Mining the News (10/10/24)

Free Agents

• José Abreu hopes to increase his value by playing winter ball.

Sources: José Abreu signed with the Senadores of San Juan in Puerto Rico’s winter ball.

Abreu will begin his journey toward an MLB comeback in 2025.

He will soon report to the Senadores for the winter season, which starts in early November. pic.twitter.com/XNwG3RiwvV

— Francys Romero (@francysromeroFR) October 9, 2024

American League

Angels

• The manager says José Suarez will be in the mix for a rotation or bullpen spot.

The Angels will have an interesting decision to make this offseason with Suarez, who is out of Minor League options and eligible for salary arbitration for a second time. He could be a non-tender candidate but isn’t expected to receive much of a raise on the $925,000 he made this season because of his second straight uneven performance in the Majors.

“He’s in the mix,” Washington said. “Whether it’s in the bullpen or the starting rotation, he’s in the mix and just has to come in and compete for a job.”

Astros

• Mauricio Dubón will have surgery on this thumb.

Houston Astros utilityman Mauricio Dubón played the final month of the season with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his left thumb, a person with knowledge of the injury told The Athletic.

Dubón will require surgery to repair the damage. Renowned hand surgeon Dr. Thomas Graham is scheduled to perform the procedure in Philadelphia.

A typical recovery time for the injury is six to eight weeks, meaning Dubón should be at full strength when the team reports to spring training in February.

Dubón injured his thumb while sliding into first base during a Sept. 6 game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. X-rays revealed no damage at the time, but further imaging uncovered the ligament tear.

Athletics

• Darell Hernaiz and Brett Harris are the leading candidates for the 2025 third base job.

The A’s trotted out several third basemen in 2024 without truly identifying a long-term option at the position. Of those on the Major League roster, it would seem that Darell Hernaiz and Brett Harris have the best chances to win the job out of Spring Training. There is also No. 8 prospect Max Muncy, whose ’24 season with Triple-A Las Vegas was derailed by injuries, though he remains highly regarded within the organization. The club is also likely to explore free agency and the trade market for hot-corner help.

“Darell and Brett played there at times this year,” Forst said. “Any of those guys are going to be part of the discussion at third base. I think we’ll also look outside the organization for options, because it is the one place on the field where we probably shuffled through the most players this season.”

• Esteury Ruiz had knee surgery.

A’s speedster Esteury Ruiz underwent arthroscopic surgery to fix the patellar tendon in his right knee this afternoon. The team announced that Ruiz “will complete post-surgical rehabilitation in the offseason to prepare for 2025 Spring Training,” suggesting this shouldn’t impact his availability next season.

• Lawrence Butler made a few mechanical swing changes before his season took off.

But it wasn’t until June 29 in Arizona when A’s director of hitting Darren Bush helped Butler make several mechanical tweaks, including keeping the youngster’s head movement under control and ensuring he stayed back more on the baseball.

The changes Bush suggested were hardly new to the young hitter, but they came at a good time.

…
“He’s really found his swing, I think, since right before the All-Star break, right when he got called back up this year,” Bleday said. “He’s really trusted himself and cut down on some movements. He’s always been a hitter, but he’s really become more experienced and more mature with what he needs to do on a daily basis.”

Blue Jays

• Orelvis Martinez could play second or third base next season. Also, he plans on playing winter ball.

Schneider said while they don’t have a definitive plan yet, they’re discussing the possibility of Martínez playing winter ball to catch up on at-bats and reps he lost during his suspension. The club is also encouraging Martínez, who typically resides in the Dominican Republic in the offseason, to spend as much time as possible at the player development complex in Dunedin, Fla., over the winter.

…

When we last saw Martínez, he’d been playing second base, a position he was adjusting to this year after mostly playing third base in the minors. The Blue Jays infield picture has shifted since with middle infielders like Jiménez and Will Wagner showing they can capably play second base. However, both are contact-oriented bats rather than power hitters like Martínez.

The Blue Jays want Martínez to remain open to both second and third base, Schneider said, but “we’ll know more as the offseason unfolds.”

Keep an eye on his position during winter ball to get an idea of where he might play once the season starts.

• Kevin Gausman restated that he pitched hurt to start the season and plans of working on his sinker.

Gausman’s 2024 campaign was a battle from the outset. He was sidelined for most of spring training with right shoulder fatigue and instead of going on the injured list, the right-hander began the season at the back end of the rotation and used his first few starts to build himself up.

The result was a first half in which Gausman struggled to find a rhythm. He made adjustments to his mechanics and settled down considerably after the all-star break, but his strikeout numbers have been down from his career norm, with the right-hander remarking on several occasions that his trademark splitter just hasn’t been where he needs it to be.

“The consistency definitely wasn’t there as much as I would’ve liked,” Gausman said following Wednesday’s game. “I thought I did a good job making adjustments when I needed to, but the reality is I had a really bad first month.”

…

Gausman said he plans to devote time in the off-season to work on his sinker, a pitch he believes could play against right-handed hitters and ultimately allow him to go deeper into games. While he was happy with the way he finished the campaign, Gausman, who turns 34 in January, says he’ll need to continue to be open to change.

Gausman’s sinker had a 6% SwStr% and 54% GB% with below-average STUPH metrics (90 Stuff+, 44 BotStuff). Here are the pitch’s comps.

An acceptable pitch but it could take a step forward.

• Bo Bichette will have surgery on his finger.

After Bo Bichette’s long-awaited return to the Blue Jays lineup was abruptly shut down thanks to another trip to the injured list, the team has provided clarity on what’s next for the shortstop.

Manager John Schneider told reporters on Wednesday that Bichette will have surgery to insert a pin in order to repair a fracture to his right middle finger, per Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi.

Orioles

• Coby Mayo could play at first base, third base, or the outfield next season.

Elias said that Mayo is most accomplished as a first baseman, though he’s played creditably at third. He didn’t dismiss Mayo playing in the outfield but says it would be “a pretty significant move.”

Red Sox

• Justin Slaten and Liam Hendriks are in contention to be the closer next season.

Notably, Breslow said that if Liam Hendriks’ offseason goes well, and he comes into spring training with no restrictions, they expect him to contribute in the back end of the bullpen next season. While he referenced Hendriks’ “track record as an elite closer,” he did not say Hendriks would be the closer in 2025 if healthy. Cora has mentioned Justin Slaten’s potential as a closer at various points this season and it seems there could be a scenario where Hendriks, coming off surgery, is the eighth-inning setup man. It’s something to watch this winter.

Twins

• Bailey Ober is now throwing a cutter and sweeper/slider.

Laurila: You’re not throwing a sweeper anymore?

Ober: “No, I still throw it. It’s my slider now. It’s my sweeper.”

Laurila: I noticed that Savant doesn’t show you throwing a sweeper.

Ober: “Since I started throwing the harder breaking ball, they’re kind of grouping them together — the cutter and the sweeper/slider. But they’re two different pitches.”

We have the two pitches (green) labeled as just one.

• A “healthy” Byron Buxton will be limited to about 100 games next season.

This could be important as a building block, but there’s also some value to this season as proof of concept, Baldelli noted. Trying to play Buxton every day hasn’t worked in the past, and the few-days-on, one-day-off schedule the Twins used with him this year clearly kept him healthier and more productive than he has been for quite some time.

“Maybe it is a good threshold, too, for us to look at and say, ‘This is what he’s capable of: Playing 100 to slightly over 100 games. This is good. This is leading to us winning games,’” Baldelli said.

White Sox

• Yoán Moncada plans to play winter ball to show he’s healthy.

White Sox 3B Yoan Moncada told me today that he will play winter ball to showcase his good health to the 29 other teams. A Free Agent as soon as the Sox refuse his2025 $25 million option, Moncada said he hopes to play for Ozzie Guillen in Venezuela.

— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) September 26, 2024

I could see the A’s give him a one-year pillow contract.

• Colson Montgomery played through an injury last season and already got hurt in the Arizona Fall League.

Colson Montgomery, SS/3B, CHW, 22

Montgomery dealt with a minor injury during the 2024 season which certainly affected his swing and ability to get to power. While many, including myself, thought Montgomery would spend a large portion of the season in Chicago, he struggled in Triple-A, slashing .214/.329/.381 while seeing his strikeout rate explode. It was very uncharacteristic of the kind of hitter he. The injury largely played a part in my opinion.

Having nearly three weeks off, hopefully things have healed up. Montgomery was aggressive, seeing just nine pitches in four trips to the plate, but he put every ball in play that he swung at. In the first inning, he smoked a 105.4 mph single to right before doubling to the opposite field in his next AB. Montgomery was hit by a pitch on the elbow in his third plate appearance of the game and ended up leaving. Something to monitor. Hopefully Montgomery is back in the lineup today.

• Jonathan Cannon started throwing his changeup and four-seamer more.

“That’s one of the reasons I’ve increased the usage of my changeup. I wasn’t throwing it a whole lot at beginning of the year, but then I started having good results with it after trying it in some more counts. I’ve been tying to get the rest of my pitches more involved. That’s why you’ve seen an uptick in the use of the four-seamer as well. It’s not a good pitch by itself; it doesn’t have a lot of vert, and I don’t have a great approach angle, but because I throw a lot that moves at the bottom, I get good results on the four-seamer. I’m kind of trying to get away from using the sinker too much.”

Laurila: What are the metrics on your sinker?

Cannon: “It’s anywhere from two to four vert, and 15 horizontal. The metrics on it are good. It’s more that the usage has maybe been a little bit too much, and again, the location hasn’t always been great. Something I had to learn when I got here is that while in the minor leagues I could rip that thing right down the middle and get a groundball most of the time, but against these guys, when it gets thigh high and above they’re pretty good at hitting it in the air.

National League

Cardinals

• Lars Nootbaar continues to try to hit more balls in the air.

“It’s just about making sure we have a plan with what the coaching staff wants to see out of me more and how we can attack that. Being able to hear that from them and then being able to express it while talking it over gives you more confidence while you are working on those things.”

Working on trying to lift the ball more to stay away from the rollover ground balls that plagued him so often this season, Nootbaar drilled a four-seam fastball from Kyle Freeland 384 feet for a homer in his first at-bat. Showing off his rare ability to whip the bat through the zone to create triple-digit exit velocity, Nootbaar spanked the ball with 105.7 mph exit velocity, per Statcast.
…

“We’ve been talking quite a bit about him being on the ground and early in counts him being able to do more damage,” said Marmol, whose bullpen was shorthanded on Thursday after Andrew Kittredge and Matthew Liberatore were used in a win the night before. “He’s very selective, but early we need him to take his A swing. He was able to open up the game that way today, and it was good to see.”

Coming into September, Nootbaar posted a 54% GB%. In the last month, it dropped to 44%.

Dodgers

• Clayton Kershaw is dealing with a bone spur in his big toe.

The 36-year-old left-hander went on the injured list Aug. 31 with a bone spur in his left big toe. Kershaw didn’t pitch until July 25 after having offseason shoulder surgery.

I don’t like this situation at all. First Kershaw has been ruled out for the postseason so it bathers him quite a bit. He’s not getting surgery to get the problem removed, so either:

1. He’ll wait on the surgery and have fewer recovery days.
2. Deal with it next season.

I don’t like either situation.

Giants

• Logan Webb is adding a cutter.

While Webb has consistently posted for the Giants, he expressed some dissatisfaction with his overall body of work this year, as his ERA is his highest since 2020. His signature changeup — which was the second-most valuable pitch in the Majors with a +28 Run Value in 2023 — plummeted to -4 this year, prompting him to introduce a cutter to give him another weapon to deploy against left-handed hitters.

Webb threw a season-high 20 cutters against the D-backs on Tuesday and said he hopes to gain more confidence in the pitch as he begins to look toward 2025.

“I think it’s just something I’ve kind of felt comfortable with,” Webb said. “I think the changeup has kind of been weird all year. I think it just helps with kind of getting them off some of the softer stuff down. That’s kind of my game. If I can do something that’s moving in to them — you guys know I’ve tried to throw one for a while now. I finally found a grip that makes the ball actually go that way. I’m excited to keep tinkering with it. These last two games, I felt good throwing it.”

Phillies

• Andrew Painter will throw 20 IP in the Fall League and won’t have a full workload next season.

Painter, who turns 22 in April 2025, is scheduled to throw two innings Saturday. Dombrowski expects him to reach 20 innings during fall ball. What comes after that remains an organizational debate.

“What we’re going to have to figure out is how we get him to pitch next year,” Dombrowski said. “Because you’ll still be limited with the number of innings he can pitch. And I don’t know the exact number of innings at this point; even we haven’t discussed that. But he’s not going to be able to go out there like a big-league starter and pitch every five or six days and pitch a whole season and have 180 innings. He’s going to be limited much more than that.”

Dombrowski floated various scenarios.

“Do we start him pitching games later?” he said. “Do we start him pitching at the minor leagues once a week and limit the innings? Could he pitch (in the majors)? Yes. But it will also depend on how he does. People who have seen him throw said he hasn’t missed a beat. In fact, when I got my reports on him at one time, I said, ‘Hey, I hope we know that we don’t have to throw 100 (mph) already.’ I mean, it’s upper 90s. But he just does it. He’s not overthrowing.”

Reds

• Spencer Steer could play more infield while Jonathan India could play first base, third base, or in the outfield.

Spencer Steer played five defensive positions last year, but the majority of his time was spent in the outfield. He could play more infield in 2025.

Jonathan India entered last spring training as a player without a home after the ascension of Matt McLain and played first base and outfield in addition to second base during spring training. After McLain’s injury, India returned to the everyday lineup as the Reds’ second baseman. Second base is still the only defensive position India has played in the big leagues after starting 132 games there.

First base and outfield could again be a possibility for India, as well as third base, a position he played in college.

The Reds spoke to Steer and India in Chicago and both told Krall and Meador that they were open to moving around. Steer, particularly, said he enjoys it.

• India had surgery to clean up his ankle.

India had surgery to “clean up” his ankle, Krall said. The surgery was expected and India should be ready to have a normal offseason. He should start spring training on time.

• Connor Phillips‘ fastball sat 96 to 99 mph (96.5 mph in the majors) with his slider at 84 to 87 mph (84.4 mph in the majors) in the Fall League.

Following two months at the Reds’ training complex in Goodyear, Ariz., Phillips returned to Triple-A Louisville and logged a 2.49 ERA with a 24/10 K/BB ratio in five starts. Cincinnati’s No. 15 prospect carried that momentum into the Arizona Fall League. He dominated in his first start on Wednesday for the Glendale Desert Dogs, who lost to the Salt River Rafters, 4-2.

Phillips fanned seven in four scoreless innings, yielding just two hits without a walk while throwing 36 of 58 pitches for strikes. His most dominant offering was his 85-87 mph slider, which finished four of his whiffs, and notched eight swinging strikes and six called strikes in 25 pitches. He sat at 96-99 mph with his fastball and he also mixed in a handful of 85-86 mph curveballs and 89-90 mph changeups.

“The slider has always been my pitch,” Phillips said. “I went through a little phase where it used to be 80-84 and a ton of sweep and kind of hard to control. Now I’m throwing it more 84-87, a little bit shorter but still has that sweep. So I’m able to control it more and put it in the zone and then get it out of the zone whenever I need to.”

• Matt McLain was crushing balls in the Fall League

We are talking a different caliber pitching than McLain is used to be, but he looked ready on Tuesday, mashing a home run and a double in his return to game action.

The home run left the bat at just 93.7 mph which shows the kind of conditions we were looking at yesterday and how the ball travled. That swing led to a 398 foot shot at a 35 degree launch angle. HIs double left the bat at 106 mph and was smoked off the wall in left field.

Looking at the box score, he played second base.

• Christian Encarnacion-Strand is also hitting the ball hard while being the DH.

In his return to action, Encarnacion-Strand mashed a double that left the bat at 110.3 mph on a line drive to left field. He also added a single on a line drive to right and a sacrifice fly. He did swing and miss five times on 12 swings, having just a 58 percent contact rate and he chased 43 percent of pitches he saw out of the zone. Something to watch moving forward.