The Toronto Blue Jays have hired former Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington to be their new Vice President of Baseball Operations, as Shi Davidi of Sportsnet and Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports reported.
In Cherington's new role, he will report to G.M. Ross Atkins and provide an emphasis on player development. For the 2015-16 school year, the 42-year-old Cherington had been serving as a professor at Columbia University, where he taught a "leadership in sports" class as part of the university's sports management program. Cherington is a graduate of Amherst College, and, after spending a season with the Cleveland Indians, worked with the Red Sox in a variety of positions from 1999 to 2015. From 2011 on, Cherington was the Red Sox' G.M., and he led the team to their World Series win in 2013. As a result, Cherington was named Major League Baseball Executive of the Year by The Sporting News, a distinction only two Red Sox executives had ever received prior. In 2015, after the Red Sox brought Dave Dombrowski in to serve as president of baseball operations and oversee Cherington, he submitted his resignation. Now, Cherington will go to a Blue Jays franchise that has done well over the past two seasons, with the team making the postseason in 2015 for the first time since 1993. At the top of their front office, the Jays have the aforementioned Atkins and President of Baseball Operations Mark Shapiro, both of whom have only been in charge of the club for the 2016 season. Cherington will add to them. --Devan Fink
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The Oakland Athletics have released designated hitter Billy Butler, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle first reported.
While with the Athletics, Butler struggled to produce at the level he once did during his days with the Kansas City Royals. This season, the 30-year-old Butler has posted a .276/.331/.403 slash line over 85 games. Hitting just four home runs and driving in 31, Butler has been worth -0.5 fWAR. Not to mention, Butler was involved in a clubhouse altercation with third baseman Danny Valencia a few weeks ago, resulting in a concussion. General manager David Forst said, though, that this had nothing to do with his release. Butler signed a three-year, $30 million deal with the Athletics in 2014 and still has a year left on his contract. Because all baseball contracts are fully guaranteed, Oakland will still owe Butler the $11.67 million he was set to make next year. In his two seasons with the Athletics, Butler hit for a .719 OPS (99 OPS+) with 19 home runs and 96 RBI over 843 plate appearances. According to FanGraphs, he was worth a -1.2 fWAR during this timeframe. --Devan Fink
The New York Mets have signed outfielder Tim Tebow to a minor league deal, as they announced. Adam Schefter of ESPN first reported the deal.
According to James Wagner of the New York Times, Tebow will make a $100,000 signing bonus, the maximum a team is able to spend on an un-drafted free agent without it counting against their draft bonus pool. Tebow, 29, is a former Heisman Trophy winner and National Football League quarterback with the Denver Broncos, New York Jets, New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles. He announced his intentions to transition to a baseball career in early August and held a workout for scouts on Aug. 30. Twenty-eight teams attended, as Tebow showed off his outfield skills, running and hitting off of former Major League pitchers. He gathered mixed reviews from scouts but they agreed he showed impressive power, hitting a 440-foot home run in batting practice. The Mets were not the only team to show interest in Tebow, as the Colorado Rockies, Atlanta Braves and Toronto Blue Jays were also reportedly considering offering him a contract. Tebow has not played competitive baseball in 11 years, with his last full-time action coming in 2005 as a junior in high school. He was a top high school baseball talent that did garner some MLB Draft interest, but he did not play in his senior season to focus on football and was not drafted. The Mets announced that Tebow will head to the Instructional League to begin his career. --Devan Fink
The Minnesota Twins are looking in multiple directions as they look for a revamped baseball operations staff, according to multiple reports.
The Twins fired ex-General Manager Terry Ryan in July and have been looking to expand into analytics in the future, a department in which the team has noted struggles. They appear to be looking for a president of baseball operations first, who in turn will hire his or her own general manager. According to MLB.com's Jon Morosi, the Twins are "looking closely" at members of the Cubs' front office for this position, including Senior Vice President of Player Development and Amateur Scouting Jason McLeod and Assistant GM Shiraz Rehman. Minnesota is also reportedly interested in former Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos, who served there from 2009 to 2015. After a surprising turn of events, Anthopoulos left the Blue Jays, even though he took the team to the playoffs for the first time since 1993. Since, he's worked for the Dodgers as a Vice President. The Twins' President of Baseball Operations job could be an appealing one for a few reasons. First, though the team is struggling this season to the league's worst record at 51-88, they do have some promising prospects close to the Majors such as Byron Buxton and Jose Berrios, who could fuel a winning core sooner rather than later. Perhaps the best example of this came in 2015, when the Twins turned heads, going 83-79 and competing for a Wild Card spot. It's not hard to imagine Minnesota being able to contend for a playoff spot sooner rather than later. Secondly, as President of Baseball Operations, whomever the Twins hire would have free reign. The person under this title finalizes all baseball decisions, one of the reasons why Anthopoulos left the Blue Jays in the first place. (He was stripped of this power after the team hired Mark Shapiro.) It's not hard to think there will not be a lot of interest in this position, and early indications are that the team will be doing a vast and extensive search as they look to 2017 and beyond. --Devan Fink
The Atlanta Braves have interest in signing former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow to a minor league deal, ESPN's Pedro Gomez reported.
The Braves were one of the five teams that met with Tebow 1-on-1 after his workout last Tuesday, according to Gomez, who also reported that the Rockies were showing interest in him as well. Tebow held a workout for 28 of the 30 Major League teams last Tuesday at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he showcased his baseball skills on both sides of the plate. The Cubs and Athletics did not attend his workout. Tebow's workout generated a wide range of reviews from scouts, though the consensus was that he had lots of raw power but still needed polish with the other parts of his game. The 29-year-old and former Heisman Trophy winner announced last month that he was interested in playing professional baseball, even after spending more than a decade away from the game, having last played it in high school. The Braves, at the very least, make sense from a geographical standpoint. Tebow grew up in eastern Florida and was a standout quarterback at the University of Florida, just 330 miles from Atlanta and in "Braves territory." The Braves may also be interested in Tebow to mentor some of their younger players. Well known for his work ethic and persistence, Tebow could be a good fit for an Atlanta team that is going through a rebuild. It's hard to know, if signed, how much of a baseball impact Tebow will have on the Braves but any could be an added bonus. --Devan Fink |
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