On Christmas, while I was some combination of calorically comatose and consumed by basketball, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that the Rangers had signed 28-year-old Japanese righty Kohei Arihara. The move continued an active Texas offseason and streak of curious, perhaps antithetical acquisitions made by a Rangers club that seems to have one foot in rebuilding and and the other in competing. What does Arihara bring to the table right now, and how does his acquisition fit as part of a broader shift in the strategy the org seems to be taking to team building?

Before I talk about Arihara, let’s remember the things that change when a pitcher goes from NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) to MLB. In addition to the leap in hitter quality, there is also a heavier workload. Pacific League pitchers start once a week rather than once every five days as they typically do in MLB. It’s a strange cultural workload reversal from high school, where Japanese pitchers can be sometimes driven into the ground and asked to throw upwards of 120 pitches on little rest during important tournaments. There’s no way of knowing what kind of long-term consequences this has for the pitchers being developed there, good or bad.

The baseball itself is also different. The tackiness and seam height of NPB’s ball differs from MLB’s (there’s also variance within each population on its own), and those attributes play an important role in creating movement on pitches. This is why, more and more often, you’ll see MLB pitchers asking the umpire for a new baseball after feeling the seams on the one they’ve just been given and realizing they are lower than they like. All of these things, in addition to the complexities of a cross-planet move and cultural adjustment, play a role in augmenting teams’ understanding of the pitchers they have scouted, via tech and eyeball evaluators, in NPB or any other foreign league. Read the rest of this entry »

Hours after trading for Blake Snell, and hours before swinging a deal for Yu Darvish, the Padres continued their remarkable post-Christmas shopping spree by signing Ha-seong Kim. Kim, a 25-year-old infielder who spent last season with the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes, was listed as our eighth-best free agent in our top 50 roundup this fall, just ahead of Didi Gregorius and Justin Turner. Per Kevin Acee of the San Diego Tribune, it will be a four-year, $25 million deal. Additionally, Kiwoom will collect a bit of a tax, taking a $5 million release fee from San Diego.

In Kim, the Padres get a player who should claim a starting job right away, and potentially ascend from there. The best way to characterize his recent KBO production is to say that he’s outgrown the league. As the starting shortstop for one of the circuit’s better clubs, Kim has notched a 140 wRC+ in each of the last two seasons. He produced a .306/.397/.523 line last year, with 30 homers and more walks than strikeouts. He’s also swiped 56 bases in 62 tries over the last two years, a 90% clip. Mel Rojas Jr.’s absurd power production deservedly won him the KBO MVP award last season, but make no mistake: Kim was the brightest prospect in the league.

The scouting report backs up the numbers. A tremendous athlete, Kim’s a plus runner with quick hands and a plus throwing arm. At the plate, he has a mature approach, displaying good patience without being passive. Most of his power comes to the pull side, and he adeptly hunts pitches he can drive: Both his swing rate and whiff rate were above average last year, notable in a league that runs a lot of deep counts. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, the Rays’ 40-man roster had a single catcher on it: Ronaldo Hernández, a 23-year-old prospect who had never played above High-A. Fast forward to Friday, and Tampa has doubled its collection of backstops after re-signing Mike Zunino, who has been with the team the past two seasons. That was not the only move the club made, though, as the Rays also signed free-agent pitcher Michael Wacha. Both deals came in at $3 million, with Zunino’s total figure including a buyout on a 2022 option. The deals make sense, though it is worth noting that the two players combined for 0.1 WAR last season, so the Rays must see something beyond their recent performances to justify even a modest investment.

The Rays need a bunch of innings behind the plate, and Zunino, who turns 30 in March, should supply some of them; just don’t expect much out of them. The last two seasons, he’s been one of the worst hitters in baseball, with his 49 wRC+ ranking 337th out of 342 players with at least 300 plate appearances. Zunino does have some power, with a career ISO around .200, and he bested that number in 84 plate appearances last season, but he just doesn’t get to it enough to make himself anywhere near a decent hitter. Even his walk rates, which were double-digit levels back in his good offensive years with the Mariners in 2016 and ’17, have dropped below league average the last three years. Zunino has always swung and missed a lot, with a 35% career strikeout rate, and he whiffed 37 times last year while putting the ball in fair territory on just 38 occasions. He’s average to maybe slightly above average at throwing out runners, but last season, he was below average in framing for the first time in his career. There are reasons the Rays declined Zunino’s $4.5 million option at the end of last season, and it isn’t because they’re cheap.

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The offseason remains slow, but the reliever market saw some moves this week, with a trio of free agents scoring new contracts. Greg Holland signed a one-year, $2.75 million deal to come back to the Royals, who continue to act aggressively this winter. Former Brewers lefty Alex Claudio signed a one-year, $1.25 million commitment to join the Angels, who recently traded for closer Raisel Iglesias. And speaking of the Angels, Keynan Middleton signed a one-year contract with the Mariners, who also added Rafael Montero via a trade with Texas this week.

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During the abbreviated 2020 season, the Red Sox saw their right fielders post an offensive line 30% above league average. It was a valiant effort on the part of Alex Verdugo and Kevin Pillar to replace the lost production of Mookie Betts. But with Pillar out of the picture and Verdugo seemingly shifted over to center to replace the departed Jackie Bradley Jr., that Betts sized hole in right field loomed large for the second straight offseason. On Monday, Boston addressed that need by signing Hunter Renfroe to a one-year, $3.1 million contract, with additional incentives that could bring the total amount to $3.7 million.

Earlier this offseason, Renfroe was cut loose by the Tampa Bay Rays after they balked at the raise he was scheduled to receive in his first year of arbitration. (MLB Trade Rumors projected his arbitration salary to fall between $3.6 million and $4.3 million.) His escalating salary combined with a significant step back in performance on the field made the decision easy for the penny-pinching Rays.

After establishing himself as a legitimate power threat in San Diego, Renfroe was shipped off to the Rays in the Tommy Pham deal prior to the 2020 season. During his first four seasons in Southern California, he launched 89 home runs for the Padres, backed by a .259 ISO, an 11.0% barrel rate, and a 39.2% hard hit rate. Despite a propensity to strikeout a little too often, he was five percent better than league average at the plate as a Padre. In his lone season in Tampa, his wRC+ fell to a career-low 76, though his power seemed mostly intact. His barrel rate dipped a couple points to 9.3% leading to a corresponding dip in his ISO to .238, but his hard hit rate stayed stable.

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Players like David Dahl aren’t supposed to be free agents. He’s a 26-year-old outfielder with an above-average career wRC+, and he’s played just four seasons. He was also a first-round pick with the prospect hype to back that up all the way until his debut. Even though his most recent season was very bad — very, very bad — most years, a team wouldn’t even consider cutting a player like him loose with three years of team control still ahead.

This isn’t most years, though. The Rockies didn’t think the chance that Dahl would bounce back would be worth the meager salary he’d garner in his first arbitration year and elected not to tender him a contract for 2021. It took just nine days for another team to pick up the slack, as late Friday night, the Rangers reportedly signed Dahl to a one-year deal worth $3 million. Because he has only three years and change of service time in the big leagues, you can think of this as a one-year contract with two team options; Texas can keep him through 2023 if it wishes, so long as it picks up his arbitration-year salaries along the way.

That fact boosted the appeal of one of the more head-scratching free-agency cases on the market. Dahl’s 2020 was bad enough — he had a wRC+ of 10 and -0.8 WAR in just 24 games — that a contending team looking to plug a hole in its outfield couldn’t do so by signing him. Any team with playoff aspirations would likely want Dahl to take on a bench role, which would limit him in re-establishing his value. Better would be steady playing time with a rebuilding team, but with so many of those organizations searching for ways to minimize payroll the same way Colorado is, it was unclear who might be willing to pay up.

Enter the Rangers, a fittingly confusing team for a confusing free agent. Texas has been a losing team for four years now, and its road back to contention has always felt rather narrow. Despite this, the Rangers embarked on what Dan Szymborski described as a skinny rebuild — refusing to tear the whole thing down and instead attempting to add modest prospect talent without trading stars while simultaneously spending money on win-now free agents. Some teams, like Milwaukee, have assembled playoff rosters while undergoing similar retoolings. In the case of Texas, the result has been a rotation frighteningly short on depth, a lineup that collectively produced one of the worst seasons ever, and a farm system that doesn’t boast a single prospect in the 55 Future Value tier or higher. All the while, the division around the Rangers is only getting tougher.

Despite the declining product on the field, the last few weeks have seen what looks like a continuation of that strategy. Texas made the obvious sell it needed to, trading Lance Lynn to the White Sox for Dane Dunning and Avery Weems. Then it turned around and traded a Top-100 prospect to Tampa Bay for Nate Lowe. These moves seemingly butt heads in raw buy/sell math, but both fit into a more broad strategy Levi Weaver outlined at The Athletic: Acquire players who are MLB-ready but young enough to still be helping the club when the team’s next crop of prospects mature.

Dahl fits that mold. Despite his years of big league experience, he’s a young player still waiting for his opportunity to break out. It certainly didn’t happen in 2020. He hit .183/.222/.247 with a walk rate on the wrong side of 5% and a strikeout rate approaching 30%. His exit velocity was down nearly three miles per hour from the previous two seasons. He was a poor defender, and he missed time with injuries, just as he has every year of his career. There were just six players in baseball who hurt their teams more than Dahl in 2020, and I’m surprised the number is that high.

If you’re a Rangers fan, you’re probably wondering what the good news is. Fortunately, there are plenty of caveats. This was only a 24-game span we’re talking about, a sample that would take us into the third week of April in a normal regular season. If someone pronounced a player’s career dead after the first 24 games of the year, you would politely shush that person, and maybe urge them to take a walk and get some air.

Dahl’s 24 most recent games also bear little resemblance to his career to that point. He entered 2020 with a career line of .297/.346/.521, a 111 wRC+ and 3.7 WAR. He was a power/speed combo threat who had a knack for posting high batting averages in both the majors and the minors, and he was hardly a liability on defense. In fact, despite center field in Coors being one of the game’s most difficult assignments, both UZR and Statcast’s OAA metric actually prefer Dahl there than in the corners. Prior to 2020, he had done a pretty good job of playing like someone once selected 10th overall in the draft.

But the issues that felled Dahl in 2020 were nothing new. He has always whiffed a lot, and he’s below-average at taking walks. He’s also never stood out much when it comes to Statcast’s exit velocity and hard-hit rate metrics, placing in the 36th percentile in the former and the 51st percentile in the latter in 2019, and those were both career-bests. That isn’t to say Dahl was getting lucky before last year, though his expected numbers do tend to lag behind his actual totals. He just hasn’t shown particularly loud tools to this point.

There’s also the issue of Dahl’s health. He was called up way back in July 2016, opened his big league career with a 17-game hitting streak, and finished the year with a 113 wRC+ in 63 games. Before he could build on that hype the following year, he was diagnosed with a stress reaction in his rib, which caused him to miss the entire 2017 season save for 19 minor league games on rehab assignments. He wouldn’t rejoin the Rockies until late April 2018 and stuck around for only a little more than a month before suffering a broken foot and hitting the shelf for the rest of the year. He managed to log 100 games in 2019 before an ankle sprain once again ended his season prematurely in the first week of August. Following the 2020 season, Dahl elected to receive shoulder surgery, but said he should still be ready for spring training.

It’s difficult to imagine how Dahl’s performance wouldn’t be impacted by such a constant barrage of injuries over these past few years, which is why the Rangers aren’t investing in him because of anything they saw in his horrific 2020 season, or in any of the more successful seasons that preceded it. They’re doing it because they believe none of us have seen what he truly has to offer, and they probably aren’t wrong. Here’s hoping 2021 turns out to be a year of good health — for Dahl, and for all of us.

Going into the offseason, the Mets had a huge hole at catcher, and with Steve Cohen taking over as owner, they also had a lot of money to spend. Those two forces have apparently combined, resulting in free-agent catcher James McCann making his way to New York. Robert Murray indicated a four year-deal was likely two weeks ago, last week Andy Martino reported talks were serious, with Ken Rosenthal reporting the sides were close to a four-year deal. On Sunday, it was Rosenthal who first reported a deal in the range of $40 million, pending physical, with Jeff Passan saying the deal was just over the $40 million mark. But while McCann is certainly an upgrade for the Mets at the position, the deal is curious given the years involved and J.T. Realmuto’s continued availability.

In our Top 50 Free Agents, I ranked McCann 33rd and expected a contract in the range of two years and $14 million; the average crowdsource numbers were in that same ballpark. Over at ESPN, Kiley McDaniel ranked McCann higher at 14th, but expected a modest deal of two years and $21 million, while Keith Law left McCann off his top-40 at The Athletic entirely. In his write-up for us, Jay Jaffe went over McCann’s plusses and minuses:

Quality catchers aren’t easy to come by these days, and for teams that can’t afford to offer a nine-figure deal to Realmuto and are loath to invest in a 38-year-old [Yadier] Molina (or simply aren’t the Cardinals), McCann offers a reasonable alternative. Admittedly, his track record for above-average play isn’t a long one; he was 0.7 wins below replacement as recently as 2018, and netted -0.1 WAR from 2014-18, that while hitting for just a 75 wRC+. Even so, his 3.8 WAR over the past two seasons is tied for fifth among catchers, while his 116 wRC+ is eighth. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Seattle Mariners signed Chris Flexen to a two-year deal. The 26-year-old will earn $4.75 million in guaranteed money, with an option to make more if he hits certain innings thresholds. Per MLB Trade Rumors, the Mariners attached “a $4MM club option and, if Flexen throws 150 innings in 2022 or 300 frames from 2021-22, an $8MM vesting option.” The contract itself is a bit of a Dipoto special, as the Mariners used a similar structure when they extended Wade LeBlanc and amusingly tacked on three club options; none were picked up.

Getting back to Flexen, the right-hander spent 2020 in South Korea, but most fans will remember him from his time with the Mets. He last appeared on a prospect list back in 2017, when Eric Longenhagen hit the nail on the head with his scouting report:

“He sits 91-94, touching 96, with an average curveball and fringe change. He has a big, sturdy, inning-eating frame but has already had a surgery, and there are scouts who’d like to see if the fastball plays consistently at 96 out of the ‘pen. Others think he’s more of an up-and-down starter.”

While he debuted later that summer, the Mets ultimately rolled snake eyes on Flexen’s development. In 68 innings spread across three seasons, he posted ghastly numbers, running an ERA north of eight while walking more hitters than he struck out. It seems almost cruel to mention his home run problem at this point but, well, too late. Ineffective and out of options, Flexen faced a very uncertain future heading into 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

At the beginning of this offseason, Dayton Moore had two goals: sign a starting pitcher and add a middle-of-the-order bat. When Kansas City pounced early in free agency and signed Mike Minor and Michael A. Taylor, the jokes were easy to make. Minor is a decent approximation of a starter, but Taylor a middle-of-the order bat? Surely there was more, right?

There’s more. Yesterday, the Royals signed Carlos Santana to a two-year, $17.5 million dollar deal, with incentives that could add $1 million to the total. Santana is now one of the top three or four hitters in a Royals lineup that feels underpowered, but less so than it did a week ago. He’ll slot in somewhere in the middle of the order (mission accomplished!) and bring his much-walking, much-taking, some-homers game to a lineup light on both (26th in walk rate in 2020, 20th in home runs).

Santana checked in at 41st on our list of the top 50 free agents this offseason. This ranking is no knock on his career production — he’s been a useful hitter for a decade now, and has become an excellent defender at first base. It’s merely the way that baseball works now; bat-first players, particularly those confined to first base, left field, or DH, are a dime a dozen these days. Add that to his age — he’ll turn 35 early in the 2021 season — and Santana looked destined for a deal of roughly this size. Read the rest of this entry »

It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say one of the most important days in the recent history of the White Sox was Dec. 7, 2016, when they traded Adam Eaton to Washington in return for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, and Dane Dunning. Giolito is now the staff ace and one of the best pitchers in the American League, having compiled 7.1 WAR over the past two seasons. López has been less successful as a back-of-the-rotation arm who hovered just below league average from 2018 to ’19 before falling below replacement level last year, but he’s still provided 4.1 WAR over the last three seasons. Dunning was just shipped out to acquire another right-handed ace in Lance Lynn from the Rangers. A lot of wins can already be credited to the Eaton deal, and more will be added to the ledger by the time all is said and done.

Perhaps it’s cosmically fair, then, that Eaton will now reap the rewards of the roster he played such a key role in rebuilding. NBC Sports Chicago’s Chuck Garfien reported on Tuesday that Eaton will be rejoining the White Sox on a one-year deal, with a team option in place for 2022. The signing comes four years and one day after the team traded him to Washington.

White Sox in agreement with free agent outfielder Adam Eaton, source tells @NBCSChicago. It's a 1-year, $7 million deal with a second year team option for $8.5 million.

— Chuck Garfien (@ChuckGarfien) December 8, 2020

Chicago first acquired Eaton after the 2013 season, in a three-team, six-player deal with the Diamondbacks and Angels that also established new homes for Mark Trumbo, Hector Santiago and the late Tyler Skaggs. Eaton, a former 19th-round pick out of the University of Miami (Ohio), immediately broke out in Chicago’s outfield, compiling 13.5 WAR over three seasons thanks to a .290/.362/.422 line (119 wRC+) and sometimes elite defense. His best season — a 2016 that included a 117 wRC+, 26 defensive runs saved in the outfield, and 5.9 WAR — earned him down-ballot MVP votes, but it came on a White Sox team that finished 78–84, spinning its tires despite the presence of stars like Jose Quintana and Chris Sale. Chicago hit the reset button, and with Eaton coming off a career year and having four years left on his owner-friendly contract extension, he became quite a valuable trade chip.

Eaton seemed like a good fit for a championship-ready Nationals squad with holes to fill in its outfield, but his honeymoon with Washington was short-lived. His 2017 season lasted just 23 games before he tore his ACL running out a ground ball, and he missed two more months in ’18 with bone bruises on his ankle. He finally turned in a full season for the title-winning 2019 Nationals and compiled 2.3 WAR with a 107 wRC+, only to return as a shell of himself in 2020, hitting just .226/.285/.384 (75 wRC+) with four homers in 41 games. He was half a win below replacement level, and Washington declined his $10.5 million team option after the season.

Eaton was able to recoup most of that with his one-year deal in Chicago, which was in need of a starting right fielder after non-tendering Nomar Mazara. Filling that spot in the order was seen as a chance for the White Sox to aim high — George Springer and Marcell Ozuna are potentially transformative bats at the top of the market, while other options like Michael Brantley, Joc Pederson, and Jackie Bradley Jr. rank in the top half of our Top 50 Free Agents list. Craig Edwards’ most recent payroll analysis has the White Sox spending much less than their market size warrants, so the resources to add a big name should be available.

Instead, Chicago opted for a 32-year-old with a modest power ceiling and waning defensive skills coming off the worst season of his career. Eaton had various problems in 2020. He raised his swing rate nearly seven points to the highest mark of his career, resulting in a walk rate of just 6.8%, more than two points below his career average. All of that swinging resulted in a lot of contact — he was in the 91st percentile of baseball in whiff rate — but he still posted his highest strikeout rate since 2015.

When Eaton put the ball in play, he also couldn’t achieve the same luck he has in the past. His ability to leg out bunt and infield singles declined, and a career .335 BABIP plummeted to a .260 mark in 2020. Because Eaton doesn’t hit for much power, his offensive value is sustained by his ability to convert line drives and grounders into singles and to work an above-average rate of walks. When he can’t do that and doesn’t have even average defensive numbers to bolster his case, you’re probably better off calling up someone from Triple-A to take his spot in the lineup.

The White Sox clearly don’t think Eaton has reached that point, likely for a few reasons. He just turned 32 this week, an age that typically means you’re past your prime but not one where you expect production to tank completely. Despite the knee and ankle injuries, Eaton can still run pretty well — he was in the 74th percentile of Statcast’s sprint speed metric this year and up to the 81st percentile the year before, which is pretty close to where he was when he was having his best seasons on defense as well as on the bases. He should avoid challenging Luis Robert to pre-game foot races, but his legs and instincts should still help add value.

His raw tools appear to be holding up in other areas as well. Eaton’s exit velocity in 2020 was down from the previous year, but only by a single mile per hour. He isn’t having trouble catching up to fastballs, as his whiff rate against the hard stuff actually just hit its lowest point since 2014. His line-drive rate has remained steady, as has his distribution of where he’s hitting the ball.

The White Sox, then, are betting that Eaton’s problems are easier to solve than it may appear. If he still runs well, perhaps fixing his defense — where he’s dropped from +27 DRS in 980.1 innings in right in 2016 to -6 DRS in 335 innings in 2020 — could be solved with better positioning, or other subtle tweaks. If his contact skills are still in place, maybe you can salvage his K/BB rates by nudging him back toward his more selective approach of the past. Perhaps there’s a 3-WAR player still here, and it’s just going to take a little elbow grease to bring him back out. The idea of achieving that while reuniting with a former fan favorite might make all that work seem worth it.