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Red Sox Acquire John Holobetz As PTBNL In Quinn Priester Trade

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The Red Sox announced Monday that they’ve acquired right-hander John Holobetz from the Brewers as the player to be named later in last month’s trade that sent righty Quinn Priester from Boston to Milwaukee.

Holobetz, 22, was the Brewers’ fifth-round pick in the draft just last summer. The Old Dominion product didn’t pitch in 2024 following the draft but is out to a terrific start in 2025. He’s pitched 24 innings across five appearances in A-ball, logging a flat 3.00 ERA on 16 hits and five walks with 31 strikeouts. Holobetz has fanned 31.3% of his opponents and issued walks at just a 5.1% clip.

It’s a nice start to his pro career, but as a former college pitcher starting out in A-ball, Holobetz hasn’t yet been challenged by older and more advanced competition. How he fares in eventual moves up the ladder will be telling. The 6’3″ righty wasn’t ranked among Milwaukee’s best prospects heading into the season. He worked primarily as a reliever in college, but the Brewers have given him longer stints so far in pro ball.

Holobetz joins outfielder Yophery Rodriguez as one of two players the Red Sox acquired in exchange for Priester. Milwaukee also sent its Competitive Balance (Round A) draft selection to Boston in exchange for Priester, whom the Red Sox acquired ahead of the 2024 trade deadline in a swap sending former first-rounder Nick Yorke to Pittsburgh. Rodriguez has appeared in 19 games with the Red Sox’ High-A club and turned in a .224/.402/.418 batting line with more walks (21.8%) than strikeouts (17.2%) in 87 plate appearances.

For much of the season so far, Priester has been more or less what a Brewers team that was desperate for starting pitching had hoped. He’s been a serviceable back-end starter capable of providing five-inning efforts that keep the Brew Crew in the game. His ERA exploded to 5.79 when the Cubs clobbered him for seven runs yesterday, but Priester had worked to a 3.79 ERA through his first four turns.

Overall, it’s not an appealing set of numbers, though. The 5.79 ERA — inflated by one particularly poor start or not — is accompanied by ugly strikeout and walk rates of 15.7% and 14.8%, respectively. Priester has walked at least three batters in each of his past four starts. He’s posted an excellent 56.8% ground-ball rate, but that’s a small consolation when juxtaposed with the lack of missed bats and worrying command issues.

That said, the Brewers have control of Priester for the next six seasons, and he still has a minor league option remaining. He’s a former first-round pick and top prospect who’s still only 24 years old, and he has a solid minor league track record. The Brewers will hope as the season goes on that he can refine that command and cement himself as a reliable member of the staff. They’ve shuffled up his pitch mix a bit, adding a new cutter that sits just over 92 mph to complement his sinker-focused approach. That pitch has been hit quite hard so far, so it’s not clear he’ll stick with the offering.

For now, Priester remains set in a rotation alongside Freddy Peralta, Jose Quintana, Tobias Myers and Chad Patrick. Milwaukee has pitchers Brandon Woodruff, Nestor Cortes, Aaron Civale, Aaron Ashby, DL Hall and Robert Gasser all on the mend from injury, but only Woodruff is close to a return at the moment.

The Athletics’ Rebuild Was A Dud; They’re Winning Anyway

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From 2018-21, only four teams in Major League Baseball won more games than the A's. They'd navigated a lean stretch from 2015-17 that saw them rattle off three consecutive last-place finishes in the AL West and come out on the other side with a swiftly acquired/developed core. Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Sean Murphy were top-100 draft picks. Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt and Frankie Montas were key pieces in the returns received for Ben Zobrist, Jeff Samardzija and Josh Reddick/Rich Hill, respectively. Mark Canha was added via the Rule 5 Draft (technically in a trade with the Rockies). Ramon Laureano was acquired from the division-rival Astros for a song.

The staying power of that core, as is ever the case with the low-budget A's, was finite. In early September 2021 -- much to the chagrin of some A's fans; my apologies -- MLBTR looked ahead to the massive slate of arbitration salaries facing the then-Oakland club and wondered whether another broad-reaching teardown was nigh, given the escalating cost of that core.

That rebuild indeed came to pass. Over the next calendar year, each of Olson, Chapman, Manaea, Bassitt, Montas and Lou Trivino were traded for prospects. The following offseason, Murphy, A.J. Puk and Cole Irvin followed. Canha, just like Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks a year prior, departed for no compensation. Sam Moll went at the 2023 trade deadline.

The plus side seemed to be a bevy of new prospects who could potentially accelerate the rebuild process and help get a contending group back on the field sooner than later. If you'd told A's fans on Opening Day 2022, after that miserable offseason rebuild, that the 2025 club would be an on-the-rise team with an exciting core of hitters, they'd likely have begrudgingly accepted that another rebuild paid dividends.

Except ... that's not really the case. It's true that the A's are winning in 2025 and look more exciting than they have in four years -- but they've reached this point not because of that rebuild but rather in spite of it. Let's take a look back at the rebuild, the missteps along the way, and the manner in which this nucleus came together despite a series of whiffs on the trade market.

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Braves Re-Sign Jesse Chavez, Zach Thompson

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The Braves re-signed righties Jesse Chavez and Zach Thompson to new minor league contracts, per their transaction log at MLB.com. Both players were recently designated for assignment and passed through outright waivers unclaimed. Both elected free agency, and both had short stays on the market.

It seems that with regard to Chavez in particular, this cycle will play out in perpetuity. He can’t simply be optioned to the minors, but he’s clearly content to continue functioning as what’s effectively the 41st man on Atlanta’s 40-man roster. The team will likely continue to summon Chavez to the majors when a fresh arm is needed, then run him through the DFA/waiver process and re-sign him.

The 41-year-old Chavez has now pitched with Atlanta in each of the past five seasons. He’s departed on minor league deals with several other clubs but always found his way back to Truist Park. Chavez has pitched three big league innings this year, allowing a pair of runs on four hits and three walks with three strikeouts. He’s been outstanding in 8 1/3 Triple-A innings (one run, five hits, one walk, 13 strikeouts) and has a terrific 2.96 ERA in 204 MLB innings over the past five years, nearly all of which have come with Atlanta.

Thompson, 31, pitched 3 2/3 scoreless innings with Atlanta this season but was roughed up a bit in 4 1/3 minor league innings. The right-hander had a nice showing as a rookie with the Marlins in 2021 but struggled following a trade to the Pirates in the 2021-22 offseason. He’s totaled 200 1/3 innings at the MLB level and carries a 4.36 ERA, 18.3% strikeout rate and 8.6% walk rate. Thompson sits in the low 90s with his heater and doesn’t miss many bats, but he’s a nice spot start option to have stashed in Gwinnett — particularly with both Reynaldo Lopez and Spencer Strider on the injured list at the moment.

Red Sox Place Walker Buehler On Injured List

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5:40pm: The Red Sox have now made it official. Buehler goes on the IL with right shoulder bursitis, while Dobbins has been recalled.

4:35pm: The Red Sox are placing right-hander Walker Buehler on the 15-day injured list due to inflammation in his right shoulder, manager Alex Cora announced (link via MLB.com’s Ian Browne). The club is hopeful that it’ll only be a minimum stint for the right-hander, who’d been slated to start tomorrow. MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo reported earlier in the day that righty Hunter Dobbins is expected to get tomorrow’s start. He made his big league debut last month and has looked sharp through two MLB starts.

Buehler signed a one-year, $21.05MM deal with the Red Sox in the offseason, matching the value of the qualifying offer which the Dodgers neglected to put forth when he reached the open market. It was a relatively sizable bet on a pitcher who looked lost for much of the 2024 season — his first full year back from Tommy John surgery — before some short but memorable postseason heroics for Los Angeles.

So far, Buehler’s tenure with the Red Sox has produced pedestrian results. He’s sitting on a 4.28 ERA with better strikeout and walk rates than he had in 2024 but also a career-low 93.5 mph average fastball. And while his 20.7% strikeout rate and 6.4% walk rate are indeed improvements on last year’s marks (18.6 K%, 8.1 BB%), that strikeout rate is a far cry from his peak 29.2% when he was pitching like a bona fide ace and Cy Young contender.

Buehler heads to the injured list just days after Boston finally got right-hander Lucas Giolito healthy and into a regular season game. Giolito required UCL surgery last spring and missed all of the 2024 season and the first month of 2025 as a result. The Sox have also been without Kutter Crawford (knee) all year and have only received two starts from Brayan Bello.

Even with all the injuries, Red Sox starters rank 14th in the majors with a solid 3.91 ERA. Ideally, Buehler will rejoin the starting staff in a couple weeks, but if he requires a bit of a lengthier stay, Dobbins has looked up to the task of filling in. The 2021 eighth-rounder pitched 125 2/3 innings of 2.61 ERA ball between Double-A and Triple-A last year. In 11 major league frames this season, he’s held opponents to three earned runs (2.45 ERA) on 11 hits and a pair of walks with 11 strikeouts. In Dobbins’ most recent Triple-A start, he held the Mets’ top affiliate to a run four hits and two walks with three punchouts across six innings.

Yankees Place Jazz Chisholm Jr. On Injured List

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3:05pm: Boone says Chisholm’s strain is of the high-grade variety and he might miss four to six weeks, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

8:51am: The Yankees announced this morning that infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. is headed to the 10-day injured list due to a right oblique strain. The move is retroactive to April 30. Fellow infielder Jorbit Vivas has been recalled from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take Chisholm’s spot on the active roster.

Chisholm exited Tuesday’s game with discomfort in his side and sat out Wednesday’s contest. Manager Aaron Boone revealed earlier this week that Chisholm would undergo an MRI on Thursday’s off-day. That imaging clearly revealed enough for the Yankees to sit Chisholm down for the next week-plus. The team hasn’t formally provided a timetable for Chisholm’s return yet, though even Grade 1 oblique strains can sideline players for upwards of a month. There are instances of players making it back from very mild strains sooner than that, of course. Boone will surely provide more information on Chisholm’s injury outlook prior to tonight’s game.

The 27-year-old Chisholm has hit for plenty of power this season but has been far more strikeout-prone than he was in 2024. He’s slashing .181/.304/.410 with seven homers, three doubles, six steals (in seven attempts) and a career-best 12% walk rate. He’s also fanned in what would be a career-high 31.2% of his plate appearances and been dinged by a .200 average on balls in play — hence the low batting average.

Even with the basement-level batting average, Chisholm’s approach at the plate doesn’t look as alarming as one might expect. He’s actually chasing pitches out of the strike zone at the lowest clip of his career. His 21.1% chase rate sits nearly seven percentage points lower than league-average. In general, Chisholm is seeing more pitches than ever before. He’s swinging at a career-low 41.1% of the pitches he sees, and his 4.27 pitches per plate appearance is both a career-high mark and the 24th-highest among 168 qualified hitters.

The driving factor behind his strikeouts is easier to explain than to fix: Chisholm’s contact rate on pitches within the zone has cratered from 80.7% last year to 72.5% this season. (League average is just over 85%.) Chisholm’s strikeout rate had actually begun to come down in recent weeks; he’s fanned in one-quarter of his plate appearances over his past 80 trips to the plate — right in line with his 2024 levels — so perhaps the spike in punchouts can be chalked up to some early-season white noise. Time will tell.

In the meantime, Vivas will get his third recall to the majors and hope to finally be plugged into to the lineup this time. He’s been summoned to MLB two times in the past, but Boone has yet to write the 24-year-old’s name on the lineup card or even send him into a game as a pinch-hitter, pinch-runner or defensive replacement.

Vivas is doing his best to force the issue in Triple-A. He’s had a superb start to his 2025 season, batting .319/.426/.436 (139 wRC+) with a pair of home runs, five doubles, six steals (in 10 attempts) and more walks (12.9%) than strikeouts (6.9%). The lefty-swinging Vivas, acquired from the Dodgers in the 2023-24 offseason, can play both second and third base.

Mariners Outright Sauryn Lao

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Mariners right-hander Sauryn Lao went unclaimed on outright waivers after his recent DFA, the team announced. He’s been assigned outright to Triple-A Tacoma. Lao has neither three years of MLB service nor a prior outright assignment, so he does not have the ability to elect free agency. He’ll remain with the M’s as a depth arm.

Lao, 25, is a former Dodgers infield prospect who converted to the mound in 2023. He’s posted a 3.61 ERA in 122 minor league innings since making that switch, including a 2.25 earned run average in 12 innings with the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma this year. He’s punched out 26.6% of his opponents with the Rainiers and limited walks to a 6.5% clip. Lao made one big league appearance — his MLB debut — with Seattle prior to his DFA, during which he pitched 1 2/3 innings with no earned runs and three strikeouts.

The Seattle bullpen has been solid, with a 3.70 earned run average, but not quite as effective as many predicted heading into the season. Andres Munoz, Collin Snider, Carlos Vargas, Gabe Speier and Casey Lawrence have all provided quality results, but the M’s have received shakier performances from Eduard Bazardo, Trent Thornton, Tayler Saucedo and the now-injured Gregory Santos. They’ll get a huge arm back soon if Matt Brash can finish off his minor league rehab stint without issue, but there’s enough uncertainty in Seattle’s middle relief group that Lao could work his way back to the big leagues with continued production in Tacoma.

Reds Activate Tyler Stephenson For 2025 Debut, Place Austin Hays On Injured List

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The Reds announced Friday that they’ve reinstated catcher Tyler Stephenson from the injured list. He’s missed the entire season so far due to an oblique strain he suffered in spring training. It’s not all good news for the Reds, however, as the corresponding move for Stephenson’s return is 10-day IL stint for hot-hitting outfielder Austin Hays. He’s dealing with a left hamstring strain, per the team. His IL placement is retroactive to April 29.

With Stephenson returning and backups Jose Trevino and Austin Wynns hitting well, Cincinnati will carry three catchers on the roster for the time being. Stephenson has plenty of experience at first base, if the Reds want to plug him into that mix, and he has more than enough bat to justify being deployed as a designated hitter. The 28-year-old bounced back from a down showing in 2023 to hit .258/.338/.444 (112 wRC+) with 19 home runs in 515 plate appearances last year. Since breaking into the majors in 2020, Stephenson is a career .267/.343/.427 hitter (106 wRC+).

This will be the second IL stint of the season for the 29-year-old Hays, who’s been on an otherworldly tear when healthy enough to take the field. He started the season on the IL with a calf strain in this same left leg but has decimated opponents with a .365/.431/.712 output between the two IL trips. Hays has already clubbed five homers in just 58 plate appearances, and he’s walking at a career-high 10.3% clip against a manageable 22.4% strikeout rate.

Hays is the third potential Reds regular on the injured list. He’ll join Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Jeimer Candelario, both of whom are dealing with back injuries. With that trio sidelined, the Reds can go with a combination of Stephenson and Spencer Steer at first base. In the outfield, TJ Friedl, Jake Fraley and Gavin Lux ought to see plenty of run — particularly against right-handed pitching. Steer and fellow righty hitters Blake Dunn and Santiago Espinal can contribute in the outfield against left-handed opponents.

Athletics Recall Gunnar Hoglund For MLB Debut

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May 2: The Athletics have recalled Hoglund and optioned fellow righty Carlos Duran to Triple-A in his place, per a team announcement.

May 1: The A’s are set to promote pitching prospect Gunnar Hoglund for his major league debut, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He’s already on the 40-man roster, so they’ll only need to open a spot on the active roster.

Hoglund, 25, was the 19th overall pick by the Blue Jays out of Ole Miss back in 2021. He landed with the Athletics as the headline prospect in the trade that sent Matt Chapman to Toronto. Hoglund’s path to the big leagues has been slowed by Tommy John surgery, but he pitched a full minor league season in 2024 and has been terrific through six Triple-A starts so far in 2025.

The elbow injury, plus some dip in velocity and diminished rate stats, prompted Hoglund’s stock to decline a bit in recent seasons. He still ranked 14th among A’s prospects at MLB.com heading into the season and 16th at Baseball America, but the general outlook had been that he profiled more as a back-of-the-rotation arm at this point.

That outlook has improved rapidly in 2025, however. After sitting 91.7 mph with his heater last year, Hoglund has seen his average fastball jump to 93.6 mph in 2025, per Statcast. His swinging-strike rate hasn’t made any substantial gains, but his overall strikeout rate is up from 22.7% last year to 26.1% this season. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel wrote today that while Hoglund didn’t rank among his top-10 A’s prospects prior to the season, the early jump in his stuff has propelled him back to the No. 2 spot on his ranking of the A’s system, trailing only first baseman Nick Kurtz.

The improved stuff has led to improved results, at least in the earlygoing. Hoglund posted a 3.44 ERA, 22.7% strikeout rate, 7% walk rate and 39.1% grounder rate in 130 2/3 innings last year — with most of those innings coming in a pitcher-friendly Double-A setting. Despite pitching in an extremely hitter-friendly Triple-A Pacific Coast League this year — the same league in which he posted a 5.88 in five starts down the stretch in ’24 — Hoglund has delivered a 2.43 ERA, 26.1% strikeout rate, 6.1% walk rate and 44% ground-ball rate.

Adding a couple ticks to his fastball isn’t likely to put Hoglund on an ace trajectory, but there’s a notable gap between projecting as a mid-rotation arm and a more fungible fifth starter. With the arrow pointing up, the A’s will hope that he can now profile as more of the former. Beyond the velo jump, Hoglund has also begun to incorporate a sinker into his repertoire and has largely scrapped his slider in favor of more curveballs and changeups. He’s always had plus command, and the revamped and revitalized arsenal is reason for some optimism. McDaniel noted in his update on the A’s system that Hoglund now looks “the way he did at his best at Ole Miss.”

The A’s have effectively been working with four starters for the past couple weeks. Joey Estes has already been optioned to Triple-A after a pair of nightmarish starts to begin his season. Fellow righty J.T. Ginn hit the injured list with elbow inflammation a bit more than a week ago. Lefty Jacob Lopez got the nod in Tuesday’s game against the Rangers but was optioned to Triple-A after Texas tagged him for three runs in a 2 2/3-inning start during which he issued three walks.

Hoglund will step into the rotation alongside Luis Severino, Jeffrey Springs, JP Sears and Osvaldo Bido. Each of Severino, Sears and Bido has produced solid or better results. Springs had a decent start but has been torched for nine earned runs in his past 8 1/3 innings, ballooning his earned run average to 6.04.

On the whole, A’s starters rank 26th in the majors with a collective 4.66 ERA. Plugging Hoglund into the mix could be a nice boon. Getting a consistent fifth starter into the mix would ostensibly benefit the bullpen, which has the eighth-highest ERA in MLB (4.51), a reprieve as well.

In terms of service time, enough has elapsed in 2025 that Hoglund won’t accrue a full year even if he’s in the majors to stay. In that scenario, he’d finish the year with 151 days of service, putting him on track to be arbitration-eligible four times, rather than the standard three, as a Super Two player. The first of those trips through the arb process would come in the 2027-28 offseason, and he’d be under club control through 2031. Of course, being optioned to the minors at any point in the future could change either of those timelines, but the club’s hope will be that Hoglund’s minor league days are behind him. The A’s stockpiled a massive number of arms in their prior rebuild, but Sears is the only one who’s proven himself in the majors so far.

Giants To Sign Daniel Johnson To Minor League Contract

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The Giants are expected to sign outfielder Daniel Johnson to a minor league contract, reports Shayna Rubin of the San Francisco Chronicle. The former big leaguer opened the season with the Mexican League’s Caliente de Durango.

Johnson, 29, has posted comical numbers in the Mexican League’s supercharged run-scoring environment. He’s hitting .429/.512/.943 with five homers and three doubles through 41 plate appearances (10 games). It’s outrageous production, but readers should bear in mind that the league-average ERA in the Mexican League this year is a sky-high 5.77. The league-average batting line currently sits at an eye-popping .292/.369/.461. Johnson’s numbers remain excellent, of course, but comparing them to the levels of offense one might expect in affiliated ball would be misleading.

A fifth-round pick of the Nationals back in 2016, Johnson was traded to Cleveland in 2018’s Yan Gomes deal. He reached the bigs with Cleveland in 2020 and 2021, and he appeared in a single game with the Orioles just last year, tallying only one plate appearance. Johnson has just 95 big league plate appearances to his credit, during which he’s posted a .200/.242/.333 slash.

While those numbers clearly don’t stand out, the lefty-swinging Johnson has a better Triple-A track record. In parts of five seasons there, he’s a .255/.324/.446 hitter. That includes 500 plate appearances of league-average offense with the Orioles’ Norfolk affiliate last year (.259/.320/.448) and a stronger .296/.384/.583 performance with the Padres’ El Paso club back in 2023.

The Giants don’t have an immediate need for help in the outfield. Each of Heliot Ramos, Jung Hoo Lee and Mike Yastrzemski is enjoying a productive season at the plate — the latter two in particular (although Ramos has been on fire himself the past two weeks or so). Twenty-three-year-old Luis Matos is on hand as a seldom-used fourth outfielder at the moment. Depth options on the 40-man roster but down in Triple-A include Wade Meckler, Grant McCray and former shortstop prospect Marco Luciano, who’s been deployed strictly as a left fielder in 2025.

Johnson will add some further depth to that group. He’s played center field exclusively in Mexico this season but has 1200+ innings at all three outfield spots in his professional career.

Mets To Promote Blade Tidwell

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The Mets are planning to select the contract of right-handed pitching prospect Blade Tidwell, as first reported by Daniel Wexler. He’ll join the team in St. Louis this weekend. The Mets currently have Sunday’s starter listed as TBD, and Mike Puma of the New York Post reports that Tidwell will make that start.

Tidwell, 23, was the Mets’ second-round pick in the 2022 draft. The former University of Tennessee standout is currently ranked among New York’s top-15 prospects both at Baseball America and at MLB.com.

The 6’4″ Tidwell is in his second run through the Triple-A level. He’s started the 2025 season with a rough-looking 5.00 ERA but much more appealing rate stats: a 31.6% strikeout rate, an 8.5% walk rate, a 38% ground-ball rate and a 0.67 HR/9 mark. Tidwell is averaging 96 mph on his four-seam fastball, up from last year’s 94.7 mph average, and has seen his swinging-strike rate jump from 11.6% to 14.5%. Fielding-independent metrics (3.17 FIP, 3.79 xFIP) feel Tidwell has been far better than his earned run average, which is currently skewed by a .369 average on balls in play.

Tidwell cruised through the low minors before struggling in his first brief stint in Double-A in 2023. He opened the 2024 season at Double-A and breezed through opponents in his second go-around before being bumped to Triple-A midway through the year. He was hit harder and struggled with his command in 17 starts there last year. Even with a 5.00 ERA, this year’s rate stats suggest that Tidwell is making gains in his second crack at Triple-A, just as he did in Double-A.

It’s likely that Tidwell’s initial call the majors will be a one-off. Even with an injury-ravaged rotation that’s seen Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas and Paul Blackburn hit the injured list already, the Mets have five healthy starters in Clay Holmes, Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning. Incredibly, all five have an ERA of 3.06 or lower. No team in the game is even close to the Mets’ MLB-leading 2.24 rotation ERA.

The Mets currently have a full 40-man roster, so they’ll need to make a corresponding moves on both the 26-man and 40-man rosters. Outfielder Jose Siri (fractured leg) and left-hander Danny Young (elbow sprain) are both 60-day IL candidates, so the Mets don’t necessarily need to designate someone for assignment in order to clear a path for Tidwell’s first big league promotion.

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