After being rejected by Giancarlo Stanton, the Cardinals continued down the list of items available in what is becoming a Marlins’ firesale and have reportedly come to an agreement on a deal to acquire Marcell Ozuna.

Ozuna to Cardinals is done

— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) December 13, 2017

While the return has not been confirmed, it’s thought that the Cardinals are going to surrender two of their better pitching prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

The run on relievers is officially underway. The latest one to sign is Anthony Swarzak, who’s getting $14 million and two years from the Mets. Like, say, Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, Swarzak wasn’t that highly thought of a year ago. Then he was great. There’s no other way around it, and, while every front-office executive would tell you they want to find the next Anthony Swarzak, or Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, you can’t very well not sign a guy who just did what Swarzak did for the White Sox and the Brewers.

Swarzak is 32 years old, and through 2016, his career WAR was 1.2, over nearly 500 innings. Last year alone, Swarzak was worth 2.2 WAR, which ranked him eighth among all relievers, between Andrew Miller and Mike Minor. Part of that was a matter of increased effectiveness, and the rest was a matter of increased trust, which saw Swarzak throwing high-leverage innings for the first time. Swarzak’s average leverage index last season was 1.49. His previous high was 0.95, when he was a rookie starter. Swarzak’s personal stock skyrocketed.

A few images here can tell the story. More recently in Swarzak’s career, he’s started getting strikeouts, which is linked to a sharp uptick in his usage of his slider.

Beginning in 2016 and carrying over into last year, Swarzak has thrown his slider slightly more often than his fastball. He’s not the only reliever to do that, but things just truly came together, as Swarzak got as many missed swings as Brad Hand. Swarzak’s contact rate this past season plummeted.

And to really cap it off, Swarzak’s velocity has increased as he’s gotten older. It’s not the way this usually goes, and I’m not sure how Swarzak has pulled this off, but the trend is undeniable. Swarzak had problems with his rotator cuff in 2012 and 2016. In 2017, he was healthy, and he was blowing his fastball at 95.

Swarzak’s is a forgettable name, because, for most of his career, he was a forgettable pitcher. Even last season, as he was terrific, he was both terrific and out of the spotlight, so for Mets fans he’s not a familiar acquisition. But this does seem like a big bullpen add, for a Mets team that isn’t as far out of the race as it seems. A healthy Noah Syndergaard should make a whale of a difference, and the Marlins, Phillies, and Braves could and should all struggle to reach 70-75 wins. The Mets still aren’t the Nationals, but they’re the only threat in the division, and that very division gives them a better shot at the wild card. There’s something here, and Swarzak ought to help.

Investing in free-agent relievers can be an uncomfortable exercise. Relievers are constantly appearing and disappearing, with Swarzak being a case in point. So many relievers seem to suddenly emerge that it’s tempting to try to find the next pop-up guy before he pops. With a guy like Swarzak, though, you don’t have to squint or project. The Mets can comfortably assume he won’t forget what he just put together. He appears to be good now, and while that’s a little bit weird, there’s no reason those points can’t both be true.

I get it — many relievers aren’t that exciting. There’s the highest tier, and then there’s all the rest, and it can be hard to tell which among the rest are really and truly good. This time of year, seemingly dozens of adequate relievers find new teams, and they always have their various upsides. They all seem okay, which means few of them stand out. No one pays close attention to the winter meetings to see who’ll get a new option for the seventh or eighth inning.

But, look. According to reports, Tommy Hunter is signing a two-year contract with the Phillies. Now, one notable thing is that the Phillies are not good. They’re not good, and yet they’re signing Hunter, to go with their signing of Pat Neshek. Might as well do something. Nobody wants a terrible bullpen. Hunter isn’t in the Kenley Jansen tier, and he’s not thought of as being close to Wade Davis. It’s very possible you didn’t even realize Hunter just appeared in 61 major-league games with the Rays. It was quiet. But Hunter brought his game up to a new level. As a reliever in 2017, Tommy Hunter was legitimately great.

This gets to the core of what I mean. Behold Hunter’s career year-by-year walk and strikeout rates.

Hunter has always thrown hard. His fastball rides in around 96, and, if you can believe it, he throws something resembling a cutter that averages 94. Hunter has never before been on the major-league disabled list with an arm injury. His arm has always been good, and this past season, Hunter best put it to use. Among relievers, he ranked in the 89th percentile in wOBA allowed, by names like Brad Hand and Raisel Iglesias. Even better, by Baseball Savant’s expected wOBA allowed, he ranked in the 97th percentile. Behind Roberto Osuna, and in front of Mike Minor. Hunter, you could say, broke out, and from the sounds of things, he went and got Raysed.

One thing the Rays did was have Hunter throw fewer and fewer four-seam fastballs.

Hunter leaned more often on his cutter, especially against lefties, and partially as a consequence, you can see a distinct change in Hunter’s overall pitch pattern. Below, on the left, you see where Hunter threw his pitches from 2014 through 2016. On the right, you have 2017.

Hunter stayed away against righties, and he stayed in against lefties. Armed with good command, Hunter was able to use his curveball off of that arm-side cutter, and lefties slugged just .261. Righties didn’t fare a whole lot better, so, when you combine everything, Hunter was a hard-throwing strikeout reliever who could retire opponents on both sides of the plate.

What Brandon Morrow had going for him, Hunter basically had, too, and Hunter is younger, with a better record of health. It’s a little strange, therefore, to see Hunter sign with a team unlikely to feature in the race, but then, every team wants late-inning stability, and obviously there’s the trade consideration down the road. It’s possible Hunter was met with some industry skepticism; teams might not have known whether Hunter could stay so successful as part of another, non-Rays organization. Now the Phillies will give him some dozens of innings, if everything goes well, and then if Hunter looks more or less the same, he’ll be in great July demand. Power pitchers who throw strikes in big situations are limited in number, and every team at the deadline wants a deeper bullpen.

There’s nothing unique here about the Phillies’ approach. Bad teams have long looked to flip relievers midseason. Hunter is the real story, looking like a potential shutdown setup guy a year after settling for a minor-league contract. All he needed was a handful of pointers from his handlers in Tampa Bay. The rest of it was all up to him.

The task of assembling a pitching staff is as much about quantity as quality. With injury rates over 50% for most pitchers in the age of the ten-day DL, you need more than the ten starters you used to need, in order to withstand the assault that is a full season of throwing baseballs hard. So, even though Drew Smyly won’t suit up for the Cubs until late next season at best, it makes sense to put him on the roster, slot him in the Disabled List, and hope he can contribute. Especially since the cost is low.

The Cubs will be on the hook only a little bit more than the Mariners would have owed Smyly had they retained his services through his last year of arbitration. The left-hander, despite being in the midst of rehab for Tommy John surgery, would have gotten around $7m in arbitration. Chicago is giving him a base salary of $10 million, with the potential for more.

Smyly deal with #Cubs is two years, $10M plus the potential to earn more than $7M in performance bonuses, source tells The Athletic. Pitched with #Rays for Maddon and Hickey.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 13, 2017

Return rates on Tommy John surgery are good enough that this could easily be a good contract for the Cubs. Perhaps Smyly wanted to lock in two years after his extended arm issue took from the World Baseball Classic until June last season to really nail down. Perhaps he understood that, after only topping 150 innings twice in his career, and being pegged as one of the biggest injury risks in baseball in a 2016 study by Bradley Woodrum, he needed to have a healthy 2019 before he would get a longer-term deal anyway.

This way, the lefty with the intriguing stuff — almost nothing he throws cuts towards his glove side, and his extreme over-the-top release point means that everything seems to fade away from righties — gets to take his rehab slowly. A 12-to-15 month timeline has him back mid season at best, though it does seem worth pointing out that pitchers that take longer to come back from Tommy John have better outcomes. Any longer, and he might miss most of the 2018 season.

When he does come back, the Cubs could use him as a lefty out of the pen, since Mike Montgomery is their second lefty behind Justin Wilson, and Montgomery may be headed to the rotation as it stands right now.

Or they can slot him into their 2019 rotation, at a low cost of a $3 million base salary. Sounds like a good way to maybe help the staff now and almost definitely help later on.

Just yesterday, the Rangers signed Chris Martin for two years and $4 million. Martin is a righty reliever who will turn 32 next June, and his major-league ERA is 6.19. If you try to Google him to examine his background, you have to be selective with your queries, because otherwise you just learn an awful lot about popular music. The Martin signing is a fairly easy one to ignore, all things considered.

I can’t make any promises. I don’t know what Martin might be capable of. But I feel almost obligated to try to talk him up. This seems like a forgettable deal, but Martin appears to have major upside. And the key to this is that, since Martin last pitched in the major leagues, he spent a couple of years in Japan.

Martin has been a teammate of Shohei Ohtani, with Hokkaido. Two years ago, he picked up 21 saves, reflecting the kind of trust he quickly earned. Because of an ankle injury, Martin has thrown just 88.1 innings over two seasons, but his performance was almost immaculate. I’ll tell you what I mean! Between 2016 – 2017, 190 different pitchers in the NPB threw at least 50 innings. Martin ranked first out of all of them in runs per nine, at 1.32. He ranked sixth in walk rate and seventh in strikeout rate, and he ranked second in K-BB%. The only pitcher ahead of him, in that final stat: Dennis Sarfate, who is outstanding. Martin hasn’t been quite on Sarfate’s level, but Sarfate seems like one of the best relievers in the world. Martin, meanwhile, seems just plain good.

If you’re curious about the stuff — when Martin last pitched in the majors, his fastball was 95, and he had a cutter at 90 and a slider at 83. This past season in Japan, Martin threw his fastball at 95, with a cutter at 91 and a slider at 84. He also started to show a splitter, at 87. This is all coming from a righty who stands 6’8. Martin just threw one of the better fastballs in Japan, and while the average fastball in the majors, of course, is harder, the stuff is good enough to play. Martin qualifies as a power reliever, with three or four pitches at his disposal. The numbers leave little reason for doubt.

The uncertainty is always the same. NPB isn’t the same as MLB, and so you can’t bring the same hitters over. Martin is going to face tougher competition, and the Rangers are hoping his overall command improvements are real. But, at the very least, Martin deserves this second shot. If a pitcher were this effective in Triple-A, you’d want to see him in a big-league bullpen, and Japanese baseball is better than that. The Rangers in 2016 got a good relief season out of Tony Barnette, who had also just pitched in Japan, and I’m sure that only encouraged them. In a market where everyone wants bullpen help, Martin is a potential bargain. Players from Japan have their prices driven down, perhaps unfairly. Finding inefficiencies is always the goal.

I don’t know if Martin will be good against the world’s best hitters. He was extremely good against the world’s second-best hitters. He’s going to cost a relative pittance. While this probably won’t win the Rangers a World Series, I could never look down on a move like this.

When the Angels landed Shohei Otani on Friday and the Yankees acquired Giancarlo Stanton over the weekend, I noted that the move might motivate the fringe contenders in the AL to shift gears. Rationally, the bar to make the postseason in the AL was just raised significantly, and teams like the Orioles saw their path to the playoffs get significantly slimmer.

This week, the Orioles appear to have gotten the memo.

#Orioles shopping Machado – and he wants to return to SS. Story: https://t.co/gnKcmW0dUh $

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 12, 2017

There’s no real reason for the Orioles to keep Manny Machado. We have the Orioles projected for 76 wins, right between the Braves and Marlins, and Machado is heading into his final year before reaching free agency. The Orioles can’t afford to let a guy with his value walk for draft pick compensation next year, so the question is whether they would trade him now or this summer.

By moving him now, they can take advantage of the desire of multiple teams to add an impact position player this winter, with the Cardinals as a potentially obvious suitor. While there aren’t that many contenders out there looking for a shortstop, Machado is a legitimately elite player, and teams that don’t see SS as a need might still get involved just to get that kind of impact player in the fold. And if some team wants to take a 10 month run at trying to re-sign him before he hits free agency, then there’s value in acquiring him ahead of time to get those exclusive negotiating rights.

The Orioles should do pretty well in a Machado deal, even though he’s just a rental. A +6 WAR guy who can provide his level of offense from SS is not something that comes available every day. Let the bidding begin!

This morning, I started working on a post about why perhaps the Cardinals should think twice before pursuing Marcell Ozuna too heavily. The premise of the post was, essentially, that while the team could afford to ignore handedness when targeting Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna isn’t that same kind of impact hitter who crushes everyone, and the team should pause before adding yet another right-handed hitter to an already right-handed heavy line-up.

The Cardinals currently project to play two left-handed hitters (Matt Carpenter and Kolten Wong) on a regular basis. Switch-hitting Dexter Fowler bats from the left side against RHPs, but that’s also his weaker side offensively. Even including Fowler, though, that’s three lefties and six righties, and with one of those three being a weak-hitting middle infielder. The Cardinals line-up just doesn’t have much in the way of left-handed power.

So the post was going to suggest that the Cardinals turn away from Ozuna, and instead go for a good left-handed outfield slugger instead. And then I realized that those guys don’t really exist in MLB right now.

Here are the left-handed hitting outfielders who have accumulated at least 1,200 PAs over the last three years, and their wRC+ over that span.

22 left-handed OFs have posted a league-average or better batting line in regular playing time over the last three years, but Harper is the only one to crack the 130 wRC+ barrier, and only two others even get over 120 wRC+. A good chunk of the 22 guys on this list are no one’s idea of a slugger, as they got themselves to average offense with OBP, not SLG. No one is going to mistake Brett Gardner, Kole Calhoun, Jackie Bradley Jr., Nori Aoki, Melky Cabrera, Denard Span, Nick Markakis, or Ender Inciarte for a slugger.

Of course, the 1,200 PA minimum does exclude a few guys who haven’t been regulars for three straight years, such as Michael Conforto, Kyle Schwarber, and Cody Bellinger. So it’s not like there are no lefty outfield sluggers in baseball. But those guys are also basically unavailable, so for the Cardinals purposes, that trio doesn’t really matter.

So, yeah, where did all the lefty slugging outfielders go? The shift reducing the effectiveness of left-handed pull players could explain part of this evolution, but it feels overly sudden to have the shift already have changed the game this significantly. More likely it’s just a cyclical thing. Baseball does this sometimes.

But that does mean that, for right now, the Cardinals might have to run a pretty unbalanced line-up. It’s either that or trade for Joc Pederson.

Last fall, the Phillies purchased Pat Neshek from the Astros and exercised his $6.5 million option. He was easily their best reliever, and then he netted the team three prospects at the trade deadline. Now he’s back — for two years and $16.5 million (and a $500k trade kicker this time!) as Ken Rosenthal is reporting — and the Phillies hope he can continue his good work for the team.

Last year’s production was a high water mark for the pitcher, thanks to a change in philosophy against lefties, perhaps. He had his best career numbers against southpaws last year, thanks to a shift in his use of the slider. He not only used it more against lefties than he had since his first full year in the league, but he also varied its location better.

Take a look at his slider locations to lefties in 2016 (left), when they hit for a .379 wOBA against him, and then those locations in 2017 (right), when they hit for a .261 wOBA against him.

Wait a second. The bad year is the one where he located the slider to two spots and mixed it up. Last year he was awesome against lefties, and he basically threw it a ton and down the middle against them. Weird.

No matter. Against righties, Neshek has been consistently great. He has the sixth-best wOBA against right-handed hitters over the last five years.

Maybe he’ll only be dominant against righties, and then be traded again. That’ll be just fine.

Position: Atlanta Braves Major League Advance Scout Trainee

Location: Atlanta
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The Red Sox have been talking about adding power all winter. The Yankees just traded for Giancarlo Stanton. Dave Dombrowski is unlikely to just let that move go unchallenged, so the Red Sox are probably more likely than ever to outbid everyone for J.D. Martinez. And the wheels to make that happen might be starting to turn.

The Boston #RedSox have let several teams know that CF Jackie Bradley is available in their pursuit of a power bat. #Cubs

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 11, 2017

When the Jose Abreu rumors kicked up a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how swapping Bradley for a slugger might make the team different but not necessarily better. And while Martinez is better than Abreu, the same principle applies here.

Unless the Red Sox get a great return for Bradley, swapping him out for whatever you can get for him in order to sign Martinez would be more rearranging the deck chairs than a massive upgrade. And it would cost a lot of money, since Bradley will make about $6 million in arbitration, and Martinez will cost north of $25 million per year to sign as a free agent. Martinez is better than Bradley, but he’s not $19 million per year better than Bradley.

Now, maybe there’s a big market for Bradley’s services, and Dombrowski is going to pull off a great trade that brings back a low-cost quality young first baseman or starting pitcher. There are scenarios where trading Bradley could make sense. But it feels more likely that the Red Sox would be selling low for the primary purpose of creating a spot in the outfield so they can justify overpaying Martinez. And if that really is the plan, this probably isn’t something Red Sox fans should be rooting for.