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Tigers Select Jose Cisnero, Designate Carlos Torres

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Per a team release, the Tigers have selected the contract of righty Jose Cisnero from Triple-A Toledo and designated right-hander Carlos Torres for assignment.

Cisnero, 30, has 33 games of big-league experience with the 2013-14 Astros, for whom he worked to a 4.94 ERA with estimators to match. Cisnero spent much of the 2016-18 seasons in the Mexican and Independent leagues, where he ostensibly found a strikeout touch that had eluded him in seasons past. The hefty 6’3 righty’s set down nearly 11 per nine in the International League this season, though his longstanding command issues continue to linger.

Torres, 36 and an 11-year MLB vet, made just six appearances for the Tigers this season. He struck out eight while walking just one, but allowed hard contact over 42% of the time and struggled to keep the ball in the yard. In over 500 IP with six MLB organizations, Torres boasts a respectable 4.09 ERA with a very solid 44.1% grounder rate.

Rays Select Mike Brosseau

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The Rays have selected INF Mike Brosseau from Triple-A Durham among a flurry of roster moves, the team announced. INF/OF Daniel Robertson was placed on the 10-Day IL with a left knee sprain, and durable reliever Austin Pruitt was sent down to make room for lefty Adam Kolarek. Catcher Anthony Bemboom was transferred to the 60-day IL to make room for Brosseau.

Though the 25-year-old Brosseau didn’t crack the club’s top 54 prospects per FanGraphs, the 5’10 righty has done little but mash in his four years on the Rays farm thus far. In 283 plate appearances for Durham this season, Brosseau’d slashed .313/.406/.579 with an outstanding 11.7% BB/17.7%K plate-discipline profile.

He’ll look to work his way into the weak-side infield platoon mix for Tampa, as each of Brandon Lowe, Joey Wendle, Willy Adames, Christian Arroyo and Ji-Man Choi have been manhandled by lefties so far this season.

Pirates Place Gregory Polanco On 10-Day IL

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The Pirates have placed outfielder Gregory Polanco on the 10-Day IL with left shoulder inflammation, the team announced. Outfielder Jason Martin has been recalled in his place. It’s the same shoulder on which Polanco underwent major surgery in the offseason, resulting in a month-long absence at the season’s outset. The move is retroactive to Wednesday, however, so it may just be a minor setback for the 29-year-old.

The lefty has struggled in his first 42 games for the team this season, slashing just .242/.301/.425 (89 wRC+) with an easily-career-high 29.3% strikeout rate. Polanco’s (left) throwing arm has graded out as subpar for the first time in his six-year big-league career thus far, so it’s certainly possible the shoulder is still giving him issue.

Martin, 23, was acquired from Houston as part of the Gerrit Cole deal, but has not been good after a midseason promotion to Triple-A in 2018. He boasts identical 65 wRC+ marks at Indianapolis both this season and last, and a 17-game cameo with Pittsburgh earlier in ’19 did not go well, as the rare lefty hitter/righty thrower slashed just .229/.289/.286 in limited action.

Rookie Bryan Reynolds has been a godsend for a beleaguered Pirate outfield thus far, but the team’ll need plenty of help elsewhere if it’s to overcome the six-under-.500 hole in which it currently sits.

Cubs Place Kyle Hendricks On 10-Day IL

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JUNE 18: Hendricks has a shoulder impingement, Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer told Jordan Bastian of MLB.com and other reporters Tuesday. “I feel like we got ahead of it,” Hoyer said. “We’re not sure how much time he’ll miss, but we’ll try to take it slow and take the length of the season into account.”

JUNE 15: The Cubs have placed righty Kyle Hendricks on 10-Day IL with right shoulder inflammation, per Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune. Righty Rowan Wick will come up from Triple-A Iowa to take his place.

Hendricks, 29, is outpacing his peripheral marks for the fifth time in six big league season thus far in 2019. The righty’s delivered 14 starts of 3.36 ERA ball with his typical microscopic walk rate, though his grounder percentage has dropped to an easily-career-worst 41.9%.

There’s no word yet on how long the command artist will remain sidelined, or who’ll replace him in the Cubs rotation. Tyler Chatwood, the only Cub apart from the opening five of Hendricks, Jon Lester, Cole Hamels, Yu Darvish, and Jose Quintana to get a start this season, would figure to be next in line, but he’s again been shaky in ’19 after signing a 3-year, $38MM deal prior to the 2018 campaign.

Dick Williams On The Reds’ Deadline Approach

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The 30-37 Reds sit tied for last in the talent-rich NL Central, but the team’s white flag still hangs far from full mast, as Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer explores. President of Baseball Ops Dick Williams, who embarked on a full-scale rental shopping spree last offseason, acquiring Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, the now-departed Matt Kemp, and Tanner Roark in win-now moves intended to revitalize a listless fanbase, explained his reasoning in a series of quotes for the piece.

“Our only focus right now is to get the most out of these guys, win and improve the roster where we can,” Williams said. “Right now, we’ve got Wood and Gennett as planned additions to the team. That’s two pretty good boosts. We still feel like this is very much an upwards trajectory. The potential is there for this team, this group of guys.”

Though it’s certainly conceivable that Scooter Gennett and Alex Wood, each still at least two weeks away from returning, with the latter perhaps closer to a month or more, could be the catalysts to jumpstart a sputtering Cincinnati club into gear and overcome the team’s long playoff odds (3.5%, per FanGraphs’ latest estimate), the rational outlook has the team entering preparations to sell, a fact of which Williams is surely aware. “There will be decisions to be made,” Williams noted, with the hard-to-ignore subtext hovering.

Puig, Wood, and Gennett entered the season as the team’s three most obvious trade chips, should the team’s course head south, though none of the trio now figures to net the return Cincy was surely banking on. Puig has endured easily the worst season of his career to this point, slashing just .222/.264/.393 (66 wRC+) while flashing little of his trademark ball-hawking in right field. Though Wood’s injury isn’t of the elbow, forearm, or shoulder variety, his history in that area is checkered, and contenders are unlikely to offer much for a rental mid-rotation starter just a week or so back from a three-month stint on the IL. Gennett’s value suffers from the same malaise as does Wood’s, though second-base offense around the league has slumped a bit this year, and his left-side thump may be just the plug a team with a gaping hole at the keystone needs.

Roark has thus far been excellent for the club, striking out batters at a career-best rate en route to a sterling 1.6 fWAR in 13 early-season starts. Deeper peripheral marks are unconvinced, though, as Roark’s 7.0% HR/FB is easily the lowest of his career, and his typically-high grounder rate has plummeted to far below league-average depths at 33.5%. His mid-to-back-end track record, too, likely won’t have teams champing at the bit to get a piece, especially with just two-plus months remaining on his deal at the time of a prospective deal.

The best course of action, then, may be for the Reds to consider perhaps-discounted extensions with at least a few of their free-agents-to-be. “We’re getting to that point where at least you want to put it on the table and start to see if there is mutual interest,” Williams said, while taking care to note that there’s “no urgency” on that front. Cincinnati did gift another offseason acquisition, Sonny Gray, with a longer-team deal of his own after he’d just finished the worst season of his career, so it’s possible this back-hatch pivot was a part of the Reds’ blueprint all along.

Indians Claim Jordan Stephens

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Per a team release, the Indians have claimed righty Jordan Stephens off waivers from the White Sox. Stephens, 26, had a rough go at AAA-Charlotte this season, pitching to an 8.60 ERA/6.29 FIP while being torched for eight homers in 37 2/3 IP. He’ll reportedly be assigned to the club’s Double-A affiliate in Akron, OH.

Stephens has worked mostly as a starter to this point in his career, though FanGraphs’ Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen point to his “premium raw spin” on a 60-grade curveball as justification for a move to a bullpen, perhaps in a “multi-inning” relief role. Stephens’ fastball grades out as below big-league average, with most reports touting his solid command of a big-league-caliber cutter.

By latest count, Cleveland stands at a man over the maximum 40 on their extended roster, so a corresponding move would figure to come in short order. The club also must make room for righty Mike Clevinger, who’ll return from the 60-day IL to start Monday’s game at Texas.

Mets Acquire Brooks Pounders

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The Mets have acquired righty Brooks Pounders from the Indians for cash considerations, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post.

Pounders, 28, had spent the entire season with AAA-Columbus, posting a solid 2.17 ERA with an 11.83 K/9 in 35 IP.  Though unquestionably impressive in the new, juiced-up Triple-A landscape, Pounders’ line was suppressed by a .217 BABIP and obviously unsustainable 87.6% LOB. His FIP was a more pedestrian 3.67, and deeper peripheral marks were even less encouraged.

In 35 career MLB innings for the Royals, Angels, and Rockies, the hulking righty has pitched to an 8.92 ERA/6.39 FIP with a startling 3.05 HR/9 over that span. He did put together an impressive line last season, spinning 15 1/3 innings of 9.98 K/9/1.17 BB/9 ball for the Wild Card-winning Rockies. Pounders’ll look to stabilize what’s been one of MLB’s worst bullpens this season, with only Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman, and the suddenly homer-prone Edwin Diaz offering anything in the way of dependability thus far.

Rays Prospect Brent Honeywell Fractures Bone In Elbow During Rehab Process

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MONDAY: Honeywell could be ready to pick up a ball again in January of 2020, Topkin tweets. His replacement ulnar collateral ligament is just fine, which represents a silver lining to the unfortunate situation.

SATURDAY: Top Rays prospect Brent Honeywell, on the mend from an April 2018 Tommy John Surgery, fractured a bone in his right elbow during a scheduled bullpen in Port Charlotte, Florida, and is out for the season, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. A surgery is scheduled for Monday.

Honeywell, a consensus top-30 prospect in every major outlet even after the Tommy John, had already experienced a major setback in his rehabilitation process this April when he was temporarily shelved with forearm soreness, an injury often precursor to major elbow damage. The 24-year-old’s vaunted screwball, perhaps the only pure version of the pitch used with regularity among professional hurlers today, was felt in some circles to be the tear’s root, though Honeywell only features it sporadically and had never been hurt prior to the surgery.

It’s obviously a brutal hit for both Honeywell and the Rays, though the latter can at least can hang its hat on an impressive young group of big-league arms and emerging talents below. Topkin, in a follow-up tweet, writes that Honeywell’s 2020 outlook is at yet unclear, though the club should know more after the Monday surgery is complete.

In 416 minor-league innings before last season, Honeywell had set down 458 batters on strikes while walking just 93 en route to a 2.88 ERA. He had little issue with the longball until he arrived for 2017 at Triple-A Durham, but his grounder rates remained robust. He was near-unanimously projected as a #2 starter in the majors should his stuff have returned to form. The future outlook now, of course, is far cloudier.

A.J. Puk, Jesus Luzardo Set To Begin Minor-League Rehab Stints

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Per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle, A’s lefties A.J. Puk and Jesus Luzardo will each begin a rehab stint on Tuesday with High-A Stockton. Puk will be making his first live-game mound appearance since undergoing Tommy John Surgery last April, while Luzardo, who’d been dealing with left shoulder soreness, will appear in an official game for the first time since last August.

Puk, a 6’7 lefty who was the sixth overall pick in the 2016 draft, had laid waste to the minors before his injury in the Spring of last season. His “double-plus” fastball and “vicious” (adjectives per Baseball America) slider allowed him to post double-digit strikeout rates in each of his three minor-league stops, culminating in a 61-inning stint for Double-A Midland in which the U of Florida product set down 86 batters in just 64 innings. It’ll surely be a lengthy rehab process for the projected ace, though it appears the club will use him in relief should he crack the majors this season.

Luzardo, a 21-year-old Peruvian-born hurler, was acquired in mid-2017 from Washington with Blake Treinen for relievers Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle. Little known at the time of the deal, Luzardo has rocketed up prospect lists after dominating performances of his own the last two seasons. Baseball America ranked him as the top lefty in the minors after 2018, waxing especially thorough on his changeup, which the site ranks as one of the minors’ best. Shoulder injuries are always cause for serious concern, but if Luzardo can make it through his first few outings unscathed, he’ll be a strong candidate to crack what’s been a middling A’s rotation thus far.

Twins Select Ryan Eades, Option Willians Astudillo

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The Twins have selected the contract of righty Ryan Eades and optioned C/INF/OF Willians Astudillo to AAA-Rochester, the team reported.

Eades, 27, had appeared in 17 games as a swingman for Rochester, notching a 5.88 ERA despite excellent peripheral markers.  The former second-rounder struck out 42 men over those 33 2/3 innings while walking just 12. After his second-round selection in the 2013 draft, Eades has never cracked the top 30 in Baseball America’s assessment of the Twins system, though pre-draft reports lauded his “power curve” and “athletic frame.”  He’s been generally stellar since transitioning to a mostly-relief role following the 2016 season, and he’ll look to make his mark as a likely longman in an unsung Twins pen.

Astudillo, also 27, rose to prominence with one of baseball’s most bizarre offensive profiles. The squatty backstop swings at nearly everything – his 63% swing rate was far and away tops in the majors this season – and makes contact nearly every time (his 4.1% strikeout rate was easily MLB’s lowest). The approach hasn’t worked for him so far this year, though, as the Venezuelan slashed just .250/.273/.357 (62 wRC+) in 120 plate appearances for the club. He’ll look to regain the magic-wand touch he brought to the majors last season in what hopes to be a brief stint with the Red Wings.

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