Once upon a time, though not too long ago in the grand scheme of things, Matt Wisler was a hot prospect. When he debuted for Atlanta in 2015, he was a top 50 prospect in baseball, the prize of Atlanta’s return for trading Craig Kimbrel to San Diego. He came out slinging, too — he threw eight innings and allowed only one run on the way to his first major league win.

The rest of that season didn’t go according to plan. Though Wisler stuck in Atlanta’s rotation, he struggled to the tune of a 4.71 ERA, 4.93 FIP, and a strikeout rate only 6.7 percentage points higher than his walk rate, one of the worst marks in baseball. 2016 and 2017 didn’t go much better, and by the trade deadline in 2018, Wisler was merely a throw-in, one of three pieces the Braves sent to Cincinnati for Adam Duvall.

You already know the broad story beats of the pitching prospect who falls from grace, but what the heck, I might as well fill them in here. The Reds turned around and traded Wisler back to the Padres, his first professional team, in exchange for Diomar Lopez, a lottery ticket arm. To add insult to injury, the Padres traded Wisler on to Seattle in exchange for the dreaded “cash considerations.” When the Mariners tried to sneak him off their 40-man roster that offseason, the Twins claimed him. Finally, after a year in Minnesota, the team non-tendered him rather than pay him an arbitration salary.

Boy, that sounds rough. Traded for a lottery ticket? Traded for cash? Waived to save a little bit of that aforementioned money? It’s an ignominious end for a once-glamorous prospect. One issue — Wisler isn’t done, at least not yet. Today, he signed a bargain $1.15 million deal with the San Francisco Giants, who will give him one more shot to recapture the form that had him ranked next to luminaries like Rafael Devers, Aaron Nola, and yes, fine, Kevin Plawecki (hey, they aren’t all hits) only five years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Mets fans have waited a long time to be as optimistic about an offseason as they are this winter. After decades in which conservative spending was only part of the self-destructive tactics the Wilpons inflicted upon the franchise, new owner Steve Cohen has stated plainly he bought the team with the purpose of buying up talent and transforming the team into something “iconic.” With no shortage of star players available both in free agency and via trade, Mets fans can let their imaginations run wild imagining what the roster could look like in 2021 and beyond.

Before this week, though, the Mets had yet to make a major move of any kind. That finally changed Tuesday, when they signed former Twins reliever Trevor May to a two-year deal. SNY.tv’s Andy Martino was the first to report a completed deal, while MLB Network’s Jon Heyman was first on the terms.

Mets have signed Trevor May, per source. Deal is pending physical. @AnthonyDiComo first mentioned talks.

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) December 1, 2020

Trevor May’s 2-year deal with the Mets is for about $15M

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 1, 2020

May ranked 21st on Craig Edwards’ Top 50 Free Agents list at the beginning of the winter, the second reliever listed behind ex-A’s closer Liam Hendriks, and ahead of big names such as Brad Hand, Blake Treinen and Kirby Yates. That might seem like an aggressive ranking considering his age, injury history, and production. At 31, it isn’t as though May is hitting the market as a young man. He has a Tommy John surgery in his past, which cost him the 2017 season and a good portion of ’18. Since his return from that injury, he’s posted a 3.19 ERA, 3.56 FIP and 1.8 WAR in 113 games. Those are perfectly solid numbers, but not what you would call elite.

But as Edwards notes, the ranking isn’t so much a reflection of May’s past as it is the potential teams see in him. That sounds strange to say about an over-30 pitcher with a surgically rebuilt elbow, but it does apply here. When May broke into the majors in 2014, his average fastball velocity sat around 92.6 mph. When he returned from Tommy John surgery in ’18, he was at 94. Then he jumped up to 95.5 in ’19 and 96.3 last season. He’s also increased the spin rate on his fastball in each of the past two years. May’s stuff just keeps getting better despite him being 12 years into his professional career.

May aims high with that fastball to make it even tougher to catch up with. Of the 233 fastballs he threw in 2020, nearly 70% were in the top third of the strike zone or higher:

Opponents swung and missed on 46.9% of the cuts they took at May’s fastball in 2020, a rate usually reserved for a good breaking ball; the league as a whole ran a whiff rate of 22.6% against four-seamers. He also generated whiff rates of 34.4% against his slider — a pitch with hard vertical drop that May says has more in common with his old curveball than the slider he had when he first broke into the majors — and 38.7% against his changeup, which was actually his most difficult-to-hit pitch inside the strike zone last season.

Put all of that together, and May had the eighth-highest whiff rate in all of baseball last year. His strikeout percentage of 39.6% ranked ninth among pitchers with 20 innings thrown. He’s one of the game’s very best strikeout arms, so why aren’t his run prevention numbers proportionately strong? Part of it is some bad luck. He had a HR/FB rate of 21.7% in 2020 — tied for 16th-highest among all qualified relievers — and also allowed a career-high fly-ball rate, leading to an icky HR/9 rate of 1.93. You’d prefer May allow fewer flies, but that’s not likely to trend down much given the way he pitches. Instead, you have to hope that such an outsized number of those fly balls stop leaving the yard. If that were the case in 2020, his 3.62 FIP would have been closer to his 2.74 xFIP, and his case as a top free-agent reliever wouldn’t be the slightest bit controversial.

With a $7.5 million AAV over two years, May’s contract beat both Edwards’ prediction and the crowdsource on this site, as well as the figure over at MLB Trade Rumors. He did it by a relatively small amount, but it is a continuation of a trend that provides reason for cautious optimism: Of the free agents ranked at each site (not counting qualifying offer guys), Edwards was under on two and exactly right with one of the free agents he listed; MLBTR has been under on all five of their signees. It’s still early, the predictions haven’t missed badly, and all of the big money players are still out there. But it’s good to see players signing for more money than analysts and fans alike thought they would receive then for less.

May’s signing is particularly reassuring when it comes to the reliever market. Again, this is one top reliever getting signed by a new owner who wants to be ambitious with his money. But when Hand and his $10 million option were spurned in November by not only penny-pinching Cleveland but also every other team, it cast a shadow over what top-tier relief talent may be worth on the market, as well as the market the dozens of merely good relievers may be subject to. If May can get a multi-year deal and a $7.5 million AAV, that should bode well for Hendriks and Hand at the top of the ladder, as well as players like Shane Greene and Jake McGee lingering a couple of rungs below them.

It is also good news for the Mets, who were in need of another good power arm to pair with Edwin Diaz at the back of the bullpen. Diaz was his old self in 2020, striking out nearly two batters an inning and keeping homers in check en route to a 1.75 ERA and 2.18 FIP. But the arms who were in line to throw ahead of him in next year are less imposing. Dellin Betances didn’t look right last season coming off an Achilles injury, and pitchers like Chasen Shreve and Miguel Castro are interesting but probably shouldn’t be the second-best arms in a contender’s bullpen. When spring arrives, May’s assignment will be to tide Mets fans over until the bigger star arrives. Come to think of it, that might be his job right now.

Ah, the introductory paragraph of a free agency signing piece. Normally, this is a space to let loose and spend a while thinking up a pun about the team and the player linking up. I must sadly tell you, however, that I can’t bring myself to do it. The degree of difficulty is the fun, and Mike Minor’s name is too easy, so you’ll just have to settle for the facts: the Kansas City Royals signed Minor to a two-year deal over the weekend, as Ken Rosenthal first reported.

When Minor left the Royals after a dominant 2017 season of relief work, he looked like a classic conversion arm. He’d been workmanlike over parts of five seasons with the Braves, never overwhelming but also never disastrous. After a brutal series of injuries ending in shoulder surgery, however, Atlanta cut him loose, and he landed with the Royals on a two-year deal. Kansas City turned him into a reliever, and he promptly annihilated the AL Central — his 2.55 ERA and 2.62 FIP represented a new level of performance, and he looked like a relief ace created out of whole cloth.

As he returns to Kansas City three years later, the situation feels both familiar and strange. Familiar, in that he’s spent the last three years putting in a performance that was, in aggregate, a little bit better than average. His run prevention numbers look slightly worse for having played two years in an extreme hitter’s park, but even then, a 4.07 ERA and 4.37 FIP will play, and that works out to an 85 ERA- and 95 FIP- after park adjustments. Even including a rough 2020, Minor looks like a workmanlike pitcher again.

Is he heading back to Kansas City to relieve? Almost certainly not. You see, Minor’s 2019 raises hope that there’s a little bit more there than meets the eye. He started the season strong, with a 2.54 ERA and 3.78 FIP, which led to his first All-Star nod. He faded down the stretch, though he still finished with 4.1 WAR and did even better (6.4 WAR) if you focus on runs allowed rather than FIP.

Even if you want to disregard the half-by-half split and focus on the aggregate, something stood out: Minor threw 208.1 innings, a career high. He followed that up with another 11 starts in 2020, essentially a full season of work. A starter who can put up decent rate statistics over a full workload is a valuable commodity in today’s game, particularly given the fact that essentially every pitcher in baseball will throw many more innings next year than they did this year, which likely increases the chance of injury. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s often said that there are no bad one-year deals, and the Braves have made a particular habit of using them to augment their young rotations — a habit that predates Alex Anthopoulos’ arrival as their general manager. After a season in which they fell one win short of their first trip to the World Series since 1999 despite a rotation thinned out by major injuries, the Braves have been been aggressive in pursuing that short-term approach. After signing Drew Smyly to a one-year contract last week, they’ve inked Charlie Morton to a one-year, $15 million deal, the same amount of money he would have been paid in 2021 had the Rays not declined his option in late October. Though a quirk of timing caused him to miss inclusion in our Top 50 Free Agents list, he’s the first major free agent to come off the board.

Morton, who turned 37 on November 12, is coming off a regular season in which he was limited to nine starts and 38 innings due to a bout of shoulder inflammation that sidelined him for three weeks in August. The Rays kept him on a short leash, but as the postseason reminded the baseball world, that’s how they roll. Morton pitched more than five innings just once (5.2 on August 4 against the Red Sox), and he topped 90 pitches just three times, maxing out at 94. He was used similarly in the postseason, and looked quite good, particularly in a pair of scoreless starts against the Astros in the ALCS; he threw five innings and 96 pitches in Game 2, then an ultra-efficient 5.2 innings while allowing just two hits on 66 pitches in Game 7. His removal while cruising along in that latter game foreshadowed manager Kevin Cash’s ill-fated decision to pull Blake Snell in Game 6 of the World Series, though in Morton’s case things turned out in the Rays’ favor. His lone postseason dud came in Game 3, when the Dodgers roughed him up for five runs in 4.1 innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

A report Tuesday from MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand indicates that Yasiel Puig will sign a one-year contract with the Atlanta Braves. The 29-year-old Puig hit .267/.327/.458 with 24 home runs for a 101 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR while playing for the Reds and Indians in 2019. The former Rookie of the Year runner-up spent most of last season in Cincinnati before heading to outfield-deficient Cleveland as part of the three-way trade that sent Trevor Bauer to Cincinnati and Taylor Trammell to San Diego. The exact financial terms of the deal are not yet available, but it’s unlikely that Puig’s one-year contract is for an exorbitant amount of cash from the team’s point of view.

From a pure “how good is Puig?” standpoint, completely divorced from context, this signing is an underwhelming one. Puig hit the market unencumbered by the possible loss of a draft pick upon signing (he was ineligible to receive a qualifying offer because of the trade), but even still, his free agency garnered a tepid reception this winter. Now, this offseason’s free agent market featured a lot more action than other recent ones, but that was driven by elite free agents such as Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon. Teams were still generally uninterested in first basemen and corner outfielders, with few getting multi-year deals and only José Abreu and Nick Castellanos getting more than $20 million guaranteed. Puig drew some interest, but nobody seemed all-in on bringing him in before spring training or when transactions were recently unfrozen. Read the rest of this entry »

With David Price shipped off to Los Angeles with Mookie Betts and Chris Sale’s spring beset by arm issues, the Red Sox rotation looks incredibly weak. With questionable internal alternatives, the Red Sox have added a potential solution from the free agent market in Collin McHugh, who will earn a base salary of $600,000 with incentives based on innings and active days on the roster that could push his earnings to a bit above $4 million.

Of course, McHugh was still on the market because he wasn’t cleared to throw until recently. He began last season in the rotation, but after four quality starts to begin the year, his performance went downhill in a hurry. Four ugly outings followed those four good ones and after two relief appearances, the latter a two-inning, four-strikeout performance, elbow soreness (but a clean MRI) meant time on the injured list. McHugh missed more than a month, then returned in a bullpen role at the end of June. He pitched well out of the pen, putting up a 3.65 FIP and 2.70 ERA through the end of August. Unfortunately, the elbow soreness returned; McHugh returned to the injured list and was eventually shut down for the season.

McHugh’s best years came as a reliable member of Houston’s rotation from 2014 to ’16. He made 90 starts and pitched at an above-average level, putting up an average of three wins per season. Elbow issues at the beginning of 2017 limited him to 12 starts at the end of the season before he was given a long relief role in the playoffs, where he made two appearances. He pitched the entire 2018 season in the bullpen before his up-and-down 2019 campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

Between 2014 and 2017, Brian Dozier took more major league plate appearances (2,807) than any other player, posting a .348 wOBA and hitting 127 home runs in the process. That performance was good for 18.9 WAR, which was the 11th-best mark posted by any hitter during that period and behind only José Altuve among second basemen. Last fall, he won a championship with the Washington Nationals. This weekend, he reportedly signed a minor league deal with the Padres.

That sequence probably overstates the degree to which Dozier’s stock has fallen. After a catastrophic 2018, his time with the Nationals was a modest success. He brought his offensive performance back to just about league average (99 wRC+), largely on the back of improved selectivity at the plate, and lifted his defense from “atrocious” (in 2018) to “mostly unimpressive” (his career norm). That all added up to 1.7 WAR and a share of a title. In most years, it might also have turned into a major league contract (you predicted a two-year deal worth $18 million). Read the rest of this entry »

That’s according to Ken Rosenthal, anyway, and the last time Ken got one of these signings wrong was never. We don’t have contract information yet, but you guessed two years and $8 million at the beginning of the offseason, and that sounds roughly correct to me. It’s possible that this late signing date is a clue that either the years or the dollars will be somewhat less than our expectation for them, but in the absence of any hard information, I’d bet there was enough interest in Brock Holt’s services that he hit what he was aiming for.

In Milwaukee, Holt will join a host of players competing for the role of Craig Counsell’s Favorite Son in spring training: Ryon Healy (who played first and third in 2019), Jedd Gyorko (first, second, and third), Eric Sogard (second, third, short, left, and right), and Luis Urías (second, third, and short) have already joined the Brew Crew this offseason. Holt, who did everything but pitch, catch, and play center field for the Red Sox last season, has been a more consistent hitter — especially over the last two seasons — than any of those four men, and so he probably has an inside track for a roster spot come April.

Given Milwaukee’s revamped outfield configuration — Christian Yelich in left (where he spent most of his time in Miami), some combination of Lorenzo Cain and Avisaíl Garcia in center, and Garcia and Ryan Braun in right — Holt will likely pick up much of his playing time in the infield, I’m guessing primarily on the left side. Sogard (third base) and Urías (shortstop) are both stronger starters if their bats hold up, but the odds of that happening for both men seem reasonably low. I wouldn’t be shocked if the 350 or so plate appearances we’re projecting for Holt this year end up being low. I also wouldn’t be shocked if Holt gets most of his defensive chances at second base, depending on how Keston Hiura’s sophomore campaign proceeds. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Cleveland Indians found themselves in the middle of a classic good news, bad news situation. It was encapsulated by this tweet from their official Twitter account:

We would like to officially welcome Domingo Santana to The Land!

Additionally, Mike Clevinger will undergo surgery on his left knee today and his timetable is TBD. pic.twitter.com/3PSW9gPjeO

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) February 14, 2020

First, the bad news. While participating in preseason drills earlier in the week, Mike Clevinger partially tore the meniscus in his left knee. After his surgery on Friday, the club announced a recovery timeline of six-to-eight weeks. The short end of his rehab timeline would put him on track to rejoin the team just after Opening Day. But since he’ll have missed all of spring training, it wouldn’t be surprising if he was brought along conservatively. Depending on how much time he needs to ramp up for the season, it’s possible he’d miss as much as the first month. Read the rest of this entry »

Trading a star player is easier to sell to a fanbase when said player’s potential replacement is part of the return package. When the Pirates traded Andrew McCutchen, they got back Bryan Reynolds. When the Marlins traded Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto, they got back Lewis Brinson and Jorge Alfaro. The exit of a star player always begs the question of who will take his spot, and if the team can point to a shiny young newcomer from another organization and say he’s the answer, it helps to maintain at least an illusion of stability at that position. Fans might miss their old star player, but fear not, because the new guy could be just as good, and so on. This has worked out better in some situations (McCutchen to Reynolds) than others (Yelich to Brinson), but it’s easy to see why a front office would want to employ this kind of strategy.

That’s how the Boston Red Sox behaved when scouring the market for potential returns in their efforts to dump the transcendent Mookie Betts (and, importantly, mountains of salary commitments), and they found their match in the Dodgers, who offered 23-year-old outfielder Alex Verdugo as part of their package in a deal that was completed earlier this week. On the outset, it seemed like a seamless transition. Verdugo certainly won’t be as valuable as Betts in any phase of the game, but he’s a decent enough bat and capable fielder who the Red Sox can plug into right field and forget about. Seems easy enough, right? Well, not necessarily. Verdugo, a left-handed hitter, will be replacing the right-handed-hitting Betts. The other two presumptive starting outfielders for Boston, Andrew Benintendi and Jackie Bradley Jr., are also lefties. Since the plan for right-handed-hitting J.D. Martinez should be to use him in the field as little as possible, and the rest of the projected bench combining for little-to-zero big league outfield experience, the Betts trade still left Boston in a vulnerable spot where outfield platoons are concerned. Read the rest of this entry »