Diamondbacks Claim Troy Scribner, Designate Jeremy Hazelbaker
The Diamondbacks have claimed righty Troy Scribner off waivers from the Angels, per a club announcement. Arizona designated outfielder Jeremy Hazelbaker for assignment to create roster space.
Scribner had been designated for assignment recently by the Halos to open the door to a claim of fellow righty Akeel Morris. The 26-year-old reached the majors last year in a swingman role and has mostly functioned as a starter over his time in the minors.
In his first 23 2/3 MLB frames, compiled over four starts and six relief appearances, Scribner allowed 11 earned runs on only 17 hits, though a whopping seven of those left the yard. He also compiled 18 strikeouts against ten walks. Scribner has a 4.03 ERA with 8.3 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 over his 149 2/3 career Triple-A innings.
Hazelbaker, who is best known for his unbelievable start to the 2016 season, will lose his roster spot despite having compiled a .258/.327/.500 slash line through 285 MLB plate appearances. The 30-year-old has also mostly demolished Triple-A pitching in recent seasons. While high batting averages on balls in play leave plenty of room for skepticism, Hazelbaker has always posted lofty BABIP figures as a professional. He also knows how to swipe a bag and can play any of the three outfield positions, so perhaps another team will take a shot.
Injury Notes: Giants, Shoemaker, Lamb, Mariners, Gyorko, Ellsbury
Giants lefty Madison Bumgarner thinks he’ll be ready before the early June target time frame set by the club, he tells reporters including Kerry Crowley of the Bay Area News Group (Twitter link). Calling the estimate “conservative” for a pinky fracture, Bumgarner noted that he’s due for a check-up in a few weeks’ time. If he is ready to ramp back up earlier than had been expected, that’d be most welcome for an organization that has had to scramble a bit after suffering some health troubles late in camp. Fellow starter Jeff Samardzija seems to be well on his way to a return after throwing a thirty-pitch pen session today, Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic also notes via Twitter.
Here’s more injury news from San Francisco and elsewhere…
- Meanwhile, Giants southpaw Will Smith is readying to pitch competitively next Monday, Crowley adds on Twitter. He could soon begin an official rehab assignment, which would start the thirty-day clock on his return to the majors. The 28-year-old, who was picked up in a 2016 deadline deal, missed all of 2017 recovering from Tommy John surgery. He’s just now past the one-year anniversary of the procedure, so he has largely progressed on a typical timeline to this point.
- Right-hander Matt Shoemaker has been placed on the 10-day DL by the Angels due to a strained right forearm, the team announced tonight. Anaheim has called righty Parker Bridwell up to take his spot in the rotation for now. Obviously, it’s a concern for Shoemaker, who had two separate forearm-related injuries in 2017 before ending his season to undergo surgery which repositioned the radial nerve in his forearm. The Angels didn’t give a timetable for Shoemaker’s return to action.
- The D-backs announced tonight that third baseman Jake Lamb is hitting the disabled list with a sprained AC joint in his shoulder, though manager Torey Lovullo tells reporters that he’s hopeful the young slugger can return to the lineup after the minimum 10-day allotment (Twitter link via The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan). Righty Matt Koch has been called up to take Lamb’s spot on the roster for the time being, which will give Arizona some additional depth in the bullpen on the heels of a 15-inning game. The D-backs are well covered in terms of depth around the infield. Deven Marrero got the start at the hot corner tonight, though Daniel Descalso and Chris Owings also seem like possible options there.
- The Mariners have placed slugger Nelson Cruz on the 10-day DL with an ankle sprain, the club announced. The move was backdated to April 1st. As Ryan Divish of the Seattle notes (links to Twitter), with two upcoming tilts with National League foes, it was fairly painless for the team to put Cruz on the shelf for a bit. And manager Scott Servais believes Cruz won’t miss more than the minimum, if that. Clearly, the M’s can ill afford any kind of extended absence from Cruz, who has raked since coming to the club on a four-year deal that expires after the present season. In other M’s news, Mike Zunino could be headed in the other direction, as Servais says his top catcher isn’t likely to require an extended absence for his oblique strain (also via Divish, on Twitter). Indeed, the skipper indicated that he believes Zunino will be ready to join the team at some point during its eight-game road swing.
- Also heading to the DL is Cardinals infielder Jedd Gyorko, as Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. His hamstring issue is not believed to be a serious one, but the team may need to make the move to bolster the bench in the meantime. For now, then, it seems likely just to be a temporary blip for a player who’ll likely take the lion’s share of the time at third this year in St. Louis. Outfielder Harrison Bader has been recalled to take the open roster spot.
- Already on the DL with an oblique issue, Yankees outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury has now been set back by a hip injury, as Bryan Hoch of MLB.com tweets. While it seems there’s not a lot of concern with this new malady, it only adds to the laundry list of aches and pains that have plagued Ellsbury of late. While his contract is obviously under water, Ellsbury remains a useful MLB asset and is in greater need than anticipated due to the Yanks’ other outfield injuries. At this point, it seems, fellow outfielder Aaron Hicks will likely be activated first from his own DL placement for an intercostal strain.
Diamondbacks Outright Yasmany Tomas
April 2: Tomas has cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Reno, the team announced Monday.
March 31: The Diamondbacks have placed outfielder Yasmany Tomas on outright waivers, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports. The move will open up a spot on Arizona’s 40-man roster, which had been at capacity.
A former star in Cuba, Tomas has been a letdown since immigrating to the majors on a six-year, $68.5MM guarantee entering the 2015 season. With around $46MM of that money still coming his way, the 27-year-old Tomas is a strong bet to clear waivers. Given that he has three years of service time, Tomas could refuse an outright assignment in favor of free agency, but as Piecoro notes, he’s unlikely to do so because it would mean vacating the contract.
The Diamondbacks previously optioned Tomas to Triple-A entering the season, even though they had just lost starting outfielder Steven Souza Jr. to the disabled list with a pectoral strain. That was clearly a damning sign for Tomas, who has struggled mightily in both the offensive and defensive facets of the game during his Diamondbacks tenure.
While Tomas did belt 31 home runs 563 plate appearances back in 2016, he still wasn’t far above the league average as a hitter that year, evidenced by a 109 wRC+. On the whole, the right-hander has slashed just .268/.307/.462 (98 wRC+) with 48 long balls in 1,169 PAs. He has been significantly worse in the field, meanwhile, having posted minus-30 Defensive Runs Saved and a minus-23.3 Ultimate Zone Rating.
Tomas’ combination of underwhelming offense and horrid defense has led to a sub-replacement level career fWAR (minus-1.4) and likely a stay in the minors for the foreseeable future.
Orioles Trade Stefan Crichton To Diamondbacks
The Orioles announced that they’ve traded right-hander Stefan Crichton to the Diamondbacks in exchange for a player to be named later or cash. Crichton was one of four right-handers designated for assignment by the Orioles on Opening Day as they created roster space for veterans Colby Rasmus, Danny Valencia, Craig Gentry and Pedro Alvarez.
Crichton, 26, debuted with the Orioles last year, though he tossed just 12 1/3 innings in the Majors. In that brief sample, he yielded 11 runs on a whopping 26 hits and four walks with eight strikeouts and a 46 percent ground-ball rate. The former 23rd-rounder did average better than 94 mph on his heater in the bigs, though, and he logged a strong 3.02 ERA with 9.4 K/9, 2.1 BB/9 and 0.38 HR/9 in 47 2/3 Triple-A innings. He has a pair of minor league options remaining, so the D-backs can shuttle him back and forth between Reno and the Majors this year and next, if they wish, without needing to worry about exposing him to waivers.
NL West Notes: Lucchesi, Turner, Souza, D-backs
The Padres rotation — like other parts of the roster — came with some surprises. As Dennis Lin of the Athletic tweets, Joey Lucchesi is going to take the ball for the team’s second game of the season. And while veteran righty Tyson Ross didn’t open the season on the active roster, he’s expected to be added in short order, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune adds on Twitter. Acee notes that there’ll be some competition early in the season to see who’ll be able to stick as a long-term piece in the unsettled rotation mix, noting that Lucchesi has a chance to stay if he performs well.
Lucchesi, 24, was a fourth-round pick in the 2016 draft and will be the first pitcher taken that season to appear in the Majors. He ranks ninth in a stacked Padres farm system according to both MLB.com and Baseball America, having turned in a combined 2.20 ERA with 9.6 K/9, 2.1 BB/9 and 50 percent ground-ball rate in 139 innings between Class-A Advanced and Double-A last season.
More from the NL West…
- Justin Turner is moving closer to swinging a bat, but he’s not yet been cleared to do so, reports Andy McCullough of the L.A. Times. The Dodgers‘ third baseman was diagnosed with a nondisplaced fracture in his wrist late in Spring Training after being hit by a pitch, and Turner tells McCullough that he was initially projected to require two to three weeks of rest before being cleared to swing at all. McCullough writes that Turner will be out until at least May, though his exact timeline remains rather nebulous at present. Turner says that upon being diagnosed with the fracture, he was told the recovery could take anywhere from four to 10 weeks depending on how his wrist responds. “There really is no timetable,” says Turner.
- The Diamondbacks may not need to fill in for outfielder Steven Souza for quite as long as had been feared, as Zach Buchanan of The Athletic reports on Twitter that Souza’s pectoral strain is progressing better than anticipated. That’s promising near-term news for the D-backs, but the team’s long-term outlook remains subject to quite a lot of uncertainty, as Buchanan explores in a subscription piece. The key question, perhaps, is whether the organization can find common ground on a second extension with Paul Goldschmidt. As Buchanan explains, there’s no real indication at this point whether that’ll take place, though CEO Derrick Hall does tell him that “neither side feels an urgency” to explore a new deal at the moment.
Quick Hits: Lindor, Bauer, Rangers, Ichiro, Bae, Boxberger
It doesn’t look like the Indians will reach any extensions with Francisco Lindor or Trevor Bauer before the season begins, though the team did at least explore the possibility of long-term deals with both players, Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer writes. It isn’t any surprise that the Tribe looked into gaining some cost certainty on either man even though Bauer is already controlled through the 2020 season and Lindor through 2021. In the latter’s case, Lindor is still a year away from salary arbitration, though one wonders if Lindor may feel confident enough in his abilities to forego guaranteed money now and wait until free agency to chase an even bigger contract. He already turned down an extension offer reportedly worth around $100MM last offseason, and his stock has only risen after a superb 2017 campaign.
Here’s more from around the baseball world as we enter the offseason’s final day…
- The Rangers seems to be done their offseason shopping, as GM Jon Daniels stated to MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan and other reporters. “I couldn’t be more clear, I don’t expect any more significant acquisitions. There is not a lot going on from our standpoint in the free-agent market,” Daniels said. This also seems to include a pursuit of Greg Holland, as Daniels reiterated that Texas plans to be flexible with the ninth-inning role and allow a closer to emerge from several candidates. Adrian Beltre, for one, still feels that a more established arm is needed, as he feels the end-game plan is “an area that’s going to be a question mark. Normally, when you have really good teams, you have [a closer.] You have closers out there in the free-agent market. … Ideally for me, you get a closer, put him in there and use him.”
- Ichiro Suzuki may begin the season on the DL to give him more time to fully recover from a right calf strain, with Mariners manager Scott Servais telling the Associated Press and other media that a decision will be made tomorrow when the team sees how Suzuki is feeling after playing seven innings today. Utilityman Taylor Motter looks to make the Opening Day roster if Ichiro isn’t available.
- The Pirates‘ interest in Korean shortstop prospect Ji-Hwan Bae dates back almost two years, Elizabeth Bloom of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes, and the team was finally able to land the 18-year-old after he was made a free agent following the Braves’ international signing scandal. Given a second chance at the signing, Pittsburgh again made a push, and Bae said (via an interpreter) that he chose them over other suitors because the “Pirates were the most active team approaching” about a contract. The Pirates thought enough of Bae to give him $1.25MM, the second-largest bonus the franchise has ever given to an international prospect, and GM Neal Huntington feels Bae can stick at shortstop over the long term.
- Brad Boxberger has been named the Diamondbacks‘ closer, the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro and others reported. Boxberger posted a league-best 41 saves in his first season as the Rays’ closer back in 2015, though injuries both cost him the job and limited him to 53 2/3 total innings in 2016-17. Now healthy, Boxberger could again blossom into an effective late-game weapon for Arizona, though Piecoro notes that the larger factor in the Diamondbacks’ decision might’ve been the team’s preference to keep Archie Bradley as a fireman rather than in a strict ninth-inning role. For updates on every team’s closing situation, be sure to follow MLBTR’s sister Twitter feed @CloserNews.
Diamondbacks Outright Albert Suarez
The Diamondbacks outrighted right-hander Albert Suarez after he cleared waivers, Zach Buchanan of The Athletic reports on Twitter. He has accepted the assignment, per the report.
Suarez was selected in the Rule 5 draft from the Giants in December. He did not have to be offered back to the San Francisco organization, though, owing to the fact that he had previously been outrighted.
For Arizona, the result is the chance to hang onto the out-of-options Suarez at Triple-A as depth when the season gets underway. Suarez has some MLB experience, having thrown 115 2/3 innings of 4.51 ERA ball over the past two seasons. He allowed nine earned runs on 15 hits and five walks while recording ten strikeouts in his 12 1/3 innings this spring.
Diamondbacks To Extend Ketel Marte
TODAY: The deal is now official.
YESTERDAY, 4:26pm: Zach Buchanan of The Athletic has tweeted the full breakdown. Marte will receive a $2MM signing bonus and $1MM salary for the coming season, followed by $2MM, $4MM, $6MM, and $8MM salaries through the guaranteed seasons (2019-22).
The options are valued at $10MM and $12MM, each of which come with a $1MM buyout. Incentives (details of which remain unknown) could tack on another $4MM overall.
11:41am: The Diamondbacks have agreed to a five-year, $24MM extension with middle infielder Ketel Marte, Robert Murray of FanRag reports. The deal also comes with a pair of option years worth a combined $22MM, which could make it a seven-year, $46MM pact. Marte is a client of the Legacy Agency.
The Diamondbacks already had Marte under control for the next half-decade, including four arbitration-eligible years, but the extension means they won’t go through that process at all with him. The Phillies made a similar decision Sunday when they signed infielder/outfielder Scott Kingery to a five-year, $24MM guarantee of his own.
The 24-year-old Marte is about to begin his second season in Arizona, which acquired him from Seattle in a blockbuster November 2016 trade. Because the deal also featured Taijuan Walker, Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger, Marte flew under the radar at the time, especially after enduring a rough 2016 with the Mariners. Marte impressed his new team last year, however, even though he didn’t post eye-popping offensive numbers in the majors.
After spending nearly the first three months of 2017 at the Triple-A level, where he raked over 338 plate appearances (.338/.391/.514 – good for a 135 wRC+), the Diamondbacks promoted Marte in late June. The switch-hitter went on to bat .260/.345/.395 (89 wRC+) with five home runs and three stolen bases in 255 PAs. To his credit, Marte collected nearly as many walks (29) as strikeouts (37), and as Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs wrote in December, there’s data suggesting he could be in line for a breakout. Marte was somewhat of a Statcast darling last year, evidenced by his 19th-place ranking in sprint speed and a quality xwOBA (.342).
While Marte’s only a .265/.319/.361 hitter (84 wRC+) with eight homers and 22 steals in 968 major league PAs, the D-backs seem optimistic he’s indeed capable of more in their uniform. And they saw him fare nicely in the field last season, where he logged four Defensive Runs Saved and a 1.1 Ultimate Zone Rating in 507 innings at shortstop. Marte’s now likely to give up short in favor of Nick Ahmed, a gifted defender who missed most of last season, and move to second. It’ll be a relatively new position in the bigs for Marte, who hasn’t lined up at the keystone since logging 31 innings there as a rookie in 2015.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Minor MLB Transactions: 3/26/18
We’ll use this post to run down the day’s minor moves:
- After being designated for assignment yesterday, catcher Chris Herrmann was released by the Diamondbacks, per a club announcement. The 30-year-old won’t get a chance to prove he can return to the strong batting output he produced in 2016 — at least in Arizona. That effort earned Herrmann a career-high 256 plate appearances last season, but he managed only a .181/.273/.345 batting line. He has, however, enjoyed a solid spring, swatting two long balls and carrying a .300/.324/.567 slash in 34 Cactus League plate appearances.
- The Nationals have brought back Alejandro De Aza on a minor-league deal after releasing him to avoid the necessity of a $100K retention bonus, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo tweets. Soon to turn 34, De Aza is at this point mostly an organizational depth piece, though he has at times in the not-so-distant past been a significant contributor at the MLB level. Indeed, he carries an approximately league-average overall offensive line through nearly three thousand major-league plate appearances, most of which have come since the start of the 2012 season. De Aza played only briefly in the majors last year with the Nats and hit .280/.368/.403 in his 212 Triple-A plate appearances.
- Also re-signing after being released was infielder Gordon Beckham, who’ll head to the minors with the Mariners, per Cotillo (via Twitter). The 31-year-old had a torrid spring but, like De Aza, has generally been on the downswing of late after receiving quite a lot of opportunities earlier in his career. Until last year, Beckham had played in at least 88 MLB contests annually since cracking the majors (despite minimal minor-league seasoning) in 2009. But his chances, which were already on the decline, largely petered out in 2017, as he made it into just 11 games in the majors. In his 355 plate appearances at Triple-A in the Mariners organization, Beckham posted a .262/.313/.393 batting line.
- The Diamondbacks have sent outfielder Ramon Flores to the Red Sox, Cotillo also tweets. It is not apparent what Arizona is getting back in return, or whether Flores might even be the PTBNL in the recent swap between the teams. Either way, it’s a minor transactions. Flores signed a minors deal with Arizona and has struggled this spring. He carries only a .204/.281/.256 slash line in 331 plate appearances, but has generally hit well at Triple-A. Last year, Flores hit .312/.409/.460 with ten home runs and 68 walks against 70 strikeouts in his 493 trips to the plate at the highest level of the minors.
NL West Links: Lamet, Giants, Salas, Dodgers
Padres right-hander Dinelson Lamet is headed for the disabled list after leaving Sunday’s outing after just six batters due to elbow pain, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. There doesn’t appear to be any structural damage to Lamet’s elbow and a source tells Acee that the righty will miss just “minimal time,” though that absence looks like it could last into May. “The hope is he will miss only the season’s first month,” Acee writes, which is a somewhat ominously vague timeframe for a pitcher who was expected to play a big role in San Diego’s rotation. Lamet posted a 4.57 ERA, 2.57 K/BB rate and a whopping 10.9 K/9 over 114 1/3 innings in his rookie season, displaying some control and home run-allowance issues but impressing many with his ability to miss bats.
More from around the NL West…
- A Giants trade for starting pitching help is “not likely” as of tonight, a source tells MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi (Twitter links), though the team is considering adding a starter with Madison Bumgarner and Jeff Samardzija both on the DL. Morosi cites the Astros‘ Brad Peacock and Collin McHugh as arms that could be available, though these could be speculative names rather than pitchers the Giants are directly targeting. San Francisco doesn’t have much luxury tax room to afford taking on any significant salary, nor does the club have much in the way of prospect depth to trade away, so it will be interesting to see how (or if) the Giants can adjust to these devastating early-season rotation losses.
- Fernando Salas‘ minor league contract with the Diamondbacks will pay him $1.5MM in base salary now that he has made the team’s Opening Day roster, The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan reports (Twitter link). The right-hander can also earn some additional money via performances bonuses. Salas posted an 0.90 ERA, 7.2 K/9, and just two walks over 10 spring innings for the D’Backs, an impressive performance that won him a slot on the 25-man roster.
- Even though the Dodgers made moves to get under the luxury tax threshold this winter, ESPN’s Buster Olney (subscription required) isn’t certain that this team will use the reset of their tax penalties to pursue a big-name free agent like Manny Machado or Bryce Harper. Splurging on a decade-long contract for Machado or Harper would seem to run counter to how president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman works, though Olney wonders if Friedman could pursue a tactic like offering a shorter-term deal but with a higher average annual value. Of course, L.A. could also spend in different ways next winter, such as acquiring an expensive player in a trade, or (most importantly) exploring an extension for Clayton Kershaw, who can opt out of his current deal after the season.