The Athletics are in agreement with veteran catcher Chad Wallach on a minor league contract, according to the MiLB.com transaction log. He’ll presumably get a non-roster invite to Spring Training and open the season at Triple-A Las Vegas.
Wallach, 34, has spent most of the past four years in the Angels’ organization. He has been the third or fourth catcher on the depth chart. The Halos called him up last September while they were navigating injuries to Travis d’Arnaud and Logan O’Hoppe. Wallach played in one game and caught two innings in a loss in Seattle. The Angels outrighted him off the roster when O’Hoppe returned.
That is Wallach’s only MLB experience since 2023. He has played in parts of eight big league seasons but only garnered semi-regular playing time three years back, when he got into 65 games and tallied 172 plate appearances for the Angels. He’s a .198/.263/.328 hitter in 443 trips to the dish. Wallach is coming off a .248/.319/.430 showing in Triple-A last year, splitting that time between the Halos and Rangers systems.
Shea Langeliers will play the majority of games behind the dish as long as he’s healthy. Austin Wynns will back him up. They’re the only two catchers on the 40-man roster. Wallach is their most experienced non-roster option, joining Brian Serven and Bryan Lavastida as organizational depth players who have MLB experience.
If he can get a couple at bats this season and one more season, he can qualify for the full pension of 10 seasons without even amassing 500 career at bats.
I sure hope he gets that pension, but it is the A’s we are talking about. I cringe when I think of Mike Magnante missing his pension by 4 days with the A’s.
29 teams had a chance to pick up Magnante for free and they passed. If he was worth a sack of wet mice a team would have taken a shot with him for the stretch in 2002 or the next season. Every single team passed. The fact is the A’s held onto him for a year too long. His ERA was 5.97 and he was a LOOGY. If your job is to get LH hitters out and they are sporting a .777 OPS; you don’t deserve a major league job.
I don’t think that’s how that works. He’d have to have 10 years of service time and hasn’t played full seasons in the majors at all
I have met Chad on two different occasions and my uncle played ball with his dad. Chad will be a future manager if he ever wanted to go into coaching His baseball IQ is off the charts
Maybe they picked him up to be a coach/manager in training.
Good luck to Chad. He has always been a nice guy in the Angels system, if not a great player and I hope he is able to catch on with the A’s and collect a little cash this season.
Future long term manager
Surprising the A’s are that thin at catcher. Then, again, David Forst had traded away a few decent catchers in the past few years. Sean Murphy, Jonah Heim, Daniel Susan was lost to the Rule V Draft…
All these exciting signings by the A’s. Lol
Hopefully Bangaliers and Wynn’s stay healthy.
NOW, let’s get Bassitt or Littell on a reasonable two year deal and an above average bullpen arm. Then they will be good to go.