Rockies Trade Nicky Lopez To Cubs
The Rockies announced they’ve traded minor league infielder Nicky Lopez to the Cubs for cash. He was on a minor league contract and will not immediately occupy a 40-man roster spot for Chicago.
Lopez has been an organizational favorite of the Cubs as a depth infielder. He appeared in 14 MLB games for them last year between April and May. Lopez had also been with the club last spring on a minor league deal before being granted his release to pursue an MLB opportunity with the Angels. The Cubs waived him in late May but brought him back on a new minor league contract in August.
The Naperville, Illinois native signed with Colorado in December. He’s out to a nice start with Triple-A Albuquerque, batting .333 with a home run and a couple stolen bases over 15 games. Although the offense is surely inflated by playing in the Pacific Coast League, he’s showing his typically strong bat-to-ball ability while playing in the middle of the diamond.
Lopez is a lifetime .245/.310/.311 hitter in a little under 700 big league contests. He’s a quality defender at any of second base, third base, or shortstop. If the Cubs wanted to call him back up, he could replace Scott Kingery (who still has a minor league option) as the team’s utility infielder. Chicago would need to select Lopez onto the 40-man roster but essentially has a free roster spot with Porter Hodge a lock to move to the 60-day injured list after this week’s UCL surgery.
Will Braves Add Drake Baldwin To List Of Early-Career Extensions?
The Braves have had a fantastic start to the 2026 season. They've outscored opponents by 62 runs, the best mark in MLB. Their 18-8 record has them atop the National League.
That's before considering the dismal starts of their two biggest threats in the division. The Mets are eight games under .500 and the Phillies nine. Atlanta has already built a 5.5 game lead in the NL East and is nine games clear of the two other teams that most observers would have considered realistic candidates to win the East. Teams cannot lock up a division in April, of course, but the Braves couldn't have drawn up a better first month.
There are myriad reasons for the hot start. The back of the rotation, easily the biggest weakness on paper given all their injuries, has performed admirably. They've been one of the best defensive teams in the league. No team has scored more runs. While some of that is driven by Mauricio Dubón and Dominic Smith hitting well above previous levels, any regression from those hitters should be offset by Ronald Acuña Jr. shaking off a middling start.
Although Acuña is still the face of the lineup, Drake Baldwin is making a strong case that he's their second-best position player. Last year's NL Rookie of the Year has come out on fire. He's tied with Matt Olson for the team lead with seven home runs while batting .318/.392/.551 over 120 plate appearances. The former third-round pick is up to a .283/.351/.488 slash over his first 561 career trips to the dish.
Baldwin already looks like one of the three to five best catchers in MLB -- no small accomplishment in a time with a lot of excellent young backstops. One would imagine the front office would love to keep him in Atlanta long term. The Braves are notably diligent about keeping their contract talks close to the vest, so there hasn't been any substantive reporting about extension conversations with Baldwin. It seems fair to assume they've at least quietly broached the possibility.
President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos has been extremely aggressive on the extension front. What kind of money might it take to add Baldwin to the likes of Acuña, Austin Riley, Spencer Strider, Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II as homegrown talents whom the Braves have extended?
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Nationals To Recall Riley Cornelio For MLB Debut
The Nationals are going to recall right-hander Riley Cornelio, reports Spencer Nusbaum of The Athletic. The Nats announced that righty Julian Fernández was optioned to Triple-A Rochester after today’s game, so Cornelio is presumably the corresponding move.
Cornelio, 26 in June, was a seventh-round pick of the Nats in 2022. As a minor leaguer, he has been working primarily as a starter. In 2025, he climbed from High-A to Double-A and then Triple-A. Across those three levels, he threw 134 1/3 innings, allowing 3.28 earned runs per nine. His 10.1% walk rate was a tad high but he struck out 24.8% of batters faced.
The Nats didn’t want him to be exposed in the Rule 5 draft, so they gave him a 40-man spot in November. He came into big league camp but made just two official appearances before being optioned to the minors. He has started his season with four Triple-A starts, posting a 2.45 ERA in 18 1/3 innings. His four-seamer and sinker are both averaging around 95 miles per hour, as he also mixes in a mid-80s slider and changeup.
Presumably, Washington wants Cornelio to potentially provide length out of the bullpen. Fernández pitched the past two games, including two innings this afternoon, so he may not have been available tomorrow. Miles Mikolas is the scheduled starter tomorrow and he hasn’t been able to go deep into games. His five starts this year have ranged from five innings on the high end to three innings on the low end. Being short-handed in the bullpen would be less than ideal if Mikolas ends up getting another quick hook, so Cornelio replacing Fernández makes sense.
Photo courtesy of Reinhold Matay, Imagn Images
Rangers Select Peyton Gray, Designate Willie MacIver For Assignment
The Rangers announced that left-hander Robert Garcia has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 20th, with left shoulder inflammation. Right-hander Peyton Gray has been selected to take his place on the roster. To open a 40-man spot for Gray, catcher Willie MacIver has been designated for assignment.
Garcia’s last appearance was on April 16th, a game he departed due to shoulder soreness. He and the Rangers opted not to put him on the IL immediately. It appears that a week of rest hasn’t allowed him to fully heal up, so the team has now put him on the shelf. An IL placement can be backdated if a player hasn’t been playing but there’s a three-day maximum, so the Rangers could only backdate it to Monday.
His injury will allow Gray to crack a major league roster for the first time, which is a nice story. As laid out by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News in March, Gray spent time pitching in the minors and independent ball, in addition to winter ball stints in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Along the way, he worked for UPS, DoorDash and cut trees. He’s now going to the show just ahead of his 31st birthday, which will be in June.
Gray came into camp with the Rangers on a minor league deal. He turned some heads with a solid spring. He tossed 10 2/3 innings, allowing three earned runs via six hits and one walk while striking out 18. He has reported to Triple-A and has continued to put up good numbers. He has thrown 12 2/3 scoreless innings over seven appearances, allowing eight hits and two walks while striking out 15. Last year, he also gave the Rangers 61 Triple-A innings with a 3.84 earned run average, 25.8% strikeout rate, 8.7% walk rate and 43.5% ground ball rate.
This year, he’s mostly a fastball/changeup guy. His fastball, which is averaging 92.9 miles per hour, has been thrown 48.8% of the time this year. His 83.2 mile-per-hour change has made up 40.7% of his offerings. He has also mixed in a cutter and a slider. He’ll see if that recipe works on major-league hitters whenever he makes his major league debut.
MacIver, 29, was claimed off waivers from the Athletics in November. He’s been in Triple-A this year and is off to a rough start, with a .170/.333/.255 line through 60 plate appearances. He’ll now head into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so Texas could take five days to explore trade interest, but they could also put him on waivers at any point before then.
His major league track record is limited and unimpressive. He got into 33 games for the A’s last year and hit .186/.252/.324 in those. He has shown the potential for more in the minors. Over 2024 and 2025, he slashed .323/.399/.534 in 604 Triple-A plate appearances. He is off to a much slower start this year but perhaps his track record enough to generate interest from other clubs. He still has options remaining and could be stashed in the minors as depth, as the Rangers were doing in recent weeks.
Since MacIver has less than three years of service time and doesn’t have a previous career outright, he would not have the right to elect free agency in the event he clears outright waivers. The Rangers might want that situation to come to pass since Danny Jansen and Kyle Higashioka are now the only two catchers on the 40-man roster.
Photo courtesy of Arianna Grainey, Imagn Images
Mets Place Francisco Lindor On Injured List
3:05pm: Mendoza said reporters, including Joel Sherman of The New York Post, Lindor’s strain is worse than Soto’s and he will therefore miss a decent amount of time. Mendoza added that Mauricio will get the majority of shortstop time while Lindor is out.
2:13pm: The Mets announced that shortstop Francisco Lindor has been placed on the 10-day injured list with a left calf strain. Infielder Ronny Mauricio has been recalled in a corresponding move. Francys Romero of BeisbolFR reported on Mauricio’s call-up prior to the official announcement. They also announced their previously-reported recall of Christian Scott, with righty Austin Warren optioned as the corresponding move.
It’s a symbolic gut punch for the Mets. With Juan Soto on the IL for the past few weeks, they endured a 12-game losing streak. Last night, they got Soto back and finally snapped that streak with a win, but they lost Lindor in the process.
Lindor appeared to be in discomfort during the game and was removed after four innings. The team later announced that his departure was due to left calf tightness. Manager Carlos Mendoza later told reporters, including Mike Puma of The New York Post, that Lindor would undergo an MRI. Around the same time, Romero reported on Mauricio’s recall, making it seem likely that Lindor was bound for the IL.
It’s an unsurprising move given the events of last night but it’s unusual in the grander scheme of things, as Lindor has been very rarely hurt in his career. In the nine full seasons from 2016 to 2025, he played in at least 125 games in each. Only once was he below 143 and only twice did he come in under 152. This is his first trip to the IL since 2021.
Due to Lindor’s iron man nature, the Mets have been operating without a proper backup for most of this season. Third baseman Bo Bichette, who was primarily a shortstop prior to this year, has been Lindor’s emergency backstop and covered the spot after Lindor was removed last night. Brett Baty came off the bench to cover third.
Lindor is out to a slow start this year, with a .226/.314/.355 line, but in a small sample of 105 plate appearances. In that sample, his walk and strikeout rates are good but he is being held back by a .264 batting average on balls in play. His much larger career track record shows he’s an above-average hitter, defender and baserunner who is usually good for five to eight wins above replacement annually. It’s possible his somewhat slow start is due to a fractured hamate he suffered in February, which he recovered from in time to crack the Opening Day roster.
It’s unclear if the Mets plan to have Bichette cover short now. He wasn’t a great defender at that spot earlier in his career and he finished last season battling a knee injury. As a free agent in the most recent offseason, it didn’t seem as though many clubs had interest in signing him to play that spot. In the end, the Mets won the bidding and have had him at third. His third base defense appears to be about average so far in a small sample, but he’s off to a rough start at the plate, currently sporting a .220/.255/.290 line for the year.
It’s possible the club could keep him at third most of the time, since he’s still getting acclimated to the position, though that would mean playing Mauricio at short pretty much every day. Mauricio has a strong .293/.349/.638 slash in Triple-A this year but hasn’t hit in the majors yet, currently sitting on a career .234/.294/.359 line.
Playing Bichette at short would open up more line possibilities for the club, as Baty or Mark Vientos could cover third base. Neither of those two are hitting well this year but each has shown better form in the past. It’s also possible the Mets don’t firmly commit to one lane or another, as they could make in-game substitutions depending on the situation, opting for Bichette at short when hoping for more offense and moving him to third when prioritizing defense.
However the playing time gets sliced up, it’s not ideal for the Mets to lose a player of Lindor’s caliber. That’s especially true in light of their rough start. Though they snapped the losing streak last night, they are 8-16 on the year and tied with the Phillies for last in the National League. They just endured Soto’s absence and now will try to climb out of that hole without Lindor.
Photo courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski, Imagn Images
Twins Claim Christian Roa, Designate Eric Wagaman
The Twins claimed right-hander Christian Roa off waivers from the Astros, who’d designated him for assignment earlier in the week, Houston announced Thursday. Minnesota designated infielder/outfielder Eric Wagaman for assignment in order to open a spot on the 40-man roster, per Dan Hayes of The Athletic. Roa has been optioned to Triple-A St. Paul.
Roa, 27, brings some velocity to a patchwork Twins bullpen that hasn’t recovered from last July’s fire sale, wherein Minnesota shipped out five relievers (Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Louis Varland, Brock Stewart, Danny Coulombe). He’s pitched briefly in both 2025 and 2026, totaling 11 2/3 big league innings. Roa has held opponents to only five runs (3.86 ERA) on 11 hits, but he’s also issued 10 walks and plunked three batters while only recording nine strikeouts.
It’s a small sample, of course, but command has long been the biggest knock on Roa’s game. The 6’4″, former Texas A&M standout was the No. 48 overall pick by the Reds back in 2020. He’s drawn praise for a plus slider and average or better fastball and changeup over the years, but he’s regularly received 30 and 40 grades (on the 20-80 scale) for his command along the way. Roa has pitched to a 4.52 ERA in parts of four Triple-A seasons, fanning 25.5% of his opponents there but also issuing walks at a dismal 13.9% clip.
While Roa’s overall numbers in Triple-A don’t look like much, most of the damage against him there came in 2023-24. He tossed 60 1/3 Triple-A frames last year and notched a tidy 2.83 ERA with a 26.1% strikeout rate and an improved (but still too high) 11.4% walk rate. He tossed one scoreless inning there so far in 2026.
Roa has sat 96.2 mph with his four-seamer in limited big league action. His slider has been as advertised in the majors; he’s finished off 11 plate appearances with the pitch, four of them resulting in strikeouts and only one resulting in a base hit (a single). He also mixes in a sinker and a very occasional changeup.
This is the second of Roa’s three minor league option years. The Twins can shuttle him back and forth across the Mississippi River as needed both this year and next, assuming he sticks on the roster. For now, he’ll open in St. Paul, but given the state of the club’s bullpen, there’ll surely be opportunities over on the Minneapolis side of the Twin Cities.
Turning to the 28-year-old Wagaman, he’ll now find himself in DFA limbo for the second time in the past six months. Minnesota originally acquired him after he’d been designated for assignment by the Marlins over the winter. The Twins shipped minor league reliever Kade Bragg to the Marlins in that swap, though he hasn’t exactly stood out in Double-A this year (12 walks and a hit batter, 46 batters faced).
The hope in picking up Wagaman was that he’d be a righty-swinging bench option who could fill in at all four corner spots. The former Yankees and Angels farmhand spent the whole 2025 season on Miami’s roster despite a sub-par .250/.296/.378 batting line (85 wRC+) in 514 turns at the plate. Wagaman was decisively overmatched by fellow righties but knocked left-handers around at strong .283/.321/.462 clip with the Fish.
Wagaman has experience at all four corner positions but has worked primarily at first base in recent seasons. He’s in the first of three minor league option years but has gotten out to a dismal .159/.284/.254 start in his first 74 plate appearances with the Saints.
The Twins will have five days to place Wagaman on outright waivers or trade him to another club. Since waivers are a 48-hour process, we’ll know the outcome of Wagaman’s DFA within the next week. If Wagaman passes through waivers unclaimed, the Twins will assign him outright to St. Paul. He hasn’t been outrighted in the past and doesn’t have three years of big league service, meaning he won’t be able to reject an outright assignment.
Red Sox Recall Payton Tolle
12:47pm: The Red Sox officially announced Tolle’s recall. Fellow lefty Eduardo Rivera was optioned to Worcester in a corresponding move.
10:00am: The Red Sox are calling up left-hander Payton Tolle to start Thursday’s series finale against the Yankees, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com. It’ll be the touted young lefty’s first major league action of the season and just the fourth big league start of his career.
Tolle currently sits 11th on Baseball America’s ranking of the sport’s top-100 prospects. He’s 15th over at MLB.com. The 23-year-old reported to camp this spring in hopes of securing a rotation spot after making a brief MLB debut late last season, but fellow top prospect and left-hander Connelly Early wound up claiming the lone rotation vacancy. Tolle opened the season in Triple-A Worcester, where he’s been excellent. In three starts, he’s totaled 15 innings and held opponents to five earned runs (3.00 ERA) on 12 hits and four walks with 19 strikeouts.
The Sox spent much of the offseason bolstering their pitching depth. While younger arms like Hunter Dobbins and Richard Fitts were sent out in trades, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow also acquired Sonny Gray and Johan Oviedo via the trade market and signed longtime Phillies southpaw Ranger Suarez as a free agent.
Just under a month into the season, that depth has already been tested. Oviedo made just one appearance before being diagnosed with a flexor strain and placed on the 60-day injured list. Gray landed on the 15-day IL with a hamstring strain after exiting his most recent start in the middle of the third inning. Left-hander Patrick Sandoval still hasn’t pitched for Boston after signing a two-year, $18.25MM contract two offseasons ago. The Sox knew he’d miss most of 2025 rehabbing from UCL surgery, but he didn’t make it back at all last year and is now dealing with biceps discomfort that popped up during a minor league rehab stint. Righty Kutter Crawford missed the 2025 season due to a knee injury and wrist surgery. He’s also on a rehab stint but also could be facing a setback after experiencing elbow discomfort during a minor league start.
Counting Tanner Houck — who won’t pitch this season after undergoing Tommy John surgery late last August — the Sox have an entire rotation’s worth of arms on the injured list. At the moment, their healthy starting options include Suarez, Early, Garrett Crochet, Brayan Bello and, once this move is official, Tolle. Right-hander Tyler Uberstine and lefty Jake Bennett are on the 40-man roster and pitching well in Worcester; Uberstine made his MLB debut earlier this season when he pitched 2 2/3 innings in a long relief appearance. He’s since been optioned back to Triple-A.
All of the injuries could give Tolle some runway to turn this into more than a spot start. There’s no expectation that Gray’s injury will necessitate a long-term absence, but the Sox have yet to put a firm timetable on his recovery, either. Even if it’s just a minimum stint, that’d be enough for Tolle to make multiple starts.
The Red Sox don’t have an off day until April 30, so they won’t have the luxury of skipping this spot in the rotation if they want to send Tolle down and bring up another arm for the ‘pen. However, they could still option Tolle and then call up Bennett or Uberstine to take the ball when this spot in the rotation comes up again next Tuesday. Alternatively, if Bello continues to struggle as he has through his first four starts (6.75 ERA, 14.1% strikeout rate, 13% walk rate in 18 2/3 innings), it’s hard not to wonder whether the currently 9-15 Red Sox might consider at least a short-term change. And, as always, the possibility of injuries elsewhere on the staff could create a more lasting opportunity for Tolle.
Tolle, the No. 50 overall draft pick in 2024, impressed in his first big league start last summer, tossing 5 1/3 innings and holding the Pirates to a pair of runs on three hits and two walks with eight punchouts. His next two starts were shaky, however, and the Sox moved him to the ‘pen for the final few weeks of the season. He wound up posting a 6.06 ERA in a small sample of 16 1/3 innings, but Tolle’s upper-90s four-seamer and 90 mph cutter were on full display. He fanned more than one quarter of his opponents and notched a huge 14.8% swinging-strike rate. This year in Triple-A, he’s added a two-seamer and upped the usage rates on both his curveball and changeup, giving him a more well-rounded arsenal.
Dillon Dingler Keeps Getting Better
There was a time not too long ago where Dillon Dingler seemed to be on track to be a backup catcher. That’d have been a perfectly fine career, but it now seems he is so much more than that, which is great for him and the Tigers.
Dingler was a second-round pick of the Tigers in 2020. For most of his time in the minors, the book on him was that he had a great defensive skill set but his ceiling would be capped by a propensity for swinging and missing.
In 2022, Dingler spent the entire year at Double-A. He hit 14 home runs in 448 plate appearances and drew walks at a solid 10% clip, but his 31.9% strikeout rate was far too high high. For reference, the MLB average was 22.2% last year. The highest qualified hitter was Ryan McMahon at 32.3%. Players generally strike out more as they climb the minor league ladder and face tougher competition. With Dingler already whiffing at a high rate in Double-A, it would be natural to expect his rates to increase as he got to Triple-A and then the majors.
That season dimmed his stock a bit. Baseball America had him as the No. 4 prospect in the Tigers’ system going into 2022 but bumped him to No. 7 ahead of the 2023 season. Going into 2022, FanGraphs had Dingler at No. 4 in the system and even slotted him in as the game’s No. 108 prospect. Tthe following year, Dingler was off the Top 100, dropped to No. 7 in the system, and given a 45 FV (future value) on the 20-80 scale. The May 2024 scouting report from FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen provides a good snapshot of how Dingler was viewed at that time:
“The athleticism and receiving to be a do-it-all defender behind the dish is here, and much of Dingler’s prospect variance is tied to whether his hit tool and medium-sized frame will enable him to be a primary catcher or just a luxury backup. He swings through a ton of in-zone fastballs and really struggles to get on top of anything in the upper third of the zone. There aren’t many catchers capable of punishing mistakes with power the way Dingler does, but his bat-to-ball ability is also comfortably worse than the typical hitter at that position. He shares quite a few similarities with Jake Rogers and should end up playing a lot, producing about 1.5 annual WAR in a low-end primary catching role.”
The 2023 season didn’t improve the way he was viewed. Injuries limited him to 89 games, including 26 at the Triple-A level. He punched out in 31.2% of his plate appearances and put up an ugly .202/.266/.384 line. Going into 2024, the Tigers gave him a 40-man spot to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft, but BA knocked him down to No. 9 in the Detroit system. FanGraphs bumped him down to No. 10 and dropped his FV to 40+ (again, on the 20-80 scale).
Dingler’s 2024 was something of a mixed bag. His results at the Triple-A level were very encouraging. He took 301 trips to the plate and trimmed his strikeout rate to 20.3% — a massive improvement. His 10% walk rate was still good, and he hit 17 home runs. His .308/.379/.559 line translated to a 145 wRC+. That got some help from a .337 batting average on balls in play, but there were a lot of good signs regardless.
However, Dingler also got his first taste of the majors and delivered more worrisome results. It was a small sample size of 87 plate appearances, but his 34.5% strikeout rate was the exact kind of thing that prospect evaluators were concerned about in previous seasons. His .167/.195/.310 line was obviously unpleasant.
Last year was a breakout. An early injury to Rogers opened up some playing time, and Dingler ran with it. By the end of the year, he had appeared in 126 games. His defense received strong grades, as expected for a guy who was considered a glove-first prospect. He was credited with six Defensive Runs Saved, putting him among the top 15 catchers for that stat. FanGraphs had him as one of the game’s 10 best pitch framers. Statcast had him in the top ten in terms of framing, throwing and blocking. He won the American League Gold Glove for the catcher position.
The offense was arguably more notable, given his past reputation. Dingler’s 23.5% strikeout rate was a bit higher than average but very tolerable and certainly better than his minor league work. His 4.9% walk rate was subpar, but he hit 14 home runs and slashed .278/.327/.425 for a 109 wRC+. That was juiced by a .345 BABIP but was encouraging nonetheless.
So far in 2026, he’s been even better. It’s a tiny sample of 83 plate appearances but his walk rate has moved up a bit to 6%, still well below average but an uptick nonetheless. His strikeout rate is all the way down to 16.9%. He has a .264/.346/.528 line and 145 wRC+, despite a subpar BABIP of .264. Statcast puts his average exit velocity in the 84th percentile of qualified hitters. His hard-hit rate is 96th and barrel rate 95th.
As mentioned, that is a small sample and maybe he can’t maintain it. But at this point, Dingler has 639 career plate appearances. Even with his nightmare start in 2024, he has a combined .261/.311/.421 line, 104 wRC+, 4.9% walk rate and 24.1% strikeout rate. That walk rate may even increase, since he usually walked about twice as much in the minors.
Maybe the strikeouts will creep back up, but there are some encouraging indicators under the hood. Dingler had a decent eye, hence the walks in the minors, but he would miss when he did decide to swing. As mentioned in the pull quote above, a big problem was him missing balls in the strike zone, not so much a problem with chasing.
His contact rate in Double-A in 2022 was 67.8%. For context, the major league average last year was 76.4%. In 2023, when he was still striking out a lot in the minors, his contact rate was 70.6%. But in 2024, he got that up above 76%, both in the majors and in the minors. He was at 77% last year and is at 78.5% so far in 2026.
It’s possible that pitchers adjust how they attack Dingler. Perhaps due to his reputation, 53.8% of the pitches he saw last year were in the strike zone. That was well above the league average of 41.9%. In the early going here in 2026, only 47.8% of pitches he has seen have been in the zone. That’s still above par but a big drop from the year before. If pitchers continue to throw him fewer strikes, he may have to adjust his approach, but he’s not a free swinger right now. His 48.5% swing rate last year was above average but barely, as the league-wide mean was 47.4%. Since he was getting attacked more, it makes sense that he would swing more. He is up to 49.5% this year, despite seeing fewer pitches in the zone, though he is still getting balls over the plate a lot.
The overall package has been valuable so far. Dingler has appeared in 174 big league games. Thanks so his contributions on both sides of the ball, FanGraphs has credited him with 5.0 wins above replacement. Dating back to the start of last year, Cal Raleigh and Shea Langeliers are the only backstops with more fWAR. Baseball Reference is a bit more bearish, giving him 3.9 WAR so far. Time will tell if Dingler can hold his gains on the strikeout side of things, but the defense gives him a strong floor and he can clearly put a charge in the ball when he does connect.
Dingler’s breakout is a great development for the Tigers. They are about to lose Rogers to free agency in a few months. If Dingler were a strikeout-prone backup, as expected, Detroit would have been looking for a new catcher in the coming offseason. Instead, they should be able to just roll with Dingler.
They may have to replace Rogers, but that could also be done in house. Eduardo Valencia is already on the 40-man roster and has some helium thanks to a .319/.405/.622 showing in Triple-A last year. His numbers aren’t as strong so far in 2026, currently sporting a .182/.308/.299 line, but with an unfortunate .222 BABIP. There are questions about whether he can stick behind the plate, but the Tigers are still trying. He’s been in the catcher position for 101 innings this year, compared to 53 1/3 at first base. FanGraphs currently considers him the No. 8 prospect in the system.
Dingler is controlled through 2030, so there are also long-term questions to be answered. A couple of Detroit’s top prospects are catchers. Thayron Liranzo and Josue Briceño are consensus top five guys in the system. Briceño is generally considered a top-100 prospect. Liranzo is already on the 40-man roster but hasn’t yet reached the Triple-A level. He spent most of 2025 at Double-A and struck out at a 31.7% rate. He was slowed by an oblique strain this spring and is only now getting ramped up. Briceño also reached Double-A last year and hit better but has more questions about his ability to stick at catcher. He recently underwent wrist surgery and is likely to miss a few months of this year. Neither of these two are knocking on the door yet but could be at some point.
Even if Briceño is ultimately pushed to first base and designated hitter, the Tigers have Spencer Torkelson and Kerry Carpenter under club control through 2028. It’s possible the Tigers will get to a point where they feel someone from that group can be traded.
Even if they don’t build up enough of a surplus to trade someone, Dingler’s development is great for the long-term spine nonetheless. Kevin McGonigle is now signed through 2034 and could be the everyday shortstop for much of that span. Max Clark is one of the top prospects in all of baseball and is currently playing in Triple-A. He should be up at some point this season and could be the center fielder in Detroit through 2032.
Along with that long-term core, the Tigers have financial flexibility. Thanks to an aversion to long-term free agent contracts in recent years, their books are fairly clean. The Javier Báez deal is done after 2027. Framber Valdez is signed through 2028 but can opt out of the final year. All their other players making eight-figure salaries are slated for free agency after the current season. Pretty soon, the McGonigle and Colt Keith extensions will be the only guaranteed deals on the books, and those aren’t especially onerous.
The Tigers will probably need more pitching. Valdez can opt out after 2027. Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Justin Verlander and Casey Mize are free agents after the current season. That clean payroll outlook will give the front office space to sign guys, and as mentioned, they could also find themselves with a position player logjam that leads to a trade.
Detroit could also explore a Dingler extension if they were so inclined. He would probably be amenable to one. Catchers don’t age especially well due to the rigors of the position, which means they rarely receive big free agent deals — at least relative to other position players. J.T. Realmuto got to $115.5MM back in 2021, and he’s still the only free agent backstop to crack nine figures. That’s a big number, but dozens of infielders and outfielders have beaten that handily.
Dingler was a bit of a late bloomer, as he didn’t reach the majors until his age-25 season and didn’t break out until he was 26. His window of club control already goes through his age-31 season, meaning he would hit the open market ahead of his age-32 campaign. If the Tigers wanted to lock him up and add another year or two, it seems fair to assume he would be interested.
Extensions for catchers this early in their careers are rare. Most of the notable recent deals for catchers came when they pushed into their arbitration years. Will Smith signed his $131.5MM deal with the Dodgers when he had over four years of service time. Alejandro Kirk was also in that bucket when the Blue Jays gave him $58MM. Raleigh and Sean Murphy had between three and four years of service when they got $99.4MM and $73MM, respectively.
The one recent deal that aligns with Dingler’s current status is the eight-year $50MM deal signed by the Nationals and Keibert Ruiz. Apart from the fact that both catchers have between one and two years of service, it’s not a great comp. Ruiz hadn’t had as much success then as Dingler has now. The deal was mostly a bet on Ruiz’s prospect pedigree, which has not panned out so far. Ruiz has mostly struggled and the deal looks like an albatross. It’s safe to presume he’d top that deal by a comfortable margin.
Contract talk aside, Dingler is making the Tigers stronger now and can continue to do so for years to come. Detroit will face some challenges with none of their starters signed long-term, but the Tigers have a strong foundation on the position player side to utilize, with Dingler rapidly emerging as a key piece of that core.
Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images
White Sox Designate Lucas Sims For Assignment
The White Sox shuffled up their bullpen Thursday, announcing that veteran righty Lucas Sims has been designated for assignment. Right-hander Tyler Davis has had his contract selected from Triple-A Charlotte and will join the big league relief corps.
Sims, 32 next month, pitched 10 innings for the South Siders prior to this morning’s DFA. He was tagged for seven runs (five earned) on nine hits, seven walks and a hit batter. He fanned 10 of his 46 opponents (21.7%), but his perennially spotty command also led to 17.4% of his opponents reaching base without even needing to put a ball in play.
The White Sox added Sims on a minor league deal over the winter. He had a nice spring, firing six shutout innings with three hits, three walks and eight strikeouts, but didn’t make the Opening Day roster. He began the season in Charlotte and tossed a scoreless frame before being selected to the majors when the Sox parted ways with Rule 5 pick Jedixson Páez.
A veteran of 10 partial major league seasons, Sims has more than six years of service time. He was a useful middle relief and eventual setup arm at his peak in Cincinnati, pitching to a combined 3.93 ERA in 183 1/3 innings from 2019-23. Sims punched out a hearty 31.9% of opponents in that time but was far too prone to free passes, issuing walks at a 12.2% clip.
Sims collected 39 holds and four saves in 2023-24, but a 2025 stint with the Nationals saw his shaky command erode to untenable levels. Sims walked more than 19% of his opponents (14 of 72) and plunked another seven batters before being cut loose in Washington. This year’s command was better than that low point, but Sims has walked or plunked more than 15% of the 1429 batters he’s face in the majors. It’s unlikely he’ll ever end up with even average command over a sample of any note.
The White Sox will have five days to trade Sims or place him on outright waivers. If they go the waiver route, that’d be an additional 48-hour process, meaning his DFA will be resolved within a maximum of one week.
As for Davis, he’ll be making his major league debut the first time he takes the mound. The 27-year-old was never drafted, instead signing with the Sox out of the independent Pioneer League in 2024, when he played for the Oakland Ballers. He’s a Sam Houston State product who’s pitched 103 innings in pro ball since signing. In that time, Davis has logged a 3.41 earned run average with a 27.1% strikeout rate and 12.4% walk rate.
Davis has some experience as a first baseman as well, having worked as a two-way player in college. However, he’s focused solely on pitching in affiliated ball and will come to the ChiSox with a four-seamer that’s been sitting 96.4 mph in Triple-A, a splitter that’s averaged 86.2 mph and a slider at nearly the same velocity as that split.
Phillies Release Taijuan Walker
The Phillies have released veteran right-hander Taijuan Walker, per a club announcement. Philadelphia also optioned right-hander Alan Rangel to Triple-A Lehigh Valley and recalled right-hander Nolan Hoffman. It seems there’ll be another move before today’s game to fill the 26th spot on the roster.
Walker, 33, is in the final season of a four-year, $72MM contract that didn’t pan out at all as the team hoped. It was a surprisingly large contract at the time he signed the deal. Walker was fresh off a solid 29-start showing with the Mets (3.49 ERA, 157 1/3 innings), but his rate stats didn’t support that level of run prevention. Walker had a decent season as an innings eating, back-of-the-rotation starter in year one of the contract (4.38 ERA, 172 2/3 frames), and he posted solid results between the rotation and bullpen in 2025 as well (4.08 ERA, 123 2/3 innings).
The other two seasons of the contract have been a nightmare. Walker was one of the least-effective pitchers in the sport in 2024, yielding a 7.10 earned run average across 83 2/3 innings. This season has gone even worse. The veteran righty has pitched 22 2/3 innings and been shelled for 25 runs (23 earned) on a whopping 36 hits and 11 walks with only 17 strikeouts. He’s working with the second-worst velocity of his career — ahead of only that disastrous ’24 campaign — and missing bats at his lowest levels ever. Between those red flags and the 9.13 ERA, the Phillies were left with little choice but to move on as they try to crawl out of an 8-16 hole and snap a woeful eight-game losing streak.
The Phillies will remain on the hook for the rest of Walker’s $18MM salary this season. He’s still owed a bit more than $15MM of that sum. Any team that signs Walker would owe him only the prorated league minimum for any time he spends on said club’s major league roster or injured list. That amount would be subtracted from what the Phillies owe, but they’re paying the vast majority of the tab even in a best-case scenario.
Ace Zack Wheeler will return to the Phillies’ rotation this weekend, though it’s anyone’s guess how he’ll perform on the heels of a procedure to address thoracic outlet syndrome. He’s posted a 5.85 ERA in 20 minor league rehab innings, albeit with more encouraging rate stats: 28% strikeout rate, 6.1% walk rate, 45.1% ground-ball rate. Wheeler will join last year’s Cy Young runner-up, Cristopher Sánchez, longtime top prospect Andrew Painter, and veterans Aaron Nola and Jesús Luzardo in the Philadelphia rotation.
All told, Walker ends up with 402 2/3 innings of 5.12 ERA ball as a member of the Phillies. He now becomes the second high-priced veteran whose contract will effectively be eaten by the Phillies this season. Outfielder/designated hitter Nick Castellanos was also cut loose from the final season of a five-year, $100MM contract just prior to spring training. He’s since signed with the Padres, for whom he’s batting .146/.196/.208 in 51 plate appearances. As with Walker, the Phillies are paying the vast majority of Castellanos’ $20MM salary. The Padres only owe him the prorated minimum for any time spent in the majors.