Seattle has signed 1B
Mike Jacobs to a minor league deal.
C Rene Rivera has signed with San Diego.
Ken Rosenthal-✔
- @Ken_Rosenthal
Still can't get consensus on which OFer DBacks will trade. Some in
industry say preference is Kubel. Others still convinced it's Upton.
Mets resign SS Omar Quintanilla to a minor league deal.
Well, at least it’s someone I know something about.
Quintanilla is a
natural shortstop; however, Baltimore played him last year exclusively at
second base. All were in the majors (36-G, 99-AB) and produced only four
errors in 119 attempts. Forget the .232 batting average… the Mets now have
another legitimate utility alternative for the infield.
Look at it this way… Justin Turner can
be your backup on 1B and 3B and Quintanilla cover 2B and SS.
Second base in the minors looks like:
AAA – Reese Havens, AA – Danny Muno, A+ - Rylan
Sandoval, A – J.C. Gamboa, Y. De La Cruz – Extended – Yeixon
Ruiz, Chad Zurcher.
Okay, here comes the DFAs…
Cleveland DFA’d OF Thomas Neal for
assignment, making room for Nick Swisher.
Let’s go back to my ‘In Search of…’ series on Cleveland:
We now move on to the Cleveland
Indians, who currently had five (5) outfielders on their 40-man before they
announced their deal Sunday with Nick Swisher. Now, they have six (6):
Nick Swisher - 4-yrs,
$56mil, with additional option
Michael Brantley
– lefty - pre-ARB – MLB/552-AB, .288
Ezequiel Carrera
– lefty – pre-ARB - MLB/147-AB, .272
Tim Fedroff –
lefty –
Thomas Neal –
bats right – pre-ARB -
Drew Stubbs –
bats right - ARB-1 -
This is normally a very
conservative team that builds from within so the Swisher deal caught me by
surprise. Stubbs comes over from Cincinnati and will start along with Brantley.
These three are obviously your starters.
2B Jason Kipnis (14-HR, 76-RBI)
also serves as a backup outfielder.
This leaves one righty that
really has no place to play on this team:
Mets target: Thomas Neal - played AA in 2012 - 405-AB,
.314/.400/.467/.867, 12-Hr, 51-RBI and was rewarded with promotion to parent
team in September (23-AB, .217)... plays AAA in 2011 for the Giants (.295)...
career (7-yrs) .299 minor league hitter... .840 OPS... primarily left field...
will play 2013 as a 25-year old.
Think
there’s any chance anyone reads this?
Ex-Miami Marlin Pitching Coach Randy St. Claire
will join the Mets’ organization as their pitching coach at Triple-A Las
Vegas
Adam Rubin speculated that the Mets
might be done signing new outfielders.
According to his usual reliable sources,
Lucas Duda will play LF,
Kirk Nieuwenhius will be the LHHCF, Mike Baxter the
LHHRF, and Collin Cowgll and Justin Turner (told ya…) will platoon as the RHHOF’s.
This would leave Brandon Hicks and Omar Quintanilla and the two IF-UTs. Other RHHOF
possibilities would be Andrew Brown and/or Brian Bixler.
Since all of this would be done with team controlled contracts, we’re
still waiting to see where the extra $10-15mil will be spent.
