This week was when the winter meetings would have taken place in Dallas, and the most relevant parts for fans (a bunch of team execs and agents in the same building trying to make moves happen) and for writers (mingling/drinking with the execs, agents and writer friends) didn't happen, leaving only the writing about said roster moves.
The volume and impact of moves were down this year, as predicted and outlined in multiple previous articles, but there are a handful of clubs that did enough in the past week or so to shift how I think about their offseason -- either by moves or indications of them.
The most active team in baseball this week hired a new GM in Chris Young -- a former big league pitcher and most recently a VP in the commissioner's office -- traded Lance Lynn to the White Sox for Dane Dunning and a prospect, and also traded for 1B Nate Lowe (plus a prospect and player to be named) for three prospects in a deal with the Tampa Bay Rays.
For context, the Rangers and Rockies have been my two designated "what are they doing?" teams in baseball for the last season-plus. The Rangers, in my view, need to do a full teardown and rebuild, and shift into asset collection mode, likely for a few years, before competing earnestly. Until recently, they hadn't committed to this at all, but also didn't make any real move toward competition, or cutting payroll, or changing up player evaluation and development in a meaningful way. I'd love it if they could pursue the rebuild without minimizing payroll to the basement like Baltimore is doing now and Houston did in the past, but I get that this often happens when that strategy is pursued. Plus, the Rangers just opened a new stadium, so there are some cash-flow issues. Texas doesn't have a good enough farm system, big league base of talent, or payroll space to compete for the playoffs without a full organizational makeover.
A week ago, the Rangers hired Young to work under Jon Daniels, who has run the Rangers' baseball operations department since 2005. Daniels doesn't need Young around to start making moves, but it made some sense to make the hire before expected offseason moves were made. The Lynn trade was a move in the right direction. As a veteran righty on a short but cheap contract who has morphed into a frontline starter, he absolutely should've been dealt last year, but recent reports indicate Lynn told Texas he'd opt out if traded last year to a team he didn't want to play for, limiting Texas' options. Dunning is a solid return, six cost-controlled years of a roughly league-average young starter with big league experience, though he comes with some risk given a spike in his value in 2020, a limited further upside, and a Tommy John surgery in the past.
The Lowe trade, on its face, seems to make sense. The lineup is littered with replacement-level players. Lowe easily upgrades one of those spots, and Tampa Bay needed to move him due to a glut at the position. Texas turned some prospects from the lower levels into immediate big league help that also has a chance to grow into a long-term keeper.
Take a step back and this deal fits with the Dunning trade as a strategy, and one that, once again, doesn't make that much sense, relative to how successful rebuilds have been handled. As we've seen with the aggressive way that MLB teams approach non-tenders, the most common surprise non-tender (to fans) is the accomplished one-dimensional slugger with name recognition and counting stats. The Rangers are terrible now and will probably be terrible in 2022, and probably won't even be real contenders in 2023: This appears to be the early stages of stripping the big league team for parts. Lowe is 25 years old and has played 71 big league games. Both eyeball scouting and analytics point to him being a fringe regular or platoon guy right now, probably a one- to two-win player over a full season. Given his history, age, position and that the best-run team in baseball can't find a spot for him to play amid the likes of Yandy Diaz, Mike Brosseau, Ji-Man Choi and Yoshi Tsutsugo, it's fair to say he's merely a solid player now and his upside isn't much above average, if at all.
If the Rangers get a solid outcome with Lowe from this trade, once they're looking solid in 2024, Lowe will be 28 and in his second year of arbitration, as a solid everyday first baseman, almost fitting recent high-profile non-tenders Eddie Rosario and Kyle Schwarber to a T. That's a little unfair since those non-tenders happened in a historically down free-agent market during a pandemic, but you can also take this in a sense of degrees: Even if he's playing well, Lowe has little upside and little trade value. C.J. Cron has occupied this space in the recent past and is a free agent right now at age 30, likely signing for a couple million guaranteed. He probably won't be as good as Lowe the next couple of years, but he'll be reasonably close and cost only money; he's the basic substitute to compare to Lowe.
I like Lowe as a player, but giving up real value for a first baseman during the down times in a rebuild is prioritizing what should be a luxury buy, the easiest spot to fill for cheap every offseason, at the end of the positional spectrum, where solid players are often discarded. Looking back at the Dunning trade, another solid young player and a move that's lower variance/upside but also comes with some risk, suggests the Rangers aren't prioritizing risk/variance/upside as a virtue thus far in a rebuild, which it has to be at some point.
The best example of the risk/upside type is in the centerpiece that Tampa Bay received in the Lowe trade, LF Heriberto Hernandez. He's in the lower levels of the minors and may be a Schwarber-type left field/first base/emergency catcher type, but he has bonkers surface numbers and underlying stats to match. The other two players the Rays got are interesting as well: a hit-first, speedy up-the-middle prospect (Osleivis Basabe) and another corner type with real hit/power tools (Alexander Ovalles). The Rangers have some depth in the lower minors, but these are the types you hold when at this point in the competitive cycle. You may point out that Hernandez and Ovalles may just turn into Lowe-types, but the Rangers need the high-variance lottery-ticket types of this skill set more than the lower-variance ones.
To come out of this on the other side and for the rebuild to work, the Rangers need to acquire, in whatever way, a bunch of well-above-average big leaguers. The Tigers' rebuild is going OK because Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene, Casey Mize and Matt Manning all have this potential and all are on the fast track to the big leagues. All of the other young players they have are nice, but with none of those aforementioned four, their rebuild would be in serious jeopardy on multiple fronts. Texas is still in the early stages of their transition, but they'll have to be OK with taking on some real risk -- they've leaned toward safety with college bats in their recent top draft picks as well -- to get the reward essential to producing top-tier big league talent. These are just a few moves, and by no means a final stance on how they will approach the next few years, but this indicates not much has changed in regard to their main issue: boldly making moves toward future contention.
The Phils are close to announcing Dave Dombrowski as their new president of baseball operations. Dombrowski comes with a very clear set of strengths and weaknesses. His history says he'll gut the farm system and spend money in an effort to win now, and he'll mostly do it in an old-school, not-very-collaborative way with just a handful of close advisers involved in the day-to-day. In his last stop in Boston, the good led to what it was supposed to -- a World series title -- but the bad quickly outweighed it, leading to Dombrowski's ouster the next season. Only some MLB owners act like winning is truly important to them, even if their decisions are head-scratching. If an owner has seen a plan or two not work and just really wants to win, it's hard to talk them out of hiring Dombrowski. Worshipping the process is fine, but if the goal is winning, you can't argue that this guy hasn't won.
This may crystallize the intent behind the Phillies' next moves, but it's unclear what the specific ideas will be. They don't seem eager to spend money this offseason, judging by the owner's recent comments, and they're committed to roughly $100 million in 2021 to five players (Bryce Harper, Zack Wheeler, Andrew McCutchen, Jean Segura, Aaron Nola). The biggest needs are catcher, center field, second base and the bullpen. If you take the cheapest decent options at each spot, you'd get something like Jason Castro, Robbie Grossman, Cesar Hernandez, Mark Melancon and Greg Holland, and that would cost something like $25-30 million on one-year deals, running things close to last year's pre-pandemic payroll.
I'm not sure the Phillies will spend that much on payroll (nobody really knows this answer) and Dombrowski's style is certainly not to take some measured one-year-deal gambles to fill holes. Assuming Alec Bohm is off the table and Spencer Howard could be available for the right player, there still isn't another clear top-100 prospect, but their last two first-round picks (RHP Mick Abel and SS Bryson Stott) are in the ballpark. The biggest trade options on the market all come with big salaries, even if for one year, but that's more Dombrowski's style: Francisco Lindor, Trevor Story, Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Nolan Arenado, Chris Sale. On the lower-salary end of things, Blake Snell or Joey Gallo could make some sense, but then Philly starts running out of premium trade chips and those two don't fill their biggest holes. This puzzle, assuming the team needs to look like a contender by the end of 2021, isn't an easy one to solve.
Lightning Round
The White Sox added Lynn, raising the floor on their rotation without spending much money, but pushing a few more chips in for 2021 specifically. Adam Eaton for $8 million guaranteed wouldn't have been my choice for right field at this juncture, but it's fine. There's room in the lineup for one more bopper in a corner outfield spot, and there's chatter George Springer is still in the mix. If the White Sox can make that happen, they'll become co-favorites in the AL with the Yankees.
The Mets have been circling James McCann on a four-year deal for weeks now and the assumption is a deal gets done, but nothing is official yet. This is notable because that would be well above market expectations (I pegged McCann for two years, $21 million) and enough so that it may get the top of the free-agent market to start moving.
The key market dynamic this offseason has been when precedents are set. With uncertainty about league revenues, teams want to know they're getting a good deal, so they need someone else to set that market first. The starting pitching market moved because Kevin Gausman and Marcus Stroman took the qualifying offer, setting the high-AAV-end of that market, and those behind it fell into place with that standard set. It just worked out that the two players who were offered a QO and it made the most sense for were starting pitchers.
The problem is that no other position has had a multiyear deal with a $10 million-plus AAV or a deal over $17.5 million in guarantees. With the non-tender deadline passed, there isn't another notable date coming up where deals are forced to happen, other than the handful of KBO/NPB posting candidates whose 30-day periods got started days ago. The best of that group is a starting pitcher (Tomoyuki Sugano), so that may defrost the Masahiro Tanaka/Trevor Bauer upper reaches of the starting pitcher market, but not much else. The next best is Ha-Seong Kim, a Korean shortstop who should clear $20 million in guarantees. But since he's 25 and will sign a longer-term deal, it may not force any action on hitters, as they don't have that much in common.
That brings us back around to the Mets. With no market forces letting teams feel comfortable that the top part of the free-agent market is set, particularly for position players, we'll just need a team to step out of line and set it themselves. Of the teams with money to spend, the Mets seem most likely to do this, but I'd assume that a $25-50 million player needs to go off the board first so the $50-million-plus types have some sense of their upside relative to precedents. I think the McCann negotiations are dragged out since the Mets would like to land Realmuto, but paradoxically Realmuto will have a better sense of his market and be more likely to make a decision after McCann has signed. You can see the incentives for the Mets to leak exactly where the McCann negotiations have stalled to signal Realmuto to lower his demands, though I'm not sure a four-year offer for McCann will do that.
The other teams rumored to be acting like they have money to spend that would make them competitive with the top free agents are the White Sox (Springer, Bauer, maybe Marcell Ozuna make sense) and the Blue Jays (Springer, maybe Bauer or LeMahieu or Justin Turner, possibly a trade, with Lindor rumored), with the Yankees (LeMahieu), Angels (Bauer, Realmuto or McCann) and Dodgers (LeMahieu, Turner, Bauer) all likely in the running to various degrees.
Lastly, the Rule 5 draft happened Thursday and there were theories about how it may be different from past iterations, but it was basically the same as it ever was. It was mostly bench/platoon position players and middle/long relievers, with some injury-concern or low-minors lottery tickets mixed in.
In Future Value, Longenhagen and I identified three clubs (the Yankees, Rays and Dodgers) as the three best-run in baseball and they also tend to have the deepest 40-man roster for this reason. This means they also have the juiciest names available to be picked in the Rule 5, and those three teams combined for one-third of the players picked (six of 18). If you expand that group to include a few more clubs that stand out with pitcher development (Indians and Astros) or emerging strength on multiple fronts (Twins), that runs the total up to 11 of 18 picks.
Some picks of note: RHP Jose Soriano (Angels to Pirates) is a high-upside starter with big stuff and a recent surgery that hasn't proved much; a good stash candidate, particular if rosters are expanded. ... OF Akil Baddoo (Twins to Tigers) is the best upside bat, with some similarities to Soriano, while SS Kyle Holder (Yankees to Phillies) and OF Ka'ai Tom (Indians to A's) are the reserve types with higher floors. ... RHP Garrett Whitlock (Yankees to Red Sox) is a funky long-relief type with solid results coming off of surgery, while RHP Brett de Geus (Dodgers to Rangers) is a straightforward, pretty polished middle reliever, and RHP Trevor Stephan (Yankees to Indians) is a little of both. ... The shot-in-the-dark, pure stuff upside reliever group includes RHP Jordan Sheffield (Dodgers to Rockies), RHP Jose Alberto Rivera (Astros to Angels) and RHP Luis Oviedo (Indians to Pirates). Lastly, I prefer to hear the name LHP Will Vest (Tigers to Mariners) in reference to my stock options (though I currently don't have any).