While the period for extensions is usually longer, this year’s circumstances have made it a brief one, squeezed between a flurry of arbitration hearings and the upcoming baseball season. That doesn’t mean there’s been a shortage, though; according to Spotrac, the 32 extensions signed so far in 2022 marks the highest total since 40 were agreed to in 2019. While I first assumed a much lower number, it’s important to remember some were signed pre-lockout, like with Byron Buxton and José Berríos.

Anyhow, here’s one I found interesting. Having completed his rookie campaign in 2021, Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase was slated to become arbitration-eligible ahead of ‘24, followed by an entry into the open market in ‘26. But an extension has wiped those years out and possibly more. Per Joel Sherman of the New York Post, Clase is guaranteed $20 million over five years. There are two options, worth $10 million apiece, that can either cover his first two years of free agency (2027 and ’28), or be bought out for $2 million each.

Some minor details include a $2 million signing bonus and escalators that can take the options to $13 million. The main point, though, is this is a long, affordable commitment made at the genesis of a player’s career, starting at pre-arbitration and possibly ending several years later. From the Guardians’ perspective, they’ve locked up a star reliever for cheap. But from Clase’s perspective, one has to wonder if he’s leaving money on the table. The future is hazy this early in someone’s career, but when said career has been brilliant thus far, the “what could have been” takes over. Read the rest of this entry »

Having lost Kenley Jansen to the Braves via free agency, the Dodgers felt that they needed a closer, and that they had an outfielder to spare. Feeling uncertain about outfield depth in the wake of Andrew Vaughn’s hip injury, the White Sox were willing to part with a pricey setup man. Fittingly, then, the two contenders teamed up on a trade on Friday, with Chicago sending Craig Kimbrel to Los Angeles in exchange for AJ Pollock.

The 33-year-old Kimbrel spent less than half a season with the White Sox after being acquired from the Cubs in a crosstown deal at last year’s trade deadline, in exchange for second baseman Nick Madrigal and righty reliever Codi Heuer. Where Kimbrel had built on a late-2020 rebound and dominated for the Cubs — posting a 0.49 ERA, converting 23 out of 25 save chances, and making his eighth All-Star team — he slotted into a setup role in front of All-Star closer Liam Hendricks with the White Sox, notching just one save and getting hit for a 5.09 ERA. At least on paper, the Sox appeared ready to utilize a similar arrangement this year, though paying Hendriks $13 million and Kimbrel $16 million made for a particularly pricey late-inning combination.

Even with the late-season hiccups, Kimbrel still finished with his best rate stats since 2017 via a 2.26 ERA, 2.43 FIP, 42.6% strikeout rate, 9.8% walk rate, and 32.8% strikeout-walk differential. Among relievers, only Josh Hader had a higher strikeout rate, and only Hendriks, Hader, and Raisel Iglesias had a better strikeout-walk differential.

The 59.2-inning workload was Kimbrel’s largest since 2018; after helping the Red Sox win the World Series in what was a comparatively lackluster season, he didn’t sign with the Cubs until June 6, 2019, after the draft pick compensation that encumbered his free agency had expired. He threw just 36 innings in 2019–20, with a 6.00 ERA and 6.29 FIP, but during the latter season, the Cubs identified a mechanical issue. “Kimbrel was getting too rotational and was flying open early,” as The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma described it in March 2021. “This led to multiple issues, all connected in various ways: his arm slot dropped, he was pulling his fastball, his velocity was dipping and he had no control of his breaking ball.” Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Ridings strikes an imposing figure on the mound. He also misses a lot of bats. Straddling the rubber at 6-foot-8, 225 pounds, the 26-year-old right-handed reliever is coming off a season where he recorded 42 strikeouts in 29 minor-league innings, and another seven in a five-inning cup of coffee with the New York Yankees. Moreover, he allowed just 20 hits and six walks in the 34 cumulative frames.

Drafted out of Division-III Haverford College by the Chicago Cubs in 2016 — the Yankees are his third organization — Ridings comes out of the bullpen with an attack-dog mindset.

“Right now, I’m the guy that wants to blow doors off,” explained Ridings, whom New York signed in January 2021 after he was released by the Kansas City Royals. “I’m trying to strike out as many guys as humanly possible.”

The 18% swinging strike rate that Eric Longenhagen noted when writing up Ridings for our 2022 Yankees Top Prospect list — the righty is No. 21 in those rankings — comes courtesy of three-pitch mix. A heater that sits mid-to-high 90s and tops out in triple digits is his bread-and-butter, and a slider he began throwing in spring training of last year is his best secondary. A knuckle-curve rounds out his repertoire. Read the rest of this entry »

Author’s note: Jacob deGrom was scratched from his scheduled start today after feeling tightness in his throwing shoulder. He will undergo an MRI. While that potential injury makes his availability for the start of the season murky, this article is about his spring start on March 27.

When you watch Jacob deGrom, he’ll make you question what you know about the fine art of pitching. Develop a mix of killer pitches to keep batters off balance? He has five excellent pitches, but he basically only uses two of them. Change speeds? He throws his fastball in a consistent band, his slider in a consistent band, and when he does deign to drop in a changeup, it matches his slider.

None of that is the most obviously extreme thing about deGrom, though. If you’ve paid attention through a few of his starts, you know what I’m talking about: he barely uses any of the plate. Home plate is 17 inches wide, and baseballs have a radius of roughly 1.5 inches. That means that pitchers have 18.5 inches of horizontal space to play with, from catching the edge on one side of the plate to catching it on the other. Read the rest of this entry »

Amidst the offseason hubbub, it’s easy to miss a move here and there. Last week, Tommy Pham signed with the Reds on a one-year, $7.5 million contract. Cincinnati had one of the league’s weaker outfields, with an unimpressive trio of Nick Senzel, Tyler Naquin, and Shogo Akiyama. Pham, now 34, is old in baseball years. His time in San Diego didn’t go so well, and he’s been presented with an opportunity to prove himself. The Reds are selling, but precisely because they aren’t contenders, Pham should find plenty of time on the field. This is a deal both sides are presumably happy with.

But if you’ve been on Baseball Savant before, you could imagine how this deal might have ended up differently. In that scenario, Pham certainly nets more than $7.5 million. Maybe even multiple years. He’s settled for his current contract because, in the last two seasons, Pham has posted a 97 wRC+. The Reds are paying him as if he’s expected to contribute one or two wins above replacement. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Twins got their dessert: they signed the top free agent in the market and installed him in the middle of the lineup. This week, they’re eating their vegetables, in the form of a one-year deal with Chris Archer:

Right-hander Chris Archer and the Minnesota Twins are in agreement on a one-year, $3.5 million contract, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Archer, 33, will join the Twins' rotation and can earn up to $9.5 million this season with performance bonuses.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 28, 2022

Those incentives are a modern-day version of a games started bonus. Archer will receive them based on the number of games he either starts or pitches three innings of relief in – basically starting or being the headliner after an opener.

I like the idea of this contract quite a bit, for both Archer and the Twins. From Archer’s perspective, it’s a bet on himself with a financial cushion if things don’t work out. When he signed in Tampa Bay last year, he hadn’t pitched since 2019, and he didn’t even accrue 20 innings. He hurt his forearm in his second start of the year, missed four months, then hurt his hip not long after returning. A starting role in the majors seemed far from a certainty. Read the rest of this entry »

Current work on the team-by-team prospect lists is being complemented by lots of live looks in Arizona as we work on the West Valley cluster of teams (Reds/Guardians/Dodgers/White Sox), so the info in those lists is fresh out of the oven. As I’ve been targeting teams with West Valley facilities who come east and talked to scouts on my side of town, some players have popped up this spring from clubs whose prospect lists we’ve already done, and I’m not wasting time adding them to their org lists just because others aren’t finished. Those changes are noted beneath some notes on Daniel Espino and are indicated on The Board’s “Trend” column, as they’re the only players to have “up” arrows at this stage.
Read the rest of this entry »

The free-agent signing bonanza might have come to an end, but that doesn’t mean that this compressed offseason doesn’t have anything left on the transaction front. On Sunday night, the Diamondbacks and Ketel Marte agreed to terms on a five-year extension worth $76 million that could keep him in Arizona through 2028 thanks to a team option.

Articles like this generally contemplate the player who just signed the extension, and we’ll definitely get to that, but the contract sounds so light on the surface that I think we should talk about that first. There’s one obvious reason that the total guarantee doesn’t jump off the page: Marte was already under contract through 2024 thanks to an extension he signed before the 2018 season. He signed that one only 1,000 plate appearances into his career, and it was quite team-friendly: five years and $24 million, with $11 million and $13 million team options tacked on to the end. He broke out in 2019 with a 7-WAR season, which made him one of the most underpaid players in the game.

Those club options are no more, because Arizona ripped them up to sign Marte’s new contract. He’ll receive the $8.4 million he was due this year and then another $76 million from ’23 to ’27. But since the Diamondbacks were certain to pick up those options, we can think of this deal as a three-year extension worth $52 million starting after the last option year.
Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto Blue Jays pitching prospect Hagen Danner is a converted catcher who gets good ride on his four-seam fastball, and he attributes that quality to his former position. Hearing that from the 23-year-old right-hander prompted me to ask Philadelphia Phillies manager Joe Girardi if what I was told made sense.

“I can definitely see that,” said Girardi, who caught for 15 big-league seasons. “But I don’t think it’s a guarantee; some [catchers] have a little tail to their ball when they throw. At times, I would have a little tail. But [Garrett] Stubbs really gets underneath it, really gets that spin. There are a lot of catchers who do. It’s how we’re taught to throw.”

Good ride typically comes with a four-seam grip, but unlike pitchers, a catcher isn’t standing on a mound with ample time to manipulate the baseball in his hand; he has to receive the ball, make the transfer, and get rid of it as quickly as possible. I asked the catcher-turned-manager about that as well.

“You don’t have time to get the grip, but ideally you want to throw it straight,” said Girardi. “And you can still throw it straight, pretty much, if you don’t have a perfect four-seam grip.”

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch is likewise a former catcher, so I asked him the same questions I’d asked Girardi. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday morning, the Blue Jays and Rockies agreed to a trade sending Randal Grichuk and cash considerations to Colorado, with Raimel Tapia and minor league infielder Adrian Pinto joining Toronto. Rob Gillies of The Associated Press reports that the amount of cash is just over $9.7 million, which accounts for nearly half of the remaining salary on Grichuk’s five-year contract. With this move, the Blue Jays get the left-handed outfielder they had been searching for, and the Rockies get another power hitter to plug into the middle of their lineup.

Grichuk signed that five-year extension (worth $52 million) after putting up 2.1 WAR in 2018, his first season in Toronto. He blasted 31 home runs the next year, but that power was the only positive aspect of his approach at the plate. Over the last three years, his offensive output has been nine percent below league average, and that’s despite an ISO that sits a hair above .200. His biggest issue has been getting on base at a regular clip. His walk rate has been remarkably consistent, sitting around 5.8% over the last six years, though it dipped to its lowest point since his rookie season last year. With a batted-ball profile focused on fly ball contact, his BABIP isn’t much better.

In the field, Grichuk has been a solid defender across all three outfield positions. Splitting his time between center and right field over the last few years, the advanced defensive metrics rate his work in the corner a little higher than up the middle. All three metrics were disappointed in his ability to cover enough ground in the field as the Blue Jays’ full-time center fielder in 2020. But moved over to right in ’21, he graded out as one of the better fielders at the position on a per-inning basis, accumulating 6 DRS and 5.5 UZR in just 330.1 innings. Read the rest of this entry »