Catching up on a few leftover moves from this week's winter meetings as I fly home ...
• The Rangers finally tired of waiting for Nomar Mazara, to whom they gave $5 million when they signed him as a 16-year-old in 2011, to convert his promise into production, trading him to the Chicago White Sox for fringe prospect Steele Walker. Mazara has a .261/.320/.435 line across four full years in the majors, making him well below average for a corner outfielder in both OBP and power, with an execrable .231/.272/.361 career line against lefties. He doesn't swing and miss often, but he also swings at too many pitches outside or around the perimeter of the strike zone, pitches he can foul off or put in play but can't hit hard -- and he really doesn't make enough hard contact for a corner outfielder who's a below-average defender. I thought Mazara would be a better hitter than this, but after four years there's been zero improvement in his approach at the plate; perhaps the change of scenery and coaching staffs will help.
Walker is a contact hitter with fringe-average power who played mostly center field in high-A last year as a 22-year-old, hitting .269/.346/.426 at that level, but he projects to a corner and doesn't have the power to profile as a regular there at this point.
• The Blue Jays signed one of the better second-tier free-agent starting pitchers on the market, Tanner Roark, who has been steady and durable for four seasons now, and who may have been affected by the Happy Fun Ball more than the average pitcher. He even stayed homer-prone after a trade to Oakland, whose home park tends to be very friendly to fly-ball pitchers. His slider has been his best pitch for years, but its break was reduced in 2019, and my hypothesis is that the changes to the baseball's physical characteristics were the cause.
If I'm right, and the baseball gets somewhere back to normal, Roark could get back to the 3+ WAR territory he was in before the ball changed. Even at just 2 WAR, though, he's fair value or better for the Jays at $12 million a year for two years, and gives Toronto some needed bulk in its rotation.
• Blake Treinen's non-tender shocked many in the industry, but he's come out OK on the other side with a one-year, $10 million deal with the Dodgers. Treinen's 2019 season was a disaster, as he had 37 walks in 58⅔ innings, more than doubling his walk rate from his tremendous 2018 season, when he was worth 3.6 fWAR and posted an ERA under 1. He battled shoulder and lower back injuries in 2019, and like many pitchers saw some of the characteristics on his main pitch (his sinker) get worse with the altered baseball, two reasons to hope that he'll be better in 2020. Treinen compensated a bit last year by throwing his cutter more, but ultimately was undone by leaving too many sinkers and sliders up in the middle third of the zone. The Dodgers are betting that injury, the baseball or just bad luck explain Treinen's issues, and he only has to be about half of what he was in 2018 to make this deal work out for them.
• The Mets bolstered the back of their rotation with a one-year, buy-low deal for Rick Porcello at $10 million, as he comes off a year when he got destroyed with runners in scoring position (.314/.407/.571, far worse than his career norms) and had trouble with his slider, which was slower and had more break than in the past, making it slurvier than usual. He won't replace the departed Zack Wheeler, but he should provide innings and has some upside, so the Mets might lose two wins with Wheeler's departure rather than three or four.
• Thursday's Rule 5 draft was a snoozer, as usual -- I don't even stay for it anymore, not since I learned that they will pick the same players whether or not I'm in the room -- but I'll mention two prospects I like who were selected. One is sinkerballer Sterling Sharp, who saw his control improve enough in 2019 that he could probably serve as the Marlins' fifth starter this year, as Miami plucked him from the Nationals' system. Sharp has a plus sinker and above-average changeup, lacking a real swing-and-miss pitch, but the ground ball/low walk combination should work to make him above replacement level in 2020.
The other is Jonathan Arauz, who was taken by the Red Sox from the Astros. Arauz started out in the Phillies' system and went to Houston in the Ken Giles trade; he turned 21 in August. He hasn't produced at the plate enough to think he'll hit at all next year, but he has consistently had good contact rates despite being young for every level he's played. The Red Sox could stash Arauz as a utility infielder and hope he can at least put the ball in play enough that they can give him 150-200 at-bats. He's a switch-hitter who can play short and is above-average at second, and his swing works. He did miss half of 2017 after a positive test for a banned stimulant. I'm a little surprised the Orioles, run by former Astros execs, didn't take Arauz, but they took likely reliever Brandon Bailey from the Houston organization instead.