December 5th, 2023: Soto, Yamamoto, Lee, Kelenic, Peralta

The 2023 Winter Meetings are underway in Nashville and, one day in, it’s been pretty quiet. I had some free time Monday and figured I should cobble together the latest Yankees-related and Yankees-adjacent hot stove happenings, so let’s recap them now. I can’t promise similar posts Wednesday and/or Thursday, but I’ll try my best. Depends on my workload at CBS more than anything (and also on there being enough stuff to write about).

The latest on Soto

Juan Soto is still a San Diego Padre and, as far as I can tell, he is neither closer nor further away from becoming a New York Yankee than he was at this time yesterday. It seems like the trade and free agent markets are hung up on Shohei Ohtani. Once Ohtani signs, everything else will pick up (I think?). Here’s the latest on Soto via AJ Cassavell and Jon Heyman:

• For the first time, Padres GM A.J. Preller acknowledged he’s listening to offers for Soto. “No real update. Nothing really new today on (the Soto) front,” Preller said Monday.
• Gerrit Cole, whose voice carries weight in the organization, is a big fan of Mike King and that presumably contributes to the Yankees’ reluctance to trade him.
• Five teams have made offers for Soto, though two are also in the mix for Ohtani, and it’s assumed they can’t make both players work financially.

My guess is the Blue Jays and Cubs are the two teams in on both Ohtani and Soto, though it could be the Dodgers even though it seems unlikely the Padres will trade Soto within the division when there is ample opportunity to send him elsewhere. With a guy like Soto, don’t the Dodgers have to at least call and make an offer, and make the Padres tell them no? I think so.

Anyway, Cole (and Aaron Judge) should have a seat at the table, but the Yankees have to be careful to not let the inmates run the asylum. Cole loves King. That’s great. It’s not hard to make a case the Yankees should trade him though. King’s value is the highest it’s ever been thanks to his late-season rotation stint. It’s also only two years of control, and (this gets overlooked) King just stayed healthy for a full 162-game season for the first time. See? Sell high!

I hope the Yankees can get Soto without giving up King. King’s great and fun to watch and a likable guy. But if push comes to shove, sorry Gerrit, King should be on his way to San Diego. “Don’t give up King for one year of Soto” feels like one of those takes that will age horribly and sound preposterous come May or June. Fortunately, I haven’t seen it too much out there. If the Yankees can get Soto without King, great, but Cole’s seal of approval should count for only so much.

When the Yankees want a player – I mean really, really want a player – it is not a secret. They let everyone know the Yankees are involved and you have to go through us. That was the case with Cole, Judge, CC Sabathia, etc. We’re kinda there with Soto, right? The Yankees’ interest is by far the most reported and well-known. Other teams are in the mix, no doubt, but the Yankees are the only team not being subtle about it. But, until it happens, we wait.

“He just wants this over with. He doesn’t care where he goes. He knows the Padres aren’t keeping him, so he wants them to trade him,” a source close to Soto told Randy Miller. “He’d be happy going (to the Yankees), but he’d be happy going to Toronto too. He says he doesn’t care where he plays. He just wants to know who he’ll be playing for.”

Yankees to meet with Yamamoto after Winter Meetings

As expected, Yoshinobu Yamamoto will begin meeting with teams face-to-face after the Winter Meetings, and the Yankees will be among them. Joel Sherman says the Yankees (and Mets) will travel to Southern California to make their pitch. I guess that means Yamamoto is making teams come to him, like Masahiro Tanaka did back in the day, and won’t tour cities.

Here’s my Scouting the Market post on Yamamoto. He’s great and the Yankees should sign him. You know that already. Yamamoto is only 25 and he has the talent to pitch at or near the front of a rotation for a long time. Even if he settles in as a No. 2 rather than ace, those guys are incredibly valuable, and rarely are they available this young and for nothing but money.

The Yankees passed up so many elite players in their mid-20s in recent years (Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Corey Seager, etc.) and every single time it was an obvious mistake that looks worse with each passing year. I hope they’ve learned from those mistakes and throw all their money at Yamamoto. Taking on Soto’s salary isn’t a good excuse to pass on Yamamoto.

Lee finally posted

At long last, Kiwoom Heroes center fielder Jung-Hoo Lee has been posted for MLB teams. His 30-day posting window opens at 8am ET today and closes at 5pm ET on Wednesday, Jan. 3rd. That’s the day before Yamamoto’s posting window closes. Between those two and Shōta Imanaga, early January figures to be a busy time for players coming from overseas.

Here’s my Scouting the Market post on Lee. The short version is he’s only 25 and his bat-to-ball ability is special, though he hits a lot of ground balls and hasn’t faced much velocity in KBO. FanGraphs notes Lee saw only 96 pitches at 94+ mph the last two years and hit .276/.300/.370 against them. 96 pitches at 94+ mph is like two weeks in MLB. It was two years in KBO.

From speaking to people smarter than me, it seems the consensus is Lee is young enough and talented enough to hit velocity, though there may be a bit of an adjustment period. Between Lee, Cody Bellinger, and Kevin Kiermaier, I would prefer Kiermaier on a one-year contract. I do think Lee is interesting though, and a sensible target even with the ground ball/velocity red flags.

(Lee’s brother-in-law, righty Woo-Suk Go, has also been posted. The 25-year-old has been a top closer in KBO the last few years. Baseball America (subs. req’d) says his fastball sits 93-95 mph and adds he has a “chance to be a low-leverage reliever, but he needs to sharpen his secondaries to become more.”)

Mariners move on from Kelenic

The Mariners finally ran out of patience with Jarred Kelenic. Late Sunday night Seattle shipped their former top prospect to the Braves in a five-player salary dump trade. The details:

• Braves get: OF Jarred Kelenic, LHP Marco Gonzales, 1B Evan White, $4.5M
• Mariners get: RHP Jackson Kowar, RHP Cole Phillips

Kelenic was the sweetener to unload $24.5M owed to Gonzales and White. Gonzales is a competent No. 5 starter when healthy. White has not been productive and healthy in the same season since 2018. In return, the Mariners get a reclamation project in Kowar (79 runs in 74 MLB innings) and a lottery ticket in Phillips (hasn’t pitched since spring 2022 because of injuries).

The Braves could put Kelenic, who is still only 24, in left field to replace Eddie Rosario, or they could flip him elsewhere (I’ve seen speculation about using him to get Dylan Cease). Either way, the Braves got Kelenic by doing nothing more than absorbing $24.5M. A year ago there was talk about Kelenic fronting a Bryan Reynolds trade. This is what the Mariners did instead.

Can Kelenic be good? I'm not sure anyone really knows. His breakout 2023 season featured a .253/.327/.419 (108 wRC+) line that was split into .308/.366/.615 (169 wRC+) in April and .235/.314/.356 (88 wRC+) the rest of the year. Kelenic’s contract rates are abysmal. The hard-hit ability is there, but when this is your contact heat map against non-fastballs …

… it’s really hard to be a productive hitter. The Yankees could absolutely use a young left-handed hitting outfielder with five years of control, and getting one simply by eating money would be ideal. It’s difficult to count on Kelenic to perform though (the Braves don’t need him to be anything more than a No. 8-9 hitter) and I don’t trust the Yankees to get young hitters on track right now.

As for the Mariners, they’ve now shed $25.5M in 2024 salary obligation between this trade and the Eugenio Suárez trade a few weeks ago. They created close to a Soto-sized opening in their payroll and have a lot of desirable MLB-ready pitching to trade. Even if Logan Gilbert and George Kirby are off-limits, Seattle can offer Emerson Hancock, Bryce Miller, and Bryan Woo. Hmmm.

There haven’t been any reports about Seattle pursuing Soto but that could change with one text or phone call (who talks on the phone? ewww). Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto is not the type to make blockbuster trades for rentals though. My hunch is he’ll use that newfound payroll flexibility to add 2-3 lesser players who might add up to one Soto. That’s usually how Dipoto operates.

Miscellany

The Yankees remain interested in a Wandy Peralta reunion, according to Heyman. Here’s what I wrote about this a few weeks ago. Several red flags popped up this season (issues with walks, homers, and righties for the first time as a Yankee) but the Yankees need a go-to lefty reliever and you know Peralta can handle the highest of high leverage situations. There’s something to be said for that. Plus, Wandy rules. Easy guy to root for … According to Mark Feinsand, bullpen coach Mike Harkey interviewed for the bench coach job. Other than a two-year stint as the Diamondbacks pitching coach from 2014-15, Harkey’s been the bullpen coach since 2008. I’m not sure what to do with this information. Just figured I’d pass it along … And finally, every manager holds a press conference during the Winter Meetings and Aaron Boone is scheduled to speak at 1:40pm ET Tuesday. He’s not gonna give us Soto or Yamamoto updates or anything like that, but we should find out whether assistant hitting coaches Casey Dykes and Brad Wilkerson are staying or being replaced (or whether Harkey will hang around as bullpen coach after being passed over for the bench coach job, I suppose).

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