The Tigers have placed catcher Grayson Greiner on the 10-day injured list with a lower back strain, the team announced. To replace Greiner, the club will select catcher Bobby Wilson from Triple-A Toledo. Wilson will take the 40-man roster spot of injured right-hander Tyson Ross, whom the Tigers are transferring to the 60-day IL. In other moves, the Tigers optioned lefty Ryan Carpenter to Toledo and will recall Triple-A lefty Gregory Soto.
The 26-year-old Greiner has gotten off to a dismal start at the plate in his first season as the Tigers’ starting catcher. He owns a .162/.231/.279 line (35 wRC+) with five home runs and 57 strikeouts against 13 walks over 169 PA. Behind the plate, Greiner has thrown out a solid 29 percent of would-be base stealers while earning roughly neutral grades as a blocker and framer.
Wilson, 36, will see his first action in Detroit since 2016, when he totaled 13 at-bats with the club. He spent last season in Minnesota, which had been the latest stop in a nomadic major league career, and then joined the Tigers prior to the current campaign. Wilson has hit an unimpressive .208/.264/.313 (56 wRC+) in exactly 1,000 major league PA, though he’s known as a quality defender.
The demotion of Carpenter is notable considering he’s tied for fourth on the Tigers in starts this season. A few of those performances have been disastrous, though, evidenced by the 28-year-old Carpenter’s 8.82 ERA/7.04 FIP in 32 2/3 innings. He toed the rubber for the seventh time of the year Friday and had another night to forget. The Indians roughed Carpenter up for eight runs (six earned) on eight hits and four walks in just three innings, leading the Tigers to demote him to the minors.
Bad pitcher up for bad pitcher. Light hitting catcher on the IL and light hitting catcher up. Bad pitcher on the 60-day where he’ll be put out of his misery with the Tigers. Sounds about right. I didn’t expect anything from this team until 2021 at the earliest anyway and have a bunch of good stuff to catch up on my DVR and Netflix this summer, so it’s all good.
I’m a die hard fan and they have been tough to watch. Even if they had stayed healthy they would not have been good. No depth at all.
It didn’t help that two veteran SPs and all their FA signings (except Gordon Beckham) were injury duds.
The only thing exciting for the Tigers this year is what draft picks they are able to sign, and what trades they will make before the deadline.
Carpenter and Soto are the 9th and 10th options for the Tigers rotation at the start of the spring. Hard for any team to go that far down on the depth chart much less a team not expected to be good this year. 3/4ths of the planned IF are also injured and the fourth is relegated to DH duty. Tigers might not be the worst team in baseball, but they are pretty close. Tough to watch and I was at the game last nigh. I left early and I almost never leave a game early.
Hey it could be worse, we could’ve resigned that one James McCann guy!