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Yankees Claim Marco Luciano

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The Yankees have claimed outfielder Marco Luciano off waivers from the Orioles, according to announcements from both clubs. Baltimore designated him for assignment a week ago. The Yankees technically have a 40-man spot open for this claim, but their agreement to re-sign Cody Bellinger is not yet official. This moves fills up the 40-man, so a corresponding move will now be required for Bellinger.

It’s possible that corresponding move could involve Luciano himself. The once-vaunted prospect is pinballing around the league this offseason, going from the Giants, to the Pirates, to the Orioles and now the Yankees.

Luciano, 24, was originally signed by the Giants as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic. He spent five seasons residing on Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list, topping out as their No. 12 prospect following the 2020 season. Luciano was productive throughout his run in the lower minors but has yet to hit beyond Double-A.

Through 1017 plate appearances in Triple-A, Luciano is a .227/.351/.401 hitter with a glaring 29.6% strikeout rate. Those tepid rate stats come despite an overwhelmingly hitter-friendly environment in the Pacific Coast League — and specifically in West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park (currently the temporary home of the A’s.)

At one point, Luciano was considered the Giants’ shortstop of the future. His status as Brandon Crawford’s heir wilted as he stumbled in the upper minors, however, and in 2024 the Giants began moving him to other positions. Their signing of Willy Adames on a seven-year deal sealed the fact that if Luciano was going to be a key piece in San Francisco, it’d need to be at another position. The Giants tried him in the outfield as well, but without much luck.

In addition to his Triple-A struggles, Luciano has seen 126 plate appearances in the majors and posted a .217/.286/.304 slash. He’s fanned in 35.7% of his trips to the batter’s box in the majors. There are still plenty of loud tools in his skill set, but Luciano’s jarring swing-and-miss tendencies have proven too prominent to surmount thus far in his career. He’s out of minor league options, so he’ll need to either break camp with the Yankees or be removed from their 40-man roster — most likely via yet another DFA. If it comes to that, the Yankees can try to slip him through waivers in hopes of keeping him Scranton as a depth option in the event that he clears.

Orioles Claim Weston Wilson, Designate José Suarez

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The Orioles have claimed utilityman Weston Wilson off waivers from the Phillies and designated left-hander José Suarez for assignment, reports Ari Alexander of 7 News.

Wilson, 31, was designated for assignment by the Phillies last week when they re-signed J.T. Realmuto. He’s spent parts of the past three seasons in the majors with them, hitting a combined .242/.328/.428 with nine home runs in 245 trips to the plate. Almost all of that production came in 2023-24, however. Wilson hit just .198/.282/.369 in a career-high 125 plate appearances this past season but raked at a .288/.375/.490 clip the prior two seasons.

Wilson has never hit righties much but feasted on southpaws in ’23-’24 before taking a huge step back in ’25. Even with last year’s lack of production in platoon settings, he’s a career .250/.359/.475 hitter (130 wRC+) against left-handed pitching. Wilson also owns a solid .247/.339/.462 output in nearly 1700 plate appearances of Triple-A work.

He’s played all around the diamond, but despite occasional reps in the middle infield, Wilson is primarily a corner infielder/outfielder. He’ll give the O’s some righty-swinging depth at all four corner spots, but he’s also out of minor league options, which significantly hinders his chances of sticking on the roster. He’d need to break camp on the club or else be designated for assignment once again.

The Orioles are as aggressive as any team in the sport when it comes to claiming players off waivers and then trying to pass them through waivers themselves in order to cultivate depth. Suárez, who’s being designated for assignment, is a product of that very churn. It should come as no surprise to anyone if Wilson is designated for assignment in the near future, whenever the O’s make their next waiver addition or sign their next free agent. At that point, they’d hope to outright him and keep him in Triple-A.

Baltimore claimed Suarez just one week ago, plucking him off waivers from the Braves, who’d signed him to a $900K deal to avoid arbitration. He’s out of minor league options, so simply optioning him to Triple-A Norfolk was never in the cards. The O’s will hope to sneak him through waivers and stash him in Triple-A as depth. Suarez has enough service time to reject an outright assignment, but doing so would mean forfeiting the $900K base salary on the big league portion of his deal (and any notable minor league split he secured as well).

Injuries limited Suarez to 19 1/3 innings this past season, but he posted a sharp 1.86 ERA in that time — albeit with a less-encouraging 16-to-10 K/BB ratio. The 28-year-old has started 62 games and made another 44 relief appearances in a career that’s seen him amass 396 innings with a 5.30 earned run average. Suarez posted disastrous numbers with the Angels in 2020, 2023  and 2024 but was a strong swingman for them in 2021-22. During those two seasons, he logged 207 1/3 frames with a 3.86 ERA, 21.5% strikeout rate and 7.9% walk rate.

The Orioles can trade Suarez or place him on outright waivers at any point within the next five days. Waivers are a 48-hour process. His DFA will be resolved by next Thursday afternoon.

Rich Hill Not Planning To Play In 2026

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Left-hander Rich Hill doesn’t want to use the word but it seems to be leaning towards retirement. Appearing on the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast, Hill was asked by host Rob Bradford if he was retiring and said “I don’t have any plans on playing next year.” The situation is somewhat analogous to that of Joe Kelly, who announced on the same podcast last month that he didn’t want to use the word “retire” but wasn’t planning on playing anymore.

“I’m looking for open possibilities to stay in the game of baseball and be a contributory factor,” Hill continued. “I enjoy the work aspect of whatever it might be that’s next. I think that’s one thing that… why athletes get hired in other positions and other… outside of sports is because they are highly-driven people that want to succeed. And that’s something that I’m looking forward to.”

It’s not shocking that Hill is slowly wafting into the next stage of his career. Though he did pitch in the 2025 season, he was easily the oldest player in the league. He was 45 years old when he suited up for the Royals and will turn 46 in March. Though he has continued pitching to an age when most other players have called it quits long ago, he did so with some unconventional approaches. He waited until midseason to sign in 2024 in a deliberate attempt to be more fresh for a stretch run.

If this is indeed the end, it will wrap up one of the more unique arcs of a player in recent history. Hill was drafted by the Cubs way back in 2002 and made his major league debut in 2005. He didn’t find immediate success but had a really good season in 2007, posting a 3.92 earned run average over 32 starts.

But from there, he went into a really challenging period of his career. He struggled with results and health for many years, leading him to be bounced between the majors and minors and between various different organizations. From 2008 to 2014, he tossed a total of 153 innings split between the Cubs, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, the Angels and Yankees. He posted a 5.41 ERA over that stretch.

2015 would turn out to be an incredible comeback season. He started the year on a minor league deal with the Nationals. He opted out of that contract in June and signed with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League. He made just two starts for that club but struck out 21 opponents in 11 innings. That was enough to get him back into affiliated baseball via a minor league deal with the Red Sox.

Boston called him up in September and he made four starts as the season was winding down. In those, he logged 29 innings with a 1.55 ERA. He had a mammoth 34% strikeout rate, a tiny 4.7% walk rate and a strong 48.4% ground ball rate. That was a tiny sample size but the Athletics made a bet on it, signing Hill to a one-year, $6MM deal for 2016. That wager paid off handsomely, with Hill giving the A’s 14 starts with a 2.25 ERA.

At that year’s deadline, he was traded to the Dodgers alongside Josh Reddick, with the A’s getting Frankie Montas, Grant Holmes, and Jharel Cotton in return. Hill gave the Dodgers six starts with an ERA of 1.83 and then three postseason starts with a 3.46 ERA.

The Dodgers were happy enough with that showing to bring Hill back via a three-year, $48MM contract. That was a pretty staggering deal for a 37-year-old who was not too far removed from being in indy ball but it worked out well. He logged 327 innings over those three seasons with a 3.30 ERA, plus 37 postseason innings with a 2.43 ERA.

After that deal ran its course, Hill went into his 40s and mercenary mode. He signed a series of one-year deal with the Twins, Rays, Red Sox and Pirates. In 2023, he seemed to wear down as the season went along, not surprising for a 43-year-old. His 4.76 ERA with Pittsburgh was still respectable but he collapsed after a deadline deal to the Padres, posting an 8.23 ERA after the swap.

As mentioned, he then tried to think outside the box to continue as an effective big league pitcher. He planned to intentionally sign at midseason in 2024 in order to spend more time with his family and also save his bullets for the second half and postseason. He stayed unsigned until inking a minor league deal with the Red Sox in August. He did get called up but only for four relief appearances before being released. In 2025, he signed a minor league deal with the Royals in May. He got called up in July but was designated for assignment after just two starts.

Given the unusual shape of his career and his willingness to buck conventions, it’s possible he’ll change his mind and find his way back to the mound. But if Hill doesn’t make it back to the majors, he will finish with 1,418 innings tossed over 388 games for 14 different clubs. In that time, he posted a 4.02 ERA but will likely be best remembered for the 2015-2021 run which saw him post a 3.15 ERA in his late 30s and early 40s. Baseball Reference pegs his career earnings over $75MM, most of that coming to Hill in his late-career surge. We at MLB Trade Rumors salute him on a fine career, which may or may not be done, and wish him the best on whatever is next.

Photo courtesy of Peter Aiken, Imagn Images

Orioles Sign Hans Crouse To Minor League Deal

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The Orioles announced Tuesday that they’ve signed right-hander Hans Crouse to a minor league contract. Ty Daubert of Phillies Nation first reported the signing and added that Crouse will be a non-roster invitee in Orioles camp this spring. He’s represented by Wasserman.

A second-round pick by the Rangers back in 2022, Crouse ranked among the sport’s top pitching prospects in the 2019-20 offseason. Texas included Crouse alongside Kyle Gibson and Ian Kennedy in a 2021 trade with the Phillies, netting then-top prospect Spencer Howard and fellow minor leaguers Kevin Gowdy and Josh Gessner. Crouse spent several seasons in the Phillies system and made a brief MLB debut with the ’21 Phillies but has spent the past two seasons in the Angels organization after landing there in ’24 as a minor league free agent.

Crouse has pitched a total of 32 1/3 innings in the majors between Philadelphia and Anaheim. He’s posted a shiny 3.34 ERA in that time, but the rest of his numbers don’t support that small-sample earned run average. Crouse has an impressive 25.9% strikeout rate but has also walked a gruesome 17.3% of the 139 batters he’s faced in the majors (in addition to plunking a pair). He’s navigated that glut of free passes not by erasing them with double plays — Crouse has just a 22.7% grounder rate in the majors — but thanks to good fortune on balls in play (.192 BABIP).

In 69 1/3 career innings at the Triple-A level, Crouse has an ERA close to 6.00, though that number is skewed by a 2022 season in which he served up 18 earned runs in only 12 1/3 innings. That minimal innings total in Triple-A comes despite pitching parts of five seasons there. He’s been hampered by injuries throughout his career. Crouse has undergone surgery to remove bone spurs from his elbow, required thoracic outlet surgery in 2023 and also missed most of the 2022 season due to a torn tendon in his right biceps.

Earlier in his career, Crouse showed a power heater that climbed to the upper 90s and helped him miss bats in droves. He’s fanned 33% of his opponents in Triple-A and 28% of his overall opponents in pro ball. More recently, following all those injury troubles, his velocity has been pedestrian. He sat 93.3 mph with his heater in his most recent full season of Triple-A ball in 2024, and sat 95.3 mph in his lone Triple-A frame last season.

There’s little harm in bringing Crouse aboard on a non-guaranteed deal, but his days a starter are surely behind him. At this point he’s a no-risk bullpen flyer with a big track record of missing bats but an even bigger injury history.

Orioles Among Teams With Interest In Justin Verlander

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The Orioles have shown interest in Justin Verlander, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. While the O’s are the first club publicly tied to the future Hall of Famer beyond the incumbent Giants, Rosenthal unsurprisingly writes that Verlander has received interest from multiple teams.

Baltimore has made a pair of rotation additions this offseason. They sent four prospects and a draft pick to the Rays for Shane Baz, whom they control for three years. Baltimore also brought Zach Eflin back on a one-year, $10MM deal after an injury-riddled season. They’re in decent shape from a depth perspective. It still feels a little light at the top end. They’re banking on Kyle Bradish in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery. Trevor Rogers was fantastic over 18 starts but was in Triple-A as recently as last May. Baz has shown upper mid-rotation talent but very little consistency on a start to start basis.

Framber Valdez, arguably this offseason’s best free agent pitcher, remains unsigned. The Orioles have shown interest throughout the winter. They have enough controllable position player talent to make a move on the trade front if someone like Freddy Peralta or MacKenzie Gore becomes available. Rosenthal suggests that the Orioles could view Verlander more as a fallback option if they don’t come away with a higher-ceiling arm.

At age 43, Verlander no longer has that kind of upside. He showed last season that he still has plenty left in the tank, though. He made 29 starts for the Giants and pitched 152 innings of 3.85 ERA ball. Verlander recorded a 20.7% strikeout rate while walking around 8% of batters faced. His 11% swinging strike rate was his highest since he won his third career Cy Young with the Astros in 2022. Verlander has maintained a 94 MPH average fastball and pitched well after an early-season pec strain cost him a month. He turned in a 3.60 ERA behind a 22% strikeout percentage over his final 19 starts.

Like Valdez, Verlander has ties to Baltimore president of baseball operations Mike Elias. The O’s front office leader was an assistant general manager in Houston during the pitcher’s first season and a half with the Astros. Verlander would also align with Baltimore’s history of free agent spending under Elias. His front office has yet to sign a free agent starter to a multi-year deal, and they’ve frequently targeted older starters (e.g. Kyle Gibson, Tomoyuki Sugano, Charlie Morton) to secure shorter commitments. Verlander figures to sign one-year contracts for the remainder of his career.

Last winter’s rotation moves backfired. None of Morton, Sugano or Gibson met expectations and the rotation’s disastrous performance early in the season dug a hole from which the Orioles couldn’t recover. The O’s made a four-year offer to Corbin Burnes and took on a year and a half of Eflin’s contract via trade in 2024, so they’re not firmly committed to one-year commitments. Still, it’s true that signing Verlander would be more in line with their previous activity than a five- or six-year deal for Valdez would be.

The Orioles have opened the checkbook a few times this offseason, most notably on their $155MM Pete Alonso signing. RosterResource projects their 2026 payroll at $149MM, about $10MM below where they began the ’25 season. Alonso, Tyler O’Neill and Samuel Basallo are their only players signed beyond this season. O’Neill’s deal is up after 2027, while Basallo doesn’t make a salary north of $4MM until 2030 (the final year of Alonso’s contract).

Orioles Claim José Suarez, DFA Marco Luciano

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The Orioles announced they have claimed left-hander José Suarez off waivers from the Braves. It wasn’t previously reported that Atlanta had bumped Suarez from their roster but they apparently tried to quietly sneak him through waivers. The Orioles have swooped in to claim him and have designated outfielder Marco Luciano for assignment as the corresponding move. Atlanta’s 40-man count drops to 39.

Suarez avoided arbitration with Atlanta on a $900K deal in November. The 28-year-old southpaw had seemed a non-tender candidate after spending the majority of the season in Triple-A. Acquired from the Angels in a Spring Training swap for former third overall pick Ian Anderson, Suarez made just seven MLB appearances for the Braves. He pitched 19 1/3 innings and surrendered five runs (four earned), albeit with a middling 16:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Injuries hampered Suarez for much of the season, but he pitched well when healthy at Triple-A Gwinnett. He posted a 3.53 ERA over nine appearances, fanning 28% of opponents against a 5% walk rate. Suarez is out of options, however, meaning the O’s cannot send him to Triple-A without exposing him to waivers.

There’s a decent chance they’ll do that eventually. Baltimore is the most active team in MLB in claiming depth players only to look to run them through waivers themselves. Suarez has a little over four years of MLB service time. That means he could refuse a minor league assignment if he clears, but he’d forfeit his salary to do so. If the O’s keep him on the roster into Spring Training, he’d compete for a long relief role.

Luciano has found himself amidst the aforementioned waiver churn. The one-time top prospect has gone from the Giants to Pittsburgh to Baltimore this offseason. He’ll very likely be waived again within the next five days. Luciano once ranked among the sport’s top 15 minor league talents at Baseball America. He was then a teenage shortstop with massive raw power upside in a 6’1″ frame. His bat has stalled against higher level pitching and he has moved to left field after struggling with errors on the dirt.

San Francisco gave Luciano limited looks in 2023 and ’24. He hit .217/.286/.304 while striking out 45 times in 126 trips to the plate. The Giants kept him in Triple-A for the entire 2025 season. Luciano connected on 23 home runs while walking more than 15% of the time, but he struck out at a near-31% rate. He whiffed on more than 35% of his swings against Triple-A pitching. While Luciano hits the ball hard when he makes contact, the swing-and-miss and limited defensive profile have dropped his stock. He’s also out of minor league options, so he’ll need to stick on an MLB roster or continue bouncing around via DFA limbo.

Orioles, Sam Huff Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Orioles have agreed to a minor league contract with catcher Sam Huff, reports MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko. The ALIGND Sports client will presumably be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee this spring.

A seventh-rounder by the Rangers back in 2016, the as-of-yesterday 28-year-old Huff has played in parts of five major league seasons. He once rated as one of the top catching prospects in the sport and carries a decent .247/.301/.430 batting line in the majors. That production comes in a sample of only 272 plate appearances and spite of a 36% strikeout rate, however. Huff’s rate stats have been buoyed by a .350 average on balls in play.

Huff has solid framing grades in his limited major league work but has struggled with blocking balls in the dirt and controlling the run game. He has just an 18.5% caught-stealing rate in his career and has been charged with eight passed balls in 507 innings behind the dish.

The minor league numbers for Huff aren’t bad. He’s tallied exactly 1200 plate appearances in Triple-A and carries a lifetime .258/.338/.476 slash at that level, including 56 homers, 60 doubles, a pair of triples and a 10.2% walk rate. Contact has been an issue for him even at the top minor league level, though; he’s fanned in an untenable 29.9% of his trips to the plate in Triple-A.

With the Orioles, Huff figures to be a pure depth option. Top prospect Samuel Basallo and mainstay Adley Rutschman will handle the catching duties in the majors. Twenty-seven-year-old Maverick Handley got some looks as a glove-first option behind the dish when the O’s were dealing with injuries in 2025 as well, though he’s since been removed from the 40-man roster. Huff can join Handley in Triple-A Norfolk and give the organization an option as a righty bat at first base, too (not that they’re lacking in that regard). He’s logged 73 career games (566 innings) at first base between the minors and the big leagues.

Nationals Depart MASN, Turn Broadcasts To MLB

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The Nationals announced Wednesday that they’re stepping away from their local broadcasting deal with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. Major League Baseball will handle in-market distribution via streaming on the league’s MLB.tv platform and through yet to be announced cable/satellite partnerships. Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post and Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com were among those to cover the news.

“Today’s announcement represents a new chapter for Washington Nationals baseball,” owner Mark Lerner said in a press release. “Partnering with MLB offers us several new opportunities that will greatly improve the on-air product, including technological enhancements, the ability to work more closely with our broadcasters, and create added opportunities for our valued corporate partners.”

It officially concludes a fraught relationship with MASN, the network which had been jointly owned by the Nationals and Orioles since the former relocated to D.C. in 2005. Those two decades were marred by disputes over rights fees. The Orioles held a majority stake in the network as a condition of the Nationals relocating into their geographic territory. The sides went to arbitration to resolve calculations over rights fees, and the uncertainty was reportedly a stumbling block in the Lerner family’s efforts to sell the Nationals in 2022. The enmity also kept the teams from making any trades with one another.

David Rubenstein purchased the Orioles from the Angelos family two years later. That allowed for a fresh start in negotiations that resulted in a deal last March resolving all past disputes and settling on fees for the 2025 season. The agreement provided that the Nats could explore other opportunities in ’26.

This comes as the RSN model continues its decline around the league. The Nationals are the seventh team to turn broadcasts over to MLB. The Diamondbacks, Padres, Twins, Guardians, Rockies and Mariners have also done so. Those clubs don’t have the certainty of fixed rights fees because their previous providers were unable to meet their contractual obligations. Most of those organizations had agreements with Main Street Sports, the corporation that operates the FanDuel Sports (formerly Bally Sports) Networks.

Main Street Sports is back in hot water. The company recently missed payments to the Marlins and Cardinals. That led all nine teams that had agreements with Main Street to pull out of their contracts last week. Main Street is seeking a buyer and has otherwise said it plans to shutter operations at the end of the NBA and NHL seasons, which would leave the nine MLB teams in limbo. Evan Drellich of The Athletic writes that Main Street is hoping to renegotiate three-year deals with MLB clubs that would run through the 2028 season. Those could involve a hybrid arrangement that includes some fixed fees and a revenue sharing agreement that responds to the broadcaster’s loss of profits as consumers continue to move away from cable.

Orioles Outright Jhonkensy Noel

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The Orioles announced that outfielder Jhonkensy Noel has cleared outright waivers and been assigned to Triple-A Norfolk. He will stay in Baltimore’s system but without taking up a spot on the roster.

The O’s are one of the most aggressive clubs when it comes to claiming players from the waiver wire and then putting them back out there shortly thereafter. The desired result is that the player clears, allowing the club to keep the player in a non-roster capacity, which has happened in this case.

From there, the best-case scenario is that the player follows in the footsteps of Ryan O’Hearn. The O’s acquired O’Hearn from the Royals in January of 2023 and then passed him through waivers. He hit his way back onto the roster a few months later. He spent more than two years as a productive member of the club before being traded to the Padres alongside Ramón Laureano for a package of prospects at the 2025 deadline.

Noel, 24, has flashed big power in his career but has been a poor hitter apart from that. In 351 plate appearances with the Guardians over the past two seasons, he launched 19 home runs but his 4.8% walk rate and 32.8% strikeout rate were both significantly worse than league average. He had a .193/.242/.401 batting line and 79 wRC+ in that time. Since he’s not an especially strong defender or baserunner, that offense was untenable.

He exhausted his final option season in 2025, which pushed him off the edges of Cleveland’s roster and onto the waiver wire. The O’s were able to grab him and then pass him through unclaimed today. He’ll return to the Triple-A level, where his offense has been more encouraging. He stepped to the plate 536 times at that level over the past two years with a 7.5% walk rate and 23.7% strikeout rate, still not great numbers but better than his big league work. His combined .285/.349/.538 Triple-A slash line in that time led to a 130 wRC+.

Even if Noel succeeds in Norfolk, he doesn’t have an amazing path back to the majors. Baltimore’s outfield mix currently includes Colton Cowser, Taylor Ward, Dylan Beavers, Tyler O’Neill, Jeremiah Jackson, Leody Taveras, Reed Trimble, Heston Kjerstad and Marco Luciano.

Photo courtesy of Ken Blaze, Imagn Images

MLBTR Podcast: The Cubs Land Cabrera And Bregman, Remaining Free Agents, And Skubal’s Arbitration Filing

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The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

Check out our past episodes!

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

Photo courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski, Imagn Images

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