I hope you’ll allow a quick personal story. In December of 2018, while I was still working for the Astros, I engaged in talks with then-free agent Nelson Cruz’s representatives. Like many teams, the Astros were hesitant to give anything more than a one-year deal to a designated hitter who had turned 38 during the previous season. Ultimately, there was no multi-year pact to be had, and the Twins ended up winning a fierce competition for Cruz’s services with a one-year, $14 million deal that included a $12 million 2020 club option. Cruz would go on to have one of the best seasons of his career in 2019, making exercising that option a no-brainer; following the 2020 season, he signed another one-year, $13 million deal with Minnesota. Heading into this offseason, Cruz was still a much in-demand bat, particularly after it became clear that the National League would adopt the designated hitter, with the rumor mill linking him to as many as six teams. On Sunday, he landed with the Washington Nationals on a one-year, $12 million deal that includes a mutual option (which in reality isn’t really an option at all, but we’ll get to that in a bit).

Cruz has been an ageless wonder. From 2015-20, his age 34-to-39 seasons, he posted wRC+ marks ranging from 133 to 164. He slipped to a 122 wRC+ in 2021, including a 96 wRC+ in 55 games following a trade to the Rays; while a partial season, that represented his first sub-100 mark since 2007. It’s difficult to figure out exactly what went wrong while he was with the Rays, but it feels silly to simply assume that father time suddenly caught up to him after a strong first half of the season with the Twins. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s second stab at an offseason continues at a brisk pace with the biggest move yet this week, a blockbuster trade that sees the A’s send first baseman Matt Olson to the Braves in a five-player deal. Atlanta didn’t get off lightly, parting with outfielder Cristian Pache, catcher Shea Langeliers (who were Nos. 72 and 70, respectively, on our preseason Top 100 prospects list), and pitchers Ryan Cusick and Joey Estes to whatever the heck they’re calling the stadium in Oakland this year. (We’ll have much more on those four prospects coming later from Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein in a separate post.)

Fresh off a new collective bargaining agreement, the A’s have let it be known that they’re ready for business in no uncertain terms. While there was no obvious requirement to trade Olson quickly — he’s two full seasons away from hitting free agency — Oakland would be hard-pressed to get an even larger package than this. I’d personally like to see the franchise actually keep one of its stars past the point at which the team can get market value, but if you’re determined to trade Olson, I can’t think of a much better situation. Many teams need first base help, and with 15 designated hitter jobs now needing to be filled in the National League, help on the easier end of the defensive spectrum comes at a premium. If you want to add a first baseman in free agency, you basically have one superstar (Freddie Freeman), one good player (Anthony Rizzo), and an interesting slugger that you’re not quite sure is a full-time option at the position (Kyle Schwarber) to choose from before the talent pool becomes a waterfall. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels made a low-key move over the weekend, re-signing catcher Kurt Suzuki to a one-year contract worth $1.75 million. The 38-year-old veteran hit .224/.294/.342 over 72 games in 2021 with a 76 wRC+ and -0.4 WAR.

While Suzuki never quite fulfilled the promise he showed in the majors as a surprisingly competent catcher at a young age in Oakland, he’s carved out an impressive career, now at 16 seasons, based on being everyone’s emergency backstop. Don’t have a tantalizing in-house option? Suzuki was always on call, ready and willing to put up a win or so over 350 plate appearances, and at a reasonable price. That’s easier said than done; he’s now 34th all-time in games at catcher, alongside a lot of far bigger names.

Suzuki’s role with the Angels will be a little lighter as he approaches the end of his career. The Angels don’t need him to take a significant chunk of a timeshare, as Max Stassi’s 2021 season ought to have put the question of just who the starter is at a firm conclusion. The Angels are rather thin at backstop, with the catching spots in the high minors likely to be largely filled with non-roster invitees like Chad Wallach. There’s one exception here in Matt Thaiss, who was moved back to catcher last season, his original position he played in college. But the Angels are rightly concerned about having Thaiss as the primary backup just a few months after his return to the position. If they really want to see if he can be a competent catcher — and they should — he likely needs more playing time than he would receive as Stassi’s backup. Read the rest of this entry »

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I like to think of myself as a pretty reasonable baseball thinker. When I see a trade, I can put myself in both teams’ shoes and understand where they’re coming from. I might not agree with their evaluation of each individual player; heck, I might not agree with the direction they’re going overall. Usually, though, I can trace back their steps until I find the key thing driving the trade on both sides. Usually isn’t always, though. Meet the strangest trade I’ve seen in recent memory:

Catcher Ben Rortvedt is headed to the Yankees along with Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, sources tell ESPN. Catcher Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela are going to Minnesota.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 14, 2022

This trade is a Rohrshach test, only more inscrutable. Sometimes I feel like the Yankees won. Sometimes I feel like the Yankees lost. Sometimes I feel like the Twins lost and the Yankees broke even. Sometimes I feel like they both lost, as strange as that may sound. Sometimes I feel like it was actually just Isiah Kiner-Falefa for cash. Sometimes I feel like Josh Donaldson will set the league on fire to get back at the Twins. Let’s look at this trade from as many angles as possible and see if we can figure out what’s going on.
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So many relievers have found new homes recently that we’ve written not one, but two reliever roundups! You can find the first one from Luke Hooper here. This is part two, containing four additional relief arms who bring interesting backgrounds, stuff, and deception to the table. Without further ado, let’s get a closer look.

Brewers Sign Brad Boxberger

If you like weird, enigmatic relievers, then Brad Boxberger is the guy for you. He’s reuniting with the Brewers on a one-year, $2.5 million contract and looks to continue his success from last season. Let’s get into what makes Boxberger tick. Here’s a plot containing every reliever in 2021 who threw at least 50 innings. On the x-axis is chase rate, or how often batters swung against a reliever’s out-of-zone pitches. On the y-axis is overall strikeout rate:

That’s right. Boxberger, the point in yellow, generated an above-average strikeout rate for a reliever (31.2%) while having the fourth-lowest chase rate (20.6%). Not that more chases automatically equals more strikeouts, but this is still pleasantly odd. Boxberger doesn’t need to fish outside the zone to rack up strikeouts – he meets hitters in the middle, and more often than not, he emerges victorious. Read the rest of this entry »

As expected, the first weekend after the end of the lockout gave us a flurry of moves. Relievers in particular were a hot commodity, with teams trying to bolster their bullpens as the pool of quality pitchers continues to shrink. Let’s take a closer look at a few of these moves from over the weekend.

White Sox Sign Joe Kelly

Kelly comes to Chicago on a two-year, $17 million deal with a club option for a third year. At 33, the veteran is coming off of a great season with the Dodgers, probably his best as a reliever. Underneath his 2.86 ERA, he posted a career-best swinging-strike rate (11.6%) and exit velocity (85.5 mph), as well as his lowest walk rate (8.2%) ever. Even with all the success, a pair of injuries raise questions about his durability moving forward. Kelly got a late start in 2021 because of an offseason surgery to clean up his shoulder, and his year ended with him walking off the mound in the playoffs after suffering a forearm injury. Luckily, he avoided the worst case scenario; all reports have him ready for the upcoming season.

Kelly’s successful 2021 came on the back of a dominant low-spin sinker. In each of the previous five seasons, his four-seam fastball was his most used heater, but after years of middling results with the pitch, he all but shelved it in 2021. A new sinker-heavy pitch mix helped increase his groundball rate over the years; his three primary pitches — sinker, curveball, and changeup — all generate grounders more than 55% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cincinnati Reds have been rumored to be interested in trading at least one of their top starters for over a year, with bits of buzz centered around Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray. Castillo remains in Cincinnati — at least for the moment — but Saturday, Gray was traded to the Minnesota Twins, one of a few weekend moves the Twins made. Heading to Cincy is Minnesota’s first round pick from last year, right-handed pitcher Chase Petty. A third player, A-ball reliever Francis Peguero also joins the Twins, but landing Gray was the fundamental purpose of this trade.

The reasons for the Twins’ sudden collapse in 2021 are varied, but the most pressing among them is obvious: the rotation. Minnesota’s starting pitchers combined to finish 25th in the league in WAR last season, with a 5.18 ERA and a 4.87 FIP. Even those marks kind of overstate the strength of the rotation given that the team no longer enjoys the services of José Berríos, who they traded to the Blue Jays last summer. Michael Pineda (and his 3.62 ERA over 21 starts) is a free agent, and Kenta Maeda’s September Tommy John surgery means that he won’t be pitching for most, if not all, of the 2022 season. Minnesota’s de facto ace, Dylan Bundy, is a pitcher coming off an ERA north of six; he significant missed time due to shoulder injuries and is taking a pay cut of more than half.

Suffice it to say, Minnesota’s lack of pitching, combined with a rapidly dwindling number of fixes in free agency, left them in a rather unenviable position even in one of baseball’s weakest divisions. Gray isn’t a true ace in the Gerrit Cole/Jacob deGrom vein, but he’s still a well-above-average starting pitcher who gave the Reds three seasons strong enough to largely erase the memory of his stint in New York. His 4.19 ERA and a 3.99 FIP in 2021 were a bit below the previous couple of seasons, but both ZiPS and Statcast’s x-stats think he was unlucky here. zHR is designed to be predictive and saw Gray as allowing three more homers last season than he actually earned from his velocity, angle, and direction data. Subtract those round-trippers out, and Gray’s 2021 looked a lot like his ’19 and ’20, though he did miss time due to injury. A sore back cost him a month of spring training and April games, and he lost another month due to a groin injury. Those maladies combined to limit him to 26 starts, most of the Five-Inning Special variety. Still, I’d take those injuries over a janky elbow or some nasty tear in the shoulder. Read the rest of this entry »

After acquiring José Berríos at last year’s trade deadline and signing Kevin Gausman to a massive five-year deal in November, the Blue Jays put the finishing touch on remaking their starting rotation by signing Yusei Kikuchi to a three-year contract on Saturday. The deal is worth $36 million, with $16 million of that total frontloaded in 2022. The lefty will slot into the back of Toronto’s rotation — one that suddenly looks like a strength for a team that came just a game shy of the postseason in 2021.

That Kikuchi was available as a free agent at all was a bit of a surprise. The Mariners declined what was a uniquely structured four-year option valued at $16.5 million per year at the end of last season, and he declined his $13 million player option. Looking at his season, you can understand why. Though he started off well last year, putting up a 3.48 ERA during the first half of the season and earning the Mariners’ lone All-Star selection, he fell apart after the break, with his ERA ballooning to 5.98.

The inconsistency is something the Blue Jays will need to figure out if they want to maximize the promising raw skills that Kikuchi possesses. After debuting in 2019 with a four-seam fastball that averaged just 92.5 mph, he spent the offseason optimizing his mechanics to unlock an increase in fastball velocity. It worked: During the shortened 2020 season, he came out throwing 95 mph — the fifth-hardest fastball thrown by a left-handed starter during these past two seasons — and was able to maintain that velocity jump in ‘21. With all that extra heat, the whiff rate on his four-seamer jumped up from 15.9% in 2019 to 30.5% over the last two years. Read the rest of this entry »

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