The Giants announced to reporters, including Maria I. Guardado of MLB.com, that they have claimed infielder Colton Welker off waivers from the Rockies. Welker was designated for assignment by the Rockies on the heels of season-ending shoulder surgery. The Giants have recalled him from the minors and placed him on the 60-day injured list.
Welker was in the minors at the time of his injury but was occupying a spot on the 40-man roster. The Rockies could have opened that roster spot by recalling Welker and placing him on the 60-day IL. However, doing so would have entitled Welker to MLB pay and service time. The Rockies evidently preferred to clear up that roster spot without paying Welker and designated him for assignment.
The Giants, on the other hand, were willing to pay Welker in exchange for adding him to their system, something that has become a pattern of theirs in recent years. They added Luis Gonzalez and Darien Nunez in similar situations, making this the third such occasion in the past year. Welker will now collect MLB pay and service time but won’t take up a spot on the Giants’ roster.
Selected in the fourth round of the 2016 draft, Welker didn’t take long to be noticed by prospect evaluators. Baseball America placed him on their list of top 30 farmhands in the Rockies’ system in 2017 and he’s been there ever since. However, he’s been slowed in recent years, as he was hit with an 80-game suspension in May of 2021 after testing positive for a banned substance. Between the pandemic wiping out the minor leagues in 2020, last year’s suspension and this year’s injury, he’s only played 62 games over the past three years.
The Giants are apparently still high on Welker, despite those setbacks. The last extended stretch of play he had was in Double-A in 2019. In 98 games there, he hit .252/.313/.408 for a wRC+ of 109. This year, he only got into ten Triple-A games but was excellent in that small sample, hitting .324/.422/.514, 135 wRC+.
Honestly don’t feel like the Giants can automatically turn players good by claiming anyone, it feels just like the Cubs bringing anyone who isn’t injured in just to have someone available.
How can the Giants procedurally do this with a full 40 man roster? Wouldn’t they have to been at 39 to claim and then put Welker on the 60 day? You can’t just claim somebody with a full roster, right?
La Stella goes to COVID IL, so that opens up the 40-man spot. Claim Welker, move him immediately to 60-Day. Now they have the extra 40-man spot open again.
Aha. I saw they activated Estrada from COVID, so Giants must have manipulated that. (1) Put LaStella on COVID. (2) Put Welker on 40 to 60. (3) Activate Estrada from COVID. Sneaky.
Welker doesn’t count against the 40 man roster. He was recalled and put directly on the 60 day IL. His transaction has nothing to do with any other transactions completed today.
Welker would have been on the 40 when acquired. There had to be an opening for him to be claimed, even if he was immediately going to the 60.
I don’t think you can place someone on the 60 day IL without them technically being on the 40-man first. Without being counted on the 40-man first, he wouldn’t be collecting that big league salary as he’d be on the minor league IL
This is another move by the Rockies cementing the firing of the General Manager and Manager. How could they run the Rockies into the ground like this?
We finally did it we goin to the show boys
World Series Bound!!
This is such good news. Colton Welker needs to be with a good team. The Rockies just are years away from having a competitive team, especially since they have no concept of talent.
Congratulations to the Giants for getting a potential all-star and great player
Umm … he’s an overweight one tool guy, a non-defender with no speed and limited power, who also happens to have a PED suspension on his resume. He’s not appreciably closer to being an all-star than I am.
Um, yeah he is. Dude was a fringe 100 guy about a year ago and among the best prospects in COL’s system.
He was a fringe top 20 guy in Colorado that had been passed by several other infielders. The best he was going to do in Denver was bench guy. Good luck to him, but don’t let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you.
Tell me you’re a tool, without telling me you’re a tool. Congrats hiflew!
Thank you. And I got your tool right here.
Yeah, but weren’t you third in the All Star message board voting this year?
So are the Giants the only team allowed to claim guys off release waivers?
Seems like the only ones that take advantage of it!
No, just the only one as troll bait, it seems.
Giants not winning games but still winning in roster manipulation…
Plenty of other teams could have claimed obviously it got all the way to the Giants and they grabbed him. Only cost money and service time. If your a fan of one of the NL teams with a worse record than the Giants – it means your ownership/management is either non creative or cheap.
Same rules apply to every team.
Or it means that their ownership saw the complete train wreck that Welker has become over the past three years too. Giants are paying for a lotto ticket here. They shouldn’t deserve that much credit for that.
“Watching the Giants right now feels a lot like gnawing a piece of gum you’ve been chewing too long. You want to get rid of that taste, but you can’t quite seem to find a spot to dispose of it.”
I hope this guy can sing or dance. Give us something entertaining to watch on this incredibly boring roster. #isitfootballseasonyet?
Hey, gabe kapler cares about leftist causes. Honestly that should enough for you.
Kapler’s been a distraction. All he does is call out his players for lack of energy. Certainly isn’t doing anything to turn around the Giants. Kapler needs to be fired.
He was NL manager of the year last year.
Honestly looks like part dumb luck and part buster posey farewell tour. He was a mess in Philly and hasn’t been much better this year
Wes Welkers son
Actually not, despite the PED commonality.
That was the joke, the multiple similarities….
“Welker was designated for assignment by the Rockies on the heels of season-ending shoulder surgery. The Giants have recalled him from the minors and placed him on the 60-day injured list.”
Another Zaidi “dumpster diving, lightning in a bottle” project that has absolutely no bearing on helping turn things around for the Giants this year (and probably never will help).
The Giants position players are made up of nothing more than platoon players. Doubtful that any could be full-time players for other MLB teams.
Giants are 41-41 and on the verge of falling below .500 and are 12.5 games behind Dodgers. They have to win next 2 games against San Diego, 3 at home against Diamondbacks and 4 against Brewers to have any chance of making playoffs.