Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
You don’t need me to tell you that the A’s aren’t a good team, nor a particularly entertaining one. Esteury Ruiz, arguably the club’s most fun position player, is down in Triple-A looking to build on his spring training success and become a more consistent everyday player than he was last year, when he led the majors with 67 steals but also had a wRC+ of just 86 and was, as far as DRS is concerned, horrible in the outfield (-20). That leaves the A’s without many players worth tuning in for, with the roster littered with post-prime veterans, waiver claims, and former prospects who’ve lost their shine. But Mason Miller’s career is just getting going, and it’s delightful to watch.
The flame-throwing righty burst onto the major league scene last year with a 3.38 ERA in four starts, including seven no-hit innings against the Mariners in a May outing that was just the third of his career. But a minor UCL sprain kept him out until September, when he was used in two or three inning spurts, topping out at 54 pitches. That perhaps foreshadowed how he’d be used this season, with David Forst saying at the Winter Meetings that he’d likely work out of the bullpen in an effort to limit his innings (and injuries). In the very early going, the move has not only kept Miller healthy, but allowed him to turn on another gear. He’s now pitching with absolute dominance as a reliever instead of teasing it as a starter. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve known for almost a year that the Oakland Athletics are moving to Las Vegas. Eventually. Someday. And every excruciating step of that process has dominated the news.
Team and city waged a years-long cold war over the construction of a new Bay Area stadium, plans for which finally fell through last year. That tipped off 12 months of open conflict with fans and government in both Oakland and Nevada, stemming from the inconvenient reality that even if the club could finance a stadium in Sin City, it would not be ready before the team’s lease at the Coliseum expired at the end of the 2024 season.
After mooting various solutions, including a stopover in Salt Lake City or the world’s most awkward stadium lease extension, John Fisher’s club is headed for Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, currently home of the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats.
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
As I mentioned in my intro column on Friday, my main responsibility here at FanGraphs is updating the RosterResource payroll pages, which give a great overview of all 30 teams’ payrolls and where they stand in relation to the luxury tax lines. I like to view payrolls with the understanding that each team is going to have its own normal range; as such, I find it best to look at the 2024 Dodgers relative to the 2023 Dodgers and the 2024 A’s relative to the 2023 A’s. So, with that in mind, I put the teams into five buckets.
All payrolls listed below are the “real payroll” for the teams rather than their luxury tax payroll. Official 2023 payrolls have not yet been reported, so I’ve used the RosterResource payrolls for both 2023 and 2024.
The Big Gainers (at least 10% increase since 2023)
The O’s had nowhere to go but up after running a bare-bones payroll for last year’s 101-win campaign. The big increases came from arbitration raises and trading for Corbin Burnes ($15,637,500).
Owner Ken Kendrick wasn’t kidding when he said he was willing to add payroll to keep the team in World Series contention. The Diamondbacks didn’t lose anyone significant in free agency, and new additions Eugenio Suárez, Eduardo Rodriguez, Joc Pederson, and Jordan Montgomery will combine to earn almost $60 million this season.
The Dodgers reined in spending in 2023 with an eye on having maximum flexibility for this season, and goodness did they flex it. They committed over $1 billion in free agency, 36% of the entire league’s total.
Kansas City’s big move was the mega-extension for Bobby Witt Jr., with free agency expenditures large in quantity (seven MLB free agents) but low in big splashes. (Seth Lugo’s $36 million contract was the largest.) Still, they look markedly improved.
The Rays were pretty quiet in free agency, but their payroll is up quite a bit even after trading away Tyler Glasnow and Manuel Margot. The large collection of arbitration-eligible players accounts for most of the gain here.
This is similar to the Rays’ situation; Aroldis Chapman ($10.5 million) was Pittsburgh’s biggest free agent commitment. David Bednar’s arbitration years and Mitch Keller’s extension could keep the Pirates in the $80M+ range for a while.
In the final year of his contract, Patrick Corbin is earning $11 million more than he did in 2023, and his raise accounts for over half of Washington’s increase.
This year, the Astros almost certainly will pay the luxury tax for the first time under owner Jim Crane. Josh Hader signed the biggest free agent deal for a reliever (by present value), and yet he has just the fifth-highest salary on the team.
Cincinnati had a very Royals-y offseason. Jeimer Candelario’s three-year, $45 million deal was the largest signing the Reds made, but add the $13 million he’ll earn this season with the salaries of newcomers Emilio Pagán, Frankie Montas, and Brent Suter and you get $37.5 million of fresh commitments to four players. That explains the increase in payroll even without Joey Votto on the team anymore.
Juan Soto’s hefty $31 million salary in his walk year explains the Yankees’ payroll jump, as the Marcus Stroman contract and arbitration raises are essentially negated by the salaries of Josh Donaldson, Luis Severino, and Frankie Montas (among others) coming off the books.
The Moderate Gainers (between 5% and 10% increase since 2023)
The World Series champs did their big shopping in the two offseasons before last year, and many of the core contributors from the 2023 roster are still with the team. The largest contract Texas gave out this free agency was Tyler Mahle’s two-year, $22 million deal, leading to a minimal increase in payroll.
After missing out on Shohei Ohtani, the Blue Jays had a low-key offseason. Yariel Rodriguez signed for $32 million but started out in the minors to get stretched out, and rather than making big expenditures the team will instead be relying on improvements from stars like Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Well, at least their relative change is actually qualifying as a moderate increase? By absolute change, this is essentially nothing; their highest paid player is Ross Stripling, who’s earning $12.5 million, but the Giants are covering $3.25 million of that, meaning the A’s themselves aren’t paying a single player eight figures.
Largely Unchanged (Within 5% of their 2023 payroll)
The Redbirds got most of their offseason shopping out of the way early, locking down Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson, and Lance Lynn before the Winter Meetings. The Gray deal is heavily backloaded, though, keeping things steady.
The Phillies tend to allocate their contracts evenly and will run it back with essentially the same squad that brought them to within one win of their second straight NL pennant.
The Mets’ payroll remains stratospheric, but nearly $70 million is money paid to other teams for James McCann, Justin Verlander, and Max Scherzer. They’re projected to be all the way down to $159 million in commitments for 2025, with no huge arbitration raises set to add to that significantly.
Don’t confuse cheaper with worse. The Tigers should be a much better team this year; they just no longer have Miguel Cabrera’s $32 million on the books.
Boston’s offseason was many things, but full-throttle it wasn’t. Adding injury to insult, the team’s big free-agent addition, Lucas Giolito, will miss all of 2024 after undergoing UCL repair surgery.
Milwaukee traded Corbin Burnes, brought back Brandon Woodruff on a reduced salary, and signed Rhys Hoskins to a backloaded contract that adds only $10 million to the 2024 payroll. Even so, the Brewers are 3–0 to start the season and should still contend for the NL Central title.
Colorado’s payments for Nolan Arenado went down from $21 million last year to $5 million this year, creating almost the entire difference. The team’s only free-agent additions were Jacob Stallings ($2 million) and Dakota Hudson ($1.5 million).
The Angels ducked under the luxury tax threshold by just $30,000 after letting five players go on waivers last August, and they won’t come anywhere close this year. Anthony Rendon and Mike Trout alone combine for nearly 45% of that.
Owner Jim Pohlad said payroll would go down, and it certainly did, even as the Twins look primed to repeat as AL Central champs. Carlos Santana ($5.25 million) was Minnesota’s “big” free agent signing.
The Padres followed through on plans to bring payroll down to a more manageable level to come into compliance with MLB’s debt-servicing rules, and they didn’t replace Juan Soto in any meaningful way, either.
…
To be clear, nothing I’m about to say is a dig on A’s fans. They’ve got what I would say is by far the toughest situation of any fanbase in the league, with their favorite team about to abandon them for three nomadic years in an unknown temporary home (Sacramento, perhaps? Salt Lake City?) before heading to a Las Vegas stadium that has been rendered on paper but entirely unclear in its real-life funding. (Nevada will chip in a hefty $380 million of what will be at least a $1 billion project.) With that all laid out, though, the A’s attendance has been nothing short of incredible, and I don’t mean that positively.
ESPN has a handy tracker for average team attendance, and the gap between the 15th-place A’s and 14th-place Marlins (remember, only 15 MLB parks have games during the opening weekend) is about 12,500 per game, nearly as large as the gap between the Marlins and the no. 10 Mariners. The boycotted Opening Day was actually the best attended of the three games, with over 13,000 tickets sold, though it would appear only a fraction actually went to the game. Instead, they bought tickets to access the parking lot for their protest.
Without protests and boycotts to artificially inflate attendance, the A’s may have a tough time cracking 10,000 fans at any point this season, and the team will exit Oakland with a whimper.
…
It appears as if Joey Bart will be on the move shortly, with his expected-all-spring jettisoning from the Giants’ roster finally coming with a DFA on Sunday. Bart hit well in spring training, with a .414/.526/.448 line in 38 plate appearances. He made the Opening Day roster as San Francisco’s third catcher, but he was never going to overtake Patrick Bailey and Tom Murphy on the depth chart so long as they stayed healthy.
Bart hit just .219/.288/.335 in 502 plate appearances with the Giants, and his -6 defensive runs saved in 156 games behind the plate don’t give any value back on the other side of the ball. That said, he was still the 2nd overall pick in 2018, and I don’t see him clearing waivers. Teams who could look to upgrade their backup catcher spot include the A’s, Diamondbacks, Braves, and Pirates.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest on Gerrit Cole’s elbow and how his uncertain status might affect free agents Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, then preview the 2024 Houston Astros (23:42) with The Athletic’sChandler Rome, and the 2024 Oakland (for now?) Athletics (1:12:15) with The Athletic’s Melissa Lockard.
Description:
The Oakland Athletics are currently seeking a seasonal Cape Cod Intern for the Amateur Scouting department. This position will be responsible for the Oakland Athletics’ scouting coverage of the Cape Cod Baseball League during the summer of 2024.
Responsibilities:
Evaluate amateur baseball players and create scouting reports on their current skills and projection of potential future skills.
Produce, curate, and analyze video and other relevant data for targeted baseball prospects.
Establish relationships with coaches within the Cape Cod Baseball League to acquire pertinent information regarding player health and scheduling.
Effectively communicate player updates to internal stakeholders.
Develop and maintain a detailed schedule to ensure appropriate coverage of players and teams across the Cape Cod Baseball League.
Qualifications/Requirements:
High degree of baseball acumen and understanding of evaluating baseball skills.
Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively with a wide variety of audiences.
Strong organizational skills, time management, and attention to detail.
Experience working with video equipment.
Flexibility to work extensive hours including nights, weekends, and holidays, as necessary to follow the Cape Cod Baseball League games.
Must have access to reliable transportation and housing accommodations in the region.
The Oakland A’s diversity statement:
Diversity Statement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are in our organizational DNA. Our commitment to these values is unwavering – on and off the field. Together, we continue to build an inclusive, innovative, and dynamic culture that encourages, supports, and celebrates belonging and amplifies diverse voices. Combining a collaborative and innovative work environment with talented and diverse team members, we’ve created a workforce in which every team member has the tools to reach their full potential.
Equal Opportunity Consideration:
We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.
Hey there, and welcome to the last edition of my data-driven look at some mid-tier hitting prospects I like more than the industry consensus. It feels weird, almost funereal, to start this article by mentioning that the series is ending, but that’s just how it is. This will be the fourth installment of my variably named Prospect Week contribution. In it, I use data and a big pinch of intuition to point out some hitters who I think have a good chance of sticking in the majors, even if they’re not your average Top 100 type.
In the past, I’ve done acceptably well at this; I don’t think it’d be fair to say that I’m great at it, but I’ve come up with my fair share of interesting players using this process. In looking through my past lists, I feel good about the process that led me to some guys you’ve heard of (Miguel Vargas and Ezequiel Tovar are probably my biggest hits so far, but I’ve also gotten some role players, and both Gabriel Moreno and Alejandro Kirk performed incredibly well by my model, though I didn’t end up including them in a list thanks to their pedigree) and plenty you haven’t.
What’s so hard about this project? The obvious thing is that my methods are archaic. I’m using some sorting techniques that are still reasonably current. K-nearest neighbors and multiple binary logistic regressions are still my two favorite techniques, and I think they both still do what I want them to. These approaches aren’t state of the art in statistical analysis, but they’re not particularly far from it, especially when you take into account that I’m a baseball writer instead of a data scientist. Read the rest of this entry »
Eric Kubota is the longest tenured scouting director in MLB, having been promoted to his current position by the Oakland Athletics in 2002. The University of California, Berkeley alum has been with the organization even longer than that; Kubota began working with the A’s in 1984 while still a student. He went on to join the baseball operations department in 1989, serving as assistant scouting director, Pacific Rim coordinator, and then supervisor of international scouting prior to taking the lead role in draft decisions.
His first draft is his most famous — perhaps you’ve heard of Moneyball — but it is by no means Kubota’s only memorable draft, nor his most impactful. Moreover, he has seen a lot change over his time in the industry. That comes with the territory when your scouting experience runs over three decades deep.
———
David Laurila: Looking back, something that stands out from the interview we did in 2009 was you saying, “The more you know about scouting, the more you know about the draft, and the more you know about prospects, the more you find out that there is more to learn.” All these years later, is there still more to learn?
Eric Kubota: “There is, and I feel even stronger about that now. The more I’ve gone through this, the more I realize how hard it is to try to predict the future on these kids, and the more I realize the need for as much information we can get to make informed decisions.” Read the rest of this entry »
Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports
The Oakland-for-now Athletics had themselves a roster shuffle on Friday, bolstering their pitching staff by adding right-hander Ross Stripling and officially announcing the addition of lefty Alex Wood. Wood joined the A’s on a one-year contract worth $8.5 million (with another million’s worth of incentives) after three years with the Giants. Now Stripling, too, is headed east across the bay, in a deal sending minor league outfielder Jonah Cox west to San Francisco (To make room for the pair, Oakland outrighted lefty Francisco Pérez and designated infielder Jonah Bride for assignment).
Wood and Stripling, who might have said something like “It’s not goodbye; it’s see you later” while packing up their lockers after the 2023 season, will be teammates for the fourth separate stint on three different California teams. They spent from 2016 to 2018 together on the Dodgers before Wood was dealt to the Reds, were reunited back in Los Angeles for the start of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season until Stripling was traded to Toronto, and then signed nearly identical two-year, $25 million free agent contracts with San Francisco a year apart from one another. Now, they’ll pair up again in Oakland and figure to factor into a starting rotation that was worth a league-worst combined 1.8 WAR in last season.
Both pitchers were available at a modest cost to the A’s after floundering in their only year together with the Giants. As Kyle Kishimoto wrote last week, Wood struggled to get hitters to swing at bad pitches and to miss whenever they did swing, falling to the 13th percentile in chase percentage and the 17th in whiff percentage. As a result, he struck out a lot fewer hitters and walked a whole bunch more. He also failed to stay healthy, with strains in his left hamstring and lower back sidelining him for the bulk of two months, and by late July, he was relegated to bullpen work as a sort of piggybacker and long relief option. He pitched better in this role, but it was far from what he and the Giants had hoped for when he signed his deal before the 2022 season. Still, Wood brings 10 years of big league service and a not-too-shabby 18.1 career WAR to Oakland, where he’ll try to right the ship. Read the rest of this entry »
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
We’ve spent a fair deal of time the past few months discussing the AL West, producers of the past two World Series winners. There’s the reigning champion Rangers constructing a pitching staff built for next October, the always-potent Astros assembling a mega-bullpen to go along with their core of offensive talent, and the Mariners making a whole lot of trade as part of their perpetual roster churn. Each of these three teams won at least 88 games last year, and all three had a shot at the division crown entering the final weekend of the regular season. Their offseason moves reflect their hopes to contend again in 2024.
The same cannot be said for the two other teams in the division. The Angels spent most of the offseason bolstering their bullpen while doing nothing to fill the Ohtani-sized hole in their lineup. The 112-loss Athletics did even less. They signed reliever Trevor Gott, traded for Abraham Toro, and that’s about it. That is, until a few days ago, when Oakland signed lefty Alex Wood and Los Angeles added outfielder Aaron Hicks. The two players improve their new clubs along the margins, but it’s going to take more than them to turn things around.
Alex Wood Moves Across the Bay
Wood, 33, agreed to a one-year deal with Oakland over the weekend, though the terms of the contract have not yet been reported. He began his career as a highly effective starter on the Braves and Dodgers, posting a 3.29 ERA and 3.36 FIP through his first six seasons. Since then, he’s been more up and down. After injuries limited him to nine appearances combined in 2019 and 2020, he took a prove-it deal with the Giants on their miracle 2021 squad, parlaying a bounceback campaign into a two-year, $25 million contract, which didn’t work out as well. Wood had a 4.77 ERA across the two seasons and was nearly replacement level in 2023, looking nothing like the mid-rotation arm he once was.
Wood’s struggles in the first year of his second contract with the Giants were largely the product of batted ball luck; he outperformed his peripherals by about a run and a half. While his numbers in 2023 returned to nearly league-average levels, the under-the-hood numbers took a big turn for the worse. Take a look at his three-year run in San Francisco.
Alex Wood’s Giants Tenure
Season
O-Swing%
K%
BB%
SIERA
2021
32.2%
26.0%
6.7%
3.60
2022
33.5%
23.6%
5.4%
3.45
2023
28.9%
17.2%
9.8%
4.98
The numbers in 2021 and 2022 look remarkably similar, despite a vastly different ERA. But nearly everything fell apart last year. The drop in strikeout rate is significant, but what stands out most to me are the elevated walk rate and plummeting chase rate, signs of a loss in command. Part of the issue may be mechanical; Wood dropped his arm slot significantly upon joining the Giants, and his funky delivery almost resembles a shotput throw rather than a baseball pitch. But between 2022 and 2023, his vertical release point stayed about the same while his arm got about two inches less horizontal extension.
In terms of actual pitch locations, Wood often missed his spots high. I’m not just talking about intentionally-placed flat sinkers; his slider and changeup also had a generally upward drift – not an ideal outcome for someone who uses the lateral action on each of his offerings to induce ground balls. Indeed, last year he had the worst grounder rate of any full season in his career. These frequent misses made it easier for batters to lay off pitches just below the zone, an area where Wood has frequently generated value in the past, leading to a ballooning of his walk rate.
This signing is as much about Wood’s role as it is about his performance. A career starting pitcher, Wood was frustrated last year when the Giants made him a swingman. San Francisco’s decision to break down the traditional roles of starter and reliever gave jobs to rookie arms like Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck, but staff veterans certainly had to adapt to the unorthodox change. Wood averaged less than four innings a game in his dozen starts, while making relief appearances of between one and 15 outs. On one occasion, he tossed four innings and 70 pitches the day after a bullpen session and on short rest from his previous appearance.
Luckily for Wood, the A’s are the perfect team for a veteran to attempt a comeback in a consistent role. He joins fellow low-slot lefty JP Sears as the only members of the projected rotation to ever complete 120 innings in a big league season. The presence of “relative innings eaters” like Sears, Wood, and Paul Blackburn (who has topped at 111 innings) will allow a pair of young arms with big stuff in Luis Medina and Joe Boyle to pitch full seasons in the rotation with minimal risk of being overworked. They’ll also help take the load off Mason Miller, who touches 102 mph and projects as a top-five reliever by Steamer, but has spent the bulk of his professional career on the injured list. With this signing, both sides gain some stability, and if Wood pitches well, the A’s could trade him to a contender before the year is over. In the meantime, though, Wood gets a team willing to give him the ball every fifth day, while Oakland gets a live breathing man willing to pitch on a bleak-looking squad – the smallest of win-wins.
Aaron Hicks Comes to Anaheim
Once an everyday center fielder who received an MVP vote in 2018, Hicks has taken quite the fall from grace in recent years. He signed a seven-year deal worth $70 million with the Yankees after his ’18 campaign, when his combination of solid home run power and a disciplined approach made him a four-win player. But his subsequent issues with injuries and performance have sapped his value, and in May, he was released with nearly three years left on his contract. He played out the rest of 2023 with the Orioles and had a surprising return to form, though he did this in just a 65-game sample and outperformed his expected numbers considerably. The Yankees will now be paying Hicks over $8 million to play for the Angels as he attempts to rebuild his career.
First, there’s the health aspect of things. The season that prompted Hicks’ lengthy extension is, to date, the only time he’s qualified for the batting title, thanks to a laundry list of injuries that have afflicted pretty much every body part there is. These issues have had a considerable impact on his performance, most notably seen in his steady decline in power over the past half decade. Since his best season, his maximum exit velocity has declined by 4 mph, and his barrel and hard-hit rates have cratered. As someone who’s never excelled at spraying line drives, Hicks isn’t able to rely on soft flares that land in front of outfielders.
A switch hitter, Hicks tapped into his power with New York because of his ability to pull the ball in the air, a skill aided by the juiced ball era and Yankee Stadium’s short porch for left-handed hitters. The Yankees as a whole were successful in optimizing the batted ball profiles of many of their hitters, turning DJ LeMahieu and Didi Gregorius into 25-homer threats. During the peak juiced ball years of 2018 and ’19, Hicks hit nearly all of his homers to the pull side, especially taking advantage when stepping into the box as a lefty. Since then, his aerial contact has been considerably weaker. Combine that with a baseball that behaves in line with normal physics, and his entire source of power disappeared. From 2017-19, Hicks homered every 22 plate appearances; that rate has been slashed nearly in half over the past four seasons. Hicks is still likely a near-average hitter, but that value will be exclusively coming from his still-great walk rates, not through homers.
Exit Velocity on Line Drives and Fly Balls
Season
Exit Velocity
2018
93.3
2019
94.6
2020
93.2
2021
94.7
2022
92.1
2023
90.0
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
The addition of Hicks, now 34, complicates the Angels’ outfield situation a bit. They already have two clear everyday outfielders in Mike Trout and Taylor Ward, leaving just one spot and a fraction of DH time for Hicks, Mickey Moniak, and Jo Adell. Even without Hicks in the picture, allocating playing time is still a challenge. On a contending team, it would make sense to set up Moniak and Adell in a power-heavy (and OBP-light) platoon. But the Angels aren’t in such a situation. Rather, they should be prioritizing the out-of-options Adell in their plans, either to build up trade value or to give him a last chance at being a viable everyday player. Now with Hicks, a veteran and known quantity who can also be traded, in the picture, the playing time picture gets squeezed a bit more.
Because of the team’s outfield logjam, Hicks probably won’t see tons of playing time to start the year. But he certainly provides a much-needed insurance policy if things don’t go as planned. He can play center field if Trout gets injured or a corner if Moniak or Adell are waived or traded. And the positional shuffling in the case of an Anthony Rendon injury could open up time at DH for him to fill. Hicks certainly shouldn’t be stealing playing time, but especially at his price point, the Angels will be glad to have him if (or when) things go wrong.
Kevin Sousa-USA TODAY SportsMatt Chapman is the second-highest-ranked position player left on the free agent market, and few players have a more evocative reputation: Four Gold Gloves in five full major league seasons, plus various newfangled defensive awards like a Platinum Glove and the Wilson Overall Defensive Player of the Year. Chapman is like a movie that won the Oscar and the Palme d’Or, and you look at the DVD cover and see it also won Best Picture at the Inland Empire Film Critics Association Awards. Lots of people think he’s good.
Even if Chapman weren’t a great defender, he’d be a valuable free agent. He’s reliable: Since his first full year in the majors, 2018, he’s never missed more than 23 games in a season. He has a career wRC+ of 118, and he’s averaged 29 home runs per 162 games. Jeimer Candelario, who is seven months younger than Chapman and has had only one season as good as Chapman’s worst full campaign in the majors, just got $45 million over three years. Ben Clemens predicted that Chapman’s free agent contract would be $24 million a year over five years; the median crowdsource estimate was 4 years at $20 million per. I tend to trust Ben’s judgment more than that of the crowd, wise as the crowd may be.
But Chapman is, nevertheless, an interesting case: a high-strikeout hitter who doesn’t put up huge power numbers, and a glove-first player at a bat-first position. That’s a precarious profile when considering a player for a long-term contract into his mid-30s. Read the rest of this entry »
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