Why isn't Schilling in the Hall of fame?
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November 20th is the deadline for teams to protect otherwise-eligible prospects from this year’s Rule 5 draft. Teams must add such players to their 40-man rosters by 8pm ET tomorrow or risk losing them to competitors when selections are made on December 12th. Eligibility is determined by reference to the age and timing of entry to the professional ranks. A player that signed at 18 years of age or younger and has five seasons of pro ball is Rule 5 eligible if he is not added to the 40-man roster in advance of the deadline. Players that signed at 19 or older and have four seasons of professional experience are also eligible to be selected if they’re not added to the 40-man roster tomorrow. (In other words, college draftees out of the 2016 class, high school draftees out of the 2015 class and most international amateurs signed in the 2015-16 international period are eligible this year if not protected.)
Teams that make selections in the draft will gain conditional control over the chosen players. To be kept permanently, a player must stay on the MLB roster for an entire season, with at least ninety days spent on the active roster. It’s plausible to imagine that the addition of a 26th active roster spot this year will facilitate the utilization of the Rule 5 process.
Full coverage of the Rule 5 landscape will necessarily await tomorrow’s decisions. The need to make tough calls will prompt some action around the game, though it remains to be seen whether that’ll be the usual run of moves on the margins or if a blockbuster or two could be swung. Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper is as usual champing at the bit, so he has released a prediction of some interesting players that are relatively likely to be left unprotected.
As you might imagine, it’s easier to account for protection of prospects for teams with extra 40-man roster space. But it’s not as simple as having an opening. You also must be able to maintain a player in that spot throughout the winter and into the season. Adding a player that wouldn’t have been selected (or wouldn’t have lasted on an active roster) therefore carries its own risk: if you end up needing the roster space, you might have to expose such a player to outright waivers in the middle of the season. It’s worth noting, too, that some teams have already added players that they wish to protect.
There are tons of factors that go into these decisions, but roster space does still matter. Here are the number of open 40-man spots for each MLB team, as things stand this morning (per MLB.com’s roster pages):
10: Nationals
8: Cubs, Twins
7: Braves, Brewers, Tigers, White Sox
6: Astros, Red Sox
5: Mariners, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Orioles, Phillies, Reds
4: Rangers, Rockies, Yankees
3: Dodgers, Mets, Rays
2: Angels, Cardinals, Indians
1: Pirates
0: Athletics, Blue Jays, Padres, Giants, RoyalsComment -
Let's get some rule 5 draft infoComment -
New MLB team might be coming to Orlando.Comment -
Brewers are going back to ball in glove logo I see.Comment -
MLB hot stove: Yankees release $153 million bust Jacoby Ellsbury, who has not played since 2017 ALCS
Yankees signed Ellsbury to a seven-year deal in December 2013
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Ellsbury is laughing all the way to the bank.Comment -
Yankees release Jacoby Ellsbury, DFA Greg Bird
The Jacoby Ellsbury and Greg Bird eras in New York are officially over.
The Yankees on Wednesday gave up on Ellsbury, cutting the oft-injured outfielder with more than $26 million left in his $153 million, seven-year contract.
Ellsbury, who has not played since 2017, was released to clear a 40-man roster spot as New York added seven players to protect them from next month's Rule 5 draft.
Ellsbury is owed $26,285,714 by the Yankees in one of their biggest free-agent mistakes: $21,142,857 for next season plus a $5 million buyout of a $21 million team option for 2021.
New York also cut frequently injured first baseman Bird and left-hander Nestor Cortes Jr., designating the pair for assignment.
Outfielder Estevan Florial was added to the major league roster along with right-handers Deivi Garcia, Luis Gil, Brooks Kriske, Luis Medina, Nick Nelson and Miguel Yajure.
Now 36, Ellsbury hit .264 with 39 homers, 198 RBIs and 102 stolen bases in 520 games in six seasons with the Yankees. He spent his first seven seasons with Boston and was an All-Star in 2011, and he arrived in New York with a .284 career average, 104 homers, 512 RBIs and 343 steals for Boston.
Ellsbury injured an oblique muscle in his right side early during spring training in 2018, developed a bad back and had hip surgery on Aug. 6 to repair a torn labrum in his left hip. He experienced plantar fasciitis in his right foot during his rehab program before spring training this year.
Bird, who turned 27 on Nov. 9, arrived in New York with great promise in 2015, debuting Aug. 13 and hitting .261 with 11 homers and 31 RBIs in 46 games. He missed all of 2016 following surgery that Feb. 2 to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, an injury originally suffered that May with Double-A Trenton.
Bird returned to bat .451 with eight homers in spring training during 2017 but fouled a ball off his right ankle March 30, started the season 6-for-60 and went on the disabled list May 2. When the foot did not improve, Bird had surgery July 18 to remove a bone in the ankle. He returned in late August and hit three home runs in the playoffs, including a seventh-inning drive off Andrew Miller that lifted New York to a 1-0 win over Cleveland in Game 3 of the American League Division Series.
But then he slumped to a .154 average with four RBIs during spring training in 2018 and had surgery March 27 to remove a broken bone spur from the outside of the ankle. Bird returned May 26 and hit just .199 with 11 homers and 38 RBIs, losing the first-base job to Luke Voit.
Eligible for arbitration for the first time in 2019, he had a $1.2 million salary. Bird went on the injured list with a left plantar fascia tear on April 16, three days after what turned out to be his final game. He hit .171 in 10 games with one RBI, an Opening Day home run off Baltimore's Paul Fry.
Cortes, who turns 25 on Dec. 10, was 5-1 with a 5.67 ERA in 32 relief appearances and one start this year after making four relief appearances in his first big league season with the Yankees in 2018.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Comment -
After 11 MLB seasons Parra just signed a contract in the Japanese league.
He was what he was a good spare OF off the bench.Comment -
The Padres have designated outfielder Nick Martini for assignment, AJ Cassavell of MLB.com tweets. The club selected the contract of outfielder Jorge Ona from Double-A Amarillo in a corresponding move.
Martini joined the Padres off waivers from the Athletics at the end of August, but the 29-year-old then struggled over 96 plate appearances, hitting .244/.344/.317 with no home runs. He logged just 13 PA with the A’s this past season before they moved on from him, though Martini was a respectable member of their offense in 2018. The lefty slashed .296/.397/.414 across 179 trips to the plate, but he only hit one HR then.
Ona, now 22, came to the Pads as a hyped prospect out of Cuba in July 2016. The club signed Ona for $7MM, and he’s now coming off a short season in which he starred in his first taste of the Double-A level. Ona racked up 103 plate appearances and batted .348/.417/.539 with five homers, though the right shoulder surgery he underwent in July limited his campaign.Comment -
Another team in Florida that nobody is going to go see.Comment -
Ellsbury released.
ChiSox sign Grandal for 4 years.Comment -
that's alot of money for grandal wow
Yasmani Grandal, White Sox agree to four-year, $73M deal
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The White Sox announced that they’ve signed free-agent catcher Yasmani Grandal to a four-year contract. He’ll be guaranteed a hefty $73MM, the team announced, which will be paid out evenly at $18.25MM per year. As per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal (Twitter link), Grandal’s deal includes a full no-trade clause in 2020 and partial no-trade protection for the remaining three seasons. To make room on the 40-man roster, the White Sox designated outfielder Daniel Palka for assignment.
Readers will recall that the 2018-2019 offseason marked a much more frustrating pass through the free agency turnstiles for the now-31-year-old Grandal. After spurning a reported four-year, $60MM offer from the Mets last winter, the former Hurricane bet on himself by agreeing to a one-year, $18.25MM deal with the Brewers.
That gambit appears to have paid off handsomely, with Grandal parlaying his fantastic 2019 into a larger long-term guarantee from Chicago. At $73MM, this contract represents the largest guarantee in White Sox history, surpassing the six-year, $68MM outlay secured by Jose Abreu in advance of the 2014 season.
From any vantage, that guarantee should provide the club with one of the very best catchers in the game. Since entering the majors with San Diego in 2012, Grandal has posted a cumulative 118 wRC+ figure, second only to Buster Posey among all catchers with more than 3000 plate appearances in that time frame. Similarly, his .348 OBP is tops among catchers since 2012, while his 141 homers since ’12 rank second only to Brian McCann’s 145. Grandal’s never been a world-beater in the batting average department, but he’s been a consistent source of power and on-base ability for the bulk of his career.
Though his offensive prowess is evident from even a cursory glance at his career numbers, any Grandal evaluation would be remiss to exclude his sterling defensive reputation. Grandal recorded a 20.1 figure in Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs Above Average metric during the 2019 campaign, good for third among catchers in the bigs behind Austin Hedges and Roberto Perez; that the White Sox press release regarding Grandal’s signing made mention of his pitch framing abilities should come as no surprise.
For the Pale Hose, the signing of such a multi-dimensional, high-profile player makes it abundantly clear that their long-running rebuild has come to an end. Last offseason saw the club make a run at third baseman Manny Machado, in a bid that was likely intended to symbolize a similar rallying cry of competitiveness. Though this past season ended up marking their seventh consecutive losing campaign, Grandal’s addition should go a long way toward supplementing a core that showed real promise in 2019.
Though it was White Sox pitchers like Carlos Rodon, Lucas Giolito, and Michael Kopech who were previously thought to be the club’s primary strength, 2019 yielded encouraging breakouts from a handful of South Side swingers. Shortstop Tim Anderson, for one, exploded en route to the 2019 batting title, logging a .335/.357/.508 slash and 3.5 fWAR across 518 plate appearances; 24-year-old infielder Yoan Moncada announced his presence with a .315/.367/.548 line with 25 home runs, ultimately garnering a down-ballot MVP vote in his second campaign of extended MLB action; rookie outfielder Eloy Jimenez was pretty decent, too–all he did was hit 31 home runs in his first 122 games at the sport’s highest level. And this is all before accounting for the impending arrival of uber-prospect outfielder Luis Robert.
All of that said, catcher didn’t, at first glance, appear to be the team’s most glaring need going into this offseason. Incumbent starter James McCann’s 109 wRC+ and .273/.328/.460 slash in 2019 did indeed compare favorably to other catchers around the league, but a deeper look shows why executive VP Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn may have been unable to resist Grandal’s well-rounded allure. Firstly, McCann’s numbers were largely the result of a scintillating first half, as his .226/.281/.413 line after the break would demonstrate; add in McCann’s .359 BABIP on the year, while providing for the defensive upgrade Grandal represents, and it’s easy to see how club leadership saw today’s signing as a necessary investment.
The White Sox fielded an Opening Day payroll of $88.92MM in 2019; the club’s ten-year highwater mark for payroll came back in 2011 when owner Jerry Reinsdorf green-lit a $127.78MM outlay. In addition to Grandal, the Sox will have Abreu ($17.8MM), Kelvin Herrera ($8.5MM), and Anderson ($4MM) under contract with significant guarantees next season, while a considerable number of players will either draw raises in arbitration or find themselves non-tendered. Impact contributors like Giolito remain under affordable club control, so there may yet be some wiggle room to make other improvements around the roster.
Regardless of their moves from here forward, the decision by White Sox brass to bring in Grandal may come at an opportune time. The Twins, despite having retained starter Jake Odorizzi, face uncertainty in their rotation, while the rival Indians continue to endure trade speculation surrounding star shortstop Francisco Lindor and lingering questions about the health of several pitchers, including Corey Kluber. Grandal’s addition to Chicago’s blistering young core should make those teams slightly more uncomfortable with regard to their standing in the AL Central.
With Grandal off the board, the free agent catching market is now likely headlined by Travis d’Arnaud, with Robinson Chirinos and Jason Castro representing something of a third tier. While those players offer varying combinations of offensive and defensive ability to interested teams, there’s little doubt that Chicago acted decisively today in securing itself the most complete backstop on the market.Comment -
Speaking of the Pale Hose I see Jose Abreu just got paid.
(3 years 50 million)Comment -
Yasmani gets to rock those new logos.Comment -
The White Sox are slowly turning things aroundComment -
Mariners, Double-A player Evan White agree to 6-year, $24M deal
The Seattle Mariners and first-base prospect Evan White have agreed to a six-year, $24 million contract with three club options, sources familiar with the deal confirmed to ESPN's Jeff Passan on Friday.
White, 23, spent all of last season at Double-A with the Arkansas Travelers of the Texas League. No player at that level has ever received a long-term extension.
In 2018, the Philadelphia Phillies signed Scott Kingery, who had played a full season at the Triple-A level, to a six-year, $24 million deal that could max out at $42 million combined. Eloy Jimenez of the Chicago White Sox also signed a long-term deal in Triple-A before making it to the majors.Comment
