Yasmani Grandal Gets Suspended, Flaps Wings
Earlier Wednesday, it was announced that Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal would be suspended 50 games for testing positive for testosterone. In the event that you don’t believe me for some reason, here’s Ken Rosenthal, and you probably believe Ken Rosenthal:
#Padres’ Grandal gets 50-game suspension for testing positive for testosterone. Not good for a team that needs all offense it can get.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 7, 2012
See? Literally the exact same thing. Previously the day had belonged to Jason Bay and Mark McGwire, but Grandal grabbed headlines like few Padres ever do.
The direct consequences are clear. The most direct consequence is that Grandal will be suspended for 50 games, instead of serving as the Padres’ regular catcher right out of the gate. That’s a full third of a season, for an important young player, and that could have a meaningful impact on the Padres’ final totals of wins and losses. Additionally, the Padres now have to wonder about what they might have in Grandal. Though he batted .297 last year in his first exposure to the majors with an .863 OPS, this positive test introduces question marks. Just as Melky Cabrera will have to prove himself all over again, Grandal will have to prove himself all over again.
But this isn’t just about the direct consequences. If you like, you can think of Yasmani Grandal as a butterfly. For as long as Grandal is out, the Padres will need to lean on their other catchers. The Padres’ other catchers are Nick Hundley and John Baker. Just last March, the Padres thought highly enough of Hundley to sign him to a three-year contract with an option. There was some thought that, with Grandal somewhat established, the Padres would be open to dealing Hundley over this offseason. Now that course of action looks less likely.
It’s a thin catcher market. Maybe you’ve heard that before, and there’s a reason Russell Martin looks like he’ll be in high demand. There are contenders who could use help behind the plate, there are non-contenders who could take a flier on someone behind the plate, and Hundley had particular appeal. He was all but out of a regular job, he’s not old, he’s signed to a cheap guaranteed contract, he’s been successful in the past, and he was unsuccessful in 2012. Hundley looked like a potential buy-low candidate with offensive upside.
Between 2009-2011, over more than 900 plate appearances, Hundley was a catcher with a 110 wRC+. He wasn’t awesome at anything, but he was good enough at lots of things, and even though he wasn’t known for his defense, catchers who can hit don’t need to be so good at the defense. Then in 2012, Hundley posted a 29 wRC+. That is terrible! He hit an empty .157. When you see something like that, you want to find a reason. There might be a reason.
Padres catcher Nick Hundley will have surgery Wednesday morning to repair a tear in the meniscus of his right knee.
[…]
Hundley said he suffered the injury at Colorado in April. After an 0-for-21 start to the season, Hundley was on a 7-for-15 run with his first homer when he said he injured the knee when he got tied up with the plate umpire while pursuing a pitch in the dirt.
Hundley played through that knee injury for a while. Through the April Colorado series, he had a .646 OPS over very limited time. The rest of the way, he posted a .421 OPS, with two home runs. That doesn’t establish causation, but that is suggestive of a problem, and it’s easy to see how knee discomfort might alter a guy’s swing and drain a lot of his strength. So anyway, yeah, Hundley was a buy-low candidate.
Now the Padres are going to be less inclined to trade him. They won’t make him completely off-limits, of course, but the odds of Nick Hundley getting traded over the offseason have to be lower. The Padres will want to have that starter in place at the beginning of 2013, the Padres haven’t given up on the idea of contending in 2013, and it’s worth having Hundley around as insurance as the Padres figure out who Yasmani Grandal actually is when he’s back. The guy who projected to take Hundley’s job is now swimming in a lagoon of uncertainty.
Let’s say the Padres’ previous odds of dealing Hundley were X%. Now they’re more like (X-Y)%, where Hundley might be dealt after Grandal is back, but probably not sooner than that. Grandal won’t be back until the end of next May. Teams who want catching help are going to be less likely to be able to get Nick Hundley, so they’ll be more likely to end up with other guys, whoever those guys might be. There are only so many available, desirable catchers.
The Rays, for example, might have been interested in Hundley. They might still be interested in Hundley, but Hundley will now be somewhat less obtainable, so the Rays will be somewhat less willing to pay the cost. So if the Rays land a catcher, it’ll presumably be in the person of someone else. Nick Hundley’s presumed unavailability changes a thin catcher market, and it might change the way the catcher market plays out. If you take two parallel realities, one in which Grandal is suspended and one in which he is not, things could look rather different come February or March.
From the looks of things, Yasmani Grandal broke the rules. Odds are that, if Grandal did indeed break the rules, he probably knew what he was doing. He might have had in mind the potential consequences for himself. The consequences could be much more far-reaching than just one guy on one team. Everything, everything, is connected. Major League Baseball encounters countless forks as it moves forward, and this is just another one. Down the other path, we’ll never know what there might be.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
That is very sad news for the Padres, Grandal was one of the few brights spots this year in an otherwise dull year.
Sucker.
Clown cheater bro.
Where there’s a will there’s a loophole.
The New York Yankees should try to acquire Buster Posey if they need a catcher so badly. He already acts like a Yankee anyway, he’d be even better if he left San Francisco.
I agree. Cano and Teixeira and eat $20 million on Tex’s contract
Don’t hate the Giants because they are World Champs two out of the last last three years. Unlike the Yankees.
Lol, sample size.
Talk about choosing your endpoints. One year earlier and they’re tied. To say nothing of the 27 overall, chump.
It really stings doesn’t it?? Yankee “fans” crack me up.
“:The consequences could be much more far-reaching than just one guy on one team. Everything, everything, is connected. Major League Baseball encounters countless forks as it moves forward, and this is just another one. Down the other path, we’ll never know what there might be.”
This is like the Cloud Atlas of baseball stories.
Or “The Butterfly Effect” of baseball stories, as alluded to in the piece.
“This is like the Cloud Atlas of baseball stories.”
Except with 20-plus comments, more people are aware of this story than are aware of Cloud Atlas.
Hmmmm. Wonder if Cincinnati had any ideas that something like this might be coming when they negotiated a certain trade?
As a Mariners fan, I am perfectly OK with the Padres being forked, because damn our natural rivals.
natural rivals in your annual race to the bottom….of the standings?
I believe it was a joke.
I imagine he didn’t start using until after he got traded. After all, if there’s anything that could induce a player to start juicing, it’s going from GABP to Petco.
Don’t worry georgmi, Mariners fans got that one… 🙂 Thumbs up from me.
Why are they saying he tested positive for testosterone? Don’t all males produce testosterone? So if it’s naturally occurring how can testing positive for it be a bad thing?
Or do they mean excessive levels of testosterone? Or maybe testing positive for artificial testosterone?
The latter. Elevated levels of testosterone beyond normal human production. Or artificial testoserone, aka steroids.
grandal is innocent!!!
I know nothing about steroid use in baseball presently. I did at one time, enough to know that Canseco was not just talking shit (for once) that over one-half of baseball players were users or had used. I had expected the new testing regime would be effective, but now I wonder. What the Lamond scandal taught us about the European bike tour is that they all do it, and they also are very good at beating the tests. These are sophisticated, disciplined, intelligent cheaters. You would have to be.
Manny Ramirez is really stupid. Let’s be real. The baseball players who are getting caught appear to be either stupid or lacking the type of discipline it takes to use and work the masking program. Braun may be the exception (if you agree he was caught) unless he is also stupid or undisciplined. So all in all, I am now suspecting that there is a lot more PED use that I thought, and the standard statements of teams who get a player racked up tells me they know it is happening. The statements of the players are ridiculous, even if they are written by the agents.
When there are millions of $$ involved you can bet that for every player caught there are 10 or 20 more who don’t get caught.
Ken caminiti approves of this post.
“Lamond scandal”
Not sure who Lamond is, but are you talking about Greg LeMond? If so, he is a huge anti-doping advocate. In fact, with Armstrong and Landis stripped of their titles, he is the only official TDF champion from the US.
I agree with your point that cycling was — and baseball probably is — dirtier than everyone thinks.
Does this affect his service time clock?
Yeah, with him suspended he’s off the 40-man and not accuring any service time during the supsension. Figuring he wasn’t going to see any more time in the minors it won’t change anything as he wasn’t Super-2 bound in the first place. They would have to option him to the minors once the suspension is finished and keep his service days in ’13 under 75 days (mid-July callup) to get an extra year out of control from him. He would go to arbitration 4-times as a Super-2 under that scenario.
If Hundley bounces back, maybe they do just that, with Grandal getting the call in mid-late July with Hundley likely dealt. I’d probably give up an extra month & a half of Grandal in ’13 to get that ’19 season under control if the team isn’t competing.
I think there is a picture beginning to emerge about what the success of “the U” may involve.
The Padres will hand the catching position back to Nick Hundley, if just to re-establish his (trade) value. If Grandal opened the season as the starter, Hundley and the Padres wouldn’t have gotten that chance.
I love your butterfly effect treatise. I hate that Hundley may not be available for a possible cheap trade to the Rays.
No one can proooove that Grandal’s drug use made him a better ballplayer. Lance Armstrong for the bicycle-riding hall of fame!
It kind of funny the Rays need a catcher, they shipped a pretty good one to the Mariners for a marginal minor league reliever with a rap sheet. If the Mariners bring up Zunino midseason I wonder what they can get for Jaso out on the market? Jaso is 29 but he is just entering his first year of arbitration.
As of right now, it seems Jaso may very well be the only player to be counted on to own a bat, in the Mariners org…if it was only as easy as just buying them bats.
as someone who actually watches a ton of padres games, i have to say nick hundley has become a very good defensive catcher.