The Rangers and Braves Apply Some Late Patches to Their Rosters

As spring training nears its conclusion, a few unsigned free agents have finally found homes. At best only one of these players will be ready for the majors in time to make the Opening Day roster, and all of them struggled to at least some extent last year, but at the very least, they’ll get another chance to extend their careers by providing depth to organizations hit by injuries. A double whammy of bad luck within their rotation has led the Rangers to sign lefty Patrick Corbin, while the Braves have triple dipped into the pool to sign catcher James McCann, outfielder Alex Verdugo, and reliever Craig Kimbrel.

On Tuesday, March 11 — the day I checked in on the Rangers in the wake of Jacob deGrom’s Cactus League debut — righty Tyler Mahle was scratched from his scheduled start due to forearm soreness, though he was able to take a start against minor leaguers on March 13 and returned to big league action on March 19. Texas wasn’t so lucky when it came to lefty Cody Bradford, who was scratched from his scheduled March 12 start due to left elbow soreness. He’s been shut down from throwing for four weeks and ticketed for the 15-day injured list to start the season; barring any further setbacks, a full buildup would bring him back in mid-May. Then on March 15, righty Jon Gray was hit by a line drive and suffered a fractured right wrist that knocked him onto the 60-day injured list. The break is clean enough that he won’t need surgery, but he’ll be out until at least June.

Given those injuries — and assuming no other ones occur — the Rangers are on track to start the season with an all-righty rotation consisting of Nathan Eovaldi, deGrom (who threw a mere 10 2/3 innings for the Rangers last September after returning from his second Tommy John surgery), Mahle (who threw just 12 2/3 innings between his return from Tommy John surgery and a season-ending bout of shoulder tightness), and former first-round picks Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter, who each made their debuts last year. Rocker made three starts totaling 11 2/3 innings while pitching reasonably well, but Leiter was lit for an 8.83 ERA in six starts and three relief appearances totaling 35 2/3 innings.

With their depth compromised, the Rangers inked the 35-year-old Corbin, a surprising choice considering that fellow free agents Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn both pitched for the team in 2020, albeit under a regime — president of baseball operations Jon Daniels and manager Chris Woodward — that’s no longer in place. Perhaps the two veterans passed on the opportunity, but it’s possible they weren’t as far along in their throwing progressions as Corbin, whom president of baseball Chris Young said had built up to about 80 pitches by throwing live batting practice in Jupiter, Florida.

A two-time All-Star with the Diamondbacks way back in 2013 and ’18, Corbin signed a six-year, $140 million deal with the Nationals in December of the latter year, and helped them win the World Series in his first season. That year, he put up a 3.25 ERA and 3.49 FIP in 202 innings, good for 4.7 WAR, and then pitched both in relief and in the rotation during their postseason run. In the World Series against the Astros, he started and lost Game 4, and came on in relief of Max Scherzer in Games 1 and 7, collecting the win in the decisive contest with three shutout innings.

From there things quickly went downhill. Over the last five seasons, Corbin went 33-70 with a 5.62 ERA, 4.92 FIP, and a total of 4.7 WAR in 744 2/3 innings. He had an impeccable attendance record, making 11 starts during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 31 or 32 starts in each ensuing campaign, and he collected his share of black ink, though not the good kind: three straight league leads in losses (including 19 in 2022), three leads in hits allowed, three in runs allowed, and one in homers allowed. Last year, he was cuffed for a 5.62 ERA (highest among all qualifiers, a feat he also achieved in 2021) in 174 2/3 innings, though his 4.41 FIP and 1.7 WAR were his best marks since 2021, mainly because he trimmed his home run rate to 1.29 per nine. Still, after five straight seasons of serving as MLB’s unofficial tomato can, I left him out of my late-February roundup of the top free agent pitchers.

Young pointed to improved results later in the 2024 season as offering some optimism. According to MLB.com’s Kennedi Landry:

Young credited the improvement to a change in pitch usage, specifically as it pertains to using his cutter and slider more, especially to right-handed hitters.

“I think the results of the second half, maybe the last 20 starts or so, were very positive,” Young said. “He’s been limiting the damage. Our hope is that we can make some improvements with that, continue the adjustments that he’s made, and get a pitcher who can help us win a lot of games.”

I can’t pinpoint an exact turning point by looking at Corbin’s game log (for one thing, he got rocked for three homers and six runs on June 5, his 20th-to-last start), but a few trends are clear simply by splitting his season into two 16-start halves, the second beginning on June 30, and comparing them. Here’s a look at his pitch usage:

According to Statcast, Corbin hadn’t thrown a cutter before 2024. While it was hit for a .301 AVG and .434 SLG with a modest 22.3% whiff rate, both Stuff+ and PitchingBot identify it as his only above-average offering these days. Both pitch-modeling systems view Corbin’s second stretch more favorably. PitchingBot, which uses the 20-80 scouting scale, grades Corbin’s first stretch at 41 for stuff, 57 for command, and 49 for overall, while his second comes in at 43 for stuff, 55 for command, and 54 overall.

The results in that second half were markedly better:

Though his ERA over the second stretch was slightly higher, Corbin’s strikeout-walk differential was more than double that in the first stretch (15.2% vs. 7.2%), he did a better job of avoiding hard contact, and his FIP was 0.62 lower. Moving from the Nationals to the Rangers, who were about 50 runs better defensively last year in terms of both FRV and DRS, can’t hurt, and his ability to soak up innings could help offset the workload limitations of the Tommy John returnees and the rookies.

Corbin’s deal guarantees him $1.1 million, with incentives based on innings that can max out at $2 million if he reaches 170 innings, incentives based on relief appearances that can max out at $1 million if he makes 55 appearances, and a $250,000 assignment bonus if he’s traded. With his wife about to give birth, he will bypass Arizona and join the Rangers in Texas next week, though he may not necessarily join the active roster immediately.

As for the Braves, I noted last week that they’ll start the season without both catcher Sean Murphy and right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr. Murphy suffered a fractured left rib when he was hit by a pitch on February 28, an injury expected to sideline him for four to six weeks. He and projected backup Chadwick Tromp are the only catchers on the 40-man roster. On Monday the team team released Curt Casali from his minor league deal, assigned Sandy León to minor league camp, and signed McCann to a minor league deal that will pay him a base salary of $1 million in the majors.

Thus the choice for backups to start the season comes down to 23-year-old Drake Baldwin, who placed 11th on our Top 100 Prospects list as a 55-FV prospect and who split last season between Double-A and Triple-A, and the 34-year old McCann. The latter had not been in camp anywhere, so he’s reported to the Braves’ spring training site in North Port, Florida, where he’ll remain until joining Triple-A Gwinnett, meaning that in all likelihood Baldwin has made the team; he’ll need to be added to the 40-man roster. [Update: Shortly after this was published, the Braves officially added Baldwin.]

McCann spent the past two seasons with the Orioles, for whom he hit .234/.279/.388 (89 wRC+) with eight homers in 233 plate appearances last year. He has rarely been an above-average pitch framer; last year, he was 4.1 runs below average by our metrics, and five below by those of Statcast. Our overall defensive numbers rated him as 6.3 runs below average, while Statcast rated him as eight below average. Still, he’s a tried-and-true backup who could find himself behind Murphy if the team decides Baldwin is better off honing his skills while playing more regularly at Triple-A than behind the 30-year-old Murphy, who totaled 10.1 WAR in 2022–23 but sank to 0.8 WAR and a 78 wRC+ last year while missing about two months due to an oblique strain.

With Acuña out until early to mid-May as he rehabs from a torn left ACL, the Braves appear on track to begin the season with a right field platoon of lefty Jarred Kelenic and righty Bryan De La Cruz, both of whom were a few points below average in terms of wRC+ when they had the platoon advantage last year — and were steamrolled by same-side pitching. The lefty-swinging Verdugo, who’s now 28, spent last season as the Yankees’ regular left fielder after being acquired from the Red Sox in a rare trade between the heated rivals. He was adequate defensively at a position that almost requires center field-level range given Yankee Stadium’s asymmetry. He also started strong, hitting .267/.358/.446 (127 wRC+) with four homers in March and April before declining to an anemic .225/.275/.336 (72 wRC+) the rest of the way. While Verdugo scuffled, manager Aaron Boone refused to acknowledge what the rest of the baseball world was seeing, particularly as the Yankees had an opportunity late in the season to give top prospect Jasson Domínguez time to settle into the left field job. Verdugo finished with the ninth-lowest wRC+ of any batting title qualifier:

Verdugo’s average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate ranged from the 21st percentile to the 32nd. He fell a bit short of his Statcast expected numbers, but even if he’d matched his .373 xSLG, it would have been the lowest full-season mark of his career. His 0.6 WAR was almost a full win better than what the Yankees got out of their left fielders in 2023, but it was still a career low.

Earlier this week, several Yankees including Aaron Judge spoke up on Verdugo’s behalf, praising him as a teammate and expressing surprise that he not only had not landed a major league job but reportedly hadn’t received a single formal offer; he was the youngest of the 62 major league free agents still on the market. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman did report that at some point in the offseason, the Pirates had floated an offer in the $8 million range — a bit less than the $8.7 million Verdugo made last year — but things did not progress, and the team eventually turned to Tommy Pham for a one-year, $4.025 million deal. The numbers tell a pretty convincing story as to why teams weren’t lining up to sign Verdugo, but the testimonials at least suggest he did a better job within the Yankees clubhouse than he had in Boston, where he wore out his welcome. Manager Alex Cora benched him twice in 2023, once for a lack of hustle while running into a critical out, and once for showing up late, apparently not for the first time. Boone, on the other hand, did not take issue when Verdugo jogged to first on an infield grounder in early September, telling reporters, “He’s beat up. He’s playing his ass off… I don’t have any issue with how hard he’s playing the game.”

The Braves were thin in alternatives to Kelenic and De La Cruz; besides left fielder Jurickson Profar and center fielder Michael Harris II, the other two outfield-capable players projected to make the team’s 26-man roster are light-hitting superutilityman Eli White and Marcell Ozuna, who didn’t play defense at all last year and played just two games in left in 2023. In that light, the signing of Verdugo makes sense. It’s a reunion of sorts, in that president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos was the Dodgers’ vice president of baseball operations when Verdugo was a Top 100 prospect with Los Angeles circa 2017. Verdugo, who wasn’t in camp anywhere, has accepted an assignment to Gwinnett to prepare for the season. He’ll earn a $1.5 million salary in the majors.

The Reunion of the Alexes is one thing, but it pales in comparison to the Return of the Prodigal Closer, the only move here not directly driven by an injury — though with relievers, an IL stint is just one pitch away. The 36-year-old Kimbrel was drafted by the Braves out of Wallace State Community College in the third round in 2008, and earned All-Star honors in his first four full seasons with the team (2011–14). He led the NL in saves each time and posted a combined 1.51 ERA and 1.52 FIP over that stretch, one of the most dominant by any reliever in history. The Braves traded him to the Padres in April 2015 as part of a teardown, and Kimbrel, while not as dominant, has gone on to put together a career that might get him to Cooperstown. He’s a nine-time All-Star who ranks fifth all time with 440 saves, though he slipped from 15th to 17th in R-JAWS amid last year’s subpar performance with the Orioles.

Cribbing from what I wrote about him in my recent roundup, Kimbrel was last an All-Star as recently as 2023 while with the Phillies. He finished the first half of 2024 with a 2.80 ERA and 2.97 FIP, numbers similar to AL All-Star selection Clay Holmes; though he blew five of 28 save chances, he struck out 37.6% of the hitters he faced.

Unfortunately, the bottom quickly dropped out as Kimbrel resumed a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde existence that dates back to his days with the Red Sox (2016–18) and Cubs (2019 to mid-2021). At times, he’s dominated opposing hitters the way he did with the Braves, but he’s prone to falling into bad habits mechanically, struggling with his release point and sacrificing deception, command, and unpredictability. His average four-seamer lost about two miles per hour from 2023 to ’24 (from 95.8 mph to 93.9), and he was bumped out of the closer role by the acquisition of Seranthony Domínguez in late July, then designated for assignment with just 11 games remaining in the regular season, as the Orioles ran out of time to fix him. He finished with a 5.33 ERA and 4.18 FIP, though he still struck out 31.5% of all hitters.

The Braves have Raisel Iglesias slotted at closer, with righty Pierce Johnson and lefty Aaron Bummer in setup roles. Two non-roster invitees, righties Héctor Neris and Enyel De Los Santos, are on track to make the team. Still, if Kimbrel shows he’s right, the Braves will find a spot for him. His minor league deal has a base salary of $2 million. He’ll remain in extended spring training until he’s ready to report to Gwinnett.

None of these transactions registers as an impact move, but the Rangers and Braves are both division favorites dealing with multiple significant injuries in order to maintain that status. Hope springs eternal that the players they’ve picked up can benefit from changes of scenery and help them weather their current roster issues.