The Athletics released infielder Akinori Iwamura, tweets Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. Iwamura would have filed for free agency a month from now anyway, but it makes sense to remove him from the 40-man roster now.
Iwamura, 31, was acquired by the Pirates from the Rays for Jesse Chavez in November. The Bucs exercised Iwamura's $4.85MM option as part of the deal, making him their highest-paid player. He was terrible for the Pirates and was designated for assignment by June. Iwamura was released in September and signed with the A's. He'll need to rebuild value with a minor league deal.
To think, the Rays pretty much flipped this guy for the best Closer in the game this year.
Rafael Soriano is from Braves.. Andrew Bailey is still on the A’s..
Aki might be worth a flyer for the Mets, no? What with Luis Castillo on the outs…
His problems almost have to be tied to his knee. Hard to see someone that makes a living with the bat going up the middle/opposite field going this far south all at once like he did with Pittsburgh, unless being with a team that makes losing a routine thing just turned him into lax all of a sudden, which is doubtful.
He was wearing a brace on his balky knee when he left the rays, wonder if still is.
Things have gotten progressively worse for Iwamura the last few years. Seems like a shame.
Aki came to Pittsburgh on a balky knee, overweight, and with his best years behind him. As much as I would have liked to have seen him succeed, he was clearly not “major league ready” this season. He will have a mountain to climb (on a bum knee no less) to playing in the majors again, and the odds are stacked heavily against him.
Castillo is a much better player than Iwamura now – which says a lot more about how bad Iwamura is than how good Castillo is. Even the Mets are not foolish enough to replace Castillo with Iwamura.
He refrained from having knee reconstruction but I wonder if he should have done it? The knee is obviously causing him major issues – he lost all his lateral speed. I’m sure the extra weight was from not being able to stress the knee.
When he played for Pittsburgh the brace he had on looked bigger than the one he had with the Rays.
Hope he makes it back.
Supposedly the ACL was not as severely injured as was originally thought (only partially torn) in his collision with Chris Coghlan, thus making reconstruction un-nessessary. But one has to wonder if total reconstruction would have served him better….
Iwamura will get a split contract but he’ll play in the majors again. That will be a terrible move for whatever team signs him though; even setting aside his hitting, his range is nonexistent.