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Article XX(B) Free Agents Update: Saturday

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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:

  1. Add the player to their 25-man roster or Major League disabled list (or agree to do so in writing).
  2. Pay the player a $100K retention bonus to keep him in the organization beyond the deadline and send him to the minors.
  3. 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…

Nationals Release Ryan Raburn

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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

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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.

NL East Notes: Robles, Walker, Swanson

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Some items from around the NL East…

  • 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.
  • Neil Walker kept the idea of a return to the Mets open until the team signed Todd Frazier, Walker tells Brendan Kuty of NJ Advance Media.  The infielder and the Mets “just kept in touch about interest levels, so on and so forth,” Walker said.  “They were just checking in to see if I was willing to come back and things like that. I certainly was.  But, really, when Frazier came in, we kind of felt like it wasn’t a possibility.”  The Mets were known to be exploring a wide range of options at second and third base, ranging from everyday players to utility options, and they eventually struck on both fronts by re-signing Jose Reyes for a backup role and signing Frazier for more or less everyday duties at the hot corner.  Walker ended up signing with New York’s other team, inking a one-year $4MM deal with the Yankees
  • Dansby Swanson’s first full MLB season didn’t go as planned, as the Braves shortstop and former first overall pick struggled to a .232/.312/.324 slash line over 551 and was even briefly demoted back to Triple-A.  Despite the lack of results, Swanson told ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick that he is looking at his 2017 as a learning opportunity.  “Just because last year didn’t go as planned, it doesn’t mean that this year won’t,” Swanson said.  “We all struggle at points in our lives.  I’m grateful it happened early, because you can build off that and learn your lessons and move forward.  I don’t even look at it as failure.  I look at it as growth.”  Still just 24 years old, Swanson has been working on his fielding and has adopted a new positioning of his hands on the bat as he looks to break out as Atlanta’s everyday shortstop.

NL Notes: Diamondbacks, Nats, Mets

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Diamondbacks third baseman Jake Lamb and Reds third baseman Eugenio Suarez have posted nearly identical career numbers to date, observes Zach Buchanan of The Athletic (subscription required), who wonders if the former could be in line for an extension. Suarez, 27, just received a long-term deal – a seven-year, $66MM guarantee – after hitting .260/.367/.461 and accounting for 4.1 fWAR across 632 plate appearances last season. Lamb, 26, was successful in his own right (.248/.357/.487 with 2.5 fWAR in 635 PAs), and three of the four major league executives and agents Buchanan polled chose him over Suarez. There’s no word on whether Arizona is motivated to extend Lamb, who’s controllable via arbitration through 2020, but Buchanan suggests the team would jump at the chance to lock him up at a Suarez-like rate.

More from the NL:

  • 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.
  • Even though Mets left-hander Jason Vargas will undergo surgery on his right hand Tuesday, he might not miss any regular-season time, Tim Britton of The Athletic tweets. It’s not as if the soft-tossing Vargas is going to have to regain lost velocity, manager Mickey Callaway noted – “It’s not going to be too hard to go back and get his 84 again,” he said – while GM Sandy Alderson essentially expressed no concern over the situation. “If he can catch the ball coming back from the catcher, he’s probably good to go,” Alderson offered.

NL East Notes: Nationals, Murphy, Phillies, Rupp

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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.

More on Washington and a division rival…

  • The Phillies have made catcher Cameron Rupp available, Matt Gelb of The Athletic reports (subscription required). If they’re unable to find a taker for Rupp in a trade, the Phillies could end up cutting the 29-year-old and eating one-fourth of his $2.05MM salary, per Gelb. Rupp, who saw extensive action in Philadelphia in each of the previous three seasons, has hit .234/.298/.407 in 1,127 major league plate appearances and thrown out 31 percent of would-be base stealers (league average is 28 percent). He’s one of three catchers on Philly’s 40-man roster, along with starter Jorge Alfaro and Andrew Knapp, and has a pair of minor league options remaining.
  • Phillies utilityman Jesmuel Valentin fell short of earning a roster spot in camp last year, but he may be playing his way to one this spring, Todd Zolecki of MLB.com observes. “The difference this year is more versatility. I’m playing more positions,” Valentin said. “I’ve played around 40 innings in the outfield. Last year, I did not do that. I’ve had more innings at third base, so I’m showing them that I am not only a second baseman and shortstop.” The 23-year-old Valentin, who hasn’t yet played in the majors, is one of five candidates for either two or three open bench spots, joining Roman Quinn, Pedro Florimon, Ryan Flaherty and Adam Rosales. He’s on the 40-man, as are Quinn and Florimon, which is an important advantage. Valentin, Quinn and Florimon are also switch-hitters.
  • 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.

Quick Hits: Extensions, Rizzo, Cardinals, Kelly

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The winter’s unusually slow free agent market has led to a number of major signings in March, though the 2017-18 offseason hardly has a monopoly on late signings.  It was on this day in 1981 that Carlton Fisk signed a five-year, $2.9MM deal to join the White Sox, concluding a very unusual (and unexpected) trip through the free agent process for the star catcher.  Fisk’s deal with the Red Sox was up after the 1980 season but, under baseball’s rules at the time, he was still under Boston’s control as long as the team mailed him a new contract by December 20, 1980.  Red Sox GM Haywood Sullivan, however, mailed contracts to both Fisk and Fred Lynn a day late, leading to arbitration hearings that eventually resulted in Lynn being dealt to the Angels and Fisk being declared a free agent.  Fisk went on to spend the next 13 seasons in Chicago, further adding to a resume that eventually led to enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

Some notes from around the sport as we head into the new week…

  • Could the lack of free agent activity lead to more young players accepting early-career extensions?  ESPN.com’s Buster Olney (subscription required) wonders if this could be the case, as “cautionary tales are swirling throughout baseball right now” as players and agents wonder if this offseason could be a harbinger of future free agent droughts.  Players with more limited or one-dimensional skillsets, for instance, might jump at taking a guaranteed deal early rather than risk facing a cold market once they hit free agency.  In the words of one agent, “The lesson to be learned is that for a lot of players, if you get offered a fair deal when you’re young, you should take it — to make sure you get paid. Then, if you get to free agency later, that can be the bonus on top.”
  • 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.
  • The Cardinals optioned catching prospect Carson Kelly to Triple-A today, seemingly solidifying Francisco Pena’s spot as Yadier Molina’s backup.  Pena was a non-roster invite to the Cards’ spring camp, and though neither Pena or Kelly hit much, the team would prefer to see Kelly continue his development with regular playing time in the minors rather than spending most of his days on the Cardinals’ bench.  “[Kelly] needs to play,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny told MLB.com’s Joe Trezza and other reporters. “He’s still too young with too high of a ceiling not to go and be ready. If something happens, we need him to step in and be our guy. There are not going to be a whole lot of repetitions to get here.”  As Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes, Pena’s defense has helped his case in a camp that also saw catchers Steven Baron and Andrew Knizner impress the team.

Nationals Sign Jeremy Hellickson To Minor-League Deal

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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.

Pitching Notes: E. Santana, Hellickson, Mariners, Red Sox, Rangers

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Twins right-hander Ervin Santana underwent surgery on his right middle finger nearly six weeks ago, on Feb. 6. He’s still unable to grip a baseball in the wake of the procedure, per Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press. Santana won’t be able to start a throwing program for as long as that’s the case, which could put his 10- to 12-week recovery timeline in jeopardy. Asked whether he’s still on track to return on schedule, Santana said: “I don’t know. They didn’t say a specific time, but for me I just want to come back when everything is 100 percent. I don’t want to rush anything.” The Twins are in much better shape than they were when Santana landed on the shelf, having since added Jake Odorizzi via trade with the Rays and Lance Lynn in free agency.

  • Righty Jeremy Hellickson languished on the open market from November until Friday, when he signed a minor league contract with the Nationals. Interest was otherwise hard to come by for Hellickson, even though he has enjoyed a decent career to this point and is fairly young (soon to be 31). “They were actually the first team that called,” Hellickson said of Washington (via Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com). “When Scott (Boras) told me the Nationals, I thought: ‘That’s a perfect situation.’“ Hellickson, who had been working out with other Boras clients before signing, noted that his first trip to free agency “wasn’t fun.”  Now, he’s “excited” about his new team and hoping to win the fifth spot in its rotation.
  • Mariners righty Erasmo Ramirez has been down with a lat strain for nearly a month, and he might not be ready to return by April 11, when the team will first need a No. 5 starter, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times reports. If Ramirez isn’t back by then – manager Scott Servais noted that an April 11 return “would be very aggressive” – the Mariners are likely to go with left-hander Ariel Miranda or righty Robert Whalen, Divish writes.
  • Red Sox reliever Bobby Poyner is “a legitimate candidate” to earn a roster spot, Ian Browne of MLB.com writes. The 25-year-old left-hander entered camp as a non-roster invitee, but he has since thrown 7 1/3 innings of one-run ball during spring action, which has put him “in the mix” for a big league role, according to manager Alex Cora. Poyner, whom the Red Sox selected in the 14th round of the 2015 draft, hasn’t even garnered any Triple-A experience to this point. He divided last season between High-A and Double-A, combining for a 1.49 ERA with 12.5 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 over 60 1/3 innings.
  • While it’s up in the air whether Poyner will be part of Boston’s season-opening bullpen, that’s not the case in regards t Craig Kimbrel. The closer has been away from the team since Feb. 28 because his 4-month-old daughter, Lydia, had heart surgery. Fortunately, she’s recovering well, relays the Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham, who adds that Cora expects Kimbrel to be ready for Opening Day. Kimbrel’s on his way to camp, where he’ll throw live batting practice Monday.
  • As expected, Rangers lefty pitching prospect Cole Ragans will undergo Tommy John surgery, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News was among those to report. And in further bad news for the Rangers’ prospect pool, righty Kyle Cody is dealing with elbow inflammation. Surgery may eventually be in the offing for him, Grant tweets. The 23-year-old Cody ranks as Texas’ No. 8 prospect at MLB.com.

Latest On Greg Holland

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The market for Greg Holland has seemingly been tepid, at best, in recent months. Two teams that have at least considered him as of late, per FanRag’s Jon Heyman, are the Braves and the D-backs. Atlanta has “checked in” on Holland, while Arizona has considered a run at him as well. One oft-connected team that doesn’t seem likely is the Nationals, as Heyman adds that the they’re “not planning” to pursue him at this juncture of the offseason. (That aligns with comments GM Mike Rizzo made to the media early this afternoon.)

The Diamondbacks already have a plethora of arms vying for bullpen spots, though as the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro recently pointed out, there are potentially as many as three spots up for grabs. Archie Bradley is considered to be among the ninth-inning favorites in D-backs camp, with Brad Boxberger and Yoshihisa Hirano also vying for saves, but Holland would give them a more established arm and deepen the overall bullpen mix in a year Arizona plans to contend. Payroll, of course, could be an issue for the D-backs, though it wasn’t long ago that they were trying to find creative ways to fit J.D. Martinez onto the books.

As for the Braves, their late-inning mix is also murky. Arodys Vizcaino figures to open the year in the ninth inning, with Jose Ramirez, A.J. Minter and Sam Freeman among the setup options helping form the bridge from the rotation to Vizcaino. There’s obviously strong incentive for the Braves to forgo signing Holland. As a rebuilding club that may not yet be ready to contend, the Braves surely don’t relish the idea of surrendering draft picks to sign a player who rejected a qualifying offer.

I’d add that at the same time, the Braves needn’t fret much over the international forfeitures they’d face, as they’ll he handcuffed in that regard anyhow following the November scandal that prompted John Coppolella to resign as GM. Beyond that, high-end bullpen arms are always in demand at the deadline, and it’s not outlandish to think the Braves could receive a better prospect than the one they’d acquire with the third round pick they’d be forced to punt. (Losing the slot value of that pick in their draft pool, however, would limit their ability to get creative, though.)

Finding teams that make sense as an on-paper fit for Holland is hardly a problem. Virtually any club in the league could stand to improve by pushing its seventh-best reliever to the minors and adding Holland to the bullpen mix. However, we’ve already seen a significant portion of the league largely sit out the free agent market, and at this stage of the offseason, more teams are up against payroll limits and reluctant to forfeit a draft/international considerations. There’s still enough time in spring that Holland could potentially make a handful of appearances before Opening Day, but the longer he waits, the more his early-season availability will be called into question.

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