The Tigers announced they’ve designated reliever Jacob Barnes for assignment and optioned outfielder Derek Hill to Triple-A Toledo. The moves open a pair of 26-man roster spots for right-hander Drew Hutchison and lefty Tyler Alexander, who will be added to the active roster tomorrow. Hutchison is being selected from Toledo, while Alexander will be reinstated from the 15-day injured list. Detroit’s 40-man roster count remains at 38.
Barnes signed a minor league deal over the offseason and broke camp with the club. The seven-year MLB veteran made 22 appearances for skipper A.J. Hinch, working primarily in lower-leverage situations. Barnes struggled to a 6.10 ERA through 20 2/3 innings, and of greater concern, saw his swing-and-miss propensity fall precipitously. He has generated swinging strikes on only 7.7% of his offerings, and his 11.2% strikeout rate is the fourth-lowest mark among the 160 relievers with 20+ innings pitched.
That’s a surprising development, as Barnes has typically posted solid strikeout and whiff numbers throughout his career. The velocity and spin on both his fastball and cutter are virtually unchanged relative to last season, but he’s simply not getting the kind of swing-and-miss to which he’s been accustomed. Barnes is out of minor league option years, so the Tigers had to designate him for assignment if they weren’t prepared to continue giving him opportunities to sort things out at the major league level.
Detroit will now have a week to trade the 32-year-old or place him on waivers. Given his rough start to the year, Barnes will probably land on the waiver wire. Even if he passes through unclaimed, he’d have the right to refuse a minor league assignment while still collecting the remainder of his $1.13MM salary by virtue of having surpassed five years of MLB service this season.
Hutchison returns to the big leagues for the second time in 2022. He made ten appearances earlier in the year after cracking the Opening Day roster, but Detroit designated him for assignment last month. Hutchison reached free agency after clearing waivers but re-signed on a minor league deal and worked his way back after five strong outings with the Mud Hens. The veteran has allowed only three runs in 9 2/3 innings with Toledo, punching out 13 batters with three walks.
A starting pitcher early in his career, the 31-year-old Hutchison has worked primarily in relief of late. That includes all of his early-season work in Detroit, where he tossed 15 2/3 innings of nine-run ball. Hutchison punched out 15 batters and issued 12 walks over that stretch, but he’s capable of shouldering multiple frames out of the bullpen and will presumably step into Barnes’ middle relief role.
Alexander, meanwhile, returns after a six-week absence. The southpaw started four times in April but suffered an elbow sprain that has kept him on the shelf since then. Originally targeted for a swing role, he’ll likely head right back into the rotation for a club that lost Casey Mize to a Tommy John procedure and has seen Matt Manning and Michael Pineda shelved due to long-term injury issues. Detroit will also be without Eduardo Rodríguez indefinitely as he attends to personal matters.
Great. Now stop being stubborn and send Tork down to gain some confidence. Bring up Greene and Carpenter. How does the worst offense in baseball not bring up the #2 prospect in baseball (he says he feels great) and the best hitter in the minors? Al has drafted pitching well, but his instincts are awful,
Carpenter is a AA player. He should get promoted to Toledo in the near future, but it will be months before he reaches Detroit. And that’s the best case scenario, he might not ever make it.
Lol, it’s not uncommon for AA players to jump to bigs. He’s biting 315 21 42 in 150 at bats! Are you telling me Grossman or anyone else is doing anything?
Might not ever make it? He’s 24! Do you have any concept of how often minor leaguers hit 20 homers in 60 games? You are completely clueless.
“Completely clueless”??? That would be you. Carpenter is a fringe prospect. Eventually, he’ll get promoted to AAA. By July, he might be a top 25 prospect in the Tigers system when MLB Pipeline revises its list. Next year, he’ll get invited to spring training. Sometime next year (if he’s still playing well), he might get called up to Detroit. Maybe he’ll contribute something as a fourth outfielder. All of this is a longshot.
You are truly grasping at straws.
Carpenter is a 24 year old fringe prospect DH/outfielder going through a hot streak at the AA level. Good for him, I hope he makes it to the big leagues. If he does, it’ll will be next year or maybe the year after that. And he’ll have negligible impact, probably a bench role.
Why does he need to be a ranked prospect to be called up? High ranked prospects fail all the time while sleepers emerge. If anyone would have predicted Beau Brieske would be in the Tigers rotation 2 years ago they would’ve laughed.
We have the worst offense in baseball and no one in the outfield is producing whatsoever. It costs nothing to give him a shot, why would you not at least give him a look? He has more homers than anyone has RBIs.
What proof do you have that he wouldn’t produce? You way overestimate yourself and lack the humility and self awareness to understand all the flaws in your logic. Google Dunning Kruger.
It does cost something to call up a player to the 40. It costs the loss of a different player. Someone has to be removed, likely being exposed to waivers. Then it becomes more difficult to recall them even if they pass thru waivers. Whatever the hitting philosophy the Tigers are preaching is not working. Meadows hits 30 hrs a year, but its mid June and he has zero! Torkelson has become a ground ball machine. I am not going all in on TTO, but maybe a little bit of launch angle talk could be used among the power hitters. Offense is down everywhere with what MLB has done with the baseball. This, however, has effected the Tigers hitters even more than the rest of the league. Change the approach, or change the coaches! Results matter!
Yeah, the main drawback with Carpenter is he’s an outfielder. Greene will already be joining us this week or next which will make him the 5th outfielder so we’ll already have to make a cut or trade… possibly Grossman. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle it. We do have two open spots on the 40 so that part isn’t an issue right now.
Grossman, Meadows, W. Castro, Reyes and Clemens… Greene will be #6. Of course, Clemens and/or Castro could be shifted to the infield, but they’ll likely have to remove or or two of them from their 26 man roster. They’ll need to make room for Candelario…
Cameron will be back soon as well… Yeah, it will be interesting to see how they manage the next couple of weeks.
That’s right – forgot about Cameron who was the only one besides Willi to hit a home run in the past month. I think Clemens and Grossman will be the odd men out unless one of them goes on a serious tear.
Carpenter has played first base, so he can get reps there. Tork should be sent down to build up his confidence.
There’s space on the 40 man, but who cares if we lose someone? Guys with very poor offensive numbers in mid June don’t have a lot of value. Al will just keep recycling the aaaa players because he doesn’t have the stones to make bold moves.
So far, not one of you has given me a good reason to not bring up Carpenter. Good teams aren’t afraid to make bold moves.
Cameron seems like a nice kid, and has done a few good things, but is extremely inconsistent offensively. He symbolizes what’s wrong with the tigers. We keep hanging on to guys like this instead of moving on finding consistent players. Al just can’t admit he got fleeced in the Verlander trade.
Cameron has an OPS+ of 94, and it was rising when he caught COVID-19. Plus, his defense is better than average. He’s played well enough to get more playing time.
Big Al making great decisions. Let’s keep bringing up the same guys all the time. Stop it Al and bring Green up already. Whast are you waiting on already?
Waiting for him to be ready. Greene himself said last week he still wasn’t feeling fully back to normal
Tigers need to designate Al Avila to the unemployment line and Coolbaugh can join him. They both suck so badly, this team sucks so badly. They look unprepared in every AB. I haven’t seen anything impressive about Hinch either, those unprepared AB’s have to fall on him too. But Avila is a huge part of the problem, Baez & Rodriguez were both terrible FA’s and Al should have known better. What was he hoping for with Baez, another guy who could strike out 200 times against 20 walks with 20 homers? Screwed the franchise for years more with that deal. No chance he opts out. And all those sell off trades where Avila brought home a bucket of broken balls each time. And Tork… the kid doesn’t look like he has the tools to be a star too me. I’m not writing him off as a dud yet, but he has shown very little in a lot of AB’s, he seems badly outmatched in many of them. Can’t even fathom how Grossman and Meadows went so wrong and lost all their power. Back to those bad plate approaches and an overall lack of plate discipline by the entire team, this offense is historically bad. And Cabrera, while he’s hitting .286, has produced an even 0 wins this season while taking almost every DH AB. Better than negative wins as he has had in previous seasons, but let’s face it, he brings nothing to the line up but they can’t take him out because he’s the only fan draw. This team was doomed as soon as they gave him that foolish extension. Years more of bad baseball coming to Detroit. Illitch should sell to someone more wealthy and willing to invest more into the team. That’s the best chance Tigers have of putting a winner on the field in the 20’s
It was just a matter of time for Barnes, he hasn’t pitched well in weeks.
The below-average merry go round continues.
As far as Carpenter… he will probably get a shot. Jacob Robson was similar last year. He tore through the minors, but the majors are a different animal. Ask Clemens.
Would Judge be a .200 hitter on this team? Is the coaching that bad?
What Avila needs to do is scrap some of these AAAA players and sign some real major leaguers. Benetendi in RF… Bogaerts at 3rd…. Nimmo in left… hope that Tork and Green make an adjustment. Keep Barnhart. Find a 2b (Trea Turner? No way). Baez is what he is… a solid defender that will hit every now and again.
Miggy only has 1 year left on his deal and he is doing decent. As long as hes still getting hits, he can have a spot on the team. First slump of 2023 and he gets Pujol-ed. Maybe meadows can hit some?
Yes, let’s have defensively challenged Bogaerts play third and have two outfielders play outside of their positions. Are we trying to build Phillies 2.0?
Carpenter has way more home runs than Robson will ever have. What are you people not getting? This is the worst offense since 1944 at 2.75 runs per game and we need power! Why is that so hard for you to understand? Are you afraid of losing Grossman? Give me a break. You guys are right up with Al pretending like you know what he will do, when no one does. The rigidity in thinking here is ridiculous. If Tork or Greene were putting up those numbers they would’ve been promoted (and were). Being truly smart is being open to what you don’t know and the willingness to try different things, not predict the future. He very well could fail, but he won’t be worse than what we currently have. End of story.
I’m just really glad the Mets didn’t sign Baez.
He’s such a high variance player that it’s easy to ignore the fact that in the aggregate, he’s just not that valuable. He’s kind of the anti-Nimmo in that respect.
Regarding Barnes, he joins a list of players whose stuff just plays down for some reason. Manny Acosta is a name that comes to mind, but there are plenty others. The velo and spin rate say they should be better than they are.
In his shoes, I’d probably go to NPB/KBO while I still had the velo. Tends to play up there, and the $/fame will be far more that they likely ever would be here.
If I had a hammer……
Riley Greene’s OPS has plummeted from prior seasons since his return. What has happened to the Tigers’ “greatest prospect since Kaline”?
If he is called up now, and it plummets even further…there goes the last tiny shred of hope for Detroit fans.
This 2022 season may be overall the worst stretch in pro sports history suffered by any team not dealing with a loss of life.
Greene’s OPS this year is .766 in 14 games. That’s much lower than last year, but a little higher than his 2019 season. And he’s probably still a bit rusty. My guess is that his numbers will climb and he’ll be called up before the end of the week. I also think he’ll adapt to the MLB quicker than Torkelson has.
While Greene has hit everywhere, and has taken his walks, I am concerned about that high K rate. It may take some adjusting, and would be surprised if he is an immediate star.
Name me one power hitter that doesn’t strike out. As long as he’s productive, who cares? That’s like saying you wouldn’t date a super model because you don’t like her hair cut. The lack of perspective here is astounding.
100 points drop on his ops during a 2 week span is not a plummet and nothing to worry about. Get some perspective and learn the game.
“Strikeout and whiff”? aren’t they the same thing?
A whiff is a swing and a miss.
If I had a bell…..