Orioles Designate Nick Avila For Assignment
The Orioles announced Wednesday that they’ve designated right-hander Nick Avila for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster will go to lefty Cole Irvin, whose previously reported promotion from Triple-A Norfolk has now been formally announced. In addition to selecting Irvin’s contract and designating Avila, the O’s optioned righty Dillon Tate to Norfolk.
Avila, 27, was claimed off release waivers from the Giants organization back in June. He was on the minor league injured list with a shoulder impingement at the time (hat tip to Christopher Correa of the Turlock Journal), and since injured players can’t be placed on outright waivers, San Francisco instead requested release waivers.
Avila hasn’t looked right all season. In 2023, the 6’4″ righty posted a strong 3.00 ERA in 72 innings out of the bullpen in Triple-A Sacramento (anecdotally recording a flawless 14-0 record along the way), but he’s been rocked for 19 earned runs in 18 innings in the minors this season. That includes a staggering 10 runs on nine hits and a pair of walks in just 1 1/3 innings with the Orioles’ Triple-A club in Norfolk since returning from that shoulder impingement that kept him out of action for nearly two months.
With the trade deadline behind us, the Orioles will have no choice but to place Avila on waivers. Since he’s no longer on the injured list, they can place him on outright waivers. Given his struggles and injuries this season, there’s a good chance Avila will clear, allowing the O’s to keep him in the organization without dedicating a 40-man roster spot to him.
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Click here to read a transcript of Tuesday’s chat with MLBTR’s Steve Adams.
Red Sox Release Dominic Smith
The Red Sox announced Tuesday that they’ve released first baseman Dominic Smith, whom they designated for assignment earlier in the week when reinstating fellow first baseman Triston Casas from the injured list.
Smith, 29, joined the Sox back in May after Casas went down with a rib fracture. He wound up appearing in 83 games and tallying 278 plate appearances with a .237/.317/.390 batting line. Smith smacked six homers and 20 doubles along the way while walking at a solid 9% clip and fanning at a 23.4% rate that’s a bit higher than the league average. By measure of wRC+, Smith was about 5% worse than a league-average bat at the plate during his time with the BoSox.
From a defensive standpoint, Smith is something of a mixed bag. Defensive Runs Saved had him as a positive last year but pegs him at -2 in 2024. Statcast’s Outs Above Average has had him slightly above-average in each of the past three seasons but below-average in his career overall. It’s fair to suggest Smith has improved his glovework over the years, but he’s still not a standout defensive player at his position.
Drafted 11th overall by the 2013 Mets, Smith was a longtime top prospect and looked to be making good on that billing in 2019-20, when he slashed .299/.366/.571 with 21 homers in a combined 139 games and 396 plate appearances.
After that strong showing, however, Smith’s offense has cratered. He admitted after the fact that he tried to play through a small tear in the labrum of his right shoulder during the 2021 season, which surely impacted his performance at the dish. An ankle injury in 2022 also hampered him. Overall, Smith carries a feeble .242/.312/.361 batting line in 1509 plate appearances since that 2019-20 showing, with this year’s stint in Boston standing as his most productive stretch in the four years since.
Cubs Release Hector Neris
The Cubs are releasing veteran reliever Hector Neris, reports ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. The team already passed Neris through waivers without making a formal announcement of the move. He went unclaimed. Neris’ spot on the 40-man roster will be filled by right-hander Jack Neely, whose contract is being selected from Triple-A Iowa. Neely was acquired from the Yankees in the deadline trade sending Mark Leiter Jr. to the Bronx.
Neris, 35, was signed to a one-year, $9MM contract over the winter and has had an up-and-down season in what’ll now be his lone year with the Cubs. His 3.89 earned run average is sound, but Neris has blown five of 25 save situations on the season while sporting career-worst strikeout and walk rates of 23.1% and 13.3%, respectively.
The more prominent factor in the decision to release the right-hander, however, could be a vesting player option that would’ve kicked in had Neris reached 60 appearances or 45 games finished on the season. He’s only appeared in 46 games right now and finished a game 33 times. Neris thus would’ve needed to pitch in 14 of Chicago’s remaining 37 games — a 37% usage rate — or recorded the final out in 12 of them, but if he’d done so he’d have secured a $9MM player option for the upcoming season. Given his shaky performance, the Cubs very likely weren’t interested in allowing that provision to be reached.
While Neris clearly hasn’t had his best season, he’s only a year removed from a sparkling 1.71 ERA in 68 1/3 frames for the Astros. That mark is also deceptive, as benefited from a .219 average on balls in play and 90.5% strand rate that combined to tamp down his earned run average. Metrics like FIP (3.83) and SIERA (3.89) were more bearish, but between Neris’ 28.2% strikeout rate and 11.4% walk rate, he still had the makings of a solid all-around season. More broadly, Neris’ track record from 2019-23 on the whole is quite impressive. He pitched 297 1/3 innings between the Phillies and Astros, combining for a 3.12 ERA (3.33 SIERA), 30.2% strikeout rate, 9.6% walk rate, 40.1% grounder rate, 0.97 HR/9, 73 holds and 50 saves.
With Neris returning to the open market, he’ll now be available for any team to sign for the remainder of the season. He’ll only cost his new club the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the big league roster/injured list. That sum would be subtracted from what the Cubs are paying him, but Chicago remains on the hook for the bulk of his contract regardless. And, so long as Neris signs with a new organization before Sept. 1 — even on a minor league deal — he can be eligible for that team’s postseason roster. (If he’s not on the 40-man at the time, he’d technically need to be a replacement for an injured player on the postseason roster, but such exceptions happen multiple times quite literally every season.)
As for Neely, he’ll be making his big league debut the first time he takes the mound in a Cubs uniform. The 24-year-old righty was the Yankees’ 11th-round pick in 2021 and has emerged as a legitimate bullpen prospect, brandishing a prototypical fastball/slider combination that’s helped him pitch to a combined 2.42 ERA with a whopping 38% strikeout rate against an 8.5% walk rate in 48 1/3 innings across the Double-A and Triple-A levels with the Cubs and Yanks this year.
MLB.com ranks Neely 18th among Chicago farmhands, while FanGraphs pegs him 22nd. The towering 6’8″, 245-pound Neely sits around 95 mph with his heater — and likely looks faster than that, given the extension his massive frame generates. FanGraphs credits him with a plus (60-grade) slider, while MLB.com’s report tabs it as a true plus-plus (70-grade) pitch — noting the massive whiff and chase rates that Neely generated on the pitch late in the 2023 season.
Neely won’t gain a full year of big league service in 2024, of course, so the Cubs will control him for at least six full seasons following the current campaign. Even if he’s in the majors for good, Neely can’t be arbitration-eligible until the 2027-28 offseason and wouldn’t hit free agency until the 2030-31 offseason. His contract is only just now being selected to the 40-man roster, however, meaning he’ll likely retain a full slate of three minor league option years beyond the current season. As such, future optional assignments could impact his arbitration and free agent timelines. For now, he’ll simply focus on carrying his excellent upper-minors work over to the big leagues and establishing himself as a credible major league bullpen weapon.
Austin Riley Diagnosed With Fractured Hand
The Braves announced Monday that Austin Riley has been diagnosed with a fractured right hand that will sideline him for six to eight weeks. With just under six weeks remaining on the regular season schedule, it could very well prove to be a season-ending injury for the two-time All-Star. Riley was hit by a pitch in yesterday’s game, and while initial imaging was inconclusive, an MRI performed Monday revealed the fracture. Atlanta will presumably make a corresponding roster move to place Riley on the injured list and bring up another infielder (e.g. Nacho Alvarez Jr.).
Atlanta also announced that right-hander Reynaldo Lopez has been reinstated from the injured list, with right-hander Jimmy Herget being optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett in his place. He’s been out since Aug. 2 due to inflammation in his right forearm.
The loss of Riley is another crushing blow for a Braves club that has been hammered by major injuries all season. Even on Opening Day, Atlanta lost catcher Sean Murphy to an oblique strain that ultimately cost him about two months of the season. That set the tone for a 2024 campaign that has seen Spencer Strider (torn UCL and internal brace surgery), Ronald Acuna Jr. (torn ACL), Ozzie Albies (fractured wrist), A.J. Minter (hip surgery) and Michael Harris II (Grade 2 hamstring strain) all endure considerable, if not season-ending injuries.
Riley, 27, hasn’t been at his best all season but has, until now, been in the lineup nearly every day. He’s also picked up the pace considerably since a dreadful start to the season. Riley lugged an awful .228/.295/.353 slash into the month of June … and has since erupted with a .275/.339/.531 that falls right in line with his career averages. In a lineup that’s frequently been without some of its best hitters, he’s been a constant alongside designated hitter Marcell Ozuna. Now, it’s very possible that Riley’s 2024 season will draw to a close with 110 games played — although the specific wording of the team’s announcement leaves the door cracked for Riley to perhaps play a few games late in September if he heals more quickly than expected and the Braves are still in Wild Card contention.
In some ways, the fact that the Braves are even still in possession of a Wild Card spot is remarkable. Strider pitched in just two games and yielded seven runs in nine innings prior to landing on the shelf with what became a season-ending ligament injury. Acuna played in only 49 games. Acuna, Albies (90), Harris (72) and Murphy (50) have all played in fewer than 100 of the Braves’ 124 games this season.
While the Braves have had exceedingly poor injury luck, they’ve also had several things go right. Atlanta has improbably gotten not only a healthy season out of Chris Sale but a vintage, Cy Young-caliber showing out of the 35-year-old lefty, who’s thrown just 10 fewer innings this season than he did in the entire four-year period preceding the 2024 season. Right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach has debuted and outpaced expectations. Reynaldo Lopez has improbably gone from reliever to Cy Young-caliber results himself.
Still, the loss of Riley is a gut-punch, particularly given how well he’d been hitting since the calendar flipped to June. The top of the Braves’ order will now need to rely on the aforementioned Ozuna, deadline pickup Jorge Soler and a trio of stars who’ve struggled through down seasons: Harris, Murphy and Matt Olson. Atlanta has gotten solid production out of some bargain-bin pickups like Ramon Laureano and Whit Merrifield, but the offense they’re trotting out on a nightly basis moving forward won’t resemble the powerhouse lineup they were expected to field this season.
Riley will likely be replaced by some combination of Alvarez and Luke Williams, neither of whom has looked comfortable against big league pitching this season. Alvarez, the organization’s top position-player prospect, still has just 38 games of Triple-A experience. He’s hit well there, but the 21-year-old went 3-for-30 in his first taste of the majors earlier in the summer and likely still needs some additional development time. He’d never played above A-ball prior to 2024. Williams is 2-for-17 in the majors this season. The 28-year-old journeyman has seen action in parts of four big league campaigns and is a .218/.277/.284 hitter in 283 trips to the plate.
At seven games back and now down another star player, Atlanta doesn’t have much of a path to overtaking the Phillies for the NL East crown. The Braves currently hold the final NL Wild Card spot but are only two games up on the division-rival Mets and four games up on the Giants. The Cardinals, Cubs and Reds are all within six games of that final postseason slot as well.
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Marlins Designate Emmanuel Rivera For Assignment
The Marlins announced Monday that they’ve designated infielder Emmanuel Rivera for assignment and optioned righty George Soriano to Triple-A Jacksonville. Their roster spots will go to right-hander Adam Oller and second baseman/left fielder Connor Norby, whose previously reported promotions to the big leagues are now official.
Acquired in exchange for cash after the D-backs designated him for assignment, Rivera appeared in 96 games for Miami and tallied 229 plate appearances. He hit just .214/.296/.269 in that time, clocking in 39% worse than a league-average hitter, by measure of wRC+. The 28-year-old provided plus defense at third base, as he’s done with the Royals and D-backs throughout his three prior MLB seasons, and he filled in occasionally at first base as well. The slick glovework at the hot corner was no longer enough to outweigh a trio of slash stats all sitting shy of .300, however.
Rivera is out of minor league options, so the Marlins didn’t have the ability to send him to the minors without removing him from the 40-man roster. Rivera will reach three years of big league service time tomorrow, while he’s in DFA limbo, so he’d have been arbitration-eligible and due a raise this offseason had the Fish opted to keep him on the roster. That would’ve made him a non-tender candidate anyhow, but Rivera will now be available to the other 29 clubs via waivers. If he clears, he’ll have exactly enough service time to reject the assignment in favor of free agency.
With Rivera jettisoned from the roster and Norby on the way up, it seems quite possible that defensive-minded second baseman Otto Lopez will now slide over to third base, with Norby taking frequent reps at second base. Lopez has graded out brilliantly at second base but provided scant offensive production. However, Lopez is younger, more versatile, more controllable and still has a minor league option remaining, so of the two defensive-minded righty-hitting infielders it’ll be Lopez rather than Rivera who keeps his spot on the roster.
Marlins To Promote Connor Norby
The Marlins are calling up infield/outfield prospect Connor Norby to make his team debut, as first reported by Isaac Azout of Fish On First. He’ll presumably receive regular playing time down the stretch.
Norby, 24, came to Miami alongside outfielder Kyle Stowers in the trade sending left-hander Trevor Rogers to Baltimore. While Stowers went right onto the big league roster (and has struggled considerably in his first 16 games), Norby was the more highly regarded young player of the two. He’s a bat-first second base/left field prospect who’s hit well at every minor league stop, including this year in Triple-A, where he’s batting .293/.382/.496 with 17 homers, 24 doubles, a triple, 13 steals (in 16 tries) and a 12% walk rate. His 28% strikeout rate in Triple-A this season is admittedly a red flag, but Norby hasn’t had major strikeout concerns in the past.
It’s worth pointing out that Norby’s production has dropped off sharply since the trade, though he’s generally still holding his own outside of a dip in power, hitting .271/.338/.373 in 67 plate appearances with the Marlins’ affiliate in Jacksonville. Even still, Norby’s aggregate production in Triple-A between the two organizations has been 28% better than league-average, by measure of wRC+, and the Marlins have little incentive not to see what they have in a player who could be a core piece moving forward.
Among the 30 big league teams, Miami ranks 27th in terms of production from its second basemen (again, per wRC+) — and that’s including the 144 plate appearances Luis Arraez received before being traded to San Diego (during which he batted .293/.343/.368). Otto Lopez has seen the bulk of the playing time at the keystone since that trade, but he’s batting just .236/.270/.316 on the season, making him one of the least-impactful hitters in the entire league.
Lopez has provided huge value with his glove, but he can still impact that game defensively in a utility role while Miami gives a legitimate audition to Norby — a former top-100 prospect who’s looked largely MLB-ready for some time but fell down the Orioles’ depth chart due to the glut of touted young infielders present in Baltimore (e.g. Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo). There’s far less competition in this stripped-down version of the Marlins, which president of baseball operations Peter Bendix is rebuilding from the ground up. MLB.com currently ranks Norby third among Miami farmhands, while Baseball America pegs him sixth.
Norby’s pending promotion gives him nearly six weeks to make his case for a 2025 role. It’s a not a true sink-or-swim test, of course. Norby only turned 24 in June and is in the first of three minor league option years. Even with a poor showing down the stretch, he’d still be in the mix to earn a spot on the roster next spring. He won’t lose his place in the team’s future plans with a so-so team debut, but he can likely go out and cement himself in their ’25 plans with a productive run. Miami currently controls Norby all the way through the 2030 season, and he’s not currently scheduled to be arbitration-eligible until the 2027-28 offseason.
Nationals Select Joe La Sorsa, Place Derek Law On 15-Day IL
TODAY: The Nationals officially announced that La Sorsa’s contract has been selected. In other moves, righty Joan Adon was also called up from Triple-A, while the Nationals placed left-hander Robert Garcia on the bereavement list and placed right-hander Derek Law on the 15-day injured list due to a right elbow flexor strain.
Despite the serious-sounding nature of Law’s injury, he told reporters (including Spencer Nusbaum of the Washington Post) that he thinks he’ll be back to normal in 5-6 days time. Law’s elbow has been bothering him for over a week, ever since pitching during rainy conditions in the Nationals’ 9-5 loss to the Giants on August 8.
AUGUST 16: Left-handed reliever Joe La Sorsa is on his way from Triple-A Rochester to join the Nationals, per Andrew Golden of the Washington Post (X link). Golden notes that La Sorsa might not be activated for today’s game, however. MLBTR has confirmed that La Sorsa is indeed headed to Philadelphia to join the Nats, and a source says he’ll have his contract selected following tonight’s game. He’ll formally join the roster tomorrow. The Nats have a pair of vacancies on the 40-man roster, so they’ll only need to make a corresponding 26-man roster move to accommodate the southpaw.
La Sorsa, 26, appeared in 25 big league games during last season’s MLB debut and pitched to a 4.41 ERA with a 19.3% strikeout rate and 6.2% walk rate in 32 1/3 innings between the Rays and Nats. Washington outrighted him off the 40-man roster back in December but has kept him in Triple-A as a non-roster player all season.
Things have gone well for La Sorsa with the Red Wings. He’s appeared in 42 games and logged 56 innings of relief with a pristine 2.25 earned run average. His 18.2% strikeout rate there is several percentage points shy of average, but he’s helped to offset the lack of whiffs with pinpoint command (4.9% walk rate) and a hefty slate of grounders (50.9%). La Sorsa now sports sub-3.00 ERA marks at both the Double-A and Triple-A levels in his career.
The Nats already have a pair of lefties in the bullpen in Robert Garcia and Jose A. Ferrer, although the latter has struggled considerably since returning from a long stay on the 60-day injured list due to a lat strain. However the Nats decide to make room for him, La Sorsa should be getting a legitimate audition down the stretch. If he performs well over the final five-plus weeks of the 2024 campaign, it’s easy to see the Nats keeping him on the 40-man roster this time around. La Sorsa still has two minor league option years remaining, so he could be an up-and-down depth arm for manager Davey Martinez next year even if he doesn’t carve out a permanent spot in the bullpen just yet.
What Would It Take For The Rangers To Duck Under The Luxury Tax Line?
The 2023 Angels entered the trade deadline as something of a long-shot contender but nevertheless embarked on an aggressive win-now push. In an effort both to break their postseason drought and perhaps to show impending free agent Shohei Ohtani a commitment to winning, the Halos went out and acquired Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, C.J. Cron, Randal Grichuk and Dominic Leone. It was a valiant, if not desperate effort, and it fell short almost immediately. By mid-August, the Angels were buried in the standings with virtually no hope of climbing back into contention. With the former August trade waiver system no longer in place, GM Perry Minasian and his staff waved the white flag in a new and more drastic way: they put more than one quarter of the roster on outright waivers.
By placing Giolito, Lopez, Cron, Grichuk, Leone, Matt Moore, Hunter Renfroe and Tyler Anderson on waivers, the Angels positioned themselves to A) save an enormous amount of money, B) potentially dip back under the luxury tax threshold (they succeeded), and C) impact several postseason races ... just not in the way they originally envisioned. For those who don't recall, the Guardians claimed Giolito, Lopez and Moore. Renfroe was claimed by the Reds. Leone went to the Mariners. Grichuk and Anderson were not claimed.
Last week, MLBTR's Darragh McDonald previewed a handful of veterans who could hit waivers in just this fashion later this month. Since Darragh wrote that piece, one team has emerged as an even likelier candidate to go down this road; as the Astros have gone on an eight-game winning streak and the Mariners have kept in arm's reach, the Rangers have fallen to a daunting 10 games back in the AL West and 10.5 back in the Wild Card hunt. FanGraphs gives the Rangers a 0.6% chance of reaching the postseason. Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA is more bullish ... at 2.4%. Texas isn't mathematically eliminated, but they're not far off.
As Darragh noted last week and as both Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and Jon Becker of FanGraphs have explored this week, there's an argument that the Rangers should jettison some of their impending free agents and cut back costs. In his column, Becker looked at how much money the Rangers would save by placing their impending free agents on waivers two days before the Aug. 31 postseason eligibility deadline. Rosenthal noted within his column that there's no clear path to dipping under the luxury tax for the Rangers, "so their only motivation would be to save on salary."
Technically that's true, but it's also not impossible for the Rangers to duck under the threshold without placing their entire roster on waivers for the taking. While sneaking under the tax threshold is a tall order, it could potentially be done without completely decimating next season's roster. Let's take a look at how they could get there and at what type of benefits they'd receive for doing so.
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