The Blue Jays are roughly where they planned on being heading into the season: 40-36 and on the periphery of the Wild Card chase. They’re doing it roughly the way they expected — with big seasons from their young boppers (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is an MVP front runner, Bo Bichette has been excellent) and timely contributions from their opportunistic offseason spending spree (Marcus Semien has been excellent, Robbie Ray looks solid).

Despite those bright spots, however, the team has plenty of room for improvement. The outfield, which looked like a potential strength coming into the season, has been hamstrung by a quad injury to George Springer; he’s made only 39 plate appearances so far this year. Teoscar Hernández has played the field in his place, and while he’s hitting well, he’s a better fit at DH. He’s also right-handed, a trait the team’s four primary outfielders share. The bullpen has been disappointing as well; Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza have impressed, but that’s about it.

To address this concern and simultaneously shore up the bullpen, the Blue Jays made a trade with the Marlins. Adam Cimber, Corey Dickerson, and an undisclosed amount of cash are headed to Toronto (well, to Buffalo at least) in exchange for Joe Panik and Andrew McInvale, as Craig Mish and Jon Heyman first reported. Read the rest of this entry »

Since before the start of the season, the Rays have telegraphed their willingness to move Willy Adames. It wasn’t so much in what they said — in that they didn’t say much of anything — but two factors made it a nearly foregone conclusion. First, the Rays are *loaded* at shortstop in the upper minors. Second, the Rays don’t compete by letting surplus talent rot on the vine. Adames will be eligible for arbitration after this year, so his presence on the major league roster blocked those cheaper minor leaguers.

It was just a matter of getting past the Super-Two deadline and some team meeting their asking price. On Friday, both of those factors lined up: the Rays have traded Adames and Trevor Richards to the Brewers in exchange for Drew Rasmussen and J.P. Feyereisen, as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand first reported.
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The Mets have been no strangers to injury this year. As Jay Jaffe detailed yesterday, Michael Conforto and Jeff McNeil aggravated injuries on the same play Sunday afternoon. When Kevin Pillar was hit in the face by a pitch on Monday night, the situation worsened. In an attempt to keep their roster afloat, the Mets acquired Cameron Maybin from the Cubs for cash considerations, as Bob Nightengale first reported.

Maybin will be reporting to Triple-A, but that state of affairs probably won’t last long. The Mets started Khalil Lee and Johneshwy Fargas in the outfield last night, which brought their combined career major league start total up from one (Fargas started Monday night) to three. Dominic Smith anchored the unit, as it were, but Fargas and Lee have combined for 72 plate appearances above Double-A. It’s clearly not a working solution for the injury-ravaged club.

Maybin is an obvious short-term upgrade, but not so long ago, he looked like he might be more than an injury fill-in. In 2019, he played an abbreviated season with the Yankees and unlocked heretofore unseen power; his 11 home runs were a career high despite only 269 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels made a minor move to bolster their relief corps over the weekend, acquiring veteran reliever Hunter Strickland from the Rays. Strickland has been effective over the first six weeks of the season, with a 1.62 ERA and a 2.83 FIP in 16 innings for Tampa Bay. In return for his services, Los Angeles will give up either cash considerations or a player to be named later.

The Rays love reclamation projects, and Strickland was one of their latest, signing a minor-league deal with the team just before the start of spring training. It wasn’t Strickland’s first time. Once a rotation prospect with the Pirates — he was a Red Sox draftee picked up in the Adam LaRoche trade — he missed the 2011 season due to rotator cuff surgery and was waived by Pittsburgh after a disappointing 2012 season. The Giants moved him to the bullpen, and the big righty with big fastball looked like a future closer candidate. He also came equipped with a big temper, resulting in such incidents and playing the cavalry general for a bullpen charge into the Yasiel Puig–Madison Bumgarner incident, yelling at Salvador Perez after an Omar Infante homer in the 2014 World Series, and intentionally hitting Bryce Harper in 2017.

When someone says there's free food in the breakroom pic.twitter.com/IiPyD1ZbXJ

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) September 20, 2016

That hot-headedness led to a broken hand that caused him to miss two months in 2018, the unsurprising result of punching a door after blowing a save, and the Giants non-tendered Strickland after that season.

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It feels like only yesterday that the Yankees snatched Mike Tauchman from the Rockies for a pittance and unleashed him on the AL East. In 2019, Tauchman was electric; his .277/.361/.504 slash line buoyed the Yankees in a season where they desperately needed it. Injuries (and 100 PA in the minors) kept him from playing a full year, but even in only 296 plate appearances, he managed 2.6 WAR, sixth among Yankees batters.

That performance didn’t carry over into 2020. Despite the team’s intermittent injury problems, the Yankees used him as a fourth outfielder and defensive replacement. He didn’t hit a single home run, a concise summary of what went wrong: his power disappeared overnight. By the start of this year, he was barely playing and out of minor league options, which makes last night’s development unsurprising: the Yankees traded him to San Francisco in exchange for Wandy Peralta and a player to be named later, as Jack Curry first reported.

Tauchman had lost his spot in the Yankees’ outfield, and it’s not hard to see why. Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks are playing everyday, which left one outfield spot for three outfielders: Tauchman, Clint Frazier, and Brett Gardner. Tauchman and Gardner fulfill similar roles, and the team was giving Gardner the majority of the playing time while carrying no backup shortstop. Frazier is the only outfielder with options, but he’s playing far more than Tauchman, which meant Tauchman was the odd man out — the team needed to trade him to avoid exposing him to waivers. Read the rest of this entry »

The long Rougned Odor era in Texas has ended. On Tuesday, the Texas Rangers traded their second baseman, the incumbent since 2014, to the New York Yankees for minor league outfielders Antonio Cabello and Josh Stowers. The trade represents the final dismantling of the team’s longtime Odor-Elvis Andrus double play combo, a process that began last September when the cellar-bound team benched both players.

The interests are clear for both sides of this minor trade. The Rangers had already all but moved on from Odor despite the two seasons remaining on the six-year, $49.5 million contract he agreed to before the 2017 season. The second baseman didn’t even make the team’s final roster cuts this spring; he was designated for assignment last week. So getting two players in return for a guy they were willing to let go for free had to be attractive to the Rangers. In 2017, Odor was still just 23 and coming off two very solid seasons as the starter, albeit with some notable flaws. Odor’s power was always compelling, but his glovework was inconsistent, and though his contact rates weren’t that lousy, he still had abysmal strikeout-to-walk ratios. Odor never really developed an ability to leverage plate discipline into actual performance. For example, where the league tends to slug about .650 after 1-0 and 2-0 counts, Odor was only about 50 points above his career slugging percentage in these situations.

ZiPS didn’t anticipate much growth from Odor from age-23 on due to these issues, but thought he would at least plateau as a low-OBP hitter with excellent power for a second baseman and a below-average glove that wasn’t so abysmal as to force a move off the position. Read the rest of this entry »

Spiritually, the Orlando Arcia era in Milwaukee came to an end when the team acquired Luis Urías from San Diego in a four-player swap back in November 2019. Urías, then 22, had been one of the top prospects in the Padres’ farm system before his rookie eligibility expired the season prior and was expected to take over as the Brewers’ starting shortstop. Such a move would likely mean benching Arcia, a former top prospect himself who had put up rather anemic numbers in his first four big league seasons. Alas, Milwaukee’s starting infield hit a number of road blocks in the year that followed that trade, and when all was said and done, Arcia appeared in all but one of the team’s games last year, as well as each of the first four in 2021.

Now, it would appear that era has formally come to a close once and for all. On Tuesday, the Brewers traded Arcia to the Braves, who immediately optioned him to the team’s alternate training site as the infielder undergoes necessary COVID protocols. Two pitchers, Chad Sobotka and Patrick Weigel, were sent to Milwaukee to complete the deal.

Braves acquiring Orlando Arcia from Brewers, source tells @TheAthletic. First on talks: @JonHeyman and @ByRobertMurray.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) April 6, 2021

When word first got out that the Brewers were discussing a deal involving Arcia, there was naturally speculation that the team on the other end might be San Diego. After all, just night before, the Padres had watched in horror as franchise shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. crumpled to the ground after injuring his left shoulder following through on a swing, and as of Tuesday morning remained unaware of how much time he was likely to miss. San Diego has ready replacements for Tatis in-house, but for a team as committed to accumulating depth as the Padres are, the timing of the news seemed all too convenient. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, the Dodgers traded reliever Adam Kolarek and right-fielder Cody Thomas to Oakland in exchange for third baseman Sheldon Neuse and right-hander Gus Varland. While it’s unusual to see a division favorite flip a major leaguer for prospects with another contender, the move makes sense for both parties. The A’s get a little better in the here and now, while the Dodgers can dream on Neuse as another breakout candidate for the club’s stellar player development staff to work with.

Kolarek is the lone established big leaguer in this swap. The sidearming southpaw has been a stable part of the Dodgers’ bullpen since his acquisition from Tampa Bay 18 months ago, running an 0.88 ERA over 30 innings of work in Los Angeles — a fun bit of trivia that shouldn’t distract from otherwise normal peripherals. He primarily works with a high-80s, low-90s sinker out of a funky slot and has generated a 62% ground-ball rate over his career. Between that, a supposedly deadened ball this year, and a cavernous new home park, he may never allow a homer again.

He joins a very good bullpen in Oakland. The Athletics’ relief corps had the league’s best ERA and third-best FIP in 2020, and that group was pretty good the previous two seasons as well. Still, Kolarek fills a hole, as the ‘pen otherwise leaned heavily toward right-handers; Jake Diekman is the only other lefty likely to crack the Opening Day roster. With the A’s set to contend again this year, Kolarek adds depth to a strong unit that should see plenty of work in relief of Oakland’s young starters.

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The Kansas City Royals acquired outfielder Andrew Benintendi from the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night as part of a three-way trade that also saw the New York Mets get involved. Heading to the Mets is outfield prospect Khalil Lee, while going back to Fenway is outfielder Franchy Cordero and pitcher Josh Winckowski. Also going to the Red Sox are three players to be named later, two from the Royals and one from the Mets.

It’s easy to see why the Royals would be highly interested in Benintendi. Most of the team’s additions this winter have been veterans in smaller deals, seemingly for the purpose of prioritizing short-term wins in 2021 and perhaps snag a Wild Card spot. While I’m unconvinced that the strategy will actually bear fruit this year, this is another move consistent with that plan. Adding Benintendi to Mike Minor, Carlos Santana, Michael A. Taylor, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland makes the Royals more entertaining than they were last season. Of course, Benintendi was a much hotter property back in 2018, hitting .290/.366/.465, enough for 4.4 WAR, before slumping to a .266/.343/.431, 2.0 WAR line in 2019. 2020 was an entirely forgettable four-for-52 campaign that lasted just 14 games due to a rib cage strain. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, the Rangers sent long-time shortstop Elvis Andrus, catcher Aramis Garcia, and $13.5 million dollars to the Athletics for DH Khris Davis, catcher Jonah Heim, and pitching prospect Dane Acker. The deal was surprising for a few superficial reasons (two fan favorites being traded within the AL West), but when you strip away the uniforms, it makes sense for both clubs.

The biggest names in the trade are Andrus and Davis, but the biggest pieces in the deal are Andrus and Heim. The Athletics needed to find a way to replace departed shortstop Marcus Semien, and Andrus joins a host of potential internal options (Chad Pinder, Sheldon Neuse, Vimael Machín, maybe Nick Allen fairly soon) who are unlikely to equal Semien’s production but might be enough to keep the A’s in the postseason hunt.

After an outlier 2017 during which he homered about as many times as he had in the previous four seasons combined, Andrus returned to Earth in ’18 and ’19, producing like a low-end regular at shortstop before he had a lousy 2020 season based on surface-level stats. But in addition to whatever COVID-related personal weirdness may have contributed to his lackluster year, there’s underlying evidence that he was his typical self and was instead subject to small sample variation caused by limited playing time. Andrus played in just 29 games last year and ran a .200 BABIP, but his average exit velocity and HardHit% stayed the same, and his .390 expected Slugging%, per Baseball Savant, was higher than his actual career mark of .370.

Andrus did struggle in other areas that might indicate real physical decline. Again per Savant, he was nearly a full tenth of a second slower from home to first, his top-end speed (Sprint Speed) fell, and he regressed (on paper) defensively. But I don’t believe Elvis is actually dead. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that, because he’s 32, the weird start-stop-sprint sequencing of the 2020 season had an outsized impact, and that playing for a non-competitive team didn’t aid his level of motivation. A normal lead up to the season and playing for a contending club could lead to a revival, to say nothing of the new financial motivators that are now at play. Remember, Andrus had to waive a no-trade clause to go to Oakland; he wants to be there. And per the terms of the contract he signed with Texas, what was supposed to be a 2023 mutual vesting option is now a vesting player option that Andrus can trigger by either accruing 550 plate appearances in 2022 or 1,100 appearances in ’21 and ’22 combined. He’s owed just over $14 million each of the next two years, while the player option year in 2023 is set for $15 million. I believe the A’s will be getting the best of whatever is left of Elvis Andrus as he chases control of that vesting option.

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