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Phillies Release Brandon Kintzler

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The Phillies have released reliever Brandon Kintzler, according to the MLB.com transactions tracker. That was the anticipated outcome after the veteran right-hander was designated for assignment over the weekend. Kintzler has well over five years of MLB service time, so he’d have had the right to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency while retaining the remainder of his salary. With that in mind, the Phils evidently just decided to place him on release waivers. Once he clears, Kintzler will be free to sign anywhere of his choosing.

Kintzler was non-tendered by the Marlins over the winter despite a productive 2020 campaign serving as Miami’s closer. The 37-year-old signed a minor league deal with the Phillies that came with a $3MM base salary if he made the club out of Spring Training. He bet on himself, turning down guaranteed deals that would’ve come with a lower salary and ultimately made good on that decision, earning a season-opening spot in the Phils bullpen.

While Kintzler has generally been a productive reliever over the course of his career, that hasn’t been the case so far in 2021. The sinkerballer managed just a 6.37 ERA across 29 2/3 innings in Philadelphia. Kintzler’s still racking up grounders at a very high clip (58.2%), but he’s nevertheless been tagged for seven home runs.

That’s the result of a exceptionally high 29.2% HR/FB rate that’s more than double Kintzler’s career mark of 13.2%. Given his generally solid track record, Kintzler should find interest from other clubs on minor league arrangements. If a few more batted balls die in the outfield grass as opposed to clearing the fences, it’s possible he could bounce back towards his more typically steady form.

Brewers Claim Sal Romano Off Waivers From Yankees

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The Brewers announced they’ve claimed right-hander Sal Romano off waivers from the Yankees. He’ll add some depth to a bullpen that has been hit hard by the spread of COVID-19 throughout the Milwaukee clubhouse in recent days.

Milwaukee will be Romano’s third team of the year. He opened the season in Cincinnati but was cut loose after a poor first month. He signed a minor league deal with the Yankees not long after and pitched his way back to the big leagues in late July. His stint in the Bronx proved rather brief, though, as he wound up again designated for assignment after a pair of appearances.

Between the Reds and Yankees, Romano has tossed 23 innings with a 4.70 ERA. He has punched out only 14.9% of batters faced against an average 8.9% walk rate. Romano has had better results with the Yankees’ top affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, working 23 1/3 frames of 3.47 ERA ball. He is out of minor league option years, so the Brew Crew need to keep him on the big league roster or wind up placing him on waivers themselves.

Yankees Claim Jonathan Davis Off Waivers From Blue Jays

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The Yankees announced a series of roster moves before this evening’s game against the Orioles. Most notably, outfielder Jonathan Davis has been claimed off waivers from the Blue Jays. New York also selected the contracts of right-handers Brody Koerner and Stephen Ridings. They’re replacing Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery, who landed on the COVID-19 injured list after testing positive for the virus.

Davis lost his 40-man roster spot when the Jays acquired Joakim Soria before last Friday’s trade deadline. The 29-year-old appeared in the majors with the Jays in each of the past four seasons, tallying a combined 241 plate appearances of .180/.285/.263 hitting. While he hasn’t performed well at the big league level, Davis has a decent .256/.357/.421 line over parts of three seasons at Triple-A.

Koerner and Ridings are both in line to make their big league debuts. Koener, a 17th-round pick of the Yankees back in 2015, has done very well at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre this season. Through 61 innings, the Clemson University product has a 2.95 ERA, the seventh-lowest mark among the 49 Triple-A East pitchers with 50+ innings pitched. His 18.3% strikeout rate is below-average, but Koerner has also issued walks at a lower than typical 7.8% clip.

Ridings began his career as an 8th-round draftee of the Cubs out of Haverford College. He was a starting pitcher early in his minor league tenure (which also included some time in the Royals system).  This year, though, he’s worked exclusively in relief, splitting the campaign between Double-A Somerset and Scranton. Altogether, the 25-year-old has pitched to a sterling 1.24 ERA in 29 innings, striking out an elite 38.2% of opponents while walking just 3.6%.

Because Koerner and Ridings were selected to the roster as COVID replacements, they can be returned to the minor leagues and removed from the 40-man without being exposed to waivers upon others’ returns from the IL.

Diamondbacks Select Tyler Gilbert

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The Diamondbacks announced they’ve selected the contract of pitcher Tyler Gilbert. Southpaw Miguel Aguilar was optioned to Triple-A Reno in a corresponding move.

It’s the first big league call for Gilbert, a 27-year-old southpaw. A sixth-round pick of the Phillies out of USC in 2015, Gilbert spent his first few professional seasons in the Philadelphia organization. The Phils traded him to the Dodgers for Kyle Garlick in February 2020, but he never appeared in a game for a Los Angeles affiliate due to last year’s canceled minor league season. The D-Backs selected Gilbert in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft over the offseason.

He’s spent the year to date with Reno, making eleven appearances (ten starts). Over 52 1/3 innings, Gilbert has a 3.44 ERA with decent strikeout and walk rates (22.8% and 8.7%, respectively). That’s deceptively strong production in the supercharged Triple-A West environment. Among the 26 pitchers with 50+ innings in the league, only one (Drew Anderson) has a better ERA than Gilbert. That quality work in the high minors will earn him a look from a D-Backs team that has little reason not to give opportunities to potential long-term members of the pitching staff.

Twins Release Matt Shoemaker

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The Twins released right-hander Matt Shoemaker this afternoon, manager Rocco Baldelli told reporters (including Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Minnesota had already passed Shoemaker through outright waivers earlier this season, so the move won’t clear up a 40-man roster spot.

Minnesota signed Shoemaker to a one-year, $2MM deal over the winter in hopes of stabilizing the final spot in the rotation. The union didn’t pan out, as the veteran tossed 60 1/3 innings of 8.06 ERA/5.41 SIERA ball before being designated for assignment in early July. It was a nightmarish campaign for Shoemaker, who posted a career-worst 14.1% strikeout rate and served up fifteen home runs in sixteen appearances.

To his credit, Shoemaker has tossed 20 innings of four-run ball since accepting an assignment to Triple-A St. Paul. With the Twins expected to use the final few months of their lost season to take a look at younger, controllable arms, it nevertheless made sense to move on. Shoemaker will now get to explore other opportunities, and he’ll presumably latch on somewhere via minor league deal with a chance to pitch himself back to the big leagues down the stretch.

Padres Designate Jorge Mateo For Assignment

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The Padres announced this afternoon they’ve designated outfielder Jorge Mateo for assignment. The move clears active roster space for left-hander Matt Strahm, who has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list.

San Diego acquired Mateo from the A’s last June. The former top prospect was out of minor league options, so the Padres had to keep him on the big league club (or injured list) in order to retain his long-term rights. The Friars have kept Mateo on the active roster over the past two seasons, although they’ve never seemed especially eager to give him regular playing time. The 26-year-old has tallied just 121 plate appearances over 79 games, serving mostly as a late-game pinch hitter, pinch runner or defensive replacement.

Mateo’s lack of roster flexibility made him something of an odd fit on a win-now Padres club. He hasn’t shown enough in his limited playing time to force his way into a more regular role, hitting .195/.235/.310 with terrible strikeout and walk rates (31.4% and 2.5%, respectively). That said, the Padres’ front office clearly remained intrigued by his physical gifts and one-time prospect status.

It’s certainly not inconceivable another club will give Mateo a look. He’ll be placed on waivers, and it’s possible a less immediate contender could place a claim and give him more consistent reps than San Diego could offer. Of course, any claiming team would also have to keep Mateo on the big league club or again expose him to waivers.

Strahm hasn’t pitched all season. The 29-year-old has missed the entire campaign recovering from right knee surgery. Last year, he worked 20 2/3 innings of 2.61 ERA/4.24 SIERA ball over nineteen appearances. Strahm will join Drew Pomeranz and Tim Hill as left-handed bullpen options for manager Jayce Tingler.

Tigers’ President: Team Could Pursue “High-Impact” Players This Offseason

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Tigers president/CEO Christopher Ilitch spoke with reporters (including Chris McCosky of The Detroit News and Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press) this afternoon. Most notably, Ilitch addressed the upcoming offseason and suggested the Tigers could pursue some bigger-ticket acquisitions as they near the end of their rebuild.

“(General manager Al Avila) and his team are very focused on continuing to improve our team. We see the long-term efforts put forth by his team and we see the emergence of a young core,” Ilitch said. “And I think Al feels we need to continue to improve our ballclub in a high, impactful way. I very much support the approach he and his team have taken — building a young core of talent and now having the desire to bring in high-impact players to fill that out. I’m very supportive of that.”

Those comments seem to suggest ownership would be willing to sign off on a significant free agent investment, and Ilitch said that kind of move “undoubtedly … could happen this winter.” Unsurprisingly, he didn’t mention any specific targets on the upcoming market, but Ilitch did express a general desire to “be strong up the middle.”

There’s a rather straightforward line to be drawn between Ilitch’s comments and the upcoming star-studded free agent shortstop class. Each of Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, Marcus Semien, Trevor Story and Javier Báez is slated to hit the open market. Seager and Correa (who will each be 27 by the start of the offseason) do so as particularly young free agents, while both Story and Báez will turn 29 this winter. That youth could be appealing to a Tigers club that’ll just be entering their competitive window next season and might still be one year away from making a true push for the top of the AL Central. (It’s also particularly easy to connect Correa as a speculative candidate of the Tigers, given his overlapping time in Houston with Detroit manager A.J. Hinch).

As Ilitch alluded to, the Tigers have played fairly well after a dismal start to the year. Detroit began this season 9-24, killing any faint hopes they had at staying in contention almost immediately. But they’ve quietly gone 42-33 since bottoming out on May 7. With three months of productive play — including good work from controllable players like Casey Mize, Matthew Boyd, Akil Baddoo, Eric Haase, Jeimer Candelario and Robbie Grossman — some optimism for 2022 and beyond isn’t unwarranted. That’s particularly true with highly-touted young players like Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson all at or approaching the big league level.

From a financial perspective, the Detroit organization shouldn’t have issue being aggressive over the coming offseasons. The Tigers entered the 2021 season with just an $80.8MM payroll, in the estimation of Cot’s Baseball Contracts. Only Miguel Cabrera ($32MM) and Grossman ($5MM) have guaranteed deals on the books for next season.

Obviously, arbitration raises will add to that tally, but the fact remains that the organization should have ample spending capacity. This is a franchise that pushed payroll up near the $200MM mark at its 2016-17 peak and had spent in excess of $100MM on players every year between 2007-2020 (prior to prorating) before snapping that streak this season.

Granted, much of that spending was greenlit by Mike Ilitch, who passed away in February 2017. We have yet to see Chris Ilitch spend at his father’s level, but the franchise has been mired in a rebuild for essentially all of the younger Ilitch’s ownership tenure. It’s possible, then, that Chris Ilitch’s comparative frugality has been more a reflection of the lack of big league talent within the past few seasons than any sort of unwillingness on his part to sign off on higher than average payrolls.

If that’s the case, as Ilitch implied today, the offseason possibilities are numerous. The core of the potential next competitive Tigers team is at or near the big league level. The time to supplement that young talent with notable outside acquisitions is approaching, and it seems the Tigers could kickstart that effort in the coming months.

Nationals Select Javy Guerra

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The Nationals announced they’ve selected the contract of reliever Javy Guerra and recalled catcher Riley Adams from Triple-A Rochester. Righty Wander Suero was optioned to Triple-A, while catcher René Rivera landed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to August 2, with a right elbow contusion. Washington already had a pair of vacancies on the 40-man roster arising out of last week’s series of trades.

Guerra will be making his season debut when he gets into a game, marking the eleventh consecutive year in which he’s picked up some big league time. Guerra saw action with the Nats in each of 2019-20, tossing 69 1/3 innings of 4.67 ERA/4.55 FIP ball. The veteran righty has only struck out 18.5% of opponents over that stretch, but he’s been stingy with walks, doling out free passes at just a 6.4% clip.

The Nationals signed Rivera to a major league contract in mid-July, but he’s only picked up 15 plate appearances over the past couple weeks. While he’s out, he’ll be replaced by the 25-year-old Adams, who came over from the Blue Jays in exchange for Brad Hand in advance of last week’s trade deadline.

Latest On Charges Against Marcell Ozuna

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The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has elected not to proceed with the felony aggravated assault strangulation charge brought against Braves outfielder Marcell Ozuna in May, according to reports from Fox 5 Atlanta and Alexis Stevens and Gabriel Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Prosecutors are proceeding with a pair of misdemeanor charges — family violence battery and simple assault. Both charges carry sentences of up to one year in jail time.

Ozuna was arrested on May 29 after allegedly striking his wife Genesis and holding her against a wall by her neck. At the time, an officer alleged he saw Ozuna choking his wife — the impetus for the felony strangulation charge — but prosecutors have reportedly elected not to pursue that charge upon review of police body camera footage. Had Ozuna been convicted on that count, he would have faced up to twenty years in prison.

Shortly after his arrest, Ozuna was reportedly released on a $20,000 bond with a court order to avoid contact with his wife. It is unclear when he’s next expected back in court to answer for the two charges that remain against him.

Regardless of the outcome of the criminal proceedings, Major League Baseball has the authority to impose discipline against Ozuna under the terms of the MLB – MLBPA Joint Domestic Violence Policy. For the moment, Ozuna remains on the 10-day injured list after dislocating a pair of fingers on his left hand on May 26.

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