Asdrúbal Cabrera hit .323/.404/.565 (145 wRC+) in 146 plate appearances for the Nationals down the stretch in 2019, which I suppose is the kind of performance they had in mind when they reportedly signed him up for another year in D.C. last week. Then again, the fact that the deal was for just one year, and $2.5 million, suggests that they also had in mind the 79 wRC+ he put up in 368 plate appearances for the Rangers at the beginning of the season. At that price and term — which, unlike many this offseason, comes in under the AAV predicted by both Kiley McDaniel and the crowd ($6 million) when Cabrera placed 48th on our Top 50 Free Agents list earlier this winter — it won’t hurt the Nationals much if Cabrera is more like the player he was in Texas than the one he was in the sacred fall, but it sure would be nice. Anyway, we’ll all find out soon.

It’s probably easiest to understand this move as one intended to make Josh Donaldson’s representatives — not to mention the Cubs’ front office, who’re dangling Kris Bryant — a little less confident that the Nationals are dead-set on replacing the recently-departed Anthony Rendon with a player of similar caliber (see also their deal with Starlin Castro last week). I’m not sure the deal is all that effective on those terms, as any team would prefer to have Donaldson or (particularly) Bryant playing third base for them instead of Cabrera. But in the reasonably likely event the Nationals start the season with neither star in-house, this deal means they will not have to routinely start, say, Jake Noll at third base (though, to be fair, the more likely option is Carter Kieboom). Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Batch three of my completist series features a pair of Dominican-born sluggers whose unorthodox paths to the majors stand in stark contrast to those of their countrymen — not better or worse, just different, and eye-opening. Both players beat long and circuitous paths around the majors and had power galore, topping out at 46 homers apiece, but their approaches at the plate were night and day, as were their secondary skills.

Carlos Pena

Dominican-born but American-raised, Carlos Peña was a first-round pick who struggled to live up to that billing, passing through the hands of five teams in eight years before landing in Tampa Bay. While he joined a cellar-dwelling club that had known no previous success, he played a key part in their turnaround while establishing his own foothold in the majors. For a few years, he ranked among the league’s top sluggers, and among its most patient. Read the rest of this entry »

Who will man the shortstop position for the Indians once the Francisco Lindor era is over? That largely depends on when Cleveland’s best player moves on, but the down-the-road answer could very well be Brayan Rocchio. The 18-year-old switch-hitter came into last season ranked No.4 on our Indians Top Prospects list.

Borrowing a boxing term, Rocchio punched above his weight in 2019. Listed at 5-foot-10 and 150 pounds, he slashed a wholly respectable .250/.310/.373 for the Mahoning Valley Scrappers in the short-season New York-Penn League. Stateside for the first time, the Caracas, Venezuela native put up those numbers against pitchers typically several years his senior.

Moreover, he did so as a comparable flyweight. With that in mind, I asked Indians GM Mike Chernoff just how impactful Rocchio’s bat can ultimately be, given his whippet-like frame.

“We have a lot of young international players who, when we signed them, were sort of undersized,” said Chernoff. “He’s one of those guys. But we see a ton of potential in his bat-to-ball ability, and in his defensive capabilities. He’s also held his own while super young for his level, and to us that’s a huge indicator of future success. We feel that as Brayan matures, as his body gets stronger and can handle the demands of a full season, he has a chance to be an impact guy.”

But again, just how impactful? While Rocchio’s physique will almost certainly fill out, he’ll be doing so from a 150-pound baseline. That’s water-bug territory, not future-thumper. Right? Read the rest of this entry »

A few days after the Minnesota Twins further emptied what was already a depleted bin of free agent starting pitcher options, one of the most pitching-starved teams in baseball opted to improve themselves behind the plate. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported late Thursday that the Los Angeles Angels had reached an agreement with former Twins and Astros catcher Jason Castro, signing him to a one-year deal.

Catcher Jason Castro and the Los Angeles Angels are in agreement on a one-year, $6.85M deal, pending physical, sources tell ESPN. Castro rounds out an Angels lineup that added Anthony Rendon and should have top outfield prospect Jo Adell in the big leagues early this season.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 3, 2020

Castro will slot in as the starting catcher in Los Angeles, delivering a boon to a team that had the fourth-worst group of catchers in the majors last season in terms of WAR. Five backstops combined for -0.6 WAR, and the only one to finish the season above replacement level — Dustin Garneau — signed a minor league deal with the Astros this winter. Max Stassi, the presumptive starter behind the plate before the Castro signing, offers some of the best framing skills in baseball, but his wRC+ of 5 — not a typo — was the third-worst in the majors out of all players with at least 100 PAs last season. Stassi was league-average with the stick in 2018, so there is some hope he can bounce back in that area as a backup, but asking him to catch 100 games was never going to be a wise strategy for the Angels. Read the rest of this entry »

“Clunk! Clang!” – Anonymous Garbage Can

In terms of winning baseball games, the Astros executed a model rebuild. When Jeff Luhnow took over after the 2011 season, Houston was a craggy mess. The team hired Ed Wade after the 2007 season to help transition from the Killer B’s era squads, but Wade’s drafts didn’t bear fruit for a long time, and at the major league level, his imagination appeared to find its limit at signing a lot of declining veterans. Luhnow’s task was to tear the team down to the foundation, and then build it back up into something that looked like a modern roster led by a modern front office. That task, he accomplished.

The Setup

Flags fly forever, and Houston secured their first World Series victory in 2017. That 2017 World Series was one of the more entertaining ones in recent memory, the perfect topper to the second 100-win season in team history. As importantly, the Astros were determined not to fall into the complacency trap that tends to snare the champs. Once a team wins baseball’s biggest prize, the natural impulse seems to be towards conservatism, to simply keep the band together and try to crank out albums identical to its prior hits.

But the post-2018 offseason was defined by a big move. Houston acquired Gerrit Cole from the Pittsburgh Pirates for a package led by Joe Musgrove and Michael Feliz. And it paid off wonderfully as Cole, no longer fettered by Pittsburgh’s increasingly dated philosophy of inducing grounders with his hard stuff, flourished in an environment that encouraged him to attack batters directly. Cole went from striking out 23% of batters faced to 35%, an improvement much greater than can be explained away by the overall increase in strikeouts around baseball. Houston’s other big pitcher pickup, Justin Verlander, continued to dominate in his post-Tigers career; the Astros had two Cy Young contenders on the roster that they did not have in July 2017. Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals didn’t set out to win the World Series in spite of their bullpen. Before the 2019 season, they made two high-upside moves by signing Trevor Rosenthal and trading for Kyle Barraclough. They also added lefty help in Tony Sipp. During the season, they took fliers on Fernando Rodney, Javy Guerra, Brad Boxberger, and Jonny Venters, while also inexplicably trading Austin Adams. And they added three relievers on deadline day, including postseason stalwart Daniel Hudson.

Those moves may not have worked out for the most part, but they showed the team’s intent to build a solid bullpen. And with Hudson leaving in free agency and the other lottery tickets long gone, they were back at square one. Enter Will Harris, who yesterday signed a three-year, $24 million contract with the team that spectacularly beat him in Game 7 of the World Series.

That’s a compelling narrative, so let’s at least give it a little space. Harris will be sharing a locker room with Howie Kendrick, whose foul-pole-scraping home run flipped a deficit to a lead the team would never relinquish. The first time he walks into the locker room in spring training after batters have reported, he’ll probably get a mock cheer from Kendrick and the rest of the Nats hitters. He’ll almost certainly get a big ovation the first time he appears in DC, and that will be weird for him for a second.
Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox have been active this winter. They retained José Abreu, signed free agents Yasmani Grandal, Dallas Keuchel, Edwin Encarnación, and Gio Gonzalez, and traded for Nomar Mazara. While a Luis Robert contract extension, first reported by Bob Nightengale, might not change the team’s outlook in the near term, it does mean that the White Sox won’t manipulate Robert’s service time by keeping a deserving player in the minor leagues to start the season. The deal will guarantee Robert $50 million over the next six seasons, with two $20 million team options, bringing the potential total value of the contract to $88 million over eight seasons.

This is the second straight year to see the White Sox sign a top prospect without any playing time in the majors to a contract extension. Last March, Eloy Jiménez agreed to a six-year deal worth $43 million with a pair of team options that could take the contract to $75 million. A little less than year later, Robert gets a slightly higher guarantee and slightly richer option years. When Robert signed out of Cuba, the last big-bonus amateur to do so under the old international free agent rules, he received a bonus of $26 million. All told, Robert will have received $76 million in guarantees before he ever swings a bat at Guaranteed Rate Field.

The CBA between the players and owners puts players at a severe disadvantage when negotiating these types of contracts. Robert shouldn’t have to consider whether signing the deal will put him on the Opening Day roster, as his play and readiness, honestly assessed, should carry the greatest weight, something Kris Bryant and the player’s union are still arguing five years later. If Robert dreams of a seven-figure salary, the potential exists three years from now in arbitration. As for negotiating a contract in free agency, with multiple bidders and a potential nine-figure guarantee, the seven years (assuming service-time manipulation) represent roughly one-third of his entire life to date. None of those factors are under Robert’s control. Read the rest of this entry »

Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Ford… Don Larsen did not have a career that placed him among the pantheon of great Yankees. Indeed, he was quite the journeyman, a league-average righty who toiled for seven teams during his 14-year major league career (1953-65, ’67) without making a single All-Star team. Yet on October 8, 1956, Larsen captured lightning in a bottle, assuring himself a permanent welcome among pinstriped legends and throughout baseball by throwing the only perfect game in World Series history. Larsen, who became a regular at Old Timers’ Day celebrations alongside more decorated Yankees, died of esophageal cancer on Wednesday in Hayden, Idaho at the age of 90.

In front of 64,519 fans at Yankee Stadium, facing the defending champion Dodgers — who sported a lineup that featured future Hall of Famers Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, and Duke Snider — the 26-year-old Larsen retired all 27 batters he faced, seven by strikeout. The last of those was Dale Mitchell, pinch-hitting for pitcher Sal Maglie, who had held the Yankees to two hits and five runs. On Larsen’s 97th pitch of the afternoon, Mitchell checked his swing on a pitch on the outside corner. “Got him!” exclaimed Vin Scully, who had taken the baton from Mel Allen in calling the game for NBC. “The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history by Don Larsen, a no-hitter, a perfect game in a World Series… When you put it in a World Series, you set the biggest diamond in the biggest ring.”

Note that Scully erred in referring to “only the second time in baseball history” where such a feat had happened. To that point, it had been over 34 years since the previous perfect game, and there had been just five in major league history: two in 1880, then ones by Boston’s Cy Young (May 5, 1904), Cleveland’s Addie Joss (October 2, 1908), and Chicago’s Charlie Robertson (April 30, 1922). Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s free agent market provided few options for teams seeking center fielders. Only 36-year-old Brett Gardner made our Top 50 Free Agents list, and he’s played a significant number of innings in the corners. The non-tendering of Kevin Pillar added another option, but he’s a slightly below-average performer and forecasts to be the same this season. None of the other major league free agents projects for even a win above replacement next season. All of that combined to make Shogo Akiyama potentially the best — and possibly the only — full-time starting center fielder available for a team hoping to contend. The Reds have been very clear about their wish to contend in 2020 and with multiple question marks in their outfield, Akiyama and Cincinnati have reportedly agreed on a three-year deal. The cost isn’t yet known, but reports have thrown out figures in the $15 million to $20 million range.

Akiyama comes to the Reds without a posting fee due to his tenure in Japan. He will be 32 years old in April, though he’s been incredibly durable the last five years, playing in the maximum 143 games each year and averaging 674 plate appearances per season during that time. He’s put up at least 20 homers in each of the last three seasons, though his isolated slugging percentage dropped by about 50 points in 2019 compared to the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Scouting reports are mixed on Akiyama’s present skillset. At Sports Info Solutions, Wil Hoefer wrote the following as part of his scouting report:

The good news on that front is that Akiyama has starting outfielder tools right now. His quick hands and good bat speed give him above-average game power and hit tools, albeit with some concerns about rigidity in his wrists and his occasional issues falling out of the batter’s box on contact. He’s an above-average runner in his early 30s, and while he does show good range and jumps in center, advanced defensive metrics–which should be taken with a grain of salt since they are a fairly new phenomenon in evaluating NPB players–are lukewarm at best and show a decline in Runs Saved from his earlier years in center field.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Marlins have spent this offseason quietly adding a number of high-upside veterans on the cheap. They’ve traded for Jonathan Villar after Baltimore unceremoniously dumped him, claimed Jesús Aguilar on waivers, and added Francisco Cervelli on a one-year contract worth just $2 million. They continued to upgrade their roster just after Christmas, signing Corey Dickerson to a two-year deal worth $17.5 million.

The left-handed outfielder fills a big need on the Marlins roster. In 2019, Miami utilized the uninspiring trio of Harold Ramirez, Curtis Granderson, and Austin Dean for the lion’s share of the innings in left field. They collectively cost the Marlins 1.7 wins, with just Ramirez rating above replacement level. For a rebuilding club, this isn’t necessarily concerning or surprising. In Dean and Ramirez, the Marlins were simply looking to see if either minor league veteran could make it in the big leagues, and Granderson was a classic clubhouse veteran playing out the last days of a long career.

But with the Marlins looking to break free from their endless rebuilding phase, adding Dickerson is a savvy move. He immediately upgrades their outfield and provides the club with a much-needed left-handed bat in the lineup. Since his debut in 2013 for the Rockies, he’s posted a 117 wRC+ and 11.5 WAR. After a good start to his career in Colorado, a strikeout problem and getting traded away from the Rays forced him to make some changes to his approach in 2018. In Pittsburgh, he started choking up regularly in an effort to make much more contact. The adjustments worked and he cut his strikeout rate by almost 10 points. Read the rest of this entry »