Royals sign Garrett Hampson to one-year, $2 million deal

Hampson defines what it means to be a utility player — the 26th man on the roster who contributes not through offensive prowess but via baserunning and defensive versatility. Despite once being a 50 FV prospect, he never became an everyday regular with the Rockies, hovering around replacement level thanks to his consistently poor hitting (he posted a wRC+ of 64 in each of his first three full seasons in a Khris Davis-esque streak). Concerns about his power potential in the minors were validated by his pedestrian exit velocities in the majors, maxing out at 11 homers even in the favorable conditions of Coors Field.

After being non-tendered by Colorado, Hampson signed a one-year deal with the Marlins, where he was roughly a league-average hitter over 250 plate appearances. This sudden uptick in offense was largely a mirage of batted ball luck; he posted a .379 BABIP compared to a .320 career baseline (in the ballpark with the highest BABIP), the lowest barrel rate of his career, and no improvements in walk or strikeout rates.

You certainly shouldn’t be expecting anything resembling a league-average hitting line from Hampson, but his baserunning and defense are still enviable. He has averaged +4.2 BaseRuns per 150 games played, and while he’s not a volume stealer, he has an 81% career success rate. His skills on the basepaths have translated to defensive range at every single position besides first base and catcher. It’s extremely difficult to maintain a high quality of fielding despite being constantly ping-ponged between the infield and outfield, especially from the beginning of a big league career, yet Hampson has performed admirably wherever he’s been stationed.

Hampson has been above average with the glove spending the considerable majority of his time at up-the-middle positions, an asset to teams who can spend a roster spot on a defense-first player and/or rebuilding clubs looking to boost their inexperienced pitching staffs with solid gloves. The Royals certainly fit the latter criteria, with eight members of their current projected pitching staff, including three members of the starting rotation, entering 2024 with fewer than three years of service time. A most likely use case for Hampson will be as a platoon partner with the left-handed Kyle Isbel and Michael Massey, though he could get time almost anywhere given the lack of proven talents on the roster.

Mets sign Joey Wendle to one-year, $2 million deal

Wendle is best known for his four-year tenure with the Rays, where he thrice eclipsed 500 plate appearances and 3 WAR (or a pro-rated 2020 equivalent) despite never locking down a single position. Instead, he rotated between second, third, and shortstop, primarily manning the keystone early on, then seamlessly shifting the bulk of his starts to third base when Brandon Lowe had a fully healthy season at second. When he hit at an above-average clip, he did so without much pop or plate discipline, putting bat on ball and consistently placing line drives into the outfield. He maximized his productivity given his lack of raw power or lift in his swing, but it relied on his plus speed and bat control, which couldn’t last forever.

Wendle broke into the majors late, playing his first full season for the Rays at age 28. Despite entering free agency for the first time, 2024 will represent his age-34 season. As a result, he’s lost a step over the years, evident in his declining defensive and baserunning value. He took extra bases on hits less frequently than before, and last season was his first as a below-average defender by RAA. His line-drive rate went from great with the Rays to below-average with the Marlins, and hitting the ball on the ground over half the time isn’t effective for someone who doesn’t have the foot speed to leg out infield hits. The warning signs were there in his age-31 season in 2021, so it’s unsurprising Tampa traded him that offseason, (correctly) anticipating a future decline. Wendle was never great with the Marlins, but his production completely fell apart during the last couple months of his tenure there, with a -6 wRC+ over the last two months of the year.

Wendle will slide into the role previously held by fellow left-handed multi-positional infielder Luis Guillorme, who was non-tendered following a down year truncated by a calf injury. It’s somewhat surprising that Guillorme was let go given his arbitration estimate of $1.7 million and track record of success in a bench role, especially with his disciplined approach at the plate and high walk rates. Should both Wendle and Guillorme return to form next season, the Mets will be trading a points of OBP for a few more extra-base hits, though the former’s decline in athleticism make it difficult to see him as an impact player, even in his limited role.

White Sox sign Paul DeJong to one-year, $1.75 million deal

Only one position player contributed more negative WAR to his team than Wendle in last season’s second half, and it just so happened to be DeJong. In the first half with the Cardinals, he hit below league average and put up the best defensive numbers of his career, putting him on a three-win pace for the season. With St. Louis well out of contention, they flipped him to the Blue Jays, where he fell into a historic slump. In 13 games north of the border, he went 3-for-44, striking out 41% of the time without drawing a walk or clubbing an extra-base hit. His .068/.068/.068 slash line was good for a -76 wRC+, prompting the Blue Jays to release him after just three weeks.

DeJong then signed on with the Giants, themselves in the middle of a horrific offensive implosion. While he was acquired to take playing time from the aging Brandon Crawford, his struggles in Toronto followed him west, where he hit even worse than Crawford. He wasn’t as historically awful as he was with the Jays, but he still hit just .184 without a walk before the Giants cut him loose as well.

The question going forward remains whether or not DeJong’s abysmal second half was a 31-game anomaly or a true change in his talent level. There are certainly red flags in his under-the-hood numbers; zero walks in 94 plate appearances is concerning, but his chase rate shooting over 54% after leaving St. Louis (compared to a 32% career rate) may be even worse. His power almost completely evaporated as well. A combination of lowered exit velocity with more ground balls than fly balls for the first time in his career led to just one barrel in 60 batted ball events. Steamer’s projections certainly put a good deal of weight into his disastrous run, forecasting a .276 OBP and 76 wRC+, with a strikeout rate a few points above his career norm.

DeJong’s signing won’t drag the White Sox, who scored the second-fewest runs in the majors last year, out of the cellar, but it will at least stabilize their infield situation in the short term. With the arrows pointing down on 40-man infielders José Rodríguez and Lenyn Sosa, the Sox lack immediate plug-and-play options at the six beyond Nicky Lopez. Their clearest option for the future is top prospect Colson Montgomery, our 12th-ranked prospect atop the 55 FV tier. But while Montgomery has looked great in pro ball, he’s far from a perfect prospect, and his poor defense at shortstop may necessitate a future position change, though he’s never played an inning anywhere else in the minors. He also suffered a back injury that limited him to just 84 games in 2023, including a relatively unimpressive showing in the Arizona Fall League. It’s possible that DeJong could hold down the fort for the early season, making way for a midseason debut from Montgomery.

Come on, you knew Wade Miley was going to sign with the Brewers, right? He’s not exactly a lifer there. In fact, he’s spent most of his major league career elsewhere — Arizona, Boston, Seattle, Baltimore, Houston, Cincinnati, and Chicago, to be exact. He’s not from Milwaukee. But he just makes sense as a Brewer, and he knows it. He reportedly let his son make the final decision on whether he’d come back this year, and the verdict is in: one year and $8.5 million, with a mutual option for the 2025 season.

That’s not the only move Milwaukee made on Monday; the headline-grabber was making Jackson Chourio’s record-setting contract official. But even that wasn’t all. They also signed Joe Ross to a major league deal, as Robert Murray reported. Ross hasn’t pitched in the major leagues since 2021, but after missing most of 2022 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, he averaged 96 mph on his fastball in 14 innings across three minor league levels for the Giants in 2023. Now, he’s back in the majors, though it’s unclear whether he’ll end up in the rotation or the bullpen.

Deals like these — moderately priced contracts for solid veterans with upside — have long been a Brewers specialty. They’ve benefited from a cornucopia of top pitching talent for the past half-decade, but they’ve supplemented it wisely as well. Miley’s 2023 season was a great example of that. He signed for $4.5 million last winter and threw 120 league-average innings, give or take some anomalous batted ball luck (his .234 BABIP was the lowest he’s allowed in his career). That was a huge coup for Milwaukee, which dealt with its fair share of pitcher injuries. Even on a tight budget, he was brought back for more of the same at roughly double the rate. Read the rest of this entry »

In the early hours of Thursday morning, the Reds made their second signing in as many days, adding right-handed pitcher Nick Martinez on a two-year, $26 million deal. Evidently, Cincinnati decided to get in on the regional pitching party; of the nine free-agent pitchers to sign MLB deals with new teams so far, six have joined the AL or NL Central. Not to mention that two of the four position players switching teams also came to the Central, and word on the street is that the Brewers are signing top prospect Jackson Chourio to an $80 million extension. The Central division teams, often the most overlooked and underfunded, have been surprisingly active so far this winter.

Martinez, who turned 33 this past August, is coming off the strongest season of his truncated career. Never a top prospect, he struggled over parts of four seasons with the Rangers from 2014 to ’17, posting a 4.77 ERA and 0.5 WAR in 415.1 innings. He was non-tendered following the 2017 season, after which he spent four years in Japan, pitching for the Nippon Ham Fighters and the Softbank Hawks of NPB. His 2021 season for the Hawks was particularly impressive; he averaged more than 6.2 innings per game and finished second in the Pacific League in ERA (min. 50 IP), trailing only Yoshinobu Yamamoto. His performance caught the attention of several MLB clubs, and when the lockout ended, he signed a four-year, $25.5 million deal with the Padres that included opt-outs after every single season.

Martinez performed well enough in 2022 to escape his deal at the first chance he got, pitching to a 3.47 ERA and 4.43 FIP in 47 games. His underlying numbers weren’t as impressive as his ERA, and while he pitched in nearly every role — starter, long-man, set-up man, closer — a lot of his success came in lower-leverage relief opportunities. Still, he knew he could do better than the three years and $18 million remaining on his contract, and indeed, only a few days after he opted out, he and the Padres agreed on a richer contract, albeit one still replete with options, team and player alike.

Martinez looked even better in 2023, but his performance wasn’t quite enough to convince the newly cost-conscious Padres to pick up their team option for $32 million over the next two years. At the same time, the righty decided he could do better than his player option for two years and $16 million. His new deal with the Reds splits the difference at $26 million over two years. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Mets began their offseason hunt for starting pitching by snatching up Luis Severino on a one-year, $13 million contract. After a rollercoaster season that led to -0.6 WAR, Severino had no choice but to take a prove-it deal and hope his performance in 2024 will be compelling enough to secure a multi-year contract next winter. For the Mets, this is likely the first in a series of moves to address a starting rotation that is significantly depleted after the trades of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander this summer.

The Mets have the coin to play at the top of the pitching market, and will likely do so, but this deal provides them with a short-term upside play to bolster a thin group of starters. With a rotation that is currently filled out by José Quintana, Tylor Megill, and Joey Lucchesi behind their ace, Kodai Senga, a low-cost, high-reward player was a practical move. If he performs and stays health, Severino becomes a trade option for them depending on the team’s performance. If they hold onto him, they can tag him with a qualifying offer or bring him back on a longer term deal. Either way, this move will not hurt them. Most importantly, it will not impact their ability to sign players such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who the Mets reportedly have interest in.

I’m sure Severino and the Mets hope that he can forget most of the summer of 2023 and instead build on the success he had in his final five starts. Among the 172 pitchers who threw at least 80 innings in 2023, Severino ranked 169th in WAR. His surface stats didn’t look any better. He set career worst marks in strikeout rate, HR/9, ERA, FIP, batting average allowed, hard-hit rate… the list goes on. As I said in his Top 50 Free Agent blurb, this wasn’t due to a concerning drop-off in rotational power. His four-seam fastball velocity (96.4 mph) was in the 88th percentile, and it even peaked as high as 97.7 mph in his second-to-last start of the season. This is a player who still has upper-90s gas in his back pocket. Read the rest of this entry »

Emilio Pagán has heeded the call. Whose call? The guy in the red tank top in Angels in the Outfield, who yells, “Go back to Cincinnati!”

Pagán, 32, is the second-best right-handed pitcher in this free-agent class who played college baseball in North Carolina and pitched for Puerto Rico in this spring’s World Baseball Classic. (Marcus Stroman remains unsigned as of this writing.) He’ll slot in nicely in the Reds’ bullpen, setting up for Alexis Díaz, the second-best Díaz brother who pitched for Puerto Rico in this spring’s World Baseball Classic.

The Reds like Pagán enough to sign him to a one-year, $8 million contract with a player option for an additional $8 million in 2025. Bob Nightengale noted at the time of the signing that Pagán had just become Cincinnati’s highest-paid player. Fortunately, Pagán held that distinction for just 12 hours before the Reds added Nick Martinez as well. But it was pretty bleak there for a minute. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, it’s best not to mess with a good thing. So say the Dodgers, who according to ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel have re-signed right fielder Jason Heyward to a one-year, $9 million contract.

In his first year with the Dodgers, Heyward appeared in 124 games, 98 of them starts, and hit .269/.340/.473 in 377 plate appearances. That’s a 121 wRC+! That’s 14th out of the 45 players who primarily played right field last year and managed 300 or more plate appearances, just a tick behind Adolis García, and ahead of Nick Castellanos, Lars Nootbaar, Fernando Tatis Jr., and George Springer.

The separating factor is that all 98 of Heyward’s starts came against right-handed pitchers last year. You might say that $9 million is a lot to pay for a platoon corner outfielder. Poppycock! The Dodgers, who have harvested the infinite galactic power of the cosmos, overpaying? The Dodgers, stuffed to the point of bursting with Guggenheim Partners’ limitless lucre, overpaying? Who cares? Surely not I. To them, $9 million is a pittance, spent here on a crucial roster player; otherwise it might have been spent on a medium-leverage relief pitcher, or caviar, or some other frivolity.

The Heyward-Dodgers reunion is exciting not just because a good team returns a productive player, but also because of how well this player fits with this team. Read the rest of this entry »

On the heels of their worst record since 1990, the Cardinals have made early splashes in the free-agent market, adding Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn in moves intended to stabilize their underperforming rotation in unspectacular fashion. On Monday, they made a much more impactful addition, signing Sonny Gray via a three-year, $75 million deal.

Gray, who turned 34 on November 7 and who spent the past two years with the Twins, is fresh off a one of the best seasons of his 11-year career. You wouldn’t know it by his pedestrian 8–8 won-loss record — he didn’t get good support from either his offense or his bullpen — but he made his third All-Star team and finished second to Gerrit Cole in the AL Cy Young voting. In 32 starts and 184 innings (his highest total since 2015), he posted an AL-best 2.83 FIP, placed second to Cole with a 2.79 ERA, and tied with Kevin Gausman for the AL lead with a career-high 5.3 WAR (0.1 more than Cole). All told, it was an ideal campaign for a player hitting free agency.

It’s not hard to spot two big reasons for Gray’s stellar campaign: better health and a reconfigured arsenal. He made just 50 starts in 2021–22 with the Reds and Twins, taking three trips to the injured list in each of those seasons; in ’21, he missed time due to strains of his mid-back, groin, and rib cage, and in ’22, it was his right pectoral and right hamstring (twice). He’s made at least 30 starts in a season just once in the past eight years (31 in 2019), averaging 26 starts and 147 innings in the seven full-length seasons in that span. While it’s possible the Twins just caught lightning in a bottle, he did overhaul his offseason program, as he explained last February following a season in which he felt unprepared after the end of the lockout:

“Started earlier. Changed up a little bit, for sure. Worked out. Physically tried to get stronger. Throwing was earlier. Eating habits. Vitamin habits,” Gray said. “Doing things that I’ve seen people do and I’ve learned from other people and other guys to get farther along in their career. Just changing habits and consciously being aware (that) it’ll pay off in the long run.”

As the Reds’ union representative during the negotiations for the Collective Bargaining Agreement that ended the lockout (shortly after which he was traded), Gray didn’t throw a single bullpen session during the 2021–22 offseason and then battled multiple injuries. By his estimate, he came to camp this past spring having thrown “about 15” bullpen sessions, and the effort clearly paid off. Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the St. Louis Cardinals’ activity before Thanksgiving, the going rate for a right-handed pitcher in his mid-30s with a recent track record of high volume but unimpressive results is one year in the low eight figures with a club option for year two. For a mid-30s right-hander with better results but a major injury in his recent past? Apparently you have to guarantee the second year.

The Detroit Tigers have landed Kenta Maeda, late of division rival Minnesota, for two years and $24 million. The top two teams in this year’s AL Central standings both have holes to fill in their rotations, as Minnesota has to replace Maeda and Sonny Gray (who reportedly signed a three-year, $75 million deal with the Cardinals this morning), while the Tigers need a replacement for Eduardo Rodriguez. (As much as I like Maeda, he’s probably not that.) Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals’ 2023 season was disappointing, but it was anything but boring. The electric Jordan Walker cracked the Opening Day roster, tying a record for most games (12) with a hit to start a career for a player age 20 or younger. Then he went on to post what I can only assume (given the dearth of fielding statistics before 2000) is one of the worst defensive seasons by a rookie ever, costing St. Louis 16 runs per Defensive Runs Saved and 12 runs per Ultimate Zone Rating and Runs Above Average. Additionally, the Cardinals brought over veteran signal-caller Willson Contreras from the division-rival Cubs for $87.5 million, only to relegate him to DH and corner outfielder in May, then to just DH, before moving him back to catcher… all within the span of a week. And don’t even ask me, or Jack Flaherty for that matter, about the right-hander’s fastball velocity.

But Kyle Gibson is boring. Last year, the Cardinals were in the bottom 10 in baseball in ERA, FIP, xFIP, and SIERA, and at the General Managers Meetings a couple of weeks ago, Cardinals’ President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak made clear the team’s desire to upgrade their pitching staff this offseason. But the Cards whiffed on Aaron Nola despite their early interest in the ace, and instead went with… Lance Lynn and Gibson? Read the rest of this entry »

Good relief is hard to find. Well, that’s not strictly true. Pretty much every team in baseball has multiple good relievers, random guys who throw 100 mph and snap off ludicrous sliders. But enough good relief pitching is hard to find, because it takes a village’s worth of relievers to get through a season, and the playoffs are even more challenging. As teams go to their bullpen earlier and earlier, they put more pressure on every arm in it, and the penalties to overworking your best few arms are harsh.

The Braves seem to understand that, because they’ve been aggressive about adding to their options this offseason. They already had Raisel Iglesias and A.J. Minter as reliable options. They gave Joe Jimenez and Pierce Johnson contract extensions that valued them like solid mid-to-late-inning options. They traded a sampler platter of former prospects for Aaron Bummer. Now they’ve added yet again by signing Reynaldo López to a three-year deal. Read the rest of this entry »