Minnesota Twins: Agree to terms with Adrianza, non-tender Grossman
By Nate Palmer
The Minnesota Twins agreed on contracts with Ehire Adrianza and C.J. Cron while non-tendering Robbie Grossman Friday night.
The Minnesota Twins didn’t have a lot of decisions to make Friday night as the deadline came and went to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players. There were two moves of note that will send some messages about the rest of the Twins offseason.
The Twins agreed to a contract with one of the few non-tender candidates that the team had going into Friday’s deadline, Ehire Adrianza. Adrianza and the Twins agreed to a 1 year, $1.3 million contract. While that is a raise for Adrianza from 2018, it is also $500,000 below what MLB Trade Rumors projected Adrianza to make via arbitration.
In 2018 Arianza saw the highest amount of at-bats he ever has in his career due to the suspension of Jorge Polanco and trade of Brian Dozier. He turned his 335 at-bats into a slash line of .251/.301/.379. Right now Adrianza is slotted to start for the Twins but will ideally be pushed to the bench due to some other addition this offseason and continue in his utility infielder role.
Robbie Grossman, as expected, was non-tendered. Grossman wasn’t projected to make a lot at $4 million for next season as projected by MLB Trade Rumors. As we have covered once already, Grossman just has seen the need for him on this roster disappear with his limited skill set. The positive he has brought to the roster is he has been one of the better on-base percentage players on the Twins roster in the past several seasons just behind Joe Mauer.
The outfielders limited range as a defender has caused him to be pushed out of that position group by the likes of Jake Cave who looks set to be the Twins fourth outfielder at the start of 2019. That left Grossman as a DH option, and since he lacks in power the claim of C.J. Cron (who the Twins agreed on a $4.8 million contract with) all but sealed Grossman’s fate as a non-tender decision.
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Other players that will be tendered a contract by the Twins include Jake Odorizzi, Kyle Gibson, Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler, Miguel Sano, Taylor Rogers, Byron Buxton and Trevor May. With tonight’s deadline passed the Twins front office will begin looking forward to the Winter Meetings and see how any of the other teams’ non-tendered players who are now free agents may or may not fit into their offseason plans.