- Righty A.J. Cole will begin the season as the Nationals’ fifth starter, manager Dave Martinez announced Sunday (via Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com). That’s not surprising, as fellow righty Jeremy Hellickson isn’t adequately stretched out yet after recently signing with the Nats on a minor league deal. Cole will join Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez and Tanner Roark in Washington’s season-opening rotation.
Nationals Rumors
Nationals Release Reid Brignac, Alejandro De Aza
Along with the previously reported Ryan Raburn, the Nationals have released infielder Reid Brignac and outfielder Alejandro De Aza, Chris Cotillo of SB Nation tweets. Both Brignac and De Aza signed minor league contracts with the organization during the offseason.
The 32-year-old Brignac hasn’t even cracked the 100-plate appearance plateau at the game’s highest level since 2011, when he was a member of the Rays. He has since seen limited action with the Yankees, Rockies, Phillies, Marlins and Braves. Brignac has batted a paltry .219/.264/.309 in 951 major league PAs, thus offsetting his ability to line up at second, third and shortstop. He perhaps could have been an early season factor in Washington, which will open the year without injured second baseman David Murphy, but the team will instead roll with Howie Kendrick and Wilmer Difo.
De Aza, 33, is a more accomplished major leaguer than Brignac, though he hit a meager .194/.223/.222 in 70 PAs with the Nationals last year. While De Aza fared well with their Triple-A affiliate (.280/.368/.403 in 212 PAs), he faced long odds of landing a spot with the Nats to begin the 2018 season. They’re loaded in the outfield, after all, with starters Bryce Harper, Adam Eaton and Michael A. Taylor, not to mention reserves Brian Goodwin and Matt Adams.
Article XX(B) Free Agents Update: Saturday
Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement contains a provision that allows certain free agents who are signed to minor league contracts to receive a $100K retention bonus if they are not on the team’s 25-man roster or the Major League disabled list five days prior to the season.
Free agents who qualify for this distinction are those who have at least six years of Major League service time and had a Major League contract expire at the end of the previous season, but signed a minor league deal ten or more days prior to Opening Day.
The deadline for teams to decide on these players is today at 11am central time. By the deadline, teams with these players in camp need to decide whether to:
- Add the player to their 25-man roster or Major League disabled list (or agree to do so in writing).
- Pay the player a $100K retention bonus to keep him in the organization beyond the deadline and send him to the minors.
- Grant the player his outright release from the minor league contract so that he may pursue opportunities with other teams.
We’ll use this post to keep track of the Article XX(B) free agents whose respective teams have elected option one or two; in other words, players who won’t be released for the time being. The most recent updates are on top.
- Miguel Montero has been informed that he’ll make the Nationals as the club’s backup catcher, according to Jamal Collier of MLB.com. He’ll earn a $1.3MM base salary, as outlined in the details of the pact he signed with the club on February 1st. Montero beat out young backstop Pedro Severino in a camp battle for the role.
Earlier…
- Right-handed reliever Fernando Salas will make the Diamondbacks’ opening day roster, Zach Buchanan of The Athletic reports. He’ll join a relief crew that seems somewhat thin behind Archie Bradley, Brad Boxberger and Yoshihisa Hirano. The 32-year-old pitched to a 5.22 ERA across 58 2/3 relief innings last season between the Mets and the Angels. In a related move, the team has designated Rule 5 pick Albert Suarez.
- Indians manager Terry Francona announced today that reliever Matt Belisle will be the seventh member of the club’s opening day bullpen (hat tip to Jordan Bastian of MLB.com). Belisle had been competing with Carlos Torres for the final relief job; he pitched to a 4.03 ERA while saving 9 games for the Twins last season.
- Danny Valencia has been added to the Orioles’ roster, Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun tweets. Valencia stated a while back that he had no plans to go to the minors if he didn’t make the big league club, so adding the corner infield to their roster was Baltimore’s only path to retaining him. He’ll prove a right-handed-hitting complement to first baseman Chris Davis.
- The Reds have informed middle infielder Cliff Pennington that he’ll make the major league club, John Fayman of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports via Twitter. He’ll serve as a bench player for a rebuilding Cincinnati club while top prospect Nick Senzel gets more seasoning at the Triple-A level. Pennington hit .253/.306/.330 for the Angels last year.
Nationals Release Ryan Raburn
According to Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post, Ryan Raburn was seen shaking hands with teammates and walking out of the clubhouse with a duffel bag. This likely means that the Nationals have elected to release him rather than add him to the major league roster or pay him a $100K retention bonus.
Washington re-signed Raburn to a minor-league pact after he hit .262/.304/.431 last year across 69 plate appearances. He logged just 69 plate appearances due to a strained trapezius in his age-36 season while playing average defense in the outfield.
Used largely in a platoon capacity as a lefty-crusher over the past six seasons, Raburn has managed a wRC+ as high as 153 (with the Indians in 2015) while being mostly shielded against right-handers. Raburn had told his teammates he was likely to retire if he didn’t make the team, so a .080/.179/.259 showing in camp has likely put a fork in a career as a slugger that struck fear in the hearts of opposing left-handed pitchers.
Joaquin Benoit Diagnosed With Forearm Strain
Veteran Nationals reliever Joaquin Benoit will not be ready for the start of the season owing to a forearm strain, Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post reports (Twitter links). His timeline is not yet known, but he is not throwing for the time being.
The Nats had added Benoit on a one-year, $1MM deal at the start of camp, hoping that he’d deepen a relief unit that has a fair bit of uncertainty behind its late-inning trio of Sean Doolittle, Ryan Madson, and Brandon Kintzler. The results weren’t there for Benoit in 2017, but he still brought a mid-nineties heater and generated plenty of swings and misses.
If Benoit is to engineer a bounceback in his age-40 campaign, it’ll have to come after he works back to health. He had been knocked around a bit in his first three spring outings, allowing three earned runs on five hits before going on the shelf with the arm ailment.
On the one hand, the news adds to the questions facing the Nats as they seek to avoid a repeat of their bullpen problems from the first half of the 2017 campaign. Shawn Kelley is, like Benoit, an established hurler who is trying to recover from an off year. The out-of-options A.J. Cole will be on the roster and could factor in the bullpen, at least once Jeremy Hellickson is ready to take over the fifth starter’s job.
On the other hand, the extra Opening Day roster spot could help the organization deal with a pile-up of possibilities. Beyond the prospective five-man unit of players noted above — i.e., Doolittle, Madson, Kintzler, Kelley, and Cole — there are loads of options and an ongoing lack of clarity.
In terms of righties, the Nats likely can’t count on anything from Koda Glover, who is still not at full health. Trevor Gott has produced nine blank frames this spring, so he could step into Benoit’s shoes. Otherwise, Austin Adams and Wander Suero also represent 40-man relief options (with the latter already having been optioned). Edwin Jackson and Cesar Vargas were both brought in on minors pacts, though the former is perhaps likelier to serve as rotation depth and the latter has already been sent out of camp.
There are yet more possibilities on the southpaw side of the equation. The hard-throwing Enny Romero has been markedly ineffective in Grapefruit League action. While Matt Grace has allowed only three earned runs, he has also coughed up 16 hits in his 10 2/3 spring frames. Both are out of options. Sammy Solis can be optioned, but he has also racked up 11 strikeouts against just one walk in his eight innings of action in camp. Veteran non-roster players Tommy Milone and Tim Collins could conceivably also be considered after showing well in their opportunities thus far.
It’s certainly still possible to imagine the Nats looking at outside options, though Greg Holland is perhaps the only free agent who’d represent a clear upgrade and the team hasn’t shown much evident inclination to pursue him. (Holland would obviously also represent a fairly expensive target.) The trick in looking at players from other organizations is in managing the 40-man roster. That’s the same general quandary the Nationals will already face in balancing the numerous non-roster and out-of-options players under consideration for just a few open jobs.
Regardless of the precise decisions made, it seems as if the club will end up making quite a few reliever transactions late in camp — if not also throughout the season. While the bulk of the rest of the roster is settled, and the Nats can always weigh mid-season trade acquisitions as needed, the bullpen again appears to be an area of potential intrigue for the defending NL East champs.
Nationals Option Victor Robles To Triple-A
- The Nationals optioned outfielder Victor Robles to Triple-A today, a move that came as little surprise given that the club didn’t want to keep Robles on the big league bench rather than gaining valuable everyday experience in the minors. Robles, a consensus top-six prospect in baseball, bypassed Triple-A entirely last season when he was called up by the Nats for 13 September games (plus a spot on the NLDS roster). Washington is already set in the outfield with Bryce Harper, Michael Taylor, and Adam Eaton, leaving Robles without a clear path to playing time. He’ll begin 2018 getting his first taste of Triple-A ball and one would expect he’ll again return to the Nats roster this season, though the exact timing could be in question depending on if the Nationals want to manage Robles’ service time.
A.J. Cole Will Make Nationals' Roster
- It’s up in the air whether right-hander A.J. Cole will earn the final spot in the Nationals’ rotation. Regardless, the out-of-options 26-year-old is “going to make the team,” general manager Mike Rizzo told Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post and other reporters Monday. Rizzo added that veteran Jeremy Hellickson, also a contender for the No. 5 job, is “way behind” right now – which seems to bode well for Cole’s chances of starting. Given that Hellickson only just signed with the Nationals, they could elect to keep him in Florida for extended spring training so he’s better equipped to succeed if he does get a regular-season opportunity, per Rizzo (via Jamal Collier of MLB.com). Rizzo noted that a couple of the Nats’ signings last year, catcher Matt Wieters and reliever Joe Blanton, struggled mightily because neither had a full spring training. He doesn’t want to go down that same road with Hellickson.
Nationals Notes: Murphy, Collins
There is “virtually no chance” Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy will be ready for Opening Day, Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com writes. Murphy, who’s working his way back from the microfracture knee surgery he underwent last October, still hasn’t seen any game action this spring, notes Zuckerman, who expects Howie Kendrick to begin the season at the keystone for Washington. Wilmer Difo will back up Kendrick, and Zuckerman adds that Murphy’s unavailability could open the door for one of Matt Reynolds, Adrian Sanchez, Reid Brignac, Chris Dominguez, Andrew Stevenson, Moises Sierra or Ryan Raburn to be part of the Nats’ early season bench.
- Back to the Nationals, with whom reliever Tim Collins is attempting to revive his career. Formerly an effective cog in Kansas City, Collins underwent back-to-back Tommy John surgeries in recent years, thus derailing his career. Now, he’s making a case to earn an Opening Day bullpen spot for the Nats, according to Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post. Both Collins and general manager Mike Rizzo have been pleased with the left-hander’s work, though he still hasn’t pitched back-to-back days since returning last season. Collins had a rough go in 2017 at the Double-A level, albeit over a mere 8 2/3 innings, as he allowed 14 earned runs on 12 hits and 10 walks, with eight strikeouts. He regarded the year as “a failure” at one point because he didn’t make it back to the majors, but a talk with team officials over the winter helped, which Castillo details in his piece.
Boswell On The Lack Of A Mike Rizzo Extension
- Mike Rizzo has built the Nationals into a contender and wants to remain as the team’s general manager, so the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell isn’t sure why ownership doesn’t seem to be in a rush to extend Rizzo’s contract. Rizzo is entering the last year of his deal, and though he said last month that he was “confident” a new agreement would be settled, there hasn’t been any news on that front in the interim. Boswell wonders if the Lerner family has held off on an extension since they could be considering letting Rizzo leave if the team again falls short in the postseason — if this isn’t the case, however, it makes little sense to put Rizzo and the franchise itself through an awkward lame-duck period.
Nationals Sign Jeremy Hellickson To Minor-League Deal
SUNDAY: The contract comes with a $2MM salary in the majors and up to $4MM in incentives, Jon Heyman of FanRag tweets. It also features several opt-out chances. Beginning May 1, Hellickson will have an opportunity to exit the deal every 15 days.
SATURDAY: The club has made the signing official.
FRIDAY: The Nationals have agreed to a minor-league deal with righty Jeremy Hellickson, per ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick (via Twitter). He’ll receive an invitation to join the MLB side of camp.
Presumably, Hellickson will have a strong shot at earning the fifth starter’s job with the Nats. The organization has been cited all winter as a possible pursuer of a rotation upgrade, though to this point it had not made a significant move. Washington had indicated it would like to see A.J. Cole, who is out of options, command a starting role. But he has not evidently not run away with things in camp, leaving the team open to adding another arm. The other top candidates for the job are prospect Erick Fedde and non-roster invitees Edwin Jackson and Tommy Milone.
Hellickson, who’ll soon turn 31, has had a quiet winter after taking a $17.2MM qualifying offer from the Phillies for the 2017 season. He struggled all year long, ending with a 5.43 ERA over 164 innings. Despite holding opponents to a .246 batting average on balls in play, Hellickson coughed up home runs at a rate of 1.9 per nine innings and saw his swinging-strike rate drop to 8.3% after sitting above ten percent in each of the prior three campaigns.
Of course, the former Rookie of the Year has had better days in prior seasons. He has never returned to the top-level output of his earliest seasons with the Rays, but Hellickson did turn in a quality 2016 effort with Philadelphia. He tallied 189 innings of 3.71 ERA ball in his 32 starts while recording 7.3 K/9 against 2.1 BB/9.
