The Brewers announced this afternoon that utilityman Mark Mathias has cleared waivers and been assigned outright to Triple-A Nashville. The 27-year-old doesn’t have the requisite service time to reject an outright assignment, so he’ll remain in the organization but no longer occupy a spot on the 40-man roster.
Mathias has spent the bulk of his career in the Cleveland farm system. He generally offered a solid combination of bat-to-ball skills, plate discipline and defensive versatility, helping to compensate for a lack of power. Milwaukee swung a minor trade to acquire the right-handed hitter in November 2019 and selected him to their 40-man roster.
With no minor league season in 2020, Mathias spent the bulk of the year on optional assignment to the alternate training site. He did appear in sixteen big league games, tallying 36 plate appearances. Mathias came to Spring Training in 2021 hoping to compete for a utility role. Unfortunately, he suffered a labrum tear in his shoulder in March and missed the entire season, although he did at least pick up a big league salary and service time while on the injured list.
Seemed like a good scout and a good out-of-the-box get by the Brewers in early 2020 before the injury. That shoulder seems really messed up. Thought he had a chance to be a pretty decent utility INF who could handle 400, 450 AB annually.
He still could be a quality player. Maybe at 1st? If he can hit for average, it might be his future position.