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Archives for March 2025

Brewers Designate Brewer Hicklen For Assignment

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The Brewers have designated outfielder Brewer Hicklen for assignment, per Adam McCalvy of MLB.com. That’s the corresponding move to add first baseman Jake Bauers, a move that was previously reported.

Hicklen, 29, has a brief major league résumé. He got five plate appearances with Milwaukee last year and four with the Royals in 2022. He struck out in eight of those and is still looking for his first major league hit. He will now start the 2025 season in DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process can take 48 hours, so they could take five days to assess trade interest.

With that brief and awful major league track record, any interest would be based on his minor league work. Over the past four years, he has a .244/.352/.469 battling line on the farm. That production translates to a 114 wRC+. He struck out in 30.7% of his plate appearances but drew walks at an 11.7% pace. He also stole 14o bases in that stretch.

He has two minor league options remaining and only a handful of service days, so he could perhaps intrigue a club looking for an affordable and controllable outfield depth piece with some intriguing tools.

Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images

Astros Designate Cooper Hummel For Assignment

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The Astros have designated catcher/infielder/outfielder Cooper Hummel for assignment and placed righty J.P. France on the 60-day injured list as he recovers from last summer’s shoulder surgery. That pair of moves opens two additional spots on a 40-man roster that already had two vacancies. The four openings will go to righty Rafael Montero, lefty Steven Okert, second baseman Brendan Rodgers and top prospect Cam Smith, all of whom have been selected to the 40-man roster and are on the Opening Day club.

Houston also placed outfielders Pedro Leon and Taylor Trammell on the 10-day injured list due to a knee strain and calf strain, respectively. Right-handers Shawn Dubin, Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier, Lance McCullers Jr., Kaleb Ort and Forrest Whitley have all been placed on the 15-day IL.

The Astros had telegraphed all these moves. They’d already announced that Montero, Okert, Smith and Rodgers were making the team. Houston had previously informed Hummel that he would not break camp. Since he’s out of options, that made a DFA or waiver placement inevitable. France, who’ll be out into at least July rehabbing last year’s shoulder procedure, was an obvious 60-day IL candidate to open the final roster spot.

Houston claimed Hummel off waivers from the Giants last spring. They outrighted him off the 40-man roster a couple weeks later but reselected his contract in June when they released José Abreu. He spent most of the season in Triple-A, exhausting his final option season in the process. Hummel went 0-8 with a pair of strikeouts in his big league work. He had a solid year in Triple-A, hitting .277/.419/.454 with a massive 17.9% walk rate through 442 plate appearances.

The Astros will have five days to trade Hummel or place him on waivers. He’s not viewed as a regular behind the plate, but he can catch on occasion while playing first base or the corner outfield. His patient plate approach has translated to a .285/.419/.480 career slash in Triple-A. He owns just a .159/.255/.275 line with a 31.9% strikeout rate over 82 major league games.

Trammell, Whitley, Ort and Dubin are all out of options themselves. Their Spring Training injuries delay the Astros’ need to make a decision on any of them, as they’ll begin the year on the major league IL. Ort has the best chance of holding a roster spot once he returns after pitching to a 2.55 ERA with a 28% strikeout rate last season.

Padres Designate Eguy Rosario, Tyler Wade For Assignment

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The Padres finalized their Opening Day roster. As previously reported, they selected catcher Martín Maldonado and infielders Jose Iglesias and Yuli Gurriel onto the roster. San Diego created one vacancy on Tuesday when they returned Rule 5 pick Juan Nunez to the Orioles. They cleared the final two spots by designating out-of-options infielders Eguy Rosario and Tyler Wade for assignment.

Both moves were expected. San Diego announced on Monday that outfielder Brandon Lockridge had made the club. Maldonado, Iglesias, Gurriel, Lockridge and Gavin Sheets would round out the bench and designated hitter position. That left no room for Rosario and Wade, neither of whom could be sent to the minors without going on waivers.

Rosario, 25, has taken exactly 100 major league plate appearances over the past three seasons. He’s a .245/.283/.500 hitter. He has hit five homers but struck out 34 times while drawing four walks. The righty-swinging infielder hit .200 with three homers but 16 strikeouts over 61 plate appearances this spring. He owns a .275/.362/.502 slash line in nearly 1200 career Triple-A plate appearances. There’s a decent chance he’ll land elsewhere on waivers.

Wade appeared in 90 games last season in a utility role. He hit .217/.285/.239 through 156 plate appearances. The Padres signed him to a $900K deal to avoid arbitration in his final year of control. That included a $1MM club option for 2026. Wade has more than five years of service time, so he could decline a minor league assignment while retaining that salary if he goes unclaimed. He hit .209 with one homer in 19 Spring Training games.

Meanwhile, left-hander Omar Cruz cracked the Opening Day bullpen. San Diego added him to the 40-man roster in November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. He’ll make his big league debut with his first appearance of the season. The 26-year-old southpaw worked 6 2/3 innings of three-run ball in Spring Training. He pitched mostly in a long relief role last year in the upper minors. Cruz combined for a 3.96 ERA with an excellent 32.3% strikeout rate over 86 1/3 innings between the top two minor league levels. He’ll provide a long relief option out of Mike Shildt’s bullpen with Bryan Hoeing and Jhony Brito each starting the year on the injured list.

Rockies To Designate Sam Hilliard For Assignment

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The Rockies are going to designate outfielder Sam Hilliard for assignment, reports Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. That will be the corresponding move to sign fellow outfielder Mickey Moniak, a move which was reported yesterday.

Hilliard, 31, was previously lined up a bench outfielder for Colorado. However, when the Angels released Moniak, they pounced to grab him, which nudged Hilliard down the depth chart by one peg. The regular outfield playing time figures to be split between Brenton Doyle, Jordan Beck, Nick Martini and Sean Bouchard, with Moniak perhaps having a chance to force his way in there as well.

That will squeeze out Hilliard, who has longstanding ties to the Rockies. Drafted by Colorado in 2015, he got to the big leagues in 2019 and was with the club through the 2022 season. He was traded to Atlanta prior to 2023. Ahead of 2024, he bounced around the waiver wire but wound up back with the Rockies.

Overall, he has shown some pop and some speed but has undercut those assets with too many strikeouts. In 875 career plate appearances, he has 42 home runs and 24 stolen bases but has been punched out at a huge 34.1% clip. His .219/.296/.438 batting line translates to an 84 wRC+.

Though Hilliard is out of options, the Rockies tendered him a contract for 2025. The two sides agreed to a $1MM salary for this year. He has at least three years of service time, meaning he has the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency. However, since he has less than five years of service, doing so would mean forfeiting the money that is still owed to him. If he clears waivers, he would like stick with the Rockies as non-roster depth.

Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images

Cubs Designate Cody Poteet For Assignment

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The Cubs announced Thursday that they’ve designated right-hander Cody Poteet for assignment. His spot on the roster will go to righty Brad Keller, who has now formally been selected to the roster. The Cubs also placed righties Tyson Miller (left hip impingement), righty Ryan Brasier (groin strain) and infielder/outfielder Vidal Brujan (elbow sprain) on the injured list and recalled righty Eli Morgan from Triple-A Iowa.

Poteet, 30, was the lone player the Cubs received in the trade sending Cody Bellinger to the Yankees. That swap was always more about dumping Bellinger’s salary than adding to the system, and today’s DFA only further underscores that reality.

A fourth-rounder by the Marlins in 2015, Poteet has pitched in parts of three big league seasons between Miami and New York. He posted a 2.22 ERA in 24 1/3 frames for the Yanks last year and carries an overall 3.80 mark in 83 MLB innings. He was sharp in 53 minor league innings last year as well, recording a 3.40 ERA. Poteet isn’t a flamethrower, sitting 93.8 mph with his four-seamer and 92.6 mph with his sinker. He complements those fastballs with a slider, curveball and changeup, rounding out a five-pitch arsenal.

Poteet has punched out 20.2% of his big league opponents against a 10.2% walk rate. Both are worse than average, though not necessarily by wide margins. In parts of five Triple-A campaigns, he’s logged a 4.47 ERA with a 21.7% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate. Poteet still has a pair of minor league options remaining, so if a team acquires him in a trade or claims him off waivers, he can be optioned directly to Triple-A. That could make him an appealing target for clubs seeking affordable rotation depth.

The Cubs owed Bellinger $52.5MM over the next two seasons, though he can opt out of the contract this year and trim $20MM off that guarantee if he feels there are greener pastures in free agency. Chicago paid $5MM of that sum to help facilitate the swap but saved $47.5MM overall. Bellinger was seen as a poor fit on the roster, with Ian Happ, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki in the outfield mix and Michael Busch at first base. Time will tell whether the club is better off for it, but for the moment the only thing they have to show for the trade is salary relief and about $25MM of breathing room between the current payroll and the luxury tax threshold.

White Sox Designate Jake Eder, Dominic Fletcher For Assignment

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The White Sox announced this morning that they’ve designated left-hander Jake Eder and outfielder Dominic Fletcher for assignment. They’ve also placed righty Drew Thorpe on the 60-day injured list while he recovers from Tommy John surgery. That trio of moves clears the way for righty Mike Clevinger, infielder Nick Maton and outfielder Travis Jankowski to be selected to the big league roster. (Maton and Jankowski were already known to have made the club.) All three had been non-roster invitees in camp this spring.

Eder, 26, was a fourth-round pick by the Marlins out of Vanderbilt back in 2020. He was considered one of the best prospects in Miami’s system when the Sox acquired him in a straight-up swap for slugger Jake Burger back at the 2023 trade deadline. Prior to Eder requiring Tommy John surgery late in the 2021 season, he’d even begun to garner some attention on midseason iterations of top-100 prospect rankings at Baseball America (No. 68) and MLB.com (No. 81).

At the time of the trade, Eder was just making his way back from that UCL repair. He’d pitched 39 1/3 innings in the Marlins’ minor league system and showed well. He was rocked in five starts with the White Sox’ Double-A club following the swap, but for a then-24-year-old just returning from major surgery, it wasn’t necessarily a shock to see him fade down the stretch.

Eder’s 2024 struggles, however, were more concerning. The left-hander split last season between Double-A and Triple-A, working to a combined 6.61 earned run average with glaring command troubles. Eder fanned a quality 24.4% of his opponents but also walked 11.6% of the batters he faced — including a sky-high 16.1% of his opponents in nine Triple-A starts. He also plunked five hitters and was charged with 10 wild pitches. His spring work wasn’t any better; Eder faced 13 hitters in 2 1/3 innings, allowing three runs on a pair of hits and three walks with four strikeouts.

Fletcher, 27, came over from the D-backs last offseason in a one-for-one swap that sent pitching prospect Cristian Mena to Arizona. He got a decent look in the South Siders’ outfield but turned in only a .206/.252/.256 slash in 241 trips to the plate. He’d been coming off a strong 2023 showing that saw him hit .291/.399/.500 in Triple-A and .301/.350/.441 in 102 plate appearances during his MLB debut.

Fletcher not only struggled in the majors, however, but also hit poorly in the minors. He clearly fell out of favor, as the Sox instead signed both Mike Tauchman and Michael A. Taylor to big league deals, pushing Fletcher down the depth chart. Even with Tauchman opening the season on the injured list due to a right hamstring strain, Fletcher didn’t make the cut and now is off the 40-man roster entirely.

The Sox will have the next five days to trade Eder and/or Fletcher. If no deal is reached by then, the pair would be placed on waivers, which is another 48-hour process. Either could be waived before that point, but the maximum length of their DFA window will seven days. Eder still has two minor league option years remaining. Fletcher has one.

As for Clevinger, he’ll return for a third stint with the ChiSox, this time in a bullpen role. The 34-year-old fired six shutout innings as a reliever during camp, fanning eight of 21 opponents (38.1%) against just one walk (4.8%). He’s far and away the most experienced pitcher in Chicago’s bullpen and could find his way to late-inning work early on, given the youth of the Sox’ bullpen. Clevinger, Bryse Wilson and Penn Murfee are the only Sox relievers with even a year of major league service (and much of Murfee’s MLB service has been spent on the 60-day IL).

Blue Jays DFA Zach Pop, Tommy Nance, Nick Robertson

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The Blue Jays revealed their Opening Day roster this morning and, in the process, announced that they have designated three right-handed pitchers for assignment: Zach Pop, Tommy Nance, and Nick Robertson. The three DFAs make room for right-hander Jacob Barnes and outfielders Alan Roden and Myles Straw on the 40-man roster. The Blue Jays had already confirmed their intention to select Barnes, Roden, and Straw, and today, they made the decision official. In addition, the Blue Jays formally placed right-handers Erik Swanson and Ryan Burr on the 15-day IL and center fielder Daulton Varsho on the 10-day IL. The team had already announced that Swanson, Burr, and Varsho would miss the beginning of the season.

Pop, 28, has pitched for the Marlins and Blue Jays throughout his four-year MLB career. In that time, he has a 4.45 ERA and 3.94 SIERA across 155 2/3 innings of work. He was electric after Toronto acquired him at the 2022 trade deadline, pitching to a 1.89 ERA in 17 appearances down the stretch. However, he has struggled at the big league level in each of the past two seasons, pitching to a 5.81 ERA in 73 total appearances. His 4.31 SIERA is better but still not especially promising. The righty is a groundball pitcher who does not miss many bats. His home run rate over the past two years (1.89 HR/9) is far too high for a pitcher who also issues his fair share of walks. To make matters worse, Pop was set to begin the season on Toronto’s injured list with elbow discomfort that arose this spring.

Nance, now 34, made his MLB debut with the Cubs at age 30 in 2021. He has had somewhat of an up-and-down career to this point. His rookie season was rough, but he looked like a capable low-leverage reliever over 43 2/3 innings with the Marlins in 2022. Then, injuries kept him out for much of 2023. He signed a minor league deal with the Padres last offseason and failed to make his way back to the majors in San Diego. Yet, after a late-summer trade to Toronto, he looked perfectly serviceable once again, pitching to a 4.09 ERA and 3.96 SIERA in 22 innings of lower-leverage work. He leads with a curveball and a sinker, a good approach for inducing groundballs, but hasn’t been able to consistently induce outs and strand baserunners at the highest level.

Robertson, 26, has already pitched for four different teams over his two MLB seasons, suiting up for the Dodgers and Red Sox in 2023 and the Cardinals and Blue Jays in 2024. He also pitched in the Angels’ system in between his stints with St. Louis and Toronto. The right-hander has a 5.30 ERA but a 3.52 SIERA in 35 2/3 career MLB frames. He has shown the ability to pitch multiple innings out of the bullpen as needed, but his performance has been poor at both the major and minor league levels since he left the Dodgers organization as part of the Enrique Hernández deadline trade in 2023. At times in the minors, Robertson has shown sharp strikeout stuff, but he has struggled in recent years to consistently rack up strikeouts and limit walks. He has one option year remaining, which could make him a bit more appealing to a club in need of bullpen help.

The Blue Jays will enter 2025 with something of a new-look bullpen, led by free agent acquisition and 2024 All-Star Jeff Hoffman. Other new pieces include Yimi García, who is back after a brief stint with the Mariners; Nick Sandlin, whom the Blue Jays acquired as part of the Andrés Giménez trade; and Richard Lovelady, who, like Barnes, signed a minor league deal with the club this offseason. Toronto selected his contract last week.

Blue Jays Make New Contract Offer To Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

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The Blue Jays have made another contract offer to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., reports Buster Olney of ESPN. No specifics of the offer have been publicly reported but Olney says a gap remains between the two sides.

The will-they-won’t-they between the Jays and Guerrero has been playing out for years now, but with a special focus on the drama this winter. Guerrero is now slated for free agency after the 2025 season, which begins today for the Jays. It’s common for players to set Opening Day as a deadline in contract talks, to avoid distractions during the season. Guerrero initially went a step further and set a deadline of February 18, the opening of Spring Training.

That day came and went without a deal getting done, though Guerrero subsequently said he would keep the door open if the Jays wanted to come back to the table. Reportedly, Guerrero’s asking price was a deal of at least 14 years and worth $500MM. The Jays reportedly did make him an offer in February with a sticker price of $500MM, but with deferrals that would knock the net present value down to the $400-450MM range. Guerrero is said to be open to deferrals generally but would still like the NPV to get to that $500MM line.

In a sense, that $50-100MM gap is not large. For a deal of that length, that’s about $3.5MM to $7MM annually. In an annual baseball budget, that’s what clubs spend on a veteran reliever or a backup catcher. That would appear to be a bridgeable gap. That’s perhaps especially true when looking at the broader picture. Guerrero has been the face of the franchise for many years now. The Jays have tried to sign other marquee players like Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto and Roki Sasaki but without success.

The regime of president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins has seemingly left a large segment of the fanbase discontent. There has been a lot of regular season success in recent years but the Jays have been swept in all of their most recent playoff appearances. Many things went wrong in 2024, which exacerbated the frustration.

Letting Guerrero walk for a relatively small financial gap would likely be unwelcome from a public relations perspective, whereas getting a deal done on Opening Day could theoretically provide a nice boost to fan morale.

The front office seems to view the situation as one that can be resolved. Shapiro recently expressed confidence that a deal would get done, either an extension or later in free agency. That was an unusual bit of candor, since front office types usually duck questions about ongoing negotiations. Atkins made somewhat similar comments yesterday, per Hazel Mae of Sportsnet and Keegan Matheson of MLB.com.

Presumably, this new offer from the Jays has moved closer to Guerrero’s asking price. Though as mentioned, no details have been publicly reported. A deal in this range would be fairly unprecedented, for the Jays or any other club.

As of a few months ago, no player had received a contract with an NPV at $500MM or higher. At the start of the 2024-25 offseason, the largest deal on record was Ohtani’s ten-year, $700MM pact with the Dodgers. Thanks to the heavy deferrals in that deal, Major League Baseball calculated the AAV as $46.06MM with the MLBPA at $43.78MM, meaning the NPV on the deal was roughly $437-460MM. Even those reduced numbers were all records, in terms of largest guarantee and largest AAV ever.

Each of those numbers is now a distant second, thanks to Soto’s deal. He got $765MM over 15 years with no deferrals, meaning his net present value shattered Ohtani’s. The AAV on that is $51MM, which also went notably beyond Ohtani’s deferral-adjusted AAV.

A hypothetical deal worth $500MM over 14 years would be a $35.7MM AAV. That would be well below Soto and Ohtani but still put Guerrero in the top 15 of all contracts by AAV, ahead of players like Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor and Mookie Betts. The total guarantee would be second all-time, when adjusting Ohtani’s down.

Guerrero hasn’t been quite as elite as Ohtani or Soto but still has a strong track record for a player his age. Many top prospects don’t reach the majors until their mid-20s but Guerrero just turned 26 earlier this month, which is a huge part of his earning power. He already has 819 games under his belt with 160 home runs, a .288/.363/.500 batting line and 137 wRC+. He was even better than that in both 2021 and 2024. Though he dipped a bit in the two seasons in between, he hit .323/.396/.544 for a 165 wRC+ last year. He’s not an especially strong defender at first but he has accomplished a lot with the bat already. If he and the Jays can’t work out a new deal, he will be one of the top free agents of next year’s class.

Photo courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck, Imagn Images

Red Sox Notes: Eovaldi, Zavala, Gambrell

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Nathan Eovaldi started for the Red Sox on Opening Day each year from 2020-22, pitching a combined 16 1/3 innings with a 2.76 ERA. Today, the Red Sox will face their former no. 1 starter on Opening Day, sending their new ace, Garrett Crochet, to the bump against Eovaldi and the Rangers.

Facing Eovaldi is never an enviable task – the right-hander has a winning record and an ERA under 4.00 in each of the past five seasons – but the Red Sox, in particular, probably aren’t thrilled to be meeting up with their old friend this afternoon. After all, they made an effort to re-acquire him this past offseason, and as it turns out, they were the runner-up for his services. According to Rob Bradford of WEEI, six teams showed legitimate interest in signing Eovaldi this winter, but the veteran’s decision ultimately came down to Texas or Boston. However, it’s not known how much money the Red Sox were willing to offer or if their final bid came close to the three-year, $75MM guarantee he landed with the Rangers.

Interestingly, Boston’s trade for Crochet came together less than 24 hours after Eovaldi signed with Texas. That’s not to say the Red Sox wouldn’t have pursued Crochet if they landed Eovaldi, but it’s a possibility worth considering. If that’s true, one could argue that missing out on Eovaldi was the best possible outcome for Craig Breslow and company. Eovaldi is a great pitcher, but Crochet is coming off an All-Star season and already looks like a strong early contender for the AL Cy Young.

Of course, the Red Sox would have been even better off with both Crochet and Eovaldi atop their rotation, especially now that so many of their other starters are on the IL, namely Lucas Giolito, Brayan Bello, and Kutter Crawford. And while the Red Sox surely have high hopes for the free agents starters they added this offseason – Walker Buehler and Patrick Sandoval – Eovaldi would have been a far less risky signing.

In other Red Sox news, catcher Seby Zavala has accepted his outright assignment and will begin the season with the Triple-A WooSox, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive. The 31-year-old was informed last week that he would not be making the Opening Day roster. While the minor league deal he signed with Boston in November included an assignment clause that allowed him to seek out an opportunity on another team’s 40-man roster, it appears he was not able to find such an opportunity and has instead reported to Triple-A. A veteran of five big league seasons, Zavala is a plus defender with 183 games of MLB catching experience. He will offer the Red Sox depth behind starting catcher Connor Wong, backup Carlos Narvaez, and Blake Sabol, who has a spot on the 40-man roster but will start the season at Triple-A.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox have released Grant Gambrell, a minor league right-handed starter (h/t to Christopher Smith of MassLive). Gambrell was one of five players Boston received in 2021 as part of the three-team trade that sent Andrew Benintendi to the Royals. The Red Sox initially acquired outfielder Franchy Cordero from Kansas City and right-hander Josh Winckowski from the Mets, while Gambrell was one of three players to be named later, along with fellow righty Luis De La Rosa and outfielder Freddy Valdez. As Smith points out, Winckowski is now the only player from that trade who is still playing in the Red Sox organization. Gambrell had pitched relatively well in Boston’s system over the past two years, putting up a 3.81 ERA and 4.29 FIP in 41 games (39 starts). However, he was never a top prospect, and now 27 years old, the Red Sox have evidently decided he does not fit into their future plans.

Phillies Designate Buddy Kennedy For Assignment

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The Phillies announced this morning that they’ve designated infielder Buddy Kennedy for assignment. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski had already signaled earlier in the week that Kennedy, who’s out of minor league options, wouldn’t make the team’s Opening Day roster. He’s been discussing potential trades of the infielder already. Today’s DFA doesn’t change that. He can still be traded for the next five days, though if no deal is reached by that point, he’ll be placed on outright waivers and made available to the other 29 teams.

Kennedy, 26, has played 54 big league games with three teams — D-backs, Tigers, Phillies — across the past three seasons. He’s a career .203/.295/.313 hitter in a small sample of 149 major league plate appearances. Kennedy hasn’t gotten any real extended shot at playing time in the big leagues, however, despite a strong Triple-A track record. He’s played in parts of three seasons at the top minor league level and turned in a .281/.392/.435 batting line. He’s walked in a massive 14.4% of his plate appearances against an 18.2% strikeout rate that’s significantly lower than league average.

A fifth-round pick out of the same Millville High School that produced Mike Trout, Kennedy is a right-handed hitter who’s played all four infield positions and left field in his professional career. The vast majority of his time has been spent at third base (3470 innings) and second base (1285 innings), but he’s played 110 innings at first base, 93 innings in left field and 10 innings at shortstop. Kennedy had no platoon splits at the plate in 2024 and has been productive against both lefties and righties in each of the past three seasons (2023-24 in particular).

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