Tigers Outright Tomas Nido

The Tigers announced that catcher Tomás Nido cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Toledo. The veteran backstop has the right to decline the assignment in favor of free agency, though the team did not provide any indication that he’d do that.

Nido spent six weeks on Detroit’s big league roster while Jake Rogers was down with a left oblique strain. The 31-year-old backed up Dillon Dingler and was mostly productive in a tiny sample. Nido collected 12 hits in 10 games, batting .343 in the process. That came in just 35 at-bats, though, and Nido’s much bigger MLB track record is that of a well below-average hitter. He has a lifetime .215/.249/.310 slash in nearly 1000 big league plate appearances. He was hitting .160 in six Triple-A games before the Tigers called him up.

Teams clearly remained skeptical about Nido’s hitting ability, this year’s small-sample success notwithstanding. He’s out of options, so any team that claimed him would have needed to carry him on the MLB roster themselves. The Tigers would surely be happy to retain him as non-roster depth in Toledo. Nido has a positive defensive reputation and plenty of upper minors experience. Rogers and Dingler are the only catchers on the 40-man roster, so Nido would probably be the first one back up if either of the big league catchers suffered a future injury.