The Mariners have again selected Casey Lawrence onto the MLB roster. They optioned rookie righty Blas Castaño to Triple-A Tacoma while designating catcher Blake Hunt for assignment in corresponding moves.
This is already the fifth time this season that the Mariners have selected Lawrence’s contract. Each of the previous four was followed by a DFA within five days. One of those DFAs resulted in a waiver claim by Toronto, but Lawrence has otherwise cleared waivers. In each case, he either accepted a minor league assignment or re-signed with Seattle after briefly electing free agency. Lawrence also quickly returned to the M’s after being dropped by Toronto.
The 37-year-old is clearly content with the arrangement. He’s able to collect at least a day or two of MLB pay for each stint on the roster. Lawrence has provided multiple innings as a low-leverage relief option for skipper Dan Wilson. He has turned in a 4.08 ERA with seven strikeouts and one walk across 17 2/3 frames over six appearances. Castaño tossed three innings in mop-up work last night, so he’ll be unavailable for a few days. That led the Mariners to swap him out for Lawrence.
Seattle acquired Hunt from Baltimore in January. The righty-hitting catcher has fanned 29 times in 96 Triple-A plate appearances this season, hitting .231/.271/.407 in 25 games. Hunt has bounced between Seattle’s and Baltimore’s 40-man rosters but has yet to get into a major league game. He’s drawn praise for his power upside but has struggled to reach base against upper level pitching. Hunt is a .232/.284/.413 hitter in just shy of 500 career Triple-A plate appearances. He’ll be traded or, more likely, placed on waivers in the next few days.
Ah, there he is!
Who is the ultimate DFA King : Casey Lawrence or Jesse Chavez?
Lawrence is giving Chavez a run for his money because Chavez hasn’t been dominating the headlines like my goat Casey
So, will he be dfa’d tomorrow or Saturday?
Right after his first game. Then, he’ll get picked up by another team, and DFA’d by them the next day..when he’ll be re-signed by the M’s..
And the cycle continues..
Hopefully they don’t need Ol’ Reliable for a few days
And suddenly everything was right in the world.
Great start to the weekend!! He’s back!!
It would be fun to keep every Casey Lawrence DFA/Call up as one article just to see how long it gets
They need to start guaranteeing the entire year’s minimum salary for a veteran player that get selected. It is just embarrassing to read things like “He’s able to collect at least a day or two of MLB pay for each stint on the roster.” as if Lawrence was hanging out in the Home Depot parking lot hoping to get in the back of the truck or something.
It’s unfortunate that, because MLB owns the market on almost-MLB-caliber players, they can set their rate. If it were a free market AAA players would be making a lot more as they are a very rare commodity and without them MLB players wouldn’t have anyone to hone their skills against.
But there’s a lot of irony in how most of the employees in America’s Pastime are just wage slaves working for the benefit of the insanely rich.
This is insane
We are whole again! GoMs!
Is Blake related to Mike?
….and here we go again. Smh.
What’s the record for DFA/call-ups for a player with the same team in a season? Are we already seeing it?
Casey Freaking Lawrence! Woohoo!!!
I’m glad they expanded rosters to 26 players to stop this from happening.
I’ve already completely forgotten this guy’s run with the 2023 Cardinals. I had to do a triple take seeing that line on his BBRef page.
Welcome back again, Casey! Wish you success and hope you stick one of these days