The Cycle, Issue 10: Spring Is Sprung
Spring Training Preivews begin in the AL West, the best and worst of this spring's logos and caps, and a ton of transactions with JT, Big Maple & Arrieta returning to old teams and much more
In this issue of The Cycle . . .
With players officially reporting this week, The Cycle will take a tour around the league with my Spring Training Preview series, highlighting some of the things to watch, or at least be aware of, for each team during the upcoming exhibition season. I’ll look at one division per issue, starting today with the American League West and concluding next Friday, one week before the exhibition games are set to begin.
Also:
Rooting for Laundry: Spring Training Caps and Logos
Transaction Reactions: So many! JT returns to LA, Arrieta returns to the Cubs, Big Maple returns to Seattle; Dodgers’, A’s, and Padres’ bullpen; Rays’ rotation; Mets, Yankees, and much more
Feedback
Closing Credits
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Spring Training Preview: AL West
Spring Training has officially begun! Reporting dates vary by team, but this is the week that pitchers and catchers are required to arrive at team camps in Florida and Arizona. Workouts start in the latter half of the week, and position players report over the weekend and into early next week.
For baseball fans, this is a very exciting time of year. It is also one of the biggest teases in all of sports. All winter (at least in a more typical winter when we’re not concerned about the survival of democracy and a global pandemic) we have our eyes set on Pitchers and Catchers. Then the players arrive, and they spend several weeks doing calisthenics in shorts. Bullpen sessions and pitchers’ fielding practice are the most compelling baseball action during this period, and the news coming out of camp largely consists of injuries, some of which are just the typical aches and pains of getting back into game shape and are long forgotten by Opening Day, and contract extensions. Still, there are baseball players congregating with their teams doing baseball, or at least baseball-adjacent things. The build up to the season has begun, and that alone is exciting.
To tide you over until we get closer to the actual exhibition games (which start on Sunday, February 28), The Cycle will be spending the next two weeks, this and next, highlighting some of the more compelling spring storylines for each team in my Spring Training Previews.
One of the joys of Spring Training is seeing offseason acquisitions in their new uniforms, so each preview will start with the player that team and its fans are likely most excited to see in their “New Duds.” I’ll then highlight the “Big Change” for each team, the thing that has changed most from last year to this; the “Big Battle,” that’s the position battle most likely to be decided by spring performance (even if the idea of evaluating players based on exhibition play is ridiculous and outdated); the “Big Question,” that’s the one unknown that might be answered before the season starts; an “NRI That-Guy,” a familiar major-league veteran who is in camp as a non-roster invitee; and, finally, the top prospect on that team whom we have yet to see in the majors but might get a “Sneak Peak” at this spring.
I’ll do a different division in each issue, starting today with the American League West. As with my Offseason Grades, teams are presented in order of their 2020 finish.
Let’s stretch those baseball muscles!
Oakland Athletics
Location: Hohokam Stadium, Mesa, AZ
New Duds: SS Elvis Andrus
For the last 14 years, Andrus has been an intra-division opponent, playing a whopping 194 games against the A’s. This weekend, he will arrive in camp wearing not the Rangers’ red, white, and blue, but Oakland’s green and gold as the team’s new starting shortstop.
Big Change: Shortstop
Andrus represents the biggest change for the A’s, not just because of his long history as an A’s opponent, but because of the player he’s replacing. Marcus Semien was the A’s starting shortstop for the last six years, arriving from the White Sox as a talented but unrefined 24-year-old in the Jeff Samardzija trade and gradually improving his performance on both sides of the ball, climaxing in a third-place finish in the American League’s MVP voting in 2019. After an off-year last year, however, the A’s let the now-30-year-old Semien depart via free agency. Marcus signed a one-year, $18 million deal with the Blue Jays, and the A’s traded for the 32-year-old Andrus, who is also coming off a down year and had lost his job as the Rangers’ shortstop even before the trade. Semien is a big loss to the A’s, in the lineup, in the field, and in the clubhouse. How many of those holes Andrus is able to fill remains to be seen.
Big Battle: Designated Hitter
To get Andrus, the A’s traded incumbent designate hitter Khris Davis. Davis hadn’t hit much in either of the last two seasons, but his absence still leaves a big hole at that spot in the lineup, and it’s not obvious who is going to fill it. Chad Pinder is the most accomplished major-league hitter on the A’s bench, but he’s a right-handed hitter who seems slotted for the short side of the team’s second-base platoon with Tony Kemp. The team’s solution to DH will likely be a platoon, as well.
Outfielders Seth Brown and Ka’ai Tom seem like the top left-handed candidates. Tom, a former Cleveland farmhand who was selected in December’s Rule 5 draft and will turn 27 in May, had a big year in the minors in 2019, hitting .290/.380/.532 with 23 home runs and 10 triples in a season split between Double- and Triple-A. Brown had some small-sample big-league success that same season. Centerfielders Dustin Fowler and Skye Bolt, the latter a switch-hitter, could also be in the mix for left-handed at-bats at DH.
On the short-side, the best option on the roster is 31-year-old utility man Nate Orf, a career .295/.391/.435 hitter in Triple-A who has seen a smattering of major-league action with the Brewers and last year’s A’s. Non-roster invitees Frank Schwindel and Jacob Wilson could also be candidates. Schwindel—a first baseman from Livingston, New Jersey, who will turn 29 in June—has hit .297/.334/.512 in parts of three seasons at Triple-A and got into six major-league games with the Royals in 2019. Wilson—a stocky, 30-year-old utility man from Tennessee—has hit .259/.332/.432 in a similar number of Triple-A opportunities. Infielder Vimael Machín and catcher Aramis Garcia, both of whom are on the 40-man roster, the latter acquired in the Andrus trade, could also be in the mix.
Big Question: LHP A.J. Puk
The sixth overall pick in 2016, Puk had Tommy John surgery in April 2018. After recovering, he got a cup of coffee in the A’s bullpen in late 2019 and proved he could miss major-league bats. However, shoulder problems, which eventually required surgery in September, wiped out his 2020 season. In December, general manager David Forst said Puk was a member of the projected 2021 rotation, but that was before the team re-signed Mike Fiers earlier this month.
Was the Fiers signing a bad indicator of Puk’s progress this offseason, or just a depth move? Puk has thrown just 36 1/3 competitive innings since his Tommy John surgery nearly three years ago and has just 11 1/3 major-league innings under his belt. Is he really a candidate for the rotation? After an additional shoulder surgery, does he still have the dazzling stuff and front-of-the-rotation potential that made him the sixth-overall pick five years ago? I’m not sure anyone in A’s camp will be watched more closely this spring.
NRI That-Guy: IF Jed Lowrie
Lowrie already has two stints with the A’s under his belt. He was their primary shortstop in 2013 and ’14, then, after a year with the Astros, returned as their primary second baseman from 2016 to ’18, hitting .272/.356/.448 (120 OPS+) in the latter two seasons and making his first, and still only, All-Star team in 2018. He then signed a two-year deal with the Mets, but a knee injury sidelined him for all but nine games. Now, he’s back in an A’s uniform as a non-roster invitee hoping, perhaps, to be part of the team’s designated hitter solution. Lowrie will be 37 in April, but he switch-hits, and, if healthy, he should be a contender to make the roster, which would put him just one A’s stint shy of Rickey Henderson’s four.
Sneak Peak: C Tyler Soderstrom
Puk is the A’s top prospect, but he has already made his major league debut and is in the thick of the team’s roster drama. Those hoping to catch a glimpse of a more distant future should keep their eye out for catcher Tyler Soderstrom, the team’s top pick in last year’s draft (26th overall from Turlock, California, about 55 miles west of Freemont as the crow flies). The A’s gave Soderstrom, the son of former Giants pitcher and sixth-overall pick Steve Soderstrom, $3.3 million to spurn UCLA and head directly to their alternate training site last year. Drafted because of his bat, the lefty-hitting Soderstrom projects as an impact, middle-of-the-order hitter, but he need to mature behind the plate. The 19-year-old ranked 92nd on Baseball America’s list of the top 100 prospects but did not make the other top-100 lists. This will be his first proper professional season.
Houston Astros
Location: The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches, West Palm Beach, FL
New Duds: RHP Pedro Báez
Prior to this year, Báez had spent his entire professional career in the Dodgers’ organization. Given all of L.A.’s success over the last decade, Báez in Dodger Blue has been a common site on national television in October. Báez made 31 appearances across six postseasons spanning the last seven years. Among those was a three-batter outing in the last major-league game anyone has seen, Game 6 of last year’s World Series. He was not on the roster when the Dodgers and Astros met in the 2017 World Series, still, an Astros/Dodgers crossover has to be one of the more awkward transitions in the game right now.
Big Change: Springer’s Sprung
During their run of success over the last half decade, the Astros have had a fair amount of turnover in their pitching staff, but their lineup has always had four, rock-solid pillars: José Altuve, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, and George Springer. Bregman was the last to arrive, in 2016, and all four were key players as the Astros won two pennants, the 2017 World Series, and made it at least to the American League Championship Series each of the last four years. Springer was the team’s MVP in the 2017 Series and, over those last four postseasons, hit .274/.353/.557 with 18 home runs in 57 games, primarily as the team’s centerfielder and leadoff hitter. That’s a huge contribution and a huge presence. Now, Springer is a Blue Jay via a six-year, $160 million contract and the team’s leading candidate for centerfield in camp is 26-year-old slap-hitting speedster Myles Straw.
Big Battle: Centerfield
They’re not really going with Straw, are they? Straw can certainly handle the position defensively, but he hasn’t shown much in 224 major-league plate appearances, and he has no power. At the very least, Straw could use a left-handed platoon partner. The only real candidate for that role in camp, however, is the team’s 2016 second-round pick Ronnie Dawson, who had a lousy year at the plate in Double- and Triple-A in 2019. Keep an eye on Jose Siri, a long-time Reds farmhand who could give Straw some competition. It seems more likely, however, that the Astros’ 2021 centerfielder is someone the team has yet to acquire, though Kevin Pillar just came off the board as I was typing this (see Transaction Reactions).
Big Question: DH Yordan Alvarez
The AL’s Rookie of the Year in 2019, Alvarez appeared in just two games last year due to surgery on both knees. A designated hitter even as a rookie, Alvarez’s mobility is not a major part of his game, but he does need to be healthy enough to play, plus a hitter’s legs are his foundation and can supply a lot of his power. In 2019, Alvarez hit .313/.412/.655 (173 OPS+). That’s monster production and a player the Astros would very much like to have back, particularly after losing Springer’s bat this winter.
NRI That-Guy: RHP Steve Cishek
The itinerant sidearmer has put together an impressive career, posting a 146 ERA+ over 594 games, including stints as closer for the Marlins and Mariners. Last year, with the White Sox, Cishek’s ERA fell below league average for the first time in his 11-year career, due in part to a spike in home runs. That was over a mere 20-inning sample (he allowed just four home runs), but it was enough to move him into the non-roster group this spring. Cishek will turn 35 this June. If he cracks the Astros’ bullpen, he’ll be on his seventh team in seven years.
Sneak Peak: RHP Forrest Whitley
The 17th overall pick in 2016, 6-foot-7 Texan righty Whitley was a unanimous top-10 prospect prior to the 2019 season, but he had a rough time that season, struggling with health and control and getting lit up in his first crack at Triple-A. Last year, his weight see-sawed and the team messed around with his mechanics, then he was shut down with forearm soreness in August. Whitley’s still just 23, still tall, and still at top-100 prospect (consensus ranking: 51), but he’s arguably a bigger question mark than Alvarez this spring. In one scenario, he could be in the major-league rotation before the year is out and back on a track toward stardom. In another, he salvages his career with a move to the bullpen. In a third, he never gets right and stalls out in the high minors. All seem equally possible right now.
Seattle Mariners
Location: Peoria Sports Complex, Peoria, AZ
New Duds: LHP James Paxton
James Paxton in a Mariners uniform isn’t an unfamiliar site (that’s an old headshot above), but it is one Seattle fans haven’t seen since 2018. Paxton and the M’s came to terms on a one-year, $8.5 million deal over the weekend, bringing the 32-year-old left back to his original team after a two-year stint with the Yankees (see Transaction Reactons).
Big Change: The lack of change
In his first five years as the general manager of the Mariners, Jerry Dipoto established a reputation as the game’s most active GM. Though he certainly had a lot of work do to upon taking over for Jack Zduriencik in late 2015, the Seattle Swapper just kept churning his roster, often turning over more than a third of the Mariners’ 40-man in a single offseason. After the 2018 season, for example, three years into his tenure, Dipoto turned over nearly a quarter of his roster by December 2. Only Kyle Seager, whom Zduriencik signed to a seven-year extension a year before Dipoto’s arrival, seemed immune. Indeed, the second-longest-tenured Mariner on the current roster, after Seager, is Mitch Haniger, whom Dipoto acquired from the Diamondbacks in November 2016.
This offseason, however, the Mariners arrive in camp with just eight new players on the 40-man, all of them pitchers, and half of them marginal arms not guaranteed to break camp with the major-league team. One of them, closer Ken Giles, won’t pitch for the team until 2022 following September 2020 Tommy John surgery. Paxton and righty Chris Flexen, the latter returned from the Korea Baseball Organization, top the list, followed by potential closer Rafael Montero (ex-Rangers) and fellow righty Keynan Middleton (ex-Angels).
That’s a testament to the fact that the Mariners finally have a crop of young talent that they want to give room to grow at the major league level, but it’s going to feel weird for Seager to survey the field during batting practice and see nothing but familiar faces.
Big Battle: Catcher
Prior to the 2019 season, Dipoto traded for former Rockies catching prospect Tom Murphy. Murphy had struggled in 210 plate appearances over four seasons with Colorado and had since been dumped on the Giants. With Mariners in 2019, however, Murphy hit .273/.324/.534 (128 OPS+) with 18 home runs in just 281 plate appearances and appeared to have claimed the team’s catching job. Then, last year, he broke his left foot and missed the abbreviated season, during which Austin Nola emerged as a viable everyday catcher in his own right. The Seattle Swapper flipped Nola to the Padres at the deadline, but part of the return was 24-year-old catching prospect Luis Torrens, who held his own as the team’s primary backstop thereafter.
This spring finds Murphy returning from injury heading into his age-30 season attempting to take his job back from a player five years younger who is more in-synch, in terms of age and development, with the rest of the Mariners’ lineup. Torrens isn’t an elite prospect, but Murphy isn’t a long term solution, and they both hit right-handed, so a platoon won’t work, though a job-share might, particularly if Murphy has any lingering pain in his foot once he starts spending his days in a squat.
Big Question: RFMitch Haniger
The second-longest-tenured Mariner is something of a new face this spring given that he hasn’t appeared in a major-league game since June 6, 2019. Haniger fouled a ball into his crotch in that game, rupturing a testicle and ending his season. During his attempts to return, he tore an adductor muscle and herniated a disk in his back, two injuries which exacerbated one another leading to a pair of surgeries in early 2020—one to repair a hernia, the other to remove the damaged parts of the disk—which wiped out his 2020 season.
In 2018, Haniger was an All-Star and ranked alongside Nelson Cruz and Robison Canó as one of the Mariner’s best hitters. He was off to a slower start in 2019, but still had 15 home runs in 63 games. He was 28 then. He’s 30 now and hasn’t played in a year and a half. Can he still be a star-level run-producer and above-average right fielder? Can he even stay healthy? We’ll start to get some answers in the coming weeks.
NRI That-Guy: LHP Roenis Elías
Cuban lefty Roenis Elías made 29 starts for the Mariners as a rookie in 2014, but failed to build on that performance as a sophomore and was dealt to the Red Sox in a deal for Wade Miley after the 2015 season. The Red Sox dealt him back in April 2018, and he had success out of the bullpen for a year and a half before the Seattle Swaper traded him again, this time to the Nationals. Last year, Elías missed the entire season with a forearm injury, but now he’s back for a potential third stint in Seattle in his age-32 season. If he can rediscover the form he showed in his last stint, he could be a valuable lefty out of a bullpen that is heavily right-handed.
Sneak Peak: CF Jarred Kelenic and RF Julio Rodríguez
These two are no less than two of the top six prospects in all of baseball. At 21, Kelenic is a year older than Rodríguez and slightly ahead on the minor-league ladder, though it’s not impossible to envision both cracking the majors before the end of this season. Kelenic will likely open the year in Double-A, Rodríguez at High-A. Both will advance quickly unless they struggle. Both are potential impact bats. Kelenic, who was acquired from the Mets in the Robinson Canó trade, is the better overall athlete (there are no doubts about his arm, legs, and he’s a better bet to stick in center than Rodríguez), but Rodríguez, who signed out of the Dominican Republic, may prove to be the more productive hitter. Each would be a must-watch on his own. Together, they are an incredibly enticing combination, and they’ll both be in camp this spring.
Los Angeles Angels
Location: Tempe Diablo Stadium, Tempe, AZ
New Duds: LHP José Quintana
Quintana was a stalwart in the White Sox’s rotation in the middle of the last decade, posting a 115 ERA+ over parts of six seasons. An All-Star in 2016, he finished tenth in the Cy Young voting that year, and, when the Cubs acquired him the following July, he cost them four prospects including slugger Eloy Jiménez. Quintana’s star dimmed a bit in Wrigleyville, but seeing him in an Angels uniform is still a welcome site for a team that has been as hard up for reliable starting pitching as this one.
Big Change: The division is softer
The Angels have one mission every year: get Mike Trout back to the playoffs. They have succeeded just once, in 2014, when they failed to win a single game in the Division Series against the Royals. Since then, the Angels have rarely been terrible, but the Astros and A’s have made the top of the division largely impenetrable. That may not be quite as true this year. The Astros were essentially a .500 team last year, they will remain without Justin Verlander following his Tommy John surgery, and they lost George Springer to free agency. The A’s, meanwhile, had a poor offseason, suffering a significant downgrade at shortstop and in the bullpen with the loss of Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks to free agency, and they enter the season without an established bat to start at designated hitter. That big change, then, looks an awful lot like hope.
Big Battle: Starting rotation
Quintana has a spot, so does Dylan Bundy, who took a big step forward last year, and the unit’s other big addition, veteran righty groundballer Alex Cobb. Lefty Andrew Heaney should be there, as well, but things start to get crowded at the back end. Youngsters Griffin Canning and Patrick Sandoval would make for a good competition all by themselves, but Jaime Barria pitched well last year, and Shohei Ohtani is attempting yet another return to two-way play. Suddenly that’s four pitchers for one spot, unless manager Joe Maddon decides to open up the entire thing and make it eight men for five spots, seniority be damned. Or is it six spots, with Ohtani starting once a week rather than in regular rotation? The lineup is largely set, and Raisel Iglesias will close, but the rotation could be something of a Battle Royale in camp.
Big Question: RHP Shohei Ohtani
Ohtani’s attempted return to the mound last year was a total disaster. He faced just 16 batters and walked eight of them with dramatically diminished velocity. In 2018, Ohtani topped out at 101 miles per hour. In the first of his two starts last year, he topped out at 95. A flexor strain was the official explanation, but one wonders how his arm will respond as he starts to ramp up this spring or, given that he has thrown just 53 1/3 innings over the last three years, as the season drags on, if he even gets that far. What’s more, Ohtani had a lousy season at the plate last year. That was probably due more to bad luck in a small sample size than anything else (his batting average on balls in play fell from .352 the previous two years to .229). Still, one wonders about the mental impact his struggles as a pitcher could be having on his overall game. How much and in what ways Ohtani will contribute this year, and, to a lesser degree, what impact that could have on the spring’s rotation battle, are the Angels’ biggest questions as camp opens up.
NRI That-Guy: CF Juan Lagares
As the Mets’ centerfielder in 2014, Lagares combined a league-average bat and Gold Glove-winning defense into a five-win season, per Baseball-Reference’s wins above replacement. The next October, he hit .348 across 25 plate appearances as the Mets won the pennant. It has all been downhill from there, but, even heading into his age-32 season, Lagares would seem to have some value as a defensive replacement in center should your starter be, say, a big-bodied slugger approaching baseball middle age whose performance in the field has been declining.
Sneak Peak: CF Brandon Marsh
Speaking of centerfield, here’s a kid who was the team’s second-round pick in 2016 out of a Georgia high school. He’s fast, he can throw, he’s a lefty hitter who goes to all fields, and, at a solid 6-foot-4, there’s power potential in his frame. The consensus 35th-best prospect in baseball, he topped out at Double-A in 2019 and could reach the majors this year, yet another signal that Mike Trout’s return to a corner pasture might be imminent.
Texas Rangers
Location: Surprise Stadium, Surprise, AZ
New Duds: RHP Kohei Arihara
Part of the fun of Spring Training is seeing old faces in new places, but for major-league fans, Arihara is both in a new place and a new face. The 28-year-old righty spent the last six years with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters (those are Nippon Ham’s Fighters, not Nippon’s Ham Fighters, sadly) of Nippon Professional Baseball and joins the Rangers on a two-year, $6.2 million contract as a projected part of their starting rotation. Baseball Prospectus describes him as “an adequate mid-rotation starter in the major leagues,” possessed of a low-90s fastball and low-80s changeup. Not terribly exciting on paper, but completely novel in a Rangers uniform.
Big Change: Elvis has left the building
When Elvis Andrus finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting as the Rangers’ new everyday shortstop in 2009, Joe Biden was in his first year in office as Vice President, the Rangers had never been to a World Series, Adrián Beltré was still a Seattle Mariner, and Andrus’s Rangers teammates included Iván Rodríguez, Omar Vizquel, Andruw Jones, Michael Young, and Hank Blalock. Andrus wasn’t a generation-defining player. I don’t think he’ll ever have his number retired by the team. Still, 12 years is a long time, and his absence will be obvious to Rangers fans
Big Battle: Closer
Sure, the Rangers have seven or eight guys competing to be in their rotation, but that list gets very uninteresting very fast. I’ll deal with the other side of the ball in the next item. For this, with Rafael Montero now a Mariner, I’m curious to see how things shake out between 2019 closer José Leclerc, who is returning from a year largely lost to a teres major tear, and 24-year-old Jonathan Hernández, who had a 1.77 ERA on September 1 last year but had a harder time over the remainder of that month.
Big Question: Where does everyone play?
The Rangers decided back in November that Isiah Kiner-Falefa would move from third base to shortstop, a move set in stone by the trading of Andrus, but who plays third base? Nick Solak seems likely to move back into the infield, but will he play third or second? Nate Lowe seems set to replace Ronald Guzmán at first base, but he’s only a year younger and no more established, so could a cold spring by Lowe and a hot spring by Guzmán salvage the latter’s job? Will the team let either Willie Calhoun or Khris Davis play the outfield, rather than making them platoon at designated hitter? If so, do they force one of David Dahl or Leody Taveras to the bench? Will Rougned Odor keep getting chances to prove he can’t hit? And who is the catcher, Sam Huff? With the exception of Davis, every player I just mentioned is younger than Joey Gallo, so there’s still upside to dream on with all of them, but exactly how Chris Woodward and the front office decide to deploy them to open the season could tell us a lot about who will get the most chances to reach that upside.
NRI That-Guy: CF Delino DeShields
The Rangers have the highest NRI That-Guy quotient among the AL West teams. Brock Holt! Charlie Culberson! Drew Butera! John Hicks! Jharel Cotton! Matt Bush! Sam Gaviglio! Hunter Wood! Justin Anderson! Nick Vincent! DeShields still tops the list, in part because he spent his first five major league seasons with Texas, four of them as a full-timer in the Rangers’ outfield, three of those in center. DeSheilds hit .245/.326/.342 (76 OPS+) with the Rangers, but he could fly on the bases and could go get ‘em in centerfield. After heading to Cleveland as half of the return for Corey Kluber, he’s back as a non-roster invitee hoping to complicate the Rangers’ centerfield picture even further.
Sneak Peak: 3B Josh Jung
Drafted out of Texas Tech in 2019 with the eighth overall pick, Jung is a San Antonio native with just 44 professional games under his belt, but, as a well-developed college player, he could be the Rangers’ ultimate solution at third base as early as the end of this season. Jung can handle the hot corner. The question is what kind of hitter he will be as a professional. He’ll likely head to High-A or even Double-A to start the year and find out, but you can get a sneak peak when the exhibition schedule starts at the end of next week.
Rooting for Laundry: Get A New Patch, Jack
As I wrote when introducing my uniform rankings two weeks ago, new uniform designs have not been a priority this offseason. As a result, the teams will be reusing last year’s Spring Training cap designs this spring. I tend to think Spring Training caps are a ridiculous concept and a pure cash grab, but sometimes the designs are fun. Last year’s design was not one of those. New Era’s concept was to combine two logos into one. For most teams, that just looked like a mess (see the bottom row below), particularly from the distance of the stands or the television cameras. There were a few exceptions, however.
The best of the caps, by far, is the Blue Jays’ (upper left above), which has their standard cap logo’s bird peering into one side of a red maple leaf. The Tigers’ tiger-striped Old English D (top, center above) worked nicely. The Diamondbacks (upper right above) almost replicated Toronto’s success with their baseball-eating snake lurking in the right side of their diamond-backed A logo. Elsewhere, New Era cast the Astros H-and-star logo in the team’s tequila-sunrise colors, a good idea ruined by the decision to outline it in navy then put it on a black cap.
Then there were the Padres. New Era placed San Diego’s interlocking SD inside the team’s swinging Padre in such a manner that the cropped SD resembled a swastika (photo in link in next sentence). The team shelved that cap almost immediately, using the excuse that they were just too excited to wear their new game caps. This year, the Padres will instead wear a cap that resembles their regular-season hat, but with a white S, like the 2016 caps made famous by the short-lived television show Pitch (now free on Tubi). As a result, the Padres are the only team with a new Spring Training cap for 2021.
Every team’s cap will have a new 2021 Spring Training patch, however. The visual motif for this year’s camps is a pair of sunglasses, with a state-specific icon (cactus or palm tree) in one lens and the state abbreviation (AZ or FL) in the other (as seen at the top of this section). The shades look an awful lot like aviators to me, which feels like a subtle tribute to our new president. However, on the patch, which places the shades on a big circle (possibly meant to be the sun) behind the MLB logo on the back of the cap, the sunglasses just look like bug eyes; big bug eyes which will be staring at you out of the back of every pitcher’s head throughout the exhibition season.
Transaction Reactions
Dodgers re-sign 3B Justin Turner ($34M/2yrs + $14 million option)
This always seemed inevitable, though Turner did have other suitors. What took so long was that the 36-year-old Turner, who has played more than 135 games just once in his career, wanted a four-year contract. He was never going to get that. The Dodgers offered two. The option appears to be the compromise. Turner takes a small pay cut here. He made $19 million last year, and, even if you don’t factor out his $8 million signing bonus and the buyout of his option (if there is one), this averages out to $17 million per season, but with an actual salary of closer to $13 million. What’s important, of course, is that the Dodgers not only got a third baseman, they got their third baseman. Turner has hit .302/.382/.503 (139 OPS+) as a Dodger with no indication of slowing down. He’s also something of a de facto team captain, and was the team’s nominee for the Roberto Clemente award in 2020.
Mariners sign LHP James Paxton ($8.5M/1yr)
Paxton has a career 114 ERA+, but he has never made 30 starts in a season or qualified for an ERA title. In two years with the Yankees (one admittedly abbreviated), he threw 171 innings over 34 starts. Last year, he had spinal surgery in February, displayed drastically diminished velocity over just five starts (only one quality), then was shut down with a flexor strain in late August. Now 32, Big Maple returns to his original organization. When healthy, he’ll be in the rotation with the top prospect for whom he was traded: 25-year-old lefty Justus Sheffield.
Cubs sign RHP Jake Arrieta ($6M/1yr)
Arrieta’s decline from the dazzling peak of his Cy Young season in 2015 was immediate and precipitous. The Cubs saw those rising walk and home run rates and Joe Maddon’s earlier hooks and happily let Arrieta walk after the 2017 season. Arrieta, having not yet accepted reality, held out for big money and didn’t sign with the Phillies until mid-March of 2018. In three years with Philadelphia, Arrieta’s decline has continued, albeit at a slower pace. His walk and home run rates appear to have stabilized, but now his strikeout rate is falling. In his last two years with the Phillies, Arrieta posted a 4.75 ERA (94 ERA+) in just 180 innings, and struck out just 7.1 men per nine innings with a paltry 2.12 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He’ll turn 35 in a few weeks and takes a 70 percent pay cut to return, diminished, to a diminished Cubs team for one last rodeo with the remnants of the 2016 champions. Will it help that his new manager, David Ross, is a former catcher to whom Arrieta pitched to a 1.43 ERA over 12 games? Probably not, but it won’t hurt.
Mets sign CF Kevin Pillar ($5M/1yr + option)
Pillar, who is joining his fifth team in three years, is an interesting addition for a Mets team that had already signed Albert Almora Jr. to back up Brandon Nimmo in center. Pillar and Almora are both right-handed hitters who are far more valuable in the field than at the plate. Pillar is a career .262/.299/.408 (89 OPS+) hitter, though he has hit .286/.320/.464 against lefties. Almora, who is five years younger than the 32-year-old Pillar, has hit .271/.309/.398 (84 OPS+) and .280/.332/.402 against lefties. Perhaps Pillar, whose defensive ratings have declined in recent years, will platoon with Dominic Smith in left and Almora will remain a defensive replacement and pinch hitter.
Per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, Pillar will make $3.6 million in 2021. For 2022, the Mets have a $6.4 million option with a $1.4 million buyout (the latter making this a $5 million guarantee for Pillar), while Pillar has a $2.9 million player option with no additional buyout.
Padres sign RHP Mark Melancon (TBA) and RHP Keone Kela (TBA)
Details have not been forthcoming about these contracts other than they are both major-league deals, Melancon’s reported by Dennis Lin, Kela’s by Jon Heyman with Lin confirming. I assume both are one-year deals for seven figures.
Melancon, who will be 36 at the end of March and is joining his eighth team, gives the Padres an “established closer,” albeit one of the white-knuckle variety. Melancon primarily throws a low-90s cutter and low-80s curve and relies on high groundball rates and strong infield defense to get the job done, which isn’t a terrible strategy with Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ha-Seong Kim, and Eric Hosmer behind him. Melancon doesn’t have the extreme control he used to in his Pittsburgh days, but he’s still good at avoiding the home run (other than catching them in the bullpen, of course). He has also had an interesting postseason history. In 2013 and 2019 he allowed a total of eight runs in 6 2/3 innings. In his other four postseasons, he has thrown 12 2/3 innings and allowed just one unearned run, that last coming among 6 1/3 otherwise scoreless frames across seven appearances for the Braves last year.
Kela is more of a conventional right-handed reliever with upper-90s velocity, a mid-80s curve, double-digit strikeout rates, and occasional control problems. He pitched just two innings last year due to forearm tightness, but arrives in San Diego with a 139 career ERA+ and won’t turn 28 until the season is underway.
A’s sign RHP Yusmeiro Petit ($2.55M/1yr) and RHP Sergio Romo ($2.25M/1yr)
The bullpen was obviously a priority for the A’s in the final weekend before pitchers and catchers report, and here they lock up a couple of venerable veterans for similarly-priced deals. Petit, who is 36, returns for a fourth year with the A’s. He was a horse for them in 2018 and ’19, averaging 77 games and 88 innings per season. In his three years in Oakland, he posted a 154 ERA+ with a 0.94 WHIP and 4.97 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Petit’s velocity has declined slightly in each of the last two seasons, but he has always been more of a junkballer, and he’s still throwing harder than he did as a starter in his twenties (not that either figure could be considered hard by major-league standards). Bringing him back seemed like a no-brainer, it just took a little longer than expected.
As for Romo, he’s one of the seemingly ageless righties that top the active games leaderboard. I listed those four when one of them, Joakim Soria, signed with the Diamondbacks. Here’s that group again, with Tyler Clippard now the only one unsigned (and I trust that he will sign soon):
Romo saved 20 games as recently as 2019. He’s not the A’s best option for that role, but he should be his reliable old self as part of the team’s suddenly quite deep set-up crew.
Rays sign LHP Rich Hill ($2.5M/1yr) and RHP Collin McHugh ($1.8M/1yr)
Having traded Blake Snell, the Rays are going with a quantity-over-quality approach to their 2021 rotation. That’s not a knock on Hill and McHugh, it’s just reality. McHugh posted a 106 ERA+ in the Astros’ rotation from 2014 to ’17, dominated out of the bullpen in 2018, split 2019 between the two roles, then signed with the Red Sox and opted out of the shortened 2020 season. He’ll be 34 in June and will likely serve as a swing man or bulk-innings guy for the Rays.
Curveball artist Hill will be 41 in March, and, as successful as his comeback has been, he has not reached 136 innings pitched in a season since his return to starting in 2015. Hill has averaged 5 1/3 innings per start over the last six seasons and seems ideally suited to be a twice-through-the-order starter for the Rays, or would if you’re willing to overlook his lousy peripherals and drop in velocity in 2020.
A’s acquire LHP Adam Kolarek and minor league OF Cody Thomas from Dodgers for UT Sheldon Neuse and minor league RHP Gus Varland
Marlins acquire RHP Dylan Floro from the Dodgers for LHP Alex Vesia and minor league RHP Kyle Hurt
This is an interesting pair of moves from the Dodgers. Righty Floro and lefty Kolarek combined to post a 1.87 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, and 4.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 43 1/3 innings out of the Dodger bullpen last year. Neither was among manager Dave Roberts’ most trusted relief arms, but they provided valuable depth in a Dodgers pen that always seems to be lacking. In addition, the 30-year-old Floro is under team control through 2023, and the 32-year-old Kolarek is under control through 2024.
The Dodgers’ willingness to part with those two, beyond the fact that they’re smartly selling high on, truthfully, rather fungible relief arms, speaks to the fact that the L.A. pen will likely be populated by the quality young arms squeezed out of their rotation. If I had to guess, I’d think Julio Urías, who was dominant in long relief in last year’s postseason and has never thrown more than 122 combined innings in the majors and minors in a single season, that coming way back in 2016, would be the lefty to replace (and, truthfully, upgrade upon) Kolarek. That leaves Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, and returning veteran David Price to battle for the final two spots in the rotation, with the loser also headed out to the ‘pen, where the Dodgers have also added former Brewers closer Corey Knebel, who is somehow still only 29.
So what did they get for Floro and Kolarek?
In the Floro deal, Alex Vesia is a 24-year-old Californian lefty with an average fastball and a changeup. Vesia was lit up in his first major-league exposure last year. Righty Kyle Hurt was a fifth-round pick out of USC last year and has yet to throw a professional pitch. He’ll be 23 in June. There’s much to see there, so good on the Marlins for getting Floro for that duo, though they’ll now have to watch his unsettling set-up in which he puts his glove on his face in a way that would seem to make for easy spitting or licking of the ball, yet never seems to get flagged by opponents or umpires.
The Dodgers included minor league outfielder Cody Thomas in the Kolarek deal. Thomas is a big, strapping, lefty-hitting Texan, but he’s also an unexceptional 26-year-old minor leaguer who has never played above Double-A. For that duo, L.A. got Gus Varland, a 24-year-old righty who has thrown all of 64 1/3 minor league innings due in part to having Tommy John surgery in August 2019 (which, to be fair, was pretty good timing).
The most interesting player of the seven involved in these two trades may be Sheldon Neuse (pronounced “NOY-see”). A second-round pick by the Nationals out of the University of Oklahoma in 2016, Neuse was dealt to the A’s in the July 2017 swap that sent Neuse, Blake Treinen, and Jesús Luzardo to the A’s for Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson. A burly six-footer, Neuse was a two-way player in college, so you know he has a strong arm, and he has played all around the infield plus a little outfield in the minors. Third base is his primary position (and this trade did go down before Justin Turner re-signed), but Neuse would seem to give the Dodgers a new super-utility option in the wake of Kiké Hernández’s departure, albeit a less athletic one they’re unlikely to ever use at shortstop or in centerfield. Neuse can hit, too. He popped 27 homers in the admittedly hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League in 2019 and is a career .294/.354/.458 hitter in the minors. He got a major-league look in 2019, and was going to be an option at second base for the A’s this year, though he did spend all of last year at the alternate training site. He’s already 26, so he’s not a prospect, but he could be a useful piece over the long season. Plus, unlike Floro and Kolarek (both of whom have been more deserving), Neuse has had a flagship Topps card (see above), and how can you say someone is great who’s never had his picture on a bubblegum card?
From the A’s perspective, with Chad Pinder and Tony Kemp set to platoon at second and Matt Chapman locked in at third, Neuse was easy enough to give up to beef up a bullpen that was running a bit thin before the Petit and Romo signings (which was when this trade went down).
Yankees sign LHP Justin Wilson (TBA)
This deal, confirmed final by WFAN’s Sweeny Murti, is another we can assume is one-year, low-seven figures. The absurd three-batter minimum may have killed the concept of the LOOGY, but Wilson is as close as you’ll come in today’s game. He has averaged fewer than four batters per appearance in his nine-year major-league career, and did the same last year under the new rule. He has done that despite handling lefties and righties with equal aplomb. The 33-year-old Wilson doesn’t flirt with triple-digits on the radar gun any more, but he still has mid- to upper-90s heat from the left side that he mixes with a low-90s cutter, and he arrives in the Bronx having posted a 143 ERA+ in Queens over the last two years. Wilson issues too many walks, but he’s regularly in double-digits in strikeouts per nine inninigs, and he keeps the ball in the park.
This will be Wilson’s second stint with the Yankees. He had a representative year for them in 2015 after being acquired from the Pirates for Francisco Cervelli. The Yankees then dealt him to Detroit for Luis Cessa and Chad Green, the latter of whom has out-pitched Wilson in relief since. Assuming this is a one-year deal, they won’t be able to cash him in again this fall.
Twins sign RHP Matt Shoemaker ($2M/1r)
Shoemaker finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting in 2014 thanks to an incredibly effective splitter and spent two more years as a league average arm in the Angels rotation before injuries began to chip away at his late-blooming career. He survived and endured a fractured skull caused by a line-drive to the head in 2016, a forearm injury in 2017, radial nerve surgery in 2018, and a torn ACL in his left knee in 2019. Last year, shoulder inflammation undermined his effectiveness. It has now taken him four years to compile a single-season’s workload (32 starts, 166 innings). He has remained roughly league average over that period, but he’s now 34 and would seem to be just a depth move for the Twins, who may decide to see if he can hold up better in the bullpen.
Diamondbacks sign IF Asdrúbal Cabrera ($1.75M/1yr)
This is a depth move for the Diamondbacks and a good one. Cabrera has been a full-time player for what feels like the better part of this century (actually since 2008), but he hasn’t held down a single position full time for full season since 2016. At 35, he’s still a league-average bat who can switch-hit .260 or better with 15 home runs and 50 walks, and he can bounce around the infield as needed. He’s overextended at shortstop, but is a reliable glove at second and third, and he started to work first base into his repertoire last year. With the Diamondbacks, he’ll provide insurance against injury and slump and will enable Ketel Marte to move to centerfield as needed. Don’t be surprised to see Cabrera get upwards of 300 at-bats or more yet again.
Cleveland signs RHP Blake Parker ($2.5M/1yr non-guaranteed)
It’s rare to see a non-guaranteed contract in baseball. Sometimes, around this time of year, you’ll see players signed to split contracts, which are effectively minor league deals that come with a seven-figure guarantee if the player makes the major league roster. I suppose this is something like that, but, technically it’s a major-league deal, which is the only reason I’m including it here (my requirements for this section are that the contracts have to be major-league deals or the move has to impact at least one team’s 40-man roster).
A late-bloomer, Parker has had his moments since seeming to establish himself in the Angels’ bullpen in 2017 at the age of 32. He has a 129 ERA+ and 32 saves dating back to that season, but he has done it with three teams, inconsistent results, and steadily declining velocity. I suppose that’s why Cleveland didn’t want to guarantee Parker, who will turn 36 in June and mixes his now-low-90s fastball with a splitter and curve, even this modest (by major-league standards) payday.
Brewers acquire OF Derek Fisher from the Blue Jays for cash and a player to be named later
Drafted 37th overall out of the University of Virginia by the Astros in 2014, Fisher debuted in 2017 and was on the Astros’ playoff rosters as they won the World Series, but, despite being a bat-first corner outfielder, he has never really hit in the majors. Now 27, he’ll join the Brewers with a .194/.286/.376 (78 OPS+) career line in 458 plate appearances over four seasons. At best, the lefty-swinging Fisher will make the roster and spell Avisaíl García against the occasional righty, but even that seems like a stretch.
Cardinals acquire C Ali Sánchez from the Mets for cash
Sánchez is a 24-year-old Venezuelan catch-and-throw backstop who went 1-for-9 in his first major-league opportunity last year. He has never hit, but by the time a team gets down to its third-string catcher, which seems like Sánchez’s ceiling, it just wants someone who can handle the position, and he can do that.
Braves claim OF Travis Demeritte off waivers from the Tigers
Drafted 30th overall out of a Georgia High School by the Rangers in 2013, Demeritte was originally acquired by the Braves in a minor deal at the 2016 deadline, then flipped to the Tigers in the Shane Greene trade at the 2019 deadline. He returns to Altanta at the age of 26 having failed to do much hitting in his major-league opportunities in 2019 and ’20. He raked at Triple-A in 2019, however, hitting .286/.387/.558 with 20 home runs in 399 plate appearances, so there’s some potential in his bat, and he’s no lower than fifth on the Braves’ outfield depth chart, so he may get some opportunities in Atlanta this year.
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Closing Credits
Some songs are overplayed for a reason. Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” is one of those. Yes, it has been done to death in movie trailers and at sporting events. Again, there is a reason for that: it is a great song. In a famous 2015 Vice article, Timothy Faust wrote about repeatedly playing the song on the jukebox in a local bar until the bartender kicked him out.
“The ‘jukebox in the corner blasting out my favorite song,’ as described in ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’?” Faust wrote. “It is also playing ‘The Boys Are Back In Town.’”
And so, today, is The Cycle, because guess who just got back today? The boys. They are back in town. Back in Florida and Arizona, back in uniform, or at least team-branded warm-up gear. Back to baseball, or at least baseball-adjacent activities in small, social-distance-respecting groups of no more than eight (why not nine? this is baseball, after all) per the league’s new “Phase 1” protocols, which last through February 20.
“The Boys Are Back In Town” led off side two of Thin Lizzy’s sixth, and I can only assume best album, 1976’s Jailbreak, the title track of which is also a classic. Thin Lizzy was an Irish hard rock quartet that primarily served as a delivery device for the talents of charismatic mixed-race lead singer, bassist, and primary songwriter Phil Lynott, who penned “The Boys Are Back In Town.”
According to Songfacts, the boys of the lyric were actually the Quality Street Gang, an alleged British organized crime organization that frequented the club Lynott’s mother, Philomena, ran in Manchester, England. The Quality Street Gang spent even more time at another club in Manchester called Deno’s, which likely inspired the lyric “down at Dino’s Bar ‘n’ Grill.”
Indeed, the boys in the song are a rough and tumble sort, “wild-eyed boys . . . them cats are crazy . . . the drink will flow and blood will spill, and if the boys wanna fight, you better let ‘em.” The verses of the song just come spilling out of Lynott’s mouth. There are almost too many words, but Lynott has so much panache that he makes that style of motormouthed half-singing work as it washes over the measures, and the loose rhythm to the verses makes the choruses hit even harder when Lynott joins the band on the beat with “the boys are back town!”
Lynott’s cool sells the song, but the endless hooks in the instrumentation are what make it infinitely replayable and put it into the pantheon of pop-rock perfection. It grabs you right from the start with a big power chord and cymbal crash followed by Lynott’s rapid-fire triplets high up on the neck of his bass, that instantly recognizable “beedle-ee-dee-da-deedle,” followed by three more big, ringing power chord crashes. The song does that twice, then settles into a shuffle for the verse and Lynott’s heptalk. The chorus brings back those power chords and cymbal crashes, bouncing a call-and-response of the songs’s title between the two stereo speakers, then guitarists Scott Gorman and Brian Robertson let loose with a rising harmonized lick that, by this point, is the third killer hook in the song’s first minute.
That all repeats, because why on earth wouldn’t you want to hear it again, and the second occurrence of the harmonized guitars is interrupted by a rapid drum fill that drops the song into a brief two-line bridge, then back to verse. The third and final chorus stretches out and quiets down, setting up a slower harmonized guitar part that then launches back into that main harmonized riff for the outro, which fades fast on the single, but allows for a bit more vamping by Lynott and higher pitched guitar parts on the album version, which is what I’ve linked to below.
The video included below sets the album track to footage of the band on what I assume is a British television show from around the time of the single’s release, and adds some extra footage to the beginning and end to cover the length of the song. Lynott is 27 in TV appearance, and his famous charisma is evident as he sings directly into the camera. He’s gorgeous, looking like a rock n’ roll pirate with his afro swooping down over one eye, two hoop earrings in one ear, and a thin mustache.
According to legend, Thin Lizzy was on its last legs before “The Boys Are Back In Town,” a song they had to be convinced to put on the album, took off, ultimately reaching number-12 in the U.S., eight in the UK, and number-one in their native Ireland. It would be their only top-40 single in the United States, but the band endured for six more albums. Lynott made a couple of solo albums before the band split in 1983. His body battered by drug abuse, he died in 1986 at the age of 36.
So, protest all you want, deep down you know you can’t resist the clarion call of Lynott’s bass in that intro, or that Pavlovian jolt of excitement from knowing that, yes indeed, the boys are back, and baseball will soon be back in town. As Lynott sings:
The nights are getting longer, and it won’t be long
Won’t be long till the summer comes
Now that the boys are here again
The Cycle will return tomorrow, Wednesday, as my Spring Training preview series moves on to the National League Central.
As Lynott sings on the bridge, “spread the word around”: