The Cycle, Issue 4: Dedicated Follower of Fashion
My annual uniform rankings, the owners’ latest proposal, what the Cardinals are getting in Arenado, Didi’s back in Philly, and Cleveland signs an outfielder
In this issue of The Cycle . . .
Continuing a tradition I started at The Athletic, this week I present my annual uniform rankings, in which I order each team according to its overall on-field look, from worst to first. I start today with the bottom ten teams. The next ten will be in Wednesday’s Cycle, and we’ll finish with the top 10 on Friday.
Also:
Love’s Labour’s Lost: The owners’ 154-game proposal and why the players are expected to reject it
Kind of a Big Deal: What the Cardinals are getting in Nolan Arenado
Transaction Reaction: Didi, Joc, Cleveland spending money on an outfielder, some faded pitching prospects get a lifeline, and more
Reader Survey
Closing Credits
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You’re Wearing That? Annual uniform rankings, numbers 30–21
I’ll admit, I was surprised when The Athletic accepted my pitch to rank all 30 team’s uniforms two years ago. I’ve been nerding out about uniforms as long as I’ve been a baseball fan. I used to draw them over and over again as a kid, and I’ve always kept a close eye, and strong opinion, on the various changes over the years. When I was learning the game’s history, Mark Okkonen’s Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century was almost as important to me as MacMillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia, and the Hall of Fame’s Dressed to the Nines database, which builds off the late Okkonen’s work, holds a similar place for me today relative to Baseball-Reference.com. Much to my surprise and delight, the rankings I did two years ago were popular enough for The Athletic to ask me to repeat them last year, and that column led to a uniform-centric appearance on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove,” quite a journey from doodling uniforms while lying on my belly on the family room floor.
Last year brought a slew of new uniforms, including complete redesigns for the Padres, Brewers, Rangers, and Diamondbacks. This year, unsurprisingly, uniforms have not been the priority, and I have thus far not heard of any changes for the coming season. So, instead of anticipating the new looks for the coming season, I’m going to rank the 30 teams based on what they actually wore last year, tossing out last year’s rankings and starting fresh based on having both seen all of those new kits in action and knowing where and just how often teams wore each of their different combinations.
These rankings are completely subjective and entirely my personal opinion, though I did try to be consistent in applying my point of view. On “Hot Stove,” Harold Reynolds accused me of liking “boring” uniforms. I prefer to say that I like a “clean” look. Beyond the simple aesthetics of the individual pieces, I tend to disdain too many alternates, too much mix-and-matching, and a lack of organizing principles as to what a team wears and when. To me, a uniform should have a distinctive look, something that immediately lets you know what team you’re watching without having to read the jersey or see the cap insignia. You should also immediately be able to tell if that team is at home or on the road. That last is one reason that I dislike the new trend of teams wearing all-powder-blue uniforms (jerseys and pants) at home. I also value cohesion across a team’s entire uniform set. Using different shades of a color, different color combinations, or different fonts or wordmarks may make for fun collecting, but it muddies a team’s identity. You’ll see a fair amount of all of those things in this week’s bottom ten teams.
All of that said, despite the proliferation of alternate jerseys and caps, we’re in an above-average period for major-league uniforms. Most of the teams look good out there. We’ve escaped the ugly trends of the late ’90s and early ’00s (black-for-black’s sake, drop-shadows, sleeveless jerseys, a fascination with purple and teal). Most of the worst uniforms of recent years (most notably those of the 2004–2011 Blue Jays and 2016–19 Diamondbacks) have been replaced. The teams below were the ten worst-dressed in 2020 in part because someone had to be. As is always the case when things get ranked, worst doesn’t necessarily mean bad. It just means not as good as the others.
Note: The visuals below are all assembled from retail images, most of them from MLBshop.com. The caps are all photographs of actual caps (with the gold New Era sticker still on the bills), but the jerseys appear to have been created digitally on a template. In several cases, I did some additional photoshopping to increase the accuracy of a jersey (adding a missing patch or, quite often, the numbers). In every case, if you are reading on substack, you can click to enlarge. Also, I want to give a blanket credit to UniformLineup.com and Chris Creamer’s SportsLogos.net, which were and are invaluable references for who wore what when, both within the 2020 season (UniformLineup) and over multiple seasons (SportsLogos).
With that, here are bottom 10 teams:
30. Minnesota Twins
There was a moment there in the early 2010s when the Twins were probably in the top half of the majors in terms of their overall uniform set. Their navy TC cap (without the gold outline) is arguably the best in baseball. They introduced the road-grey jersey above in 2010, and it was an easy upgrade over the pinstriped one with the arched “Minnesota” in block letters that they wore from 1987 to 2009. They complemented that new grey jersey with a red-brimmed version of their cap, wore pinstripes at home, and included a cream, pinstriped throwback to their 1960s look as a home alternate. Even with a couple of navy alternate jerseys cluttering things up, that was a handsome uniform set.
Then, in 2015, the organization decided to ditch the home pinstripes and add a gold outline to their wordmark and cap logo despite the fact that gold had never been one of the Twins’ colors. Their look has been sinking like a rock ever since. In 2016, they added that eyesore of a red alternate. In 2017, they added the red cap to go with it. In 2019, they stopped wearing the ’60s throwback and added that navy alternate with the old-school “Twins” wordmark. Then, last year, they added the powder blue. The powder blue is a faithful update of their 1973–86 road uniform, with thinner stripes, and buttons and a belt in place of the pullover top and elastic waistband. The problem is, the Twins wear their new power-blues exclusively at home.
In fact, in 2020, the Twins wore the powder blue more any other home uniform, donning it 12 times. The red, white, and navy “Twins” jerseys are all also home-only uniforms; they wore those nine, six, and four times, respectively. The powder blue is by far the best looking of the Twins four home uniforms (I can’t stand the gold trim on the other three), but it should be a road uniform. As it is, the Twins are much better looking on the road, limiting themselves to the grey and navy “Minnesota” jerseys and wearing the classic version of their cap. Still, I miss the red-brimmed road cap, which was last seen in 2018.
The Twins’ six jerseys are the most of any major league team. They have three caps, two different word marks at home, and powder-blue violation. They don’t mix-and-match, but that’s their only salvation. This is the worst uniform set in the majors.
29. Texas Rangers
Note: the Rangers’ jerseys and caps do actually match; that they don’t above is not reflective of the Rangers’ actual uniforms. This is true for all of the teams, but was most obvious here.
The Rangers introduced this new set last year, and it is a total boondoggle. They could have simplified their look: established red or blue as their primary color and come up with something consistent and cohesive. Instead, they threw a bunch of ideas out and apparently decided to use them all. Like the Twins, the Rangers have fewer problems on the road, where they wear either the grey or blue jersey with their blue cap. At home, however, it’s a total mess. They’ll wear the white jersey with the red or royal blue cap, the powder blue jersey with the powder-blue or red “T” cap, and the red jersey with either of the two red caps.
That red TX cap is a mess in and of itself. It looks like a spring training cap. The star is both nowhere near Arlington within the outline of the state (it’s a uniform custom to have the star indicate the home city) and seems to imply that the cap says T.X., which stands for nothing (even using the state abbreviation of TX is a little strange, imagine the Twins with “MN” on their cap). The new “Rangers” wordmark is sloppy; the letters don’t line up. Also, while you can’t see it above, they use a drop shadow on the back of a jersey that has a regular outline on the front. Mix in the powder-blue violation, and it’s impressive that the Twins were able to beat Texas to the bottom. The only reason the Rangers aren’t last is that their overall color scheme is pleasing to the eye, which is not true of the Twins’ uniforms with those dirty gold accents.
28. Miami Marlins
The Marlins are proof that there’s more than one way to make a bad uniform set. The polar opposite of the Rangers, the Marlins’ uniforms are simple, clean, well-organized, and consist of just one cap and three jerseys. The problem is the cap logo and the wordmark on the black jersey, which they wear both at home and on the road, are illegible from any reasonable distance. Similarly, the colors on the white and grey uniforms are so subtle that they practically disappear from a similar remove. The Marlins made a huge deal out their redesign after the 2018 season, touting their new shades of red and blue as “Our Colores,” colors supposedly evocative of Miami’s multi-ethnic community. Too bad you can’t see them from the stands, or from any television shot other than a close-up. I was afraid that would be the case when these uniforms were first announced, but I ranked them somewhere in the middle of the pack that year due to the clean design. After watching the Marlins in the playoffs last year, however, I’m done with these. They’re the new version of the Padres’ generic-label packaging. At least you could see the Padres’ cap logo.
That said, these would be easier to fix than the Padres’ were. Just fill the “M” on the cap and the “Marlins” on the black jersey with white (note that Nike made sure you could see their swoosh), make the sleeve stripes a little thicker, maybe put some stripes around the collar, and add a contrast-colored button and/or bill to the cap. Just putting a blue button atop that black cap would add so much. If they want to go all the way, the Marlins could also swap out the black on the other two jerseys for the red or blue. They’re your “colores,” Miami, use them!
27. Houston Astros
If I never see that orange Astros jersey on a ballfield again, it will be too soon. The Astros will wear that both at home and on the road, and I’ve had my full of it over the last six years. I was very happy when the Astros brought back their classic “H-star” caps in 2013, but a close look shows unnecessary beveling and shading in the logo that was not on the originals. That cap is still the best thing here, except perhaps for the tequila-sunrise side-panels on that navy alternate, but they wore that jersey just three times in 2020, and it has more of a spring-training-jersey feel. Back to the caps, why doesn’t the orange-billed cap (which they’ll wear with any of the three jerseys on the right) have a corresponding orange button?
The Astros have had some of the most memorable uniforms in major-league history, but these are somehow even more generic than the Marlins’. The letter font is straight from the original Colt .45s’ road unis, but the Colts’ home unis had that great smoking-gun wordmark, which then gave way to the Astros’ shooting star, and the landmark tequila-sunrise jerseys of the ’70s. This current set is just dullsville straight across, and ugly at that. They edge the Marlins only because of their legibility.
26. Colorado Rockies
Rumor has it the Rockies are planning new uniforms for 2022. I’ll be curious to see how much of a departure they make, as they’ve had the same basic look since their inaugural season of 1993. There have been constant tweaks over the years, of course, including changing the shade of purple (to a purplier purple) in 2017. The Rockies’ home uniform is sharp (in part because the pinstripes, which are purple, look black from a distance). The others are rather lame. The black sleeveless jersey is a ’90s relic that is well past its sell-by date. It’s the last sleeveless uniform in regular use in the majors, and the fact that the team wears it over black sleeves, instead of a contrasting color, makes it pointless. Then again, black and purple are not a great combination, in general. The cap is classy (they wear the all-black version at home and the purple-billed version on the road, regardless of their choice of purple, black, or standard jersey), but there’s still a lack of contrast to that color scheme that makes everything look dreary. The Rockies are the only major-league team currently using purple. Here’s hoping they make better use of it in 2022 and beyond.
25. Seattle Mariners
The Mariners didn’t come into existence in 1993, but the basic look of these uniforms did, and it’s feeling a bit stale and dated these days. As with the Rockies, the Mariners have a unique color scheme, but it could use some freshening up. The cream throwback to their original color scheme is fun, but it clashes with the rest of the set. Also, they wear their navy alternate way too much: 29 times in a 60-game season in 2020, most of those on the road. That navy alternate is an odd duck here. It’s the only jersey to use a specialized font for the numbers and player names (the others use block text on the back), the only one with a number on the front, and the only one without placket piping, which makes it somehow both more plain and more ornate than the others at the same time.
24. Tampa Bay Rays
In the NFL, the Chargers have used powder blue and yellow to produce some of the league’s best uniforms. The Rays can stake claim to that color combination in the majors, but have yet to explore its potential. Instead, they use the exact same navy wordmark and piping on four “different” jerseys. Worse yet, they wore that blasted navy-on-navy jersey 37 times in a 60-game season last year and 14 times in a 20-game postseason. The only bit of originality here is the nifty devil-ray patch and the alternate cap they wear with their Sunday powder blues, but the throwback logo on that cap is way too big, and the powder blues are way too dark. The Rays came close to something unique here, but after 13 years of this look, they to try something new.
23. San Francisco Giants
Does this seem low for the Giants? You might be right, but we’re already past the worst of the worst and into the respectable middle of the league in terms of appearance. San Francisco’s home cream and road grey are updates on the Giants’ classic 1960s look and are now classics in their own right thanks to the success the team had in the 2010s. Still, I can’t decide if the extra gold drop shadow on the wordmark is subtle genius or trying too hard. I do know that I don’t like either of the alternates at all.
The wordmark on the orange jersey dates back to 1947, but was only used on a jersey in the small window between 1978 and 1982 before being revived for that alternate in 2014. With the home and road jerseys using different fonts, that’s three different text treatments, and wordmark on the orange jersey seems too large. Meanwhile, the empty drop shadow on the interlocking SF on the black jersey bugs me. The Giants do respect order, however. They wear orange at home on Fridays, black at home on Saturdays, both always, and exclusively, with the orange-billed cap. The rest of their games feature their standard home and road uniforms with the all-black cap. The only exception in 2020 was for double-headers, when they wore an alternate with the black-billed cap in the nightcaps.
22. Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pirates brought back their ’90s road script last year on both the standard grey and the “neon” black road jerseys. I dig the script and love the grey, but the black suffers from legibility issues and loses that splash of red by turning the mascot’s bandana yellow on the left sleeve. That new road alternate also resulted in the Pirates adding another alternate cap (with a yellow outline around the P as opposed to the white outline of the existing alternate cap). They now have four caps, including the camouflage one worn on Wednesdays at home, which is too many.
Other complaints: the unbalanced location of the number and insignia on the home black alternate; the number font in general, which is just trying too hard; and the mere existence of the military uniform. I’m not a fan of baseball teams playing army dress-up. Still, the basic look here is a classic that makes good use of an underutilized color (yellow) with strong contrast and that nice splash of red on the sleeve. The Pirates are just a little bit of simplification away from being in the top half of these rankings.
21. Arizona Diamondbacks
During the four years that the Diamondbacks wore their diamond-infused “evolutionary” uniforms (2016–2019) I could not deride them loudly or often enough to get my fill. Then, last year, they got rid of all of the remaining absurdities of those uniforms, simplified their cap scheme to just three, and adopted this current set. They still have at least one too many caps and way too many jerseys (five), and the teal violates the color scheme, but I can’t help but acknowledge this as a handsome and well-coordinated set. The road grey and Sedona-red alternate are especially nice, and the black “A” cap looks sharp atop the black alternate. I might have ranked them even higher if not for the teal and the fact that they’re still mixing and matching way too much.
On the road, they largely stick to the grey and red (they wore the black just twice on the road last year). At home, however, they’ll wear any of the four non-grey jerseys, they’ll mix and match the two non-teal caps with the colored tops, and they actually wore the teal more often at home (nine times) than any of the others (red eight, black seven, white just six). If they were to simplify—say by dumping the teal and black—this team, which had been a distant 30th for so long, could rise even higher.
To be continued on Wednesday . . .
Holding Back the Year: MLB’s 154-game proposal
Pitchers and catchers are due to report to Spring Training in barely more than two weeks, but Major League Baseball’s owners are still trying to push that date back and restructure the season. Their concern, depending on your level of cynicism, is either over the current levels of community spread of COVID-19, particularly in Arizona (a very legitimate concern), or the fact that those infection rates will prevent fans from being able to pay their way into the ballpark to see workouts and exhibition games in the near term (emphasis on “pay”). The owners’ most recent proposal, made public on Friday, would push the start of Spring Training to March 22, Opening Day to April 28, shrink the season to 154 games (which was the pre-1961 standard) but pay the players their full salaries, keep the universal designated hitter, put 14 teams into the postseason (up from the usual 10, but down from last year’s 16), and expand the postseason by a week into November (a change reportedly approved by FOX, which broadcasts the World Series).
That all sounds reasonable, but the players are expected to reject it today. One of their sticking points is that expanded postseason. To my delight, the players are strongly against it out of the fear that it would allow teams to be less aggressive in the free-agent market. Some might argue that it’s late enough in the offseason that a change for the 2021 season wouldn’t effect this winter’s free agents. Plus, everything goes back on the table in December when the current collective bargaining agreement expires. However, the players appear not to want to set any kind of precedent of having expanded playoffs two years in a row, or to have caved on that issue so easily, as that’s a key bargaining chip for them for the fall. Plus, there are still some big-name free agents who remain unsigned, including Trevor Bauer, Justin Turner, Marcell Ozuna, and Nelson Cruz.
The players are also concerned about that 154-game schedule having fewer off-days and more double-headers, adding to the existing injury risk in going from a 60-game season to something closer to a full season. In addition, many appear to be taking the stance that this is all coming too late in the winter. Many of the pitchers have already begun workouts targeted to an on-time arrival at camp, and many have already booked travel and living arrangements.
The big question is if the players will make a counter-proposal, or if they’ll continue to hold a hard, and silent, line on playing the 2021 season as scheduled. Either way, they clock is ticking. Either the two sides come to terms on an alternate plan by the end of next week, or players will be showing up in camp the week after that. Stay tuned . . .
Rollin’ with Nolan: What the Cardinals are getting
The biggest news over the weekend was that the Cardinals had come to terms with the Rockies to acquire superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado. You won’t find that deal below in Transaction Reactions, however, because it is not yet finalized. We don’t know exactly what players the Rockies are getting back, and there are all sorts of financial and contractual details regarding money the Rockies are reportedly sending to St. Louis to help pay for Arenado’s contract and reported alterations to that contract that I’d rather not weigh in on until they are confirmed and official. What I can comment on, however, is exactly what the Cardinals will be getting in Arenado.
Put simply, Nolan Arenado has been one of the best players in baseball over the last half decade. Since 2015, he ranks third among all hitters in wins above replacement, per Baseball-Reference’s calculations, behind only Mike Trout and Mookie Betts (though, to be fair, a good distance behind both). Arenado was thus arguably the best player in the National League until Betts’ arrival last year. Since arriving in the majors in 2013, at the age of 22, he has won the Gold Glove at third base every year, eight straight and counting, and is already in the conversation about the greatest defensive third basemen in the game’s history.
On top of that, he is a four-time Silver Slugger who put up some eye-popping numbers as a member of the Rockies. From 2015 to 2019, his five All-Star seasons, he hit .300/.362/.575 while averaging 40 HR, 38 doubles, 347 total bases, 124 RBI, and 104 runs scored per year. Unsurprisingly, given the combination of his glove and his bat, he finished in the top eight in NL MVP voting every one of those five seasons.
Okay, now to temper that. First, those are Coors Field-inflated numbers. That doesn’t mean that Arenado isn’t an elite bat, only that there’s a little padding in those stats relative to one could have expected from him at sea level. Arenado’s OPS+ over those five peak seasons was 129. Among players with 2,000 or more plate appearances from 2015 to 2019, that 129 OPS+ ranks twentieth, just behind Anthony Rendon and tied with Miguel Cabrera and Carlos Correa. Perhaps more relevantly, Betts, who also has tremendous value in the field, is just a few points above him at 134. So, we’re still talking about an elite player, but not necessarily a monster, 40-homer-a-year bat.
It’s also worth noting here that, though Arenado’s OPS+ over those five years matches that of Cabrera and Correa, he had roughly 1,000 more plate appearances over that span than either of them. That speaks to another thing Arenado has done exceptionally well in his career thus far: stay healthy. In those five peak seasons, he averaged 157 games and 675 plate appearances per season.
Now the more acute concern: Arenado will turn 30 in April, and he’s coming off both his worst season at the plate since he was a rookie (.253/.303/.434, 84 OPS+) and his only significant injury, an inflamed AC joint and bone bruise in his left shoulder that ended his 2020 season in mid-September. It’s possible those two are related, and surely this deal won’t be done until the Cardinals can be sure of the health of Arenado’s shoulder, but here’s where I turn back around and tell you why Arenado’s 2020 season doesn’t worry me all that much.
First thing’s first: it’s his left shoulder. Arenado’s outstanding play at third has many sources—his quickness, instincts, reflexes, inventiveness—but one very large part of it is his ability to throw a strike to first base from seemingly anywhere on the diamond. If the injury was to his throwing shoulder, his right, that could have had a big impact on his value on the field. The left isn’t nearly as large a cause for concern.
Second: if you look behind the numbers, there wasn’t a radical or particularly alarming change in Arenado’s offensive game last year. He actually made more contact than usual, dropping both his strikeout and walk rates. His exit velocity was only slightly down (87.8 mph vs. his career average of 89.5), and he wasn’t beating the ball into the ground. Rather, he seemed to be getting under pitches and popping them up more often. His launch angle was a career high 19.1 degrees, as was his pop-up rate, with 20 percent of his fly balls remaining in the infield. As a result, his batting average on balls in play was way down (.241 vs. .299 career), and so were his overall results. That seems like something that could be fixed with a small adjustment, or simply a winter off and a healthier front shoulder.
If Arenado can be even 80 percent of what he was in his 20s as he moves into his 30s and down out of the mountains, he should continue to be a star and a very valuable player in St. Louis. Of course, there’s a catch to that, too. Arenado is under contract through 2026, his age-35 season, but he has an opt-out in that deal after this coming season, and reports say that the terms of the trade will include the Cardinals adding a second opt-out after 2022. That first opt-out is one reason why the Rockies made this move now, and both that and the reported second opt-out are among the reasons why the early reports of the return the Rockies are getting have been so unimpressive. I’ll unpack all of that once we have the official word. In the meantime, here are some other transactions that may interested you:
Transaction Reactons
Phillies sign SS Didi Gregorius ($28M/2yrs)
A week ago, in The Cycle’s debut issue, I ranked the top 10 free agents who were, then, still unsigned. Five of them have signed since. The Phillies landed two of them. That’s good news for Philly fans. However, the two they landed, Gregorius and catcher J.T. Realmuto, were the two who played for Philadelphia last year, so things haven’t changed all that much for the Phillies, whose biggest offseason addition to a team that went 28-32 last year remains reliever Archie Bradley. Still, better to have Didi and J.T. than to lose them.
Gregorius looked like his pre-Tommy-John-surgery self last year, hitting .284/.339/.488 with 10 homers in the shortened season. Add his excellent fielding at shortstop, speed on the bases, and the fact that he’s one of the most interesting people in the game, and this contract is a bargain for the Phillies. Its two-year term also allows Didi to avoid competing against next winter’s glut of free-agent shortstops, though one wonders how much opportunity will be left for him the year after, when he’s heading into his age-33 season.
Cleveland signs OF Eddie Rosario ($8M/1yr)
Holy cats, Cleveland signed an outfielder!? Over the past three years, Cleveland’s outfielders, as a group, have been 5.5 runs below replacement level, per Baseball-Reference’s calculations. They were below replacement in each of those three seasons, and, in 2020, sank to a stunning -3.3 bWAR over just 60 games. Cleveland’s best outfielder over that span, per cumulative bWAR, was Michael Brantley, who left as a free agent after the 2018 season. Brantley also still leads Cleveland outfielders in plate appearances over those three seasons, two of which he played for Houston. Nineteen other Cleveland players played at least a quarter of their games in the outfield over the last three years. The top three, by bWAR, have been Oscar Mercado (2.1), Jordan Luplow (1.9), and Tyler Naquin (1.9). Again, that’s cumulative over three seasons (though Mercado and Luplow were not on the team in 2018).
Despite that complete lack of even league-average outfielders, the biggest contract Cleveland handed out to a free-agent outfielder between the end of the 2017 season and this past Friday was a one-year, $1.5 million deal for Domingo Santana. Santana posted a 60 OPS+ in 24 games last year and will spend the 2021 season with the Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball.
In that context, an $8 million deal for Rosario, a 29-year-old outfielder with a career .478 slugging percentage, feels like the dam breaking. Unfortunately for Cleveland fans, Rosario may still fall short of league average. He has power, and he’s fun to root for, but he’s not much defensively, and he almost never walks. This is, after all, a player the Twins non-tendered in December. You know the Twins, they’re the team Cleveland is trying to catch in the American League Central. Or should I say was trying to catch. Rosario instantly becomes Cleveland’s best outfielder, but it would have been nice to see the team make an effort in this direction before trading Francisco Lindor.
Cubs sign OF Joc Pederson ($7M/1yr + mutual option)
Pederson was an All-Star as a rookie and has more career Home Run Derby homers (99 in just two Derbies) than any player in the competition’s history. His power is unquestioned, but, in actual games, he struggles to hit for average (.230 career) and his walk rate has been on a steady decline throughout his major-league career. That’s a bad combination, and it is exacerbated by a rising ground-ball rate. Pederson has also declined in the field, arriving as a viable centerfielder and leaving the Dodgers as a middling left fielder. I wonder how many of those myriad problems had to do with his struggle to get regular playing time on a crowded Dodgers roster. In Chicago, he should be no worse than the left-handed side of a complex platoon in left field (with Kris Bryant moving out there against righties to make room for David Bote at third), and ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the Cubs are going to let him face lefties, at least to start the year. Pederson could benefit from the change of scenery and a new set of coaches. At 29, he still has the ability to be an impact player, but he’ll have to reverse those trends to do it. Joel Sherman reported the mutual option
White Sox sign LHP Carlos Rodón ($3M/1yr)
The third-overall pick in the 2014 draft, Rodón was supposed to be a future ace for the White Sox, but two major surgeries—shoulder in late 2017, Tommy John in May 2019—derailed his progress. He did make it back to the mound last year, but was sidelined for most of the season by further shoulder soreness. The Sox non-tendered him in December, but that now appears to have been, at least in part, a method of avoiding arbitration and re-setting his salary. Rodón made $4.45 million last year. He returns to the fold for just $3 million and will compete for one of the last two spots in Chicago’s rotation in Spring Training, though optimism for the 28-year-old lefty’s future is muted.
Phillies sign LHP Matt Moore ($3M/1yr + incentives)
Speaking of once-heralded young lefties trying to piece their major-league careers back together. Moore topped multiple prospect lists in 2012, was an All-Star and picked up some Cy Young votes in 2013, but went under the knife for Tommy John in April 2014 and hasn’t done much to impress since. Though he did have a couple of healthy seasons post-surgery, since returning he has posted a 5.13 ERA (83 ERA+) and a weak 2.29 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Last year, he pitched for the Softbank Hawks in Japan’s NPB. His results were much better there, but they spanned just 85 innings. The Phillies are buying, but only as much as the White Sox are staying in on Rodón. Moore, who will turn 32 in June, will battle for a rotation spot in Spring Training.
Cubs sign RHP Trevor Williams (~$2.5M/1yr)
Trevor Williams has a big personality. With the Pirates, he co-hosted a podcast with fellow pitcher Steven Brault and gained a reputation for grading and ranking things on twitter and elsewhere. He’s a fun guy to have around, and he had a nice season on the bump in 2018. Unfortunately, he has been awful since. On the mound, that is. He’s a fastball/sinker/slider guy with sub-par velocity and below average strikeout rates, who gives up more than his share of fly balls. When the Cubs gave Kohl Stewart a major-league contract last week, I speculated that they had lowered their threshold for signing starting pitchers in the wake of Jon Lester, José Quintana, and Tyler Chatwood departing as free agents. This move would seem to confirm it. Contract value per Jon Heyman.
A’s acquire LHP Cole Irvin from the Phillies for cash
Reds acquire SS Kyle Holder from the Phillies for cash
To make room for Moore on the roster, the Phillies sold Irvin to the A’s. Irvin has had some success as a starter in Triple-A, but he’s a fly-ball guy with low strikeout rates who has made just three major league starts as of his 27th birthday (which was yesterday). That’s exactly the kind of pitcher who gets dropped from the roster to make room for a new addition.
Holder was drafted by the Yankees out of the University of San Diego late in 2015’s first round. He climbed to Double-A by 2019 without impressing much, then went to the Phillies in that year’s Rule 5 draft. Holder spent the 2020 season at the Phillies’ alternate training site, and now heads to the Reds for his age-27 season to make room for Gregorius, and because the Phillies effectively replaced him with former Red Sox farmhand C.J. Chatham, who is a year younger and reached Triple-A in 2019.
Diamondbacks claim RHP Humberto Castellanos off waivers from the Astros
Castellanos, who was designated for assignment by Houston to make room for Jason Castro, is a stocky Mexican righty who will turn 23 in April and made his major-league debut in 2020. He has below average velocity and unimpressive secondary stuff (curve, change, slider). Not much to see here.
Daniel Murphy retires
Murphy will be just 36 in April, but he’s no longer a viable second baseman, didn’t hit much in 2019, and was awful in 2020. The three-time All-Star retires with a career line of .296/.341/.455 (113 OPS+), 1,572 hits, and the record for the most consecutive postseason games with a home run, six, set during the Mets’ 2015 pennant run. His best years were the two he spent with the Nationals, 2016 and ’17, both of which earned him the Silver Slugger, and the former of which saw him finish second the National League’s MVP voting.
Reader Survey
In order to serve you better, I would like to know a little more about you. This is optional, of course, but, if you don’t mind, please reply to this issue with:
your favorite team (or teams, or if you are a general-interest baseball fan)
your general location (as many of the following as you feel comfortable sharing: city, state, province, country for those outside the U.S. and Canada)
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The idea here is to know whom I’m writing for, what teams you want to read about, and when and where you’ll receive the newsletter. I can’t promise I’ll write more about the Diamondbacks if you tell me you’re a Diamondbacks fan, but if there’s a large Diamondbacks contingent among the readership, I will likely lower my threshold for including Diamondbacks items and dive deeper into the ones I include.
Closing Credits
There are so many good clothes-related song options for today’s closing credits, but since this is Monday morning, I thought I’d give you all a little boost with some P-Funk. This is “Get Dressed,” the lead track from George Clinton’s first and best solo record, Computer Games. That record came out in 1982, after the heyday of P-Funk but just in time to be a touchstone for hip hop (the record’s biggest hit, “Atomic Dog,” would provide the hook for Snoop Dogg’s first solo hit, “What’s My Name?” roughly a decade later). Co-written by Clinton and P-Funk bassist/multi-instrumentalist/icon Bootsy Collins, “Get Dressed” is an only slightly thinner version of the classic Parliament sound, with Bootsy’s rubbery bass, some funky, clean-channel guitar, a busy horn section, and a variety of overlapping vocal interjections from what sounds like a few dozen people, including a female chorus.
The key line for our purposes here is this one, which is not part of the refrain but pops up a few times, usually spoken:
A good show starts in the dressing room
And works its way to the stage
Clinton and company were certainly artists who placed a high value on their appearance, although not in the conventional way. That fits today’s bottom 10, whose uniforms are more funky than slick. It’s time to get the show on the road!
The Cycle will return on Wednesday with uniforms 20 to 11 and, hopefully, thoughts on the final structure of the Arenado trade, among other things. In the meantime, please help spread the word!