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Giants Move Tommy La Stella To 60-Day IL, Claim Trevor Hildenberger

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The Giants have moved infielder Tommy La Stella to the 60-day injured list and claimed right-handed reliever Trevor Hildenberger from the Mets, Maria Guardado of MLB.com was among those to report. San Francisco subsequently optioned Hildenberger to Triple-A Sacramento.

La Stella went on the 10-day IL with a left hamstring strain on May 4, and Tuesday’s switch to the 60-day version means he won’t return until at least July. That’s obviously less-than-ideal news for him and the Giants, who signed La Stella to a three-year, $18.75MM contact in free agency. The 32-year-old hit a disappointing .235/.297/.353 with one home run in 75 plate appearances before suffering his injury. The Giants have relied on Wilmer Flores and Mauricio Dubon at the keystone in La Stella’s place, but they should soon reinstate Donovan Solano, who has been on the IL with a calf strain since April 22.

Hildenberger, 30, threw just 2 1/3 innings with the Mets this year before they designated him for assignment last weekend. Also a former Twin, Hildenberger has pitched to a 5.52 ERA (with a much more encouraging 3.60 SIERA) and recorded a 22.5 percent strikeout rate, a 7.1 percent walk rate and a 48.4 percent groundball rate over 133 2/3 frames in the bigs.

Royals Place Danny Duffy On 10-Day IL

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MAY 18: Duffy told Lynn Worthy of the Kansas City Star and other reporters that he has a Grade 1 strain. He doesn’t expect to miss much time.

MAY 17: The Royals have placed southpaw Danny Duffy on the 10-day injured list (retroactive to May 14) with a left forearm flexor strain, Anne Rogers of MLB.com tweets. They’ll make a corresponding roster move Tuesday.

Whenever the phrase “forearm flexor strain” is used regarding a pitcher, it’s unsettling. So, the Royals can only hope this doesn’t make for a long absence or even Tommy John surgery for Duffy, who has been excellent this season. The 32-year-old has posted an elite 1.94 ERA with a 28.2 percent strikeout rate against a 7.1 percent walk rate over seven starts and 41 2/3 innings.

Duffy is in the final season of his contract, making this year all the more important for him. He’ll close out a five-year, $65MM deal when the season concludes. A Royal since they drafted him in Round 3 in 2007, Duffy owns a 3.95 ERA in 1,153 innings dating back to his 2011 debut.

Brewers Activate Christian Yelich

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The Brewers have activated outfielder Christian Yelich from the 10-day injured list and optioned left-hander Hoby Milner to Triple-A Nashville, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tweets.

Yelich has already been on the IL twice this year on account of back issues, and the Brewers can only hope it won’t happen again. The former NL MVP missed about three weeks during his first stint on the shelf, and one game after he returned, Milwaukee had to put Yelich back on the IL on May 4. Yelich has been in great form when healthy enough to play, having batted .353/.463/.382 in 10 games and 41 plate appearances.

Yelich is the Brewers’ go-to option in left field, but they’ve mostly had to rely on Billy McKinney, Tyrone Taylor and Jackie Bradley Jr. with him unavailable for the majority of the season. All three of them have struggled to varying extents this year.

Orioles Designate Rio Ruiz For Assignment

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The Orioles have designated infielder Rio Ruiz for assignment and selected the contract of infielder/outfielder Stevie Wilkerson, per a club announcement.

The 26-year-old Ruiz was a 2012 fourth-rounder of the Astros and a prospect of some note in both the Astros and Braves organizations. Baltimore claimed him off waivers from Atlanta in the 2018-19 offseason and has given him a fairly lengthy look in the infield, but to this point, Ruiz simply hasn’t capitalized on that opportunity.

Dating back to 2019, Ruiz is hitting just .220/.292/.380 through 718 plate appearances. The O’s have given him some run at each infield position other than shortstop, but he hasn’t been able to string together a particularly productive stretch. The 2021 season, in particular, has been a tough one for Ruiz, who is batting just .167/.250/.300 through 101 trips to the plate. The Orioles will have a week to trade Ruiz or pass him through outright waivers.

The 29-year-old Wilkerson is a familiar face for O’s fans, having spent parts of two seasons in a utility role for Baltimore. He’s a a .219/.279/.365 hitter in 410 plate appearances and has played every spot on the diamond other than catcher and first base — including 5 1/3 innings of mop-up duty on the mound in 2019.

Pirates Trade Sean Poppen To Rays

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The Rays announced Tuesday that they’ve acquired right-hander Sean Poppen from the Pirates in exchange for cash. Pittsburgh had recently designated Poppen for assignment. Tampa Bay’s 40-man roster is now full.

Poppen has been optioned to Triple-A Durham for the time being but could see some action in the big leagues with his new club before long, given the regularity with which the Rays have shuffle up their pitching mix in recent seasons.

The 27-year-old Poppen has seen time in the Majors in each of the past three seasons (2019-20 with Minnesota, 2021 with Pittsburgh) but hasn’t found much in the way of success. He’s tallied 20 2/3 innings in the bigs but yielded 18 runs (15 earned) on 30 hits and 11 walks with 23 strikeouts. Poppen’s sinker averages 94.4 mph and has resulted in a solid 46.8 percent ground-ball in his limited big league action. He pairs the pitch with a slider and a seldom-used changeup, but none of the three offerings has been particularly effective against MLB opponents.

Poppen has had more success in the minors, where he sports a 3.39 ERA and a strikeout per inning in parts of five professional seasons — mostly as a starting pitcher. All 13 of his MLB appearances to date have come out of the bullpen, but it’s possible the Rays could look to stretch him back out, either as a multi-inning reliever or as a true depth option for the rotation. The Harvard product is a former 19th-round pick who has never been considered to be one of his organization’s top products, but he carries a respectable 3.88 ERA in 65 Triple-A innings.

Mets Prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong To Undergo Shoulder Surgery

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The Mets’ injury woes continued this week, as the team announced Tuesday that top outfield prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong will undergo surgery on his right shoulder “for a GLAD lesion (glenoid labral articular disruption).” Crow-Armstrong, according to the Mets’ press release, underwent an MRI this week, which “revealed a tear of the labrum as well as injury to the articular cartilage of the shoulder.”

The 19-year-old Crow-Armstrong wouldn’t have been a viable option for the Mets’ banged-up outfield in 2021 anyway, but it’s nevertheless a notable setback to the 2020 first-round pick’s development. He appeared in six games of Class-A ball in 2021, going 10-for-24 with a pair of doubles to begin his professional career. That limited sample will now be the only experience he gets under his belt for the 2021 season. The Mets have yet to announce a formal timeline on his recovery, but a surgery of this nature surely won’t be something from which he can return in just a few months’ time.

Crow-Armstrong becomes the second high-profile Mets prospect now slated for major surgery, joining 2019 draftee Matt Allan, who is out for the year due to Tommy John surgery. Both players rank among the Mets’ top six farmhands on the organizational rankings at Baseball America, MLB.com and FanGraphs.

Jake Petricka To Pitch For Atlantic League’s High Point Rockers

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Veteran reliever Jake Petricka is headed to High Point, N.C. to suit up for the High Point Rockers of the independent Atlantic League. The right-hander somewhat quietly signed a deal with the Rockers midway through Spring Training, and he tells Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he’s hoping for a resurgence with the indie league club.

Reusse writes that Petricka, 33, had a workout for multiple big league clubs this spring but didn’t land a deal after the fact. “To give it another shot, my hand was kind of forced to find the best option in independent ball,” Petricka tells Reusse. “And that was High Point.”

Petricka spent the 2020 season in the Blue Jays organization but didn’t get a call to the big leagues, instead working at their alternate training site for most of the year. He tossed eight innings with the 2019 Brewers and logged 45 2/3 frames with Toronto back in 2018, producing a combined 4.36 ERA in those 53 2/3 innings of relief. The former White Sox setup man is a veteran of seven big league seasons, during which time he’s compiled 231 2/3 innings — all out of the bullpen — and recorded a 3.96 ERA with a 17.2 percent strikeout rate, a 9.5 percent walk rate and an excellent 59.1 percent ground-ball rate.

Petricka will hardly be the only big league veteran on the Rockers’ roster this summer. He’ll report to High Point and team up with the likes of Logan Morrison, Mike Carp, Michael Martinez and Tyler Ladendorf, among others.

D-backs To Promote Corbin Martin, Place Luke Weaver On Injured List

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The Diamondbacks will place right-hander Luke Weaver on the 10-day injured list following his recent shoulder discomfort and call up right-hander Corbin Martin to make his team debut in one of the remaining games of this four-game set against the Dodgers, John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports 98.7 FM reports (via Twitter).

Weaver, 27, exited his most recent outing with shoulder discomfort but expressed optimism after the fact that he could remedy the issue with a change to his mechanics. At the time the righty was optimistic that he’d avoid the injured list, but Gambadoro indicates that Weaver won’t make his scheduled start against the Rockies on Friday and is indeed IL-bound.

Acquired from the Cardinals as part of the Paul Goldschmidt trade, Weaver had an up-and-down season so far, sandwiching four ineffective starts between four pretty strong outings — two on either end of that rough stretch. Overall, the former first-rounder has a 4.50 ERA through 40 innings with a slightly below-average 22.8 percent strikeout rate but a better-than-average 7.8 percent walk rate. He’ll join Zac Gallen and Taylor Widener on an increasingly crowded D-backs injured list that also currently holds position players Ketel Marte, Asdrubal Cabrera, Christian Walker, Carson Kelly and Kole Calhoun.

Turning to the 25-year-old Martin, his promotion is of plenty note for the D-backs, who thought highly enough of the 2017 second-rounder to make him one of the key pieces they received from the Astros in return for Zack Greinke. Martin was on the injured list at the time, having undergone Tommy John surgery earlier in the 2019 season, but he entered that year regarded as one of the game’s 100 best prospects, ranking 78th at Baseball America and 81st at MLB.com. Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs currently ranks Martin as the D-backs’ No. 6 prospect and the No. 114 prospect in baseball.

Martin did get his feet wet with the ’Stros before falling to that UCL injury, albeit in a small sample of 19 2/3 innings. He was roughed up for 14 runs in that time (two unearned), but his prospect pedigree and excellent minor league track record give plenty of hope that he can eventually be a big piece of the Arizona staff. He’s tossed 9 2/3 innings in Triple-A Reno this year and yielded only two runs with a 14-to-6 K/BB ratio.

The 2019 injury, the canceled 2020 minor league season and the delayed 2021 minor league campaign have all combined to limit Martin to a total of 201 2/3 innings in the minors, but he’s excelled at every level. The righty carries a career 2.54 ERA, a strong 27.8 percent strikeout rate, an 8.4 percent walk rate and a hearty 53.2 percent grounder rate in that time. He’s been as effective in Triple-A as he was in Double-A, logging a 2.87 ERA with 59 punchouts in 47 innings, although his 24 walks at that level are a bit more troubling. That’s the only level at which Martin has struggled with free passes, though, and scouting reports generally give him credit for average or above-average command.

Given last year’s lack of innings and the fact that he’s working back from major elbow surgery, Martin will probably see his workload managed rather judiciously in 2021. Still, his promotion gives the D-backs and their fans a first glimpse at a pitcher the club hopes can be a prominent contributor to the starting staff for the foreseeable future. If he sticks on the MLB roster this year, the D-backs would control him all the way through the 2025 season, but future optional assignments could push his free agency back even further.

Kevin Pillar Diagnosed With Multiple Nasal Fractures

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Mets outfielder Kevin Pillar has been diagnosed with multiple nasal fractures after being struck in the face by a fastball from Braves right-hander Jacob Webb, per a club announcement. He’ll meet with a specialist to determine the next steps in his treatment.

It was a grisly scene in last night’s Mets/Braves game, for those who didn’t see. An errant fastball from Webb rode up and in on Pillar, striking him flush on the nose and dropping the veteran outfielder in a heap. Pillar was eventually able to walk off the field under his own power, and fans were surely relieved all the more when Pillar tweeted later in the evening: “Thanks to everyone that has reached out! Scary moment but I’m doing fine!”

At this point, there’s no clearly defined timeline for when Pillar might return. If (or when) Pillar is ultimately placed on the injured list, he’ll be added to a staggering number of outfielders on the IL for the Mets. Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo and Albert Almora Jr. are all on the 10-day IL at the moment, as are infielders/outfielders Jeff McNeil and J.D. Davis. Jose Martinez, meanwhile, is on the 60-day IL.

With that group sidelined, the Mets have Dominic Smith, Khalil Lee and Johneshwy Fargas on the big league roster, in addition to infield/outfield options Jose Peraza and Jake Hager. The Mets have some other outfield options in Triple-A, including former big leaguers Mallex Smith, Brandon Drury and Mason Williams (none are on the 40-man roster), but their depth is obviously being pushed to its limits.

It’s not at all a surprise to see MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweet that the Mets are exploring outfield additions from outside the organization, but the trade market typically doesn’t get started this early in the season. There have at least been a few recent DFAs who could be claimed or acquired to simply add some depth; Pittsburgh designated Troy Stokes Jr. for assignment, while veteran Jon Jay was designated by the Angels over the weekend. Jay’s transactions log at MLB.com indicates that he cleared waivers, but he has the service time to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency.

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