will apply, so we cannot respond to most applications.

List Of Top Young Pitchers Without Extensions

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MLB teams are working to keep their best pitchers off of the open market with contract extensions, and fewer elite arms are hitting free agency as a result of this emerging trend. In the past month alone, Matt Cain, Derek Holland, Jon Niese and Madison Bumgarner have signed long-term extensions that will postpone their free agency.

So who's going to hit free agency? Fortunately for teams without pitching, some under-30 starters are not signed to long-term deals (minimum 2.5 wins above replacement in 2011 per FanGraphs). The list below includes pitchers who are going year to year through arbitration, and those who are headed for free agency this coming offseason:

Eligible For Free Agency After 2012

Eligible For Free Agency After 2013

Eligible For Free Agency After 2014

Eligible For Free Agency After 2015

  • Rick Porcello – 23 years old, 2.7 WAR in '11, 2.170 years of MLB service through '11
  • David Price – 26 years old, 4.7 WAR in '11, 2.164 years of MLB service through '11
  • Jordan Zimmermann -– 25 years old, 3.4 WAR in '11, 2.154 years of MLB service through '11 (extension candidate)
  • Ian Kennedy – 27 years old, 5.0 WAR in '11, 2.124 years of MLB service through '11 (extension candidate)
  • Mat Latos – 24 years old, 3.2 WAR in '11, 2.079 years of MLB service through '11
  • Doug Fister – 28 years old, 5.5 WAR in '11, 2.058 years of MLB service through '11
  • Philip Humber – 29 years old, 3.5 WAR in '11, 2.000 years of MLB service through '11

Eligible For Free Agency After 2016

  • Daniel Hudson — 25 years old, 4.9 WAR in '11, 1.117 years of MLB service through '11 (extension candidate)
  • Ivan Nova – 25 years old, 2.7 WAR in '11, 1.035 years of MLB service through '11
  • Brandon Beachy – 25 years old, 2.8 WAR in '11, 1.014 years of MLB service through '11
  • Michael Pineda – 23 years old, 3.4 WAR in '11, 1.000 years of MLB service through '11

Many of the pitchers above will eventually sign extensions that delay their arrival on the open market. For now, however, it remains possible that they'll test free agency.

How Much Is Super Two Status Worth?

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Super two players go to arbitration four times instead of three, so they make more money than their peers. This incentivizes teams to keep top young players in the minors for extra seasoning: clubs save millions in future seasons if their players don't qualify as super twos.

It's probably not a coincidence that Carlos Santana, Giancarlo Stanton and Stephen Strasburg were all called up within four days of one another in June of 2010. Those players now project to miss out on super two status this offseason because of the patience their teams showed two years ago.

This past offseason former top prospects Matt Wieters and Andrew McCutchen were among the players who narrowly missed out on super two status. Three years ago, when they were initially called up, it was apparent that their teams were likely working to avoid super two status. This isn’t to say teams always time call-ups based on service time — that's not at all true — but there’s no denying it’s a contributing factor with top prospects. 

Sometimes teams build escalators into extensions for pre-arbitration eligible players who may qualify as super twos (yesterday we encountered one such deal). Here’s a look at how teams have valued super two status on recent contract:

The value of super two status depends on many factors including the player’s performance and the timing of the deal. But if your favorite team keeps its top prospect in the minors until June, know that arbitration eligibility may well be a factor. Similarly, it’s easy to see why the MLBPA insisted on an increase in super two players in the most recent round of collective bargaining.

How To Use MLBTR

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An explanation of the many ways to enjoy MLB Trade Rumors:

  • If the main site doesn't load perfectly on your cell phone, try the more mobile-friendly mlbtraderumors.mobi.  It's a simple page that shows you just the headlines and lets you click through to what you want to read.
  • If you're an iPhone user, be sure to pick up our app for the latest news and rumors. MLBTR just introduced an Android app as well.
  • If you want only the hard news in the form of transactions, our transactions page is the ticket.  You can also get only the transactions via Twitter or RSS. 
  • To return to the main page at any time, just click on the title or the Home button on the navigation bar below the title. 
  • The navigation bar will cover many of your needs.  Use the About dropdown to learn about this site or any of its writers. 
  • The Contact button takes you to a page where you can write an email message to the MLBTR writers.  If you have a link to a rumor we've missed, please send it in through the Contact page!  Also use the Contact page to inquire about advertising on MLBTR.
  • The Archives dropdown shows you 15 months worth.  If you need to go back further, click on Site Map at the very bottom of the page.  Site Map also lists out every MLBTR post category, including players, teams, and features.
  • The Tools dropdown takes you to a number of different places. The MLBTR Widget allows website owners to easily add a constantly updated box with all of MLBTR's headlines to their sites.
  • Also under the tools tab is our Transaction Tracker, which enables you to search about anything and everything to do with baseball trades, signings and extensions. 
  • Under the tools tab, you'll find a link to our Forums, a message board community of MLBTR readers with over 9,100 members.  You can discuss any baseball-related topic on the Forums, and start your own thread too.
  • MLBTR's Agency Database lets you know which agencies represent which players. It's searchable by team, agency or player, so be sure to check it out.
  • Feeds By Team is a very useful dropdown.  Hover over it to see all 30 teams.  Click on the team name to bring up a page of every post containing information about that team, with the latest on top.  These are the same pages you'll find if you go to the Rumors By Team section on the sidebar and select A's Rumors, Angels Rumors, etc.  
  • Also under the Feeds By Team dropdown, you'll find RSS and Twitter buttons.  Those links allow you to follow a single team's rumors via RSS or Twitter.  Did you know we have a separate Twitter account for each of the 30 teams?  For example you can follow @mlbtrtigers, where you would get the latest Tigers updates.
  • You can also follow Tim Dierkes and Ben Nicholson-Smith on Twitter for more MLBTR content.
  • On the far right of the Navigation bar, you'll see buttons for Twitter, Facebook, and RSS.  MLBTR has over 165,000 Twitter followers, over 55,000 Facebook fans, and over 53,000 RSS subscribers.  Sign up for these and you'll be the first to receive all of our posts.
  • Be sure to check out your favorite team's MLBTR page on Facebook so you can receive and comment on the latest rumors.
  • On to the sidebar.  It begins with a list of our Top Stories, which our writers update any time major hard news occurs.  Go here for a quick update on the most important stories.  Below that is the site's Search Box, where you can type in any player's name and get the latest on him. 
  • MLBTR Features has all kinds of goodies, including our free agent lists, non-tender candidate andprojected arbitration salaries.  Many of the MLBTR Features are constantly updated by our writers, so be assured that our free agent lists are always fresh. 
  • Below Features you've got headlines for all the Recent Posts, in case you'd rather not scroll to see all the headlines.  Then there's a box for our Mailing List, where you can sign up to receive a daily email containing MLBTR's posts.  Use this option if you don't need the news as soon as possible.
  • Next we have Featured Posts, where you'll find original work from MLBTR writers we consider noteworthy.  For example, read about the service time breakdown for top prospects.

Regular MLBTR Features

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If you're a regular MLBTR reader, you'll be familiar with our chats, our Week In Review posts and Mike Axisa's Baseball Blogs Weigh In feature. Here's some more detail on when you'll see our weekly features and exactly what to expect from them:

  • MLBTR Chats - Come by every Wednesday at 2pm CDT to chat about the latest trades, signings and rumblings around the Major Leagues.
  • Baseball Blogs Weigh In - Every Friday morning, Mike Axisa directs you to some of the best writing on baseball blogs around the web. Whether it's opinion, stats or something else entirely, you can connect to the best of the blogosphere once a week on MLBTR. If you want to send Mike a post of yours, reach him at: mike@riveraveblues.com.
  • Week In Review - It's remarkable how much happens in seven days. Every Sunday night, we summarize the week's biggest stories in our Week In Review posts.
  • MLBTR Originals - We gather all our original analysis and reporting in one place every Sunday night.

Recent Extensions For Pre-Arb Eligible Players

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As players approach free agency, they generally gain leverage in contract negotiations with their teams. That’s how Joey Votto and Matt Kemp, two superstars within striking distance of free agency, obtained two of the offseason's most lucrative contracts.

But when players sign extensions early on in their careers, the deals take a different shape. Low-revenue Major League teams can’t afford $200MM mistakes, so they often choose to commit tens of millions to relatively unproven players in exchange for extended team control at a manageable rate.  These teams are investing less money in a commodity that’s less certain to pay off.

This offseason has already featured 11 extensions for pre-arbitration eligible players, as MLBTR’s Extension Tracker shows. The group – Andrew McCutchen, Derek Holland, Jon Niese, Alcides Escobar, Cameron Maybin, Sergio Santos, Jonathan Lucroy, Carlos Santana, Cory Luebke, Salvador Perez and Matt Moore — includes some players who have already become stars. Here are some more observations about the deals:

  • Club options are a must. Teams have obtained at least one option on each extension. 
  • These contracts are the domain of small market teams. The Padres (30th in Opening Day payroll), Royals (27th in payroll), Pirates (26th in payroll), Rays (25th in payroll) and Indians (21st in payroll) are responsible for seven of these 11 extensions.
  • WMG was the lone agency to broker more than one of these deals (Santana, Escobar).
  • Teams seem to prefer up the middle position players. Three catchers, two center fielders and a shortstop populate the list of pre-arbitration position players who signed this offseason. 
  • Starting pitchers can also cash in early; they obtained four of the 11 contracts.
  • Santos, a late bloomer who became a pitcher years into his professional career, is one of two players on this list who's over 25. Santana, who celebrated his 26th birthday on Sunday, is the other.

These deals seem to be on the rise. We saw five extensions for pre-arbitration eligible players last offseason and seven the previous year. Perhaps teams are drawing inspiration from the Rays, who have retained star-caliber players affordably with some successful early-career extensions.

Largest Contracts In Draft History

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Baseball new collective bargaining agreement went to rather extreme lengths to restrict amateur spending, so the days of big money contracts for drafted players appear to be a thing of the past. Clubs are now given a "draft pool" based on their winning percentage, and they face stiff penalties if they spend more than allotted.

Teams were aware that these restrictions could be put in place, so they spared no expense on last year's draft, likely their final chance to spend freely. The 30 clubs combined to spend $236MM on the draft last year, the most in baseball history. Let's take a second to update our list of the largest contracts in draft history…

Major League Contracts

  1. Stephen Strasburg, Nationals (2009, 1st round/1st pick): Four years, $15.1MM. His $7.5MM signing bonus is no longer the draft record, however.
  2. Mark Prior, Cubs (2001, 1/2): Five years, $10.5MM. Prior exercised an opt-out clause near the end of the deal and instead filed for salary arbitration. He earned an extra $1.575MM by doing so.
  3. Bryce Harper, Nationals (2010, 1/1): Five years, $9.9MM. Includes a $6.25MM signing bonus that will be paid out in five installments.
  4. Mark Teixeira, Rangers (2001, 1/5): Four years, $9.5MM. His $4.5MM signing bonus was a draft record for six years.
  5. Danny Hultzen, Mariners (2011, 1/2): Five years, $8.5MM. The deal includes a $6.35MM signing bonus and escalators that could push the total value to $10.6MM.
  6. David Price, Rays (2007, 1/1): Six years, $8.5MM. Like Prior, Price opted out of the final year of his contract and filed for arbitration, earning an extra $2.85MM.
  7. Pat Burrell, Phillies (1998, 1/1): Five years, $8MM. The first of these mega-contracts for draftees.
  8. Dustin Ackley, Mariners (2009, 1/2): Five years, $7.5MM. There's another $2.5MM in incentives tied to how quickly he reached the majors.
  9. Rick Porcello, Tigers (2007, 1/27): Four years, $7.285MM. Porcello also opted out of his contract and filed for arbitration, earning an extra $1.756MM in the process.
  10. Anthony Rendon, Nationals (2011, 1/6): Four years, $7.2MM. All but $1.2MM of the guarantee comes in the form of a signing bonus.

The Hultzen and Rendon deals pushed J.D. Drew and Josh Beckett (both four years, $7MM) out of the top ten. Porcello's contract was designed to match but not exceed Beckett's by pro-rating his 2007 salary.

Big league contracts can no longer be handed out to drafted players according to the new CBA, so this list will not change until the current agreement expires at the earliest.

Minor League Contracts

  1. Gerrit Cole, Pirates (2011, 1/1): $8MM
  2. Bubba Starling, Royals (2011, 1/5): $7.5MM
  3. Jameson Taillon, Pirates (2010, 1/2): $6.5MM
  4. Donavan Tate, Padres (2009, 1/3): $6.25MM
  5. Buster Posey, Giants (2008, 1/5): $6.2MM
  6. Tim Beckham, Rays (2008, 1/1): $6.15MM
  7. Justin Upton, Diamondbacks (2005, 1/1): $6.1MM
  8. Matt Wieters, Orioles (2007, 1/5): $6MM
  9. Eric Hosmer, Royals (2008, 1/3): $6MM
  10. Joe Borchard, White Sox (2000, 1/12): $5.3MM

The Cole and Starling deals pushed Manny Machado and Zach Lee (both 2010 draft picks with $5.25MM bonuses) out of the top ten.

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