June 22: Ruiz has been assigned outright to Triple-A, according to David O’Brien of The Athletic.
June 19: The Braves are designating reliever José Ruiz for assignment, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com. That’ll open both the active and 40-man roster spots necessary to promote Didier Fuentes. Atlanta will call up the 20-year-old righty to start tomorrow’s series opener against the Marlins.
Ruiz had a brief stint on the Braves’ roster. Atlanta claimed him off waivers from the Phillies on June 7. He carried an 8.16 earned run average at the time. He worked around a walk to toss a scoreless inning during his team debut. He had a much tougher second appearance, giving up three runs on two hits and walks apiece in one inning during Sunday’s blowout loss to the Rockies. The Braves didn’t use him during their sweep of the Mets.
The 30-year-old Ruiz now owns an 8.82 ERA across 16 1/3 innings for the season. He was a reasonably effective middle reliever for Philadelphia a year ago, turning in a 3.71 ERA with a 24% strikeout rate in 52 appearances. Ruiz’s chase and whiff rates have each taken a step back this year, while his walks have climbed from roughly 8% to an 11.4% clip. He also missed a couple weeks in May due to neck spasms.
Atlanta will likely place him on waivers this weekend. Ruiz is out of options, so another team would need to plug him into the MLB bullpen if they were to place a claim. He’s playing on a $1.225MM arbitration salary. Ruiz crossed the five-year service threshold earlier this season, so he could elect free agency and retain that salary if he goes unclaimed on waivers.
Good riddance!
The guy they Braves gave up Kimbrel for
Great, next thing you know, they’ll be trading Chris Sale…..
They are not trading Sale. The Braves have moved within five games of the last wildcard spot. The Braves are playing their best baseball right now and just swept the 1st place Mets. After a favorable weekend series against Miami they’ve got a sputtering Mets team to face for four games and have their best pitching set up for that series. After next weekend’s series with the Phillies they have a very favorable schedule heading into the All-Star break. Alex has already said they will be buyers. W
We said the same thing before their latest losing streak. “Playing good ball and Acuna and Strider are back”….2025 (and 2024 Braves for that matter) are a .500 team at best. They’ll win some great series and then lose some dumb ones. That’s what .500 teams do….I hate to trade Sale b/c he’s clearly our Ace, but it makes too much sense to do it for a haul.
What haul for a 36 y/o SP with an injury history and while we don’t know the extent of this rib injury, his last rib fracture kept him out for a half-season. While he could get something, they don’t have the necessary funds, barring a sudden cash infusion, to replace a top-of-rotation arm like his over the next season of control, especially with AJSS/Lopez both coming back from injury, eventually, with question marks. “Zero percent” has only become negative now.
Boy, this post aged well. Just lost two of three to the Marlins.
Cris Sale needs to stay in Atlanta, he’s making about half of what an ace makes.
That lasted long. So much for grabbing Phillies castoffs.