The deadline for an MLB team to sign Kenta Maeda is January 8th at 5pm ET/4pm CT, according to Jon Morosi of FOX Sports (on Twitter). Meanwhile, MLBTR has learned that the Hiroshima Toyo Carp have set the release fee at $20MM, the maximum allowed by the agreement between MLB and NPB. Any team willing to meet that $20MM asking price will have the right to negotiate with Maeda over the next couple of weeks.
The Dodgers would appear to be a solid fit for Maeda after losing Zack Greinke to free agency and tearing up their agreement with Hisashi Iwaukma. They have been expected to be among the teams in the hunt for the right-hander, but there hasn’t been any definitive word on that as of late.
Maeda, 28 in April, is widely considered to be one of the best pitchers in Japan. He just wrapped up a season in which he pitched to a 2.09 ERA with 7.6 K/9 against 1.8 BB/9 across 206 1/3 innings, marking his sixth consecutive season with an earned run average of 2.60 or better. His excellent 2015 season netted Maeda his second Sawamura Award — Japan’s equivalent to the Cy Young Award. With his relative youth, dominant track record and, of course, lack of draft pick compensation, Maeda immediately becomes one of the more intriguing arms on the free-agent market. MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes forecasted a five-year, $60MM deal for Maeda this winter. When factoring in a release fee of $20MM, that amounts to an $80MM commitment overall.
Mar 17, 2013; San Francisco, CA, USA; Japan starting pitcher Kenta Maeda (20) pitches the ball against Puerto Rico during the first inning of the World Baseball Classic semifinal at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
Yankees starting pitcher Luis Severino, 21, could have an innings limit in 2016, manager Joe Girardi said at the Winter Meetings.
By Brendan Kuty
Lost in the shuffle of the Yankees‘ trades at the Winter Meetings was manager Joe Girardi’sannual winter press conference, an approximately 20-minute chat with reporters serving mostly as a check in from his season-ending talk after October’s Wild Card loss.
Naturally, Luis Severino was one of the topics brought up. Severino is expected to be a big part of the Yankees’ rotation in 2016 after an impressive 11-start rookie campaign. Brought up from Triple-A in August, Severino went 5-3 with a 2.89 ERA, helping vault the Yankees into their first postseason since 2012.
The Yankees handled Severino with care in 2015.
Expecting to need him at some point at the majors during the season — likely due to the Opening Day rotation’s fragility and his impressive right arm — the Yankees limited him to just 99 1/3 innings in 19 starts between Double-A and Triple-A. Then he threw 62 1/3 in the bigs, bringing him to 161 2/3 total — or 48 2/3 more than his previous high of 113 innings the season before.
Considering how valuable Severino, who entered 2015 as its top-ranked prospect according to MLB.com, is to the Yankees going forward, Girardi was asked whether Severino might have an innings limit in 2016.
“I don’t know if there’s a limit, if there is, it’s very short,” Girardi said. “I don’t know how many innings he ended up with this year, I think 140-ish.”
“We’ll have to watch him, because the rigors of a big league season is different than a minor league season because it’s longer, but I don’t expect a huge limit on him.”
It’s unclear how much of a limit the Yankees would put on the youngster. Typically, young pitchers increase their innings totals by about 30 or 40 innings a year until they’re considered able to handle a full season.
Keeping a close eye on Severino’s starts early in the season makes the most sense. The Yankees expect to break Opening Day healthy — of course, we know that’s a dicey proposition with the health worries surrounding their rotation. They could protect him by holding him to maybe six innings or 90 pitches a start until it gets warmer and they believe he’s fully loose. Or they could completely let the reigns go and let his innings dictate themselves. Who knows.
General manager Brian Cashman said he hadn’t had any discussions with Girardi about potentially limiting Severino’s innings.
The Yankees entered last season with some sort of soft innings cap in mind for starting pitcher Michael Pineda. Pineda had thrown just 76 1/3 innings in 2014. Though he had thrown 170 innings major-league innings in 2011, that was a long time ago, and the club wanted to protect the oft-injured right-hander. But the Yankees didn’t end up needing to impose limits on Pineda, who spent almost all of August on the disabled list.
FILE – In this Oct. 9, 1973, file photo, Cincinnati Reds’ Pete Rose holds a bat as he talks to the press prior to workout at Shea Stadium in New York. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has rejected Pete Roses plea for reinstatement, citing his continued gambling and evidence that he bet on games when he was playing for the Cincinnati Reds. Manfred says in a letter sent to Rose and made public on Monday, Dec. 14, 2015, that baseballs hits king hasnt been completely honest about his gambling on baseball games. (AP Photo/File)
Oh, you may still see him on baseball telecasts. You’ll see him hawking memorabilia in Las Vegas. He’ll still show up signing and selling autographs during Hall of Fame weekend in Cooperstown.
He’ll just never be walking in the Baseball’s Hall of Fame Museum unless he happens to be buying a ticket.
Commissioner Rob Manfred made it explicitly clear Monday that Rose will not only remain on baseball’s ineligibility list, but it will never change.
Manfred made sure his ruling was as transparent as possible, and when he laid down the facts in his ruling, how can anyone in the world disagree with his ruling?
“Really, there is no other decision,’’ former Commissioner Fay Vincent, whose office originally banned Rose from baseball in 1989, told USA TODAY Sports. “This is the right decision. Any criticism of it would be out of concern for Pete Rose. This is absolutely the proper decision.
“It came as no surprise at all.
“Any other way would have presented enormous problems, which Mr. Manfred and baseball do not need.’’
While Rose begged for mercy and forgiveness, acknowledging he had a gambling problem and lied back in 1989, Manfred informed him that MLB investigators confirmed information in the O’Dowd report that cited Rose also gambled as a player in 1986, and perhaps in 1985, not just as a manager in 1987.
So he played 72 games for the Cincinnati Reds, making 272 plate appearances, in which he actually was gambling on games as an active player.
The O’Dowd report also said that Rose gambled as a player in 1985 when he played 119 games and had 501 plate appearances, which Manfred now believes.
Sure, it has been 26 years since he’s been banned, longer than some criminals served on murder charges, but Manfred specifically cites that Rose still has “not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life.’’
Rose says he is a changed man in one sentence, but in the other, acknowledges that even today he bets on the horses, sporting events, and, yes, even Major League Baseball, while employed as a Fox Sports analyst.
It’s probably not quite what the folks at Fox want to hear, either, knowing that one of their employees is betting on baseball while covering the sport.
“In short, Mr. Rose has not presented credible evidence either by an honest acceptance of him of his wrongdoing,’’ Manfred wrote in his ruling, “so clearly established by the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him and all of the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989.
“Absents such credible evidence, allowing him to work in the game presents and unacceptable risk of a future violation by him of Rule 21, and thus to the integrity of our sport.’’
Oh, Rose will still be permitted to participate in ceremonies, and Fox or any third party that does business with Major League Baseball can continue to employ him, but he cannot be associated with any major-league or minor-league club.
Rose and his attorneys plan on issuing a statement later Monday, but now, the sympathy is over.
The man with the most hits in baseball history will be expunged from its future.
It’s over.
“This is it, I don’t think we’ll hear about this again,’’ Vincent said. “He never cared overall about the game of baseball. All he cared about was Pete Rose.
“Really, Shoeless Joe Jackson [suspended with his White Sox teammates for his role in fixing the 1919 World Series] is probably a stronger candidate than Pete Rose, and there is really no interest in opening that up, and that was in 1919.’’
So what would have happened if Rose had told the truth back in 1989?
What if he didn’t wait until his book was published in 2004 that he lied?
Would it have made a difference?
“We talked about, but that assumes an elephant can fly,’’ Vincent said. “It assumes that Pete Rose might have done something in 1989 that he’s totally incapable of doing, and that’s telling the truth, and acting in baseball’s best interest instead of his own.
“All he has ever been concerned about is Pete Rose.’’
Now, as sad or cruel as it might sound, no one may care about Pete Rose again.
He will never be in the Hall of Fame, certainly, not while Rose still is alive.
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