Here are today’s minor transactions from around the league:
- The White Sox have re-signed righty Blake Smith to a minor league deal, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag tweets. (Heyman had previously reported it was the Padres who had signed Smith, but that seems to have been incorrect.) Chicago non-tendered Smith two weeks ago. The 29-year-old made his big-league debut in 2016, pitching 4 1/3 innings for the White Sox, but he’s perhaps a little more interesting than that pedigree suggests — he played his first several pro seasons as an outfielder before moving to the mound in 2013 as a 25-year-old, and he’s since made good progress getting through the minors, posting a 3.53 ERA, 9.5 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 in 71 1/3 innings for Triple-A Charlotte in 2016 while throwing his fastball in the 93-MPH range in his big-league stint. The Padres selected Smith in the second round of the Rule 5 Draft in 2015 but ultimately returned him to the White Sox.
- The Marlins have signed righty Javy Guerra to a minor league deal, tweets MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro. The 31-year-old Guerra pitched briefly for the Angels in 2016 but spent most of the year with Triple-A Salt Lake, where he posted a 4.35 ERA, 9.9 K/9 and 5.4 BB/9 in 51 2/3 innings. As that line suggests, Guerra has struggled with his control, and his 4.3 career MLB BB/9 has probably been his biggest impediment to sustained success (although he’s also had injury issues, and he missed 50 games in 2015 due to a drug suspension). Nonetheless, he has had strong seasons with the Dodgers and White Sox in parts of six years in the big leagues, and his experience could be valuable to the Marlins as they continue to address their bullpen.
SD Union-Trib’s Jeff Sanders also reported last night that the club signed Erik Johnson to a minor league deal and acquired Tyler Barnette from the White Sox for cash.
Actually @MickeyKoke of East Village Times had that first. If you look at his timeline vs Jeff’s rip there.
LOL, actually Heyman had Johnson first. I’ll have to take your word for it if Koke had Barnette since he’s completely unreadable 100 percent of the time.
Not Johnson.
Hey I don’t like the guy but he’s unreadable how? That’s not my been my experience viewing his stuff. Seems pretty informed in correlation to any other of the bloggers.. let alone weak UT writers. Lol. You KNOW this.
Really doesn’t matter who had the Erik Johnson news first unless there’s a prize for bringing bad news before everyone else.
Johnson is horrible.
Johnson was solid for a period of time then completely fell off. It’s like he forgot he was a professional pitcher.
Nice big arm, why not, like how the Padres haven’t done anything they’ll regret in the future this offseason.
The pitching is so bad. Could break some awful records this year….
Yeah it will be interesting to see how many wins Vegas projects the team at come March, wouldn’t be surprised if the total is similar to that of last year since the hitting is pretty good.
Is anyone else getting a ton of pop up ads lately?
Yup it’s kinda like a blight
Where do you get the pop ads? I don’t ever seem to get any on the web but I run an ad blocker in chrome. Seems to work really well.