The Orioles have agreed to a minor league pact with right-handed reliever Matt Bowman, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. The ZS Sports client recently opted out of a minor league deal with the Twins. Bowman’s deal in Baltimore pays him a prorated $1MM base salary and contains an upward mobility clause next week (Aug. 22) and a straight opt-out clause on Aug. 28.
Baltimore will be Bowman’s fourth organization of the season. He’s pitched in both the majors and minors for each of the Twins, D-backs and Mariners as well in 2024. His big league work includes a 5.40 ERA in a small sample of 15 innings, but he’s posted an excellent 2.05 ERA with a 28.9% strikeout rate and 6.6% walk rate in 30 2/3 innings at the Triple-A level. Originally a 13th-round pick out of Princeton by the 2012 Mets, Bowman has pitched 200 1/3 MLB frames across parts of six seasons. He owns a career 4.22 ERA, 18.8% strikeout rate, 8.3% walk rate and 55.6% grounder rate in the majors.
Bowman’s Orioles deal continues a dizzying string of transactions involving the journeyman righty this season. He originally signed a minor league deal with the Twins but was designated for assignment not long after being selected to the MLB roster and traded to the D-backs for cash. Upon being designated for assignment in Arizona, he cleared waivers and elected free agency, going on to ink a minor league deal with the Mariners. He was back in the majors shortly thereafter but designated for assignment a third time. Bowman elected free agency, re-signed with Seattle, triggered an opt-out a few weeks later, then re-signed with Minnesota on a new minor league deal — only to opt out of that minor league contract earlier this week.
The clauses in Bowman’s contract could lead to further movement in the two weeks ahead. Next week’s upward mobility clause would require the Orioles to gauge whether any of the other 29 clubs around the league is willing to put Bowman on the 40-man roster. If so, the O’s would need to either add him to their own 40-man roster or facilitate a move sending Bowman to the organization that’s willing to do so. His Aug. 28 out date would again give the O’s 48 hours to add Bowman to the roster and, if they choose not to, give Bowman a brief window to sign with a new team before Aug. 31 — the deadline for players to be eligible for their organization’s postseason roster.
This guys head must be spinning from his cut/release/DFA’s this year. Next CBA needs to do something to protect or compensate a player when this happens multiple times in 1 season.
hoof hearted;
LOL
You must be a politician. Every time there’s a perceived inconvenience it’s a problem – which in turn demands a
new law be passed.
Or we could do this which is easier…….
Once a player is DFA’d. the team signing him cannot DFA
him until after the season (including playoffs) is over.
That way the evil teams will not be able to keep DFA’ing
the same guy. Once a year, and that’s it! Of course, that
would mean a DFA’d player would probably not be signed
by another team till the offseason, but hey……at least the
guy can go home unemployed, relax, and his head won’t
be spinning.
How would you like it if you showed up for work and they say we don’t need you today. But you can head over to Scanton. Then later in the week, they tell you t1o head over to Harrisburg. Or go down to Norfolk to see what they need that you can offer.
The point….in his job, he’s getting jerked around. Alot of mental stress
He expects that to happen. Baseball players are traveling all the time anyhow. They don’t work in one office. Games are all over the place. It’s like musicians and touring. Some people can’t handle that kind of work or lifestyle, but for athletes, it’s what is expected.
He’s a MD native – welcome home and hope you get another shot in the show!
He did throw 2 scoreless at OPACY earlier this season. Hmm. Maybe he likes himself some home cookin. Worth a shot.