The Mariners announced that right-hander Trent Thornton has been reinstated from the 15-day injured list. To make room on the active roster, the M’s have once again designated righty Casey Lawrence for assignment.
Thornton returns after missing a month due to appendicitis. The righty has allowed five homers in only 15 1/3 innings of work out of the Mariners’ bullpen, which has been the biggest culprit in Thornton’s 5.87 ERA. A 16.9% strikeout rate also hasn’t helped, but in something of an all-or-nothing statistic, Thornton has a career-best 51% grounder rate and a .250 BABIP, so he has been successful when he has been able to keep the ball in the park.
In under two months’ time, Lawrence has already made an early bid for MLBTR’s most written-about player of 2025. Lawrence has been designated for assignment six times in the last eight weeks, with Seattle logging five of those DFAs and the Blue Jays the other instance. The right-hander has cleared waivers five of those six times (except for when the Jays claimed him away from the Mariners), and on three occasions Lawrence elected free agency before quickly re-signing with Seattle.
Chances are that Lawrence’s latest trip to DFA limbo will again result in the right-hander staying with the M’s, whether he just accepts an outright assignment or if he again clears waivers, elects free agency, and re-signs a new minor league deal. Throughout this transactional whirlwind, Lawrence has also posted a 4.08 ERA over 17 2/3 innings with Seattle and Toronto, with only an 8.8K% but also a tiny 1.3BB%.
One former jay messing with another
Thornton is trash.
I’m ok when we use him in a bullpen game or in lower leverage situations
I didn’t like it when we were constantly using him in the 7th and 8th innings
That’s fair. It seems like every lead he came in with, he promptly gave up that lead this year.
He has given up runs in 5 of his 16 appearances. 4 of those games were wins. And in the other one what ended up as the winning run had already scored. He just isn’t a flashy name or style so people only remember his bad innings. Both of his bad innings.
At this point it’s just abuse. Stop.
Not as bad as people think. If you force teams to keep a player for a certain period of time the fringe players would never get called up. The players know they are temporary help who will go back to DFA limbo the next time their team makes a roster move. So Lawerence gets MLB pay, per diem and a chance to wear a major league uniform and be in a major league stadium ( except Sacramento and Tampa). It could be worse. Hope Lawerence has a sturdy suitcase.
Even Joey said whoa.
So what’s your suggestion, just stop signing him? Don’t think he would like that considering he’s making $3k a day on the big league roster.
Perfect situation for both. Seattle has a 41st roster spot to get through a nasty injury bug. Casey gets big league checks and stability in where he lives and then plays for Tacoma in between which is like 20 minutes from T-Mobile.
Again!!
I’ve lost count. How many dfa’s is that for Lawrence this season?
Read the article.
MLBTR gonna have to thank Casey Lawrence, Jesse Chavez, and Cooper Hummel for keeping the clicks coming this year
Along with the academy, Aunt Sarah and all the fans out there.
Does anyone know with any clarity how these ‘new minor league’ contracts work out? If he is DFA’ed and re-signed, does he accumulate the value of all his contracts? One would assume he gets some small minor league contract and then a pro-rated minimum big league contract when he is on the roster. But does he get to pocket the rest of the, say, 50k MiLB contract each time this happens?
No. MiLB contracts are non guaranteed so each time the contract just ends. Each time he resigns the contract contains his MLB salary and MiLB salary, and his MLB one is probably a little above minimum.
Hi Jerry Dipoto! (If you’re seeing this to check on our reactions to your weekly Casey Lawrence shenanigans)
Groundhog day with Lawrence.
Terrible move by the Mariners.. Thornton is going to hurt the Ms.
I don’t understand the fascination with Thornton, except that he’s slightly better than the guys at Tacoma or Arkansas. Kowar Surely they have to address the bullpen quickly, don’t they?