September 17: Wallach cleared waivers and has been outrighted back to Salt Lake, the Angels announced this afternoon.
September 15: The Angels announced a few roster moves during tonight’s off day. Logan O’Hoppe is back from the seven-day concussion list, leaving the club to designate catcher Chad Wallach for assignment. Los Angeles also announced that infielders Scott Kingery and Niko Kavadas cleared waivers and were outrighted to Triple-A. MLBTR covered the Kavadas outright this morning.
O’Hoppe went down a week ago when he was struck on the head by a Jacob Wilson backswing. The Halos called up Sebastian Rivero to back up Travis d’Arnaud, who stepped into the starting catching role. A few days later, d’Arnaud landed on the injured list with his own concussion symptoms. The Angels were forced to call up Wallach, the #4 backstop on the organizational depth chart. Rivero started all three games behind the dish in the weekend series in Seattle.
Wallach made one appearance as a defensive replacement. He caught the final two innings on Friday after Jo Adell pinch hit for Rivero in the top of the seventh. That was the 33-year-old’s first major league action since 2023. Wallach spent all of last year with the Halos’ Triple-A team in Salt Lake. He divided this season between the top affiliates of the Rangers and Angels, hitting .251/.321/.439 across 251 plate appearances.
The Angels will place Wallach on waivers this week. There’s a good chance he goes unclaimed and accepts a minor league assignment to spend the final two weeks of the regular season in Salt Lake. He’ll qualify for minor league free agency at year’s end if he’s not on a 40-man roster.
Kingery was designated for assignment on Saturday when the Angels called up Denzer Guzman. The former Phillies second baseman has cleared waivers three times this season. He hit .148 in 19 games during his first big league action in three years. He’ll also be a minor league free agent at year’s end unless the Angels call him back up before then.
I think this is a record for roster moved made in September. At the end of the day, it does not even matter, if anything if keeps people somewhat interested.
Be fun if the Angels line up, for one day, only started players 26 yrs old or younger.
Glad to hear Logan is good.
No, there was another guy who told us the team was going to play in the Postseason when the team was close to joining the Wild card. The stats told us it was going nowhere but the fool insisted.
Tim would never get this amount of disrespect!
Will it ever change for the angels. Once again, just enjoying baseball. Kinda don’t mind all the losses. My expectations for the angels are always to big. They are not great they are just good 40 percent of the time. Thanks arte
FWIW, Kavadis has blasted 4 long home runs in the past two games with the Salt Lake Bees.