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Marlins in touch with free agent first baseman Yuri Gurrielaccording to Barry Jackson With Craig Misch of the Miami Herald Alejandro Villegas of 5 Reasons Sports.
Gurriel, who turns 39 in June, has spent his entire MLB career with the Astros. He signed with them from Cuba in 2016 with a five-year deal covering the period 2016-2020. After a short run in the first year of that contract, Gurriel established himself as an above-average regular in his three subsequent seasons. From 2017 to 2019, he walked just 4.7% of his moves to the plate, but also struck out only 10.9%. He hit 62 home runs and batted .296/.333/.486. His 119 wRC+ at that time showed he was 19% better than the league average.
However, the past three years have been much less consistent. Gurriel slumped badly in his shortened 2020 season, just .232/.274/.384 on wRC+76. Still, the Astros had enough faith in him that they gave him a one-year contract extension with the option for him to join the club in 2022. 319 batting average and he achieved a 132 wRC+ in 2021 to win his league batting title. The club triggered his option for the 2022 club, but Gurriel again fell into a slump, posting . It recorded 347/.360/.490. His market has been quiet so far this offseason, with only reported interest from the Astros, but that was before they signed. Jose Abreu.
Fish already has a first baseman, so he doesn’t necessarily need to add a first baseman. Garrett Cooper lined up in that position. Although he has been an above-average hitter in each of his last four seasons, he has suffered frequent injuries and has yet to appear in his 120 games in any season of his career. Acquiring Gurriel would give them extra cover or allow the club to monitor the workload of the two players, both right-handed but Cooper reverses using his split Therefore, platooning is possible. For his career he has 119 wRC+ against right-handers, but 113 against left-handers. 2022 was even more notable, with 79 against southpaws and 125 otherwise.
It may take time with the duo as the designated hitter, Jorge SorelThe outfielder will miss a significant amount of time in 2022 due to a back spasm, and reports say he’s likely to win the majority of his playing time in the DH slot next year.
All of this makes Gurriel a bit of an awkward fit on the roster, but his inconsistent track record and rising age in recent years probably means he doesn’t cost much. Appeal to the Marlins Club of Spending. According to Roster Resources calculations, his current salary is around $103 million. That’s pretty modest by MLB standards, but only once has the club surpassed it, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, which went back in 2017 under the previous owner group: Last year, they made just over 7,900. Opened the season with $10,000.
Whatever the cost, adding Gurriel is another attempt by the club to add attacking to their lukewarm line-up, which produced 88 wRC+ last year, placing them 25th out of 30 teams in the league.they have already signed Jean Segura As part of that effort, we’ve been trying to trade from rotation surpluses for quite some time, but have yet to come to an agreement.
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