The Orioles have designated backstop Ryan Lavarnway for assignment, the club announced. Baltimore has called up Steve Clevenger to take his place on the active roster.
Lavarnway, 27, bounced around the waiver wire this winter before settling with the O’s. He has received just 32 plate appearances, hitting safely just three times. Once a top-100 prospect, Lavarnway has failed to regain his former promise. Now, he’ll likely need to show real improvement in the minors — whether in the Orioles organization or elsewhere — before receiving another chance at MLB action.
Meanwhile, the Orioles will take another look at Clevenger, 29, who has put up excellent numbers at Triple-A this year (.352/.413/.451, 11 walks vs. 10 strikeouts). He offers a left-handed bat to pair with current starter Caleb Joseph as the club awaits Matt Wieters‘ return from injury.
With two years and 58 days of MLB service entering the year, Clevenger would reach a third year of service (and arbitration eligibility) if he stays in the bigs the rest of the way, but another demotion could well leave him shy of the mark. So long as he sticks on the big league roster for 86 days, the minimum required for Super Two status, he’ll likely be arb-eligible next year.
Simple question. What took so long?
Lavarnway is supposedly a superior defensive catcher to Clevinger, but I never saw it and given their performance/ time in the majors, I’m not sure there are many stats that would back up the assumption.
Regardless, Clevinger is a better offensive option. I’m wondering what this says about Weiters’ health and prospects for returning this year.
Considering Wieters is about to start his rehab tour tonight in Bowie I don’t think you can make any connection. I think this is simply a case of Clevenger had done everything the team had asked him to do at Norfolk and Lavarnway wasn’t showing the team anything. For my money this move could have been made a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t think Lavarnway wasn’t ever a great defensive catcher in the minors. He was pretty much a non-prospect in the Sox system until he started hitting at a somewhat young age.
He had a 32 homer season in their minor league system in 2011 with 18 of those coming in AAA in only 61 games. The guy had a .295/.390/.612/1.002 line in AAA at 23 years old.
I never said he was Johnny Bench, but within the O’s front office I believe Lavarnway was considered a more finished product to Clevinger definsively. The O’s pretty much wanted Clevinger at AAA to work on his defense- there’s never been much doubt Clevinger could hit.
I think they should have made this move a week or more ago, plus I’m not to sure Weiters will be ready to go in a couple of weeks.
Yeah well the Toronto office passed off Navarro as some good defensive glove when we signed him last year. Offices say things, the Orioles probably didn’t want to give up depth especially when Lavarnway was not to long ago extremely productive in the AAA system.
Not saying there’s anything wrong with you critiquing the Orioles decision to DFA him and call up Clevinger. They probably thought there was more upside in Lavarnway and thats why they went with him to start the season.
I agree with you that the O’s clearly had greater expectations for Lavarnway but it just never clicked. It also didn’t help that Joseph started hitting pretty consistently and effectively blocked Lavarnway from getting ABs. Anybody who watches the O’s will tell you he would go an entire week between starts. The O’s have played 22 games in May and Lavarnway has started 3 and played a single inning in 2 others. Clearly he had lost any faith Buck had in him to compete.