Rockies Place Chase Dollander On IL With Elbow Strain
The Rockies announced a series of roster moves today. Most notably, right-hander Chase Dollander has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to a right elbow strain. Left-hander Sammy Peralta has been recalled to take his spot on the roster. The Rockies also placed infielder/outfielder Tyler Freeman on the paternity list. Outfielder Sterlin Thompson has been recalled for Freeman and will be making his major league debut as soon as he gets into a game.
More to come.
Brennen Davis Has Assignment Clause In Deal With Mariners
Outfielder Brennen Davis is with the Mariners on a minor league deal. As part of that deal, he has an assignment clause today, per Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times. If he triggers the clause, he will be offered up to all the teams in the leagues. If any club is willing to give him a roster spot, the Mariners would have to either add him to their own roster or send him away to another club that would. Divish notes that Davis also has an August 1st opt-out.
It seems like Davis has a decent chance of getting a roster spot in the coming days. He is crushing the ball with Triple-A Tacoma, currently sporting a .293/.404/.569 line. Even in the context of the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, that performance leads to a 145 wRC+, indicating Davis has been 45% better than league average. He has eight home runs in 151 plate appearances and is drawing walks at a strong 12.6% clip.
Those numbers will surely draw the attention of some clubs around the league but it doesn’t seem like the Mariners will let let him get away. “I don’t see a scenario where we don’t keep him in our organization,” general manager Justin Hollander said to Divish. “He’s a right-handed bat with power and there aren’t a ton of them available.”
The Mariners are surely not just making this call based on his 33-game sample this year. Many years ago, Davis was one of the top prospects in the sport. He was a second-round pick of the Cubs in 2018 and hit his way up to the top minor league level in 2021. Baseball America ranked him the #16 prospect in the league going into 2022.
Injuries derailed his progress from there. As Divish notes in his column, it was initially thought that Davis had a herniated disc in his back in 2022, but surgery found a cluster of blood vessels pushing against his sciatic nerve. Subsequent seasons saw him deal with a core muscle strain, a stress reaction in his back and a broken ankle. Around those injuries, he only played 229 minor league games in the four years from 2022 to 2025, producing a .215/.329/.404 line in that time.
The Cubs added Davis to their 40-man roster in November of 2022, to prevent him from being available in the Rule 5 draft. He never got called up to the majors, apart from a stint on the injured list in 2024. Davis got a few days of big league service from that but didn’t get to appear in a game. He was designated for assignment after that 2024 season and then non-tendered. He spent 2025 with the Yankees on a minor league deal while still recovering from ankle surgery in 2024. He returned but then missed more time due to a crash into an outfield wall, per Divish.
It’s been quite an odyssey but Davis now seems to finally be both healthy and performing up to his abilities. Based on his numbers and the comments from Hollander, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s added to the 40-man soon. There may not be playing time available in Seattle immediately, as they have Julio Rodríguez, Randy Arozarena, Luke Raley, Dominic Canzone, Rob Refsnyder and Connor Joe in their outfield mix.
Davis burned two options while on the Cubs’ roster in 2023 and 2024 but still has one remaining. That means the Mariners could give him a 40-man spot and keep him in Tacoma for the time being, unless they want to bump someone else off the active roster.
Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images
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Jordan Westburg To Undergo Season-Ending Elbow Surgery
Orioles infielder Jordan Westburg will undergo elbow surgery and miss the rest of the season, reports Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner. Westburg is already on the 60-day injured list and will stay there for the rest of the campaign.
It’s a disappointing but unsurprising result. Westburg was diagnosed with a partial tear of his ulnar collateral ligament back in February. He and the O’s initially tried for a non-surgical approach, as he was given a platelet-rich plasma injection at that time. Earlier this month, some continued discomfort in his elbow led to him being shut down from throwing. Now it seems the surgical path could no longer be avoided.
Some observers may wonder why he didn’t just undergo surgery in the first place. Generally speaking, surgeries require long recovery timelines, so players and teams usually try to explore the alternatives first. The player often ends up going under the knife in the long run, but there are some cases where the alternate possibilities are effective, allowing the player to return sooner. In this case, perhaps Westburg had a path to helping the Orioles late in 2026 if all went well.
That best-case scenario won’t happen but the O’s likely haven’t lost anything by trying. UCL surgeries for pitchers often take a year or so to recover but position players can come back sooner than that. It’s possible Westburg could return for the start of 2027, which would have been the outcome if he had surgery back in February anyway.
Though the outcome isn’t shocking, it’s likely deflating for Westburg and the Orioles regardless, as injuries have become a big storyline in his career and the team’s season. For Westburg personally, he had a breakout season in 2024, though that was limited to 107 games by a hand fracture which put him on the shelf for over a month. In 2025, he made trips to the IL for a hamstring strain and an ankle sprain, only appearing in 85 games. Now he’s going to miss the entire 2026 campaign. While spending this year on the 60-day IL, Westburg will cross three years of service time and qualify for arbitration. He can be retained through 2029.
For the O’s, Westburg is one of 13 players currently on the IL. That includes five position players. In addition to Westburg, Jackson Holliday, Dylan Beavers, Ryan Mountcastle and Heston Kjerstad are on the shelf.
With no Westburg and no Holliday so far this year, Baltimore has had to go to backup plans on the infield. Gunnar Henderson has been at shortstop and Pete Alonso at first base but Westburg was the planned third baseman and Holliday supposed to be the second baseman. Coby Mayo has been the main guy at the hot corner this year but he has produced a dismal .174/.242/.321 line. Jeremiah Jackson has mostly covered second. His .238/.259/.400 line is better than Mayo’s but still subpar. Blaze Alexander has contributed at both spots but has hit just .244/.299/.289.
With all the injuries, the O’s have started slow, currently sporting a 20-24 record. Their season is still salvageable since so many other teams in the American League are also scuffling. That losing record is good enough for the club to be just a game and a half out of a playoff spot at the moment. They will try to stay in the race in the coming months but Westburg won’t be a part of the solution, so other guys will have to step up. The Orioles could look for infield help ahead of the trade deadline if the incumbent guys aren’t delivering.
Photo courtesy of John Jones, Imagn Images
Orioles Acquire Eduarniel Núñez, Designate Christian Roa
The Orioles acquired right-hander Eduarniel Núñez from the A’s in exchange for cash, the clubs announced Friday. He’d previously been designate for assignment and has now been optioned to Baltimore’s Triple-A affiliate in Norfolk. To open space on the 40-man roster, the O’s designated another right-handed reliever, Christian Roa, for assignment.
The 26-year-old Núñez was one of four players the A’s received from the Padres in exchange for Mason Miller and JP Sears. Shortstop Leo De Vries headlined the return, with rotation prospects Braden Nett and Henry Baez standing as enticing secondary pieces. Núñez was the “fourth” prospect in the deal but also the most major league-ready of the bunch. He’d already made a very brief MLB debut with San Diego and jumped right onto the Athletics’ roster following the trade.
Last summer, Núñez pitched eight innings with the Athletics and was tagged for eight runs on nine hits, seven walks and a pair of hit batters. He did fan nine batters, but when accounting for all the walks and the pair of batters he plunked, those nine punchouts only represented 23% of the opponents he faced — just barely north of the league average.
Lackluster debut notwithstanding, the A’s surely had some hope that Núñez could turn things around in 2026. That hasn’t happened. Núñez has a respectable 4.61 ERA through 13 2/3 innings (2 1/3 in Double-A, 11 1/3 in Triple-A), but he’s walked 11 of his 67 opponents (16.4%) and plunked another two batters (3%). Since coming to the A’s organization last summer, Núñez has faced 155 batters between the majors and minors. A whopping 19.3% of them have reached base without putting a ball in play, whether by walk or hit-by-pitch. He’s also tossed six wild pitches in a total of 33 1/3 innings.
Beyond that poor command, Núñez has experienced an alarming velocity drop this season. His four-seamer averaged 98.1 mph last year but is at an even 95 mph so far in 2026. Last year’s slider sat 88.5 mph. This year, it’s at 87 mph. Perhaps the Orioles have some mechanical tweaks in mind to get him back on track, but it’s not an encouraging trend. Núñez doesn’t have a full year of service under his belt and is in the second of three minor league option years, however, so the O’s have some time to get him trending in the right direction if they’re willing to keep him on the 40-man roster.
Roa, 27, was with the Marlins last year and signed with the Astros as a minor league free agent after being outrighted by Miami. He was briefly called to Houston’s big league roster but was quickly designated for assignment and claimed by the Twins. Minnesota optioned Roa to Triple-A and wound up designating him for assignment themselves not long after. The Orioles claimed him earlier this week, but it’ll be another potentially abbreviated stay in a new organization for Roa.
The No. 48 overall pick out of Texas A&M back in 2020, Roa is a hard-throwing righty who’s yet to break through and establish himself in the majors. 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 4.56 ERA in parts of four Triple-A seasons, fanning 25.5% of his opponents there but also issuing walks at a dismal 14% clip.
This is already his third DFA of the season. The Orioles will either trade Roa, place him on outright waivers or release him in the days ahead. His DFA will be resolved within a maximum of one week.
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Rays Designate Aaron Brooks For Assignment
The Rays have designated right-hander Aaron Brooks for assignment and recalled fellow righty Trevor Martin from Triple-A Durham in a corresponding move, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Their 40-man roster is now at 39 players.
Brooks, 36, signed with the Rays earlier this month after beginning the season in the Mexican League. His contract was selected to the major league roster last weekend, and he made his team debut Wednesday evening. It didn’t go well. The journeyman righty recorded only one out and was tagged for three earned runs on a pair of walks and a homer. That could end up representing the entirety of his time with the Rays; he’ll now be traded, placed on outright waivers or released within the next week. Brooks has been outrighted in the past and thus has the right to reject a minor league assignment if he passes through waivers unclaimed.
This now becomes the seventh season in which Brooks has logged at least one big league appearance. He has just under three total years of major league service time, during which he’s compiled 207 innings with a 6.48 ERA, a 15.2% strikeout rate and a 7% walk rate.
Though he hasn’t had much success in the majors, Brooks has pitched in parts of 10 Triple-A seasons and piled up more than 800 innings there. A 4.80 ERA doesn’t stand out, but he’s spent most of his Triple-A career pitching in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League and has had some successful seasons there. Brooks also spent two years pitching with the Korea Baseball Organization’s Kia Tigers, for whom he logged a 2.79 ERA in 229 1/3 innings from 2020-21.
Angels, Austin Wynns Agree To Minor League Deal
The Angels and free agent catcher Austin Wynns are in agreement on a minor league deal, MLBTR has learned. The Klutch Sports client opened the season with the division-rival A’s but was designated for assignment a week ago. The A’s asked to assign him to Triple-A Las Vegas, but as a player with five-plus years of service, Wynns had the right to refuse, which he did. The A’s then placed him on release waivers, and he subsequently became a free agent.
Wynns spent nearly one calendar year with the A’s after they acquired him in a cash swap with the Reds last June. He’d taken 63 plate appearances with Cincinnati and turned in a mammoth .390/.429/.661 slash (three homers, seven doubles), but that sort of production was never going to be sustainable; Wynns had a modest track record prior to that outburst, and while the short uptick in power was impressive, his overall batting line was also buoyed by a sky-high .513 average on balls in play.
Now 35 years old, Wynns wound up taking 110 plate appearances with the A’s and slashing .167/.204/.304 in that time. The well-traveled backstop’s career marks are somewhere between the extremes of those Cincinnati highs and West Sacramento lows. He’s suited up for the Reds, A’s, Orioles, Giants, Dodgers and Rockies, compiling a lifetime .231/.276/.347 slash line in 826 big league plate appearances (293 games).
Wynns doesn’t draw premium framing grades, but Statcast thinks he’s solid when it comes to blocking balls in the dirt. More impressively, Wynns has shut down 30.2% of attempted base thieves in the majors — right in line with his career 31% mark in the minors. He’s quite strong when it comes to controlling the run game, and clubs clearly value his experience, defensive acumen and work with pitchers, as evidenced by his five-plus years of service despite sub-par work in the batter’s box.
Because Wynns has five-plus years of service, he was able to elect free agency and still retain the remainder of this year’s $1.1MM salary. The A’s are on the hook for the vast majority of that sum. The Angels will owe Wynns only the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the big league roster. That would be subtracted from what the A’s have left to pay out.
The Angels’ catching depth has taken a major hit in recent weeks. Logan O’Hoppe suffered a broken wrist in late April. That injury pushed Travis d’Arnaud into the starter’s role, but he went on the injured list last week due to plantar fasciitis.
That pair of injuries left the Halos with Sebastián Rivero and rookie Omar Martínez as the catching tandem at present. Both signed minor league deals over the winter. Rivero entered the season with only 162 days of big league service. He’s a .169/.220/.202 hitter in 134 big league plate appearances and a .248/.296/.369 hitter in 785 Triple-A plate appearances spread across six seasons.
Martinez, 25, had never played in the majors before being called up earlier this week. He’s 1-for-3 in his fledgling MLB career. The Venezuelan-born backstop posted decent numbers in the lower minors with the Yankees but slashed .208/.297/.358 with a 34.4% strikeout rate in 259 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A dating back to last season. Given that tandem’s minimal track record, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Wynns found himself catching games at Angel Stadium in the near future.
The Opener: Subway Series, Suarez, Lee
With Shohei Ohtani getting the day off, catcher Will Smith led off for the first time in his career. The move paid off for the Dodgers. Smith took Landen Roupp deep in his first at-bat. Ohtani is expected to return to the lineup on Friday, which will likely bump Smith back to the middle of the order.
1. Aces battle in New York
The first Subway Series of the season begins on Friday, with the Yankees heading to Citi Field. It’s a matchup of unexpected top starters for each side. Cam Schlittler will get the ball for the Yankees. He’s built on his 2025 postseason success to become a legitimate AL Cy Young contender. Clay Holmes will oppose Schlittler. The veteran slipped out of the rotation down the stretch last year, but has bounced back in a big way this season. Holmes has allowed two earned runs or fewer in all eight starts. He’s been one of the most effective members of a rotation that includes Nolan McLean and Freddy Peralta.
2. Suarez cruises in revenge game
Red Sox lefty Ranger Suarez faced his former club for the first time on Thursday. He delivered 5 1/3 scoreless frames against the Phillies, striking out eight. Suarez was coming off a minor hamstring injury and was pulled after 76 pitches. “To be honest, it was like a regular game,” Suarez told reporters through an interpreter, including Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic. “Obviously, I know they were my old teammates, but I wanted to just get deep in the game.” Philadelphia signed Suarez as an international free agent in 2012. He’d spent his entire pro career with the organization until this season. Boston handed Suarez a five-year, $130MM deal this offseason.
3. Lee makes history against the Dodgers
Giants outfielder Jung Hoo Lee sliced a line drive down the left field line in the fifth inning against the Dodgers last night. The ball skipped off the side wall and past Teoscar Hernandez. Lee zoomed around the bases for an inside-the-park home run. It was the first inside-the-parker for a Giant at Dodger Stadium, according to multiple reports, including from Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. It was also Lee’s first at any level, even Little League, he told reporters. The play momentarily tied the game, but L.A. would score three times in the sixth inning. Hernandez was at the center of the rally following his defensive miscue.
Photo courtesy of Vincent Carchietta, Imagn Images
What Should The Cardinals Do With Riley O’Brien?
It’s been a weird year for closers. Edwin Díaz, Josh Hader, Ryan Helsley, Emilio Pagán, Carlos Estévez and others are on the injured list. Jeff Hoffman lost his job with the Blue Jays. Pete Fairbanks, just reinstated from the IL, has an earned run average of 10.00. Devin Williams and Andrés Muñoz have ERAs over 5.00. Bryan Abreu, filling in for Hader, has an ERA over 8.00. The Cardinals, meanwhile, are getting great results from a guy who hardly pitched in the majors before his 30th birthday.
St. Louis acquired Riley O’Brien in a very small trade in November of 2023. At the time, O’Brien didn’t even have a 40-man roster spot with the Mariners. All 29 other clubs had passed on claiming him when Seattle placed him on outright waivers in the summer of 2022. He was about to become a minor league free agent, but the Cards saw enough in O’Brien to send cash to Seattle to acquire him and place him on their 40-man roster so he couldn’t hit the open market.
The track record at that time wasn’t much to go on. An eighth-round pick of the Rays in 2017, O’Brien began his career as a starting pitcher. He was flipped to the Reds in August of 2020 for left-hander Cody Reed. Cincinnati added O’Brien to the 40-man roster that November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. Things didn’t work out with the Reds. O’Brien made a brief major league debut in 2021 but posted a 4.55 ERA in Triple-A. He was designated for assignment early in 2022 and shipped to the Mariners for cash or a player to be named later.
O’Brien was moved to a relief role in 2022, a switch that didn’t immediately bear fruit. He finished the year with a 7.03 ERA in 39 2/3 Triple-A innings. He seemed to turn a corner in 2023 when he threw 55 Triple-A innings with a 2.29 ERA in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. O’Brien struck out 37.7% of batters faced and induced grounders on 57.1% of balls in play. His 13.6% walk rate showed that he was still working on his control, but the Cards were intrigued enough to make that small trade and dedicate a 40-man spot to him.
That didn’t pay off right away. O’Brien suffered a flexor strain early in 2024 and missed most of the season. He was only able to make eight big league appearances and 14 more in Triple-A. He went into 2025 with only 10 1/3 major league innings under his belt. He turned 30 in February of that year, just before the season started.
O’Brien was finally able to break out in the big leagues last year, as he gave the Cards 48 innings with a 2.06 ERA. He wasn’t really as good as that ERA would suggest, however. His 11.1% walk rate was quite high and his 22.6% strikeout rate only average. His 54.1% ground ball rate was good but he got a lot of help from a .252 batting average on balls in play and 82.8% strand rate. His 3.61 FIP and 3.82 SIERA suggested he was good but not quite as dominant as the ERA made it seem.
The Cardinals sent him to the minors a few times last year and burned his final option year. That situation could push a pitcher off the roster, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon with O’Brien. He has taken over the closer’s role in St. Louis, with a 2.70 ERA and 12 saves in 20 innings so far this year. Though that ERA is higher than last year’s, the numbers under the hood look far better. His 29.5% strikeout rate, 2.6% walk rate and 62% ground ball rate are all huge improvements. His .320 BABIP this year actually skews a bit to the unlucky side. His 2.06 FIP and 1.67 SIERA think he actually deserves far better than his ERA.
The results are backed by a strong arsenal. O’Brien is averaging 98.4 miles per hour with his sinker, a pitch he is throwing 59.2% of the time. This year’s most-used secondary pitch is a sweeper that comes in around 83.8 mph, though he’s also using a 91.5 mph slider, giving hitters two different breaking pitches to watch out for. There’s also a changeup nominally in the mix, though that has made up less than 1% of his offerings this year.
O’Brien’s success is a big reason why the Cardinals are playing a bit above their heads right now. They have a 24-18 record despite an essentially even run differential. They have scored 194 runs and allowed 193. The +1 run differential gives them an expected win-loss of 21-21, but they have gone 8-3 in one-run games and 5-1 in extra innings. In short, they’ve played like a .500 team on the whole but have eked out three extra wins in close contests. O’Brien locking down 12 saves and earning three wins has surely played a role in tipping those scales.
It puts the Cards in an interesting spot this summer. They had planned for this season to be an evaluation year. They traded away Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan in rebuilding moves. The plan was to spend 2026 letting less-established guys accumulate lots of playing time, so the club could figure out who is a building block and who has trade value.
Perhaps the Cardinals will fall back in the standings and make things easier for the team brass. If not, it could lead to some tough decisions. The front office probably doesn’t want to buy at the deadline since that would require subtracting from the farm system, at a time when they are trying to build it. In fact, they probably want to do more selling, with guys like Lars Nootbaar, JoJo Romero, Dustin May, Nolan Gorman and Alec Burleson being some logical trade candidates.
O’Brien will be a very interesting player to track as well. On the one hand, he is not close to free agency. He came into this year with one year and 129 days of service time. He’s under club control for four more seasons after this one. He could qualify for arbitration this offseason as a Super Two guy, but even he does, four arb years for what looks like a potential high-end reliever is a great thing to have. There’s a case for keeping him around.
On the other hand, reliever performance tends to be quite erratic. O’Brien is 31 years old and doesn’t have a long track record of big league success. He walked 11.6% of batters faced in his minor league career. He had a 13.1% walk rate in the majors coming into this season. He’s now walking just 2.6% of opponents this year. Did he suddenly go from poor control to elite, or is this going to regress?
There’s also the ever-present injury concerns with a pitcher, especially one who throws almost 100 mph. Most high-velocity pitchers deal with arm issues these days and O’Brien had that aforementioned flexor strain in 2024.
There are many moving pieces here, making O’Brien an interesting player to watch in the coming months. As mentioned up top, lots of clubs have gotten poor results from their closers. Relievers are always in demand at the deadline and that need will perhaps be even greater this year. There’s an argument for the Cards to cash in while O’Brien is putting up good numbers. When they plan to truly contend in a few years, he’ll be pushing into his mid-3os and who knows what his status will be at that point?
Between now and the August 3 deadline, there are many ways it could tip. O’Brien could keep locking down games but he could also see his control slip or he could perhaps get hurt. The team could keep winning games and hang in the race or they could slip back. Trade talks won’t earnestly ramp up for a while but the Cardinals will have some interesting phone calls this summer.
Photo courtesy of Dennis Lee, Imagn Images