Giants Designate Joan Gregorio For Assignment

The Giants have designated right-hander Joan Gregorio for assignment to clear a spot on the 40-man roster for Tony Watson, whose contract with San Francisco is now official (Twitter link via Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area).

Gregorio, 26, has yet to reach the Majors and missed the second half of the 2017 season in Triple-A due to a PED suspension. Prior to that, he’d pitched to a 3.04 ERA with 7.4 K/9, 4.3 BB/9 and a 32.5 percent ground-ball rate in 74 innings of work there. Overall, Gregorio has a 4.37 ERA in 181 1/3 innings at the Triple-A level. Gregorio was, at one point, a mainstay on Giants’ prospect rankings, topping out at No. 7 among their farmhands in the 2016-17 offseason, per Baseball America. BA noted that he had an average fastball and slider with an improving changeup but questionable command, pointing to a potential shift to the ’pen.