MLB NEWS/RUMORS Thread

ruh roh, mystery team

• Free agent righty Tyler Wilson is nearing a deal with an unnamed team, Kubatko relays in the same piece. To this point, Wilson has spent his pro career with the Orioles, who chose him in the 10th round of the 2011 draft. He saw action in Baltimore as a swingman in each of the previous three seasons and posted a 5.22 ERA, 4.77 K/9 and 2.42 BB/9 across 145 1/3 innings (42 appearances, 19 starts).

 

for me more like skipping the final season of a tv series after it jumped the shark

 

2017 Review: Yasiel Puig
by Daniel Starkand | Dodger Blue — 12 hours ago

There were a lot of question marks surrounding Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Yasiel Puig going into the 2017 season, as the year prior was hardly positive for him.

The Dodgers at one point attempted to trade Puig, and when they were unable to do so, demoted him to Triple-A Oklahoma City. He returned for the final month of the regular season but in a bench role — something Puig was not accustomed to.

Puig went into Spring Training this year with an opportunity to bounce back, repair his image, and a desire to reclaim a starting job in right field. And that’s exactly what he did.

Hamstring issues had limited Puig the last few seasons, but he remained healthy this season and in 152 games, hit .263/.346/.487 with career highs in home runs (28), RBIs (74) and stolen bases (15).

In addition to his strong production on offense, Puig was also stellar in right field as he won the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year award. He lost out on the Gold Glove award to Chicago Cubs right fielder Jason Heyward, although Puig was equally if not more deserving.

Puig carried his strong production into the postseason, as he came up with a number of clutch hits in all three of the Dodgers series. Overall in 56 at-bats, he slashed .286/.365/.518 with three home runs and 10 RBIs.

Puig’s play on the field was not the only thing to be impressed with, as the recently-turned 27-year-old also matured a lot off the field, having his second child, being eager to learn English and not causing any issues in the clubhouse.

2017 Highlight:
Puig was fun to watch in the postseason, as he was locked in at the plate for much of it. In Game 1 of the National League Championship Series against the Cubs, Puig went 2-for-4 with two RBIs and a home run. The home run was the first of his postseason career and helped the Dodgers earn a 5-2 victory as they went on to win the series in five games, advancing to their first World Series since 1988.

2018 Outlook:
A year ago, it didn’t seem like Puig fit into the organization’s future plans, but a lot has changed in the last 12 months. He heads into the 2018 season as the team’s unquestioned everyday right fielder, and although it will be the last of Puig’s six-year contract he signed with the Dodgers out of Cuba, he will be arbitration eligible in 2019.

 

Twins to sign Zach Duke
by Jeff Todd | MLB Trade Rumors — 2 hours ago

The Twins have agreed to a deal with veteran lefty Zach Duke, as Paul Lambert first tweeted and as Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer-Press confirms on Twitter. Terms of the arrangement aren’t yet known.

Duke, 34, is coming off of a limited 2017 campaign. Despite undergoing Tommy John surgery in mid-October of 2016, he managed to bounce back in time to make 27 appearances for the Cardinals.

As might have been expected, given his rapid return, Duke showed some rust. He recorded only 5.9 K/9 and allowed far more hard contact (37.0%) than usual while posting a 3.93 ERA over 18 1/3 frames. On the other hand, the southpaw allowed only a .197/.284/.364 batting line to opposing hitters and generated rates of swinging strikes (10.9%) and groundballs (50.4%) that were not out of line with the figures he has maintained in recent seasons.

For Minnesota, the move gives the team a potentially solid second lefty to pair with Taylor Rogers at what will likely turn out to be a marginal commitment. If Duke can rebound to anything like the form he showed over the prior three seasons — over which he posted a 2.74 ERA with 10.4 K/9 and 3.9 BB/9 over 180 1/3 innings — then he’ll surely represent a true bargain.

The Twins have already added Fernando Rodney to bolster a questionable late-inning unit. Perhaps, then, the organization will turn its focus to addressing other needs, though surely additional bullpen moves will at least be considered. The 2017 unit, after all, rated 22nd among all MLB teams by measure of both fWAR and ERA.

 

either no one else watched the world series
or they just don't care

Free Agent Faceoff: Yu Darvish vs. Jake Arrieta
by Steve Adams | MLB Trade Rumors — 6 hours ago

While the relief market has been highly active over the past month, there’s been little activity at the top end of the market for free agent starters. Heading into the winter, Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta stood as the top two available starters, and neither has come to terms on a new contract for the 2018 campaign. Both seem like candidates to pull in nine-figure deals, even with fairly quiet market to date, though opinions vary as to which is the better investment.

Both Darvish and Arrieta are 31 years of age, though Arrieta will pitch all of the 2018 season at the age of 32, while Darvish won’t turn 32 until next August. Arrieta, though, doesn’t have a major arm injury on his recent track record, whereas Darvish missed all of the 2015 season and part of the 2016 campaign due to Tommy John surgery.

Darvish, of course, left a poor final impression on fans when he was tattooed by the Astros in a pair of postseason outings, though SI’s Tom Verducci was told by an anonymous Astros player that Darvish was tipping his pitches in both of those outings. Prior to that ugly finish, Darvish was trending up, pitching to a 3.10 ERA with a 75-to-14 K/BB ratio in 11 starts as a Dodger (between the regular season and the first two rounds of postseason play). Overall, he finished out the year with a 3.86 ERA, 10.1 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 1.3 HR/9 and a 40.9 percent ground-ball rate.

Despite the recent Tommy John operation, Darvish averaged 94.2 mph on his heater — his best mark to date in the Majors — and cleared 200 innings when factoring in postseason play. Darvish has been an All-Star in each of his four full healthy MLB seasons, and he owns a 3.27 ERA with more than 11 strikeouts per nine innings over dating back to his second big league season. In 832 1/3 Major League innings, Darvish has been worth roughly 19 WAR per both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs.

Arrieta, meanwhile, had one of the great hot streaks in MLB history in 2015 when he rode a staggeringly dominant second half to National League Cy Young honors. In Arrieta’s final 147 innings of that 2015 campaign, Arrieta pitched to an unthinkable 0.86 ERA with 147 strikeouts against 27 walks issued. Darvish cannot lay claim to a run nearly that dominant at any point in his career. (Few pitchers can, of course.)

Certainly, though, Arrieta’s dominance has not been limited to that stretch of 20 starts. In parts of five seasons with the Cubs — a total of 803 big league innings — Arrieta logged a 2.73 ERA with 8.9 K/9, 2.7 BB/9 and considerably above-average ground-ball tendencies. His innings total has declined in consecutive seasons, though, and Arrieta’s 92.1 mph average fastball in 2017 was the lowest of his career. Arrieta’s home-run and ground-ball rates trended in the wrong direction this past season, as was the case with his velocity.

Arrieta does come with more postseason experience and success than Darvish, though that may not carry as much weight with the game’s increasingly analytically-inclined front offices. He’ll also cost his new team a draft pick in 2018, whereas Darvish isn’t tied to compensation due to the fact that he was traded midseason.

MLBTR projected nine-figure commitments for each of the two in free agency this offseason, though Darvish topped our 2017-18 MLB free agent rankings, which were based on earning potential. There have been reports suggesting that Arrieta and agent Scott Boras are seeking upwards of $200MM, while others have suggested Stephen Strasburg’s seven-year, $175MM deal as a target for Darvish and his reps at Wasserman. Of course, all agents are going to aim high early in negotiations, and those early targets don’t necessarily line up with the dollar figures that the two stars will ultimately command.

Each pitcher has his merits, and there are various cases to be made in favor of one over the other. With all of that said, I’ll open this up to MLBTR readers to voice their opinions (link to poll for Trade Rumors app users)…

 

dodgers christmas tree
it falls over every october

 

Is Kershaw the star of that tree?

 

one of the coolest things if ever read

D'backs player pays off parents' mortgage with first pro contract
by Jay Busbee | Big League Stew — 7 minutes ago

Here’s a great moment. Pavin Smith is a 21-year-old first baseman who played college ball at the University of Virginia. The No. 7 overall pick in the 2017 draft, he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks and pocketed a handy $5 million signing bonus. On Christmas Day, he put that bonus to good use:

“Because of all the sacrifices you made to get me where I am, I want our family home to be yours,” Smith said in a letter to his parents telling them he’d paid off their mortgage.

Smith began his pro career with the Class A Hillsboro (Or.) Hops. Regardless of where he ends up next, he’s already a huge success.

 

This should be the standard operating procedure for any kid that makes its big.