Non-Tender Roundup Part I

Teams had until 11:59 P.M. on Thursday night to tender arbitration eligible players a contract for 2011. There were close to 200 non-tender candidates out there, but let’s look at the most notable players who weren’t tendered a contract and are now free agents.

Martin was non-tendered by the Dodgers

Russell Martin, Los Angeles Dodgers. I wrote about Martin last month and this was a pretty easy call for the Dodgers.

As I wrote in the post, every key stat for Martin has declined or taken a turn for the worse since 2006. Plus, there is a ton of wear and tear on his body.

Martin will definitely find a home somewhere because of the lack of depth at the catching position around the majors. The New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, or Toronto Blue Jays could be a landing spot for Martin.

Jack Cust, Oakland A’s. It seems like the A’s and Cust are the couple in high school that gets together, breaks up, gets together, tries to stay together when they both go to different colleges, and that lasts about a month until one of them realizes that there are a lot of better options out there.

The A’s non-tendered Cust last year too before they brought him back for another season. I think after this non-tender, Cust and the A’s have finally broken up.

Cust saw his power numbers take a dip last season (20.5 HR/AB in 2009 to 26.8 HR/AB in 2010), but maintained his usual BB percentage and K percentage remained about the same.

Cust is a DH at this point in his career and really shouldn’t be playing the OF on a regular basis.

Cust would be a good fit for a team like the Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Rays, Blue Jays, or the Baltimore Orioles.

Bobby Jenks, Chicago White Sox. Between Jenks’ potential salary in 2011 (could be $8 million plus) and his weight issues, he really fell out of favor in Chicago. Not to mention that the White Sox have a couple of solid in-house replacements for Jenks in Matt Thornton and Chris Sale.

Despite having a 4.44 ERA, Jenks had the second highest K/9 ratio of his career with a 10.4 mark and had the second highest groundball Percentage of his career (58.3) in 2010. A very high BABIP (.368) could potentially explain the high ERA.

Jenks also saw an increase in velocity in 2010. He was hitting 95 again on his fastball.

Jenks could be a fit with the Red Sox, New York Mets, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Rays.

Later, we’ll cover a couple of other players who were non-tendered in Part II of this post.

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