The Braves have sent right-hander Dereck Rodríguez outright to Triple-A Gwinnett, according to his transactions tracker on MLB.com. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment earlier this week. The same is true for left-hander Lucas Luetge, per Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Rodríguez, 31, signed a minor league deal with the Twins in the offseason. He was selected to the big league roster in May and made one appearance before heading to Atlanta on a waiver claim. He spent most of his time on optional assignment before being passed through waivers in July. He stuck with the organization and was added back to the roster this past weekend. He was sent in for some mop-up duty on Sunday and didn’t exactly get the floor clean, allowing eight earned runs in two innings before being designated for assignment again.
He now has an earned run average of 15.19 this year over four appearances, though that’s mostly due to that recent drubbing. He has a career 4.49 ERA in 234 1/3 innings dating back to 2018, mostly with the Giants. He has thrown 64 Triple-A innings this year with a 5.91 ERA.
Since he has a previous career outright, Rodríguez has the ability to reject this assignment and elect free agency. It’s not clear whether or not he has chosen to do so, but given that the season is almost over and he accepted an outright a few months ago, it’s possible he reports to Gwinnett for a few more outings before the winter arrives.
Luetge, 36, was acquired from the Yankees in the offseason and has bounced on and off the roster all year, with this being the third time Atlanta has passed him through waivers. In the first two instances, he was able to elect free agency since he has more than three years of service time. But since he’s shy of the five-year mark, doing so would have meant forfeiting what was left of his $1.55MM salary.
By sticking around, he kept that money and got selected back to the roster later. Around those transactions, he made 12 big league appearances with a 7.24 ERA. In 20 Triple-A outings this year, he has a 3.91 ERA. He now has the chance to elect free agency again but will likely accept as he has done earlier this season, giving the club some non-roster relief depth for the final weeks of the season.
It will be sad if this team collapses against the Phils again in the DS.
They have won 3 of the last 4 series vs. PHI inc. celebrating on their field as division winners. Everything will be ok.
Your optimism needs to bleed into Tyler Matzek’s recovering UCL. This bullpen needs him.
TA
No, it won’t
Some people will be sad, yes
Some people will be happy.
It makes sense to me, but I don’t know for certain, that more people will be happy than sad.
The vast vast vast majority won’t care
Hope Pudge doesn’t hold a Grudge on his kid.
His kid will still get a ring and Pudge is proud of his son for even making it to the majors
These to Gus aren’t very good. But yet they keep Luke Williams on the roster and don’t even play him.
The trolls always turn up to play. One called “TradeAcuna”, imagine,
and another called ‘Fili’ hack.
I’m sure the trolls mentioned are happy to see third place teams enter into the world series action. It minimizes BB. Only the best need be in the WS hunt, it reduces the talent, more money to some I guess. only the best should be involved. I’ve reduced my watching of sports in general, not what they used to be or what they should be.