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Orioles Release Andrew Suarez

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The Orioles announced they’ve released left-hander Andrew Suárez from his minor league deal. The 31-year-old had been pitching for Triple-A Norfolk.

Suárez, not to be confused with Baltimore righty Albert Suaáez, had been working out of the bullpen in Triple-A. He surrendered 11 runs (nine earned) through 13 2/3 innings. He fanned 12 against five walks with a roughly average 44.2% ground-ball percentage.

A former second-round pick of the Giants, Súarez started 29 games for San Francisco back in 2018. He turned in a 4.49 ERA over 160 1/3 innings in what has been his most productive MLB work. The Miami product saw scattered action over the next two seasons before making the jump to Korea in 2021. He parlayed a strong year with the KBO’s LG Twins into an opportunity in Japan, but Suárez didn’t find the same level of success for the Yakult Swallows of NPB.

The Cardinals brought Suárez back to the affiliated ranks on a minor league deal a year ago. St. Louis selected his contract shortly after the All-Star Break and used him in low-leverage relief during the season’s second half. He tossed 27 2/3 innings across 13 appearances, struggling to a 7.16 ERA. Suárez’s 13.1% strikeout rate and 11.5% walk percentage were each well worse than average. His ability to work multiple innings and career 4.35 ERA at the Triple-A level could nevertheless get him another minor league opportunity as a free agent.

Orioles Sign Andrew Suarez To Minor League Deal

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The Orioles signed reliever Andrew Suárez to a minor league contract, the club announced. The team did not indicate if he’ll receive an invitation to big league camp.

Suárez, 31, saw a bit of major league action with the Cardinals last year. St. Louis had inked him to a minor league pact during the 2022-23 offseason. They selected his contract at the end of July. Suárez went on to make 13 appearances in low-leverage relief. He pitched 27 2/3 innings with a 7.16 ERA. The former second-round pick had a well below-average 13.1% strikeout rate and was tagged for seven home runs.

St. Louis took the lefty off the 40-man roster at the end of the season. He elected minor league free agency after clearing outright waivers. While his MLB work didn’t go well, he lands another opportunity thanks to his solid numbers in the minors. Suárez worked in a multi-inning capacity for the Cards top affiliate in Memphis, logging 64 frames through 28 appearances. He turned in a 4.08 ERA while striking out 24.5% of batters faced with a 45.1% ground-ball rate.

Suárez has allowed 4.27 earned runs per nine in parts of four Triple-A campaigns. He owns a 4.96 ERA through 230 1/3 career innings at the big league level, with the vast majority of that experience coming when he started 29 games for the Giants six years back. Suárez spent two seasons overseas between his stints in San Francisco and St. Louis. He had an excellent year in the KBO in 2021 but struggled in a small sample in Japan the following season.

Cardinals Outright Andrew Suárez, Casey Lawrence

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The Cardinals announced on Thursday that pitchers Andrew Suárez and Casey Lawrence have elected free agency after being outrighted off of the 40-man roster. In addition, the team sent three more players, right-hander Kyle Leahy and infielders Irving Lopez and Juniel Querecuto, outright to Triple-A Memphis.

The moves clear five spots on the team’s 40-man roster, bringing the total down to 35. Not so coincidentally, the Cardinals currently have five players on the 60-day IL who will need spots on the 40-man following the conclusion of the World Series: Dylan Carlson, Brendan Donovan, Packy Naughton, Wilking Rodriguez, and Guillermo Zuñiga.

Suárez appeared in 13 games for St. Louis this season, pitching 27.2 innings in a long relief role. The southpaw was little more than a mop-up man, posting a 7.16 ERA and a 5.67 SIERA, while walking nearly as many batters as he struck out. He did, however, look much more comfortable at Triple-A, posting a 4.08 ERA in 64 innings with the Memphis Redbirds.

Lawrence didn’t have much more success than Suárez, pitching to a 6.59 ERA and 5.05 SIERA in 27.1 innings of long relief. Those aren’t great numbers for the 35-year-old journeyman, but on the bright side, he did a good job limiting hard contact for the second year in a row, holding opposing batters to an 88.1-mph average exit velocity and finishing with a respectable 4.39 xERA.

Leahy appeared very briefly for the Cardinals in 2023, pitching in three games, facing 15 batters, giving up four runs, and recording five outs. He was optioned in mid-July, barely two weeks after making his MLB debut. Unfortunately for the 26-year-old righty, his numbers at Triple-A weren’t much more impressive than they were in the majors; he posted a 9.74 ERA and a 6.63 FIP through the final two months of the season.

Lopez has been in the Cardinals organization since 2017, when he was taken in the 19th round of the draft. After a strong showing at Triple-A, batting .315 with a 1.001 OPS in 19 games, the 28-year-old made his MLB debut at the end of September. He went hitless in 11 at-bats but recorded his first big league RBI on a sacrifice fly in the final game of the season.

Querecuto, a utility infielder, was a mid-September call-up, appearing in nine games and splitting his time between first, second, and third base. He went 2-for-20 with a single, a double, and a walk. Having been outrighted previously in his career – back in 2016 with the Rays – Querecuto could have elected free agency instead of accepting his outright assignment, but evidently, he has decided to remain in the Cardinals organization. After bouncing around between five organizations in his professional career, it makes sense that he’s interested in sticking with the team that gave him his first shot at big league action in seven years.

Cardinals Activate Adam Wainwright From 15-Day Injured List

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The Cardinals announced a set of roster moves, headlined by Adam Wainwright’s activation from the 15-day injured list.  St. Louis also selected the contract of left-hander Andrew Suarez, moved Ryan Helsley to the 60-day injured list, and optioned catcher Ivan Herrera and left-hander Zack Thompson to Triple-A.

Wainwright will take the ball to start tonight’s game against the Diamondbacks, as the veteran will try to get his 18th and final Major League season on track.  He last pitched on July 4, as shoulder inflammation and (as implied by Cardinals manager Olli Marmol) a broader range of nagging injuries sent Wainwright to the IL for the second time this season.  He also started the year on the IL due to a groin injury that delayed his 2023 debut until May 6.

It seems clear that Wainwright simply hasn’t been himself all year, as the 41-year-old has been hit hard to the tune of a 7.66 ERA over 11 starts and 51 2/3 innings.  His injuries are quite possibly to blame, or it could be that time has simply caught up to a pitcher who has defied convention by remaining an effective starter into his 40’s.  In the best-case scenario, this latest absence will act as a reset for Wainwright and allow him to finish his career on high note, albeit amidst a very disappointing Cardinals season.

Suarez signed a minor league deal with St. Louis during the offseason, and now looks set to make his first MLB appearance since 2020.  Breaking into the bigs with three seasons pitching for the Giants, Suarez posted a 4.66 ERA over 202 2/3 innings with San Francisco before heading overseas.  Suarez pitched well for the KBO League’s LG Twins in 2021, but a move from South Korea to Japan didn’t pan out — he had a 6.23 ERA over 21 2/3 innings with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball in 2022, pitching most of the year with the Swallows’ top minor league affiliate.

The move back to North America has served Suarez reasonably well, as he has a 4.08 ERA, 24.5% strikeout rate, and 8.9% walk rate in 64 innings with Triple-A Memphis.  Working mostly as a multi-inning reliever, Suarez has been stretched out as a starter in his last three outings, and could be paired with Wainwright in a piggyback combo while Wainwright gets fully ramped up.  Since several Cardinals starters are trade candidates heading into the deadline, Suarez might get an opportunity should one or more holes in the rotation open up.

Helsley’s 15-day IL stint began on June 10, and he was expected to miss at least a few more weeks anyway since he only recently started throwing bullpen sessions.  The reliever is recovering from a forearm strain, and told MLB.com and other reporters that he was taking a more cautious approach to his recovery after trying “to rush back too quick” from a similar injury in 2018.

Cardinals Notes: O’Neill, Matz, Edman, Suarez

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Cardinals outfielder Tyler O’Neill has been out for three weeks with a lower back strain, and it’s taking longer than expected for the 27-year-old to get back on track. The original hope was that he could go on a minor league rehab assignment last weekend, but manager Oli Marmol said on Monday this week that O’Neill hadn’t progressed to the point where that could happen. MLB.com’s John Denton tweets that O’Neill resumed baseball activity yesterday but only in the form of light swings off a tee.

It’s not yet clear when O’Neill will head out on that rehab assignment, but it’s fair to say his absence will be lengthier than originally expected. The mounting scope of his absence is notable in multiple facets. First and foremost, it deprives the Cards of a potential high-end source of power. Health troubles have dogged O’Neill over the past two seasons, but as recently as 2021 he clubbed 34 home runs and swiped 15 bases while batting .286/.352/.560 in 537 plate appearances.

O’Neill’s absence also gives the Cardinals some additional runway to look at younger talent. Twenty-four-year-old Alec Burleson hasn’t logged everyday at-bats but has frequently remained in the lineup through some struggles, in part due to both O’Neill and Dylan Carlson currently residing on the injured list. Burleson has thus far mustered a rather punchless .258/.324/.290 batting line since O’Neill hit the IL, but it’s still valuable exposure to big league pitching for the promising slugger, who hit .331/.372/.532 in 470 Triple-A plate appearances last season.

From a larger picture standpoint, O’Neill’s injury further muddies the Cardinals’ outfield outlook as the summer trade season approaches. O’Neill and Marmol already had a public spat early this season after the manager suggested to the team’s beat writers that his outfielder hadn’t hustled at full effort when trying to score from second on a single to the outfield. O’Neill naturally disputed that notion and took exception to Marmol publicly airing his frustration.

The two have ostensibly put the issue behind them, but the Cardinals have a fairly well-documented battle for playing time in the outfield and O’Neill is only a year and a half away from reaching free agency. There’s been plenty of speculation about a potential trade, and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale wrote over the weekend that Cardinals brass could indeed look into potential trades of O’Neill in exchange for rotation help this summer.

O’Neill only hit .228/.283/.327 with a 34.3% strikeout rate in 99 plate appearances before being placed on the injured list. The longer he’s out, the less time he has to show he’s righted the ship — and the greater the concern for any potentially interested trade partners. Given his injury troubles and that diminished production prior to the injury, it’s not a given that O’Neill will even have sufficient trade value to net the Cardinals meaningful pitching help.

That need for starting pitching is due both to a lack of starters controlled beyond the current season and the 2023 struggles of some current rotation members. Chief among them is lefty Steven Matz, one of just two current starters (in addition to Miles Mikolas) signed beyond the current season. Matz inked a four-year, $44MM deal in free agency in the 2021-22 offseason and has struggled to remain healthy and to pitch well when on the field.

The 31-year-old Matz was torched for a 6.39 ERA through his first six starts this year but looked to be turning a corner when he held opponents to four earned runs over 15 1/3 innings in three starts from May 7 through May 19. A date with the Reds at Great American Ball Park yesterday proved otherwise, however, as Cincinnati jumped Matz for six runs on 11 hits and two walks in just four innings of work.

Matz’s 5.72 ERA in 10 starts is even higher than last year’s 5.25 mark (15 games, 10 of them starts), which came in a season that saw the southpaw battle shoulder and knee injuries. Denton further reports that while the Cardinals have used six starters during their current stretch of 19 games in 19 days — Matthew Liberatore is slated for his second start this weekend — they’ll drop back to a conventional five-man arrangement after their coming off-days. The 23-year-old Liberatore, who’s been excellent in eight Triple-A starts — could push the struggling Matz off the starting staff, at least on a temporary basis.

Turning from a pair of players who are currently mired in some struggles to one who’s trending in the other direction, Tommy Edman discussed a key part of his recent hot streak with Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The switch-hitting infielder has begun batting right-handed against certain right-handed pitchers whom he feels he can see better from that side of the plate. Rather than simply favoring the standard left-on-right and right-on-left platoon matchup, Edman is selectively favoring right-on-right matchups based on pitch shape, release point and other more granular data points — and thus far doing so with good success. He’s 5-for-14 with a pair of doubles and a triple in right-on-right matchups.

Edman elaborates on the finer details of his approach and how he selects which pitchers are best faced from which side of the plate. It’s a fascinating read from Goold with thoughtful quotes from both Edman and reigning NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt that’ll likely appeal to far more than just Cardinals fans. Edman’s fresh approach to switch-hitting makes sense in an era of increasingly specialized data, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more switch-hitters begin looking into it — particularly if it continues working well for Edman.

Rounding out a smattering of Cardinals-related topics, Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat tweets that lefty Andrew Suarez, who signed a minor league pact with the Cards after two-year run overseas (one KBO season, one NPB season), has an opt-out in his contract on June 1.

The 30-year-old Suarez has had an uneven showing in Triple-A Memphis so far, with a 5.08 ERA in 28 1/3 frames working as a multi-inning reliever. The bulk of the damage against him has come in three particularly tough outings, but Suarez has been scored upon in six of his 15 trips to the mound. He’s fanned 30 hitters in that time but also issued 13 walks, and his overall 22.9% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate are fairly pedestrian. Suarez had a nice rookie campaign with the 2018 Giants (4.49 ERA in 160 1/3 innings out of the rotation) and was outstanding in the KBO in 2021, but he struggled in Japan last season and hasn’t found his stride thus far in Memphis. He has a career 4.66 ERA in 202 2/3 big league innings.

Cardinals Sign Andrew Suarez To Minor League Deal

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The Cardinals announced Friday that they’ve signed lefty Andrew Suarez to a minor league contract and invited him to Spring Training. He’ll provide some left-handed depth and a potential bullpen option after spending the past two seasons pitching in the Korea Baseball Organization (2021) and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (2022).

A second-round pick by the Giants back in 2015, Suarez pitched parts of three big league seasons in San Francisco, impressing with a solid 4.49 ERA in 160 1/3 frames as a rookie in 2018 before regressing to a 5.79 ERA in 32 2/3 innings during his sophomore season. Suarez tossed just 9 2/3 innings during the shortened 2020 campaign, bringing his career ERA to 4.66 in 202 2/3 innings. He’s fanned a below-average 17.8% of his MLB opponents but also posted strong 7.8% walk and 49.8% ground-ball rates as a big leaguer.

Suarez, 30, was excellent with the KBO’s LG Twins back in 2021, pitching 115 1/3 innings of 2.18 ERA ball with a 26.6% strikeout rate, 8.7% walk rate and 57.1% grounder rate. That landed him a deal with NPB’s Yakult Swallows for the 2022 season, which he surely hoped to use as a stepping stone for either a raise on a second season in NPB or a return directly to the big leagues. Unfortunately, things didn’t pan out that way; Suarez spent more time with Yakult’s minor league club than he did their top team, and he was roughed up for a 6.23 ERA in 21 2/3 frames while pitching with the Swallows’ top-level club.

It’s not clear whether the Cardinals view Suarez as a starter or reliever, though he’d have a better path to their roster if he were to head to the bullpen for the upcoming season. He’s worked primarily as a starting pitcher in his career, but the Cardinals have Jordan Montgomery, Adam Wainwright, Miles Mikolas, Steven Matz and Jack Flaherty penciled into the rotation now, with several depth options behind them (e.g. Dakota Hudson, Jake Woodford, Matthew Liberatore, top prospect Gordon Graceffo). In the bullpen, however, he could compete with Genesis Cabrera, Zack Thompson, Packy Naughton and JoJo Romero.

Andrew Suarez Signs With NPB’s Yakult Swallows

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Left-hander Andrew Suarez has signed with the Yakult Swallows of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball for the 2022 season, per a club announcement (link via Yahoo Japan). It’ll be the first season in Japan for the lefty, who spent the 2021 season with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization.

Suarez, 29, will head to Japan on the heels of an outstanding season in the KBO. The lefty in 23 games (22 of them starts) and worked to a pristine 2.18 ERA and 2.72 FIP with an impressive 26.6% strikeout rate, a solid 8.7% walk rate and a huge 57.1% ground-ball rate through a total of 115 2/3 innings. Given that success and his relative youth — Suarez won’t turn 30 until next September — it stands to reason that a strong season in Japan would go a long ways toward putting him back on the MLB map as a free agent.

Suarez, after all, is only three seasons removed from a pretty sound debut campaign with the 2018 Giants. That season saw the 2015 second-rounder rack up 160 1/3 innings of 4.49 ERA ball with a 19.5% strikeout rate that was below the league average but a 6.8% walk rate and 51.3% grounder rate that were both considerably better than the average big league pitcher.

Despite that solid showing and some shakiness at the back of the San Francisco rotation in his sophomore season, Suarez was used almost exclusively as a reliever the following year in 2019. He didn’t take well to the change, scuffling to a 5.79 ERA in a small-ish sample of 32 2/3 innings. Suarez saw even less MLB time in 2020 after the acquisitions of Kevin Gausman, Drew Smyly, Tyler Anderson and Trevor Cahill; he logged just 9 2/3 frames out of the bullpen that season and had his contract purchased by the KBO’s Twins that offseason.

In an odd coincidence, Suarez will continue down a similar career path to 32-year-old righty and similarly named Albert Suarez (no relation). Both made their Major League debuts with the Giants within the past five years and have seen their only MLB action come with San Francisco — Albert from 2016-17 (4.51 ERA in 115 2/3 innings) and Andrew from 2018-20 (4.66 ERA in 202 2/3 innings). The similarities don’t stop there; Albert has spent the past three seasons pitching for the same Swallows club that Andrew will now join. Albert departed the Yakult organization as a free agent this winter and signed in the KBO — albeit with the Samsung Lions and not Andrew’s former Twins.

Time will tell whether either pitcher will make it back to the big leagues, but the younger Suarez has certainly taken some promising steps down that path. Andrew’s 2021 campaign in Japan will be particularly worth monitoring for big league clubs who are eyeing 2022 rotation help.

KBO’s LG Twins Re-Sign Casey Kelly

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Right-hander Casey Kelly has re-signed with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization, reports Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News. Kelly will receive a base salary of $1.2MM, with a further $300K available in incentives. The Twins also signed Adam Plutko a few days ago, bringing them up to the maximum of two foreign pitchers. As Yoo points out, this means they will not be bringing back left-hander Andrew Suarez.

Kelly was a highly-touted youngster, being a first-round draft pick of the Red Sox in 2008. Boston gave Kelly a bonus of $3MM, which was a franchise record at the time. He quickly came to be considered one of the top prospects in the game, appearing on Baseball America’s Top 100 for four consecutive seasons from 2010 to 2013 and headlining the trade that sent Adrian Gonzalez to the Red Sox.

The righty made his debut with the Padres in 2012 but had to be shut down due to Tommy John surgery after just six starts. He eventually made it back to the big leagues for brief stints with San Diego in 2015 and Atlanta in 2016, but with uninspiring results. He then had a nice showing with the Giants in 2018, logging an ERA of 3.04 over 23 2/3 innings.

That run with the Giants was enough to pique the interest of the LG Twins, who brought Kelly to Korea for 2019. Since then, Kelly has got into a groove and thrived, spurring rumors each year that he would be considering a return to MLB. In 2019, he threw 180 1/3 innings over 29 starts, putting up an ERA of 2.55. In 2020 and 2021, his ERA slipped just over 3.00, but he still made at least 28 starts and threw over 170 innings in each campaign. In total, over the three seasons with the Twins, he’s thrown 525 1/3 innings with an ERA of 2.96. That sort of consistent production has drawn the attention of MLB teams, but the 32-year-old is staying in Korea for a fourth straight season.

As for Suarez, he will no longer have a place on the Twins’ roster. The southpaw was a second-round pick of the Giants in 2015 and made his MLB debut in 2018. He made 29 starts that year and logged 160 1/3 innings with an ERA of 4.49. 2019 was a bit of a setback, as he bounced between Triple-A and the big leagues, with an ERA close to 6.00 at each level. With 2020’s shortened MLB campaign and canceled minor league season, he was frequently optioned and only got to throw 9 2/3 innings.

He signed with the LG Twins for 2021 and seemed to get back on track, appearing in 23 games, 22 of them starts, with an ERA of 2.18 and 126 strikeouts over 115 1/3 innings. Despite that strong showing, the club has seemingly moved on to Plutko, which leaves Suarez available to pursue other opportunities. Given that Suarez is just 29 years old and coming off a strong campaign, he should garner plenty of interest from other clubs.

Giants Sign Curt Casali

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The Giants have signed veteran catcher Curt Casali to a one-year major league contract worth $1.5MM, Maria Guardado of MLB.com was among those to report. To make room for Casali on its 40-man roster, the team officially sold left-hander Andrew Suarez’s rights to the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization. Casali is a client of Beverly Hills Sports Council.

Casali became a professional when the Tigers used a 10th-round pick on him in 2011, but he has so far divided his major league career between the Rays and Reds. He was a Red for the previous three years, during which he posted a productive .260/.345/.440 line with 18 home runs in 485 plate appearances. As a defender, the 32-year-old Casali has thrown out a respectable 27 percent of would-be base stealers, but the all-around package wasn’t enough for Cincinnati to keep him in the fold. The team non-tendered Casali before the Dec. 2 deadline instead of paying him a projected $1.8MM to $2.4MM in arbitration.

Now that he’s on his way to the Bay Area, Casali seems like the front-runner to back up returning starter Buster Posey, who opted out last season over COVID-19 concerns. Casali will now reunite with right-handers Kevin Gausman and Anthony DeSclafani, whom he played with in Cincinnati.

Along with Casali and Posey, the Giants also have fellow catchers Joey Bart and Chadwick Tromp, but those two have all three minor league options remaining. In the event the Casali pickup works out well for the Giants, they’ll be able to keep him around in 2022, as he’ll be eligible for arbitration through then.

Andrew Suarez Close To Joining KBO’s LG Twins

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The LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization are close to signing left-hander Andrew Suarez to a one-year contract, according to Daniel Kim of ESPN and DKTV (Twitter link).  It’ll be a $600K pact, Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News tweets. The deal would have to be tied into a purchase of Suarez’s rights from the Giants, as Suarez is still controlled by the San Francisco club.

Suarez was a second-round pick for the Giants in the 2015 and seemed to be emerging as a rotation candidate during a 2018 rookie season that saw him post a 4.49 ERA, 2.89 K/BB rate, and 7.3 K/9 over 160 1/3 innings.  That debut was followed up, however, with only 32 2/3 frames of big league work in 2019 (at a 5.79 ERA), as well as some unimpressive numbers at Triple-A, albeit in the very hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.  This past season, Suarez made several trips back and forth from the Giants’ alternate training site to the active roster, posting a 3.72 ERA over 9 2/3 innings of relief work, but with more walks (six) than strikeouts (five).

Since Suarez is out of minor league options and seemed to becoming an afterthought in San Francisco, it isn’t surprising that he and his representatives explored opportunities elsewhere.  Pitching in the KBO League would allow the left-hander to both earn more money than he would have as a pre-arbitration player in the big leagues, and also presumably give him a chance to start games and re-build his value.  Suarez only turned 28 last September, so there is plenty of time for a potential future return to North American baseball.

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