The Athletics have designated outfielder Trayce Thompson for assignment, as Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle was among those to tweet. His roster spot was needed with starter Trevor Cahill and reliever Lou Trivino coming to the majors.
Thompson has already bounced from the Dodgers to the Yankees and then on to the A’s via the waiver wire, so it’s possible he will again be on the move. If is not traded and clears waivers, Oakland will presumably look to stash him at Triple-A.
The 27-year-old outfielder only got into three games in his short time with the Athletics, striking out four times in his seven plate appearances. Thompson also struggled at the plate last year with the Dodgers and their top affiliate. He spent most of the year at Triple-A, where he slashed .212/.269/.363 with nine home runs in his 369 plate appearances.
I wonder if he’ll be picked up by another team again
Yes the Dodgers
Yea the warriors as the luggage carrier
Should have been Smolinski….
That my first thought too. But then I compared their stats
Defense stats? Because one is unbelievably bad in CF and the other made a play of the week in an extremely small stint.
What does Smolinski have on Melvin? He can’t hit and his defense is terrible but still has a spot on the team.
He has potential. Potential to be even worse than he already is
Players should get a capped amount of DFA options per year
and then no one will pick them up?????
I agree but I wonder if they get some kinda relocation money? Especially if someone is bouncing around the minors. Should be at least a deal where they get some money to move.
Yeah, that’s not how the minors work. There has been some fascinatig stuff lately about how poorly minor leaguers are paid and treated in general. At the lower levels of the minors, especially. I mean, some teams don’t even feed the players before or after games.
I assume Thompson gets some free plane tickets. From a claiming team, but besides that he’s on his own. He’s obviously just an up-and-down player from here on out. That life doesn’t sound that fun to me, even though with the bonus of a few major-league at-bats.
Yeah @davidcoonce74 been reading that stuff. Congress even passed a bill that allows minor league players to be paid less than minimum wage. You’d think that an ML team that found ways to take care of minor leaguers would have a competitive advantage for any free agent minor leaguers and in effect get their pick of the litter. Heck feeding players before and after games really would cost them very little.
NOW… I’m not sure how much of a difference that would make because I’m not sure how good any FA minor leaguers would be.
Especially with nutrition stuff; there was a minor-leaguer; not a prospect, but in AA with the Brewers, on a podcast talking about this stuff a couple weeks ago. In single-A he was paid 1100 dollars a month, but only for the season – not spring training. So 7600 dollars a season. He said the Brewers are really good about taking care of their minor-leaguers as far as food, but a lot of orgs aren’t. Which, as you mention, seems to be a competitive disadvantage. Premium athletes making that little amount of money are probably living on fast food and junk food. The organization also doesn’t provide housing so most of the players share apartments; this player was living with 4 other guys in a 4-bedroom apartment, with one of them sleeping in the living room.
Some teams arrange for “host families” for players as well. There also isn’t a per diem in the minors, like there is in the majors. This player got a law degree in college before he was drafted and signed for a 3000 dolllar bonus so at this point he’s just doing it for the love of the game or in hopes of a call-up. The bill that Congress passed is actually going to decrease some minor leaguers’ pay. It is a shame. We can talk about multi-million dollar contracts and wealthy baseball players all we want, but the truth is that’s a tiny percentage of all the players who ever play professionally.
I agree the players should get paid more, but your reason as to why teams would VOLUNTEER to pay 200 kids (including players in all levels, plus extended spring, etc) extra to entice free agents makes no sense. Say you wanted to give them each an average of 25,000 extra for the season…. that’s upwards of 5 mil.
First, as you noted, how often are free agent minor league players worth much of anything? Not talking AAAA players, but what you’re talking about- luring a true minor league prospect? Not often. If there was a true free agent that was worth wooing, they’d get a better contract and abonus that makes it worthwhile to them… likely at a cost to the team well short of that 5 mil.
Maybe the become a FA?
If a team is unwilling to put him on a major league roster or even 40 man then he loses a significant amount of money. So becoming a FA is merely a milb contract. With him being out of options it tends to stand that unless he signs a milb contract with a team that has a significant injury well then financially he’s not in the greatest of shape, it also stands to argue being out of options means him essentially not being called up until Sept. So there is an advantage of being DFAd multiple times at least until he is finally released and forced the milb route officially.
Didn’t expect Adam Rosales to pop in the comments
Go Braves, get this guy.
We don’t have a roster spot.
Poor A’s fans…now what will they talk about other than that this guy’s brother is a lot better at his sport than Trayce is at baseball…
I dunno, probably about having the player with the most WAR in all of baseball right now
Or maybe their top 10 offense in baseball and top 10 lineup. A’s just don’t have name value…yet!
A’s are going to wreck everyone in the 2nd half if healthy, quote me on that.
Quoted
“A’s are going to wreck everyone in the 2nd half if healthy”
–Justin Turner Overdrive
Justin-turner overdrive said ‘A’s are going to wreck everyone in the 2nd half if healthy’. I saw him say it, too.
You saw him say it? Really ? What did it look like?
A’s fans are tough not like these bandwagon wine sippers across the bay. A’s fans know that you got to cheer for the team not the player. Of course once the A’s are back in the playoffs next year the bandwagon fans will be back.
The A’s literally had to give away every ticket for tonight’s game for free to get people to come to the stadium.
They are celebrating their 50th anniversary tonight is why the tickets are free. They decided to give something back to the fans as a promotion. Smart business move because if you can create a buzz they will come back with cash. The company i work for gives away stuff all the time. Millions of free product and it worked. One of the top 5 companies out of the recession. We double in size because of good marketing and promotions.
So true. The A’s fanbase is tough … all 10,000 of them.
There were 46,000 people at the game last night.
If you want this guy on your team that badly you must be desperate
Is he a 5th or 6th outfielder?
Haha Braves do need him
The former White Sox is the new Micah Johnson with less minor league success , a little more MLB production and a whole lot of the same health issues.
There is usually one guy every year that bounces from team to team to team during April and May. It is usually a former relatively big prospect that hasn’t caught on. I remember it being Casper Wells one year. I guess Thompson is the guy this go around. I expect the Blue Jays to get involved at some point.
I know we’re talking about a small sample size here (7 ABs), but when you’re a guy like Thompson who is squarely on the bubble, you gotta make the most of every opportunity. He didn’t, so step up and spin the big wheel again.
Does anyone know how the contract system works with players like this? Do they receive a guaranteed major league minimum contracts with every new team?
If a player is claimed on waivers, the claiming team takes on his contract. If he’s released, then he becomes a free agent, but the team that released him still owes him the remainder of his contract (minus what he gets paid by the next team to sign him, usually the MLB minimum). If he’s outrighted, he gets paid the same unless he’s on a split contract (i.e. he’d be paid less for his time in the minors).
He gets the major league minimum prorated to his time on the major league roster. The Major league minimum is 540K this year, so his 7 days on the roster netted him .04 of the ML minimum. (A major league “season,” for contractual purposes, is 172 days long). So his 7 days netted him about 21K, minus taxes, of course. Nice work if you can get it I suppose, although it must be frustrating to bounce all around the country. If he goes back to the minors it would be on a minor-league contract, and those can vary wildly in value.
How long does a player have to be in the majors to qualify for the majors minimum salary of $540,000 ?
It’s called a minimum salary for a reason. The player simply needs to be on the active 25-man MLB roster in order to qualify. Of course, he may need to stick there or be on the disabled list in order to receive that full amount of $540k for any particular season.
Again, how is a line of .212/.263/.369 being referred to as “slashed”? The appropriate term is “struggled to”.
“Slashed” just refers to his batting line, a.k.a. “slash line.”
Slashed is referring to his slash line, not the description of his hitting.
MLB.com website Definition: mlb.com/glossary/miscellaneous/slash-line
“Slashed” is also sometimes used as a shorthand way to say a player produced a specific slash line, as in “Player A slashed .300/.400/.500 last season.”
It might be mlb.com’s definition, but it remains inappropriate. It is a poor way to describe his batting line. Maybe it should be said that he batted .212/.288/.369. Slashed should be used for someone that can actually produce.
No, it’s accurate. His slash line was extremely poor, but he still slashed ___/___/___
MLB can’t even get the foul pole designation right. It should be called the fair pole since a ball that hits is considered a HR. lol
How about the term hit and run in baseball. It ought to be called the run and hit since the player on base runs to the next one before the batter has an opportunity to hit the ball and advance him even further.
However, these terms are more incorrect than the slash line. All one has to do is say a hitter slashed a more appropriate term when using it as Modified_6 wrote with his “extremely poor” comment.
It’s not just baseball….. boxing rings are square, we park in driveways, fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing, recite at a play, but we play at a recital.
At first I thought you were trying to be funny, that “slashed” sounds like a poor choice of words for a guy with a bad slash line, just like it sounds funny to say someone “hit” .150, when really that average portrays a lack of hitting. But seems like even after explanation, you’re not getting it. This is a slash: “/.” A series of those is his slash line: .280/.350/.350. Rather than saying “his slash line is….” it’s shorter to say “he slashed…”
What’s really funny is that those three numbers are referred to as a triple slash line yet there are only two “/” ‘s in the metric. Or it could be that your explanation is not entirely accurate either.
Suffice it to say that had Jeff Todd wrote Trayce Thompson slashed a poor or pedestrian.212/.269/.363 none of us would be having this discussion. Of course any MLB fan with half a brain would know exactly what Jeff was articulating and what a slash line represents which might suggest that stymeedone has a poor or pedestrian knowledge of baseball terminology.
The Indians are already looking at a roster crunch with Urshela coming off of the DL, but I would like to see them pick Thompson up.
The Indians already have too many fringy bench players who are out of options.
Luckily, Thompson won be claimed. We need him for support. On the other hand, Lou Trivino is a flame thrower the A’s need to evaluate at Major League Level…
Agreed, Trivino is a really under the radar prospect who could play a huge part for Oakland this year as they flip the page from rebuilding to contending.
Marlins. Brinson to AAA
Thompson looked good when he was with the White Sox
Thank god we can keep Boog and Smolinski!!!
Liked him a lot down here in LA.
Bad luck for him with his injury.
He needs regular playing time so even if in AAA, he can get his rhythm back and offer help to the team.
Thompson should clear waivers this time. That is twice he was claimed and then DFA’d, A claiming team would again have to keep him on the roster and most teams that could do that have already had a crack at him.