D-Backs Sign Kolten Wong To Minor League Deal
The Diamondbacks have signed second baseman Kolten Wong to a minor league contract, as announced by their Triple-A team in Reno. He’ll head to the Snakes’ top affiliate.
Wong was in camp with the Orioles this spring. A .200/.294/.400 showing wasn’t enough to crack a competitive Baltimore infield. The O’s granted Wong his release rather than add him to the MLB roster after he triggered an opt-out in his minor league deal five days before the start of the season.
A veteran of 11 big league campaigns, Wong will try to get back to the majors in Arizona. The 33-year-old had suggested at the end of camp that he was unlikely to pursue minor league opportunities if he didn’t make the O’s roster. He has evidently decided to give things another go, likely in the hope of securing a bench role.
Wong doesn’t offer a ton of defensive flexibility. He has logged nearly 9000 innings at second base but has never started an MLB game at another infield spot. His outfield experience consists of 106 frames with the Cardinals eight years ago. Arizona has Ketel Marte locked in at second base but has dealt with injuries on the other side of the bag. Geraldo Perdomo suffered a meniscus tear in his right knee that required surgical repair. Top prospect Jordan Lawlar previously sustained a thumb issue that’ll cost him a few months. That leaves rookie Blaze Alexander and glove-first veteran Kevin Newman as the shortstop options in the majors.
While Wong probably won’t be considered for a spot on the left side of the infield, Newman’s promotion took an experienced infielder off the Reno roster. Wong is a two-time Gold Glove winner at the keystone, yet his defensive metrics have dropped off within the last two years. He remained an above-average hitter as recently as 2022, when he connected on a personal-high 15 homers with a .251/.339/.430 slash for the Brewers.
Last season was the worst of his career, as he managed just a .183/.256/.263 line in 87 contests between the Mariners and Dodgers. To his credit, Wong rebounded in a very brief sample in L.A. He had turned in a dismal .165/.241/.227 mark with Seattle before being released. After catching on with the Dodgers, he hit .300 with a pair of homers in 34 trips to the plate.
Orioles To Promote Jackson Holliday
MLB’s top prospect is set to make his debut. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports (X link) that the O’s plan to call up Jackson Holliday. The team has yet to announce the move.
Holliday, the #1 overall pick in 2022, has destroyed minor league pitching. Despite being a high school draftee, he reaches the majors after just a year and a half in the minor leagues. The lefty-hitting infielder traversed four levels in his first full professional season. Holliday raked at a .323/.442/.499 clip over 581 plate appearances last season. He spent the majority of that time between High-A and Double-A but made it to the top minor league level late in the year.
That meteoric rise made it seem that the Oklahoma native had a real chance to break camp. That didn’t happen, as Baltimore reassigned Holliday back to Triple-A Norfolk late in Spring Training. The 20-year-old has opened the year on a tear as part of a loaded Tides lineup. He’d collected 13 hits (including four doubles and a pair of home runs) with 11 walks and eight strikeouts over his first nine games.
The son of seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday, Jackson owns an excellent .321/.452/.497 batting line through 154 minor league games. In addition to his stellar offensive track record, he offers plenty of defensive value as an above-average or better middle infielder. Holliday has primarily played shortstop in the minors, but the O’s used him mostly at second base in Spring Training. Seven of his nine starts in Norfolk this year have come at the keystone, where he seems likely to break into the big leagues.
Holliday’s well-rounded profile has made him an essentially unanimous choice as the game’s best minor league talent. It’s the third straight season in which the O’s entered the year with a player whom most evaluators consider the sport’s top prospect. Holliday will now join Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and plenty more talented young players at Camden Yards. He should pair with Henderson in what has the chance to be a franchise-defining middle infield.
Baltimore has relied on Jordan Westburg — himself a former first-round pick and highly-regarded prospect — as their primary second baseman in the early going. The Mississippi State product has started slowly, hitting .195/.242/.355 through his first nine games. Westburg could slide over to third base if the O’s want to keep him in the everyday lineup. Ramón Urías and Tony Kemp, each of whom is on the roster as a multi-positional infielder, have struggled (albeit in exceedingly small samples). Westburg still has options remaining and could theoretically be sent back to Norfolk; the Orioles would need to designate Urías or Kemp for assignment to take either player off the big league club.
The O’s will likely reveal the corresponding move tomorrow. Holliday is not yet on the 40-man roster, but Baltimore has two vacancies. Unless they DFA a player who can’t be optioned, they’ll only need to clear active roster space. Whatever the transaction, Holliday will step into the lineup on an everyday basis.
The timing of the promotion surely isn’t coincidental. By calling Holliday up before the end of this week, the O’s are still in position to afford him a full year of service time. A player is credited with a full service year if they’re on an MLB roster or injured list for at least 172 days. Despite his two-week stint in the minors, Holliday will narrowly surpass that mark if he’s in the majors for good.
Promoting a top prospect just before the cutoff for a full service year would’ve been unlikely under the previous collective bargaining agreement. It was more common to see teams hold down their top talents until a bit past that date to secure an extra year of contractual control. The 2022-26 CBA introduced the Prospect Promotion Incentive to reduce the temptation for teams to keep their best young players in the minor leagues.
The PPI allows the Orioles to potentially win a draft choice if Holliday hits the ground running. A top position player prospect who accrues a full service year as a rookie (even if he’s not on the Opening Day roster) would earn his team an extra pick after the first round if he wins Rookie of the Year or finishes in the top three in MVP voting during his pre-arbitration seasons. Holliday still meets that criteria. The O’s already earned an extra pick in the 2024 draft when Henderson won Rookie of the Year last season. If Holliday also pulls off that feat (or hits the more difficult MVP finish within his first three years), Baltimore would get another pick.
Had the Orioles waited beyond this week to promote Holliday, they’d have forfeited the chance at the PPI selection. Keeping him in Triple-A for another few days would’ve prevented him from reaching a full year of service through the traditional method, but a top prospect can also “earn” a full service year with a top-two finish in Rookie of the Year balloting regardless of when he was promoted. If the O’s called Holliday up in May, for instance, he could have played his way to a full service year through his ROY finish without netting the organization the extra pick. That played out in 2022, when Rutschman finished second in AL Rookie of the Year voting despite being called up in late May.
There’s an argument that the Orioles should simply have carried Holliday on the Opening Day roster. GM Mike Elias pointed to the youngster’s limited experience at second base and facing left-handed pitching as reasons for starting him in Norfolk. A combination of Holliday’s torrid start there and middling production from their MLB infielders led the front office to reverse course rather quickly.
If Holliday is in the majors for good, he’d first reach arbitration after the 2026 season. He’d be under team control through the ’29 campaign. Any future assignments to the minor leagues could push that trajectory back, but the O’s and their fans are surely hopeful that won’t be necessary now that Holliday is getting his first look at big league arms.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Diamondbacks Re-Sign Tyler Chatwood To Minor League Deal
The D-Backs have brought back righty Tyler Chatwood on a minor league contract, according to an announcement from their Triple-A team. He joins the Snakes’ top affiliate in Reno.
Chatwood played with the D-Backs in 2023 as well. He’d signed a non-roster deal in early August and made five relief appearances before being released. The 34-year-old also spent some time in the Pittsburgh system last season. Before that, he’d pitched in Japan during the 2022 campaign.
A veteran of 10 big league seasons, Chatwood most recently appeared in the majors in 2021. He split that season between the Blue Jays and Giants, working 32 innings of relief. He allowed 5.63 earned runs per nine, partially offsetting a solid 26.2% strikeout rate with an elevated 14.5% walk percentage.
Chatwood has long struggled to throw strikes consistently. As a result, he has worked mostly in long relief since 2019 after beginning his career as a starting pitcher. Chatwood’s mid-90s velocity and flashes of both swing-and-miss and ground-ball upside have long intrigued teams despite his below-average control. He owns a 4.20 ERA in parts of eight Triple-A campaigns and can serve as multi-inning relief depth for Arizona.
Astros To Promote Spencer Arrighetti
The Astros are promoting pitching prospect Spencer Arrighetti, report Chandler Rome and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. The right-hander will make his major league debut tomorrow evening in Kansas City. Houston will need to make a corresponding 40-man roster move when they officially select Arrighetti’s contract.
It’s the first major league call for the 24-year-old. Houston selected Arrighetti in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of the University of Louisiana. While he didn’t enter the professional ranks with much fanfare, he has developed into arguably the top pitching prospect in the Houston system. Baseball America and The Athletic’s Keith Law each slotted Arrighetti as the organization’s best minor league pitcher and a top five talent in the system overall.
Both outlets suggest Arrighetti projects as a back-of-the-rotation starter. His fastball sits in the low 90s but plays a bit above its velocity because of its ride at the top of the zone. BA and The Athletic each suggest that Arrighetti’s slider is the best pitch in a generally solid arsenal, while he throws enough strikes to potentially stick in the rotation.
Arrighetti split the 2023 campaign between the top two levels of the minors. He allowed 4.40 earned runs per nine through 124 2/3 innings, striking hitters out at an above-average 27.1% clip. Arrighetti has logged 8 1/3 innings of two-run ball over his first two Triple-A starts this year. He has punched out 10 batters but issued seven walks in the early going.
Houston has been forced to dip its into rotation depth. The Astros knew all offseason they’d be without Lance McCullers Jr. and Luis Garcia deep into the season as they rehab from arm surgeries. Justin Verlander began the year on the shelf after a minor bout of shoulder soreness in Spring Training, while José Urquidy went down with a forearm strain during exhibition play. The Astros poked around the rotation market late in the offseason but decided against meeting the asking price for Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery.
They opened the season with a starting five of Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, Hunter Brown, J.P. France and Ronel Blanco. Valdez recently felt some soreness in his elbow and landed on the 15-day injured list this evening. Houston called Blair Henley for a spot start in Valdez’s place last night but will give Arrighetti the next look in the rotation. It could be a brief first call, as Verlander is slated for a second rehab start this weekend and could be back in the majors by the end of next week.
Angels Sign Angel Felipe To Minor League Deal
The Angels recently signed reliever Angel Felipe to a minor league deal (h/t to Baseball America’s Matt Eddy). While the contract details aren’t clear, it seems fair to presume that was a two-year pact. Felipe underwent Tommy John surgery last month and will miss the entire 2024 season.
Felipe entered Spring Training holding a 40-man roster spot with the A’s. The 26-year-old righty had made his major league debut with Oakland a year ago. A waiver claim out of the San Diego organization, Felipe tossed 15 innings of seven-run ball for the A’s in the second half.
While he held his job over the winter, the surgery marked an end to his A’s tenure. Oakland designated Felipe for assignment shortly after announcing he’d go under the knife. They released him after the DFA, as injured players cannot go on outright waivers.
In parts of eight minor league campaigns, Felipe owns a 4.65 ERA. He allowed 5.46 earned runs per nine innings in 30 appearances between San Diego’s and Oakland’s Triple-A affiliates last season. The 6’5″ hurler missed a decent number of bats, fanning a third of opposing hitters. He also walked nearly 14% of batters faced, continuing a trend of career-long issues finding the strike zone.
Cubs’ Julian Merryweather Shut Down With Rib Fracture
Cubs reliever Julian Merryweather has been diagnosed with a rib stress fracture in his back, manager Craig Counsell told the team’s beat (relayed by Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune). He’ll be shut down entirely for a month before going for further evaluation.
Merryweather’s absence from game action will last well beyond that initial four-week period. Even if he is cleared to resume baseball activity in a month, he’ll need to build his arm back into game shape. Chicago already placed Merryweather on the 15-day injured list over the weekend. They initially announced the injury as a shoulder strain, but further testing evidently showed it was a back issue. It wouldn’t be all that surprising if he eventually winds up on the 60-day IL.
Injuries have been an unfortunately recurring theme for Merryweather, who has pitched like a quality high-leverage arm when healthy. He didn’t reach the majors with the Blue Jays until he was nearing his 29th birthday, largely because of a 2018 Tommy John procedure. He debuted in 2020 but missed a good chunk of the following season due to a significant oblique strain. A 2022 abdominal strain again led to a notable absence, likely contributing to Toronto’s decision to waive him the following offseason.
The Cubs claimed him, a move which paid off when Merryweather turned in a career-best ’23 campaign. The righty avoided the IL last year and turned in a 3.38 ERA with an excellent 32.3% strikeout percentage across 72 innings. He’d fanned six over 4 2/3 innings of one-run ball this year before going on the shelf.
Royals Sign Zach Davies To Minor League Deal
The Royals announced this evening that they’ve signed starter Zach Davies to a minor league pact. The Boras Corporation client has been assigned to Triple-A Omaha.
Davies adds a veteran rotation option to the upper levels of the K.C. system. He was in Nationals camp this spring but didn’t make the MLB roster and was cut loose just before Opening Day. The 31-year-old righty had struggled in exhibition play, allowing 14 runs in as many innings across four starts.
That came on the heels of a rough 2023 campaign. Davies was tagged for seven earned runs per nine through 18 starts with the Diamondbacks a year ago. He missed some time with a back injury and was released in the days leading up to Arizona’s postseason run. Davies had turned in more serviceable back-of-the-rotation production in the preceding season. He managed a 4.09 ERA despite middling strikeout and walk numbers over 134 1/3 frames with the Snakes in 2022.
Davies doesn’t throw hard and has never missed many bats. He nevertheless posted solid results early in his career on the strength of above-average control and a lot of ground-ball contact. Davies has started exactly 200 games at the major league level and owns a 4.36 ERA in a little more than 1000 innings. He has allowed 5.43 earned runs per nine over the past three seasons, though, in part because his formerly strong walk rates have ticked upwards.
Kansas City’s rotation has been excellent in the first couple weeks. Only the Red Sox had a lower rotation ERA entering play today, as K.C. starters have worked to a microscopic 1.60 mark in their first 10 starts. Cole Ragans, Brady Singer, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha and Alec Marsh have each taken the ball two times.
The Royals kicked veteran righty Jordan Lyles into multi-inning relief and have Daniel Lynch and Jonathan Bowlan as rotation depth in Omaha. Minor league signee Luis Cessa had initially been assigned to Triple-A but was recently moved to the development list after walking five of his first 23 opponents.
Rangers Select Davis Wendzel
The Rangers announced they’ve selected infielder Davis Wendzel onto the major league roster. Rookie infielder Justin Foscue has been placed on the 10-day injured list as a result of a left oblique strain. To clear space on the 40-man roster, Texas transferred third baseman Josh Jung from the 10-day to the 60-day injured list.
Wendzel, 26, is headed to the big leagues for the first time. Texas took the right-handed hitter 41st overall in the 2019 draft. The Baylor product hasn’t moved through the ranks as quickly as the team likely envisioned on draft day, but he’s now headed to Globe Life Field after parts of five seasons in the minors.
Within his first two-plus seasons in pro ball, Wendzel had reached the Triple-A level. He has played there since 2022. Wendzel struggled in his first look at Triple-A pitching, hitting .207/.287/.398 during the ’22 campaign. He improved in his second season, connecting on 30 homers with a roughly average .236/.361/.477 overall line. Wendzel went unselected in the Rule 5 draft but he’s been off to a blistering start this year. Over his first nine contests, he’s hitting .314/.419/.657 with a trio of homers and four walks and strikeouts apiece in 43 trips to the plate.
That excellent first week surely played a role in Wendzel’s first promotion, but his call is also motivated in part by injuries to players above him on the third base depth chart. Jung broke his right wrist when he was hit by a pitch a few days into the season. He underwent surgery and will miss 8-10 weeks, making his move to the 60-day IL a formality. Jung’s injury spurred Foscue’s first MLB call, but the Mississippi State product lands on the shelf himself after just two plate appearances. The Rangers didn’t provide a timetable for his return. Depending on their severity, oblique strains sometimes lead to absences in excess of a month.
Since Jung went down, the Rangers have relied on Josh Smith as their primary third baseman. That’ll likely continue, with righty-hitting Ezequiel Duran on hand as a complement to Smith’s left-handed bat. Wendzel adds another righty bat to that mix and has the ability to back up the middle infield duo of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien.
MLB, MLBPA In Dispute Over Pitch Clock’s Impact On Injuries
One of the unfortunately defining storylines of Spring Training and the first couple weeks of the regular season has been the prevalence of significant injuries to key pitchers. While that is a concern every year — particularly early in the schedule as players build their arms back up — the number of big names suffering arm injuries led the league and Players Association to trade barbs over the weekend.
On Saturday, the players union put out a brief statement (on X) that implied the pitch clock was a key contributing factor:
“Despite unanimous player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the commissioner’s office reduced the length of the pitch clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said. “Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified. The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset — the players.”
This is the second season in which the pitch clock has been in use at the major league level. In 2023, pitchers had 15 seconds between pitches when no runner was on base and 20 seconds to begin their delivery with runners aboard. Over the winter, the competition committee passed a rule change cutting the latter time from 20 to 18 seconds. That measure was approved by the six league representatives on the rule committee; all four players on the panel voted against it. The MLBPA released a statement at the time calling the changes “unnecessary” and saying the 2024 season “should be used to gather additional data and fully examine the health, safety and injury impacts of reduced recovery time.”
Unsurprisingly, MLB quickly fired back after Clark’s latest protestation. The league argued that there has been no empirical backing pointing to the clock as a contributing factor to pitcher injuries. MLB instead suggested the main issue is the increased stress which pitchers are putting on their arms to improve the quality of their arsenals.
“(The MLBPA’s) statement ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries,” the league said in a statement of its own. “Nobody wants to see pitchers get hurt in this game, which is why MLB is currently undergoing a significant comprehensive research study into the causes of this long-term increase, interviewing prominent medical experts across baseball which to date has been consistent with an independent analysis by Johns Hopkins University that found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries.
In fact, JHU found no evidence that pitchers who worked quickly in 2023 were more likely to sustain an injury than those who worked less quickly on average. JHU also found no evidence that pitchers who sped up their pace were more likely to sustain an injury than those who did not.”
Concerns about pitcher health are an annual event, although there hasn’t been much consensus about which factors are more responsible than others. Last month, noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. Keith Meister told Ken Rosenthal and Eno Sarris of the Athletic that he considered the sweeping breaking ball and power changeup to be problems, pointing to the tighter grip that pitchers use on those offerings. A few players and other injury experts pushed back against Meister’s hypothesis, arguing that increased effort to maximize velocity (on both the fastball and breaking stuff) was the more notable driver.
Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that pitcher injuries have been a major story in recent weeks. Gerrit Cole (elbow inflammation), Lucas Giolito (internal brace surgery), Eduardo Rodriguez (lat strain), Anthony DeSclafani (flexor tendon surgery) and Trevor Stephan (Tommy John surgery) were among the pitchers to suffer notable injuries during Spring Training. Giolito, DeSclafani and Stephan underwent season-ending surgery before Opening Day.
Since the season began, Eury Pérez, Shane Bieber and Jonathan Loáisiga have all been lost for the year due to elbow ligament repairs of their own. Things are still up in the air for Braves ace Spencer Strider, who landed on the injured list over the weekend after imaging revealed UCL damage in his elbow.
It’s not an issue for which there are simple solutions. Justin Verlander, who has been one of the preeminent workhorses of his generation but lost the 2021 season to a Tommy John procedure, discussed the issue over the weekend. Verlander, on a minor league rehab stint to build up after a seemingly minor bout of shoulder soreness, pointed to a confluence of factors (relayed by Ari Alexander of KPRC 2).
While he noted “it would be easiest to … blame the pitch clock,” the three-time Cy Young winner spoke about pitchers’ desire to maximize their swing-and-miss acumen even if it comes with a higher chance of injury. Verlander pointed to the increase in home runs over the past few seasons and teams’ heavier reliance on their bullpens — which he acknowledged is supported by data indicating that relievers tend to be more effective than a starter navigating a lineup for the third or fourth time — as reasons for pitchers to avoid pitching to contact. Those interested in the subject should check out the veteran righty’s thoughtful response in full.
Team decision-makers also need to wrestle with the balance between protecting their most talented pitchers without sapping their effectiveness. That’s an inexact science for medical and coaching staffs. Mariners manager Scott Servais pointed to the early-season spate of injuries as a factor in pulling young righty Bryce Miller at 78 pitches after seven scoreless innings in a win over the Brewers on Saturday (link via Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times).
Servais cited a desire to minimize the amount of potentially high-stress innings that Miller faces early in the season as one of a number of variables in making what seemed to be an atypically quick call to the bullpen. That’s just one example, of course, but it’s illustrative of the kind of concerns which front offices and coaching staffs face as they try to keep their best pitchers healthy.
Julio Teheran Opts Out Of Deal With Orioles
March 23: Teheran has exercised his opt-out clause, per Jon Heyman of the New York Post. He now figures to return to free agency where he’ll hunt for a new deal that offers him a better chance of receiving playing time in the big leagues.
March 22: Veteran righty Julio Teheran intends to trigger an opt-out clause in his minor league contract with the Orioles if he doesn’t make the Opening Day roster, reports Andy Kostka of the Baltimore Banner (X link). The O’s will need to decide in the next few days whether to give him an MLB spot or let him retest free agency. His contract would come with a $2MM base salary if he makes the team.
Baltimore signed Teheran a little less than one month ago. He has started three of four appearances in camp, allowing five runs with a 7:5 strikeout-to-walk ratio through 9 1/3 innings. There’s not a whole lot to be gleaned from that small sample, although it hasn’t been a resoundingly strong performance.
If Teheran were to make the team, it’d very likely come in a long relief role. O’s manager Brandon Hyde confirmed yesterday that they’ll open the season with a rotation of Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez, Tyler Wells, Dean Kremer and Cole Irvin (link via Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com). Righty Kyle Bradish and southpaw John Means are each starting the year on the injured list. GM Mike Elias told reporters this afternoon that both pitchers are expected to contribute early in the first half of the upcoming season (X link via MLB.com’s Jake Rill).
The O’s don’t have a ton of flexibility to accommodate a long reliever. Craig Kimbrel, Danny Coulombe, Yennier Cano, Jacob Webb, Cionel Pérez and Dillon Tate should all have bullpen spots secure. Mike Baumann is out of options and has tossed 5 2/3 scoreless frames with six strikeouts this spring. It’d be a surprise if the O’s risked losing him on waivers. That would leave only one spot available. Lefty Keegan Akin still has an option remaining, but he has outpitched Teheran in camp, fanning 10 without allowing a run over 7 1/3 innings.
Teheran worked mostly as a starter a season ago. He opened 11 of 14 appearances as a member of the Brewers. Teheran allowed 4.40 earned runs per nine across 71 2/3 innings. He struck out a below-average 17.4% of opponents while keeping his walks to a pristine 4.5% clip.