Minnesota Twins add Homer Bailey, Rich Hill to fill out starting rotation

Homer Bailey

The Minnesota Twins needed two starting pitchers to fill out their 2020 rotation, but they failed to sign any of the high-profile names on the market.

On Tuesday, the Twins picked up two veterans to fill those gaps, signing right-hander Homer Bailey and left-hander Rich Hill to one-year contracts.

Bailey, 33, won a total of eight games in four seasons from 2015-18, but he bounced back to respectability in 2019. He went 13-9 with a 4.57 ERA in 31 starts and 163.1 innings pitched.

Eighteen of those starts came with the Kansas City Royals, 13 with the Oakland Athletics after a midseason trade.

Bailey's deal is for $7 million, and he will earn performance bonuses if he reaches 180 innings, something he has not done since the 2013 season.

Hill, 39, will be 40 years old by the time the season starts, and he's still good when he's healthy, but he's on the injured list a lot. He was limited to 13 starts in 2019 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he did go 4-1 with a 2.45 ERA in 58.2 innings.

Over the past five seasons, Hill has made 86 starts, or about 17 per season. That's why his contract contains only $3 million in guarantees. The contract escalates to $9.5 million if he hits 15 starts or 75 innings. Hill had surgery on his elbow in October, and he won't return until at least June.

I wouldn't expect either of these two guys to provide a major impact for the Twins, but they had to do something. They still have their ace, Jose Berrios, and two middle-of-the-rotation pitchers in Jake Odorizzi and Michael Pineda.

However, the other members of their 2019 rotation signed elsewhere. Kyle Gibson is with the Texas Rangers. Martin Perez has moved on to the Boston Red Sox.

Of course, the Twins won 101 games and the AL Central title last summer on the strength of their excellent offense, not their pitching. They smashed a MLB record 307 home runs, and no matter what, they are going to have to hit their way back to the playoffs.

Rumor has it Minnesota "has room to go big" for third baseman Josh Donaldson. That would add to an already good lineup, and it also would improve the Twins' infield defense -- a must behind a starting staff that is likely to be considered suspect going into the season.

Hyun-Jin Ryu agrees to four-year deal with Toronto Blue Jays

Hyun-Jin Ryu

Left-handed pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu has agreed to a four-year, $80 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, according to reports.

Ryu, 32, finished second in the National League Cy Young Award voting in 2019, when he went 14-5 with a league-leading 2.32 ERA in 29 starts for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Blue Jays are looking to reconfigure their starting rotation this offseason -- they've also added right-handers Tanner Roark and Chase Anderson.

I think this is an overpay, but hey, Toronto is coming off a 95-loss season, and it was going to have to significantly outbid the competition in order to sign a pitcher of Ryu's caliber.

There's no doubt Ryu has quality stuff, but if you look at his injury history, and you wonder if he's going to be productive all four years of the deal. Here are the number of starts he's made in each season of his career:

2013: 30
2014: 26
2015: 0
2016: 1
2017: 25
2018: 15
2019: 29

Last season was the first time Ryu had thrown more than 180 innings in a season since his rookie year in 2013. I'm not sure if he'll hold up, but as a White Sox fan, I am glad he signed somewhere outside of the American League Central Division. I was concerned Ryu would sign with the Minnesota Twins, who still need help for their rotation.

At this point, all the high-end starting pitchers are off the free agent market. The top two remaining guys are Homer Bailey and Ivan Nova, so we'll see if Minnesota moves to address its pitching weaknesses via trade.

Let us never speak of this Oakland series again, OK?

Ivan Nova

The White Sox opened the second half of the season by playing their worst series in quite some time. They were swept in three games in Oakland. They were outscored, 21-5, and were limited to only two extra-base hits the entire series -- both of which came Sunday.

Dating back to 2017, the Sox have lost their past eight games in Oakland. That stadium has been a house of horrors for the South Siders seemingly for the past 25 years.

I was noticing that Kansas City traded starting pitcher Homer Bailey to Oakland over the weekend. And I thought, hey, if the Royals can trade a mediocre, washed-up pitcher such as Bailey, does that mean the Sox can trade Ivan Nova?

Nova was up to his old tricks Friday night, giving up three home runs in a 5-1 loss. The right-hander is now 4-8 with a 5.60 ERA this season, and his failure to pitch like a reasonable stopgap veteran continues to be one of the disappointments on this team.

I'd say trade Nova for a bag of balls, but if he does depart, that may prolong Dylan Covey's stay in the starting rotation. Covey did not make it out of the first inning in Saturday's 13-2 loss. He is 1-5 with a 5.92 ERA this season, and he is 6-26 with 6.07 ERA for his career.

How much longer are the Sox going to insult us with the idea that Covey is a viable solution in the rotation? There's been a lot of talk about the rebuild "turning a corner" this season, as the Sox still qualify as overachieving with their 42-47 record.

However, this team will not truly "turn a corner" until they are putting a credible starting pitcher on the mound more days than not. Right now, charitably speaking, there are 2.5 holes in the rotation. Some may say there are four holes.

Hey, at least Reynaldo Lopez pitched well Sunday. He allowed only one unearned run over six innings, but the Sox still lost, 3-2. Lopez's ERA is finally below six at 5.97.

It's going to be a long second half with the Sox pitching staff continuing to be in a state of disrepair. They've done a decent job of covering up the holes over half a season, but the warts always show over a 162-game schedule.

Report: Cubs renew contract talks with Jeff Samardzija

Turn on the baseball talk shows in Chicago, and you still hear nothing but poetry and praise for the Cubs' front office and its rebuilding plan. Many members of the media gush about the prospects the Cubs have in their system, especially third baseman Kris Bryant, who has been tearing up Double-A.

But here's the thing: Prospects are all fine and dandy, but don't you have to make progress at the major league level eventually? The Cubs have lost 90 or more games for three consecutive years, and they are on pace for another 93 losses this season. That's unacceptable for a big-market team -- at least it should be.

It's past time for the Cubs to open up the wallet and start spending to improve the major league team. The North Siders have only $31 million committed to their roster for the 2015 season (excluding arbitration raises). Given the ticket prices they charge, the Cubs should have plenty of cash on hand. And, there's not much question that money should be spent on pitching.

All these prospects we keep hearing about are position players: Bryant, Javier Baez, Jorge Soler, Albert Almora, Arismendy Alcantara, etc. Where are the pitching prospects? There aren't many worth talking about, and that's why I think the Cubs should sign their best pitcher, Jeff Samardzija, to an extension. Reports on Monday indicated the team is trying to do just that.

To this point in the season, it's been assumed Samardzija would be traded to an AL East contender midseason. Previous contract talks have gone nowhere with the right-hander, whose 2.77 ERA ranks ninth in the National League. Despite a 2-6 record, Samardzjia's other numbers are good: 82 strikeouts in 91 innings and a 1.18 WHIP. I don't know that he's an ace on a contending team, but he's probably a No. 2 starter. He's a solid, reliable pitcher who would be an asset to any organization.

Knowing that, why don't the Cubs just keep him? Sure, he's going to command six years at over $100 million. That's a lot of dough, but it's the going rate. If Homer Bailey can get six years and $105 million, then so can Samardzija. And it isn't like any of the other free agent pitching options next offseason (Max Scherzer, Jon Lester, James Shields, Justin Masterson) are going to come any cheaper.

If you're gonna pay for pitching, why not pay the guy who has been with the organization all along? Samardzija will be 30 heading into next season, but his arm doesn't have the wear and tear of many pitchers his age. He was late to the party in terms of becoming a starting pitcher. He's thrown 649 innings in the majors during his career. By way of comparison, San Francisco right-hander Matt Cain (who is three and a half months older than Samardzija) has thrown 1,779.2 innings in the majors. Projecting a pitcher's future is always guesswork, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say Samardzija's got plenty of bullets left.

Let's say the Cubs do ante up and make Samardzija a lucrative offer in the coming weeks. It will be interesting to see if he accepts. I have the sneaking suspicion that Samardzija is tired of this rebuilding plan. By the Cubs' own admission, they are at least two years and maybe three years away from fielding a team that can compete. Samardzija is in the prime of his career right now. Does he want two or three more of his best years to go to waste languishing on a rebuilding club? The way he's pitched, it's absurd he has only two wins this season.

That leads me to my next point: If the Cubs want to attract big-name free agents, they need to start winning more games. Why did Masahiro Tanaka choose the Yankees over the Cubs? It wasn't because the Cubs didn't make a representative offer. It was because Tanaka wants to win, and the Yankees field a competitive team every season.

Sure, the Cubs could flip Samardzija to the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Orioles or Yankees and get three or four prospects, but then their team would become even worse than it already is. If the Cubs trade both Samardzija and pitcher Jason Hammel, they don't have many good options to plug into those two rotation spots. They might be charting a course toward 95 or 100 losses.

Would Max Scherzer or Jon Lester want to come be a part of that? I don't think so. Who is going to take the Cubs' money, if not Samardzija? Members of the media might be swooning about Cubs prospects, but veteran players don't give a damn about Javier Baez's batting average in Triple-A. They want a chance to win, and they want it sooner rather than later.

I believe signing Samardzija for the long haul would bring the Cubs closer to a chance to win than flipping him for a package of ifs and maybes at the trade deadline.

Pitching prices come down for the patient

Jason Vargas will make more money
than Royals fans would like.

It's not really easy to like the contract Ubaldo Jimenez got from the Orioles, unless you think he's going to pitch like an ace the way he did way back when for the Rockies. If he does that, this deal will be a steal for Baltimore. Though he probably won't.

That might not really matter though, because even if Jimenez is just an inning-muncher with a little upside, the Orioles paid what is the going rate for that kind of guy, and much less than Jimenez and his agent might have expected when the offseason began.

Jimenez isn't the only one. Ervin Santana, who is still a free agent, was no doubt pleased to see rumors floated that it would take six years and $100 million to land him. If he gets half of that now, I'll be surprised.

Matt Garza, thought to be one of the prizes of the free agent pitching market, also didn't sign until late in the offseason for much less than most people -- including the Cubs -- probably expected him to get. I mean, if you're Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein, wouldn't you rather have Garza for Edwin Jackson money instead of Edwin Jackson?

Or another point of contrast: Is Jimenez more or less dicey than Homer Bailey, who just got more than $100 million without even hitting the market?

While the top of the pitching market maybe didn't reach the heights we might have expected with the money rolling into baseball, the bottom of the market didn't seem to suffer. At least not among the teams that felt like they had to strike deals before Christmas.

Does the four-year, $49 million deal the Twins gave Ricky Nolasco before Christmas look so great now that Jimenez and Garza barely got more?

How will the Royals feel if Santana takes the same four-year, $32 million deal they gave Jason Vargas long before everyone in the Midwest got sick of snow this winter? Even worse, what if Santana decides that's a bunk deal so decides to look for a well-paying, one-year prove-it deal -- or what an agent would call a pillow contract -- in an attempt to hit the market again with two recent and successful seasons on his resume.

If the Royals hadn't rushed to sign Vargas, or the Twins to ink Nolasco and Phil Hughes (3 years, $21 million), both might have the room in their budgets and rotations to take advantage, either grabbing a better pitcher for the same or less money, or a comparable pitcher on better terms.

Instead both teams are hamstrung. Bad contracts don't usually do that until after someone's thrown a pitch.

The lesson here seems pretty obvious. Good things, or at least better prices, come to those who wait.

Homer Bailey's no-hitter is first of 2013 season

The 2012 baseball season equaled an all-time record with seven no-hitters thrown. This year, things are evening out a bit.

We got a little over halfway through the 2013 season before Homer Bailey broke the ice with the first no-hitter of the year Tuesday night.

The Cincinnati Reds right-hander defeated the defending world champion San Francisco Giants 3-0 before a crowd of over 27,000 people at Great American Ball Park.

Bailey retired the first 18 batters before walking Gregor Blanco to lead off the top of the seventh inning.

Blanco would be the only San Francisco player to reach base as Bailey faced just one hitter over the minimum.

Bailey struck out nine and needed a fairly economical 109 pitches to finish the job. He threw first-pitch strikes to 19 of the 28 batters he faced.

It was the second no-hitter of Bailey's career. He blanked the Pirates on Sept. 28, 2012, the seventh and final no-hitter of last season. On Tuesday, he became the first pitcher since Nolan Ryan to account for consecutive no-hitters — meaning that no other pitcher threw one between his two.

Ryan pulled that trick back in the mid-70s. As a member of the California Angels, he beat the Minnesota Twins 4-0 on Sept. 28, 1974. Check out the box score on that one. Ryan struck out 15 and walked eight in the victory. He later no-hit the Baltimore Orioles on June 1, 1975. Those were two of Ryan's record seven no-hitters during his 27-year career.