Left-hander Daniel Norris is returning for a second big league stint with the Tigers, the team announced to reporters Thursday. Norris, who signed a minor league deal after being cut loose by the Cubs, will start tomorrow’s game for the Tigers. He’ll make at least two starts, tweets Evan Woodbery of MLive.com. The Tigers will need to make a corresponding 40-man roster move before tomorrow’s game.
Further opportunities beyond these two scheduled outings for Norris will be dependent on the lefty’s performance and the health of the other options on the roster. Chris McCosky of the Detroit News tweets that veteran Michael Pineda is headed out on a rehab assignment and could only need two starts himself, for instance, so there’s likely some correlation there.
Norris, 29, was one of three lefties the Tigers acquired in the 2015 trade that sent David Price to the Blue Jays. (Matthew Boyd and Jairo Labourt also went to Detroit in that swap.) He spent the 2015-21 seasons with the Tigers organization, working as both a starter and reliever while batting a lengthy run of health issues — most notably a frightening bout with thyroid cancer which he thankfully overcame.
The Tigers flipped a then-struggling Norris to the Brewers for minor league righty Reese Olson last summer on July 30, and his results didn’t improve following the swap. He became a free agent after the season and inked a one-year, $1.75MM deal with the Cubs that didn’t pan out as hoped; in 30 innings with Chicago, Norris logged an unsightly 6.90 ERA with a career-best 32.1% strikeout rate but also career-worst marks in walk rate (15.7%) and home run rate (2.10 HR/9).
Since returning to the Tigers organization, Norris has made three starts in Triple-A and allowed a total of two runs on five hits and two walks with five strikeouts. He spent the season in the Cubs’ bullpen and thus wasn’t stretched out much at the time he re-upped with the Tigers, but he did toss four shutout innings with one hit, no walks and three strikeouts in his most recent outing (against the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate, coincidentally enough).
This could prove to be a short stint on the roster for Norris. However, with each of Pineda, Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize, Beau Brieske, Rony Garcia and Spencer Turnbull all on the injured list — plus Eduardo Rodriguez still working his way back from the restricted list — there’s enough uncertainty on the staff that Norris could earn himself a longer leash if he shows well in his first couple outings.
Dirty Dan lives is a van down by the river.
Bet you wish you were a baseball player.
They make way more than that….
Year 7 and we’re back to Daniel Norris starting games..
Somebody’s got to pitch and it sure won’t be Mize, Faedo or Turnbull due to surgeries, or Brieske or Skubal, for a while. Garcia, Pineda, and Wentz aren’t ready yet. It’s another lost season so anyone who can give 3-5 competent innings can join the rotation.
So the post Al Avila regime starts back where Al started…Daniel Norris. But hey someone has to pitch!
They need to stop w/ the b.s and get Fister out of retirement.
A three true outcomes pitcher.
Congratulations, Mr. Norris.
VanMan Part Deux
The corresponding move is Skubal to the 60 Day IL, guarantee
Probably Faedo. Already ruled out for the season.
Probably. But shutting down Skubal would not be a bad idea either. There’s zero point in rushing him back or forcing him to pitch if he’s not 100% pain free. Between Alexander, Hutchison, Manning, Norris, Hill, Pineda, Edwin R, Garcia, Chi-Chi and E-Rod, we hopefully won’t need him.
If Skubal is fully healthy, I’d still like to see him build up his endurance for future seasons. Already had Tommy John, so he isn’t as high risk for that again. I’ve still only heard tired arm.
As a Cub fan I say. ‘Yeesh!!’
In this edition of Good Move- Bad Move. Al is gone but Norris is back. One step forward two steps back. As a Chicago fan, I say Best of luck with dat.
At this point we just need bodies. So Norris, on what’s most likely a fill in role, isn’t a big deal.
Rest of this season should essentially be open tryouts
He’s always had stuff and can hardly be worse than Bryan Garcia. Hope for 4 innings and another bullpen performance.
Big surprise!
Norris is a good guy, I’m glad he’s getting a second chance..
What do they have to lose ?
Games? It’s like the Cubs. Guess we can count on every guy the Indians cut to parade through town.
If we only look at the current “healthy” players in the system, it really won’t make any diifference as to who is in the lineup. They have virtually NO impactful
positional players on the farms. A new GM, IMO, will have to trade some young arms to start righting the ship. I don’t see any real hope of a contender for the next 4 years, even if Chrissie opens the checkbook. Al decimated this franchise.
The minors were already in shambles. It wasn’t Avila or Dombrowski or Smith. Tom Monoham was a slum lord. The system needs to be modernized.
He struggled on the Cubs. Perhaps you want to trade for Smiley or Miley?