BOCA RATON, Fla. – This year’s crop of major-league free agents includes such luminaries as potential Cy Young winners Zack Greinke and David Price, home run champ Chris Davis and all-stars Alex Gordon and Justin Upton, among others, but there’s also some interesting stuff bubbling well below the surface.
The list of minor-league free agents has been released by Major League Baseball (to Baseball America, you can see it here), and as always there’s a great deal of has-beens and never weres on it. Players become minor-league free agents after six years in the pros, if they’re not on a major-league team’s 40-man roster.
There are 28 players on this year’s list who finished the 2015 season as property of the Blue Jays, including Andrew Albers, Scott Copeland, Brad Glenn, Colt Hynes, George Kottaras and Luis Perez, all of whom have suited up for the big club at one point in time or another.
The list is dotted with Canadians, as well. Along with Albers and Kottaras, you can also shop for Luke Carlin, Jesse Crain, Scott Diamond, Tyson Gillies, Taylor Green, Jim Henderson, Dustin Molleken, Peter Orr and Skyler Stromsmoe in the minor-league free agent aisle.
Ricky Romero is on the list, as is Robinzon Diaz – the man the Blue Jays traded for Jose Bautista. Travis Snider and Brad Lincoln, who were traded for each other, are minor-league free agents. So is Burt Reynolds (though there’s no word on Dom DeLuise).
All in all, there are 590 names on the list (coincidence? I think not), and the goal is not to find the ones who will help your minor-league affiliates win some games, but to sift through the multitude and bring in players who have a chance to contribute to the big-league roster. And that’s a great challenge.
Blue Jays’ interim general manager Tony LaCava says his club will be active in pursuing minor-league free agents, and more than just to shore up a 40-man roster that only has 14 pitchers on it at the moment.
“First and foremost you want to find guys who can help your major-league club,” said LaCava. “That is far and away the number one reason you (sign minor-league free agents). The next group of players is not necessarily going to do that, but can create a competitive (minor-league) team, but that’s a distant second.”
The Blue Jays had one minor-league free agent signee on their playoff roster in 2015, Ezequiel Carrera, and in the recent past have gone the minor-league free agent route to pick up helpful players such as Neil Wagner, Steve Tolleson and, of course, Munenori Kawasaki.
This year, there are some very interesting names on the list. There are fireballing relievers who have had trouble throwing strikes such as Carlos Marmol, Andy Oliver, Stolmy Pimentel and Josh Zeid. There are left-handed relievers such as Jeff Beliveau, Scott Rice and Caleb Thielbar, who have had success at the big-league level, though it was fleeting.
Daniel Bard, who is still only 30, was once a dominant big-league reliever. Jean Machi was part of a World Series-winning bullpen in 2014, with a WHIP under 1.00 over 71 appearances. John Lannan and Travis Blackley have been viable big-league starters; Rudy Owens, just 27, was the Pirates’ minor-league pitcher of the year in back-to-back seasons.
On the offensive side, Emilio Bonifacio is out there, and though he washed out badly with the Blue Jays in 2013, he’s had success before and since. Hak-Ju Lee and Carlos Triunfel were once big-time “shortstops of the future” in their respective organizations; Rogearvin Bernadina and Jason Bourgeois can be helpful, speedy backup outfielders, and personally, I’ve always been a big fan of Kila Ka’aihue. The now-veteran minor leaguer is a Three True Outcome first baseman who could help both the Bisons and Blue Jays the way Dan Johnson did in 2014.
LaCava believes that there’s merit to bringing in a player who has yet to live up to his prospect hype. “Sometimes a guy that maybe had to fail before he could take that next step may regroup and become better,” said the Jays’ acting GM. “You’ve got to be open-minded to that. It happens, guys fall in the cracks, they fail, then they rebuild themselves and fulfill the promise that at one point somebody saw.”
But there’s no magic formula to figuring out who that guy might be.
“It’s the whole gamut, it’s a rainbow,” added LaCava. “There’s no real one thing that you can pinpoint and say ‘Oh, that’s gonna click.’ So you just have to look at each player individually and try to make a decision as to whether they’ve figured it out or they’ve gotten better.”
There’s a reason there are close to 600 players available. And for every Scott Downs, there are dozens of Jared Goederts. The Blue Jays will sign several minor-league free agents in the coming weeks, and most will elicit eye-rolls from the fan base, but one or two of them can break through and have that one good year that so many fringe big-leaguers seem to have. It’s just too bad no one can figure out who that one or two will be ahead of time.