The White Sox announced that they have signed right-hander Jonathan Heasley to a minor league deal with an invite to major league spring training. The righty is represented by Icon Sports Management.
Heasley, 28 this month, has some limited big league experience stretched over multiple seasons. He has appeared in each of the past four major league campaigns, throwing a combined 139 innings, allowing 5.89 earned runs per nine. His 14.4% strikeout rate is well south of league average, though his 8.9% walk rate is near par.
Most of that came with the Royals from 2021 to 2023. Last winter, he was acquired by the Orioles and started the 2024 season with that club. The O’s mostly kept him on optional assignment, only giving him four big league appearances on the year. He was designated for assignment and then released in July.
That’s not a terribly impressive body of work, but it’s a fairly small sample and the White Sox are likely focused more on his minor league numbers. In 2021, he tossed 105 1/3 innings over 22 Double-A appearances, 21 of those being starts. He had a 3.33 ERA, 27.7% strikeout rate and 7.9% walk rate. Over the past three years, he has thrown 164 2/3 innings at the Triple-A level, with his ERA at 5.47 in that time. His 22.4% strikeout rate and 8.8% walk rate in that stretch were still respectable, but he allowed 30 home runs, pushing more runs across the plate.
Heasley has worked both as a starter and a reliever in his career, so he should be able to provide the Sox with depth in both areas. Their bullpen had a collective ERA of 4.73 last year, which was 28th in the league. The rotation was a bit better, with a 4.62 ERA that ranked 25th, though they traded Erick Fedde at last year’s deadline and Garrett Crochet last month.
The Sox do have a number of intriguing young arms, as one would expect from a rebuilding team, but adding in other arms is a sensible offseason goal. They have signed guys like Martín Pérez and Bryse Wilson, as well as having acquired Cam Booser and Wikelman Gonzalez via trade and Penn Murfee via waivers. Heasley now comes aboard as non-roster depth. If he eventually gets a roster spot, he is out of options but has barely a year of service time.
Padres made a minor league signing of a former MLB reliever who has spent the last 2 seasons in the NPB.
J.B. Wendelken signed a minor league deal with the Padres with an invite to spring training. He had a 4.00 ERA over parts of 6 seasons in the majors before going to Japan and pitching to a 1.57 ERA over 95 appearances in 2 seasons.
cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/padres-j-b-wen…
baseball-reference.com/players/w/wendejb01.shtml
baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=wen…
Preller might have a found a solid bullpen arm with that signing.
Preller has deep scouting ties in Japan. Martinez, Suarez, Matsui, and now Wendelken.
J.B. went to Japan because they offered him $3.5 million when he was making $800k in the majors and was still a year away from arbitration. It looks like it helped judging from his ERA there.
The Padres are going to have some tough decisions to make in terms of cutting down to only 8 pitchers for the pen.
White Sox have cornered the market on the almost major league quality players! This is so exciting! They will probably lose less than 110 games this year! Yes!
roob: You don’t suppose Getz thought he was signing Helesly?
Or Adam Haseley?
I knew I was gonna get that wrong.
Well, they’re in a full rebuild under a lousy owner who reduced their payroll. Who do you guys expect them to sign and overpay for?
This guy was awful in the rotation with the Royals in 2022. I do somewhere back remember him having a couple good outings from the bullpen even if his numbers don’t reflect it.
bwmiller: On the mess that Getz is building, yeah, he’s a good fit.
The White Sox collect useless players.
They are the best at it.
He will start the second game of the season for the Chisox after Perez starts on opening day.
This guy stunk. Impressive he collected -.6 war in 5.1 innings.
Even if one of these signings works out(probable), it will become the Getz signature move going forward. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt. He found player x this way, and may do it again. There will be no memory of the 50 players who didn’t stick when thrown against this wall.
When did he find player x? Who exactly is that? He gave away all his X’s with the exception of Robert, and that clock is ticking. We can see what Getz has done so no benefit of the doubt given.
Cleaning up the balance sheet preparing for the dirt nap & sale. White Sox is where players & baseball ops ppl that have no buisness being on/in a ML roster/organization somehow find work.
The home of misfit ex-Royal farm hands.