Starting pitchers among Major League Baseball's free agents continue to come off the board quickly: Stephen Strasburg followed by Gerrit Cole followed by Madison Bumgarner, Wade Miley, Julio Teheran and Gio Gonzalez, all faring better than anybody might have expected last winter. With the preferred pitching pendulum in MLB seemingly swinging back from relievers to starting pitchers again, there is a desperate need for rotation help in the industry.
The Minnesota Twins are looking for help, as are the Chicago White Sox (although they did add Dallas Keuchel), the Toronto Blue Jays, the Los Angeles Dodgers and others. With the free-agent cupboard mostly cleaned out, clubs are increasingly digging into trade possibilities, which is why the name of the Cleveland Indians' Mike Clevinger has popped up, and why executives have speculated that the Pittsburgh Pirates will try to fix Chris Archer before dangling him in June or July, or sooner.
Because of the rotation starvation, the Yankees will be able to make a decent deal to move the contract of J.A. Happ, and the Boston Red Sox might be able to construct some trades of David Price and/or Nathan Eovaldi, to shed at least some financial obligation. Other teams believe the Seattle Mariners, in the midst of a rebuild, would flip Marco Gonzales and Yusei Kikuchi for the right offers.
The Pirates' Joe Musgrove turned 27 earlier this month, and is coming off a season in which he generated a 4.44 ERA and 1.6 WAR. But he's arbitration-eligible for the first time this winter, with a projected salary of just $3.4 million that makes him close to untouchable. I asked an official who needs a starter if he might see a path to landing Musgrove, and he scoffed. "I seriously doubt [the Pirates] would talk about him," he said. "They may say they'd talk about him, but they're not going to trade him."
Tanner Roark got $24 million over two years. Cole Hamels cost $18 million for one season. Cole will make $1 million for every six innings or so. In that context, Musgrove is a deeply coveted asset.
So remember the name of one pitcher, in particular, who is bound to become one of the most targeted assets in the year ahead: the Tampa Bay Rays' Charlie Morton. In 2020, he will pitch for $15 million, in the second year of what could turn out to be a three-year deal, if he spends less than a month on the injured list.
Morton is 36, and before he signed with Tampa Bay last winter, teams were wary of a breakdown -- but then he had a spectacular season in 2019, posting a 3.05 ERA for Tampa Bay, with a career-high 240 strikeouts and just 57 walks in 194⅔ innings. He finished third behind his former teammates, Justin Verlander and Cole, in the voting for the AL Cy Young Award. He beat Oakland in the AL wild-card game, throwing five shutout innings, augmenting what was already an accomplished postseason track record.
When healthy, Morton will check every box for contending teams. He has been a staff leader. He has worked in big games, big moments, including the last pitches of the 2017 World Series. He has pitched in both leagues, and in the AL East. He keeps the ball in the park: Of all starters in the majors in 2019, he allowed the fewest home runs per nine innings.
His contract for the season ahead is affordable, and if he continues to take the ball and his deal vests for 2021, the one-year obligation will only add to his perceived value. If the Rays were to do the arbitrage thing, as one evaluator described it, then it would make sense for the small-budget franchise to flip Morton right now, in the way it did Tommy Pham, because the potential return nearing the end of his career could be excellent.
But the Rays have a strong and respectful relationship with Morton, and while he doesn't possess any no-trade protection in writing, there is a sense that Tampa Bay might work in concert with Morton to determine how the next couple of years would play out.
Morton is not someone who is wed to extracting every inning, every pitch, every nickel out of his arm. He could walk away and be perfectly happy at home, a perspective that gives him a de facto no-trade clause. If he were traded somewhere against his wishes, anybody who knows Morton knows he would be more apt than a lot of his peers to simply retire.
The Rays would probably feel out Morton before they ever put him on the market, but for now he's an important part of their playoff hopes for 2020, along with Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, in front of the club's deep bullpen.
The market for position players is steeped with stars: Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts, Nolan Arenado and others. The scarcest asset is, and will continue to be, starting pitchers like Charlie Morton.
News from around the major leagues
The cancerous effect of Major League Baseball's tanking problem was apparent last week, after the Indians traded Corey Kluber to the Texas Rangers for hard-throwing reliever Emmanuel Clase and outfielder Delino DeShields. Once news of the deal broke, a lot of the social media response fixated on the idea that this was a first sign that Cleveland intended to wholly surrender the 2020 season and focus on a rebuild.
If Ancestry.com could track the origins of that kind of feedback, it might trace back through the Orioles, the Phillies, the Astros and others in the past decade -- teams that gave up seasons, slashed payroll and designed teams to finish at or near the bottom of the standings (and at or near the top of the amateur draft). After a decade in which the tanking strategy has become commonplace, you really couldn't blame an Indians fan for anticipating that Cleveland is working from that playbook.
But here's the thing: The Indians haven't tanked and aren't tanking. Rather, they've endeavored to remain competitive, just as the Diamondbacks, Athletics and Rays have continued to assemble teams that can contend for a playoff spot. Over the past seven seasons, the Indians have averaged 91 wins a year, the most in the American League.
In that same time, they've ranked 21st among 30 teams in average annual payroll, at $104 million, according to the numbers dug out by the great Paul Hembekides. Last year, the Indians finished 93-69, with a payroll of $120 million.
As the high-end salaries for players like Lindor and Cole grow, the disparity between small-market and big-market teams also escalates, and the Indians, Diamondbacks, Athletics and Rays are forced to manage payroll and make difficult choices. For the Indians, dealing Kluber is one of those moments, given his history and the fans' familiarity with him.
But Kluber's salary of $17.5 million wasn't proportional to his role on the team, relative to its strengths -- and given the apparently tepid industry interest in Kluber, other clubs viewed him the same way, as an increasingly expensive pitcher coming off an injury-plagued season. "I liked [the deal] for the Indians," one evaluator said. "Too much risk [for Cleveland] in that contract."
Said another: "Kluber scares me right now."
One evaluator felt that the Indians waited too long to move Kluber, and that there is more potential for high-end production from the former Cy Young winner than from Clase, whose role will limit his innings and value.
But even without Kluber, the Indians could still contend -- as they did last year. Kluber pitched 35 innings for the 2019 Indians, with a 5.80 ERA, and Cleveland contended for the AL Central title. It's likely that the Indians will start next season with a rotation of Shane Bieber, who won the All-Star Game MVP and finished fourth in the AL Cy Young Award voting last year; Clevinger, who was limited to 21 starts and 124 innings in 2019; Carlos Carrasco, who made 12 starts before his cancer diagnosis; Zach Plesac (3.81) and Adam Plutko.
Through their offensive struggles of last summer, they developed a rookie center fielder, Oscar Mercado, and hung in the AL Central race despite major injuries to Lindor and Jose Ramirez. They'll use the money saved in the Kluber deal and spend on a second baseman, and they can reasonably expect better lineup production around Ramirez, Carlos Santana and perhaps Lindor.
• The underrated element in the Rays' deal for Hunter Renfroe -- and a reason some rival evaluators love it for Tampa Bay -- is Renfroe's defensive excellence. He's not particularly fast, but his reads off the bat are true and he gets excellent jumps, and Renfroe moves smoothly. Last season, Renfroe was tied for second among all outfielders in defensive runs saved, and while some front offices don't trust DRS as wholly representative of fielding excellence, Renfroe's preeminence provides some context for what evaluators see in him. Renfroe will be a wingman to center fielder Kevin Kiermaier, one of the best defenders in baseball, and a common sight in 2020 will be that of a Rays pitcher acknowledging a great play from his outfield.
• The Diamondbacks' front office believes it can help Bumgarner with defense, which has been an area of focus since Mike Hazen took over the team's baseball operations. Last year, Arizona ranked second in the big leagues in defensive runs saved, behind the Dodgers. Shortstop Nick Ahmed led all players at his position in DRS, while Brandon Crawford -- the Giants' shortstop behind Bumgarner last year -- was 16th.
• Other teams view the San Diego Padres as the most unpredictable in the industry right now. There continues to be a major push within the organization to contend in 2020, following a season in which San Diego finished 36 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West and 19 games behind Milwaukee for the second wild card. The Padres have a very deep well of talent in their farm system, and in their trade talks they have shown a willingness to expend those resources aggressively, and surprisingly.
When Ken Rosenthal reported the other day that the Padres had demonstrated an interest in the Indians' Lindor to play shortstop -- and perhaps to shift Fernando Tatis Jr. to either center field, second base or some type of super utility role -- it was noted by rival evaluators that such a position move right now would immediately reduce the potential leverage for Tatis Jr. on a long-term deal. Historically, elite shortstops tend to get paid more than their peers.
The Padres have been trying to move the contract of outfielder Wil Myers, perhaps by attaching high-end minor league talent to Myers to unload his money. Lindor will get a huge payday through arbitration next season, so if the Padres extract him from the Indians, then Lindor, Myers, Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer would be in line to make $92 million combined in 2020.
• Joe Panik may land with the Yankees on a non-roster contract. Panik could wait for a full-time job elsewhere, but there is mutual interest between the Yankees and the left-handed-hitting infielder, who could theoretically help to balance a very right-handed roster of position players. If Panik won a job in spring training, he could share time at second base, playing against right-handed pitchers and allowing the Yankees to continue to move around DJ LeMahieu in a super-utility role.
Panik hasn't hit much for power in his career, but he has played a lot for the Giants, who inhabit the toughest home-run park for left-handed hitters -- and in Yankee Stadium, Panik would have the advantage of the shorter dimensions in right field. Panik, like a lot of hitters, seemed to endeavor to hit more fly balls last season, with a rate of 33.8%, as Sarah Langs noted.
Former Giants manager Bruce Bochy wrote in a text, "He's got some pull power." If Panik signs with the Yankees, Bochy wrote, "he could get up on the plate ... put up a nice year with a few more homers."