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Pirates Sign José Urquidy

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February 11: Pittsburgh officially announced Urquidy’s one-year deal on Wednesday evening. Jones was placed on the 60-day injured list in a corresponding move. He’ll miss at least the first two months of the regular season but could be back before the All-Star Break as he rehabs from the elbow procedure. Pittsburgh will need to make another 40-man roster move — likely designating someone for assignment — once they finalize their agreement with DH Marcell Ozuna.

February 5: The Pirates and right-hander José Urquidy are reportedly in agreement on a one-year, $5MM contract. Urquidy, an Octagon client, can boost that salary further via incentives.

Pittsburgh generated headlines yesterday when they jumped in as a late entrant in the Framber Valdez bidding before he ultimately went to the Tigers last night. They’ll still add a former Astros hurler to reunite with new pitching coach Bill Murphy, though on a much smaller scale. Murphy coached Urquidy with Houston from 2021-24.

From 2021-22, Urquidy was an unheralded but quality member of the Houston rotation, starting 48 games and pitching to a solid 3.81 ERA with a 20.3% strikeout rate and a tiny 5.2% walk rate. Injuries began to slow him down in 2023. He missed three months with a shoulder injury that season, and his entire 2024 campaign was wiped out by an elbow injury that ultimately required Tommy John surgery over the summer. The 2025 season had been scheduled to be Urquidy’s final year of club control, so the Astros unsurprisingly cut him loose following the season.

Urquidy latched on with the Tigers on a one-year, $1MM contract that included a 2026 club option valued at $4MM. He returned from the injured list in September but pitched only 2 1/3 innings in the majors before consenting to be optioned. He pitched well in the minors last year (2.91 ERA, 22.2 K%, 6.2 BB% in 21 2/3 frames) but was hit hard in his small big league sample. The Tigers opted to decline their 2026 option and send Urquidy back to the open market.

With the injury troubles ostensibly behind him, Urquidy heads to the Pirates as an interesting buy-low candidate with some upside. Because he favors a changeup as his go-to offspeed pitch, he has substantial reverse splits in his career. Lefties have posted an awful .203/.257/.362 slash against him, whereas righties — with some help from the short left-field porch in Houston — have tagged him for a .267/.314/.468 batting line. Moving from one of the best environments for right-handed home runs to perhaps the worst in MLB will surely benefit his skill set.

Exactly what role the Pirates have in store for Urquidy, who turns 31 in May, remains to be seen. The Bucs are as deep as nearly any team in the sport when it comes to starting pitching but seem to add a low-cost veteran around this time of the offseason every year. In the past, that’s meant short-term pickups of Tyler Anderson, Jose Quintana, Martín Pérez and Andrew Heaney. Urquidy isn’t a lefty like that quartet but still seems to meet general manager Ben Cherington’s annual bargain starter quota.

Reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes will, of course, be the Pirates’ Opening Day starter. He’ll be followed in some order by veteran Mitch Keller and young flamethrowers Bubba Chandler and Braxton Ashcraft, both of whom impressed as rookies in 2025. Urquidy will join a competition for the fifth spot that includes Carmen Mlodzinski, Hunter Barco, Thomas Harrington and Jared Jones, who’ll be returning from 2024 Tommy John surgery. Mlodzinski fared better as a reliever than a starter last season, so this move could push him to the ’pen. If Urquidy is outshined by Jones, Barco or Harrington in camp, he could open the season in a swingman capacity.

Will Sammon of The Athletic first reported that the sides had an agreement. Jon Heyman of The New York Post reported that it was a $1.5MM base with incentives.

Jacob Stallings Joins Pirates’ Baseball Operations Department

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Longtime major league catcher Jacob Stallings has taken on a new role in the Pirates’ baseball operations department, Stallings tells Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Specifics surrounding his job are still being ironed out, but for now the plan will be for Stallings to be in Pittsburgh around once a month to consult with the front office and spend time visiting minor league affiliates throughout the year to work on the development of the organization’s young catchers.

Stallings tells Mackey that he played through notable back pain last season and knew as the year wore on that he was likely to retire following the 2025 campaign. The veteran backstop adds that playing for Skip Schumaker with the 2023 Marlins helped him to realize the type of impact a coach/manager whose playing career has just ended could have on players throughout the organization. Time will tell whether Stallings sticks in baseball operations or takes on more of a player development or even coaching role moving forward, but he’s jumping right back into the game following what appears to be the final season of his playing career.

Stallings, 36, opened the 2025 season on the Rockies’ roster. He’d re-signed on a one-year deal after hitting .263/.357/.453 as Colorado’s primary backstop the season prior. Things didn’t go nearly as well in ’25. Stallings hit just .143/.217/.179 in 93 plate appearances before being cut loose in Denver. He briefly latched on with the Orioles when they were hit with a litany of catcher injuries but appeared in only 14 games before being passed through waivers and electing free agency.

All told, Stallings appeared in parts of 10 major league seasons. The former seventh-round pick suited up for 577 games between the Pirates, Marlins, Rockies and Orioles, tallying 1922 plate appearances and batting .232/.311/.340 (77 wRC+). While Stallings was rarely a big threat with the bat, he for several years ranked as one of the game’s premier defenders behind the plate. He won a Gold Glove with the Pirates in 2021 and nabbed 21% of runners who attempted to steal against him in his career. That mark was weighed down by some low percentages later in his career, but from 2019-20 Stallings thwarted 36.2% of the runners who took off during his watch.

Stallings accrued more than seven years of major league service time and took home about $12MM in his playing career. He’ll now have a say in helping to guide the next generation of Pirates catchers and could use that opportunity as a launching point into any number of other career paths within the sport.

Readers — Pirates fans in particular — will want to check out Stallings’ interview with Mackey in full for quotes on his experiences mentoring younger catchers as a player, his relationship with Schumaker, some of the strengths he sees in new Pittsburgh skipper Don Kelly, and more.

Kris Bubic Wins Arbitration Hearing

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Left-hander Kris Bubic won his arbitration hearing against the Royals, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. He’ll be paid the $6.15MM salary figure he and his reps at Apex Baseball submitted rather than the $5.15MM figure submitted by the team.

Bubic, 28, looked well on his way to a breakout in 2025 before a strained rotator cuff ended his season in late July. He’s shown flashes off a new gear upon returning from Tommy John surgery in 2024, when he posted a 2.67 ERA with eye-popping strikeout and walk rates (32.2%, 4.1%) in a small sample of 30 1/3 frames of relief work. He wasn’t quite that dominant in 2025 but still gave reason to buy into the prior season’s results; in 116 1/3 innings back in the Kansas City rotation, Bubic logged a terrific 2.55 ERA with a 24.4% strikeout rate, an 8.2% walk rate and a strong 47.2% ground-ball rate.

Put those two seasons together, and Bubic carries a stout 2.58 ERA, 26% strikeout rate, 7.4% walk rate and 48.8% ground-ball rate in his past 146 2/3 innings. He’s locked into a spot in manager Matt Quatraro’s rotation, and with a full, healthy season will position himself as one of the more desirable arms on next year’s free agent market. This is his final season of club control, given his 5.135 years of big league service time.

Bubic will join Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha and Noah Cameron in what should be a formidable Royals rotation. His proximity to free agency prompted the Royals to at least consider the idea of trading him to acquire help on other areas of the big league roster this winter,  but obviously no deal came together. The Mets and Red Sox were both linked to Bubic at various points this winter as they scoured the trade market for rotation upgrades.

If the Royals fall out of contention in the season’s first half, Bubic’s name could once again surface on the trade market. However, provided he’s healthy and anywhere close to his 2024-25 form, he’ll be a qualifying offer candidate, so Kansas City would likely seek a fairly notable return to pry him loose. That’s a down-the-road consideration anyhow; the Royals enter the 2026 season with a very similar club to the one they trotted out in 2026, though they’ll hope that better health and newcomers Isaac Collins, Lane Thomas, Matt Strahm and Nick Mears can help them contend in a perennially thin American League Central.

Marlins To Sign John King

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The Marlins and left-handed reliever John King are in agreement on a one-year, $1.5MM contract for the 2026 season, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He was non-tendered by the Cardinals back in November. Miami now needs to open two 40-man roster spots — one for King and another for righty Chris Paddack, who agreed to a one-year deal earlier in the week. Their 40-man roster is full, but one spot can be opened by transferring injured righty-hander Ronny Henriquez, who’ll miss the season following Tommy John surgery, to the 60-day injured list.

King, 31, spent three and a half seasons with the Rangers from 2020-23 before being traded to St. Louis at the ’23 deadline. He spent the next two and a half seasons in the Cardinals’ bullpen. The 6’2″ ground-ball specialist has a 3.70 ERA over his past 243 big league innings but is coming off a rough season in which he worked to a 4.66 earned run average with a career-low 12.6% strikeout rate in 48 1/3 innings.

While King has never been one to miss many bats, that 12.6% mark was still three percentage points south of his career mark entering the 2025 season. Last year’s 6.3% walk rate was a strong mark but still up from the prior season’s 5.6%. King’s 93 mph average sinker velocity was also its lowest since the 2022 season.

What King lacks in strikeouts, he at least partially makes up for in ground-balls. Opposing batters have an extremely difficult time elevating against the lefty’s arsenal. He sports a massive 61.5% ground-ball rate in his career and has run that number up as high as 66.9% (in 2023). As one might expect for an extreme ground-ball pitcher, King has done a nice job keeping the ball in the yard, with just 0.89 homers per nine frames in his major league career.

King has been more effective against fellow lefties than righties, holding same-handed opponents to a .251/.291/.337 slash in his career. Right-handers have hit him well, slashing .302/.353/.430 in 682 plate appearances.

The Marlins have been on the lookout for a lefty to join manager Clayton McCullough’s bullpen. Miami already had Andrew Nardi, Cade Gibson and Josh Simpson, but each comes with some degree of red flag. Nardi missed the 2025 season due to injury. Gibson logged a 2.63 ERA in 51 2/3 innings as a rookie last year but did so with sub-par strikeout and walk rates; metrics like SIERA (4.08) and FIP (3.76) weren’t nearly as bullish. Simpson posted decent minor league numbers but was rocked for a 7.34 ERA in 30 2/3 big league frames.

King, like each of the other three lefty relievers on Miami’s 40-man roster, has some question marks of his own. He has more of a big league track record than any of his new southpaw teammates, however — enough to give the Marlins some veteran experience but not so much that he’s a pure one-year rental. King enters the 2026 season with 4.148 years of major league service time, meaning he’s still controllable through the 2027 season via arbitration. He’ll need to pitch well enough this year that his team feels he’s worth giving a raise and keeping for an additional year, but if he can bounce back to 2021-24 form, he’ll likely do just that.

Astros Notes: Hader, Diaz, Trade Market

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Astros closer Josh Hader is behind schedule in camp after imaging revealed biceps inflammation a couple weeks ago, manager Joe Espada told the team’s beat as camp opened this morning (link via Chandler Rome of The Athletic). Espada added that Hader has already been resting for the past 10 days or so and is scheduled to resume throwing from flat ground today. Hader himself told reporters that he felt “pretty good” after his brief shutdown (video via MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart). He acknowledged being a “probably a few weeks behind” due to the minor setback. Hader didn’t rule out Opening Day but also declined to put a firm timetable on his rehab.

The 31-year-old lefty (32 in April) is entering the third season of a five-year, $95MM contract in 2026. Hader enjoyed a decent first season in Houston and a dominant second campaign; overall, he’s pitched to a 3.06 earned run average while striking out a colossal 37.4% of opponents against a roughly average 8.5% walk rate. He’s picked up 62 saves along the way. Bryan Abreu would be the top candidate for saves early in the season if Hader were to miss time.

Elsewhere in the Houston bullpen, righty Enyel De Los Santos is current shut down from throwing for a couple days due to a strain in his right knee (via McTaggart). The 30-year-old De Los Santos was a nice bargain addition in August. Houston signed the well-traveled righty to a big league deal after he was cut loose in Atlanta. He went on to pitch 22 1/3 innings as an Astro, working to a 4.03 ERA with far more encouraging rate stats (26.4 K%, 6.6 BB%). He was dinged for five home runs in that time — an average of 2.01 per nine frames — which continued a worrying trend from the 2024 season. However, the long ball wasn’t an issue for him in Atlanta, and De Los Santos yielded just 0.53 HR/9 from 2022-23 in Cleveland. He’s playing out his final season of club control on a $1.6MM salary.

Espada also announced to reporters this morning that catcher Yainer Diaz suffered a foot sprain on a slide into second base during the Dominican Winter League season (video via McTaggart). The injury took place back in December, and Diaz immediately flew to Houston for a diagnosis and to begin treatment. He’s catching bullpens, swinging the bat and throwing as normal, though he’s on what Espada described as a “modified” running program while the foot is in its final stages of mending. There’s no indication that Diaz will miss time to begin the season or even be hobbled early during exhibition play, but it’s still something to keep an eye on; Houston has reportedly already been poking around the market for a backup catcher.

In broader terms, the Astros remain active in both the free agent and trade markets. They’ve reportedly been seeking a left-handed-hitting outfielder as part of the return in any trade talks surrounding infielder Isaac Paredes, who remains available for clubs looking to add some thump at the infield corners and/or at designated hitter. General manager Dana Brown suggested today that trade talks have slowed down in general since camp opened but stated that Houston remains open to roster changes throughout the course of spring training (via Matt Kawahara of the Houston Chronicle).

In addition to seeking a backup catcher, looking for a lefty-hitting outfielder, and exploring trade scenarios for Paredes and pricey first baseman Christian Walker, the Astros have spent much of the offseason listening to interest in center fielder Jake Meyers.

Brewers To Sign Gary Sánchez

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The Brewers have agreed to terms on a deal with veteran catcher Gary Sánchez, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. The MDR Sports client will be guaranteed $1.75MM on the deal.

Sánchez, 33, spent the 2025 season with the Orioles organization but was limited to just 30 games and 101 plate appearances due to wrist inflammation and, more seriously, a sprain of the posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He was reasonably productive when healthy, popping five homers and turning in a .231/.297/.418 batting line (100 wRC+).

This will be Sánchez’s second stint with the Brewers in the past three seasons. He spent the 2024 campaign in Milwaukee as well, hitting .220/.307/.392 with 11 homers in 280 plate appearances. He served as a backup to William Contreras and a part-time (40 games) designated hitter that season and figures to reprise that role in 2026.

A former top prospect and an All-Star earlier with the Yankees early in his career, Sánchez has settled into a backup/part-time role in recent seasons. He appeared in 128 games and totaled 471 plate appearances with the Twins in 2022 after being traded from the Bronx to Minnesota, but he’s taken only 648 plate appearances combined in the three subsequent seasons (albeit, in part due to last year’s injuries).

Sánchez developed a reputation as a defensive liability earlier in his career but progressed to the point that he turned in solid defensive marks behind the dish in both 2022 and 2023. He was closer to average in ’24 and slipped back below average in 2025, per both Defensive Runs Saved and Statcast, though that was obviously a small sample (175 innings). He’ll return to a Milwaukee club where he’s familiar with some members of the staff (e.g. Brandon Woodruff, Abner Uribe, Trevor Megill, Aaron Ashby, Jared Koenig), but the Brewers’ staff has turned over a fair bit even in the roughly 18 months since Sánchez’s initial departure.

The Brewers recently signed veteran catcher Reese McGuire to a minor league deal and invited him to spring training. He’d been in line to serve as the backup to Contreras but now seems likely to be ticketed for Triple-A Nashville — if he doesn’t have an out clause in his contract that allows him to explore other opportunities late in camp.

The addition of those two veterans gives the Brewers the ability to be more patient with top prospect Jeferson Quero, who is widely regarded as the heir to Contreras behind the plate but still has just 59 games and 251 plate appearances of Triple-A ball under his belt. He could push his way into the mix with a big enough season in Nashville, and it’s feasible that he’ll be ready for a full-time look in 2027, when Contreras will be entering his final season of club control (and likely be an offseason trade candidate, as is often the case with top Brewers players who are a year from reaching free agency).

Blue Jays, Juan Yepez Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Blue Jays are in agreement on a minor league contract with first baseman/outfielder Juan Yepez, per Aram Leighton and Eric Treuden of Just Baseball. He’ll presumably be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee later this month.

Yepez, 27, has appeared in parts of three big league seasons with the Cardinals and Nationals — most recently with Washington in 2024. He’s a .258/.307/.423 hitter (103 wRC+) in 588 plate appearances as a major leaguer. The righty-swinging Yepez has fairly neutral platoon splits in his MLB time and carries a 6.5% walk rate against a 20.9% strikeout rate.

The 2025 season was a struggle for Yepez. He didn’t appear in the majors and struggled badly in Triple-A while also spending nearly two months of the season on the minor league injured list. He appeared in 75 minor league games overall (62 in Triple-A, plus 13 rehab games in High-A) and posted a combined .220/.292/.358 batting line in 284 turns at the plate.

It was a year to forget, but Yepez has a track record as a well above-average hitter in Triple-A and a solid, roughly league-average producer in about one season’s worth of plate appearances. He has below-average speed (31st percentile in 2024, per Statcast) and doesn’t bring much defensive value to the table, with poor marks from Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average at first base and in both outfield corners.

Yepez joins the Blue Jays just one day after they revealed outfielder/designated hitter Anthony Santander will miss five-plus months due to shoulder surgery. With Santander sidelined, the Jays will likely go with Nathan Lukes, Daulton Varsho and Addison Barger in the outfield, with George Springer mixing in occasionally but spending most of his time at designated hitter.

Yepez joins the mix for a bench spot behind that group, though there’s not much space for a non-roster player to force his way in. Tyler Heineman will take one spot as the backup catcher, while speedster Myles Straw is in line for backup outfield work. Infielder Leo Jimenez is out of minor league options and is the primary backup to Andres Gimenez at shortstop (though second baseman Ernie Clement can certainly handle shortstop as well). Infielder/outfielder Davis Schneider has minor league options left, as do outfielders Joey Loperfido and Jonatan Clase. Yepez will try to leapfrog Schneider, Loperfido and Clase for the final bench spot, but there’s a good chance he simply heads to Triple-A Buffalo to serve as depth in the upper minors.

Dodgers Re-Sign Evan Phillips, Designate Ben Rortvedt

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The Dodgers announced Wednesday that they’ve re-signed reliever Evan Phillips to a one-year deal worth $6.5MM. Catcher Ben Rortvedt was designated for assignment to open a spot on the 40-man roster. Phillips, a client of Apex Baseball, was non-tendered by the Dodgers in November after undergoing Tommy John surgery late last May but will return on a new one-year deal.

Phillips, 31, came to the Dodgers via a 2021 waiver claim out of the Rays organization. He pitched well enough down the stretch in ’21 to stick on the roster throughout that offseason, but Phillips didn’t immediately look like a waiver heist in the initial months following his claim.

That changed in 2022. A then-27-year-old Phillips erupted for 63 innings with a microscopic 1.14 ERA. He set down 33% of opponents on strikes and walked only 6.4% of the batters he faced, averaging better than 96 mph on his four-seamer and sinker alike. Phillips picked up 19 holds that year, but by 2023 he’d stepped into the closer’s role in L.A. — a job he handled with aplomb. Phillips turned in another dominant season, recording a 2.05 ERA with 24 saves, six holds, a 28.2% strikeout rate and a 5.6% walk rate.

For three full seasons from 2022-24, Phillips was a wipeout late-inning reliever. He combined for a 2.21 ERA with 44 saves, 34 holds and only nine blown saves, whiffing 29.6% of opponents with a 6.5% walk rate. His 2025 campaign got out to a strong start as well, with 5 2/3 shutout frames and six strikeouts. Phillips hit the injured list early in the year, however, and by late May the team announced that he’d require Tommy John procedure, sidelining him for what’ll likely be 13 to 14 months.

Phillips figures to aim for a return around the All-Star break, give or take a couple weeks. If he’s able to do so, he’ll be a prominent midseason boon to the bullpen — effectively the same as picking up a prominent reliever ahead of the trade deadline. There’s risk in any pitcher coming back from major surgery, but if it works out, he’ll be healthy for October, which has been the Dodgers’ primary concern (relative to the regular season) with all their higher-end pitchers in recent seasons.

The Dodgers are an annual luxury tax payor and are well into the top bracket of penalization. Phillips will come with the maximum 110% tax on his salary, meaning he’ll cost the Dodgers $13.65MM overall. It’s a steep price to pay, particularly relative to the risk, but the Dodgers’ spending knows virtually no bounds.

As for Rortvedt, he’ll likely head back to the waiver wire on the heels of his latest DFA. He ended the season on the Dodgers’ 40-man roster and quickly inked a $1.25MM deal to avoid arbitration. The Dodgers then placed him on waivers, hoping he’d clear and could then be stashed in Triple-A Oklahoma City as upper-level depth. Ideally, the $1.25MM salary would’ve dissuaded other clubs from claiming him while also giving Rortvedt a reason to accept the minor league assignment; he has enough service time to reject an outright in favor of free agency but not enough to do so while retaining his guaranteed salary.

The Reds scooped Rortvedt up anyhow and carried him on the 40-man roster for much of the offseason. When he was designated for assignment earlier this month, the Dodgers placed a claim to bring Rortvedt back to the organization. They’ll now hope to pass him through waivers, as they initially planned.

It’s easy to see why clubs would be happy to have the out-of-options Rortvedt in the upper minors but might be wary of carrying him on the big league roster. He’s a plus defender behind the plate whose keen eye typically lends itself to strong walk rates. Rortvedt is strikeout-prone and consistently hits for a low average, however, and he has little in the way of in-game power. He’s a career .190/.279/.270 hitter in 633 MLB plate appearances and a .239/.328/.412 hitter in 574 Triple-A plate appearances.

The Dodgers can trade Rortvedt or place him on waivers at any point within the next five days. Waivers are a 48-hour process, so his DFA will be resolved within a maximum of one week.

Corbin Carroll To Undergo Surgery For Hamate Fracture

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Diamondbacks star Corbin Carroll suffered a broken hamate bone in his right hand yesterday during batting practice, Steve Gilbert of MLB.com reports. He’s slated to undergo surgery today, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. That’ll sideline Carroll for the majority of camp and seems likely to land him on the injured list to begin the 2026 season.

It’s an awful note on which to start camp for the D-backs and their fans. Carroll, the 2023 NL Rookie of the Year, is already a two-time All-Star and finished sixth in National League MVP voting last season after hitting .259/.343/.541 with 31 home runs, 32 doubles, 17 triples, 32 stolen bases (in 38 tries), a 10.4% walk rate and a 23.8% strikeout rate in 642 trips to the plate. No player in baseball provided more baserunning value than Carroll in 2025, per FanGraphs’ BsR metric, and he was 39% better than average at the plate by measure of wRC+.

The Diamondbacks haven’t provided a formal timetable for Carroll’s recovery and presumably won’t do so until after his surgery. It’s a relatively common injury though — as both Jackson Holliday and Francisco Lindor can attest — and typically shelves hitters for anywhere from four to eight weeks. Hamate injuries (and hand injuries in general) have a tendency to linger and impact a hitter’s power output, but every injury situation is different. Arizona should provide more details in the days ahead.

With Carroll likely IL-bound, an already uncertain D-backs outfield mix now looks even murkier. Arizona traded Jake McCarthy to the Rockies on the heels of a couple disappointing seasons earlier in the winter. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. will open the season on the injured list as he continues rehabbing last season’s torn ACL. Top prospect Jordan Lawlar was already moving from the infield to the outfield this season but now seems certain to begin the season there. Center fielder Alek Thomas is a fine defender, but he’s four seasons into his MLB career now and his bat has yet to catch up to his former top prospect status. Infielder/outfielder Blaze Alexander was traded to the Orioles just last week.

Suffice it to say, outfield options on Arizona’s roster are thin, at best. Lawlar and Thomas are likely locked into starting roles by default. First baseman/designated hitter Pavin Smith has some experience in the outfield corners but has graded as a poor defender. The recent signing of Carlos Santana was originally intended to give the lefty-swinging Smith a strong platoon partner at first base, but Santana could play first base with Smith temporarily patrolling an outfield corner.

Outfielder Jorge Barrosa is on the 40-man roster and out of minor league options, but he’s a .148/.170/.239 hitter in 95 big league plate appearances with a league-average track record at the Triple-A level. Infielder/outfielder Tim Tawa belted 31 Triple-A homers in 2024 but hit just .201/.274/.347 in 205 MLB plate appearances this past season; he’s spent a lot more time in the infield during his pro career but does have 1519 innings of outfield experience.

If the D-backs feel particularly aggressive, they could fast-track Ryan Waldschmidt, the No. 31 overall pick in 2024, to the big leagues. The 23-year-old has yet to even suit up in Triple-A but torched opposing pitcher in both High-A and Double-A last season. In a combined 601 plate appearances (split evenly between the two levels), the University of Kentucky product slashed .289/.419/.473 with 18 homers, 27 doubles, four triples, 29 steals (39 attempts), a 16% walk rate and a 17.6% strikeout rate. Baseball America currently ranks Waldschmidt as the game’s No. 48 overall prospect.

It’s also possible, of course, that the D-backs look to bring in some outfield help from outside the organization. As stated, it was already a relatively thin mix — at least in terms of established options — so even scooping up a veteran on a minor league contract with a non-roster invitation to spring training might’ve been prudent. Mike Tauchman, Mark Canha and old friend Randal Grichuk are among the more notable unsigned names still lingering on the market. Spring training naturally brings up opportunities to scoop up other veterans as they opt out of minor league deals and/or less-experienced players who find themselves designated for assignment when other clubs make final additions. The D-backs could monitor both markets as they look to bring in some depth in light of Carroll’s injury.

Braves Place Spencer Schwellenbach On 60-Day Injured List

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Feb. 11: Schwellenbach details (video link via Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that he felt strong throughout the offseason and had thrown off a mound four or five times without issue before experiencing discomfort right at the end of a 20-pitch bullpen session about ten days ago. He’s since undergone imaging that led to his diagnosis and 60-day IL placement. Schwellenbach says he might require arthroscopic surgery — nothing is scheduled yet — and isn’t sure what the recovery period would be from that procedure.

Feb. 10: The Braves opened camp this morning with an unwelcome update on talented young righty Spencer Schwellenbach. He’s been placed on the 60-day injured list due to inflammation in his right elbow, per Mark Bowman of MLB.com.

The team’s hope is that the 25-year-old is dealing with bone spurs and not something more nefarious. Regardless, since the “60-day” term begins on Opening Day (and can only be backdated a maximum of three days), Schwellenbach will miss at least two months of action to begin the season. His IL placement should open space on the roster for catcher Jonah Heim, who agreed to a one-year deal with Atlanta earlier today.

Injuries to the pitching staff were the hallmark of Atlanta’s 2025 season, and their 2026 campaign isn’t starting out much differently. The Braves have already been on the lookout for rotation help — perhaps already knowing that Schwellenbach would be sidelined — with reported interest in Chris Bassitt and Lucas Giolito, among others. Atlanta has already had to make one late-offseason pivot, signing Jorge Mateo and Kyle Farmer (the latter on a minor league deal) after Ha-Seong Kim suffered a torn tendon in his hand when he slipped on some ice and fell in a fluke off-field injury. He’ll need four to five months to recover from the subsequent surgery. Schwellenbach’s injury seems to set the stage for another late addition.

The Braves had already been facing workload and health concerns in the rotation. Chris Sale missed significant time with a ribcage fracture last season and has a lengthy injury history. Spencer Strider’s return from UCL surgery produced results that were nowhere close to his star-caliber performance prior to injury. Schwellenbach missed months due to an elbow fracture. Reynaldo Lopez only made one start last year due to shoulder surgery. Promising young righty AJ Smith-Shawver was shelved after a handful of starts due to his own Tommy John procedure.

Entering the year, the Atlanta rotation figured to include Sale, Strider, Schwellenbach, Lopez and one of Hurston Waldrep, Grant Holmes, Bryce Elder, Didier Fuentes or an external addition such as Giolito or Bassitt. The Braves are down to three established veterans (Sale, Strider, Lopez), none of whom is coming off a peak season in terms of both health and performance. There ought to be a fair bit of urgency to add another starter to help keep pace in a perennially competitive National League East.

How much space the Braves do or don’t have to make that rotation addition happen isn’t fully clear. RosterResource projects an actual cash payroll around $268MM and a CBT payroll about $10MM less than that. That puts the Braves around $6MM shy of the second tier of luxury tax penalization. They’d owe a 20% tax on any dollars up to the $264MM luxury mark and a 32% tax on anything from $264MM to $284MM. That’s presumably the point at which Atlanta would prefer to halt its spending, given that crossing the $284MM third-tier threshold is the point at which a team’s top draft pick is dropped by 10 places.

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