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Injury Notes: Anibal, Buxton, Hill, Swarzak, Brewers

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Braves righty Anibal Sanchez landed on the 10-day disabled list on Wednesday after suffering a hamstring strain while running in the outfield during pre-game warmups, as the team announced. Things looked potentially much worse, as Sanchez reportedly collapsed and was down for several minutes before having his leg placed in an air cast and being carted off the field (Twitter link via MLB.com’s Mark Bowman). Thus far in 14 innings (two starts, one relief appearance), the 34-year-old Sanchez has yielded just two runs on 11 hits and six walks with 14 strikeouts. He’d been relying more heavily on a cutter and a changeup with the Braves than he had in previous seasons, and those tweaks had generated positive gains in swinging-strike rate, chase rate and ground-ball rate. Lucas Sims, Matt Wisler and Max Fried are among the 40-man roster options to step into the rotation in place of Sanchez for the time being.

Some injury news from around the game…

  • The Twins announced that Byron Buxton has been placed on the 10-day DL, retroactive to April 15, with migraine headaches. Outfielder Ryan LaMarre was added to the 25-man roster in place of Buxton, who’ll be eligible to return next Wednesday. It’s been a slow start to the year for Buxton after a strong five-month stretch to close out the 2017 season; the longtime top prospect hit .274/.335/.448 in his final 459 plate appearances last season but is off to a .195/.233/.244 start to the season.
  • Left-hander Rich Hill hit the disabled list due to a finger injury, the Dodgers announced today. Fellow southpaw Adam Liberatore is up from Triple-A to take Hill’s place for the time being. Specifically, Hill told reporters that he’s dealing with a cracked fingernail and that the DL stint is “precautionary” in nature (Twitter link via Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times). The Dodgers have a reputation for aggressively utilizing the shortened 10-day DL and their Triple-A depth to keep their roster fresh, and that seems like the tactic they’re employing in this instance. Of course, as Aaron Sanchez’s 2017 season with the Blue Jays demonstrated, fingernail and blister issues can be more serious for pitchers than they initially sound.
  • Anthony Swarzak’s rehab with the Mets has been shut down for now due to lingering discomfort in his ailing oblique muscle, tweets MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo. He’d been throwing off of flat ground but now won’t be throwing at all and won’t travel with the club on its upcoming road trip, per DiComo. Swarzak inked a two-year, $14MM deal with the Mets this offseason but has pitched just 2 1/3 innings on the year due to a DL stint that now looks like it’ll be prolonged.
  • Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel passes along some Brewers injury news, reporting that Wade Miley’s first rehab start went smoothly and adding that he’ll start again on Sunday (Twitter links). At that point, the Brewers will likely have to make a decision whether they’ll add him to the big league rotation or keep him in the minors for another rehab outing. Additionally, lefty Boone Logan threw a bullpen session for the first time since injuring his left triceps muscle — a notable first step in his debut in the Milwaukee ’pen.

Braves Promote Jesse Biddle, Place Jose Ramirez On 10-Day DL

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The Braves are set to promote lefty Jesse Biddle to the big-league roster, per a club announcement. He’ll replace righty reliever Jose Ramirez, who is heading to the 10-day DL after experiencing shoulder inflammation.

It’s a long-awaited call-up for Biddle, who was selected in the first round of the 2010 draft and once regarded among the game’s hundred top pre-MLB players. Injuries disrupted his progress, however, and forced him out of the rotation.

Since landing with the Braves and working back to health, Biddle has shown well in the upper minors. He turned in 49 2/3 innings of 2.90 ERA ball last year at Double-A, registering 9.6 K/9 against 2.9 BB/9. And Biddle was off to an excellent start in the highest level of the minors in 2018, allowing just three hits and no runs while running up eight strikeouts against a single walk in his 6 1/3 innings.

As for Ramirez, 28, this’ll be a much-needed reprieve after a brutal opening to his own season. He has also tossed 6 1/3 frames, all in the majors, but with much different results. Ramirez has not only coughed up a dozen earned runs, but has surrendered eight walks to go with his seven punchouts.

Braves Sign Jose Bautista

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The Braves have announced the signing of veteran slugger Jose Bautista to a minor-league deal. Per the organization, he’ll head to extended spring camp and will line up at third base. The deal would pay him at a $1MM rate in the majors, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag tweets.

While Bautista has maintained he still hoped to play in the coming season after sitting out Spring Training, this news comes as a surprise. The Braves have long been expected to fill out their outfield with top prospect Ronald Acuna, which seemed to make them an unlikely destination for Bautista.

In a twist, though, Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos — who was with the Blue Jays when Bautista broke out and turned into a superstar — will give the veteran a chance to return to the hot corner at 37 years of age. Bautista certainly has spent plenty of time there, but the vast majority of his experience at third came in the distant past. Needless to say, this isn’t the third-base move that many anticipated at the start of the 2017-18 offseason.

Bautista will not only be looking to show he’s capable of returning to the infield after mostly plying his trade in the grass over the past nine seasons. He’ll also have to prove he can bounce back from a marked decline over the prior two campaigns.

Heading into the 2017 campaign, which Bautista spent with the Blue Jays after having to settle for a one-year deal in free agency, the hope was the his 2016 effort was just a blip. Bautista had experienced a big power drop, after all, but largely maintained his other-worldly plate discipline and still reached base at a healthy .366 clip.

But the most recent season did not go as hoped for the ever-confident veteran. Bautista hit 23 home runs but carried a miserable .203/.308/.366 slash in his 686 plate appearances. He also drew walks and went down on strikes at rates (12.2% and 24.8%, respectively) worse than he had since way back in 2008 — which is also the last time he spent the majority of his time at third.

It’s certainly an interesting gambit for the Braves, whose current plans at the hot corner involve riding out a Ryan Flaherty hot streak, mixing in Charlie Culberson, and waiting for Johan Camargo to return from the DL (while hoping he can repeat a surprisingly solid debut season). If Bautista can return to anything approaching the form he showed at the plate between 2010 and 2015, when he was one of the game’s very best hitters, he could boost a team that is playing solid baseball out of the gates but has cause to anticipate some regression from certain players.

Aaron Blair Undergoes Shoulder Surgery

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6:48pm: Blair will miss the entire 2018 season after the procedure, which addressed a capsule tear, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports in a story and Twitter update.

5:30pm: Braves righty Aaron Blair has undergone shoulder surgery, per a team announcement. The precise nature of the procedure, which was performed by Dr. James Andrews, has yet to be disclosed.

Blair, who’s still just 25, has largely struggled since going to the Atlanta organization in the oft-discussed swap that sent Shelby Miller to the Diamondbacks. While two other key pieces in that deal — Ender Inciarte and Dansby Swanson — appear to be core pieces for the Braves, Blair’s own future was already uncertain before today’s news.

The 36th overall pick in the 2013 draft, Blair was considered a high-quality prospect at the time of the deal. And he pushed into the rotation picture in Atlanta not long after arriving. But the early returns were quite poor, as Blair worked to a 7.59 ERA with 46 strikeouts and 34 walks in his first 15 starts, over which he managed only seventy innings.

Heading into 2017, the hope was that Blair could reestablish his trajectory and work back into the MLB mix. Instead, he foundered at Triple-A, pitching 127 1/3 innings of 5.02 ERA ball with 7.4 K/9 against 4.0 BB/9. In his only major-league outing, Blair was knocked out after just three innings. He was again ineffective this spring.

The righty did make one Triple-A appearance this season, so it does not appear he’d stand to accrue MLB service while he is out. But if the Braves wish to free up a 40-man spot, they’ll need to put Blair on the 60-day DL, where he would gain service credit. That’s likely not a major concern for the organization, though, given his struggles. Instead, it seems as if Blair’s 40-man spot may ultimately be in jeopardy.

Poll: When Should The Braves Promote Ronald Acuna?

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The topic of whether top prospect Ronald Acuna should be in the Majors or in Triple-A is one of the most oft-discussed topics certainly among Braves fans but also among fans throughout the league. The 20-year-old, after all, has been widely billed as a phenom in the waiting and topped the majority of prospect rankings from major outlets this offseason (with the occasional exception of Shohei Ohtani, when he was deemed eligible for such lists).

Ronald Acuna | Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

Acuna opened the 2017 season in Class-A Advanced and skyrocketed to Triple-A by season’s end. The Venezuelan-born slugger didn’t just move up the ladder, though; his numbers actually improved upon each promotion, culminating with a .344/.393/.548 line in Triple-A.

Overall, Acuna slashed .325/.374/.522 with 21 homers, 31 doubles, eight triples and 44 steals across three minor league levels in 2017 — and he did so all before turning 20 years of age this past December. Even before reading any of the many glowing scouting reports on Acuna, it’s abundantly clear that he’s a special talent. Teenagers simply don’t perform that well in pro ball.

Entering the season, the thought was that the Braves, like many teams do with elite prospects, would take advantage of Major League Baseball’s service time infrastructure and hold Acuna in the minors long enough to delay his free agency by a year. Doing so would only require him to be in Gwinnett until mid-April. While some may bristle at the notion, it’s hard to argue, from a front-office standpoint, that the extra two weeks of games in 2018 are worth sacrificing Acuna’s entire 2024 season — his age-27 campaign. Keeping Acuna in the minors for those couple of weeks makes perfect sense from a long-term view.

That date has come and gone, however, meaning the Braves can bring their vaunted wunderkind to the Majors at any point, knowing he’ll be controlled through 2024. Bringing him up now would mean allowing him to reach arbitration four times as a Super Two player rather than the standard three times, but that’s of relatively minimal consequence — at least when juxtaposed with the notion of losing an entire year of club control over his prime.

But although Acuna dominated Grapefruit League play in Spring Training (.432/.519/.727), that hasn’t been the case in the regular season. It’s only nine games and 41 plate appearances, of course, but Acuna is hitting .139/.244/.167 in Triple-A. After striking out at a 19.8 percent clip last season, he’s already whiffed 14 times in 41 plate appearances (34.1 percent).

None of that does anything to change the perception that Acuna is a star in the making, but it stands to reason that the Braves may not relish the idea of taking a struggling 20-year-old and bringing him to the big leagues to face even tougher competition. It doesn’t help that Preston Tucker has filled in capably at the big league level. Even though the 27-year-old likely isn’t a long-term piece, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that his start isn’t sustainable, the fact remains that the Braves have gotten some production out of Acuna’s would-be spot in the lineup.

That, of course, isn’t deemed a good enough reason for Acuna to be in the minors for many. Narratives on his brief minor league struggles will suggest that he’s pressing to earn a promotion or not engaged enough by the lack of competition. Atlanta skipper Brian Snitker went with the similarly nebulous explanation that Acuna is “trying too hard” at the moment (link via MLB.com’s Mark Bowman). It’s understandable if Braves fans want to see him up at all costs; it’s been a lengthy rebuilding process down in Georgia, and Acuna’s arrival could in many ways mark a move back toward contention. It’s also true that attendance figures would likely spike, at least in the short term, the moment that Acuna is called upon for his highly anticipated debut. And if he’s anything close to the player that most believe he will be, there’s also an argument to be made that Acuna ought to be added to a ballclub that has played rather well and may yet be a fringe postseason contender.

All of those factors enter into the calculus of when Acuna will be brought to the big leagues. It’s a decision the Atlanta front office won’t make lightly, as the last thing first-year GM Alex Anthopoulos and his staff want to do is have to demote Acuna back to Gwinnett if he struggles out of the gate. At the same time, Anthopoulos & Co. are no doubt cognizant of the fanbase’s desire to see Acuna attack Major League pitching and of the manner in which a strong arrival on the scene would invigorate the Atlanta faithful.

(Link to poll for Trade Rumors app users.)


Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Poll: Service Time Considerations

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It’s no secret that talent alone doesn’t necessarily dictate when top prospects will reach the major leagues. Ballclubs have significant financial and competitive incentives to keep top prospects down in the minors even when they’re hitting the cover off the ball, or embarrassing every opposing batter from the mound. These incentives are a by-product of MLB’s service time regulations.

For those unfamiliar, the basic concept is as follows: players accrue service time for each day spent at the MLB level, even if they’re on the major league disabled list. After a player collects six years of service time, he’s eligible for free agency.

Things get far more complicated from there, however. MLB has specific regulations in place to account for partial seasons, since the vast majority of players are promoted at some point in the midst of the season. Perhaps the most significant aspect of these regulations (and certainly the most controversial) is that a player doesn’t get a full season’s worth of service time if he spends 12 days in the minors.

That seemingly short amount of time is the difference between the Cubs keeping Kris Bryant under team control through 2020 or 2021, which was (unofficially) the reason the team elected to keep him at Triple-A to start the season. At the end of 2020, Bryant will fall exactly a day shy of qualifying for free agency, giving the team the rights to one more of his prime seasons.

The conversation has once again resurfaced (though admittedly to a lesser extent) in regards to Braves prospect Ronald Acuna. Although the 20-year-old annihilated Grapefruit League pitching to the tune of a .432/.519/.727 batting line with four homers and four steals, Lane Adams and Peter Bourjos made the opening day roster while Acuna was reassigned to minor league camp. He’s now been down long enough to give the Braves control over him for an additional season.

It’s hard to blame teams for managing the service time of top prospects in this way, especially a Braves club that has little chance to contend this season as it is. From a pure baseball standpoint, the fraction of a WAR that Acuna might have contributed in those first 12 days (it’s worth noting that he’s off to a .152/.222/.182 start in Triple-A) is worth tens of millions less than the WAR total he’s likely to post in the year 2024.

On the other hand, the system is hardly fair to the players. At its core, it seems absurd that a single day of service time can cost a player the additional seven or even eight figures he could have earned if his final arbitration season had instead yielded open market value for him.

There wouldn’t seem to be an easy solution to the issue, either. There’s not exactly a midway point between becoming a free agent and being under team control for an additional season (though the Super Two regulations at least guarantee players more arbitration dollars if they’ve accrued a significant portion of a seventh year’s service time). One could say that 12 days is an awfully small percentage of a season and that players should gain the full year even if they spent 20 days, 30 days, 40 days, etc. in the minors, but no matter what, it’d always come down to one day making a multi-million dollar difference in value.

What do you think? Should the service time rules change, or are they perfectly reasonable the way they are now? (Poll link for app users)

NL Notes: Harvey, Forsythe, Nats, Braves

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Mets right-hander Matt Harvey opened the season with five scoreless innings of one-hit ball back on April 3, but the former ace hasn’t fared nearly as well in two starts since then. Harvey yielded four earned runs in five frames in each of those outings – including in a loss to the Brewers on Saturday – and now there’s some question as to whether he’s a lock to remain in the team’s rotation throughout the season, Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes. While Harvey’s spot isn’t yet “in peril,” per Sherman, the Mets will have a decision to make soon between him and fellow righty Zack Wheeler when left-hander Jason Vargas returns from the disabled list. That’s assuming Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz stay healthy, of course, and that Wheeler continues to perform well after enjoying a seven-inning, two-hit, one-run season debut against the Marlins earlier this week.

Here’s more from the National League…

  • Dodgers infielder Logan Forsythe exited the team’s game Saturday with right shoulder discomfort and subsequently underwent an MRI, Ken Gurnick of MLB.com reports. Results should come Sunday, Gurnick adds; if Forsythe does require a stint on the disabled list, the Dodgers will divide third base among Enrique Hernandez, Kyle Farmer and a minor league call-up, manager Dave Roberts suggested. Primarily a second baseman, Forsythe has only been manning the hot corner this year because of an injury to starter Justin Turner, who suffered a broken left wrist last month. Forsythe has gotten off to a rough start filling in for Turner, having batted .174/.224/.283 in 49 plate appearances.
  • Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy will begin extended spring training action Monday, manager Davey Martinez told Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com and other reporters Sunday (Twitter links). Martinez noted that the Nats aren’t going to rush Murphy, who’s working back from offseason surgery on his right knee. Meanwhile, third baseman Anthony Rendon is unlikely to require a DL stint, Martinez revealed. Rendon’s dealing with a sore left big toe that kept him out of the lineup Saturday. He’ll rest again Sunday.
  • Braves left-hander Luiz Gohara, out since early March with a sprained ankle, will begin a Triple-A rehab assignment Tuesday, Mark Bowman of MLB.com writes. Gohara will make at least four starts in the minors, according to Bowman, putting him on track to return sometime in May. Had Gohara been healthy during spring training, the 21-year-old would have stood a strong chance to open the season in Atlanta’s rotation. Instead, the Braves have had to turn to veteran Anibal Sanchez, who has delivered positive results in three appearances/two starts (1.29 ERA, 9.0 K/9, 3.86 BB/9 over 14 innings).

Braves Designate Luke Jackson

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The Braves have designated right-hander Luke Jackson for assignment, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweets. His spot on the Braves’ 25-man roster will go to righty Lucas Sims, whom they recalled from Triple-A.

This is the second time since last December that the Braves have designated the 26-year-old Jackson, who rejoined their 40-man roster when they selected his contract April 4. Jackson then went on to make only two appearances, during which he combined for 1 1/3 innings and gave up two earned runs on two hits and a walk. He yielded both of those earned runs as part of the Braves’ epic collapse Saturday against the Cubs, who rallied back from a 10-2 deficit to escape with a 14-10 win.

Sims, 23, has been a well-regarded prospect at times since Atlanta chose him 21st overall in the 2012 draft. He struggled during his first major league promotion last season, though, with a 5.62 ERA/5.07 FIP across 57 2/3 innings (14 appearances, 10 starts).

NL East Notes: Rendon, Acuna, Hunter

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The latest from around the NL East…

  • Anthony Rendon left last night’s game after fouling a ball off his left big toe, and he wasn’t in today’s Nationals lineup. X-rays on the toe were negative, and manager Dave Martinez told MLB.com’s Jamal Collier and other reporters that there had yet to be any discussion of a possible DL stint for the star third baseman. Washington is already short Daniel Murphy and Adam Eaton from their first-choice starting lineup, and a Rendon absence would give Bryce Harper even less protection.
  • Ronald Acuna is hitting just .138/.219/.172 over his first 32 Triple-A plate appearances this season, and with Preston Tucker playing well for the Braves in left field, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that we may have to wait a while longer to see Acuna make his big league debut. There had been speculation that Acuna could have been called up as early as today, as he would no longer accumulate a full year of MLB service time if he remained on the roster for the entire season, giving the Braves an extra year of control over the star prospect. Service time considerations aside, it doesn’t seem like Atlanta would try to rush Acuna to the majors when he is on such a cold streak. O’Brien did wonder, however, if the team could promote Acuna on Monday to generate some extra interest for the start of a new homestand.
  • Tommy Hunter will participate in a game at the Phillies’ extended Spring Training camp today, though manager Gabe Kapler told reporters (including NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jim Salisbury) that the team would see how Hunter felt afterwards before deciding whether he needed one more rehab outing or not.  Hunter suffered a hamstring strain in late March and has yet to make his debut in a Phillies uniform.  The club signed Hunter to a two-year, $18MM free agent deal in the wake of his very strong 2017 season with the Rays.  Even if Hunter requires one more outing, he is likely to be activated sometime this week, provided there aren’t any health setbacks.

NL East Notes: Blair, Chen, Glover, Pivetta

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Braves righty Aaron Blair is dealing with a shoulder injury and is headed to see Dr. James Andrews for an evaluation on Monday, tweets David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. O’Brien’s colleague, Gabe Burns, had previously tweeted that Blair could miss “significant time” with the injury, though the specifics of the issue aren’t yet known. The 25-year-old Blair was viewed as a largely MLB-ready starter when the Braves picked him up from the D-backs alongside Ender Inciarte and Dansby Swanson in the Shelby Miller blockbuster, but he’s struggled to a 7.89 ERA in 73 big league innings thanks largely to shaky control and a susceptibility to home runs. Blair has a career 4.36 ERA with 7.6 K/9 against 3.9 BB/9, and while he may not have been viewed as an immediate piece of the rotation, a notable absence will thin out Atlanta’s rotation depth to an extent.

Some more notes from the division…

  • The Marlins announced last night that left-hander Wei-Yin Chen was able to throw three shutout innings in an extended Spring Training game. Chen didn’t allow a hit or a walk and picked up one strikeout as he tossed 35 pitches in the rehab outing. The results, of course, are largely inconsequential. The key takeaway, rather, is simply that Chen is throwing at all. The southpaw suffered a partial tear of the UCL in his left elbow back in 2016 and was limited to just 33 frames by injury in 2017. Late last season, skipper Don Mattingly revealed that the organization wasn’t sure whether Chen would be able to pitch in 2018 at all. The Marlins owe the veteran lefty more than $50MM over the next three seasons, so any progress toward a return to the hill is significant plus for the team. It’s also worth noting that J.T. Realmuto caught three innings and took three at-bats in an extended spring game, per the team. He’s reportedly eyeing a return to action next week.
  • MASNsports.com’s Byron Kerr tweets that Nationals reliever Koda Glover is making some progress in his return from shoulder troubles. Glover, who was briefly the team’s closer in a 2017 season marred by back and hip injuries, opened the year on the 60-day DL after a spring MRI revealed inflammation in his right shoulder. He’s now throwing from 75 feet though, which is at least a step in the right direction for a young power arm for whom the organization has quite a bit of hope. The outlook on Joaquin Benoit is less optimistic, as Kerr notes that the veteran has yet to begin throwing. Washington added Benoit late this spring — not long after Glover’s MRI, in fact — but he quickly went down with a forearm strain and opened the season on the DL himself.
  • Phillies righty Nick Pivetta has somewhat quietly been one of the team’s biggest surprises of the year thus far, as Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia observes. The right-hander spoke after his most recent quality outing about how last year’s struggles — a 6.02 ERA in 133 innings — have helped prepare him for better success in 2018. “I worked hard with [pitching coach Rick Kranitz] and everybody not trying to be so perfect in the strike zone,” said Pivetta. “I think that really has carried over this year and it’s been good so far.” Manager Gabe Kapler praised Pivetta for improving his concentration level since the beginning of Spring Training, his willingness to attack up in the zone with his fastball and his ability to throw his curveball for a strike when needed.
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