The Pirates have placed right-hander Jordan Milbrath and lefty Jack Leathersich on waivers, Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
As a Rule 5 draft pick, the Pirates will have to offer Milbrath back to his previous organization, the Indians, if no one claims him on waivers. If a team does claim the 26-year-old Milbrath, it must commit to carrying him on its 25-man roster. Otherwise, he’d head back to the waiver wire and would have to be offered to Cleveland upon clearing.
The side-arming Milbrath struggled in camp during his spring training stint as a member of the Pirates, with whom he allowed eight earned runs on 10 hits and eight walks (with eight strikeouts) in 8 1/3 innings. He fared much better than that last year, which he divided between the Indians’ High-A and Triple-A affiliates, with a 3.02 ERA and 10.0 K/9 against 4.0 BB/9 in 56 2/3 innings.
Leatherich, 27, joined the Pirates last September after they claimed him from the division-rival Cubs. He then got into six of the Pirates’ games, working 4 1/3 scoreless innings with six strikeouts against two walks. Overall, Leathersich has tossed 16 2/3 frames of five-run ball in the bigs since debuting with the Mets in 2015. However, he hasn’t been nearly that effective over a much larger sample of work at the Triple-A level, where he has offset a sky-high strikeout rate (14.5 per nine) with an ugly walk rate (6.9) en route to a 4.68 ERA in 100 innings.
Well, I’ve given up trying to predict their bullpen. No Crick, no Siegrist, no Milbrath? Who is left?
I guess they are going to take the best 7 (or 8) instead of factoring options, etc. into the decision. Very un-Pirate like to not horde assets in favor of taking the best 25, TBH.
I think the best 25 are finally that much better than the ones without options. In the last couple of years, the ones with options were not much better at that moment than the ones without the options so the sent the ones the could control down to keep them in the fold as their upsides were far better than the ones without options. Now those ones who were sent down still have upsides but performing better than they were a year ago. A nice problem to have.
All that said, hope that Milbrath clears & the Indians pass and Leathersich clears and Siegrist gets no MLB offers and opts to stay with the Bucs and they can keep them in the system and work with them to improve them to where they could be valuable later in the season.
Osuna also was sent down. Sounds like they want him playing daily and not sitting on the bench and only pinch hitting. Of course all of the conspiracy loving yinzers are saying it has to be money considerations and that they have no interest in winning because they sent Osuna down. Betting Osuna goes down till the pitching gets into regular season mode in a week or so and they send a pitcher with options left, ie, Santana or Neverauskas goes down to pitch regularly and Osuna comes back up, ready to go, and gets some at bats filling in at 1b, 3b, corner OF and pinch hitting. Will get some semi regular ab at that point as long as he remains hot in AAA
I think that the reason that Osuna was optioned was that they do not need the extra bench man with the DH eliminating pinch hitters for the first three games.They will probably lead off with Frazier.Even though I think that Osuna would benefit from full time AAA play(especially getting games at 3B) he has had such a good Spring with his power playing well that they will bring him up and option Santana for the Twins series.
I do think that the Pirates are trying to put their best team up albeit the one that they can most afford.