The Diamondbacks announced that right-hander Luke Weaver has been placed on the 10-day injured list due to right elbow inflammation. The placement is retroactive to April 8. Left-hander Kyle Nelson has been called up from Triple-A to take Weaver’s spot on the active roster. In other moves, the D’Backs outrighted southpaw Caleb Baragar and righty Humberto Mejia to Triple-A, as both of the recently-designated pitchers cleared waivers.
Weaver tossed two-thirds of an inning of relief work in Thursday’s 4-2 Arizona win over the Padres, allowing a run on three hits. An elbow issue could be the reason behind that shaky outing, though Weaver was also dealing with a blister problem during the end of Spring Training. Weaver worked exclusively as a starter in 2019-21, but the D’Backs are using him as a reliever in the early going of the season, so this IL stint could delay any eventual return to the rotation.
Nelson will now step into Arizona’s bullpen, and the southpaw’s first appearance will mark his Diamondbacks debut. Nelson has pitched in each of the last two seasons, with only a 12.19 ERA to show for 10 1/3 innings in The Show. The D’Backs claimed Nelson off waivers from the Guardians in November, after Nelson had spent all five of his professional seasons in Cleveland’s organization.
WHEN are they going to finally give up on this guy?
Even when healthy, he’s awful.
Like all D-backs fans, I would love to see what Weaver could do given a healthy, uninterrupted year.
That’s just wishful thinking at this point. Good chance this will be his last year in AZ.
Just hasn’t developed into the pitcher they thought they were getting in the Goldy trade. Injuries certainly have been a part of his struggles.
I wouldn’t say that he’s awful when healthy. In 2019, in his 64.1 healthy innings he racked up 1.8 fWAR and 1.7 bWAR. For context, a league average SP (or a #3) would be expected to put up roughly 2 WAR per 150 innings.
So that 2019 season was well above average on a rate basis, and is the only thing that keeps us hanging on (like Robbie Ray’s 2017, but they gave up one year too early).
Ray wasn’t going to reach his peak in Arizona.
Inclined to agree on Ray; couldn’t tell you why it would never happen, but something’s been off for years with the pitching.
64 innings, for a starter? Really? He is not even league average.
This dream needs to end.
He is just not that good.
Note that I said “on a rate basis”, I was just explaining that he’s not awful when healthy; I never said that he was consistently healthy. Also, there’s some benefit to having a large amount of value concentrated in a small amount of time from one player because it frees up time/space for other players to accrue value; however, that’s only if there are productive replacement candidates (which the DBacks don’t really have).
We can agree that he probably shouldn’t stay a SP (which is something that the DBacks community has been discussing for a couple years now), but the fact that he was able to accumulate that much value in only 64 IP while facing lineups multiple times suggests that a healthy Weaver can be well above-average in a bullpen role.
But that’s if, and only if, he can stay healthy.
Make St Louis an offer. We would probably take him back if the price was right.
Update: Steven Matz is getting beaten around by the Pirates. We might be making you an offer.
I had high hopes for Weaver when he came up in St. Louis. I was also very disappointed they traded him. To see him now reminds why I am not a general manager and instead, I sit on my butt and complain about things I nothing of. I have been momentarily humbled.