Guardians Designate Doug Nikhazy For Assignment
The Guardians announced that they have selected left-hander Kolby Allard to the 40-man roster. To open an active roster spot, right-hander Colin Holderman has been optioned to Triple-A Columbus. In a corresponding 40-man move, left-hander Doug Nikhazy has been designated for assignment.
Allard, 28, bounced on and off Cleveland’s roster last year in a swing role. He tossed 65 innings over 33 appearances, including two starts, with an excellent 2.63 earned run average. Maintaining an ERA in that range was likely not possible. He benefited from a 79.2% strand rate with only 5.6% of his fly balls leaving the yard. His 5.3% walk rate was good but his 15.8% strikeout rate and 38% ground ball rate were subpar. His 4.41 SIERA suggested his ERA may have been almost two full runs to the lucky side.
The Guards outrighted him off the roster at season’s end but then re-signed him to a new minor league deal. Though it’s only a few days into the season, the Guardians are probably adding Allard in case they need some length to spare the bullpen. They are in Los Angeles for three games against a tough Dodger lineup, making it possible one of their starters gets knocked out early. On top of that, there’s some concern around Tanner Bibee. The righty departed his Opening Day start after five innings due to shoulder inflammation.
Parker Messick is starting the first game against the Dodgers tonight. Manager Stephen Vogt recently said Bibee could make his scheduled start in the second game, per Tim Stebbins of MLB.com. Gavin Williams is scheduled for the third game. If someone gets knocked out early or Bibee’s shoulder flares up, Allard could be called upon to eat some innings.
The move will cost Nikhazy his spot on the 40-man roster. The 26-year-old was a second-round pick in the 2021 draft. He generally posted solid numbers on his way up the ladder. From 2022 to 2024, he logged 328 innings over 70 starts and five relief appearances with a 3.90 ERA. His 26.8% strikeout rate was quite strong but his 14.5% walk rate was not.
The Guards added him to their 40-man roster in November of 2024, to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. His results backed up last year. He posted a 5.02 ERA at the Triple-A level. His 11.1% walk rate was an improvement but still a high figure, while his 22.5% strikeout rate was a drop from his previous seasons. He made his major league debut allowed six earned runs in four innings.
Nikhazy is now bumped into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Guards could take as long as five days to see if there’s any trade interest. Nikhazy is still optionable for another two seasons, which could add to his appeal for a club looking to add depth to the minor league system. Despite his underwhelming 2025, Baseball America still ranked him as the club’s #28 prospect coming into this year.
Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images
Brewers, Cooper Pratt Reportedly Working On Extension
The Brewers and prospect Cooper Pratt are reportedly on the verge of finalizing an eight-year contract worth $50.75MM. There will also be two club options worth about $15MM per year, though the value of those options can increase via escalators. The Brewers will need to make a corresponding move to add the Boras Corporation client to their 40-man roster.
It’s a surprising out-of-nowhere extension. Pratt is 21 years old and hasn’t made it to the majors yet. He only just made his Triple-A debut a few days ago. He wasn’t even going to be eligible for the Rule 5 draft until December of 2027.
Extensions for players with no major league experience are becoming more common but this one feels even a bit more extreme than some of the others. Most pre-debut extensions have been for guys very close to cracking the big leagues. The Brewers themselves did one with Jackson Chourio just over two years ago, an $82MM guarantee, though that one was a bit less surprising. Chourio had finished the prior season at the Triple-A level and seemed highly likely to break camp with Milwaukee in 2024 as he was one of the top three prospects in the sport.
Pratt, on the other hand, mostly features on the back of top 100 prospect lists. Baseball America is the high outlet, putting him at #50. MLB Pipeline has him at #62, ESPN at #70, The Athletic at #99 and he’s not even on the FanGraphs list. He had an okay season at Double-A last year, with a .238/.343/.348 line and 107 wRC+, and only just cracked the Triple-A level to start this season.
Perhaps it speaks to the Brewers being quite high on Pratt’s future. Though his offense was middling last year, the plate discipline was clearly good. His 12.7% walk rate and 15.2% strikeout rate were both strong figures. He only hit eight home runs but could perhaps add more power in time. He stole 31 bags last year and is considered a solid defender at shortstop.
If the Brewers have faith in Pratt’s long-term future, there’s sense in locking him up now. That’s especially true with him being a Boras client. That agency isn’t quite as extension-averse as its reputation but the extensions they have done have almost always been for guys who have reached their arbitration years. According to MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, which has data going back to 2006, the Carlos González deal from back in 2011 is the only pre-arbitration extension for a Boras client.
In that context, perhaps the Brewers felt it was worth it to take a gamble on Pratt, even though he is still so early in his career. If they waited until he had been in the big leagues for a few years, the price would go up if he had any kind of success. From the perspective of Pratt, this is a chance for him to lock up some notable earnings and stave off any chance of a bust. Perhaps he will find himself underpaid if he becomes a star, but he’s not the level of surefire, can’t-miss prospect that Chourio was. He could play out this contract, including the options, and still reach free agency after his age-30 season.
What remains to be seen is how this impacts Milwaukee’s short-term plans. Even if Pratt is signed to a big league deal, he doesn’t need to be on the active roster, as he could still be kept in the minors on optional assignment. Joey Ortiz was their everyday shortstop last year. He put up a rough .230/.276/.317 line at the plate but stole 14 bases and was credited with 12 Outs Above Average. He is still in that job and has a massive .455/.500/.455 line so far this year but in a tiny sample of 12 plate appearances.
Ortiz is still under club control for many years but the club may pivot away from him at some point if he can’t post better offense over a sustained stretch of time. He does have options and could be sent to the minors, or perhaps be moved into a utility role since he has experience at second and third base. Pratt has fairly limited experience off the shortstop position but could presumably handle second or third if the Brewers asked him to. For now, Brice Turang is a strong option at the keystone. Third base is a bit more open, with David Hamilton and Luis Rengifo in the mix at the moment.
Looking further down the road, most of those guys still have lots of club control. Rengifo is on a one-year deal but Ortiz, Turang and Hamilton aren’t slated for free agency until after 2029. Prospects Jett Williams, Jesús Made and Luis Peña are generally considered top 100 guys who will be in the mix at some point. Williams has already played at the Triple-A level, Made at Double-A and Pena at High-A. At some point over the horizon, the infield could feel quite crowded, which could perhaps lead to a trade.
In the near term, the deal could have other notable impacts. With the deal in place, the Brewers may not worry about Pratt’s service time, since he would be under club control for the ten years regardless. The Prospect Promotion Incentive could also be interesting here. Pratt would be PPI eligible since he is on the aforementioned prospect lists. Even though he missed the first few games of the season, it’s still early enough for the Brewers to call him up for a full year of service time.
However, a player who signs an extension prior to his major league debut is not eligible to earn PPI picks for his team. Unless the two sides agree to the deal in principle and then don’t officially sign it until after Pratt’s debut, then PPI is off the table.
Altogether, it’s a surprising and curious extension, one that seemingly leads to more questions than it answers. Perhaps the coming days will provide some more clarity on the deal and what it means for all the other moving pieces in Milwaukee.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today first reported that the two sides were working on an eight-year deal worth more than $50MM, including those club options. Jon Heyman of The New York Post reported the specific guarantee. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that there are escalators on the options. Photos courtesy of Dave Kallmann, Imagn Images.
Astros Select Cody Bolton
The Astros announced they’ve selected pitcher Cody Bolton onto the big league roster. Reliever Christian Roa has been optioned to Triple-A Sugar Land to open an active roster spot. Hayden Wesneski, who’ll miss the majority of the season rehabbing Tommy John surgery, moves to the 60-day injured list to clear space on the 40-man roster.
Bolton returns to the majors for the first time since last April. The 27-year-old righty made one MLB appearance for Cleveland, tossing two innings of three-run ball. Cleveland optioned Bolton to Triple-A after that outing. He was injured in a car accident shortly thereafter, and the Guardians released him in June. Bolton signed a minor league contract with Houston at the end of July.
The 6’2″ hurler was still injured at the time. He made his organizational debut towards the end of August. Bolton pitched 13 2/3 innings with Sugar Land to close the year, allowing three runs. He struck out 15 while issuing eight walks. Bolton remained in the system over the offseason, pitching once this spring. It wasn’t a good outing, as he walked four of the six batters he faced, but the Astros will bring him back up as a long reliever.
Roa has worked as a single-inning reliever this spring and for his first two appearances with Houston. The Astros swap in Bolton to add a long reliever behind Lance McCullers Jr. for tonight’s start against the Red Sox. Houston used six relievers, including Roa, yesterday after Tatsuya Imai failed to escape the third inning in his big league debut.
Brewers Acquire Luis Matos
The Brewers announced that they have acquired outfielder Luis Matos from the Giants in exchange for cash considerations. San Francisco had designated Matos for assignment last week when setting their Opening Day roster. To open a 40-man spot for him, Milwaukee has designated left-hander Sammy Peralta for assignment. Matos is out of options, so the Brewers will also need to open an active roster spot for him when he reports to the team.
Milwaukee is buying low on a former top prospect. Matos was a fairly high profile international signing out of Venezuela and he performed well against lower-level pitching. Going into 2022, Baseball America ranked him the #73 prospect in all of baseball. In November of that year, the Giants added him to their 40-man roster to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft.
He hasn’t been able to click in the majors. Over the past three seasons, the Giants sent him to the plate 593 times. His 14.2% strikeout rate was quite low but he also drew a walk at a subpar rate of 6.1%. He hit 15 home runs but his 231/.281/.369 batting line translated to a wRC+ of 80, putting him 20% below league average. He may have been held back by a .247 batting average on balls in play but his batted ball data wasn’t popping off the charts. His defensive metrics have been quite poor, though he’s been better in the corners than in center.
His minor league offense has been better in that time. In 823 minor league plate appearances over the past three years, he has 33 home runs and a .290/.354/.495 line. Even though most of those numbers were put up in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, wRC+ still considered him to have been 19% above league average in that time.
As he was shuttled between Triple-A and the minors, he exhausted his option years. That made it harder for the Giants to keep committing a roster spot to him. They preferred to use their bench spots to keep the power bat of Jerar Encarnación and the speed of Jared Oliva.
The Brewers will take a shot on him. They have recently gotten good results from a few guys that other clubs gave up on, with Andrew Vaughn and Jake Bauers being a couple of examples. Perhaps they can get a similar post-hype breakout from Matos. He has under two years of club control, so he can be retained through 2030 if that pans out. He will qualify for arbitration at the end of this year as a Super Two guy if he holds his spot all year.
For now, he’ll have to find some playing time in the outfield. For the moment, Milwaukee has Jackson Chourio, Steward Berroa and Akil Baddoo on the injured list. That leaves them with Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell, Brandon Lockridge and Blake Perkins, with Christian Yelich perhaps playing the field on occasion when he’s not the designated hitter. One of them could be optioned to the minors to open a spot for Matos. Perkins started the season on optional assignment and was recalled when Chourio got hurt, so perhaps he will be the move.
Matos is a righty bat and he has better numbers against southpaws, so perhaps he can carve out a short-side platoon role as Mitchell and Frelick are lefties. Matos has a .238/.302/.411 line against lefties in his big league career, compared to a .226/.267/.342 slash against righties.
Peralta, 28 in May, was just claimed off waivers from the Angels in October. He was optioned to Triple-A Nashville earlier this month and therefore hasn’t appeared in a big league game for the Brewers. He has 45 2/3 innings on his track record from the previous three seasons with a 5.12 earned run average, 17.3% strikeout rate, 11.2% walk rate and 40.8% ground ball rate.
The lefty tossed 70 2/3 Triple-A innings last year. His 4.33 ERA wasn’t especially impressive but that performance came in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. His 24.1% strikeout rate, 4.8% walk rate and 45.5% ground ball rate were all decent figures. He still has an option remaining and could appeal to a club looking for some pitching depth. DFA limbo can last as long as a week but the waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Brewers could take a maximum of five days to explore trade talks.
Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images
Giants Designate Tyler Fitzgerald For Assignment
The Giants announced that infielder/outfielder Tyler Fitzgerald has been designated for assignment. That opens a 40-man spot for right-hander Dylan Smith. It was reported earlier that San Francisco would be acquiring Smith from the Tigers. Smith has been optioned to Triple-A Sacramento.
Fitzgerald had a breakout performance at the plate in 2024, his age-26 and rookie season. After a strong 2023 season in which he ripped 22 homers and swiped 32 bags in the minors, he hit the ground running in San Francisco. Through 96 games and 341 plate appearances that season. Fitzgerald hit .280/.334/.497 with 15 homers and 17 steals. A .380 average on balls in play was ripe for regression, and Fitzgerald’s 31.7% strikeout rate only further cast doubt on his ability to sustain that year’s level of production. He fell off more substantially in 2025 than one might have reasonably anticipated, however.
In 2025, Fitzgerald opened the season as the Giants’ top option at second base. He got out to a slow start, however, and hit the injured list in early May due to a rib fracture. He only missed 12 days. Fitzgerald returned and continued to struggle at the plate. By late June, he’d been optioned to Triple-A Sacramento. He was recalled a week later and spent most of the remaining time on the ’25 calendar oscillating between Sacramento and San Francisco. Overall, Fitzgerald finished out the season with a .217/.278/.327 slash line and a 28.8% strikeout rate.
Now 28 years old and with no clear path to playing time, Fitzgerald has lost now only his starting job but his grip on a roster spot entirely. His 2025 struggles contributed to the Giants’ offseason signing of Luis Arraez to serve as new skipper Tony Vitello’s second baseman. With Matt Chapman at third, Willy Adames at shortstop and Arraez at second base, none of Fitzgerald’s primary positions are available. He’s logged a bit of time in the outfield corners, but the Giants have Heliot Ramos and Jung Hoo Lee handling those roles, with newly signed Harrison Bader in center.
Though Fitzgerald could factor into the bench mix, in theory, the Giants have Christian Koss in an infield/outfield role. He outperformed Fitzgerald in the majors last year (after a big 2024 in the minor leagues). Jerar Encarnacion is out of minor league options and can’t be sent down. Minor league signee Jared Oliva offers plus-plus speed and a good glove across all three outfield spots. One spot, of course, is earmarked for the backup catcher (currently Daniel Susac). And whenever top prospect Bryce Eldridge returns to the majors, that’ll push Casey Schmitt — who’s surprisingly played three games at first base thus far — into a utility role.
Increasingly, Fitzgerald just feels like a man without a true role on the roster. He’d be a nice depth option to have in the event of an injury, but the Giants are well-stocked with players who have a combination of comparable versatility, youth and more minor league options than Fitzgerald, who’s in his final option year.
Based on Fitzgerald’s versatility and 2024 production, another club would take an interest now that he’s in DFA limbo. He doesn’t have strong defensive grades at shortstop in the majors but does have plus marks at second base. He can handle third base or the outfield corners as well, and even while he struggled at the plate last season, Fitzgerald landed in the 97th percentile of big leaguers in terms of average sprint speed (29.7 feet/sec), per Statcast.
The Giants have five days to trade Fitzgerald or place him on waivers. Running him through waivers would be another 48-hour process. Within a week’s time, his DFA will be formally resolved. There’s a good chance he’ll land with another club. It’s easy to imagine some teams having interest in a small trade, and at the very least, it’d be surprising if all 29 other clubs passed via waivers.
Giants To Acquire Dylan Smith
The Giants are acquiring right-hander Dylan Smith from the Tigers, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Detroit designated him for assignment when setting their Opening Day roster last week and will get cash considerations in return. San Francisco will need to make a corresponding move to open a 40-man spot for this to become official.
Smith, 26 in May, has a limited major league track record. The Tigers added him to their 40-man roster in May of last year. He spent most of the remainder of the seasons on optional assignment and was also on the minor league injured list for a while. His major league work consisted of 13 innings over seven appearances, allowing two earned runs while surrendering six hits, five walks, hitting three batters and striking out four opponents.
His minor league track record as a reliever is also fairly limited. After being drafted in 2021, the Tigers had him working as a starter for a while. Thanks to some injuries and some mediocre numbers, he was moved to the bullpen in 2025. Around his stints in the majors and his time on the IL, he tossed 39 2/3 minor league innings with a 2.27 earned run average. His 37.7% strikeout rate was massive and his 45.5% ground ball rate was also pretty good, though his 11.3% walk rate was on the high side. His four-seamer and sinker both averaged in the mid-90s while his splitter and slider both averaged in the mid-80s.
Due to his recent move to relief work and his subpar control last year, Smith may be a bit of a project. He got squeezed off the Detroit roster but San Francisco will be the beneficiary. Smith still has a couple of options, so they can shuttle him to the minors and back fairly freely as he tries to rein in his stuff. He has just a handful of service days and could stick with the club for years to come if he takes a step forward and continues to justify a roster spot.
The Giants don’t have a lot of certainty in their bullpen. They traded away Tyler Rogers and Camilo Doval last year then lost Randy Rodríguez to Tommy John surgery. They added some guys via small deals but didn’t make any massive moves to upgrade the relief corps, so there’s room for some young guys to flourish.
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images
Rangers Outright Dairon Blanco
Outfielder Dairon Blanco has cleared waivers and will accept an outright assignment to Triple-A Round Rock, reports Francys Romero of BeisbolFR. Blanco was designated for assignment last week when the Rangers added Andrew McCutchen to their Opening Day roster. Blanco had a previous career outright and therefore had the right to elect free agency but he’ll waive that right and look to work his way back to the majors with Texas.
Blanco, 33, has spent his entire big league career with the Royals thus far. He served as a useful bench piece thanks to his speed and defense. He stole 59 bases in 73 attempts. He logged 733 innings in the outfield and was considered a bit better than par by both Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average. His offense wasn’t a significant drag either, as his .257/.312/.416 batting line translated to a 99 wRC+, just barely below league average.
Despite those contributions, he got nudged off the Kansas City roster when they signed Starling Marte about a month ago. The Rangers claimed him off waivers and held him for a little over two weeks but, as mentioned, needed a spot for McCutchen.
Each club passed on a chance to get Blanco off waivers in recent days, even though he has options remaining. Even if he elected free agency, he would have been limited to minor league offers. Instead, he’ll just report to the Express and try to work his way back to the majors.
The Rangers have Brandon Nimmo, Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford in their outfield, with McCutchen in the mix alongside utility guys Ezequiel Durán and Sam Haggerty. They could get Cody Freeman back from the injured list in a few weeks. Alejandro Osuna and Michael Helman are depth options on the 40-man, currently in Triple-A on optional assignment. Blanco joins Nick Pratto, Mark Canha, Tyler Wade and Richie Martin as non-roster guys with some major league experience.
Photo courtesy of Peter Aiken, Imagn Images
Blue Jays Sign Austin Voth To Minor League Deal
The Blue Jays signed righty Austin Voth to a minor league contract after he was released by the White Sox at the end of camp. Toronto never formally announced anything, but Voth pitched three innings for their Triple-A club yesterday. He picked up a pair of strikeouts and didn’t walk anyone, but he was tagged for a pair of solo homers. Voth is represented by The·Team agency.
Voth, 33, spent the 2025 season in Japan pitching for Nippon Professional Baseball’s Chiba Lotte Marines. He logged 125 innings with a 3.96 earned run average, below-average strikeout rates and good command.
Voth has picked up more than five years of major league service time, dating back to his 2018 MLB debut. He’s a former fifth-round pick who’s pitched in part of seven big league seasons. In 360 1/3 innings as a major leaguer, Voth has a 4.70 ERA, a 22.1% strikeout rate and an 8.3% walk rate. Those are roughly league-average rate stats, and it bears mentioning that a good portion of Voth’s most prominent struggles came early in his career with the Nats. He has a 4.29 ERA over his past three big league seasons, including a tidy 3.69 ERA in 61 innings with the 2024 Mariners, for whom he set down one quarter of his opponents on strikes with a walk rate just north of 7%.
Though Voth has pitched more in relief than as a starter during his recent MLB stints, he has more experience in the rotation than in the bullpen. Last year in Japan, all 22 of his appearances were starts. He started yesterday for Buffalo, and while he only pitched three innings, that was surely in part to pretty limited usage in camp with the ChiSox. Given that the Jays currently have Shane Bieber, Trey Yesavage and José Berríos on the injured list, it’s likely that Voth will continue to stretch out to serve as some experienced starting depth with the Jays’ top affiliate.
Braves Select Martín Pérez, Option Didier Fuentes
10:25am: Fuentes will start for Gwinnett on Friday, per MLB.com’s Mark Bowman. He’ll get a couple minor league turns to build up to around 90 pitches and then be more strongly considered for the big league rotation.
8:48am: The Braves announced Monday morning that they’ve selected the contract of veteran lefty Martín Pérez from Triple-A Gwinnett. Right-hander Didier Fuentes was optioned to Gwinnett to clear a spot on the active roster. Atlanta already had a 40-man vacancy, so Fuentes is the only corresponding transaction needed.
Some fans will bristle at optioning Fuentes after he shined with four innings of one-run ball in long relief yesterday, but that four-inning appearance means he’d have been unavailable for the next few days anyhow. He’ll surely be back in the fold before long, but the Braves will presumably be cautious with his workload this season. He pitched only 70 innings total between the minors and major leagues last year.
Pérez, 35 next week, signed a minor league deal over the winter and was in the mix for a rotation spot this spring — particularly after Spencer Schwellenbach, Hurston Waldrep, Joey Wentz and Spencer Strider went down with injuries. He had a nice Grapefruit League showing, working to a 2.84 ERA in 12 2/3 innings, but Atlanta reassigned him to minor league camp to begin the season. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t an especially long stint. He can now step into the same long relief/swing role that Fuentes held, providing some length behind out-of-options starters Bryce Elder and José Suarez. Alternatively, the Braves could move either Elder or Suarez to a swing role and go with Pérez in the rotation.
A flexor strain knocked Pérez out for most of the 2025 season, but he was sharp in his limited action with the White Sox. He tossed 56 innings with the South Siders, his seventh career team, and logged a 3.54 earned run average. Pérez fanned only 19.3% of his opponents against a 9.6% walk rate. He’s never missed many bats but has generally held his own through sharp command, solid ground-ball tendencies and plenty of weak contact.
Atlanta will be Pérez’s eighth career team. He’s been a steady back-of-the-rotation starter for a good while now, starting a full slate of 12 games in the shortened 2020 campaign and making between 20 and 32 starts in the other five seasons from 2019-24 (while pitching to a collective 4.27 ERA). Last year marked the first time since 2018 that Pérez required a trip to the 60-day injured list.
Marlins Acquire Leo Jimenez
7:23PM: The trade has been officially announced by both teams, and the Marlins announced that right-hander Garrett Acton was designated for assignment to create 40-man roster space for Jimenez. Acton has a 10.80 ERA over 6 2/3 innings and seven career big league games — six with the Athletics in 2023 and one with the Rays in 2025, with the 2024 season a wash due to a Tommy John surgery.
Acton is no stranger to DFA limbo, as he has now been designated three times in less than six months. The Rockies claimed the righty after the Rays designated Acton after the season, and Miami then claimed Acton off waivers in Januray following another DFA.
5:30PM: The Marlins are set to acquire infielder Leo Jimenez in a trade with the Blue Jays, according to Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith. Francys Romero reports that the Jays will receive minor league infielder Dub Gleed and $250K in international bonus pool money in return. Miami’s 40-man roster is full, so some sort of corresponding move will have to create room for Jimenez before the trade is officially announced.
Jimenez is out of minor league options, so the Jays had to designate the infielder for assignment when he wasn’t included on the Opening Day roster. It didn’t seem likely that Jimenez was going to sneak through waivers and remain with the Blue Jays via an outright assignment, and the Marlins indeed stepped up with a trade offer to bring the 24-year-old into their organization.
Making his MLB debut in 2024, Jimenez posted a respectable 101 wRC+ over his first 210 plate appearances, hitting .229/.329/.358 with four home runs. Bo Bichette‘s injury woes that season opened the door for Jimenez to receive a good chunk of playing time, but with Bichette back in 2025 and other players (i.e. Andres Gimenez, Ernie Clement, Addison Barger) all becoming bigger parts of the infield picture, Jimenez became the odd man out.
Injuries also didn’t help Jimenez’s case, as he played in only 44 total games between the majors and minors in 2025. Over 18 games with the Blue Jays, Jimenez had just a .301 OPS to show for 32 trips to the plate, though he hit better in the minors. Jimenez has a .260/.404/.380 slash line and seven homers over 374 career PA at the Triple-A level.
While it seems like power will never be a big part of Jimenez’s game, his ability to collect hits and draw walks against big league pitching will determine whether or not he can be a regular in the majors. Defensively, there seems to be little question that Jimenez’s glove is ready for primetime, whether as a shortstop or as a second baseman. Jimenez’s arm strength has been seen as a potential barrier to sticking at shortstop, and the Jays used him more regularly at second base over the last couple of years, though that could’ve been more due to Bichette’s presence at shortstop.
Jimenez now gets a fresh start on a new team, playing behind Xavier Edwards at second base and Otto Lopez at shortstop. Miami’s incumbent middle infield duo are both strong defenders and good speed threats, though both Edwards (95 wRC+) and Lopez (86 wRC+) had subpar offensive numbers overall. There’s room for Jimenez to potentially earn himself some playing time, though for now he’ll join a position-player mix that has been depleted by IL stints for Christopher Morel and Kyle Stowers.
Miami already signed Austin Slater to help fill in for Stowers in the outfield, and now Jimenez will bolster the infield depth chart. With Morel out, the Marlins have used Connor Norby and newly-recalled Deyvison De Los Santos at first base, with Graham Pauley and super-utilityman Javier Sanoja at third base. The Fish are expected to mix and match at least until Stowers is back in a few weeks’ time, giving Jimenez some opportunity to play in the field as others are rotated into the DH spot.
The 23-year-old Gleed was a ninth-round pick for the Marlins in the 2024 draft, and his first season of pro ball saw Gleed make it all the way to Triple-A, albeit for just one game. Gleed hit .252/.391/.347 over 275 plate appearances at four different Marlins affiliates, with most of his playing time coming at the A-ball and Double-A levels. Gleed primarily split time between the two corner infield positions, and also appeared in a game apiece as a second basema and as a catcher.