MLBTR Podcast: Kevin McGonigle, The Padres’ Franchise Valuation, And Edwin Díaz To Miss Time
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- The Tigers signing Kevin McGonigle to an eight-year extension (1:30)
- José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones reportedly having an agreement in place to buy the Padres (13:10)
- Dodgers right-hander Edwin Díaz requiring elbow surgery (27:20)
Plus, we answer your questions, including…
- Are the Braves for real? And what do they do once their injured guys get healthy? (32:20)
- If a salary cap is theoretically implemented, how would it work with the teams currently over the cap? (40:50)
- Can Michael Wacha of the Royals keep up his dominance? (45:50)
- What are the Reds going to do with Matt McLain and TJ Friedl? (48:15)
- Can the Nationals keep up this level of offense? And if so, should they have invested more in this year’s pitching staff? (52:10)
Check out our past episodes!
- Lenyn Sosa Traded, And Injury Concerns For The Astros, Cubs And Orioles – listen here
- Previewing The 2026-27 Free-Agent Class – listen here
- Lots Of Extensions And Big-Picture Topics – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images
Braves To Select JR Ritchie
The Braves are promoting pitching prospect JR Ritchie to start tomorrow afternoon’s game against the Nationals, reports Harrison Smajovits of Sports Illustrated. Mark Bowman of MLB.com reports that Didier Fuentes is being optioned back to Triple-A Gwinnett in the corresponding transaction. Atlanta will also promote Carlos Carrasco to work in long relief.
Fuentes was just recalled this morning. He started this evening but labored over three innings, allowing seven hits and a walk. Fuentes’ inefficiency forced the Braves to bring in Martín Pérez for long relief. The veteran southpaw tossed three innings of two-run ball, which obviously took him out of consideration to start tomorrow’s ballgame.
Atlanta needed a spot starter for the finale of their four-game set in Washington. Long relievers José Suarez and Dylan Dodd each pitched on Tuesday, and Dodd is reportedly going on the injured list. A bullpen game would have been a lot to ask. Reynaldo López only completed one inning last night, so every Braves reliever has pitched within the past two days.
Ritchie was the logical candidate to take the ball. The 2022 supplemental first-round draftee has been Gwinnett’s best pitcher in the early going. Ritchie has only given up three runs through his first 27 1/3 innings while striking out 26.2% of opposing hitters. He has tiptoed around erratic command, as he’s walked 13 batters and plunked four more.
Although the 22-year-old isn’t a finished product, he’s likely to be up and down throughout the season as a key rotation depth piece. Baseball America ranks Ritchie as the #2 prospect in the Atlanta system, crediting him with a deep arsenal and a chance to be a #4 starter. Ritchie has been in the 93-94 mph range with his four-seam fastball and sinker this season. He throws four distinct offspeed pitches — a changeup, cutter, slider and curveball.
It’s past the point at which Ritchie can reach a full year of service time in 2026. He was on the preseason Top 100 lists at each of BA, MLB Pipeline and ESPN. He therefore meets the threshold for the Prospect Promotion Incentive and could “earn” a service year if he finishes top two in Rookie of the Year balloting. The Braves would not receive an extra draft choice in that scenario because he wasn’t on the MLB roster for 172+ days.
There’s a decent chance this is a one-off appearance regardless. Ritchie will be the only healthy, optionable pitcher on their active roster aside from top setup man Dylan Lee. Atlanta has an off day on Monday. The Braves could option Ritchie after tomorrow’s appearance to get an extra bullpen arm up for their weekend series against the Phillies. Pérez would be ready to start in the middle of next week. Spencer Strider probably only needs one more rehab outing before he returns to the rotation.
Braves To Select Carlos Carrasco
The Braves are selecting veteran righty Carlos Carrasco onto the MLB roster, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com. Left-hander Dylan Dodd will go on the 15-day injured list with an oblique strain. Carrasco will be available in long relief behind JR Ritchie, who is coming up to start tomorrow in his major league debut.
Atlanta already had two openings on the 40-man roster. They lost Osvaldo Bido on waivers to the White Sox over the weekend and designated Ian Hamilton for assignment this morning. Adding Ritchie and Carrasco will put their roster back at capacity.
The 39-year-old Carrasco will be in the big leagues for a 17th season. He made three starts for Atlanta last summer as part of a revolving door of depth arms while the rotation was decimated by injury. Carrasco allowed 15 runs across 13 2/3 innings and finished the season in Triple-A. The Braves brought him back on a new minor league deal at the beginning of the offseason.
Carrasco is out to a nice start with their top affiliate in Gwinnett. He carries a 1.71 earned run average through his first four appearances. Carrasco has fanned 21% of opposing hitters with a sub-6% walk rate. He’s only in the 90-91 mph range on his fastballs, leaning more heavily on his slider and changeup to compensate.
The arsenal hasn’t played at the MLB level for the past few seasons. Carrasco owns a 6.36 ERA between four teams since the start of the 2023 campaign. Atlanta needed a length option for a bullpen that has gotten a lot of work over the past couple days.
Their last two starters, Reynaldo López and Didier Fuentes, threw a combined four innings. While Ritchie is a very good prospect, he’s not a lock to work deep in the game in his first outing against a big league lineup. He’ll take on a Nationals team that has started the season hot offensively behind fantastic months from James Wood and CJ Abrams. Excluding the just optioned Fuentes, Ritchie and Carrasco have been Atlanta’s two best Triple-A starters.
Braves Recall Didier Fuentes, Designate Ian Hamilton For Assignment
The Braves announced Wednesday morning that they’ve recalled right-hander Didier Fuentes from Triple-A Gwinnett. Fellow righty Ian Hamilton was designated for assignment to open a spot on the active roster. Fuentes will start tonight’s game against the Nationals.
Hamilton’s contract was just selected to the big league roster last week. He made only one appearance with Atlanta and was tagged for three runs in an inning of work. He’ll now be traded or placed on waivers within the next five days.
With his latest appearance, the 30-year-old Hamilton has now pitched 151 1/3 major league innings between the White Sox, Twins, Yankees and Braves. He’s worked to a solid 3.75 ERA overall, although a terrific 2023 season (2.64 ERA, 58 innings) disproportionately affects that career-long mark; Hamilton had a 4.91 ERA in 14 2/3 innings prior to that season and has a 4.35 earned run average in 78 2/3 frames since.
Hamilton has fanned just over one quarter of his major league opponents (25.4%) but also carries a bloated 11.3% walk rate that’s nearly three percentage points north of the league average. He’s shown above-average grounder tendencies (45.9%) and has done a nice job of avoiding homers and hard contact in general. The right-hander sat 96 mph with his heater for the 2024-25 Yankees but averaged 94.4 mph in his lone Braves appearance. His sinker velocity dipped similarly. Hamilton’s primary breaking pitch is a slider that he’s typically thrown at a near 50% clip.
Fuentes, 10 years younger than Hamilton, won’t turn 21 until mid-June. Despite that youth, he’s auditioning for a role in the Atlanta rotation. The right-hander struggled in a four-start cup of coffee last summer but had a big spring showing and has been excellent in Gwinnett thus far. Through his first 16 2/3 frames, Fuentes sports a tidy 2.16 ERA with a 31.7% strikeout rate and a 9.5% walk rate. He made one long relief appearance with the Braves early this season before being sent down and shined there as well, holding the Royals to a run on two hits and a walk with four punchouts in four innings.
Atlanta’s pitching injuries have been chronicled at length. Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep had surgery to remove loose bodies from their elbows before the season started. Joey Wentz tore his ACL during spring training. Spencer Strider opened the season on the injured list due to an oblique strain and has yet to return.
The Braves have been left with a group of Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, Grant Holmes, Bryce Elder and Martín Pérez to shoulder the rotation load thus far. To call Elder (1.50 ERA in 30 innings) and Pérez (2.21 ERA, 20 1/3 innings) “pleasant surprises” thus far would be an understatement. Pérez has pitched like a fifth starter when healthy for the bulk of the past five seasons. Elder was one of the least-effective pitchers in baseball in 2024-25.
It’s not reasonable to expect either Elder or Pérez to sustain this level of production, but there’s no taking away what’s already in the books; these impeccably timed hot streaks have helped the Braves weather a storm of early injuries that threatened to dig them in a massive hole for a second straight season. Instead, Atlanta has an NL-best 2.98 ERA from the rotation and sits at 16-8 with a five-game cushion in a disappointing NL East division. With Strider on a minor league rehab assignment, Fuentes now in the majors, top prospect JR Ritchie performing well and injured arms like Schwellenbach, Waldrep and AJ Smith-Shawver (Tommy John surgery last year) all progressing through their rehab windows, Atlanta could be on the cusp of escaping those early health setbacks with an improbable division lead, which would set the Braves up incredibly well for the remainder of the season.
Braves Place Raisel Iglesias On Injured List
The Braves placed closer Raisel Iglesias on the 15-day injured list due to shoulder inflammation this morning, per a team announcement. Lefty Dylan Dodd was recalled from Triple-A Gwinnett to take Iglesias’ spot on the active roster. Iglesias had an MRI which showed inflammation, no structural damage, per Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The IL placement comes a few days after Atlanta skipper Walt Weiss had acknowledged that Iglesias was unavailable because he’d slept on his shoulder wrong (via MLB.com’s Mark Bowman). Weiss said at the time that Iglesias might be available the following day (Sunday), and he indeed pitched an inning in that game. He’s now headed to the IL and will miss at least two weeks of action. Weiss will likely provide further updates on Iglesias’ status later tonight, before the Braves take on the Nats in D.C.
Iglesias sat 94.8 mph with his four-seamer in 2025 and was close to that mark for his first several appearances of the current season. His heater sat 95 mph in an April 14 outing but dropped to 93.9 mph the following day and sat just 92.9 mph his last time out.
Iglesias re-signed with Atlanta on a one-year, $16MM deal over the offseason. He’s gotten out to another strong start, holding opponents scoreless on just five hits with an 11-to-1 K/BB ratio in his first 8 2/3 frames. The right-hander struggled early last season due to an uncharacteristic stretch of susceptibility to home runs, but since mid-June of last year, he’s rattled off 52 innings with a 1.04 ERA, 31.2% strikeout rate and 5.8% walk rate while converting 26 of 27 save attempts.
With Iglesias shelved, Atlanta will almost certainly turn to fellow free-agent addition Robert Suarez in the ninth inning. The former Padres closer, who inked a three-year, $45MM contract this offseason, picked up the save Saturday when Iglesias was unavailable and has been dominant as the Braves’ primary setup man this season. He’s held opponents to just one run on seven hits and a walk with 11 strikeouts in 9 2/3 frames. Suarez picked up 77 saves and 20 holds while pitching to a 2.91 ERA in four seasons with San Diego before signing in Atlanta this winter.
Braves Notes: Fuentes, Kim, Roster Decisions
Braves prospect Didier Fuentes was a healthy scratch from a scheduled start yesterday and could be an option to join the big league pitching staff in the near future. As Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution breaks down, Fuentes’ scratch doesn’t necessarily guarantee a recall to the majors, but the Braves are light on options to summon as they embark on a sequence of 10 games in 10 days. Each of Hayden Harris, Dylan Dodd and Rolddy Muñoz was optioned late last week, meaning they can’t be recalled for 15 days (from the date of their option) unless they’re directly replacing an injured player on the roster. Skipping Fuentes’ start yesterday also helps to manage the promising 20-year-old’s workload after he only pitched 70 total innings (majors and minors combined) in 2025.
Fuentes has been terrific so far in Gwinnett this season. He’s taken the ball three times, tossed a total of 16 2/3 innings and held opponents to four runs (2.16 ERA) on eight hits and six walks with 20 strikeouts. He’s also plunked three batters and tossed a wild pitch, so his command hasn’t exactly been pristine, but the results and bat-missing capabilities are impressive.
Throughout spring training, there were calls from Atlanta fans to plug Fuentes into the rotation — understandably so. To this point in the season, however, there are five Braves pitchers who’ve started multiple games — Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, Grant Holmes, Martín Pérez, Bryce Elder — and none has an ERA higher than 3.42 (Holmes). Despite all the injuries, Atlanta starters remarkably lead the majors with a 2.65 ERA. Metrics like FIP (4.02) and SIERA (4.05) are far more bearish, but it’d be hard for Braves brass to tell any of the current starters he’s losing his place in the rotation. Atlanta already briefly jettisoned Pérez, but he quickly re-signed on a new deal and responded by tossing six shutout innings in Philadelphia on Friday.
None of that includes righty Spencer Strider, who’s working his way back from an oblique injury and could return early next month. The Braves will need to figure out a way to plug Strider back into the rotation whenever he’s cleared to return. Elder looked to be very much on the roster bubble in spring training, but he’s allowed only two earned runs through his first 23 1/3 innings. Pérez, as previously mentioned, just fired six shutout innings on the road against a top division rival. He now has a 2.21 ERA on the year. Perhaps another injury will make the decision easier, but if everyone’s healthy, it’s fair to say that “too many effective starters” isn’t a problem many foresaw Atlanta encountering a few weeks back (though it’s a “problem” they’ll surely welcome with open arms).
On the position-player side of the roster, the Braves will have some decisions looming regarding seldom-used veterans currently holding down bench spots. Catcher Sean Murphy is on a rehab assignment. Shortstop Ha-Seong Kim is headed for a simulated game Thursday, manager Walt Weiss told the Atlanta beat (via MLB.com’s Mark Bowman). He could begin a rehab assignment next week himself.
The return of Murphy, on paper, would seem to be bad news for veteran backstop Jonah Heim, who’s 5-for-23 in limited action as the No. 2 catcher behind reigning National League Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin. As Bowman points out, however, infielder Kyle Farmer has only received seven plate appearances all season. The organization loves his presence in the clubhouse, but he’s even more seldom-used than Heim. Keeping Heim over Farmer could allow the Braves to more comfortably use both Baldwin and Murphy in the same lineup, splitting time at catcher and DH, with Heim on hand as an emergency option.
Of course, when Kim returns — likely in mid-May — both Heim and Farmer could be squeezed out. No one on the Braves’ bench can be optioned, so two of Farmer, Heim, Jorge Mateo and Eli White are likely to find themselves displaced, barring other injuries that allow the team to kick those decisions down the road a bit.
Mateo has hit quite well, albeit in a tiny sample of 20 plate appearances. His prior track record doesn’t create much optimism about him sustaining this pace, but he’s still an elite runner with 98th-percentile sprint speed (per Statcast) and some defensive versatility. White has been the team’s worst hitter … in a similarly tiny sample of 22 plate appearances. He’s a terrific outfield defender, however, and Statcast measures his sprint speed even better than Mateo, placing him at the very top of the MLB scale with 30.4 feet per second (100th percentile).
Braves Select Martín Pérez
April 17th: Perez was officially selected back to the roster today.
April 15th: 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.
Braves Re-Sign Luke Williams To Minor League Deal
The Braves have re-signed Luke Williams to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He has been assigned to Triple-A Gwinnett and entered tonight’s game as a pinch runner.
It’s an unsurprising development. Williams is clearly liked by the club as a depth piece but he is out of options, leading to frequent transactions. Williams was added to the roster a few days ago while Michael Harris II went on the paternity list. When Harris came back a few days later, Williams was designated for assignment, cleared waivers and elected free agency. It’s a familiar cycle for him. He was claimed off waivers in the summer of 2023 and, since then, this is the third time he has become a free agency and then quickly re-signed.
Williams hasn’t hit in the majors, with a .212/.272/.280 line in 350 plate appearances. But he provides defensive versatility, with experience at every position on the diamond except catcher. He can also steals some bases, swiping 25 bags in 31 attempts in his big league career.
Atlanta doesn’t have a ton of optionable position player depth on the roster. The only guy on the 40-man who isn’t already in the majors or on the injured list is Nacho Alvarez Jr., who has a .182/.325/.212 line in Triple-A so far this year. If someone on the active roster suffers an injury, Williams will be a candidate to rejoin the big league club.
Photo courtesy of Brett Davis, Imagn Images
Braves Designate Osvaldo Bido, Select Ian Hamilton
The Braves have designated right-hander Osvaldo Bido for assignment, per a team announcement. Right-hander Ian Hamilton‘s contract has been selected from Triple-A Gwinnett in a corresponding move. Atlanta also optioned southpaw reliever Hayden Harris to Gwinnett. That’ll clear another active roster spot for veteran lefty Martín Pérez. Braves skipper Walt Weiss said last night that Pérez, who quickly re-signed on a minor league deal after being designated for assignment and clearing waivers, will start Friday.
Bido, 30, has become the poster boy for the perpetual DFA carousel that some players ride in today’s game. Since the end of the 2025 season, he’s been on six different 40-man rosters via a series of DFAs and waiver claims. He spent the 2025 season with the A’s and has since bounced to the Braves, Rays, Marlins, Yankees, Angels and back to the Braves. It’s feasible he could now find himself with a seventh organization in the span of about five calendar months.
On the one hand, the parade of DFAs might suggest that teams don’t feel Bido is a big league-caliber arm. On the other, he’s yet to make it through waivers. Twenty percent of the league has rostered Bido since the 2025 Winter Meetings commenced. Clubs clearly think there’s major league potential in the lanky right-hander, but he’s yet to put things together with any real consistency.
Bido pitched 10 innings with Atlanta and was tagged for seven runs on seven hits and five walks. Walking five of the 41 hitters he faced (12.2%) is already problematic, but Bido also plunked a pair of batters and rattled off four wild pitches. Suffice it to say, his command has not been there in 2026.
Command has never been an especially strong point for Bido, but he hasn’t struggled to this extent in the past. He entered the season having walked or hit 12% of the batters he’s faced in the majors. He’d averaged a wild pitch every 10 innings or so. He’s walked/hit 17.1% of his opponents this year and averaged a wild pitch every two and a half innings — certainly not ideal.
Bido has had an up-and-down run in the majors, logging poor numbers in 2023, strong output in 2024 and more struggles in 2025. The 2026 season clearly hasn’t been kind to him. Overall, metrics like SIERA (4.62) and FIP (4.70) view him a bit more favorably than his career 5.13 ERA, but Bido has typically pitched like a swingman or sixth starter. He averages 94.7 mph on his four-seamer and sinker alike. He’s only a bit worse than average in terms of strikeout rate (20.6%) and walk rate (9.7%), but he’s an extreme fly-ball pitcher whose best season was spent pitching home games in the cavernous Oakland Coliseum during the Athletics’ final season there.
Last year’s move to West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, which played like an absolute launching pad, did Bido no favors. He served up 13 big flies in only 44 1/3 home innings, compared to just six on the road (35 1/3 innings). He’s been tagged for one home run in his 10 innings with the Braves.
Bido would ideally land in a more pitcher-friendly home park than he had with either the A’s or Braves. Sutter Health Park was the fifth-most homer-friendly park for left-handed batters in 2025, per Statcast’s Park Factors. Atlanta’s Truist Park was just behind, sitting sixth in MLB. Time will tell whether that happens. The Braves have five days to trade Bido or place him on waivers. Outright waivers are a 48-hour process, so today’s DFA will be resolved in no more than a week’s time.
As for Hamilton, he’ll be suiting up for a seventh major league season. He’s pitched 150 1/3 innings for the White Sox, Twins and Yankees in his career, turning in a sharp 3.59 ERA overall. A terrific 2023 season (2.64 ERA, 58 innings) disproportionately affects that career-long mark; Hamilton had a 4.91 ERA in 14 2/3 innings prior to that season and has a 4.06 earned run average in 77 2/3 frames since.
Hamilton, 30, has fanned just over one quarter of his opponents in the majors but also sports an 11.1% walk rate that’s nearly three percentage points north of average. He’s shown above-average grounder tendencies (45.9%) and has done a nice job of avoiding homers and hard contact in general. His first year with the Braves organization has kicked off nicely, with 6 1/3 innings of two-run ball and a 9-to-1 K/BB ratio in Triple-A Gwinnett.
Like nearly everyone else in the Atlanta bullpen, Hamilton is out of minor league options. At present, southpaw Dylan Lee is the only optionable pitcher — bullpen or rotation — on the Braves’ major league roster. It’s an untenable setup in the modern game, where teams tend to cycle various relievers through the final couple bullpen spots to maintain a stock of fresh arms in support of starters who rarely work deep into games. That’s all the more true given that Lee, while technically optionable, almost certainly isn’t being sent down anytime soon. He’s been one of Atlanta’s most consistently effective relievers dating back to 2024, with an overall 2.65 ERA and a 1.13 mark through his first eight frames in 2026.
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.