{"id":2460,"date":"2016-12-07T18:28:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T23:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=2460"},"modified":"2016-12-07T18:28:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T23:28:53","slug":"marlins-bring-aj-ellis-one-year-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2016\/12\/07\/marlins-bring-aj-ellis-one-year-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Marlins Bring in A.J. Ellis on One-Year Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the <b>Winter Meetings<\/b> roll on, the <b>Miami Marlins<\/b> continue to make a series of small moves. After signing veteran pitchers <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lockeje01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jeff Locke<\/a><\/b> and <b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcgowdu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dustin McGowan<\/a><\/b> earlier today, the Marlins brought in catcher <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/e\/ellisaj01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A.J. Ellis<\/a><\/b> on a one-year, $2.5 million deal. <b>Buster Olney<\/b> of <b>ESPN<\/b> broke the news.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Marlins have agreed to terms with A.J. Ellis on a 1-year deal for $2.5 million.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Buster_ESPN\/status\/806610533441032192\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">December 7, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Marlins Bring in A.J. Ellis on One-Year Contract<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Ellis, 35, has been in the major leagues since 2008, and has played every game of his career thus far with the <b>Los Angeles Dodgers<\/b>, aside from the few he played with the <b>Philadephia Phillies<\/b> after being traded late last season. Ellis was never truly a primary backstop in Los Angeles; he played more than 100 games in a season only twice. However, his lockerroom presence was lauded. A young Marlins team on the verge of contending will find that useful.<\/p>\n<p>Though he known more for his glove than his bat, Ellis did have a couple solid years at the plate. He best season came in 2012, when played a career-high 133 games. That season, Ellis set personal bests in OPS (.787), home runs (13), doubles (20), hits (114), and RBI (52). Since then, his offensive production and playing time has declined. Near the end of his tenure with the Dodgers, he served primarily as the personal catcher to <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kershcl01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Clayton Kershaw<\/a><\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>With the Marlins, Ellis will back up young star catcher <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/realmjt01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">J.T. Realmuto<\/a><\/b>, who is becoming one of the better backstops in the game. Miami has been in need of a backup catcher since <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mathije01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jeff Mathis<\/a><\/b> signed with the <b>Arizona Diamondbacks<\/b> last week. While he may not play often, Ellis is a nice addition to this Marlins squad.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/576816208\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/576816208?et=rmzARxKoRTtM5XRL6ChmOA&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=mUsOkwBPFRUTusMQZIjxlCd5BUURUb5Gfsm9nZvejkw=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Winter Meetings roll on, the Miami Marlins continue to make a series of small moves. After signing veteran pitchers Jeff Locke and Dustin McGowan earlier today, the Marlins brought in catcher A.J. Ellis on a one-year, $2.5 million deal. Buster Olney of ESPN broke the news. The Marlins have agreed to terms with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":807,"featured_media":2461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,35],"tags":[96,68,71,69],"class_list":["post-2460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marlins","category-news","tag-a-j-ellis","tag-baseball","tag-miami-marlins","tag-mlb"],"modified_by":"Josh Greenberg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/807"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}