We’ll keep tabs on today’s minor moves right here:
- The Marlins announced that right-hander Bryan Morris has been outrighted to Triple-A New Orleans. Morris was designated for assignment two days ago after missing the majority of the season due to back surgery. Because of the Major League service time he’s accrued — four-plus year — Morris will be able to elect free agency this winter and hand-pick the best environment and the best offer from interested teams. The 29-year-old (30 next March) has a 2.30 ERA in parts of three seasons with the Fish and a 2.80 career ERA in 215 innings between Pittsburgh and Miami. He’s also sporting one of the league’s best ground-ball rates (58.4 percent) among pitchers with at least 200 innings dating back to the 2013 campaign.
- The Royals have released righty Chien-Ming Wang, MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan reports on Twitter. Wang had been designated on Saturday, and with the minor league season in the books, that all but assured that the veteran would end up being released. It’s remarkable, really, that the once-excellent starter was able to last as long as he did in the big leagues this year given all the arm troubles and failed comeback attempts already in his past. Now 36, Wang managed to put up a 4.22 ERA with 5.1 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 to go with a 49.3% groundball rate over his 53 1/3 innings in his first major league action since 2013. This was also his first season as a full-time reliever.
yankees better sign him for a reunion
If they did, Wang would have an ERA of 2.5 and ptich 220 innings according to Nine Livez.
The guy was really a decent starter for a couple of years, until being forced to run the bases in a interleague game with those silly NL rules.
The other thing regarding Wang and other players like him later on during their careers is when they are lucky to have roster spots at all, how they can manage to get salaries like Wang did in ’12 of 4m because of Union rules and younger players, without “seniority” that are far, far better are forced to play for league minimum, or barely over.
I do realize it isn’t going to change, tho wouldn’t it be nice to see a scale where seniority didn’t matter and pay was based on performance? Wouldn’t that stick in the union’s girdle really nice?
Welcome to the wacky, wacky world of labor unions.where you get paid for hanging around.
Those darn silly nl rules forcing pitchers to perform athletic feat I mean what is this a sport? You could never have a pay scale based solely upon performance because their isn’t a track record there. That is what super 2 and arb is supposed to address. You’re never going to have a system that’s fair.
Wainwright Blew out his Achilles after Leaving the batters box, running to 1st. That’s what happens when kids start specializing ONE position/sport at an early age. Less athletes.
While over-specialization in high school and earlier is indeed a real issue, Wainwright was all-state in football (as both a wideout and a kicker) in addition to his baseball feats in high school, so he’s a horrible example of it.
And categorically attributing his Achilles injury at the age of 33 to something from when he was 14 would be absurd even if he had specialized. It would be like claiming that your Confusion about Capitalization is because too many high school students in this country are studying German.
I’m not sure if that NL rules thing was sarcasm or not…
I only remembered it was a interleague game and Georgie (steinbrenner) was still running the Yanks. He was FURIOUS about the injury and wanted the rules changed to allow for DH’s when it bacame apparent Wang was hurt really bad and one of his key ppl was going to be out for a long time and his team’s chances hurt.
Dude… trust me. He’s SERIOUS!
Silly NL rules? You mean the actual rules of baseball? 9 innings, 9 fielders, 9 batters.
They tried that in 2013 already.
Wang was as close to an ace as the Yankees got during a time when they really didn’t have a dominant starter. Moose and Andy were at the tail-end of their careers and all Wang did was win 19 games in consecutive seasons. I really thought in ’09 that he’d be a great #2 behind CC. CC, Wang, Burnett, Pettitte and Joba.
Angels… Here we come…
Not if the Braves can steal him for their own garbage heap of washed out starters!
Not to worry… The Angels are the undisputed champs in that department …
If anyone care to do a little study on Wang’s ERA with different catchers, he or she will be amazed. When Butera is catching, Wang is pitching much better. Any team wishing to get some of this veteran would have to find a catcher that can work out the synergy.