Apr. 17: Knight has cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.
Apr. 14: The Rays have selected right-hander Phoenix Sanders onto the major league roster, tweets Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. In a corresponding move, reliever Dusten Knight was designated for assignment.
Sanders, 26, is getting a big league call for the first time. He was a 10th-round senior sign out of South Florida in 2017, signing for just $7.5K. The overwhelming majority of players in that demographic don’t advance to the majors, but Sanders earned his way there with an excellent five-year run in the minor leagues.
Aside from a rookie ball stint late in his draft year, Sanders hasn’t posted an ERA above 3.29 at any stop. He’s backed that up with excellent strikeout and walk numbers, routinely punching out upwards of 30% of opponents while only once dishing out free passes at a higher than average clip. Sanders, who has worked almost exclusively in relief, owns a 1.81 ERA in 49 2/3 Double-A innings and a 3.19 mark in 79 frames over parts of three seasons with Triple-A Durham. He’s fanned 31.1% of batters faced against a meager 4.6% walk rate at the top minor league level.
Sanders has never appeared on an organizational prospects ranking at either Baseball America or FanGraphs, but his consistently strong production caught the attention of the Tampa Bay front office. He’ll offer a fresh arm in the middle innings for manager Kevin Cash, having not pitched for Durham since last Friday.
Knight loses his roster spot just a day after being selected back to the majors. He’s a quick casualty of roster churn as the Rays shuttle through bullpen arms to cover a stretch of 13 games in as many days to open the regular season. The righty tossed 42 pitches in last night’s loss to the A’s, likely knocking him out of commission for the next day or two. Tampa Bay will now risk losing him on waivers to add to the immediate bullpen options at Cash’s disposal.
The 31-year-old Knight has logged big league time in each of the past two seasons. He struggled over seven appearances with the Orioles last year, allowing ten runs in 8 2/3 innings. He had a nice showing with Baltimore’s top affiliate, though, posting a 3.05 ERA in 38 1/3 frames with a 26.2% strikeout rate. Knight hasn’t allowed a run in four innings with Durham in 2022 and struck out three batters in 2 1/3 innings of one-run ball against Oakland yesterday.
One of the best names in pro baseball
Sounds like a superhero name. Most definitely made for cinema, at least.
Sounds like an OnlyFans account
Do you still use your account?
80 grade name 70 grade hair
We can only hope he faces Skye Bolt
Welcome to The Show!
Well, Knight had a good run.
Was his dad a Colonel?
No way! I’d be sooo fat if my dad were *the* colonel… Could be related to Barry though, who was not related to the colonel.
Wait… Barry and the Colonel aren’t related? Where else could he get that shake and bake from?
Do we forget the other Reggie … great player
He’s always put up some decent “standard” numbers, and BA thought he might be a Rule 5-er this year, but of course there was no Rule 5. Doesn’t seem to have a lot of “stuff”, but ya gotta have somethin’ to produce those numbers, even if he has been old for every class he’s pitched in. Why not.
“ Aside from a rookie ball stint late in his draft year, Sanders hasn’t posted an ERA above 3.29 at any stop”
So what about fall league (7.90) and AAA (3.38) on 2021?
Phoenix rising.
He’s like the Phoenix, rising from Arizona!
Another example of the absurdity of the long outdated, artificial, 40 man roster. S/B 45 at least for the “low revenue” organizations who rely on internal player development and recriminations as opposed to virtually unrestrained free agent spending.
Rays use their minor leaguers as temp workers. glad to see MLB reduce the number of times you can call up and send down players in a season.
Please provide an update on the status of PHOENIX Sanders 4 brothers:
YUMA, TUSCON, SCOTTS-DALE, and, not to be forgotten, TOMBSTONE (born on 10/31)
We got a Phoenix rising! That reminds me that Phoenix Rising by Deströyer 666 is one of the best albums to come out from the year 2000.
With a name like that he was born to be a professional athlete
Or a mass killer.
I’m at the Rays game and am sitting a couple of sections over from the Rays pen. Sanders is wearing number 80 and sitting at the end of the bullpen bench. The Rays defense has been terrible, and they are losing 4-1, bases loaded for the A’s with one out. No one warming up in the pen yet.
Thanks for the update. Now go watch the effing game.
It’s now 5-1 A’s, Rays at bat and Sanders is warming up in the pen. It looks like he may have the fifth inning.
Update: Sanders is on the mound ready to make his MLB debut.
Sanders is now out of the game. He went three innings and gave up one run. Not a bad debut.
*SARASOTA SEA HORSES
Figured, Cleveland Steamer would have gotten the first look
Tired of the dfa shuffle, teams using 40-50 pitchers a year. Imagine being called up to make the bigs for the first time, you have been fighting for this all your life, only you know no matter how good or bad you will be dfa’d and move to a new organization,