Masahiro Tanaka will not opt-out of the final three years and $67 million remaining on his contract. Tanaka could have declared himself a free agent but instead will remain with the Yankees.
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Hopefully the Yankees go back to sucking again next year.Comment -
Bucs picked up option year for Andrew McCutchenComment -
Giants right-hander Johnny Cueto has decided not to opt out of the remaining four years and $84MM on his contract, Jon Heyman of FanRag was among those to report (Twitter link).
The Giants included the opt-out clause in Cueto’s deal when they signed the then-free agent to a six-year, $130MM pact after the 2015 season. At the time, Cueto was an established front-line workhorse who was coming off six straight outstanding seasons, most of which were spent with the Reds. Cincinnati traded Cueto to Kansas City in July 2015, and he went on to win a World Series with the Royals that year despite posting somewhat disappointing numbers along the way.
In the first year of his Giants tenure, Cueto lived up to his contract by delivering 219 2/3 innings of 2.79 ERA ball and logging 8.11 K/9, 1.84 BB/9 and a 50.2 percent groundball rate. Similar production in 2017 likely would have led Cueto back to the open market, but he instead endured one of the worst seasons of his career. Cueto threw just 147 2/3 innings, his lowest total since 2011, thanks in part to blister issues and a mild flexor strain. When he was healthy enough to pitch, Cueto looked more like a back-end starter than an ace. All told, the 31-year-old put up the second-worst ERA (4.52), walk rate (3.24 BB/9) and grounder percentage (39.4) of his career, contributing to the downfall of a Giants team that entered 2017 with playoff aspirations but wound up tying the Tigers for the majors’ worst record (64-98).
The Giants had no shortage of issues in 2017, including in their rotation, but most of their starting staff for next year already looks set. Along with Cueto, ace Madison Bumgarner, Jeff Samardzija and Matt Moore remain in the fold, as do fifth starter candidates Ty Blach and Chris Stratton.Comment -
Giants will probably be good again next year.Comment -
i'm eager to see how White Sox progress in their rebuild
if both Chicago teams can be relevant at the same time, that will be really funComment -
You think Aaron Judge has a sophmore slump next year?Comment -
Padres will shock the world within the next few years
very deep farm system and they have been throwing a lot of money into itComment -
Already miss baseball....Starting the count down to reporting to Spring training!!!!!Comment -
The Indians will extend a one-year, $17.4MM qualifying offer to first baseman Carlos Santana, reports FanRag’s Jon Heyman (on Twitter). Santana will have 10 days to determine whether to accept or reject that $17.4MM contract. If he rejects, any club that signs him this winter will forfeit a draft pick (or picks), while Cleveland will stand to recoup a pick in the 2018 draft should he sign elsewhere. For more details on the specifics of the QO system, check out MLBTR’s previous primer on the newly restructured system.
The 31-year-old switch-hitter batted .259/.363/.455 with 23 home runs and career-best work at first base in 2017. While the market for corner bats hasn’t been great in recent years, Santana’s defensive improvements, power and longstanding reputation as one of baseball’s most patient hitters (career 15.2 percent walk rate) should serve him well on the open market even with draft-pick compensation attached to his name.
Eric Hosmer is most commonly projected to top the free-agent market for first basemen given his youth and enormous production in his walk year, but we pegged Santana as the second-best option at the position on our annual Top 50 free agent list, pegging him for a three-year deal in the $45MM range and noting that a fourth year is certainly a possibility. The QO won’t help Santana to maximize his earning capacity, but he’s a more well-rounded player than many of his more one-dimensional peers at first base.Comment -
Very few players take these qualifying offers. They want good multi year deals.Comment -
Orioles catcher Welington Castillo will decline a one-year, $7MM player option and re-enter the free-agent market in search of a larger multi-year contract, tweets FanRag’s Jon Heyman. The decision has seemed likely for quite some time now given the strength of Castillo’s 2017 season in Baltimore. He’ll hit the open market as one of the top catchers available, along with Alex Avila and Jonathan Lucroy.
Castillo, 31 next April, had a career year at the plate in what looks like it will be his only season in Baltimore. Through 365 plate appearances, the slugger batted .282/.323/.490 with a career-best 20 homers. He was limited to 96 games in large part due to a testicular injury that was suffered when a ball was fouled into his groin. Castillo was sidelined for about three weeks and got off to a slow start upon returning before he closed out the year with a blistering finish. (He also missed 10 days early in the season with a minor bout of shoulder tendinitis.)
Defense has long been a knock on Castillo, but his 2017 work behind the plate showed legitimate signs of improvement as well. Castillo caught a whopping 49 percent of runners that attempted to steal against the Orioles’ pitching staff, and his oft-panned pitch-framing skills finished at a roughly league-average level, per Baseball Prospectus.
While it’s certainly possible that the O’s could kick the tires on a reunion with Castillo, the team has top prospect Chance Sisco all but ready to take over a prominent big league role in 2018. He’ll presumably pair with backup Caleb Joseph to form the Orioles’ primary catching duo in 2018 and beyond, though 26-year-old Austin Wynns is also an option to see some time behind the dish of Sisco proves to be in need of additional development.
Moving on from Castillo and going with an affordable combination of Sisco, Joseph and/or Wynns will allow the Orioles to dedicate more of their offseason resources to the starting rotation, which is clearly the organization’s top overall need.Comment -
The NL MVP finalists include one surprise: Paul Goldschmidt, Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto.
In a crowded field that included Nolan Arenado and Charlie Blackmon, Votto beats out the two Rockies as a finalist even though he played for a team that lost 94 games. Of course, Stanton also played for a losing team. So does that mean Goldschmidt will win?
Prediction: Stanton's 59 home runs and 132 RBIs earn him his first MVP Award.
David Schoenfield: ESPNComment -
R.I.P. Roy Halladay. I'm in shock, my favourite Jays pitcher of all time.Comment -
Sad news about Roy Halladay
RIPComment -
Sad day for baseball, Halladay really seemed like a great guy.Comment -
Rip Halladay. Just terrible news. Guy was an unbelievable pitcherComment -
The Orioles are known to be on the hunt for multiple starting pitchers this offseason — possibly as many as three — and MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko writes that the team has “definite” interest in righty Andrew Cashner and southpaw Jason Vargas. GM Dan Duquette has suggested in recent weeks that he’d prefer to add at least one lefty to his rotation, and Vargas would accomplish that goal.
Neither Cashner nor Vargas are among the top tier of free-agent starters, though it’s long seemed unlikely that the O’s would play at the top of the market. Given the team’s sizable needs in the rotation behind Kevin Gausman and Dylan Bundy, the Orioles will most likely have to add multiple arms from the second and third tiers of free-agent starters to fill out the starting five. Starting pitching, of course, is hardly Baltimore’s only need. The O’s could also very well take a look at some depth options in both the infield and the outfield, as they currently project to rely heavily upon a host of young and/or unproven assets (e.g. Tim Beckham at shortstop, Trey Mancini and Austin Hays in the outfield corners).
Baltimore currently has nearly $62MM committed to just four players in 2018: first baseman Chris Davis, center fielder Adam Jones, DH Mark Trumbo and setup man Darren O’Day. The payroll is projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to balloon by another $55.1MM following a sizable slate of arbitration raises to another seven players, highlighted by Manny Machado and Zach Britton. In all, the O’s look to be on the hook for just under $127MM in 2018 before so much as spending a single penny this winter.
Assuming the payroll won’t expand too far beyond the $164MM mark at which the Orioles entered the 2017 season, that’d leave Baltimore with roughly $35-40MM to spend on new salary for the 2018 campaign. That’s not an insignificant amount of funds, to be sure, but that money will go quickly if the O’s truly intend to add three new starters and deepen their pool of position players.
Neither Cashner nor Vargas figures to break the bank, so to speak. We pegged Cashner for a two-year, $20MM contract on last week’s top 50 free-agent list and projected a one-year, $10MM pact for Vargas on the heels of a poor finish to the 2017 season. Generally speaking, it’d be a surprise to see either command more than a $12MM annual commitment in free agency, and the O’s could certainly backload any multi-year deals issued to free agents in an effort to defer some of the dollars to 2019, when some combination of Machado, Britton and Jones will all likely be off the books.
Of course, the fact that so many key Orioles contributors are just one year from the open market will play into the offseason calculus as well. The Orioles have to be cognizant of the fact that if the season goes south early on in the 2018 campaign, they’ll be faced with the unpleasant notion of having to listen to offers on longtime stars like Machado, Britton and Jones.
With that possibility looming, the team may not wish to commit to lengthy multi-year deals in free agency this winter. Speaking from a purely speculative standpoint, shorter-term deals that would allow the club to pivot in the event of a poor start to the year could be more desirable than locking in a mid-rotation arm like Lance Lynn or Alex Cobb on a three- or four-year pact that could prove more difficult to move.
Cashner, 31, gave the Rangers 166 2/3 innings of 3.40 ERA ball but did so with one of baseball’s worst strikeout rates (4.6 K/9) and a lackluster walk rate (3.5 BB/9). Fielding-independent ERA alternatives like FIP (4.61), xFIP (5.30) and SIERA (5.52) were all considerably more bearish on his 2017 output.
The 35-year-old Vargas turned in an All-Star first half in 2017, though the 2.22 ERA he carried through the end of June was buoyed by an unsustainable 86 percent strand rate. Vargas’ control slipped in the season’s final three months (3.9 BB/9), and his BABIP and strand rate regressed (substantially so in the case of the latter), leading to a bloated 6.66 ERA in the final three months of the 2017 campaign.Comment -
been alot of baseball tragedies in the past few years.Comment -
RIP Roy Halladay, a true warrior on the mound.Comment -
A day after a plane crash took the life of ex-MLB star pitcher Roy Halladay, witnesses have come forward to say they saw the accident and Halladay was flying erratically.
Video obtained by TMZ Sports shows Halladay, 40, making big changes in altitude as he flew around the Gulf of Mexico — not far from his home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. He’d fly up to 100 feet in the air, according to TMZ, then down to a few feet above the water. TMZ termed it “showboating.”
The video portrays witnesses, who are watching from a boat, as surprised by Halladay’s flying pattern to the point that they’re saying “What the [expletive]?” as they watch. As Halladay’s plane flew up and down, one of the men in the videos said, “That can’t be legal.”
Here’s the video, which you should be warned, contains NSFW language:
Here’s more on the scene from TMZ:TMZ Sports has obtained footage shot by boaters who say the ex-MLB star’s plane was going from 100 feet in the air down to 5 feet and then back up again … repeatedly.
The boaters were so shocked by the flying pattern, they pulled out their cell phones to capture the bizarre dips and rises. Moments later, the plane crashed into the Gulf of Mexico — and the boat full of witnesses raced over to the crash scene to see if they could help. Once they arrived, it was clear the pilot was dead.When authorities responded to the crash, they said Halladay was dead on site. There was no mayday call, according to the local sheriff’s office. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board is pending.
Halladay won two Cy Young awards during his 16-year MLB career with the Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays. He retired in 2013 and got his pilot’s license in 2014, fulfilling a life-long dream after growing up the son of a pilot. Halladay is survived by his wife and two sons. The plane he was flying is an ICON A5, of which Halladay received the first model last month. It’s been described as “a Jet Ski with wings.”Comment -
2:23pm: There’s a “tentative understanding” in place simply to extend the prior posting regime for another year, Sherman reports. The MLBPA has yet to weigh in on the subject, though, and there’s still not a final deal in place.
1:31pm: In the wake of Shohei Otani’s decision to hire a MLBPA-certified player representative, it seems that there’ll be a renewed push to figure out a way to resolve the impasse that has threatened to derail his planned move to the majors. Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports that there’s a sense that the move will help facilitate an agreement that all involved will approve.
Indeed, Otani’s reps at CAA are scheduled to “meet soon” with the player’s association to attempt to get on the same page in an effort to sort things out, MLB Network’s Jon Morosi tweets. That’s just the first step here, of course, as Otani and the MLBPA will still need to engage with Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball — the two entities that are primarily negotiating a new system governing inter-league player transfers.
The difficulties here are tied to two factors: first, MLB’s rules capping international bonuses on certain younger international free agents; and second, the expiration of the prior posting system. There was a time when Otani’s current team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, might have auctioned Otani’s negotiating rights for something approaching or even exceeding nine figures while Otani might have commanded a guarantee of as much or more. Under the just-expired transfer system, the Fighters would at least have stood to receive the maximum allowable $20MM fee. But that’s no longer how things work.
The transfer rules currently under contemplation would do away with the (up-to) $20MM flat-fee approach in favor of one that would allow the NPB team to earn a percentage of the bonus the posted player negotiates. If Otani was free to seek his market value, that wouldn’t likely pose a problem. But his earnings are now severely limited; while he is evidently at peace with that, his would-be former team is obviously not enamored of the possibility of losing its best player for what would be relative peanuts.
Under MLB’s current international rules, MLB clubs can’t go past their international spending pools (as supplemented via trade) to sign Otani. Those are even more limited than might be realized, though, due to teams’ preexisting commitments with young international players. (This was already known, of course, though the details remained fuzzy.)
According to a report from the Associated Press, only six teams even have enough uncommitted pool space to offer Otani seven figures. The Rangers ($3.535MM), Yankees ($3.25MM), and Twins ($3.245MM) easily lead the way, with the Pirates ($2.2MM+), Marlins ($1.74MM), and Mariners ($1.57MM+) also have some money to spend — or, perhaps, to trade to a would-be Otani suitor. For someone who is expected to be an immediate and significant contributor at the major-league level, that’s a pittance no matter the precise amount. Of course, he’ll also have a chance to make significant income off the field and through a future extension or trip through arbitration.Comment -
well that is a crazy royComment -
Sad part is his wife never wanted him to fly and now family without him.Comment -
Jake Arrieta, Wade Davis, Lance Lynn, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, Alex Cobb, Greg Holland, and Carlos Santana received one-year, $17.4MM qualifying offers from their teams earlier this week. If those players sign elsewhere, here’s a look at the draft picks the signing team would lose.
Competitive Balance Tax Payors: Tigers, Dodgers, Yankees, Giants, Nationals
If one of these teams signs a qualified free agent, it must forfeit its second-highest and fifth-highest pick in the 2018 draft. The team will also have its international signing bonus pool reduced by $1MM. The Tigers are highly unlikely to sign one of the nine players listed above, but the other four teams might. The Giants’ second-highest pick will fall somewhere in the 30s overall, so they stand to lose the most if they sign a qualified free agent.
Non-Disqualified Revenue Sharing Payees: Diamondbacks, Braves, Orioles, Reds, Indians, Rockies, Astros, Royals, Marlins, Brewers, Twins, Athletics, Pirates, Padres, Mariners, Rays
These 16 teams received revenue sharing and did not exceed the competitive balance tax. If one of these teams signs a qualified free agent, it forfeits its third-highest pick. These teams face the smallest draft pick penalty.
All Other Clubs: Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Angels, Mets, Phillies, Cardinals, Rangers, Blue Jays
These nine remaining teams would forfeit their second-highest pick and and have their international signing bonus pool reduced by $500K. The penalty is something of a middle ground, but it would sting for a team like the Phillies to sacrifice a pick in the 30s.
What happens if a team signs two of these nine free agents? The CBA calls for forfeiture of the next highest available draft pick. For example, if a team has already lost its second and fifth-highest picks and it signs a second qualified free agent, it would lose its third and sixth-highest picks. So as in the past, if you’ve already signed one qualified free agent, the draft pick cost to sign another is reduced.Comment
