The Brewers are signing outfielder Jared Oliva and right-hander Jon Duplantier to minor league contracts, tweets Adam McCalvy of MLB.com. Both players will get non-roster invitations to big league camp.
Oliva, who turns 29 tomorrow, got a brief big league look with the Pirates. The Arizona product appeared in 26 games for the Bucs between 2020-21. He hit .179/.220/.214 in that minimal sample. He spent the ’23 season in Triple-A with the Angels, struggling to a .261/.348/.423 slash in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. Oliva dropped back a level this year, as he spent the season in Double-A after signing a minor league contract with the Mariners.
The righty-swinging Oliva posted good numbers in the Texas League. He turned in a robust .294/.378/.463 slash while going 37-40 in stolen base attempts. He’s quite a bit older than the average Double-A player, but he showed enough to earn a camp invite from Milwaukee. Oliva can play all three outfield positions and could open next season with Triple-A Nashville.
Duplantier has also been out of the majors for a few years. He earned some Top 100 fanfare during his prospect days in the Diamondbacks’ system. Duplantier has yet to find any major league success, however. The 6’4″ hurler owns a 6.70 earned run average across 49 2/3 big league innings. He last suited up at the MLB level in 2021.
The Rice product split the ’24 campaign between the Mets’ and Dodgers’ systems, along with four starts in the independent American Association. He started seven of 23 appearances in the upper minors, turning in a 4.20 ERA with a strong 27.4% strikeout rate but a massive 16.1% walk percentage over 55 2/3 innings.
Oh my Lord, when will real deals start happening? Zzzzzzzz!
Perry Minasian has already handed out over 70 million “this winter”
Good for Oliva. He’s a great dude
Glad Jared got another chance cool dude met him in 2018 in Arizona Fall League
Nice for Oliva. As someone mentioned before, he’s a good guy.
Played his college ball at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Stole a lot of bases and made most of the non-Pac-12-Networks commentators pronounce his last name wrong, especially the pig farmers of the South Eastern Confederates (SEC).
Every year at this time I read about the Brewers signing some dude I never heard of, but can be sure will be intricate bullpen piece by June.
Every. Single. Year.