NL East Notes: Anthopoulos, Mets, Afterman, Nationals, Bones
Alex Anthopoulos couldn’t celebrate the Braves‘ World Series triumph with the rest of the organization last night, as the president of baseball operations had to watch from home after testing positive for COVID-19 on Saturday. The diagnosis left Anthopoulos “surprised,” as he told Scott Miller of The New York Times, but fortunately, “I’m fully vaxxed, I don’t have any symptoms, I feel great….My family is fine.” To avoid any distractions for the team, Anthopoulos told only manager Brian Snitker and team chairman Terry McGuirk about his diagnosis.
As unusual as the situation was, Anthopoulos got to celebrate with his wife and children, adding to the special moment. The Braves have reached the postseason in each of Anthopoulos’ four seasons at the helm of the front office, and the 44-year-old has now captured his first championship after 10 total years as a general manager (counting his six years with the Blue Jays from 2010-15).
More from the NL East….
- Yankees assistant general manager Jean Afterman declined a request from the Mets to interview about their front office vacancy last week, SNY’s Andy Martino reports (Twitter link). Afterman has worked with the Yankees in the AGM role since 2001, and she received an additional promotion to senior VP in 2012.
- The Nationals officially announced their 2022 coaching staff, including three previously-reported new hires (first base coach Eric Young Jr., third base coach Gary DiSarcina, hitting coach Darnell Coles) and one more newcomer in bullpen coach Ricky Bones. Former bullpen coach Henry Blanco is staying on the Nats’ staff in the new role of catching/strategy coach. This is Bones’ second time working with Washington’s organization, as he previously served as a pitching coach for the Class-A advanced team back in 2005. Bones has been the Mets’ bullpen coach from 2012-21, with a brief stint as a minor league pitching coach in 2019.
Nationals To Name Gary DiSarcina Third Base Coach
The Nationals are bringing veteran big league coach Gary DiSarcina aboard as their new third base coach, reports Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post (Twitter thread). They’re also bringing assistant hitting coach Pat Roessler back in that same role.
The 53-year-old DiSarcina had a 12-year playing career as a shortstop with the Angels, appearing in the big leagues each season from 1989-2000. He spent time in the Halos’ front office and then as a minor league manager in the years following his retirement, but his past eight seasons have been spent on big league coaching staffs.
DiSarcina spent three years as a base coach with the Angels organization before heading to the Red Sox — where he’d previously managed in Triple-A — to serve as bench coach. His next stop came with the Mets, again as a bench coach in 2018, and then as third base coach fort he past three seasons.
Roessler, 61, has been the Nats’ assistant hitting coach in each of the past two seasons. Like DiSarcina, he’d been with the Mets prior to his time in D.C. After a lengthy stint in the Yankees’ player development department (including a run as their farm director), he joined the Mets’ coaching staff in 2015: first as an assistant hitting coach and, by 2018, as their lead hitting coach.
There’s been a fair bit of turnover on the Nationals’ staff already this offseason. Hitting coach Kevin Long departed to take the same job with the division-rival Phillies, prompting the Nats to bring Darnell Coles back to the organization to join the Major League staff in that role. Recently retired outfielder Eric Young Jr. is lined up to serve as the Nationals’ new first base coach, replacing Randy Knorr. DiSarcina will be replacing Bob Henley. Both Knorr and Henley were reassigned to player development roles earlier in the offseason.
Nationals Hire Eric Young Jr. As First Base Coach
The Nationals have hired Eric Young Jr. as their new first base coach. The news was revealed by Young’s father, Braves first base coach Eric Young Sr., who was speaking with reporter Jose de Jesus Ortiz (Twitter link) prior to Game 1 of the World Series. Young Jr. will replace Randy Knorr, who was reassigned to a player development role earlier this month after spending the 2021 season as Washington’s first base coach.
This is the first big league coaching role for Young, who spent the 2021 season on the coaching staff of the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma. The 36-year-old is only two years removed from the end of his playing career, as Young played with Triple-A Tacoma and in the Mexican League in 2019. He was set to return to the Mexican League in 2020 before the season was canceled due to the pandemic.
Young is a veteran of 10 MLB seasons, spending the bulk of his career with the Rockies (313 games from 2009-13) and the Mets (209 games in two separate stints). While he had only a couple of above-average seasons at the plate, Young was a feared baserunner in his prime, including a 2013 season that saw him lead the National League with 46 stolen bases.
2013 was also Young’s only season as a true everyday player, as he spent much of his career as a part-timer capable of providing speed off the bench and filling in at all three outfield positions, as well as second base early in his career. Given this track record, it is probably safe to assume that Young will also assume some responsibilities as a baserunning and/or outfield coach in D.C. Those roles were previously filled by Knorr and former third base coach Bob Henley.
The third base coaching job is the last vacancy remaining on the Nationals’ staff, with Young now in the fold to replace Knorr. The Nats already made a switch at hitting coach, hiring Darnell Coles after Kevin Long left to assume hitting coach duties with the Phillies.
Nationals Hire Darnell Coles As Hitting Coach
Oct. 18: The Nats have formally announced Coles as their new hitting coach.
“We are very excited to add Darnell Coles as our hitting coach,” manager Dave Martinez said in a statement within today’s press release. “We align on hitting philosophy, process and focusing on the here and now. He’s not only an outstanding hitting coach, but a great baseball man. Darnell has a great rapport with both veterans and young players and brings a thorough understanding of the analytics that we would like to incorporate.”
Oct. 15: The Nationals are planning to hire Darnell Coles to be their next hitting coach, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com (Twitter link). Should the two sides eventually finalize a contract, Coles would replace Kevin Long, who departed to become the Phillies’ hitting coach earlier this week.
Coles played in the big leagues from 1983-97 before moving into coaching. He spent some time in the Washington organization early in his coaching career, working as a roving hitting instructor and minor league coach for a few seasons in the late 2000’s. Coles made it to a big league coaching staff by 2014 and was hired by the Brewers as hitting coach entering the 2015 campaign.
After four years in Milwaukee, Coles stepped down to take on the same role in Arizona. He spent the next three-plus seasons with the D-Backs before being let go in early June amidst Arizona’s nightmarish season. It seems he’s now on track for an eighth consecutive season coaching hitters at the big league level, assuming talks with Washington get across the finish line.
The Nationals slumped to a last-place finish in the NL East after orchestrating a midseason sell-off. That wasn’t really the fault of the offense, though. Washington’s .266/.346/.433 team slash line (excluding pitchers) checked in seventh league-wide by measure of wRC+, the second-highest mark among non-playoff teams.
Nationals Outright Three Players
The Nationals announced they’ve outrighted three pitchers — righty Steven Fuentes and southpaws Sean Nolin and Alberto Baldonado — off the 40-man roster. Nolin, who has previously been outrighted in his career, has elected free agency. Fuentes and Baldonado didn’t have that opportunity at the moment, although they’ll both reach minor league free agency this winter as players with seven-plus years in the minors.
Washington has four players on the 60-day injured list, and three of them will need to be reinstated to the 40-man roster at the start of the offseason. Veteran southpaw Luis Avilán will hit free agency this winter anyways, but Washington will need roster space for each of Stephen Strasburg, Will Harris and Kyle McGowin over the winter. Today’s series of outrights clears the necessary room for those activations.
Fuentes was added to the 40-man last winter to keep him from being taken in the Rule 5 draft. Unfortunately, he missed most of the season on the injured list and still hasn’t appeared in a big league game. The 24-year-old struggled mightily around those injuries, posting an 11.23 ERA over 37 2/3 frames across four minor league levels. Before the disastrous year, he’d been among the better pitching prospects in a thin Washington farm system.
Nolin pitched in the bigs with the Blue Jays and A’s from 2013-15 but didn’t get to the highest level again until this past August. The 31-year-old worked 26 2/3 innings of 4.39 ERA ball for the Nats across ten appearances (five starts), albeit with a below-average 16.3% strikeout rate.
Baldonado, a longtime minor league veteran, got his first big league call in September. The 28-year-old made fourteen relief outings down the stretch, allowing ten runs in 10 2/3 innings with twelve strikeouts and seven walks. It wasn’t the debut showing he’d been hoping for, but Baldonado earned that look with a solid 3.31 ERA over 32 2/3 Triple-A frames.
Phillies To Hire Kevin Long As Hitting Coach
The Phillies are set to hire Kevin Long as their new hitting coach, Britt Ghiroli and Matt Gelb of The Athletic report (via Twitter). Long, who has been the Nationals’ hitting coach for the past four seasons, will be reunited with manager Joe Girardi and bench coach Rob Thomson in Philadelphia. The trio worked together in New York, where Long served as the hitting coach for much of Girardi’s managerial tenure. Long was on a one-year contract with the Nats for the 2021 season, and while he was reportedly open to a return to D.C., he also had the freedom to gauge interest elsewhere.
With the Phillies, Long will replace the recently dismissed Joe Dillon — his former assistant hitting coach with the Nats. The Phils hired Dillon as their hitting coach prior to the 2020 season, but his tenure proved relatively short, as the Phils made some changes to Girardi’s staff after another disappointing playoff miss. Phillies hitters ranked sixth in the Majors in walk rate from 2020-21 and are tied for the seventh-lowest team strikeout rate at 22.6 percent in that same span. They ranked 10th in runs scored (1040), 13th in home runs (280) and posted an overall .244/.324/.417 batting line (97 wRC+) during Dillon’s two years as hitting coach.
Moving from Washington to Philadelphia, Long will also reunite with one of his highest-profile pupils, Bryce Harper, whom he coached with the Nationals during Harper’s final season prior to free agency. (His time with the Yankees did not overlap with embattled Phillies shortstop Didi Gregorius.) Girardi and Long had a heated exchange earlier this season after Girardi called for then-Nationals ace Max Scherzer to be checked for foreign substances on the mound mid-inning, though doesn’t seem to have formed a lasting rift between the longtime colleagues, based on today’s news.
Long, 54, has a pair of World Series rings: one for his 2009 work with the Yankees and a second for with the 2019 Nationals. He served as Yankees hitting coach from 2007-14 before joining the Mets in the same capacity from 2015-17 and the Nationals from 2018-21.
The Phils also parted ways with infield coach Juan Castro and gave assistant hitting coach Pedro Guerrero the freedom to explore other opportunities, so Long’s hiring will be the first of at least a couple of coaching changes in the weeks to come.
East Notes: Rasmussen, Girardi, Orioles, Nationals
The Rays first looked into acquiring Drew Rasmussen from the Brewers last offseason, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal writes, well before Tampa finally landed the right-hander as part of the Willy Adames trade in May. However, Tampa Bay’s interest in Rasmussen really dates back to when the Rays selected him with the 31st pick of the 2017 draft, though a signing never took place because a post-draft physical revealed elbow damage, and led to the second Tommy John surgery of Rasmussen’s young career.
The lack of a deal was a disappointment for both Rasmussen and for veteran Rays scout Paul Kirsch, who brought Rasmussen to the team’s attention after evaluating his high school outings. Kirsch did finally get to see Rasmussen pitch for the Rays in Seattle this past summer, which by that point counted as a rare trip to the ballpark for Kirsch after a three-year battle with ALS. Kirsch passed away in September, and Rosenthal’s piece serves as a moving tribute to Kirsch, a beloved figure in the Rays organization and around the scouting community.
More from around both the AL and NL East…
- The Phillies haven’t yet had any talks with manager Joe Girardi about his contract, though president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski admitted to media (including The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Scott Lauber) earlier this week that he “didn’t even know” about the Phillies’ club option on Girardi for 2023 until asked by a reporter. 2022 is the last guaranteed season of Girardi’s original three-year contract with the club, and Dombrowski didn’t believe the manager would be bothered by the lack of longer-term security, and added that “I think Joe did a good job for us.” Girardi is 110-112 in his first two seasons in Philadelphia, a lack of success that has largely been attributed to the Phillies’ leaky bullpen and flawed roster construction moreso than any specific failings on the manager’s part. Former Phils GM Matt Klentak hired Girardi after the 2019 season, before Dombrowski replaced Klentak last winter.
- Cedric Mullins‘ tremendous season cemented him as a building block for the Orioles, and Jon Meoli of The Baltimore Sun figures Mullins, Austin Hays, and Anthony Santander have become the team’s top outfield combination heading into 2022, with Ryan McKenna likely the top bench option. The O’s have enough young outfield depth, however, that the position could be an area of surplus for the offseason. If the Orioles look to trade from this surplus, Santander’s name has surfaced in trade rumors in the past, but his stock has likely fallen after an injury-shortened season.
- Nationals president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo has already prioritized some offseason changes in how the Nats scout and develop their players, due to a lack of recent help in the minor league pipeline. The draft is the most glaring example of this issue, as MASNsports.com’s Mark Zuckerman notes that Anthony Rendon (picked sixth overall in 2011) is the last Washington draft pick taken in any round to generate more than 1.0 WAR for the team. Of course, the Nationals have lost their share of picks for compensation purposes, and they’ve also traded some prospects (Lucas Giolito, first and foremost) who went on to become established big leaguers for other teams. While these moves culminated in Washington’s 2019 World Series title, the thinned-out farm system has become more glaring in the wake of the Nationals’ 91-131 record since winning that championship.
Nationals Make Two Coaching Changes
Nationals third base coach Bob Henley and first base coach Randy Knorr won’t be returning to the staff next season, as The Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty reports that the club has reassigned the two coaches to player-development jobs. These could be the only changes made to manager Davey Martinez’s staff, as the other five coaches have been asked to return in their current roles.
Henley was a 26th-round draft pick for the Expos in 1991, and apart from one game with the Pirates A-ball affiliate in 2002, he has spent his entire baseball career in the Expos/Nationals organization. After working as a manager and field coordinator at the minor league level, Henley joined Washington’s coaching staff in 2013 and has worked as the third base coach for seven of the past eight seasons.
Knorr’s tenure with the club also dates back to the Nationals’ days in Montreal, as he played for the Expos in 2001 and then played three seasons for the team’s Triple-A affiliate before retiring from playing. Knorr has worked as a minor league manager and worked in player development in between three separate stints on Washington’s big league coaching staff, working as a bullpen coach and bench coach in the past before his 2021 assignment as the first base coach.
Beyond their official titles, Knorr and Henley were also baserunning coaches, and Henley worked as an outfield coach. It isn’t yet known if the replacements will take over those additional duties, or if the Nationals might expand their staff with a new position or two.
Of the other five members of the staff, Dougherty writes that hitting coach Kevin Long “becomes the biggest question mark” to be in D.C. in 2022, as Long “is open to returning again, though he will consider other opportunities.” Long will likely require a multi-year contract to come back for his fifth season as the Nationals’ hitting coach. His first deal with the team was a three-year contract (rather an unusually lengthy commitment for a coach), and he agreed to return on a one-year pact for 2021.
Examining A Potential Juan Soto Extension
It’s a new era for the Washington Nationals. In a major deadline selloff in July, the club traded Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Yan Gomes, Jon Lester, Daniel Hudson, Brad Hand and Josh Harrison. Anyone who was healthy and productive was shipped out of town. Well, almost anyone. Juan Soto stayed.
Even though the team is clearly stripping things down for the short-term, it always made sense to hang onto an incredible talent like Soto since he still has three years of team control remaining after 2021. The club targeted MLB-ready prospects in their deadline deals such as Josiah Gray and Keibert Ruiz, specifically to get back into contention while Soto is still on the club. But why not keep him around past 2024 and get rid of that ticking clock scenario?
Back in August, Soto said he wanted to go year by year, which would seem to indicate he’s not terribly motivated to put pen to paper. After all, he’s already banked some money, having reached Super Two status last offseason. He and the club avoided arbitration and agreed to a salary of $8.5MM for this season. But players have often made similar statements and still gone on to sign extensions when the numbers were big enough. For example, Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor had extension rumors swirling around them for years, rumors that they consistently shrugged off until they finally got what they wanted. In both cases, they were just one season away from free agency.
So, what would it take to lock up someone like Soto and keep him away from the open market? Let’s look at some numbers. Soto is going to finish this season with three years and 134 days’ service time. The largest extension ever given out for a player between three and four years’ service time is Freddie Freeman‘s eight-year, $135MM contract, signed at the start of the 2014 season. But Soto now has more earning power than Freeman did then. First of all, Freeman didn’t reach Super Two status as Soto did. Soto has also accomplished much more in his career so far, compared to Freeman at that time. In 471 games up to that point, Freddie had a career slash of .285/.358/.466 for a wRC+ of 127 and 7.1 fWAR. In 464 games, Soto’s career slash is .301/.432/.550, for a wRC+ of 156 and 17.7 fWAR.
Fernando Tatis Jr. makes for a closer comparison, though with a slightly smaller track record. When he signed his extension in February of this year, he had two years’ service time, with one of those years being the shortened 2020 season. Through 143 games, he had a line of .301/.374/.582, for a wRC+ of 150 and 6.6 fWAR. It took 14 years and $340MM to get his signature. That’s an average annual value of over $24MM.
Mookie Betts also makes for an interesting comparison, but unlike Tatis, he was much closer to free agency than Soto at the time of his extension. He had between five and six years’ service time and was just one year away from hitting the open market. In the three years leading up to that contract, Betts played in 439 games, slashed .299/.389/.535, for a wRC+ of 140 and 22.4 fWAR. His extension was 12 years, $365MM, average annual value of just over $30MM, the largest extension ever given out in MLB history.
Soto’s skill level is very similar to both Tatis and Betts, but he falls between the two when it comes to service time and proximity to free agency. Therefore, it seems fair to think that he could reasonably ask for an average annual value in between the two, where his salary escalates over his remaining arbitration years and into the free agent years. (Tatis’s contract for instance, escalates from $1MM in 2021 to $5MM in 2022, $7MM in 2023, $11MM in 2024, $20MM apiece in 2025 and 2026, $25MM in 2027 and 2028 and then settles at $36MM for each of the last six years of the deal.)
If Soto could get a contract of 14 years, just as Tatis did, that would take him into his age-36 season. That’s not unreasonable, given that other recent extensions for superstars have gone to a similar range. Betts’ extension goes to his age-39 season, Mike Trout’s to his age-38 season, Lindor to age-37 and Tatis to age-35. If that contract had an average annual value of $28.6MM, that would eclipse $400MM, nudging over a symbolic barrier and surpassing Mookie Betts for the largest extension in history.
That’s a lot of money, and probably too much money for the Nationals, without some creative manoeuvring to go along with it. They have Stephen Strasburg‘s contract on the books through 2026, paying him $35MM in each of the next five years. There’s also Patrick Corbin‘s deal, which pays him $23MM next year, $24MM in 2023 and $35MM in 2024. Add on that theoretical Soto money and they’re in the range of $100MM to just three players in 2024.
That’s probably too rich for a club that’s never had a payroll higher than about $205MM, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. But then again, Soto’s contract figures to be quite high by 2024 anyway. Mookie Betts used the arbitration process to get his salary as high as $27MM in his final year of control, and he wasn’t even a Super Two player. So, extension or not, the club is still facing a scenario where Strasburg, Corbin and Soto take up about half the budget in 2024.
The question then is if they want to commit to a Soto-Strasburg duo earning around $70MM for 2025 and 2026, with Soto being the primary line item for about a decade after that. If the answer to that is yes, then baseball could have its first 400-million-dollar man.
Nationals Re-Sign Alcides Escobar
The Nationals announced an agreement to re-sign veteran infielder Alcides Escobar to a one-year, Major League contract. The GSE Worldwide client will make $1MM for the 2022 campaign.
Acquired out of the Royals organization in a move that was originally intended to provide some stopgap depth, Escobar instead wound up turning in the most productive offensive season of his 12-year MLB career. The longtime defensive star and former World Series-winning Royals shortstop posted a .288/.340/.404 batting line through 349 plate appearances after coming over from the Kansas City organization.
In many ways, the decision to quickly re-sign Escobar mirrors last year’s approach with fellow infield veteran Josh Harrison. The Nats quickly re-signed Harrison to a one-year, $1MM contract that proved to be a bargain, and they’ll hope for similar results with Escobar, who’ll give them a multi-positional asset off the bench in 2022.
Looking ahead to next season, the Nationals are surely hopeful that well-regarded youngsters like Carter Kieboom (third base) and Luis Garcia (second base/shortstop) can stake a claim to long-term spots on the roster. Garcia has spent a bit of time at shortstop but was used much more at second base in both 2020 and 2021, even after the trade of Trea Turner this past summer. If that’s indeed Garcia’s long-term spot, there’s no clear heir-apparent at shortstop. Escobar’s return, then, makes some sense in providing a safety net, while still clocking in at an affordable enough rate that the Nats could pursue a more established option at short — be it via free agency or trade.
An eventual free-agent signing or swap of some note shouldn’t be firmly ruled out based on the Nationals’ deadline fire sale, either. While the club is clearly gearing up for what GM Mike Rizzo has termed a “reboot,” Rizzo has also pushed back on the notion of any sort of full-scale rebuild. The Nats’ intentions, by all accounts, are to return to competitiveness sooner than later, and adding a shortstop of note — even if it’s not one of the very top-of-the-market options this winter — would be a step in that direction. For now, Escobar provides some cover while retaining flexibility.
Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post first reported the Nationals had agreed to a one-year deal with Escobar. Jon Heyman of the MLB Network reported Escobar’s salary.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.