Morning Rundown: Frankie Montas signs, Chris Sale traded to Braves, Oneil Cruz breakout?
More activity when it comes to pitching, Oneil Cruz recognized on MLB.com
It’s been a busy couple of days on the pitching side of things, as Friday, Lucas Giolito signed a two-year deal with the Boston Red Sox, and Saturday, the Cincinnati Reds also struck a deal with free agent Frankie Montas.
The Reds haven’t been shy about the free-agent pitching market, previously signing Emilio Pagan and Nick Martinez before also inking a deal for Montas.
The 30-year-old Montas pitched only one game for the Yankees last year before missing the rest of the season due to an injury.
In 2021, Montas posted a 13-9 record with a 3.37 ERA while striking out 207 batters in 187 innings pitched.
After signing Giolito on Friday, the Red Sox made another move involving a starting pitcher on Saturday, trading Chris Sale to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for Vaughn Grissom.
Sale, 34, missed most of the 2021 and 2022 seasons due to injuries but crossed the century mark regarding innings pitched last year (102.2).
He made 20 starts, posting a 6-5 record with a 4.30 ERA (3.72 xFIP) while striking out 29.4% of the batters he faced.
Grissom was a former Top 100 prospect who had mostly fallen out of favor with the Braves. In 2023, he posted a .280/.313/.347 in 80 plate appearances with a wRC+ of 78.
During the Braves World Series run, Grissom jumped from Double-A to the majors and posted a 121 wRC+ in 156 plate appearances, hitting five home runs and stealing another five bases.
MLB.com put out an article where they pick out one breakout player for each team, with Oneil Cruz being the pick for the Pirates.
2023 was supposed to be that year, but Cruz missed most of the season after breaking his ankle in a home plate collision against the Chicago White Sox.
In 2022, Cruz hit 17 home runs and stole 10 bases in 361 plate appearances but struck out 34.9% of the time. If he can cut back on those strikeouts, the sky seems to be the limit for the shortstop.
There will be no article on New Year unless something big happens, and the Mailbag will also drop on Tuesday. I'm trying to take advantage of the holidays so close together to give me some time off, especially with me fighting off a cold right now.
The New Year will bring our draft coverage to the site, with a weekly feature with some player profiles or rankings. I’m looking forward to that.
Every Monday during the offseason, we will be doing a mailbag article. Please send in your questions to have them answered! Either comment below with ‘mailbag’ entered in the message or email us at bucsondeckqa@gmail.com.
I look forward to answering what you guys have!
Good for Cincy’s fans, we could argue that they could’ve spend that money differently, but no arguing that they spent it. $100-$120 million payroll for a MLB franchise should be the floor. The addition that the Royals and Tigers have made would have been welcome by me and most. The fact that our favorite team refuses to spend that money is my biggest frustration.
The beauty of baseball is that a club like the Reds is gonna spend $40m more than the Buccos and it'll increase their chances of success...by a couple percentage points.
The Pirates could of course apply the same logic and put themselves within a few percentage points of even the highest-spending markets by investing even a modest amount in the club, but they instead choose to cry unfair and use that to justify spending nothing.
The additional utility of another $50m when you are already fielding a well-built ~$125m roster almost completely gets eaten up by the inherent randomness of the game. Sure, you want to use the bullets you have, but that should not generate some existential crisis of "unfairness". Such a claim fundamentally misunderstands the game we love.