The Opener: Mariners, Buxton, Yankees
As the 2024 regular season continues, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:
1. Mariners under new management:
After struggling badly on offense throughout the season and a 1-8 road trip that allowed the Astros to overtake them in the AL West race, the Mariners took action yesterday by firing manager Scott Servais and installing Dan Wilson as the club’s new skipper. It’s the second midseason managerial change of the month, as it was just two weeks ago that the White Sox overhauled their coaching staff while replacing Pedro Grifol with Grady Sizemore in the manager’s chair.
The question for Wilson and the Mariners now is whether or not the changes in the dugout will help inject some life into a team that has seen its playoff odds sink to just 11.1% according to Fangraphs, or if the club will continue to flounder while the Astros pull further away in the AL West race. Chicago has gone just 3-8 since their swap was made, although given the 1-22 stretch the club had prior to Grifol’s firing, even that meager .272 winning percentage is arguably an improvement. Wilson’s first task will be winning tonight’s game against the Giants, which takes place in Seattle at 7:10pm local time with Luis Castillo (3.51 ERA) on the mound opposite Hayden Birdsong (5.01 ERA).
2. Buxton nearing return?
Uber-talented but oft-injured outfielder Byron Buxton has somewhat quietly put together a strong, healthy season with the Twins this year. His 90 games played this year are the third most of his MLB career to this point, and he’s made the most of them by slashing an excellent .275/.334/.528 (140 wRC+) while posting strong numbers in center field. It’s a huge step forward from a 2023 campaign that saw Buxton offer just 85 games worth of below-average offense while being limited to a DH-only role in a bid to keep the now 30-year-old former All-Star healthy.
Of course, Buxton is currently on the injured list with inflammation in his right hip. That’s surely a worrisome diagnosis for Twins fans given Buxton’s long injury history, but MLB.com’s Injury Tracker provides plenty of reason for optimism by noting that the outfielder has done hitting, fielding, and running in recent days and could be activated from the shelf as soon as today, the first game where he’s eligible to return to action. Minnesota has relied on youngster Austin Martin in center field while Buxton has been out of commission.
3. Yankees getting healthier:
Yankees fans got exciting news yesterday when it was reported that infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. is set to be activated from the injured list today. The news ought to provide a facelift for the club’s struggling infield mix, and more reinforcements are on the way with both Jon Berti and Anthony Rizzo set to begin rehab assignments amid lengthy stays on the injured list this year. Both Berti (87 wRC+ in 17 games this year) and Rizzo (80 wRC+ in 70 games) have struggled to produce at the plate this year, but those issues are par for the course in a Yankees infield that has seen Gleyber Torres, Oswaldo Cabrera, Ben Rice, and DJ LeMahieu all post lackluster numbers with Torres’s 90 wRC+ leading the pack. With New York clinging to a 1.5-game lead in the AL East over the Orioles, the impending returns of Chisholm, Rizzo, and Berti could help the club’s beleaguered infield to show signs of life down the stretch.
Mariners Fire Scott Servais, Hire Dan Wilson As Manager
The Mariners are making a change as they try to salvage their playoff hopes. Seattle announced Thursday evening that they’ve fired manager Scott Servais and tabbed Dan Wilson as their new skipper. The M’s also dismissed hitting coach Jarret DeHart. They did not announce an immediate replacement at hitting coach, although Adam Jude of the Seattle Times reports (on X) that franchise icon Edgar Martinez will join the coaching staff in an unspecified role. The M’s have not officially announced Martinez’s hiring.
“We believe that we need a new voice in the clubhouse,” president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said in a statement. “Dan knows our team and has been a key member of our organization working with players at every level over the past 11 years. He is well respected within and outside of our clubhouse and we are confident he will do a great job in leading our group over the final six weeks of the season and moving forward.” Dipoto subsequently thanked Servais for his passion and work over a nearly nine-year run in Seattle.
Servais, 57, has been the skipper in Seattle since he was hired after the 2015 season. The club has had its share of ups and downs in that time but the move seems to be related to the club’s recent slide in the standings. The Mariners were cruising at the beginning of the season while clubs like the Astros and Rangers were slow getting moving. As recently as June 18, the M’s had a ten-game lead over the Astros in the American League West.
But things have flipped since then, with the Mariners hitting a bad skid as the Astros have course corrected. The M’s are now exactly .500 at 64-64, putting them five games back of Houston and 7.5 games back in the Wild Card race.
Whether a club’s failings can be placed on the manager is always a matter for debate, but it’s not uncommon for them to be scapegoated when things go bad. Seattle has a strong pitching staff but the hitters have a collective batting line of .216/.301/.365 this year, which translates to a wRC+ of 96. The team-wide 27.7% strikeout rate is easily the worst in the majors, with Colorado second-worst at 26.1% and every other club below 25%.
Whether that has something to do with Servais or the club’s overall roster construction, or some combination, is something for each fan to decide for themselves. Either way, it seems the decision makers have opted to shake things up with just over a month remaining on the schedule.
The club has stuck by Servais through some other ups and downs, though some of those were clearly planned. The Mariners hovered around .500 in his first three years, including an 89-73 finish in 2018, but then the front office decided to embark on a rebuild. They traded away players like Robinson Canó, Edwin Díaz, James Paxton, Jean Segura and others going into 2019. They finished below .500 that season and in the shortened 2020 season as well.
Things have been much better lately. They won 90 games in 2021, just narrowly missing the playoffs. Another 90-win season followed in 2022, which was enough for a Wild Card spot that year, the club’s first playoff berth since 2001. Last year, they slipped slightly to 88 wins, missing the playoffs by just one game.
Despite a fairly strong three-year run, the ongoing collapse this year has prompted the M’s to pivot to Wilson. It’s a curious choice, as midseason managerial firings usually see the club pivot to another key member of the staff such as the bench coach, but that’s not the case this time.
Wilson played in the big leagues from 1992 to 2005 as a catcher, most of that with the Mariners. The M’s hired him as a minor league catching coordinator in 2013. He has never been part of a big league coaching staff, nor been a manager at any level. According to the M’s press release, Wilson has spent the past seven years as a special assistant for player development.
Notably, the team’s press release lists Wilson as the 18th full-time manager in franchise history. There is no interim tag. Dipoto confirmed that the M’s view him as the permanent manager (via Daniel Kramer of MLB.com). The team did not announce the length of Wilson’s contract.
The aforementioned run scoring issues also led the team to move on from DeHart. Seattle dismissed first-year offensive coordinator Brant Brown just two months into the season. They’ll try to jumpstart the offense with another midseason change. DeHart had been on Seattle’s major league staff since 2019. He has held the title of director of hitting strategy and hitting coach for the past two-plus seasons.
Martinez, one of the greatest hitters in MLB history, was the M’s hitting coach between 2015-18. He stepped down after the ’18 campaign to take a less demanding role with the organization. Now that he’s returning to the coaching staff, he’ll presumably have a significant say in hitting instruction regardless of his specific title. Assistant hitting coach Tommy Joseph is now the top in-house staffer on that side of the ball.
Ken Rosenthal and Marc Carig of the Athletic first reported that Servais would be fired and that the Mariners would hire Wilson in his place.
Angels Sign Perry Minasian To Two-Year Extension
The Angels are opting for continuity atop the front office. The Halos announced on Thursday that they’ve signed general manager Perry Minasian to an extension that runs through the 2026 season. There’s reportedly a club option for ’27.
“Over the last four years, Perry and his baseball operations staff have begun to lay the foundation for a bright future of Angels baseball,” owner Arte Moreno said in a release. “We have been impressed by the steps Perry has taken to infuse our major league team with young and exciting talent while also revamping our player development process. We believe this extension will allow him to continue the vision of building sustainable success throughout the Angels organization and deliver a championship for our fans.”
Minasian is also quoted in the press release: “I am incredibly thankful to Arte and Carole Moreno for their continued trust and support,” he says. “I would also like to thank [Angels president] John Carpino for the tremendous working relationship we have developed over the last four years and I look forward to continuing our plans of bringing the Angels back to being a consistent championship contender.”
Minasian was named the general manager of the Angels in November of 2020, following the firing of Billy Eppler. He had previously worked as a scout for Toronto and assistant general manager for Atlanta and was able to secure a four-year pact in his new gig with the Halos. This is the final season of that deal but the club is satisfied enough with his performance to keep him around.
That might seem a little strange, as things haven’t been going especially well for the Angels. Despite having two superstars on the roster in Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in recent years, the club hasn’t had a winning season since 2015, hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014 and hasn’t won a playoff game since 2009. They are 54-73 this year, ahead of only the White Sox in the American League standings.
It’s a matter of debate as to how much blame Minasian can take for that, as it doesn’t appear as though he’s been given a lot of rope to work with in building around those guys. Looking at MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, the club hasn’t been a huge spender since he was brought aboard. The four-year, $58MM deal they gave to Raisel Iglesias has been the biggest deal of his tenure, both in terms of years and guarantee. They already had big contracts on the books for Trout, Anthony Rendon, Albert Pujols and others when he came aboard, and seemingly didn’t want to add much more to that. Moreno plainly stated that he was paring back payroll going into 2024.
The franchise has seemingly had a mandate against significant investments in starting pitching, something that seems to come from ownership since it predates Minasian’s tenure. Since a five-year, $77.5MM deal for C.J. Wilson late in 2011, things have been kept fairly modest. Joe Blanton got a two-year, $15MM deal at the end of 2012 and then it took a decade for the club to give out another multi-year deal for a starter. At the end of 2022, Tyler Anderson got a three-year, $39MM deal, still fairly modest in terms of rotation investments.
Minasian and his front office have seemingly tried to get around these limitations by drafting players they could fasttrack to the majors, which they have actually had a bit of success with. Zach Neto was the club’s first-round pick in 2022 and Nolan Schanuel in 2023. Both players were up in the majors by last year and having good results. Chase Silseth, taken in the 11th-round in 2021, was pitching in the majors by 2022. Ben Joyce, taken in the third round in 2022, was in the big leagues last year and could now be the club’s closer. Christian Moore, just taken 8th overall last month, is already thriving in Double-A.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing to criticize in Anaheim. Due to rushing all their prospects to the majors, the club’s farm system is generally considered one of the worst in the league. Baseball America recently put them dead last, FanGraphs and ESPN have them in the bottom as well, while MLB Pipeline has them 29th, ahead of only the Astros. The major league roster is obviously lacking, given their poor results lately. There’s actually an argument that they have one of the worst long-term outlooks of the 30 clubs in the league.
But there is some controllable talent on the roster alongside Trout, with guys like Neto, Schanuel, Taylor Ward, Jo Adell, Logan O’Hoppe and others all slated to stick around through 2026 or longer. They could have made some of those players available this summer and kicked off a notable rebuild but didn’t do it. It’s not known whether that was a front office decision or something that came from ownership. The light spending in recent years means that the future payroll is starting to clear up. Despite having two massive contracts on the books between Trout and Rendon, RosterResource has the club’s guarantees at $109MM next year and $89MM in 2026. By 2027, Rendon, Anderson and Robert Stephenson will all be off the books, leaving Trout as the club’s only significant investment.
Moreno has clearly placed some constraints on Minasian but is evidently pleased with the way he has worked within them, so he’ll keep him around for another couple of years to see how things progress.
Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register was first to report the Angels and Minasian had agreed to a multi-year extension. Roger Lodge of Three Point Media first reported the ’27 option year.
Cubs Release Josh Staumont
The Cubs released reliever Josh Staumont from his minor league contract, tweets Tommy Birch of the Des Moines Register. It’s not clear if the right-hander triggered an opt-out or if the Cubs simply decided they weren’t going to call him up.
In either case, Staumont returns to the market just two weeks after signing with Chicago. The 30-year-old pitched twice for Chicago’s top affiliate in Iowa. He walked five batters while recording only three outs. Staumont had run a much more impressive 16:3 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 10 2/3 frames with the Twins’ top affiliate earlier in the season. He clearly did not have any kind of command in his very small sample in Iowa.
A former second-round pick of the Royals, Staumont pitched parts of five seasons with Kansas City. He posted an above-average 26.2% strikeout rate but walked more than 13% of batters faced through 168 1/3 innings. The Royals non-tendered him last winter. Staumont signed a big league deal with Minnesota that guaranteed him $950K. He made 25 appearances for the Twins, working to a 3.70 ERA over 24 1/3 innings. His walks remained high and his strikeout rate dropped sharply to 17.6%, so Minnesota cut him loose when they brought in Trevor Richards at the trade deadline.
Staumont’s camp can again look for minor league opportunities for the next few weeks. He’d need to sign with a team by September 1 to be eligible for postseason play with his new club, though that’s a secondary consideration to pitching his way back to the majors.
Phillies’ Rodolfo Castro Suffers Season-Ending Thumb Injury
Phillies infielder Rodolfo Castro, who is on optional assignment to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, is out for the season. Matt Gelb of the Athletic reports (on X) that Castro tore a ligament in his right thumb and will miss the rest of the year.
It’s a minor hit to Philadelphia’s infield depth. Castro is on the 40-man roster but hasn’t played for the Phils this season. The 25-year-old has spent most of the year on the minor league injured list. He hasn’t hit well in 23 minor league contests and didn’t make much of an impact in 14 MLB games for the Phils last year.
A switch-hitter with some defensive flexibility, Castro played in 180 games over parts of three seasons with the Pirates. Philadelphia acquired him in a one-for-one swap for left-hander Bailey Falter at the 2023 deadline. Falter has been a decent back-end starter for the Bucs this year, working to a 4.02 ERA across 21 appearances. Even though he wouldn’t have had a path to a rotation spot in Philly, that trade worked out squarely in Pittsburgh’s favor.
The Phils could recall Castro and place him on the major league 60-day injured list if they want to open a 40-man roster spot at some point. It’s also possible they simply release him to clear a 40-man opening. This is Castro’s last minor league option year, so the Phils would need to carry him on next year’s MLB roster or place him on waivers. He’s not a lock to hold his roster spot all offseason even if Philadelphia keeps him for the remainder of the year.
Nick Ahmed Elects Free Agency
Nick Ahmed elected free agency after going unclaimed on outright waivers, per the transaction log at MLB.com. The Dodgers had designated the veteran shortstop for assignment on Monday.
Ahmed signed with the Dodgers a month ago. With Mookie Betts and Miguel Rojas out at the time, Los Angeles added Ahmed directly onto the major league roster. The defensive stalwart started 14 games at shortstop. He continued to provide defensive value but didn’t produce much offensively. While Ahmed hit a go-ahead home run to help beat the Giants (his former team) early in his Dodger tenure, he ultimately hit just .229/.245/.292 in 49 trips to the plate.
Between San Francisco and L.A., Ahmed carries a .232/.271/.300 batting line through 221 plate appearances. While he has never been a huge offensive threat, Ahmed has particularly struggled at the dish over the last two seasons. The two-time Gold Glove winner remains a strong defender, but the lack of firepower at the plate has squeezed him off a trio of rosters within the past two seasons. The Dodgers have welcomed Betts and Rojas back in recent weeks. Even with Betts returning to the outfield, they were comfortable enough with their infield depth to waive deadline pickup Amed Rosario after five games.
Ahmed is now free to look for a third team of the ’24 season. If he signs elsewhere before September 1, he’d be eligible for postseason play with another club.
Padres Option Matt Waldron
The Padres optioned starter Matt Waldron to Triple-A El Paso. San Diego recalled reliever Logan Gillaspie to step into the bullpen before tonight’s series opener with the Mets.
Waldron, MLB’s lone knuckleballer, has held a rotation spot all year. He has made 26 starts and is second on the team behind Dylan Cease with 142 2/3 innings. His 4.79 ERA belies decent peripherals. Waldron has a roughly average 21.6% strikeout percentage and has kept his walk rate to a tidy 6.6% clip. Hitters have generally had a tough time making hard contact against him. An abnormally low 67.1% left on base rate is the biggest factor in Waldron allowing nearly five earned runs per nine. ERA estimators like FIP and SIERA suggest his peripherals should point to an ERA in the low-4.00s.
Things have gone downhill over Waldron’s last few starts. He carried a 3.71 ERA into the All-Star Break. He has given up exactly eight earned runs per nine innings in 36 frames during the second half. Waldron has surrendered five-plus runs in four of his last five starts. The Twins blitzed him for 12 hits and 10 runs in 4 1/3 innings last night.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets that the assignment is about giving Waldron some rest before the stretch run. While it’s possible that fatigue has played a role in the righty’s recent struggles, Waldron isn’t too far beyond last year’s innings total. He combined for 133 2/3 frames between the majors and Triple-A a season ago. There seems to be something amiss with his recent skid, so the Padres will give him at least a couple weeks away from big league hitters. A pitcher cannot be recalled from an optional assignment for at least 15 days unless he’s replacing another pitcher who is going on the injured list.
San Diego doesn’t have an off day until September 3. They’ve got a handful of rest days built into their September schedule but will need a full rotation for the next two weeks. The Friars have Cease, Michael King, Joe Musgrove and Martín Pérez in their rotation for now. There’s still not much clarity on whether Yu Darvish will be able to return from the family matter to which he’s attending. Randy Vásquez is the top depth arm on the 40-man roster. He has a 4.63 ERA over 17 major league starts this year and has been hit extremely hard (8.78 ERA) in the Pacific Coast League.
The demotion shouldn’t have much impact on Waldron from a service time perspective. He entered the year with 54 days of MLB service and has already topped the necessary 118 days on the active roster to surpass the one-year service mark in 2024.
What Might It Cost To Extend Garrett Crochet?
Despite months of trade speculation, Garrett Crochet was not moved at the deadline. His contract status seemed to be a big reason. A few days before the deadline, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that Crochet sought an extension if he was going to pitch in the postseason. Whether he'd simply have refused to play in October if he landed with a contender isn't clear. Crochet didn't have the leverage to force a team to sign him long term.
At the same time, Crochet's stance complicated the White Sox's efforts to find a package they felt worthwhile. GM Chris Getz seemed taken aback by the public revelation of Crochet's extension desire (link via Scott Merkin of MLB.com). While Getz maintained that the relationship between the player and team was still strong, he said the manner in which the situation was addressed was "a bit hurtful ... considering I felt like we could have handled it a little bit differently."
The Sox continued to discuss Crochet right up to the July 30 deadline. No deal came together. Only the White Sox know whether that's because of the extension hold-up. In any case, he'll finish out the year in Chicago. Crochet could be the most popular trade candidate of the upcoming offseason. The Sox are very unlikely to be competitive in the next two seasons. Chicago should try to move Crochet this winter.
Maybe they won't need to make progress on an extension to do so. Crochet's desire for a long-term deal was tied to his workload reaching a level which he'd never approached in college or the minor leagues. His camp was worried about his arm health if he pitched into October. That's not happening with the White Sox, who can pull back on his workload in an effort to keep him on the field. They're already doing so. Crochet hasn't thrown more than four innings in a game since the start of July. That's generally not a performance question but a clear goal to avoid stressing his arm. Chicago pulled him yesterday after 57 pitches and four innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts.
Even if an extension isn't an absolute necessity to facilitate a trade, Crochet is presumably still amenable to discussing a long-term contract. That's unlikely to come with the White Sox, who are at the nadir of a rebuild and have never guaranteed a player more than $75MM (the ill-fated Andrew Benintendi deal). If a contender wanted to extend Crochet -- either as a condition of a trade or simply after acquiring him -- what kind of price could it take?
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NPB Players Pushing For Earlier Free Agency
Just like their counterparts in Major League Baseball, the players in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball have various ongoing labor battles in the context of their league. Evan Drellich of The Athletic took an extensive look at some of the current discussion topics in a column published this morning.
Some of the battles involves things like endorsement rights but fans of MLB will likely be most interested to know that the players are fighting for earlier free agency, which could allow some of them to make the move to North America sooner.
As laid out by Drellich, NPB players have two different forms of free agency. A player can achieve domestic free agency after seven or eight years in the league, depending on whether the player was drafted out of high school or college. Unlocking that right gives a player the ability to sign with another NPB club. But getting full international free agency, allowing a player to sign with an MLB club, takes nine years.
The Japan Professional Baseball Players Association is trying to lower both of those numbers to six years, the same amount of service time that MLB players need for free agency. One source tells Drellich that the league was willing to offer a reduction in domestic free agency but not international free agency, though the full details of that offer aren’t publicly known.
NPB players are often made available to MLB clubs before those nine years are up via the posting system. Under that system, the player’s NPB club posts them for MLB clubs, opening a 45-day negotiating window. If a player signs with an MLB club in that time, the NPB club gets a posting fee, which is relative to the size of the contract the player got from the MLB club. Bigger deals naturally lead to bigger posting fees. In an extreme example, when the Dodgers signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325MM deal this offseason, they also had to pay almost $51MM to the Orix Buffaloes, the NPB team that posted him.
Although Yamamoto was able to come over to the majors at the relatively young age of 25, other pitchers often have to wait longer. Shota Imanaga, for example, was just posted in the most recent offseason and signed with the Cubs. He had pitched in parts of eight NPB seasons through 2023 but still didn’t have full international free agency. He is now in his debut MLB season at the age of 30.
There’s also no guarantee that a player will be made available via the posting system. Kodai Senga had to reach full international free agency before coming to the majors because his NPB club, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, has a team policy against posting their players. Senga signed with the Mets going into 2023, which was his age-30 season.
If the rules were to change, future players in a similar position to Imanaga or Senga could make the move to North America a few years earlier. That would increase their earning power in a couple of ways. Teams clearly value youth, as shown in the massive guarantee that Yamamoto got. Senga and Imanaga got $75MM and $53MM guarantees, respectively. Part of that may be due to the Dodgers valuing Yamamoto as more talented, but it’s also fair to assume that he wouldn’t have got as much money if he were heading into his age-30 season like Senga and Imanaga.
Beyond the age factor, if a player is able to reach full free agency at a young age, the lack of a posting fee could mean more money going directly to the player. The Cubs were willing to give Imanaga a $53MM guarantee but also paid $9.825MM to the Yokohama BayStars, his NPB club. Theoretically, that willingness to spend north of $60MM on Imanaga could have seen that amount of money go straight to him if he were a free agent, as opposed to the BayStars getting a big cut.
There’s nothing in Drellich’s article to suggest that changes are coming to the system that would affect younger players such as Roki Sasaki. Yamamoto was made available to MLB clubs just after turning 25, a notable age since that is when international players are no longer considered “amateurs” under MLB rules. Before turning 25, players are subject to the international bonus pool system, where each team gets roughly $4-8MM to spend on player bonuses. Broadly speaking, the small-market teams get bigger pools and the large-market clubs get smaller ones.
If a player wants to make the move before turning 25, they are therefore limited to a relatively modest bonus. For example, Shohei Ohtani left the NPB and signed with the Angels prior to his age-23 season. He received only a $2.3MM signing bonus at that time, obviously far less than what Yamamoto got by waiting until his 25th birthday.
Sasaki, who doesn’t turn 23 until November, may be in a similar boat to Ohtani. He turns 23 in November and there have been rumors that he may be posted this offseason. If that comes to pass, he would only be able to secure a small signing bonus of a few million bucks and there’s nothing to suggest that is changing.
Whether Sasaki is posted this winter or not is therefore another matter, but it could still be a notable change if it the JPBPA is successful in changing the free agency rules. In future, players as talented as Imanaga or Senga could have the chance to come over to Major League Baseball a few years earlier than under the current system, which could be a nice development both for those players and fans who want to see the best players competing against each other in North America.
It’s perhaps due to the constraints of the current system that another young Japanese player, Rintaro Sasaki, chose to play college ball in the United States rather than enter the NPB draft. While NPB clubs may not be excited about losing their control over players, they may also recognize that loosening the reins could reduce the chances of other players skipping the NPB entirely.
Whether the JPBPA will be successful remains to be seen. The system is not exactly analogous to the MLB-MLBPA dynamic. As laid out by Drellich, the collective bargaining agreement doesn’t have a set time limit like in North America, rather a rolling and ongoing negotiation. It’s also a complicated legal matter involving Japanese antitrust laws, with JPBPA set to file a challenge to the NPB’s reserve system at some point this year. Fans interested in getting into all the nitty-gritty details of the negotiations are encouraged to read the piece in full.
Reds Designate Brooks Kriske For Assignment
The Reds announced that they have signed first baseman Dominic Smith, a move that was previously reported. He takes the active roster spot of outfielder Jake Fraley, who has been placed on the 10-day injured list with a right knee sprain, retroactive to August 21. To open a 40-man spot for Smith, the Reds have designated right-hander Brooks Kriske for assignment.
Kriske, 30, signed a minor league deal with the Reds in the offseason. He was selected to the roster June 17 but wasn’t put into that day’s game and was optioned after it ended. That means he’s been stuck in Triple-A all year, where his numbers have been solid. He has tossed 49 1/3 innings, allowing 3.10 earned runs per nine. His 14.8% walk rate is quite high but he has also punched out 36.7% of batters faced.
That’s not totally out of character for him. He has 21 2/3 major league innings with an 11.22 ERA in that small sample, striking out 24.3% of batters faced while walking 16.5%. In 108 minor league innings dating back to the start of 2021, he has a 3.92 ERA, 13.2% walk rate and 36.8% strikeout rate.
With the trade deadline now in the rear-view mirror, the Reds will have to place him on waivers in the coming days. The lack of control is obviously a concern but the big strikeout numbers are enticing. If any club puts in a claim, Kriske has less than a year of service time. He is in his final option year and will be out of options as of next season.