The Rays announced that they’ve designated right-hander Aaron Slegers for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster will go to right-hander Cole Sulser, whose previously reported selection to the MLB roster is official.
Sleger, who stands at a towering 6’10”, pitched just three innings for the Rays this season and spent the rest of the year in Triple-A Durham. The former Twins farmhand totaled 112 1/3 innings there, pitching to a 5.05 ERA with 6.4 K/9, 2.2 BB/9, 1.76 HR/9 and a 41.5 percent ground-ball rate. While those results are unsightly, that’s been the case for the majority of Triple-A pitchers in 2019, as the adoption of the Major League ball has led to an explosion of home runs in the International League and Pacific Coast League alike.
Prior to the 2019 season, the 26-year-old Slegers carried a much more respectable 3.54 ERA through 233 innings at the Triple-A level. Slegers’ strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates in seasons past have been roughly in line with this year’s rates, but he’s never endured anywhere near this level of home run issues in the past. Slegers has a minor league option year remaining beyond 2019, so it’s possible that another club in need of some pitching depth will take a look at the big righty.
Yes, lets blame the ball on his bloated era when you still have MLB pitches having very low eras.
Fair analyses!!
If anything, it’d be unfair to take his ERA at face value. There were 16 qualified pitchers in all of Triple-A this season that had an ERA under 5.00. There were 110 a year ago.
It’s misleading to even mention Triple-A statistics in 2019 without acknowledging the overwhelming change to the offensive environment there — no different than the home-run boom throughout MLB should be contextualized by highlighting the changes to the ball that have resulted in record home run levels.
Well then, go all logical on me…lol
But your logic is faulty.
It’s like me saying – home runs aren’t exploding this year because there are plenty of players who haven’t hit more than 10.
I was not aware of this gross manipulation of the baseball.Of course I knew that it had changed for the clear cut hitters benefit,but these AAA statistics indicate a gross imbalance in the name of providing more action.This indicates an imbalance worse than the steroids era.It really says to me that all hitting “records” this year should be noted with an asterisk like they did with Roger Maris’ home run record.
Maybe they should raise the mound again to offset it if they decide to keep on using this ball.
Yeah, lots of speculation on the ball being juiced before this season, but the AAA numbers really put that in perspective. A part owner of Rawlings, who makes the MLB and AAA baseballs, is, of course, MLB itself.
It’s sometimes hard to keep track of who’s a Ray even with a scorecard.