A little over a month after signing a minor league deal with the Blue Jays, right-hander Vinny Nittoli now plans to opt out of that deal, FanSided’s Robert Murray tweets. Nittoli will hit the free agent market again, and could join his fifth different organization in just over a year’s time.
A 25th-round pick for the Mariners in 2014, Nittoli has already bounced around several times in his career — this is his second stint with the Blue Jays, and he also has two separate stints with Seattle. It was with the Mariners in 2021 that Nittoli made his MLB debut, tossing a single inning of work on June 23, 2021. After the M’s released him last August, Nittoli has since signed minor league deals with the Twins, Yankees, and Blue Jays, with Nittoli also opting out of his pact with New York.
Amidst all this movement, the 31-year-old has had a solid season at the Triple-A level, with a 3.30 ERA over 46 1/3 combined innings for the Yankees’ and Jays’ affiliates. Nittoli also has a 32.06% strikeout rate and 7.61% walk rate, but despite these numbers, it appears as though he wasn’t on the radar of either AL East team for an in-season promotion.
The Yankees should reconsider bringing him back.
I never heard of him, but if he can fog a mirror he should be considered.
MLB should not pay players for non-baseball medical issues..
MLB should provide health care for every major minor & leaguer, for life. Baseball teams benefit from using these guys and then cutting them when they can’t hit 90 MPH on the gun anymore. These teams are too profitable to be allowed to be as cheap as they are. Especially the way they treat their minor leaguers.
ALL jobs use their workers. If you’re extremely unproductive, you probably won’t keep it long. If you can no longer perform due to health, most employers will “encourage” you to apply for disability and get lost.
I’m not siding with MLB owners, I just don’t see how they’re different from other industries.
Government is full of unproductive workers that we pay for. Private sector, including sports, are not that stupid.
Because mlb is exempt from paying players on MiLB minimum wage. How can you not see that?
LGM,
The private sector doesn’t have unproductive workers? Right…
Nobasrball20,
You’re saying an employer’s health care plan shouldn’t cover non-work-related medical issues? How many health care plans outside baseball function like that? Why should baseball be an exception to the typical setup?
“The business is giving exhibitions of base ball, which are purely state affairs. It is true that in order to attain for these exhibitions the great popularity that they have achieved, competitions must be arranged between clubs from different cities and States. But the fact that in order to give the exhibitions the Leagues must induce free persons to cross state lines and must arrange and pay for their doing so is not enough to change the character of the business. According to the distinction insisted upon in Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 655, 15 Sup. Ct. 207, 39 L. Ed. 297, the transport is a mere incident, not the essential thing. That to which it is incident, the exhibition, although made for money would not be called trade of commerce in the commonly accepted use of those words. As it is put by defendant, personal effort, not related to production, is not a subject of commerce. That which in its consummation is not commerce does not become commerce among the States because the transportation that we have mentioned takes place. To repeat the illustrations given by the Court below, a firm of lawyers sending out a member to argue a case, or the Chautauqua lecture bureau sending out lecturers, does not engage in such commerce because the lawyer or lecturer goes to another State.”
Once the Supreme Court codified that nonsense in 1922, declaring that MLB’s money-making ballgames didn’t constitute interstate commerce, I guess the owners figured they could get away with anything — and for the most part, they were right.
That absurd bit of law needs to be demolished. A $10B+ international industry certainly constitutes commerce.
Makes a nice chocolate spread