The Braves have claimed right-hander Chase Whitley off waivers from the Rays, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com (on Twitter). Whitley was arbitration-eligible for the first time this offseason and was projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $1MM.
Whitley, 28, tossed 57 1/3 innings this past season in his first full year back from Tommy John surgery. The righty made all 41 of his appearances with the Rays out of the bullpen after working as a starter throughout his minor league career and early on after his MLB debut with the Yankees. Whitley logged a 4.08 ERA with 6.8 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 and a 32.8 percent ground-ball rate. He doesn’t throw hard, averaging just 90 mph with his heater, but he still missed more bats earlier in his career and in the minors, leaving the potential for a modest uptick in strikeouts with Atlanta. (A move to the NL, clearly, won’t hurt his chances in that regard.)
The Rays are facing somewhat of a payroll crunch due in no small part to an arbitration class that at one point contained a dozen players. They’ve pared that back some by waiving Whitley and trading former closer Brad Boxberger to the D-backs, but it’s still likely that we’ll see a few more moves out of Tampa Bay before tonight’s 8pm ET deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players.
A future closer? Regardless, the Rays wasted that one
Oh man, the Rays are really tight on cash. Sell low on Boxberger, now give Whitley away for free. Wow.
Whitley was terrible, Rays fans aren’t mad about him being gone
Well it might be close to saying the rays are rebuilding, JK I’d do the same thing if my team was short on cash.
And few shorter on it than the Rays. They’ll be doing their yearly bottom feeding with the leftovers and somehow stay competitive. Pretty amazing if you think about it.
Yeah, but only the Rays can have four consecutive losing seasons and still somehow be considered “competitive.”
they usually go on their hot streak around June or July, that about it.
Yeah is it tough for them to compete. It almost tkes 5-7 years of drafting to come up with a core, then fill it in with FA’s and they can compete for 2 years max, then the whole process starts over again. Tough to be a fan of a small budget team.
Could be a good ” buy low” candidate for the Braves. It isn’t unknown for pitchers to improve in their second full season coming back from TJS.
Whitleys peripheral numbets were rather solid. Good walk rate, decent FIP- at the very least, the Braves are getting a guy who can throw 50 innings of middle relief efficiently for $820,000 (salary+claim fee).
Also, keep in mind that there’s limited risk in arbitration salaries as only 1/6th of it is guaranteed if the player is cut loose before a certain date. I think its opening day but im not 100% certain.
Nevertheless, very solid low risk, decent reward type move.
Agree. Braves just dumped Jim Johnson too.