The Cycle, Issue 14: Middle of the Road
AL Central Spring Training Previews, Kevin Mather's resignation, Kazmir's comeback, and more
In this issue of The Cycle . . .
Today, we turn to the AL Central with the penultimate set of Spring Training Previews.
Also:
Newswire: Kevin Mather’s resignation
Transaction Reactions: Clippard, Kazmir, Choo
Aches and Pains: Franchy, Sam Huff, Clarke Schmidt
Feedback
Closing Credits
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Spring Training Previews: American League Central
Spring Training is underway, but the exhibition schedule doesn’t start until Sunday. To tide you over until we get closer to the actual games, The Cycle is spending this week and last highlighting some of the more compelling spring storylines for each team in my Spring Training Previews.
Because one of the joys of Spring Training is seeing offseason acquisitions in their new uniforms, 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to be decided by spring performance (even if the idea of evaluating players based on exhibition play is ridiculous and outdated); the “Big Question,” that’s the one unknown that might be answered before the season starts; an “NRI That-Guy,” a familiar major-league veteran who is in camp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 started in Issue 10 with the American League West, surveyed the National League Central on in Issue 11, and wrapped last week with the American League East in Issue 12. This week, we started with the National League West, and we continue today with the American League Central. As with my Offseason Report Cards, teams are presented in order of their 2020 finish.
Minnesota Twins
Location: Hammond Stadium, CenturyLink Sports Complex, Fort Myers, FL
New Duds: SS Andrelton Simmons
Simmons is nothing less than one of the greatest defensive shortstops in major-league history. Fielding statistics are notoriously unreliable. Still, on the all-time leader list for Baseball-Reference’s defensive wins above replacement (dWAR) at shortstop—a list topped by Ozzie Smith and Mark Belanger, so it at least passes the sniff test—Simmons ranks 11th heading into his age-31 season and is way ahead of everyone in the top 10 (yes, even Ozzie) on a per-game basis. Now in his thirties and coming off a couple of injury-shortened seasons, it remains to be seen if Simmons can still play up to his own standard in the field, but he is a player of historical significance regardless of where his career goes from here.
Big Change: Simmons
Simmons should change the character of the Twins’ infield with his glove, but he has already changed it with his mere presence, by pushing Jorge Polanco to second base and Luis Arraez to left field and/or a super utility role. That gives the team important depth given the fragility of its infielders, Simmons included, and could complicate the arrival of the team’s top prospect, left fielder Alex Kirilloff (see below). That’s quite an impact simply by showing up to play his usual position.
Big Battle: Fifth Starter
Kenta Maeda, José Berríos, and Michael Piñeda will top the Twins’ rotation, and the team added J.A. Happ and Matt Shoemaker via free agency this winter. However, incumbent righty Randy Dobnak may complicate the Twins’ plans. After all, Shoemaker has only been healthy enough to make 11 starts over the last two years combined, and Dobnak has been as good or better than Shoemaker in both of those seasons in terms of both run prevention and run expectation. Over those same two seasons, Dobnak has also out-pitched Happ, who has actually been pretty lousy according to deserved run average (5.01 in 2020, 6.00 in 2019). The 38-year-old Happ will be a late arrival to camp after testing positive for COVID-19, so that could be a factor, but if Dobnak shows well enough this spring, he could convince the Twins that the fragile Shoemaker would be better preserved, and more effective, in the bullpen.
Big Question: When will Alex Kirilloff take over in left field?
This could be a bigger battle than the fifth-starter thing, but there’s more at work here than just winning a job in camp. Kirilloff is the team’s top prospect, and the 23rd best prospect in all of baseball, according to my aggregated list. However, opinions on the 23-year-old lefty diverge quite a bit, with Keith Law ranking Kirilloff seventh on his list, and Baseball Prospectus putting him down at 71st. A first-round pick in 2016, Kirilloff lost the 2017 season to Tommy John surgery, crushed A-ball and High-A in 2018, but topped out at Double-A in 2019 and didn’t impress much at the plate at that level. That was probably due to a wrist injury, but without a proper minor-league season last year, outside evaluators have a hard time knowing how he would handle an advanced league.
The Twins had enough confidence in Kirilloff to bring him up to the majors to make his debut in the postseason last year (he started one game and went 1-for-4), but they also have service-time reasons to keep him in the minors a little longer, even if only until mid-April. There are also legitimate concerns about the quality of Kirilloff’s play in the outfield—he split 2019 between the outfield corners and first base—and he is blocked at first base and designated hitter by Miguel Sanó and Nelson Cruz, respectively. So, it remains an open question as to whether or not Kirilloff will spend most of 2021 in left field for the Twins, as many expect, or in Triple-A trying to prove what he can do with his bat and in the field at such an advanced level.
NRI That-Guy: UT Andrew Romine
The Twins have a good collection of that-guys in camp, including centerfielder Keon Broxton, shortstop JT Riddle, and outfielder Rob Refsnyder, but Romine takes this spot both because of the amount of time he has spent in the AL Central and because of the larger footprint of the Romine name. Andrew is the son of former Red Sox outfielder Kevin Romine and the brother of now-Cubs catcher Austin Romine. He also was a Detroit Tiger from 2014 to 2017, averaging 109 games per season with the Tigers. In his career, Andrew has appeared in 62 games against the Twins. The most memorable of those was his penultimate game with the Tigers, on September 30, 2017, when he played all nine positions in a 3-2 Tigers win, including taking the mound and getting Miguel Sanó to ground out to start the top of the eighth.
Sneak Peak: SS Royce Lewis
The top overall pick in the 2017 draft, Lewis ranks just two spots behind Kirilloff on my aggregate list and enjoys more of a consensus as something like the 30th best prospect in baseball (he’s 25th on my list, but 29th on Baseball America’s and 31st on Baseball Prospectus’s). Lewis had an off-year in 2019, though he followed it up by crushing in the Arizona Fall League. Still, the inability to get back on the horse last year hurt, and this could be a crucial year for his development. That will likely take place at Triple-A, but we’ll get a look at him in camp first.
Chicago White Sox
Location: Camelback Ranch, Glendale, AZ
New Duds: RHP Lance Lynn
Lynn was an All-Star and a World Champion with the Cardinals early last decade, but his best individual performances have come over the last two years. In 2019, he posted a 141 ERA+ in 208 1/3 innings, struck out 10.6 men per nine innings with a 4.17 strikeout-to-walk ratio, all career highs, and finished fifth in the Cy Young voting. Last year, he led the majors with 84 innings and was superficially comparable to the year before with a 136 ERA+, a 3.56 strikeout-to-walk ratio, a 1.06 WHIP, and a sixth-place finish in the Cy Young voting. He was a bit hit-lucky in 2020, however, with opponents hitting just .243 on balls in play. As a result, deserved run average wasn’t as fond of that more recent season. Still, the Sox have added a horse to their rotation, one with a 140 ERA+ over 292 1/3 innings over the last two years.
Big Change: MGR Tony La Russa
I’m trying to think of a worse decision any team made this offseason than the White Sox’s decision to pull 76-year-old Hall of Famer Tony La Russa out of a nine-year retirement to manage an exciting, young, diverse, up-and-coming team that is ready to be a serious contender in the American League. With all due respect to La Russa, who is the third-winningest manager in major-league history and a deserving Hall of Famer, this team was crying out for a young, progressive manager, ideally of color. What it got was the oldest white guy no one even knew was available. La Russa was progressive 30 years ago, but he’s not only regressive now, at least relative to the modern game, his accomplishments have made him defensively so. Just as importantly, La Russa is a distraction, not just because a now-year-old drunk-driving arrest came to light soon after his hiring (giving the White Sox an escape hatch they chose not to use), but because of the size of his legacy. Now, this team has to share its story with La Russa. However the White Sox do this season, the players will only get partial credit. La Russa is too large a presence for the narrative of the season not to revolve around him.
Big Battle: Starting rotation
Lucas Giolito, Dallas Keuchel, and Lance Lynn are the sure things. The last two spots, however, will be interesting. Carlos Rodón returned from Tommy John surgery last year, but ran right into shoulder issues. The Sox resigned him earlier this month for $3 million, so he’ll get a shot to return to the rotation, but he’s not guaranteed anything, including health. Reynaldo López was awful last year, but Dylan Cease was only superficially better. Their respective deserved run averages were 7.60 and 7.36, and Cease led the league with 34 walks against just 44 strikeouts.
Then there’s top pitching prospect Michael Kopech, who made four starts for the big-league club in 2018, but has been sidelined since having had Tommy John surgery that September then opting out of last season. He will need to build his innings back up and thus could split time between starting and relieving this year, but he should still be in the mix to open the season in the rotation. Similarly, the White Sox say they see lefty Garret Crochet as a starter over the long term. Crochet, who was team’s top pick in last year’s draft and made his major-league debut in September, seems more likely to spend this season in the bullpen, much like fellow hard-throwing lefty Chris Sale did as a rookie on a similarly aggressive timetable. Still, those two young fireballers, Kopech and Crochet, could share one of those final two spots, bouncing between the rotation and the bullpen to build up innings. That would be one of the more compelling developments of the spring were it to happen.
Big Question: Can top prospect Andrew Vaughn make the team?
The White Sox have an opening at either first base or designated hitter, whichever one José Abreu isn’t playing on any particular day, and general manager Rick Hahn indicated last week that the team might let Vaughan, one of the top hitting prospects in the game, fill it. Vaughn was the third-overall pick in 2019 and has had just 245 competitive plate appearances as a professional, none above High-A. However, he is a college product (Berkeley), will be 23 in early April, and the Sox obviously think his bat may be ready already. So do they do it? And if they do, do they brush off the service-time concerns and let him start on Opening Day? The White Sox signed both Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert to six-year deals before they made their Opening Day debuts, Jiménez signing on March 22. Might Vaughn’s placement on the roster depend on his willingness to sign a similar deal?
NRI That-Guy: C Jonathan Lucroy
The White Sox have former number-one pick Tim Beckham and busted Phillies prospect Nick Williams in camp, but Lucroy takes this spot for his surprising career path. Lucroy was once one of the best catchers in baseball. From 2012 to 2016, primarily with the Brewers, he hit .291/.353/.465 (120 OPS+) with excellent work behind the plate, made two All-Star teams, and finished fourth in the National League’s MVP voting in 2014. Then, in 2017, his power vanished, and, in 2018, his ability to get on base followed. Now, he’s a non-roster journeyman hoping to snag a backup job with anyone who will take him. In the last three years and change, he has tried the A’s, Angels, Cubs, Red Sox, Phillies, and now the White Sox.
Sneak Peak: 1B Andrew Vaughn
We should get to see plenty of Vaughn in exhibition action this spring, as he’ll be battling for a spot in the Opening Day lineup. The 14th-best prospect in baseball, per my aggregated list, Vaughn’s value is all in his bat, so it shouldn’t be difficult to tell how he’s doing.
Cleveland Baseball Club
Location: Goodyear Ballpark, Goodyear, AZ
New Duds: OF Eddie Rosario
The last time Cleveland signed an outfielder to a guarantee equal to or greater than the $8 million they gave Rosario earlier this month was during the 2013-14 offseason, when they gave David Murphy a two-year, $10 million contract and signed Michael Brantley to a four-year, $25 million extension, which bought out two years of Brantley’s free agency (one via a club option) for what proved to be $19 million.
That alone makes the addition of Rosario notable. However, Rosario is also a longtime Central-division foe who has done more damage against Cleveland than any other team. Across six seasons, 93 games, and 371 plate appearances, Rosario has hit .301/.337/.560 with 22 home runs and four triples against Cleveland. Amidst yet another dismal offseason, putting that player in a Cleveland uniform is a small ray of light.
Big Change: No more Lindor
With apologies to Corey Kluber (who only pitched every fifth day) and José Ramírez (who lacks Lindor’s outgoing personality), Francisco Lindor was the face of Cleveland baseball almost from the moment he arrived in the majors in 2015. He was the team’s best player, its brightest star, and played the most visible and important defensive position outside of the battery. What might hurt most of all about the Lindor trade is that not every team, regardless of their place on the competitive spectrum, has a player that it would hurt this much to lose. Who is the Mariners’ Francisco Lindor? What about the Yankees’? Cleveland (and the Rockies) had that guy, and then they traded him. Andrés Giménez may prove to be a very good major-league shortstop, but he’ll never be to this team what Francisco Lindor was.
Big Battle: Outfield
Josh Naylor is expected to fill the vacancy at first base created by Carlos Santana’s departure. Rosario will be in left. That leaves an open call for center and right. Oscar Mercado and Jordan Luplow likely lead the charge there, but both are right-handed hitters coming off lousy seasons, so they could be saddled with left-handed platoon partners. Combatants there include Bradley Zimmer, Jake Bauers, Daniel Johnson, and top prospect Nolan Jones (see below), with non-roster lefties Billy Hamilton and Ben Gamel throwing their hats in the ring, as well.
Then there’s this next guy . . .
Big Question: Will Cleveland convert Amed Rosario to centerfield?
Prior to the 2017 season, Rosario (that’s “A. Rosario” on your scorecard, with Cleveland having added two unrelated Rosarios this offseason) was a top-10 prospect and the supposedly can’t-miss Mets Shortstop of the Future. He made his major-league debut that August, but he hasn’t really hit, and proved to not be such a great fielder, either. Now, he’s 25, in Cleveland, and stuck behind the same, younger Mets shortstop prospect who eclipsed him last year. Rosario is still very fast, though, and the Mets had flirted with the idea of moving him to centerfield once it became obvious that Giménez was the better option at short. Cleveland now has both players and may opt to do the same thing, particularly given their lack of a reliable centerfielder. If so, you can add him to the scrum described above.
NRI That-Guy: CF Billy Hamilton
Relievers Blake Parker and Oliver Pérez have a real chance to make the team, Bryan Shaw is back in a Cleveland uniform, converted outfielder Anthony Gose is in camp and still trying to make it as a left-handed pitcher at the age of 30, and I already mentioned former Brewer Ben Gamel. However, Billy Hamilton remains a uniquely enjoyable player to watch, particularly in games that don’t count and when he doesn’t have a bat in his hand. Hamilton’s Sprint Speed has come back into the pack in recent years. Now 30, he’s no longer the fastest man in baseball. Last year, according to Statcast, he was closer to average among centerfielders (the fastest position on the field, on average) than to the league’s elite runners (Tim Locastro, Roman Quinn, Adam Engel, Trea Turner, and Byron Buxton were the five who cracked 30 feet per second). Still, the idea of Hamilton using every ounce of speed available to him to win a spot on this team is an enticing one. Hopefully he’ll play enough this spring to make a circus catch or two and take an extra base that no one even though was possible. After all, his opportunities to do those things have almost dried up.
Sneak Peak: 3B Nolan Jones
Cleveland’s second-round pick in 2016, Jones is a budding Three True Outcomes slugger, who should walk, homer, and strikeout in abundance. He topped out at Double-A in 2019, but he’ll be 23 in May and Cleveland has toyed with moving him to the outfield to get him to the majors faster (and because he’s no great shakes at the hot corner to begin with). It will be interesting to see if they use him in the pastures during the exhibition schedule. If they do, add Jones to the list of right-handed hitters competing for an outfield spot.
Kansas City Royals
Location: Surprise Stadium, Surprise, AZ
New Duds: LF Andrew Benintendi
New Royals first baseman Carlos Santana was a 2019 All-Star who, in 151 career games and 663 plate appearances against the Royals, hit .288/.416/.537 with 31 homers and 119 walks, but he’s also heading in to his age-35 season. Benintendi is nine years younger, has three years of team control remaining, and seemed like he was on a path to stardom as recently as 2018. If either of those players is going to remain in Kansas City long enough to play on a contending Royals team, it’s Benintendi, who is certainly familiar enough from his championship run with the Red Sox in 2018, which included two memorable Benintendi catches in left field.
Big Change: Left field
Alex Gordon—arguably one of the top 10 players in Royals history, an elite draft pick who spent his entire 14-year career in Kansas City, helping to lead the Royals to two pennants and their second championship—retired at the end of the 2020 season at the age of 36. Gordon was the Royals’ regular left fielder for each of the last 10 seasons, winning eight Gold Gloves at the position over that time. Now, he’s gone and the position goes to Benintendi, who seemed destined for a similar and possibly even superior career with the Red Sox, but can Benintendi fill Gordo’s shoes?
Big Battle: Second base
For a team with as little hope as the Royals have in 2021, Kansas City has a surprisingly stable lineup, rotation, and back-end of the bullpen. Barring injury, the only real uncertainty I can see in there is that incumbent second baseman Nicky Lopez, who will be 26 next month, is a career .228/.279/.307 (57 OPS+) hitter. Lopez is an excellent fielder, but the Royals may not want to live with that bat much longer. They don’t really have an alternative on the 40-man roster, however. Enter non-roster invitee Hanser Alberto, who hit .299/.322/.413 (96 OPS+) in 781 plate appearances for the Orioles over the last two seasons while making 75 starts at second base. The two could platoon, with Lopez the left-hander, but don’t rule out Alberto winning the job outright.
Big Question: Is Benintendi a good player or a bad one?
I would have preferred these not all be about Benintendi (the Big Battle wasn’t!), but he just happens to fit each situation. In this case, the Big Question in Royals camp really is about what the team has acquired in the 26-year-old left fielder. Can they get him back on the path to stardom? Is he a busted prospect on which the Red Sox, the team that knows him better than any other, knew exactly when to cut bait? We won’t get the full answer this spring, but his path back to a successful major league career starts with a confidence-building Spring Training.
NRI That-Guy: RHP Ervin Santana
Ervin Santana is 38 and has made just eight major-league starts over the last three years, but, as anyone who follows him on twitter can tell you, he loves baseball, and he’s not going to quit until he has exhausted every opportunity. Santana is also a two-time All-Star and 15-year veteran with 149 wins to his credit, so he trumps even the return of former Royals relief ace Wade Davis (now 35 and coming off a couple of brutal seasons) as the top that-guy in camp.
Sneak Peak: SS Bobby Witt Jr.
The son of the control-challenged Rangers right-hander, Bobby Witt Jr. was the second-overall pick in the 2019 draft and looked so advanced coming out of his Texas high school that he’s already here in big-league camp despite having just 37 professional games under his belt. The 13th-best prospect in all of baseball (and a top-10 dude per Baseball Prospectus and MLB Pipeline), Witt is a five-tool stud who will turn 21 in June and is expected to advance quickly.
Detroit Tigers
Location: Publix Field at Joker Marchant Stadium, Lakeland, FL
New Duds: C Wilson Ramos
Wilson is a two-time All-Star and an 11-year veteran who should serve the Tigers’ young pitchers well and provide a solid bat in the lineup and leadership in the clubhouse. He’s not the most exciting addition, but he might be a perfect one for a team at the Tigers’ stage of rebuilding.
Big Change: MGR A.J. Hinch
Hinch is a low-key manager. That’s arguably why he’s here with the Tigers and not still with the Astros: he failed to sufficiently stand up to his own team’s sing-stealing scheme. So, he won’t bring change by sheer force of personality. Still, he’s a manager that is used to winning, which is something the Tigers haven’t had for a while. Brad Ausmus was a first-time manager taking over a good team in 2014. Ron Gardenhire finished his Twins career with four losing seasons, then coached for a year and took two years off before replacing Ausmus in 2018. Hinch, meanwhile, posted a .594 winning percentage in five years with the Astros. In his final three years with the team (2017 to ’19), the Astros won 100 or more games each year plus two pennants and a World Series.
That doesn’t mean that Hinch will turn the Tigers’ into instant winners, no manager could, but the soon-to-be-47-year-old might manage with more urgency than the 62-year-old Gardenhire did last year, and while many of Hinch’s decisions with the Astros likely came from the front office, he will surely be a more progressive manager, as well. After all, in 2019, the year that Hinch became the first manager to go through an entire season without issuing an intentional walk, Gardenhire called for 24 of them. Then again, a manager has to manage the players he has, so it will be interesting to see if Hinch is more amenable to old-school tactics now that he’s managing a team that can’t win by sheer force of talent.
Big Battle: The infield corners
Jeimer Candelario will hold down either third or first base, but which depends on who the Tigers settle on for the other. Prospect Isaac Paredes got the bulk of the playing time at third base last year, but he skipped Triple-A to do it and flat-lined at the plate, so he may be headed for a Triple-A debut before being reinstalled at the hot corner in Detroit. Utility men Niko Goodrum and Harold Castro are always around to suck up extra playing time where needed, but the real contenders here, other than Paredes, are among the non-roster invitees.
Renato Núñez, who will be 27 in April, hit .250/.316/.457 (105 OPS+) with 30-homer power over the last three years for the Rangers and Orioles. He’s more of a first baseman than a third baseman, but has played both in the majors. Aderlin Rodriguez is 29 and has never played in the majors, but he, too, can play either side of the diamond, he’s a career .269/.320/.464 hitter in the minors, he raked in his first crack at Triple-A in 2019, and he spent last year with the Orix Buffaloes in Nippon Professional Baseball, which is as close to major-league-level competition as you can get outside of the major-leagues. The Tigers also have infielder Greg Garcia in camp, he’s more of a utility type with a weak bat, but he is an established major leaguer with experience at third base.
Big Question: Can Casey Mize prove 2020 was a fluke?
The list of elite prospects that bomb on their first exposure to the major leagues but rebound to have good to great careers is a long one. Mize, the top pick in the 2018 draft, has accomplished the bombing part, going 0-3 with a 6.99 ERA in seven major-league starts last eyar. Now to see if he can manage the rebound. Having skipped over Triple-A for his debut last year, he’ll likely head there for the first time, along with Paredes, to start the season. So, this isn’t about him pitching his way into the Opening Day rotation. The Tigers just want to see him pitch well in camp, with consistency and confidence, so that they can have confidence he’ll be ready for that rebound later in the year.
NRI That-Guy: RHP Julio Teheran
Teheran was the top pitching prospect in baseball prior to the 2011 season and similarly well-regarded the following year. He finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting in 2013, was an All-Star in 2014 and ’16, and posted a 121 ERA+ as recently as 2019. In seven years in the Braves’ rotation, he posted 3.64 ERA (111 ERA+) while averaging 32 starts and 191 innings per season. This was a quality starting pitcher. Then, last year, he signed with the Angels and went 0-4 with a 10.05 ERA in nine starts. So here he is, with the Tigers, trying to put the pieces back together at the age of 30. Teheran struggled to hit 92 on the radar gun last year, after averaging 92 as recently as 2017, so keep an eye on his velocity, and on his ability to miss bats and keep the ball in the park, both of which vanished last year. He may be much closer to done than you would suspect for a 30-year-old with his track record.
Sneak Peak: 1B Spencer Torkelson
The top pick in last year’s draft, Arizona State product and Hall of Name candidate Spencer Torkelson isn’t a candidate for a corner infield spot with the major-league team this spring, but he’s not expected to stay in the minors for long; possibly only this year. Thus, we should get a good look at him this spring. The seventh-best prospect in baseball in the aggregate (third per MLB Pipeline), the 21-year-old Torkelson is a monster bat in waiting.
Newswire
Mariners’ Mather Resigns
Kevin Mather resigned as president and chief executive officer of the Mariners on Monday. If you missed it, Mather was exceedingly candid about his team in a video chat with the Bellevue, Washington, Rotary Club on February 5. The video surfaced over the weekend and prompted outrage over some of Mather’s comments, which I detailed in Monday’s newsletter.
As scandals go, this is pretty tame. Mather made a few culturally and personally insensitive comments about some of the Mariners’ players, but mostly amid praise for those same players. That wasn’t what forced his resignation, anyway. Most likely, Mariners chairman and managing partner John Stanton requested Mather’s resignation because of Mather’s comments about the manipulation of players’ service time, which is an open secret in the sport, but is sure to be a headache for Stanton and the Mariners’ front office, if not the owners as a whole as they enter negotiations with the union over a new collective bargaining agreement this fall.
That is to say, Mather lost his job not because he said something controversial, but because he did something detrimental to his employer. He lost his job for work reasons. The president of a team should know better than to brag about service-time manipulation in public. In that way, Mather is the most recent victim of our current reality in which everything we do happens online. A year ago, Mather likely could have said the same things to that Rotary Club in person, and none of them would have left that room of senior-citizen Mariners fans. This year, however, they had to do the event remotely, so someone recorded it and posted it online, likely for the Rotary Club members who couldn’t watch it live. Someone outside of the Rotary Club found it, and it blew up in Mather’s face.
That’s not to excuse Mather. He should have known better. Failing to understand that your video chat with the public might reach a wider audience than intended is evidence that you are not qualified to hold such a high position in this environment. Spilling company tea in public is very much a fireable offense in any job. That doesn’t mean Mather should blacklisted, but it speaks to his competence.
All of that said, Mather lost his job for telling a truth that everyone in the game of baseball acknowledges. Teams manipulate service time to extend control of their best prospects.
As I wrote on Monday, there was no more blatant example of this than the Kris Bryant situation. In Spring Training 2015, Kris Bryant hit like a video game version of Babe Ruth. Everyone knew he was going to be the Cubs’ third baseman that season. The only question was if the Cubs would put him on the Opening Day roster or start him out in the minors to prevent him from acquiring a full year of service time for that season, thus delaying his free agency by a year. Under the pretense of having him “work on his defense,” the Cubs sent Bryant to the minors, then recalled him on the very first day after he could no longer obtain that full year of service time. We all saw it coming. Before the Cubs decided to start Bryant out in the minors, I wrote an article for SI.com saying they would, and the day before his promotion, I wrote another saying, essentially, “okay, you can call him up now,” and the Cubs did.
Bryant eventually filed a grievance over the decision, arguing that this was blatant manipulation of his service time, which it was, and that such explicit manipulation is against the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, which it is. He lost that grievance.
What does that tell us? If the Bryant situation didn’t violate the rules against manipulation of service time, than there are no rules against manipulation of service time, at least not any enforceable rules against it. So, Mather said that the Mariners were never going to bring their top prospects to the majors last year because they didn’t want to start their service clocks. He said that some top prospects won’t debut until a month or so into the season to suppress their service time, and that some others might not be promoted until subsequent seasons for similar reasons. He didn’t have to resign because he was operating the team that way. He had to resign because he was caught on camera admitting to operating the team that way. Nearly every team manipulates service time, and everyone knows it, but Mather is the guy who told Claude Rains’s Captain Renault in Casablanca (a movie written, by remarkable coincidence, by the grandfather of former Cubs team president Theo Epstein, the very executive who made the decisions in the Bryant situation) that there was gambling going on in Rick’s.
We know, you idiot. Shut up! Ugh, now I have to blow my whistle and pretend to be shocked. I’ll expect your resignation on my desk this afternoon!
That’s what happened here, but don’t expect the service-time manipulation to stop. Everyone will go right back to pretending there’s nothing to see here, and we’ll all forget about Kevin Mather, if we haven’t already. The union, which won’t forget about Mather, will try to put stricter language into the next CBA to guard against that manipulation, or will attempt to alter the service-time rules to make it more difficult to do, but the owners, despite knowing full well they’ve been operating in bad faith, will want concessions from the players in return, and those new rules are unlikely to be any more effective in curbing the manipulation. After all, if the Bryant situation wasn’t a violation, what possibly could be?
Transaction Reactions
Diamondbacks sign RHP Tyler Clippard ($2.25M/1yr + $3.5M mutual option)
Clippard is the last of the four active games-pitched leaders to sign, and the second to do so with the Diamondbacks, who gave Joakim Soria a one-year deal worth $3.5 million (but no option) earlier this month. Clippard is the youngest of the four (see table below), and the most well-traveled, so much so that this is a return engagement in Arizona. Clippard previously opened the 2016 season with the Diamondbacks before Arizona flipped him back to his original team, the Yankees, at that year’s deadline for right-hander Vicente Campos. Sadly, that means that Clippard, who played for ten teams in the last seven years, won’t be adding to that total, at least not until this year’s trading deadline. Seemingly indefatigable, Clippard posted a 163 ERA+ (2.86 ERA) in 88 innings over the last two seasons with a 0.86 WHIP, and 4.74 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Braves claim OF Phillip Ervin off waivers from Cubs
On September 1 of last year, Ervin was still with the organization that drafted him 27th overall in 2013, the Cincinnati Reds. This is the third time he has been claimed off waivers since: the Mariners claimed him first, on September 3, then the Cubs on December 22, and now the Braves. With Atlanta, he replaces Travis Demeritte as the fifth outfielder on the 40-man roster. Demeritte, claimed from the Tigers on February 12, was outrighted to Triple-A on Sunday. Ervin, 28, is a stocky right-handed-hitter who can do a little bit of everything (hit, hit for power, run, throw, play centerfield), but not enough of any of it to stick in the majors.
Red Sox claim RHP Joel Payamps off waivers from the Blue Jays
This is the third waiver claim of the winter for Payamps, and second time he has been claimed by the Red Sox, who claimed him from the Diamondbacks on November 25, then lost him to the Blue Jays on February 10, only to reclaim him now, less than two weeks later. As I wrote two weeks ago, Payamps, who will be 27 in April, doesn’t seem likely to crack a big-league rotation at this point, though he’s higher on the depth chart in Boston than he was in Toronto. He’s a better fit in the bullpen as yet another mid-90s sinker/slider guy, but likely headed back to Triple-A to start the year.
Giants sign LHP Scott Kazmir (minor league, non-roster invitee)
I have thus far limited my Transaction Reactions to players joining a new team’s 40-man roster, but I have to make an exception in this case. Kazmir, the three-time All-Star and member of the 2008 Rays’ pennant-winning rotation, has signed a minor-league deal with the Giants in an attempt to re-start a major-league career that stalled out in 2017. Kazmir made 26 starts for the Dodgers in 2016, then missed the entire 2017 season (save for a few minor-league rehab starts) with hip and intercostal injuries. The Dodgers then traded Kazmir to the Braves that December in a big salary-dump deal that saw Adrián González head to Atlanta and Matt Kemp return to L.A. Kazmir’s velocity fell to the low 80s in Braves camp, and he was released before the 2018 season started.
Kazmir sat out the remainder of 2018 and ’19, but, last year, he made three starts and one relief appearance in the Constellation Energy League, a one-off, pandemic-era independent summer league comprised of four Texas-based teams. Kazmir’s CEL numbers were unspectacular (4.20 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 2.50 K/BB, 6.0 K/9), but Buster Olney, who reported this signing, also reports that Kazmir was hitting 93 miles per hour in a recent bullpen session. Good for him, but the 37-year-old’s chances of making the Giants would still seem to rank between slim and none, even if this is the team that was desperate enough to give Aaron Sanchez $4 million based off similar reports of bullpen velocity. Kazmir’s career rates include a 104 ERA+, 1.35 WHIP, and 2.36 strikeout-to-walk ratio, so it’s not like there’s a ton of upside here to begin with.
OF Shin-Soo Choo signs with Shinsegae Wyverns of the Korea Baseball Organization ($2.4M/1yr)
Choo, who posted a 122 OPS+ and accumulated 34.6 bWAR over a 16-year major league career, said he had richer offers from major-league teams but wanted to return home to Korea for his age-38 season to give back to the fans of his home country and so his parents could see him play in person, which they never have. Choo, born in Busan, South Korea, signed with the Mariners as an amateur free agent straight out of his Korean high school at the age of 18.
Aches and Pains
Red Sox OF Franchy Codero (IL): COVID-19
Cordero is the eighth player identified out of the nine who tested positive during intake testing. He has been placed on the COVID-19 injured list. (source) Meanwhile, Andrew Miller told the media on Tuesday that he had COVID-19 earlier this month, but he was not the ninth player to test positive, having already recovered before reporting. (source)
Rangers C Sam Huff: grade 2 hamstring strain
Grade 2 is medium severity. That’s not great for a catcher who had hopes of claiming the starting job in camp. Huff will rehab for two weeks then get a follow-up MRI. (source) Jose Trevino and offseason addition Jonah Heim are now the leading candidates for playing time behind the plate to start the year, with Drew Butera and John Hicks among the non-roster candidates.
Yankees RHP Clarke Schmidt: commonextensor strain in right elbow
That’s not a common strain, it’s a strain of the common extensor tendon. Schmidt, one of the Yankees’ top prospects, will be shut down for three to four weeks, but reportedly has no ulnar collateral ligament damage. (source)
White Sox 3B Yoán Moncada: right arm soreness
Just some early-camp throwing-arm soreness, according to the White Sox, but they are restricting his throwing a bit for now. (source) Hopefully this won’t prove to be a “Disastre Personal!”
Cleveland DH Franmil Reyes: sprained ankle
Reyes sprained his ankle “a few weeks ago,” which is enough time for it to have mostly healed, though Cleveland will surely let the 265-pound Reyes take it easy early in camp just to be sure. (source)
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Closing Credits
I tried to make an “I Left My Heart in (San) Francisco (Lindor)” pun in the Cleveland Spring Training Preview above. I couldn’t find it. I regret even mentioning it here, but that put me in mind to roll out that old chestnut for the closing credits. After all, as overused as the song’s title may be in headlines and jokes such as the one I failed to execute in this issue, how often do you actually hear it? (And, yes, I know they play it at the ballpark after Giants wins, the question stands.)
“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” is widely regarded as Tony Bennett’s biggest hit and signature song, though I quibble with both assertions. For one thing, it only reached number-19 on Billboard’s pop charts. Bennett had four songs that charted higher, and his biggest hit by the numbers was 1957’s “In The Middle of an Island,” which went to number-9 and spent 14 weeks in the top 40. Nobody remembers “In The Middle of an Island,” a corny, Hawaiian-influenced trifle Bennett was overqualified to sing. You’d be hard pressed to even find a Tony Bennett best-of collection that includes it.
They remember “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” though, which is an odd signature song for a kid from Astoria, Queens. The song did win Bennet Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Male Solo Vocal Performance in 1962 and the song and its eponymous album both went gold, so it was a hit of a different kind even in its day.
The song was written in 1953 by pianist George Cory and lyricist Douglass Cross, who were 33-year-old Bay Area natives trying to make it as songwriters in New York at the time. They left their hearts in San Francisco, Bennett just sang the song. On the recommendation of his musical director, Bennett included the song in his December 1961 New Year’s set at the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. It was so well received that he recorded it that February, almost exactly 59 years ago, initially releasing it as the B-side of “Once Upon A Time.” The disc jockeys all flipped the single over and played “San Francisco,” and one wonders if it’s initial B-side status suppressed its chart performance relative to its actual, cultural impact. At any rate, Cory and Cross, both of whom died in their 50s in the 1970s, never had another hit, but the one they had earned them accolades for decades beyond their deaths.
The song itself is rather slight. It doesn’t have a chorus, and the first 40 seconds of its mere 2-minute, 50-second running time is spent on a melancholy introduction over a tinkling piano, panned left, in which Bennett explains that he is unmoved by Paris, Rome, and Manhattan. Bennet then hits the title line, the only time it is said in the entire song, with the band—upright bass, brushed drums, and strings joining the piano—coming in on the word “heart.” The song is slow and contemplative, with a pretty, but not terribly memorable melody.
As for Bennett’s performance, he has been so visible in his senior years that many likely think of his raspy, clipped delivery as his signature style, but, during his prime in the 1950s and ’60s, he had more of an operatic croon, with long, clear, sustained tones and a lovely vibrato. This is that Tony Bennett, and his ability to stretch out those notes is part of what allows the song to keep such a glacial tempo.
Despite the slow pace, the song does slowly crescendo, with the strings surging, and Bennett’s voice rising to the concluding phrase, “when I come home to you, San Francisco, your golden sun will shine for me,” which seems to arrive just as the song settles into a groove. Some horns join the arrangement on “home,” and Bennett really drives it home on “sun,” which is where the band drops out to let Bennett belt out that note free from the song’s rhythm.
It’s an impeccably arranged piece of music, a lovely little mash note to the writers’ home town, and Bennett’s voice is a treasure, but I fail to understand why such a little wisp of a thing, with no hook and such a geographically specific sentiment, caught on the way it did. Bennett has better songs and better performances from that period (and if there’s anyone who likes that kind of crooning who hasn’t bothered to check out Bennett’s work from the period, correct that immediately). Maybe I’m just annoyed that someone as New York as Astoria’s Anthony Dominick Benedetto has been saddled with a signature song about San Francisco, but then we got Joe DiMaggio, so I guess we’re even (though, for what it’s worth, Tony Bennett seems like a much better human being than DiMaggio was).
It was recently revealed, via a long feature in AARP, that Bennett, now 94, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2016. Bennett is still singing and has a new album of duets with fellow New Yorker Lady Gaga coming out soon, but he’s already receding from public life. So, if it takes “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” to keep his legacy alive and point listeners to a time when he was in full voice, what do I have to complain about?
Cleveland baseball fans, however, they have plenty.
The Cycle will return on Friday to wrap up the Spring Training Previews with Francisco Lindor’s new home, the NL East.
In the meantime, please sing this newsletter’s praises where and whenever you can.