We’ll use this post to track the latest minor moves from around the game …
- The Royals announced that they’ve signed right-hander Michael Ynoa to a minor league contract. There’s no mention of an invite to Major League Spring Training. Ynoa, now 27, signed a hefty $4.25MM bonus with Oakland as an amateur back in 2008. He never found his footing in the organization, though, and was traded to the White Sox alongside Jeff Samardzija in the deal that brought Marcus Semien to Oakland. Ynoa made his big league debut with the ChiSox in 2016 and pitched to a 4.42 ERA with 8.1 K/9 against 5.9 BB/9 in 59 innings of work from 2016-17. He was out of affiliated ball entirely last year and is currently pitching in the Dominican Winter League, where he’s allowed just one run on four hits and four walks with 13 punchouts in 10 1/3 innings.
Earlier Moves
- The Athletics have reached a deal to bring back catcher Beau Taylor, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle (via Twitter). Thus ends a brief foray onto the open market for the 28-year-old, who was outrighted and became a minor-league free agent recently. Taylor made it up to the majors in 2018 just long enough to record his first hit, but he’s still hunting a second.Odds are he’ll head back to the Triple-A level, where he spent almost all of the 2018 season. Through 519 career plate appearances at the highest level of the minors, the former fifth-round pick has a .261/.364/.363 batting line.
It was nice not to leave him in free agency lim-Beau for too long.
Ha Ha good one sir. I think your going to see more of these type of players start signing. Im hoping most of these guys didnt enjoy waiting out the market like they did last year and then some of them still didnt have jobs during spring training.
He has a good chance to be up with the team sometime during the season. A’s only have 1 catcher on the 40 man who is a platoon catcher. Murphy will not be ready for another year so taylor will get some at bats this year.
if their opening day catchers are Taylor and Phegley, Murphy will be up by May
Wow you must be able to tell the future
Wow, Michael Ynoa.
Seems a lifetime ago he was pegged as the next King Felix. Shocking to see he’s still only 27
Also in that Samardzija-Semien trade was Rangel Ravelo, who put up really solid numbers at AAA last year. If you love a .300 BA with bat control and low strikeouts, he’s the man, he deserves a shot next year somewhere, hopefully not a place like STL (where he was at AAA last season), where he’s blocked by like 6 1Bmen.
A’s 16.3 bWAR (and counting via Semien, Phegley and Bassit)
CWS 0.5 BWAR
No one talks about that trade when badmouthing Beane, wonder why???
Maybe because the A’s still haven’t won a playoff series?
This is the most tired narrative in baseball. Beane has no budget, his team plays in the very worst stadium in sports, in close proximity to a huge-budget baseball team that plays in maybe the best stadium in sports. He also is the GM of a team that plays in the same city as perhaps the greatest basketball team ever assembled, a perennial NBA finalist. Despite all this, he puts winners on the field consistently; I’ll take the thousands of regular-season games as a much stronger body of evidence than the relative handful of playoff games, especially these silly one-game playoff “series.”
Michael Ynoa, along with Dermis Garcia and Gilbert Lara, the poster children for not expecting too much from high bonus 16 year old Dominican signees. Yes, they might be very successful like Gleyber Torres but it is still all just a guessing game. Just remember that before anointing the Marlins the 2023 World Series champions simply because they signed the Mesas this year.
Yeah, the Int’l marker in general is a real crapshoot…You have high bonus, highly rated prospects that constantly flame out, and then you have lower bonus signees like Acuña Jr. and Albies that come put of nowhere and become big time prospects and ML budding stars…
Prospects are always great and exciting, until they aren’t..lol
Missed in all of this today was the end of Brucie Maxwell’s time in Oakland. He’ll be missed.
Good flier pick for the Royals. Wouldn’t be surprised to see him used as a setup man type.