Fact: Max Scherzer struck out 11 batters over eight innings in the Washington Nationals‘ 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday. It was Scherzer‘s 12th game this season with 10 or more strikeouts, the most in MLB.
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Past seasons have seen notable names from Josh Beckett to Chase Utley change teams during MLB‘s waiver trade window, as last-chance contenders have to add big league players who will be eligible for postseason play to their respective rosters.
This year’s waiver trade window has seen some notable names thrown around, including Ryan Braun (per Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal) and Brian McCann (via Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball), but neither one is going anywhere. Per Heyman, Yasiel Puig has been claimed, but all signs indicate he’s unlikely to escape from Los Angeles before the offseason.
While none of the players who have changed teams over the past few weeks are nearly as notable, some saw their situations improve, while others likely wish things had never changed.
Who are the biggest winners and losers of the 2016 waiver trade window? Let’s take a look.
Veteran outfielder Coco Crisp is heading back to his original team, as the Oakland Athletics traded him to the Cleveland Indians in exchange for left-handed pitcher Colt Hynes.
The Athletics announced the deal after the Associated Press (h/t ESPN.com) first reported it Tuesday night. Jordan Bastian of MLB.com reported Crisp will join the Indians on Thursday and be added to the roster on Friday.
According to Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball, the Indians will only pay for around $500,000 of Crisp’s salary, and the A’s are responsible for the rest.
Crisp is hitting .234 with 11 home runs, 47 RBI and seven stolen bases, which represents a solid bounce-back campaign after an injury-plagued 2015 season that saw him hit just .175 in 44 contests.
The 36-year-old veteran possesses some pop, has decent speed and is a slightly above-average defensive player in left field in terms of defensive runs saved, per FanGraphs.
Crisp also has 31 games of playoff experience, including a World Series ring, which he won with the Boston Red Sox in 2007. Cleveland traded the Los Angeles native to Boston in 2006 after three-plus seasons.
While Crisp has enjoyed some decent years since, including time with the Kansas City Royals and A’s, he has never returned to the form he displayed during his final two campaigns with Cleveland. He hit .299 with an average of 16 homers, 70 RBI and 18 stolen bases per year in that span.
Although the Indians aren’t expecting that type of production, Crisp provides outfield depth. Rajai Davis, Tyler Naquin and Lonnie Chisenhall represent a below-average starting outfield to begin with, while Brandon Guyer and Abraham Almonte sit behind them.
Michael Brantley is out for the season due to a right shoulder injury, while Almonte is ineligible for the postseason due to an 80-game suspension he served for performance-enhancing drugs.
That left Cleveland with limited outfield flexibility entering the playoffs, but Crisp helps alleviate that.
He won’t be a difference-maker in winning the World Series, but having a player with his level of big-game experience should be a big help for a young Indians team.
Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.
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Roughly five weeks are left in the 2016 MLB regular season, and while the playoff picture is taking shape, there is still a lot to be decided before October.
In the American League, 10 legitimate contenders remain. The Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers have a strong hold on their respective division leads, but the AL East is a three-team race, and the two wild-card spots are wide open.
The National League picture is not as congested, but eight clubs are still in position to reach the postseason. The Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals are locks to fill two of the five spots. The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants both look like good bets as well, regardless of who wins the NL West. That leaves four teams to battle it out for the final wild-card spot.
What follows is a look at each club’s chances of reaching the postseason, with the following factors taken into account:
So, with the regular season set to wrap up on Oct. 2, here is an updated division-by-division look at the playoff chances of all the remaining contenders from where they stood one week ago.
The day the Baltimore Orioles first called up Manny Machado, they were in a three-way tie for the American League wild-card lead, and third base was a problem. Wilson Betemit and Robert Andino were splitting the job, and they weren’t getting the job done.
Machado was a shortstop who was one of the best prospects in baseball. He had just turned 20, but the Orioles arranged for him to play two games at third base in the Double-A Eastern League. And then they called him up and handed him the position in the major leagues.
Machado had two hits that first day and two home runs the next. He ended up hitting just .262, but the Orioles went on a 33-18 run that got them into the playoffs.
Four years later, people are comparing Machado to Brooks Robinson.
“He might be better than Brooks,” said one AL scout who watched Machado last week.
Yoan Moncada doesn’t need to be that good to help the Boston Red Sox. But he might be.
Moncada turned 21 in May. He’s a second baseman who is one of the best prospects in baseball, but the Red Sox just moved him to third base in the Double-A Eastern League. The Red Sox are leading the AL wild-card race, but third base is a problem. Travis Shaw and Aaron Hill are splitting the job, and they’re not getting the job done.
Now, Moncada will have his chance with the Red Sox announcing his promotion late Wednesday night after Boston’s 8-6 win over the Rays.
I’ll trust the Red Sox are making the right move, because Dombrowski has never been shy about pushing talented young players to the big leagues and giving them a shot. He did it already this month with 22-year-old outfielder Andrew Benintendi, who rewarded the Red Sox’s faith with an .850 OPS and outstanding defense after they promoted him Aug. 2 from Double-A Portland.
The Red Sox needed help in left field, and they needed a spark. Benintendi gave them both, but then he got hurt. He went on the disabled list Aug. 25 with a sprained left knee, and while the injury isn’t as serious as feared, he can’t spark them right now.
Perhaps Moncada can.
An AL scout who has seen Portland quite a bit said in an ideal world, Moncada becomes a major leaguer next year. In the world the Red Sox live in, it’s worth a shot now.
“If I was the Red Sox, I would do it,” the scout said. “Look what the Yankees did with [Gary] Sanchez.”
There are no guarantees, but when Baseball America ranked the top 100 prospects in the game last winter, Moncada was third. He was behind Corey Seager and Byron Buxton but well ahead of Benintendi (15) and Sanchez (36).
Moncada ranked first in the same magazine’s midseason update, ahead of Benintendi, Sanchez and a few other players already having success in the big leagues in Alex Reyes, Alex Bregman and Trea Turner. Moncada was the Most Valuable Player of the All-Star Futures Game.
Moncada is younger than all those guys, and the rankings are based on future potential, not instant readiness. But given his speed and baserunning ability—his 45 steals are the most of anyone in the Red Sox organization, including on the big league team—Moncada is an obvious choice for a 40-man September roster.
The question is whether he can be more than that. The Red Sox think there’s a chance, given the recent decision to move him to third base. He wasn’t going to come up and displace Dustin Pedroia at second, but Boston’s third basemen have been among the least productive in the majors.
While the Red Sox have been baseball’s highest-scoring team, their third basemen ranked 27th in the majors with a .712 OPS entering play Tuesday. The recent numbers have been worse than that. Shaw had a .176 batting average and .572 OPS in August; Hill, acquired July 7 from the Milwaukee Brewers for two minor leaguers, had a .194 batting average and .512 OPS in his first 32 games with the Red Sox.
When I wrote about Moncada for Bleacher Report last winter, I reported he wouldn’t be ready for the big leagues this year and might not be ready next year, either. But I also used something Moncada said to reporters then: “I have one goal, and that’s getting to the big leagues.”
Players arrive at their own paces, but they show up faster when they make big progress and their teams have big needs. Both those things appear true now with Moncada, just as they did four years ago with Machado.
“I just wanted to play in the big leagues,” Machado said then, in a story I did for CBSSports.com. “If it would have been catching or playing the outfield, I’d have tried to do the job.”
Machado quickly looked like a natural at third base. Moncada, according to scouts who have seen him, isn’t likely to be as much of a defensive star.
“He’s not going to be a 75-80 fielder [on a 20-80 scouting scale] like Machado is,” the AL scout said. “At second base, he had 60-65 range. But his bat is where his money is.”
The bat and the potential have made Moncada money already, with the Red Sox paying $31.5 million to sign him after he left Cuba. It looks more and more like that investment will pay off.
It might start paying off this week.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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With scarcely more than a month remaining in the regular season, MLB‘s divisional and wild-card tussles are getting real. That’s equally true of the various awards races, some of which remain wide, wide open.
As we update odds for every major prize—Comeback Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year and each league’s Cy Young and MVP awards—there isn’t much movement at the top of the leaderboard. In fact, only the National League Cy Young has a new front-runner.
Several awards are exceedingly tight and tough to call, however, including the Manager of the Year scrambles and the throw-up-your-hands American League Cy Young chase.
We’re looking at stats, obviously. But we’ll also consider past voting trends, team performance (which matters, fair or not) and a dash of old-fashioned gut feeling.
Feel free to sound off with your own picks in the comments, and proceed when ready.
The Los Angeles Dodgers didn’t merely tread water in Clayton Kershaw‘s absence. They went full Michael Phelps and splashed into the lead.
When Kershaw last pitched for the Dodgers on June 26—before his back betrayed him—they were 41-36, eight games behind the hated San Francisco Giants in the National League West.
Entering play Tuesday, L.A. sat in first place, 1.5 games up on San Francisco.
That’s partly because the Giants have stumbled, going 14-26 since the All-Star break. But give credit to the Dodgers roster for showing resilience and to rookie skipper Dave Roberts for keeping the wheels on.
Now, the really good news for the Chavez Ravine faithful: Kershaw thew a pair of simulated innings without a setback on Tuesday, per Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times.
“My guess is that Kersh will want to pitch in a major league game tomorrow,” said president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, per McCullough. “With the time he’s missed, my guess would be the next step would be a minor league assignment. I think it will take a little bit of time to build him up in a way for him to be strong through September and hopefully October, as well.”
The words “Kershaw” and “October” occupying the same sentence should leave Dodgers fans salivating.
There are no guarantees, obviously. This herniated disc has been a nagging bane for Kershaw, costing the three-time Cy Young Award winner two months and counting. Rust and recurrence are always concerns, even for the best pitcher on the planet.
A Kershaw revival, however, makes this Los Angeles rotation exponentially more dangerous.
Rich Hill, whom the Dodgers acquired at the trade deadline, made his belated debut Aug. 24 after struggling with a blister, tossing six scoreless frames in a 1-0 win over the Giants.
Japanese import Kenta Maeda has been the team’s most consistent starter with a 3.38 ERA and 148 strikeouts in 146.2 innings. And rookie Julio Urias has allowed just one earned run with 14 strikeouts in his last 12 innings.
Add Kershaw, and you’re looking at a potentially fearsome group.
He’s not the only Dodgers hurler on the comeback trail. Brett Anderson (blister), Scott Kazmir (neck irritation), Brandon McCarthy (hip stiffness) and Alex Wood (elbow soreness) are all working their way back as well, per Michael Duarte of NBC Los Angeles.
Soon, the Dodgers could be swimming in starting pitching depth. That’s a best-case scenario. Given the raft of injuries the club has weathered so far, L.A.’s front office should be rubbing rabbits’ feet and knocking on the conference table until their knuckles bleed.
Even if Kershaw is the sole cavalry, though, the Dodgers will take it and smile.
The offense is clicking, posting the NL’s second-best OPS (.779) since the All-Star break behind shortstop and Rookie of the Year favorite Corey Seager, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and third baseman Justin Turner.
The bullpen, anchored by All-Star closer Kenley Jansen, is tied for the best ERA (3.35) in the Senior Circuit.
Now, insert Kershaw. The Dodgers have gone 14-2 in his starts this season and 59-56 in their other games. His 5.5 WAR is tops among all pitchers, despite his protracted DL stint.
We could keep lobbing stats at you, but what’s the point? Kershaw is great. Like death, taxes and gravity, it’s an ironclad inevitability, assuming he’s healthy.
That’s an assumption until we see him square off against big league hitters.
You can psychoanalyze his reportedly tearful reaction, as McCullough reported, to the trade of veteran catcher A.J. Ellis, which the New York Times‘ Tyler Kepner, among others, called into question:
You can point to his career 4.59 postseason ERA as proof he won’t necessarily carry the Dodgers to the World Series promised land, no matter whether his back is right. The potent Chicago Cubs, resurgent Washington Nationals and even-year Giants all lie in wait, after all.
Set that aside, though. Kershaw is a generational talent. The Dodgers have gained significant ground in the standings without him. They’re now poised to get him back.
Forget treading water. Think full splash ahead.
All satistics current as of Aug. 30 and courtesy of MLB.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.
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LOS ANGELES — Where this Tim Tebow Fantasy Camp ends is not in the major leagues. Not in Yankee Stadium, or Fenway Park, or heck, whatever they’re calling the ballpark in Oakland these days.
But judging from a sunny Tuesday showcase workout at the University of Southern California, he’s going to be swinging away for quite some time.
Why is he picking up a baseball bat for the first time in more than a decade at the wizened old age of 29?
“Because I love it,” he said after working out for two hours in front of representatives of 28 major league clubs. “Since I was four or five years old, the two things I’ve loved the most are, one, playing quarterback with 10 guys looking at you and depending on you to win a ballgame and, second, hitting a baseball.”
What you can see, easily, is this: an organization taking a flier on Tebow, sending him to Class A or even Double-A, because he’s an athlete, and he’s way strong, and he will be a positive role model to young prospects. And, if that minor league team happens to play in SEC territory, can you imagine the ticket sales? Cha-ching!
“I think he put a lot of work into it,” one veteran scout said after watching a well-practiced Tebow run a 60-yard dash, throw from right field, take fly balls in center field and hit for some 40 minutes. “But he doesn’t do anything easy.
“He doesn’t run easy. He doesn’t throw easy. He doesn’t hit easy. His bat is strong, but he had trouble making adjustments.
“I can see someone giving him a chance to go to spring training and maybe Double-A, but then you’re taking at-bats away from some 23-year-old kid.”
Tebow hasn’t played competitive baseball since his junior year of high school. Remember when folks thought Alex Rodriguez would find it impossible to produce in 2015 after sitting out one full season because of his suspension for performance-enhancing drugs? That was elementary compared to this.
The last time Tebow swung a bat in a baseball game, George W. Bush was president of the United States. It was 2005.
Which is probably why, in some ways, he exceeded expectations in front of the 46 scouts (some organizations sent multiple representatives) at Rod Dedeaux Field. The Chicago Cubs and Oakland Athletics were the only two clubs to pass.
“I can tell you this: He’s way further advanced than I thought he’d be at this stage,” one veteran (and previously skeptical) scout said. “Obviously, he’s crude. No question the biggest thing is his bat.”
Another said: “He shows power. He shows all the tools. He can run. He can throw. He has raw arm strength. It’s just not transferred to baseball.”
Tebow started his day with a 60-yard dash, clocked somewhere between 6.6 and 6.8 seconds, depending on which scout’s stopwatch you believed. On the MLB scouting scale that runs 20 to 80, it was a solid 60.
Though, as one scout noted about the sprint, which ran from center field toward the left field line, “The field is crowned, and they were smart; they had him run downhill.”
Next he took balls in right field, and for a guy who spent so much time at quarterback, he was not a natural with the throws. There were only a few ropes and several loopy throws. Fielding one bouncer in right, Tebow awkwardly took three shuffle steps before firing a throw to third base.
“He throws like a quarterback,” one of the scouts said. “You throw a football different than you throw a baseball. As a quarterback, you don’t spread your feet, and you throw the ball up. In baseball, you throw the ball down. Throwing to third, he should have had a longer stride.
“His arm strength is probably below average. Then again, a lot of guys playing in the big leagues throw below average.”
Which pretty much brings us to why both Tebow and the scouts were here: hitting. Tebow is enormous—6’3”, 255 pounds and sculpted, which was eye-poppingly accentuated by the spandex workout clothes he was wearing. The biography sheet distributed by his agent noted his low, 7.3 percent body fat.
He took several rounds of batting practice, crushing several baseballs well over the fence and into the trees over the Dedeaux Field scoreboard in right field. There was the big-time power that makes scouts salivate.
Then he took live batting practice against a couple of former big league pitchers, David Aardsma and Chad Smith. Here, he had no idea what was coming—fastball? slider? changeup?—and here was where he struggled. Batting left-handed, he swung late on several fastballs, fouling them away down the third-base line. And he swung way early on several changeups, sometimes fooled enough that he finished his swing with one arm.
Best-case scenario, he’s a project. A very big project. But former major league catcher Chad Moeller, who has been working as Tebow’s private tutor since May, spoke of how far his pupil already has come in three months. The biggest challenge, Moeller said, is pulling the bat out of the workaholic Tebow’s hands.
“Taking away his football mindset of more, more, more,” Moeller said. “At a certain point, you stop getting benefit.”
That statement speaks volumes: What’s going on, quite literally, is Tebow is trying to make up for lost time.
In many ways, he is still a neophyte baseball player trapped in a football player’s body. He acknowledges his knee-jerk reaction to work harder and more often than everybody else, and he held up his callus-covered batting-practice hands as proof.
His goal, he said, isn’t simply to make the big leagues but “to have a career in the big leagues.”
To that end, his agent, Brodie Van Wagenen, said representatives for five clubs stayed after the workout to meet with Tebow and get a feel for him personally. What they no doubt saw was a friendly, earnest guy who is drop-dead serious about making this baseball thing work.
Van Wagenen said his ideal scenario would be for Tebow to agree to a contract and start playing with an organization’s instructional-league team by late September. That way, he could quickly begin to assimilate into baseball, continue the process of refining his skills that started this summer and then perhaps play winter ball before heading to spring training. One source, in fact, told B/R that Tebow already has a slot this winter playing in Venezuela.
As for Tebow, he’s just working it one day at a time. And Tuesday, he copped to a ton of nerves.
“At the NFL combine, you’ve got your body of work for four years,” he said, not to mention dozens and dozens of other players performing for the critics. “Here, you haven’t seen me play baseball since I was 17 years old.
“There was a lot of pressure, a lot of nerves.”
Still, he said, it was easy to put aside the fact his baseball future was at stake Tuesday because baseball “is something I love and am passionate about, but it’s not my identity. When you have that mindset, it helps you to be free.”
His identity lately, since the Philadelphia Eagles sent him packing during training camp last summer, has been as a college football analyst for ESPN and the SEC Network and as a contributor to ABC’s Good Morning America. Besides, as he noted, he’ll be taking a pay cut to follow this baseball dream.
But while his motives seem pure, the game itself decides who stays and who goes. There will be a team that will sign him. Always, in these cases, there is someone. Some think that team will be the Atlanta Braves, given the combination of their rebuilding program (Tebow can be a positive role model), need for sluggers (see the trade for Matt Kemp) and location of many of their minor league affiliates right near the epicenter of the SEC.
Whoever it is, Tebow’s bat will dictate the rest from there. It’s all about whether he can hit as a corner outfielder. If he can’t, the Denver Broncos, New York Jets, New England Patriots and Eagles will not be the only professional clubs to say, “See ya.”
At this point, the most impressive thing in his game is his stamina (stronger men would have wilted before he was finished hitting after 40 minutes Tuesday) and his attitude.
“I want to be someone who pursues what I believe in, what I’m passionate about,” Tebow said. “People who ask what if you fail, guess what? I don’t have to live with any regrets.”
As far as life philosophies go, it’s difficult to argue with that.
And as far as hardball realities go, it’s also difficult to argue with the scout who told me, “The percentages obviously are against him making the major leagues. But he is Tim Tebow, and if he makes it, it would not surprise me.
“But it’s going to be a hell of a sacrifice for him for the next two years if he’s going to make it.”
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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Toledo, Ohio, police confirmed minor league prospects Dovydas Neverauskas, Gift Ngoepe and Warwick Saupold were arrested on Aug. 28 following an altercation at a bar, per MiLB.com’s Danny Wild.
Neverauskas and Ngoepe are both members of the Indianapolis Indians, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate.
“We are extremely disappointed in the actions of Gift and Dovydas,” Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said in a statement, per Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “We have made the decision to suspend both players for seven days, taking them through the remainder of their seasons.”
Saupold pitches for the Mud Hens, the Detroit Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate. Dave Littlefield, the Tigers vice president of player development, said the team was alerted to Saupold’s arrest and “will let legal system take its course,” per MLB.com’s Jason Beck.
On Thursday, the Tigers announced they were suspending Saupold for five games, per Beck.
Authorities charged Neverauskas with two counts of resisting arrest and failure to obey a lawful order, while Ngoepe and Saupold were both charged with assault. Wild provided details of what happened leading up to the incident:
According to the report, Ngoepe, Saupold and Neverauskas were drinking together at the bar late Saturday night before Ngoepe allegedly confronted another man, Andrey Goncharuk, 25, after bartenders announced the establishment would be closing for the night. Witnesses said Ngoepe was unhappy about a bartender pouring out a drink the Indianapolis shortstop had handed him.
Goncharuk, according to witnesses, then got in between an irate Ngoepe and a female bartender, which led to the pair pushing each other. Following the scuffle, the trio of players exited the bar, but Ngoepe waited outside for Goncharuk, according to witnesses in the report.
The bar in question is adjacent to Fifth Third Field, where the Mud Hens play their home games. Outside the establishment, Saupold struck Andrey Goncharuk, and Ngoepe and Neverauskas interfered with officers who were in the process of making arrests.
According to Lucas County, Ohio, arrest records, all three players were released on Sunday. Saupold pitched in Monday’s game against the Indians, going five innings in relief in an 8-1 win for Toledo.
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Tim Tebow worked out in front of 28 MLB clubs at the University of Southern California on Tuesday, making his bid to return to professional sports, this time as a baseball player.
During the 90-minute showcase, Tebow took part in a 60-yard dash, outfield drills, throwing drills, batting practice and faced live pitching. Afterward, he addressed the media.
Bleacher Report MLB Insider Scott Miller was in attendance and spoke with several scouts during the workout. Hear what they had to say in this MLB version of Insider Buzz.
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