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Archives for May 2023

Guardians Designate Meibrys Viloria, Select David Fry

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The Guardians announced that they have selected the contract of catcher/infielder David Fry, while catcher Meibrys Viloria was designated for assignment in a corresponding move.

Cleveland somewhat surprisingly opened the season with three catchers, with Mike Zunino backed up by Cam Gallagher and Viloria. The 26-year-old Viloria has been the least used of the trio, with no starts and just 21 2/3 total innings spend behind the plate so far this year, compared to 158 for Zunino and 74 for Gallagher. He’s also only received four plate appearances on the season, going 0-3 with a walk.

That wasn’t a terribly effective use of a roster spot and Viloria will now be cut loose. None of those three backstops had the ability to be optioned to the minors, so he had to be designated for assignment. Prior to this season, he had been with the Royals and Rangers and is now at 103 career major league games, hitting .198/.270/.279 in that time. That’s obviously not a great batting line, but Viloria does rank well in Statcast’s new caught stealing above average metric (helpful explainer via Mike Petriello of MLB.com). The Guards will now have a week to trade Viloria or pass him through waivers, though in the event he clears waivers, he would have the right to reject an outright assignment by virtue of having a previous career outright.

In his place, the Guardians are sticking with the three-catcher system in a sense, though Fry is not merely a backstop. The 27-year-old was initially drafted by the Brewers but came to the Guardians in March of 2022 as the player to be named later in the J.C. Mejia trade. Throughout his minor league career, he’s played all around in the infield and outfield, in addition to his time spent behind the plate. This year, he’s actually primarily played third base along with a bit of time at second and first, not having taken up the catcher spot since last year. The club still announced him as a catcher/infielder, which suggests his time as a backstop isn’t totally over, but his defensive versatility should give him more opportunities than Viloria to get into games and help the club.

This is his first time joining a big league club and he’ll be making his major league debut as soon as he gets into a game. With Triple-A Columbus last year, he hit 17 home runs in 119 games and slashed .256/.329/.450 for a wRC+ of 105. Through 25 games this year, he’s hitting .289/.381/.478 and has a 121 wRC+. He figures to slot into the club’s bench as a backup infielder alongside Gabriel Arias, with José Ramírez, Amed Rosario and Andrés Giménez hold three starting spots with Josh Bell and Josh Naylor sharing first base and designated hitter.

Steven Brault Moving To Outfield With Atlantic League Club

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Former Pirates and Cubs left-hander Steven Brault signed with the Atlantic League’s new Frederick club last week, and it seems he’ll do so as the hopeful first step down a new career path. Brault has already played left field for his new club, and MLBTR has learned that the 31-year-old plans to become a position player on a full-time basis. He’ll hope to use this opportunity in the Atlantic League to land a minor league deal with an affiliated club and eventually return to the Majors as an outfielder.

Brault may never have garnered as much attention as some of the other best-hitting pitchers in the National League, but he certainly qualifies among them. Back in college, Brault was a .397/.416/.554 hitter in 199 plate appearances. He batted .419/.419/.484 in 36 minor league plate appearances and is a career .258/.275/.337 hitter with a homer — a second-deck, 441-foot bomb — four doubles and just a 14.9% strikeout rate in 101 big league trips to the plate. He’s gone 1-for-8 to begin his season with Frederick. Baseball America’s scouting reports on Brault from his early days in the Orioles system note that he was a plus athlete and the first player in Rocky Mountain Conference history to earn all-conference first team honors as both a position player and a pitcher.

Brault’s move away from the mound comes on the heels of several injury-plagued seasons. Shoulder and lat strains regularly hampered Brault from 2019-22, limiting him to a combined 192 2/3 frames in the Majors over that four-year period. Most of those innings came in 2019, when he tossed a career-high 113 2/3 frames but also missed more than a month with a shoulder strain.

In his career on the mound, Brault at times looked like a viable starter and multi-inning reliever, but injuries derailed some otherwise promising stretches on more than one occasion. In all, he’s tallied 352 1/3 innings at the big league level with a 4.73 ERA, 18.8% strikeout rate, 11.3% walk rate, 0.97 HR/9 and 45.5% ground-ball rate.

Only time will tell whether Brault can successfully make the move to the other side of the ball at age 31, but it makes for an interesting subplot to keep an eye on throughout the season. His raw batting numbers in the Majors certainly don’t leap out relative to other full-time hitters, but it’s clear that Brault has more of a knack for handling the bat than the majority of now-former mound counterparts.

Guardians Trade Konnor Pilkington To Diamondbacks

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The Guardians have traded lefty Konnor Pilkington to the D-backs in exchange for cash, per announcements from both teams. Arizona had an open spot on the 40-man roster, so a corresponding 40-man move was not needed. Pilkington has been optioned to Triple-A Reno.

Pilkington, 25, has had a rough start to his season in Triple-A, where he’s been clobbered for 13 runs on 19 hits and 11 walks with 14 strikeouts in 14 innings of work. His 2022 season in Triple-A featured similar struggles, evidenced by a 5.88 ERA in 56 2/3 frames, but despite his unsightly showing in Columbus, Pilkington had a solid MLB debut last year.

In 58 innings for the Guardians, he turned in a 3.88 ERA through 11 starts and four relief appearances. He’s added another two scoreless innings here in 2023. Pilkington’s career 19.5% strikeout rate is about three percentage points below the league average, and his 12.4% walk rate is about four percentage points higher than average. He’s more than held lefties in check in his big league career, yielding just a .238/.333/.286 batting line. Righties have been better but haven’t completely torched him, turning in a .234/.335/.372 output.

Pilkington has a pair of minor league option years remaining — this year included — and has had some success in the big leagues in a rotation role already. He’ll give the D-backs some optionable depth both this year and next, which of extra importance with Zach Davies on the injured list, Madison Bumgarner already having been released (hence the open 40-man spot) and young arms like Ryne Nelson, Drey Jameson and Tommy Henry all struggling to various extents to begin the season.

Tigers Sign Sam Clay To Minor League Deal

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The Tigers have signed left-hander Sam Clay to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He had signed a minors deal with the Diamondbacks in the offseason but was released, per the tracker.

Clay, 30 in June, has a bit of major league experience on his ledger to this point in his career. A Twins draftee, he never got the call to the big leagues with them, reaching free agency after 2020. The Nationals then signed him to a major league deal and put him into 58 games in 2021. He didn’t rack up a ton of strikeouts, just 15.9% of batters faced, but he got ground balls at an excellent 60.1% rate. The lefty posted a 5.60 ERA that year but might have deserved better, given his .342 batting average on balls in play and 65.4% strand rate, which were both on the unfortunate side of average. His 4.61 FIP and 4.42 SIERA were each about a full run better than his ERA.

Clay spent most of 2022 in the minors and eventually went to the Phillies and Mets in July with a couple of waiver claims in a span of a week. The Mets would later outright him off the roster in August. Amid all of that bouncing around, he tossed just 5 1/3 innings in the majors with a 8.44 ERA. But in 43 Triple-A innings, he had a much more palatable 3.56 ERA, getting grounders on almost two thirds of balls in play and striking out 24.1% of opponents.

Clay returned to the open market this winter and signed a minor league deal with the Diamondbacks. He wasn’t terribly effective in four spring outings and was released but will now join the Tigers. Per the transactions tracker, he’s been assigned to the FCL Tigers and will presumably get back into game shape after a layoff of about a month, at which point he’ll likely head to Triple-A Toledo. The Tigers have three lefties in the big league bullpen in Tyler Holton, Tyler Alexander and Chasen Shreve but Alexander currently has a 5.28 ERA on the year and Shreve a 7.84. Clay will give them a non-roster option to potentially turn to in the not-too-distant future.

Red Sox Notes: Whitlock, Rotation, Casas

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Despite a series of injuries to Garrett Whitlock and a history of success in the bullpen, the Red Sox are planning to keep the 26-year-old righty in the rotation once he returns from the injured list, writes Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe. Manager Alex Cora plainly stated multiple times this weekend that the organization views Whitlock as a starter, and he pushed back on the notion that pitching on consecutive days, being ready to throw nearly everyday, warming up and sitting down without getting into a game (i.e. all the rigors that come with being a relief pitcher) would help Whitlock remain healthier.

Whitlock has a career 4.75 ERA in 55 innings as a starter compared to a 2.24 mark in 112 2/3 frames as a reliever, but he’s not yet had a lengthy audition in the rotation. Part of that is due to health issues — he had Tommy John surgery in 2020, missed time this year recovering from hip surgery, and is now with ulnar neuritis in his right arm — but the Sox remain committed to giving him an opportunity to work as a member of the starting staff.

Turning a lineup over has proven difficult for Whitlock to this point in his young career. Opponents have batted .275/.313/.363 against him the first time around as a starter, but that jumps to .272/.313/.533 on the second trip and .300/.364/.700 on the third time through (albeit, in a sample of just 22 plate appearances).

The Boston rotation currently consists of Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Nick Pivetta, Tanner Houck and Brayan Bello. Houck, who’s also hoping to establish himself as a viable long-term rotation piece for the Sox, is the only member of that group with an ERA south of 5.00. Sale, Kluber and Bello are all north of six earned runs per nine frames in their limited 2023 work thus far. Given those struggles and the fact that Kluber (signed through ’23) and Sale (signed through ’24) are relatively short-term pieces, it makes sense to see whether Whitlock, who is signed through 2026 with a pair of club options thereafter, can eventually find his footing in a rotation setting.

One potential arm on the mend is lefty James Paxton, who could impact the starting staff sooner than later. The veteran southpaw hasn’t appeared in a Major League game since April 2021 thanks to Tommy John surgery, a significant lat strain and a more minor hamstring strain, but he’s made five rehab appearances and was particularly sharp his last time out, with 5 1/3 shutout frames and an 8-to-1 K/BB ratio. It’s a stark contrast from an April 19 rehab appearance against the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate, where Paxton was tattooed for seven runs while only recording two outs.

MLB.com notes that Paxton will be reevaluated today to determine whether another rehab start is necessary. He’s coming up on the end of his 30-day minor league rehab window next week but would have time to make one more Triple-A outing if the organization deems it best for him.

In the lineup, the Sox have seen struggles from another hopeful long-term piece: first baseman Triston Casas, who’s hitting just .133/.283/.293 through his first 92 trips to the plate. The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey writes that the team expects to stick with Casas at the MLB level for now, rather than sending him to Triple-A Worcester for any kind of reset. McCaffrey notes that manager Alex Cora cited Casas’ pitch recognition as a plus, despite the rocky average. Casas’ issues haven’t been chasing pitches off the plate so much as fouling off the in-zone pitches he needs to be punishing, Cora observed.

Casas currently has a 30.5% chase rate on pitches off the plate, which clocks in just shy of the 31.5% MLB average. He’s been more passive in the zone, however, with his 62.8% swing rate on pitches over the plate checking in five percentage points south of average. He’s averaging a hearty 90.7 mph off the bat when does put the ball in play and has three homers on the year, but Casas has also fanned in more than 29% of his plate appearances.

The Sox aren’t teeming with alternatives, however, particularly with Bobby Dalbec sporting a near-40% strikeout rate in Triple-A since his demotion. Veteran Justin Turner has started six games at first base for the Sox this season, so he’d presumably be in line for more work there if the team eventually decides that a minor league breather would be best for Casas.

The Opener: Harper, Judge, Rojas

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As the calendar flips to May, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:

1. Is Harper back?

Phillies superstar Bryce Harper is reportedly set to visit Dr. Neal ElAttrache today for evaluation with the possibility of Harper returning from Tommy John surgery, which he underwent back in November, on the table as soon as tomorrow. The former NL Rookie of the Year and two-time MVP provided the spark for Philadelphia’s improbable run to the NL pennant last year by launching 22 hits (including six homers) in 17 postseason games. The Phillies could certainly use the boost that Harper would provide, as the club has started the season just 15-14, good for fourth place in the NL East.

2. Will Judge avoid the IL?

After an MRI revealed reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge has a mild strain in his hip, the Yankees decided to be cautious with their captain, who has not played the last three games in order to rest the injury. The club has indicated that the final decision on a potential trip to the injured list is expected to come later today. If Judge is placed on the IL today, the Yankees will be able to backdate the move the maximum of three days, meaning Judge could miss as little as one more week. Still, even that much missed time would be a serious blow to the Yankees team that ranks just 23rd in the Majors in runs scored. New York is tied for last place in the AL East with a 15-14 record.

3. Miguel Rojas to return:

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts indicated yesterday that shortstop Miguel Rojas is set to be activated from the 10-day IL today, so long as he feels good after his last rehab game. The Dodgers swung a deal with the Marlins for Rojas’s services this past offseason with the intention of using Rojas as a glove-first utility player, though Rojas’s initial role became far larger than that thanks to Gavin Lux’s torn ACL during spring training. As the club’s regular shortstop, Rojas scuffled badly to a .125/.200/.156 slash line in 35 plate appearances before going on the injured list. Upon his return, he’ll split time at short with Chris Taylor and Mookie Betts, who has spent more time in the infield in recent days and has passed the eye test so far defensively.

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