Keeping up with the latest minor moves from around baseball…
- The Brewers are reuniting with reliever Jim Henderson on a minor league pact, Adam McCalvy of MLB.com tweets. Interestingly, the 35-year-old Henderson will act as a player/coach, and he could even do some scouting eventually, per McCalvy. The majority of Henderson’s major league time has come in Milwaukee, where he made his MLB debut and pitched to a 3.44 ERA across 102 innings from 2012-14. He last saw action in the majors in 2016 with the Mets. An attempt to catch on with the Cubs a year ago didn’t take, so Henderson went through the season without pitching competitively.
Earlier updates:
- The Brewers have released reliever Ernesto Frieri, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The 32-year-old Frieri will look to continue his career, even though he struggled in camp, per Haudricourt. Once of the game’s premier relievers, Frieri was last an effective major leaguer in 2013, when he was the Angels’ closer. He logged just seven innings last year (with the Rangers) after not pitching in the bigs in 2016. Frieri performed well with the Triple-A affiliates of the Rangers, Yankees and Mariners, though, as he combined for a 3.43 ERA with 11.9 K/9 against 4.8 BB/9 over 39 1/3 frames.
- The Diamondbacks have released catcher Josh Thole, according to a team announcement. The 31-year-old Thole had been in camp as a non-roster invitee for the D-backs, who originally added him on a minor league contract entering 2017. Thole didn’t play at all last year, however, after suffering a hamstring tear during the spring. Prior to that, he saw big league action with two teams – the Mets (2009-13) and Blue Jays (2013-16) – and combined to hit just .242/.313/.306 in 1,499 plate appearances. To his credit, Thole has earned plus defensive marks for the majority of his career.
People forget Frieri pitched in the 2017 WBC for Columbia. Still some gas in the tank.
Lol
He has gas in the tank he’s just not accurate with it
Although it’s hardly a strong suit at all, accuracy isn’t even his biggest issue
That inability to keep the damn ball in the yard is what has destroyed his career
I don’t know if four seasons of being an above average reliever qualifies him as “premier.” Guys of his peak ability are still a dime a dozen.
I agree that Frieri was never really a “premier” reliever,just having one or two good seasons with the Angels.I remember when the Pirates first got him for Jason Grilli in 2014,he was pitching to Paul Goldschmidt and the pitch took off and came in on him and hit him on the hand I believe.He was out for the rest of the year.Of course the next inning Randall Delgado had to plunk the Pirates best hitter,Andrew McCutcheon,in the back..He later went on the DL with a broken bone in his back..This seemed to me to be unfair as Frieri clearly was not throwing tight,but just did not have good control.To Goldschmidt’s credit he backed that up.
He wound always look good coming in the game good fast ball but some how he finds the only happy zone on a 32 count and boom he blows the game this is what I remember of him as a angel.Good luck to him but he was never the closer in Anaheim.He just had role for awhile.