Luke Williams Elects Free Agency
Utilityman Luke Williams elected free agency after being designated for assignment by the Braves, relays Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He cleared waivers and has multiple career outright assignments, allowing him to return to the market.
There’s a decent chance that’s just a formality and a precursor to a new minor league contract with Atlanta. Williams has bounced on and off the Braves’ roster for the past three-plus seasons. He received a brief call over the weekend while Michael Harris II was on paternity leave. Williams is out of minor league options and was surely aware he’d be the cut once Harris returned to the team.
The call-up gave Williams a few days of major league pay. He appeared in two games, once as a defense substitute and one as a pinch-hitter. He drew a walk against Kolby Allard in his only plate appearance. Williams has taken 350 trips to the plate in the big leagues. He’s a .212/.272/.280 hitter, though he has stolen 25 bases.
Gerrit Cole To Begin Rehab Assignment
Gerrit Cole is taking a significant step in his return from Tommy John surgery. The two-time ERA champ will kick off a rehab assignment at Double-A Somerset on Friday, skipper Aaron Boone tells reporters (including Jorge Castillo of ESPN).
It’s not quite Cole’s first game action. He was able to get on a mound for a pair of brief starts at the end of Spring Training. Cole has spent the past couple weeks throwing bullpen and live batting practice sessions. Friday’s start will be his first regular season game since 2024. His elbow gave out the following spring, and he went under the knife in March ’25.
Minor league rehab assignments for pitchers generally last up to 30 days. The league frequently grants extensions in 10-day increments for those coming back from Tommy John procedures. Cole is probably still a month-plus away from big league readiness.
Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren, Ryan Weathers and Luis Gil comprise the season-opening rotation. The top three have pitched very well in their first four turns. Weathers has been inconsistent and has only once worked beyond five innings, but he’s getting a lot of strikeouts behind the plus stuff that made him an offseason trade target. Gil was the odd man out to begin the season when the Yankees had enough days off to get by with four starters. He has given up four home runs over his first nine innings.
Carlos Rodón has yet to begin a rehab assignment but may return before Cole does. Rodón, recovering from a postseason procedure to remove loose bodies from his elbow, is throwing live batting practice sessions. The rotation would run at least six deep if everyone’s healthy. There are a few weeks for injuries and/or performance to change that picture before Cole and Rodón are back in the Bronx.
Cole will join shortstop Anthony Volpe at Somerset. The infielder began a rehab stint there on Tuesday. Volpe took two at-bats (both strikeouts against the also rehabbing Zack Wheeler) and played five innings at shortstop in his first game. They gave him a rest day tonight. Volpe is rehabbing from October shoulder surgery and can spend up to 20 days on a rehab stint.
José Caballero has gotten everyday shortstop work with Volpe out of action. Although Caballero hit a walk-off two-run double to beat the Angels tonight, he’s batting .169/.222/.288 on the season overall. He’ll slide into a utility role once Volpe is activated. Backup catcher J.C. Escarra is their only player on the bench with minor league options, meaning someone is likely to be designated for assignment once Volpe returns. Minor league signee Randal Grichuk has started the season 1-16 in a short side platoon role as the final player on the bench.
Nick Pivetta Facing Extended Absence With Flexor Strain
The Padres will be without Nick Pivetta for quite some time. Manager Craig Stammen told reporters on Wednesday that San Diego’s Opening Day starter has been diagnosed with a flexor strain (link via AJ Cassavell of MLB.com). The righty is being shut down for an indeterminate period.
Stammen said the absence will be measured in “weeks and maybe months.” The manager and pitcher each expressed confidence that Pivetta will be able to return this season. That suggests they’re hopeful he’ll avoid any surgical procedures.
Pivetta was also diagnosed with a flexor strain while a member of the Red Sox in April 2024. That was a mild strain and he recovered quickly, returning to action a month later. This one will seemingly result in a longer absence. Those are the only two non-viral injured list stints of Pivetta’s big league career. Durability has traditionally been a strength.
Matt Waldron will be activated from the injured list on Friday or Saturday to replace Pivetta in the rotation. It’s an alarmingly thin group behind Michael King. Righty Randy Vásquez is now up to #2 on the depth chart, followed by Walker Buehler and Germán Márquez. They’re already without Yu Darvish for the season and have uncertain timelines for Pivetta and Joe Musgrove.
Griffin Canning should be back a couple weeks from now to take one rotation spot. Any of Buehler, Waldron or Márquez could be pushed from the group once Canning is healthy. Waldron made one MLB start last season and had a 6.48 ERA over 21 appearances in Triple-A. Buehler and Márquez were reclamation free agent additions. They’ve each had one good start and two clunkers in the first three turns through the rotation.
Depending on the injury’s severity, this could also have an impact on the upcoming free agent class. Pivetta can opt out of the remaining two years and $32MM on his contract. That’d be an easy call if he’s healthy and pitching anywhere close to last season’s level.
Rangers Select Cal Quantrill, Gavin Collyer
The Rangers are calling up swingman Cal Quantrill and reliever Gavin Collyer, reports Kennedi Landry of MLB.com. Texas will place righty relievers Chris Martin and Luis Curvelo on the 15-day injured list. In corresponding 40-man roster moves, Texas designated Marc Church for assignment and transferred Cody Bradford to the 60-day injured list.
Martin and Curvelo both made early exits from last night’s loss to the A’s. The former is dealing with a shoulder impingement, while the latter has a biceps strain. That’s actually a relief in Curvelo’s case, as his injury initially looked serious. He’ll miss at least a couple weeks, but there’s apparently nothing amiss structurally with his elbow.
Quantrill will be available as a long man out of Skip Schumaker’s bullpen. The veteran righty finished last season in the Texas organization and re-signed on an offseason minor league deal. He didn’t win a job out of camp and has taken three turns through the rotation in Triple-A. Quantrill has surrendered eight runs over 14 innings but has recorded 13 strikeouts against only four walks.
The Stanford product made 26 big league starts a year ago. Quantrill spent the majority of the season with the Marlins and took the ball twice for the Braves. He allowed 6.04 earned runs per nine across 117 2/3 innings. Quantrill has generally struggled since an excellent two-year stretch with Cleveland between 2021-22.
Collyer, 25 next month, gets his first call to the big leagues. The 6’1″ righty was a 12th-round pick in 2019 who signed for well above slot value out of high school. Control issues pushed him to the bullpen within a couple seasons. The strike-throwing remains a concern, but he has intriguing stuff. He punched out 30% of opponents with a massive 16% walk rate en route to a 4.40 ERA between the top two minor league levels a year ago.
Texas re-signed Collyer as a minor league free agent over the offseason. He has been out to an excellent start with Triple-A Round Rock, striking out 11 across 6 2/3 innings. Collyer has also been around the strike zone in that small sample and only issued two walks. Even if that level of command probably isn’t sustainable, he’ll bring a power arm out of the middle innings. Collyer is averaging around 98 mph on his heater and has both a slider and cutter in his arsenal.
Collyer has shown enough to jump Church on the depth chart. He has a similar profile as a 25-year-old righty with big stuff and well below-average control. Church has made brief MLB appearances over the past couple seasons, tossing 5 2/3 innings of two-run ball. He has spent most of the last two years on the minor league injured list. He has battled oblique and elbow issues, as well as a teres major injury in his shoulder.
Church has struggled over his first few appearances with Round Rock. He has given up four runs on nine hits and four walks across 4 2/3 innings. The fastball is in the 96 mph range, but the Rangers evidently felt more comfortable bringing Collyer up in the short term. They’ll have five days to trade Church or place him on waivers.
Bradford is working back from last year’s UCL surgery. He went on a rehab assignment in early April but hit a snag when he experienced some soreness after that outing. While the Rangers have downplayed any long-term concern, there’s no timetable for the resumption of the rehab stint. The 60-day window backdates to Opening Day, meaning Bradford won’t be able to pitch in the majors until late May at the earliest.
Braves To Select Martín Pérez On Friday
The Braves seem set to bring Martín Pérez right back up to the majors. Manager Walt Weiss told reporters this evening that the veteran southpaw was among the options to start Friday’s series opener against Philadelphia (relayed by Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Mark Bowman of MLB.com suggests it will indeed be Pérez, who is also listed as the team’s probable starter opposite Taijuan Walker on the MLB website.
Atlanta designated him for assignment on Sunday and ran him through outright waivers. Pérez elected free agency but returned on a minor league contract this morning. That might’ve come with an understanding that he’d be quickly called back up. The transactional sequence allowed the Braves to carry a nine-man bullpen for the intervening few games, though it obviously came with the possibility that another team would claim Pérez off waivers.
Pérez has made three appearances in an Atlanta uniform. He has gotten decent results, allowing just five runs across 14 1/3 innings. The 35-year-old southpaw has only struck out six of the 53 batters he faced with a well below-average 7.2% swinging strike percentage.
Bryce Elder is on the mound for tonight’s series finale against Miami. The Braves are off tomorrow. Pérez’s return allows them to give an extra day of rest to their other starters. It’ll be Chris Sale vs. Cristopher Sánchez in a phenomenal pitching duel on Saturday and Grant Holmes opposite rookie Andrew Painter to round out the weekend divisional set. Atlanta hasn’t listed probable starters for next week’s series against the Nationals but would have Reynaldo López and Elder on schedule for the first two games.
The Braves already have two openings on their 40-man roster. They’d only need to make an active roster move involving a pitcher as a corresponding transaction. Dylan Lee and Hayden Harris are their only pitchers with minor league options. They’ll presumably option Harris out after tonight’s game.
Dylan Carlson Elects Free Agency
April 15: The transaction log has been updated to indicate that Carlson elected free agency.
April 14: The Cubs sent outfielder Dylan Carlson outright to Triple-A Iowa, according to the MLB.com transaction log. Chicago designated him for assignment over the weekend when Seiya Suzuki returned from a season-opening injured list stint. Carlson has the right to elect free agency, though the log doesn’t specify whether he’ll do so or report to the affiliate.
Carlson signed a minor league contract in January. He broke camp alongside two other non-roster invitees, Michael Conforto and Scott Kingery. Suzuki’s activation needed to push one of those three off the roster. Conforto offers a lefty bat on a heavily right-handed bench. Kingery hasn’t started a game all season but provides a little more defensive versatility and speed in a pinch-running role than Carlson offers.
The 27-year-old Carlson started one game in left field. Between that and a pinch-hitting appearance, he went 0-4 with a couple strikeouts. Carlson has now appeared at the MLB level in seven straight seasons and has accrued more than five years of service time. A former top prospect, Carlson had a couple league average seasons with the Cardinals early in his career. His bat regressed as he got into his mid-20s, and he owns a .204/.280/.303 line across four teams going back to the start of the 2024 season.
If Carlson accepts the outright, he’ll join Kevin Alcántara, Chas McCormick and Justin Dean as outfielders with MLB experience in Iowa. Alcántara and Dean hold spots on the 40-man roster. The MLB starting outfield is settled with Ian Happ, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Suzuki left to right and Moisés Ballesteros taking the bulk of the designated hitter work.
The Giants’ Punchless Early-Season Offense
The Giants are among the three teams off to a 6-11 start, tying them with the rebuilding Rockies and White Sox for the worst record in MLB through three weeks. It's much too early to write them off, but it has unquestionably been a rough start. They're riding a three-game losing skid into tonight's game in Cincinnati and have been outscored by 22 runs. Only the White Sox and an injury-riddled Blue Jays team have a worse run differential.
San Francisco has been mostly healthy. Their only rotation injury was losing projected sixth starter Hayden Birdsong to elbow surgery late in camp. Their position players had been fully healthy until this afternoon's injured list placements for center fielder Harrison Bader and pinch-runner/fifth outfielder Jared Oliva.
They do have a number of injured relievers, though most of those were known coming into the season. Randy Rodríguez went down to Tommy John surgery last September. They signed Sam Hentges and Jason Foley knowing neither player would be ready for Opening Day. They've lost a couple middle relievers (Reiver Sanmartin, Joel Peguero and José Buttó) since Spring Training, but that's about it. Their early-season struggles have been much more attributable to underperformance than injury.
That's especially true since the bullpen hasn't been the biggest culprit to the slow start. It hasn't been good, but they're 18th in ERA (4.39) and have blown two leads on the season. The pitching in general has been average, about what one would expect given the personnel. The offense has been the much bigger disappointment.
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Rockies Place Kyle Freeland On IL
The Rockies announced today that left-hander Kyle Freeland has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 13th, due to left shoulder inflammation. Fellow lefty Jose Quintana was reinstated from his own stint on the IL as a corresponding move.
Freeland was scheduled to start for the Rockies three days ago but he was scratched due to some tightness in his shoulder. Details on his health are still not clear but the Rockies will let him rest up for at least a few turns through the rotation.
It’s an unfortunate setback for Freeland personally. He was out to a strong start this year, with a 2.30 earned run average through his first three appearances. But beyond that, this reduces the chances of him triggering his $17MM vesting player option for 2027.
Unlocking the player option was always going to be tough, as Freeland needs to throw 170 innings this year. That’s a mark he has hit only twice in his career. Way back in 2018, he got to 202 1/3 innings. His second-best season in that category was 2022, when he only barely got there, finishing at 174 2/3. Last year, a minimal stint on the IL for a back injury knocked him out for 15 days. He took the ball 31 times and logged 162 2/3 innings.
Naturally, Freeland’s best path to hitting that benchmark would be to stay healthy and pitch deep into games. Any kind of injury setback, even a small one, reduces his chances of getting to that line.
Presumably, the Rockies wouldn’t want him to trigger that option. They are rebuilding, having lost 119 games last year, and don’t have strong motivation to spend at that level on a starting pitcher. They did bolster the rotation this winter by signing some pitchers but all to notably lower salaries than that. They gave Michael Lorenzen $8MM, Quintana $6MM and Tomoyuki Sugano $5.1MM. Even if they are willing to bring back Freeland next year, it would make sense for them to prefer to negotiate a salary, as opposed to Freeland having the freedom to just lock in $17MM.
In terms of the on-field results, it’s not a huge deal in the short term. Quintana missed a couple of weeks with a hamstring strain but slots right into Freeland’s position in the rotation. He is taking the ball tonight, followed by Sugano, Ryan Feltner, Chase Dollander and then Lorenzen.
Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images
Jared Young To Undergo Meniscus Surgery
The Mets announced that infielder/outfielder Jared Young has been placed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to April 13th, due to a left meniscus tear. Outfielder MJ Melendez has been recalled to take his place on the roster. Young will undergo surgery, per Will Sammon of The Athletic. The team has not announced an expected recovery timeline.
It’s an unfortunate blow for both Young and the Mets. For Young personally, he was getting some big league time and making the most of it. He has usually hit well in the minors but came into this season as a 30-year-old with just 116 big league plate appearances. Injuries to Mike Tauchman, Juan Soto and Jorge Polanco opened up some playing time with the Mets this year. Young stepped up to take 23 plate appearances and produced a .350/.391/.450 line.
Unfortunately, his season will now be on pause for a while. Meniscus surgeries usually require a couple of months of recovery, give or take. For instance, Tauchman is also out due to meniscus surgery and his recovery will reportedly take six weeks.
Young’s path to playing time in the future will depend upon what else happens on the roster. Soto’s calf strain isn’t considered overly serious, so he’ll likely be back in the outfield before Young is healthy. Polanco’s Achilles injury has kept him primarily in the designated hitter slot, which has allowed Mark Vientos and Young to pick up some start at first base.
For now, Melendez comes up and will be making his Mets debut as soon as he gets in a game. A longtime member of the Royals, he signed a big league deal with the Mets in the offseason but has been on optional assignment so far this year. He has a subpar .216/.286/.431 line at Triple-A, which isn’t too far off his major league career line of .215/.297/.388.
The Mets will likely utilize a rotation of Carson Benge, Brett Baty, Luis Robert Jr., Tommy Pham, Tyrone Taylor and Melendez in the outfield, while Vientos might get more starts at first base. They don’t really have a clear depth infielder on the bench but Baty has experience at second and third, while third baseman Bo Bichette appears to be the emergency shortstop behind Francisco Lindor.
Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images
Porter Hodge To Undergo UCL Surgery
Cubs right-hander Porter Hodge will undergo surgery on the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow, reports Taylor McGregor of the Marquee Sports Network. He will miss the entire 2026 season and likely part of 2027 as well.
It’s obviously an unwelcome development for Hodge, in addition to being another blow for the Chicago pitching staff. He began this season on the 15-day injured list with a right elbow strain. Now that he’s going to miss the remainder of the campaign, he’ll be transferred to the 60-day IL at some point in the future when the Cubs need a 40-man roster spot.
Hodge seemed to break out with the Cubs in 2024. He pitched 43 innings out of their bullpen that year, allowing 1.88 earned runs per nine. His 11.6% walk rate was on the high side but he punched out 31.7% of batters faced, averaging in the upper 90s with his fastball. He earned enough trust to rack up nine saves and nine holds that year. He got some help from a .189 batting average on balls in play and 80.1% strand rate but it was an encouraging season nonetheless.
His results backed up in 2025. His strikeout rate fell to 27.2%, still above average but well below the previous season. His walk rate ticked up a bit to 12.2%. His batted ball luck returned to normal levels and he fell victim to some home run troubles. The end result was a 6.27 ERA on the year. An oblique strain and a shoulder impingement may have impacted his ability to get in a groove.
Ideally, 2026 would have been a bounceback year but that won’t happen now. As mentioned, he has already been on the IL all season and will now stay there. The one silver lining for him personally is that he’ll collect big league pay and service time for the year. He began the season with his service clock at one years and 117 days. There’s a small chance he could qualify for arbitration as a Super Two player, depending on where the cutoff lands at season’s end.
For the Cubs, it’s another blow to the pitching staff. They have already lost Cade Horton to his own UCL surgery. Justin Steele is still working his way back from last year’s UCL surgery. Matthew Boyd, Jordan Wicks, Hunter Harvey, Phil Maton and Ethan Roberts are also on the IL. Some of those guys will be back in the mix later this season but the Cubs will now have to plan on getting through 2026 without any contributions from Hodge.
For now, they have a bullpen consisting of Daniel Palencia, Ben Brown, Caleb Thielbar, Jacob Webb, Hoby Milner, Riley Martin, Luke Little and Ryan Rolison. They have Gavin Hollowell and Charlie Barnes on optional assignment. Swingman Colin Rea is in the rotation but could be pushed back to the bullpen if some injured starters get healthy. The injured relievers could also come off the IL in the future and bolster the depth chart, but it’s also possible further injuries arise in the interim.
Photo courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images