Minor MLB Transactions: 4/21/19
The latest minor moves from around baseball….
- The Red Sox have outrighted Erasmo Ramirez to Triple-A, Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe reports (Twitter link). Ramirez was designated for assignment on Friday and had the option of rejecting an outright assignment to become a free agent, so it appears as though the right-hander has decided to remain in the Sox organization after clearing waivers. The 28-year-old signed a minors contract with Boston in the offseason and appeared in one Major League game, though that lone appearance was enough to guarantee Ramirez’s big league salary. As Masslive.com’s Christopher Smith notes, Ramirez’s salary will still count against Boston’s luxury tax calculations for the season. Terms of Ramirez’s guarantee aren’t known, and while it surely isn’t an exorbitant amount, every dollar counts for a Red Sox team that is trying to stay under the $246MM maximum tax penalty threshold.
AL East Notes: Snell, Pedroia, Jays, Vlad Jr.
The latest from around the AL East…
- Blake Snell continues to be on pace for a quick return from the 10-day IL, as the Cy Young Award winner told reporters (including Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times) that he felt good following a bullpen session on Saturday. A fractured toe sent Snell to the injured list last week, though the southpaw could potentially be pitch on Wednesday, his first eligible day to be activated. Since the Rays have an off-day on Thursday, however, the team could also wait until Friday to activate Snell, just to make sure the ace is entirely recovered and ready to go. More details could be known on Monday, as manager Kevin Cash said Snell could throw another bullpen that day.
- Dustin Pedroia is also hopeful of a minimum IL stint as he recovers from his latest knee problem, telling media (including Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald) that his injury was “just a weird freak thing” rather than a more serious setback. The Red Sox second baseman explained that his cleat caught in the dirt while he was swinging during Wednesday’s game, leading to an ominous-sounding popping feeling in his knee when it failed to turn along with the rest of his body. Given that knee injuries have limited to Pedroia to just nine games since the start of the 2018 season, he admitted that the pop “more kind of scared me than anything….We’re going to let it calm down for a few days and it should be all right. It just twisted the wrong way.” Given Pedroia’s recent injury history, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Sox wait beyond the 10-day minimum to activate him from the IL. In the opinion of Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe, the team should give Pedroia more minor league rehab time before his return, as Pedroia had only a four-day stay in the minors during his first rehab stint this season and looked shaky at the plate once he reached Boston’s MLB roster.
- Speculation continues to swirl over when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will be promoted to the Blue Jays’ roster, now that more than enough days have elapsed on the service-time calendar for the Jays to gain an extra year of control over the star prospect. Guerrero was slowed by an oblique injury suffered during Spring Training, though he hasn’t looked any worse for wear in his return to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, posting a whopping 1.324 OPS over his first 20 plate appearances. The Jays would like to see Guerrero play in three consecutive games as part of his recovery process, though as MLB.com’s Gregor Chisholm notes, this has yet to happen due to multiple rainouts on Buffalo’s schedule. Assuming the Bisons get some good weather on their four-game series in Syracuse this week, Chisholm speculates that April 26 would seem to be the earliest potential date for Guerrero’s Toronto debut, when the Blue Jays begin a series against the Athletics at Rogers Centre.
Nathan Eovaldi To Undergo Elbow Surgery
MONDAY: Eovaldi will go under the knife tomorrow, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports via Twitter. The club anticipates that the righty will be sidelined for four to six weeks, Rob Bradford of WEEI.com tweets.
SATURDAY, 4:27pm: Eovaldi is indeed “leaning” toward minor elbow surgery to clean up loose bodies, per Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe.
10:37am:Red Sox right-hander Nathan Eovaldi has been placed on the 10-day injured list due to a loose body in his elbow, per MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo. Bobby Poyner will take Eovaldi’s roster spot (Twitter links). The move is retroactive to April 18th.
This is not a new injury for Eovaldi, as just last season he had arthroscopic surgery to remove a similar loose body, causing him to miss roughly two months of the season. Obviously, Eovaldi recovered just fine, but the injury is still a blow to the defending champs as they have yet to play up to the level of expectations thus far in 2019. There has been no indication as to whether or not this current IL stint will require surgery. NBC Sports Boston’s Evan Drellich posted this report from November which gave Eovaldi a clean bill of health, though of course, Eovaldi has put a few more miles on the elbow since then.
The injury hits after just four starts this season in which Eovaldi did not record a decision, totaling 21 innings with an even 6.00 ERA. It was certainly a rough start as his walk rate was up (4.71 BB/9), strikeout rate was down (6.86 K/9), and he surrendered 2.57 home runs per game on a 25% HR/FB rate. Those numbers were bound to normalize at least somewhat over time, though obviously this new injury revelation might speak to his early season struggles as well.
Poyner, 26, will join the team as a left-handed option out of the bullpen for the time being. He went 1-0 with a 3.22 ERA across 20 appearances out of the Red Sox pen last season with an impressive 9.7 K/9 to 1.2 BB/9 in the admittedly small sample.
Diamondbacks Acquire Blake Swihart
The Diamondbacks have acquired catcher Blake Swihart from the Red Sox, per a club announcement. International pool money is also going to Arizona in the deal — $500K in spending capacity, GM Mike Hazen tells reporters including Zach Buchanan of The Athletic (Twitter links) — with outfield prospect Marcus Wilson going to Boston in return.
Swihart had been designated for assignment recently. He’s now heading to an interesting situation with the Snakes. Hazen is among several top D-Backs executives that came over from the Red Sox; needless to say, the team is amply familiar with Swihart.
The Diamondbacks are the one organization in baseball that has been most dedicated to carrying three catcher-capable players on its active roster. That’s particularly relevant for Swihart, given that his questionable abilities behind the plate have thus far limited his chances in the majors. But the plan doesn’t appear to be for the out-of-options Swihart to displace a current D-Backs receiver (Carson Kelly, John Ryan Murphy, Caleb Joseph). Rather, Hazen indicates that the club intends to utilize him in some kind of utility capacity.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the Arizona organization is better able to draw value out of Swihart than were the Sox. Prior attempts at moving him around the field didn’t work out. And his well-regarded bat hasn’t yet done much damage in the majors, though to be fair opportunities have come in fits and starts to this point. In 626 career plate appearances at the game’s highest level, Swihart carries a .255/.314/.365 slash with nine home runs, ten steals, and a combination of a 25.7% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate.
The Red Sox won’t come away with what they hoped for out of Swihart, who was once considered quite a high-end prospect. But they were able to add an interesting player in Wilson, who was taken 69th overall in the 2014 draft. He has some swing and miss in his game but also has drawn his share of walks and has produced solid numbers at times in the low minors. An intriguing athlete, Wilson is off to a nice start this year at Double-A and is seen as possessing a relatively lofty ceiling.
Red Sox Place Eduardo Nunez On IL, Promote Michael Chavis, Designate Erasmo Ramirez
The Red Sox announced a series of roster moves Friday morning, revealing that they’ve placed Eduardo Nunez on the 10-day injured list (retroactive to April 18) due to a mid-back strain). Additionally, Boston has designated righty Erasmo Ramirez for assignment and recalled infielders Tzu-Wei Lin and Michael Chavis from Triple-A Pawtucket. It’ll be the MLB debut for Chavis, a former first-round pick who is currently ranked as the game’s No. 75 overall prospect by MLBPipeline.com.
Nunez will join fellow second basemen Dustin Pedroia and Brock Holt on the injured list. There’s no word yet on long he’s expected to be sidelined. The loss of that trio facilitated the promotion of Chavis for his first look in the big leagues as well as the return of the versatile Lin, who has been up and down with the Sox dating back to the 2017 season. While Chavis has been primarily a third baseman in his minor league career, he’s played 47 innings at second base in 2019 and has experience at shortstop in the past, as well. He seems likely to step up at second base for the time being with Boston’s other options on the mend.
Selected with the 26th overall pick in the 2014 draft, Chavis posted modest numbers in his first two and a half professional seasons before breaking out with a .282/.347/.563 batting line between Class-A Advanced and Double-A in 2017. He followed that up with a similarly impressive .298/.381/.538 slash across three levels in 2018 (topping out in Triple-A but spending the bulk of his time in Double-A), though it should be pointed out that Chavis’ 2018 campaign was shortened by an 80-game PED suspension.
This season, he was off to a .250/.354/.600 start in Pawtucket. Chavis is a bat-first prospect, drawing the most praise for plus raw power and a solid hit tool. Strikeouts are part of his game but haven’t been a huge problem for him, and he’s shown improved plate discipline in recent years as well.
Ramirez’s stint with the Sox will go down as a brief and forgettable one. The veteran right-hander made only one appearance with the Boston organization, allowing four runs on four hits (including a pair of homers) and a walk with one strikeout in three inning of relief. The Red Sox will have a week to trade him, release him or pass him through outright waivers; Ramirez would be able to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency anyhow, so this move seems quite likely to end his tenure with the Red Sox organization.
Though he had a poor year with the Mariners in 2018, Ramirez isn’t far removed from a three-year stretch (2015-17) in which he logged a combined 3.97 ERA with 7.0 K/9, 2.3 BB/9 and 1.2 HR/9 in 385 1/3 innings between Tampa Bay and Seattle. He has extensive big league experience as both a starter and reliever, and a club looking at adding some depth in either area could take a look at the righty, who won’t turn 29 until early next month. The Braves are known to be on the lookout for potential bullpen arms, for instance, while the Rangers haven’t been secretive about their desire to add rotation depth.
Minor MLB Transactions: 4/19/19
We’ll track Friday’s minor moves from around the league here…
- The Red Sox picked up left-handed reliever Jeremy Bleich on a minor league contract, MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo writes. The 31-year-old made his MLB debut last season with the A’s but totaled just one-third of an inning, allowing a pair of runs in the process. Brief as it was, that MLB debut surely meant the world to the longtime Yankee farmhand, who grinded through a decade in the minors and pitched in independent ball before reaching the game’s top level. Bleich enjoyed a strong year with Oakland’s Triple-A affiliate last season, pitching 51 1/3 innings with 8.4 K/9 against 2.3 BB/9 with a 53.1 percent ground-ball rate in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. He spent Spring Training with the Phillies but was cut loose when he didn’t crack the Opening Day roster. Given the uncertain state of the Boston ‘pen, it’s possible that Bleich will earn a second big league opportunity at some point in 2019.
- Catcher Stuart Turner has returned to the Reds on a minor league contract, as first noted by Roster Roundup (Twitter link). Cincinnati selected Turner, a former third-round pick by the Twins, in the 2016 Rule 5 Draft and carried him on the MLB roster for the entire 2017 season. He was heavily shielded from facing big league pitching, however, and hit just .134/.182/.244 with a pair of homers in 89 plate appearances. The Reds outrighted to Triple-A early in 2018, and he struggled to a .200/.265/.213 slash there in just 22 games during an injury-shortened season. Turner has never hit much but owns a 32 percent caught-stealing rate as a pro, and scouting reports have long pegged him as an above-average defender and receiver. That surely holds value to the Reds, if only to give the organization’s young pitchers in the upper minors a quality battery mate.
Red Sox Place Dustin Pedroia On Injured List
7:34pm: The move is no official. Reliever Marcus Walden was brought up to take the roster spot for the time being.
6:52pm: Pedroia will indeed hit the IL, per WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford (Twitter link).
6:33pm: Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia has yet another injury to his troubled left knee, though it seems that he has avoided a significant new problem. Regardless of the outlook, it’s the latest indication that the lauded veteran will likely never get back to being a durable, everyday player.
Pedroia “felt a pop” in the joint, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said in an appearance on the Dale & Keefe Show on WEEI (audio link). That characterization set off some initial alarm bells.
As it turns out, the initial medical review was fairly promising, according to Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe. Testing indicated that the 35-year-old “did not sustain a serious injury,” though the precise diagnosis remains unclear.
It’s still not known whether Pedroia will require a return trip to the injured list, though Abraham says that appears likely. He had just been activated after missing virtually all of the 2018 season. Pedroia recorded two singles and a walk in his first 21 plate appearances.
No matter how this particular situation plays out, it’s not likely to be the final time the Red Sox have to deal with uncertainty regarding Pedroia this season. As Dombrowski put it, given “the number of things that he’s had going on with that knee, as we know, the knee is never going to be one hundred percent.”
If the club ends up having to dip into the farm system to find a replacement, it seems likely to call upon Tzu-Wei Lin. Skipper Alex Cora cast doubt upon the idea of calling up slugging prospect Michael Chavis, as Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com tweets, though the third bagger is now being introduced to the second base position to open that possibility.
Red Sox Select Contract Of Erasmo Ramirez
In a second move of the day, the Red Sox announced that they have selected the contract of righty Erasmo Ramirez. He’ll take the active roster spot of fellow right-hander Marcus Walden, who was optioned down.
This move didn’t require a complementary 40-man transaction, as the club had an opening to work with. But it does still pose some future roster limitations, as the veteran Ramirez will need now need to stay on the active roster or be exposed to waivers.
Soon to turn 29, Ramirez has seven years of MLB experience as a swingman. He struggled through a homer-prone, ten-start stint last year with the Mariners before landing with the Boston club on a minors pact. In two starts at Triple-A to open the 2019 campaign, he allowed just one earned run in eight innings while recording five strikeouts and no walks.
Red Sox Designate Blake Swihart, Select Sandy Leon
The Red Sox have designated catcher Blake Swihart for assignment, as first reported by Evan Drellich of WEEI.com (Twitter link). In his place, Sandy Leon is heading back onto the MLB roster, as Jon Heyman of MLB Network was first to tweet.
Struggling out of the gates, the defending champs have decided upon a change behind the dish. The considerations are familiar; they were weighed just weeks ago when Leon was outrighted in favor of Swihart. This move, then, constitutes a mulligan of sorts.
Swihart wasn’t off to an inspirational start at the plate, with a .231/.310/.385 slash, but it seems likely that the move was driven primarily by the club’s broader pitching issues. The Boston staff has been among the worst in all of baseball thus far. While that reflects quite a bit more than Swihart’s own performance behind the dish, the organization obviously feels it has something to gain in that regard by switching things up.
Leon was stashed down at Triple-A after clearing waivers late in camp. He lacks Swihart’s abilities on offense but is lauded for his glovework and game management skills. He had teamed with Christian Vazquez to form a defensive-oriented backstop combination in recent years, but the club opted to give Swihart a run at the position to open the season after utilizing him in a utility role last year.
The move potentially means jettisoning the upside and cheap control embodied in the control rights over Swihart. He’s earning $910K this year as a Super Two player and comes with three further arbitration-eligible campaigns. Long lauded as a potential impact bat that can line up behind the dish, those predictions haven’t yet come to fruition. Over 626 career MLB plate appearances, Swihart owns a .255/.314/.365 slash line.
Teams that believe in the bat may well give Swihart a chance at a lengthier run of consistent playing time. That could come via trade or waiver claim. If no team is interested in carrying the out-of-options 27-year-old on its active roster and he clears waivers, the Red Sox will have a chance to stash him back at Triple-A.
AL Notes: Royals, Gordon, Yanks, BoSox, Holt
Royals left fielder Alex Gordon has considered retiring after 2019, the last guaranteed season of his four-year, $72MM contract, Rustin Dodd of The Athletic reports (subscription required). That decision’s on hold for the time being, but now the question is whether the career-long Royal, 35, will finish the season with the club. Gordon has gotten off to such a superb start this year that Dodd notes he could emerge as a viable in-season trade candidate for the rebuilding Royals. But Gordon has 10-and-5 rights, meaning he’d be able to kibosh any trade, and his lofty salary ($20MM this year and a $4MM buyout in 2020) further complicates matters. While Gordon was an indispensable piece for the Royals in his younger days, his production has fallen flat since he received his contract. However, as Dodd explains, Gordon may have revived his career thanks to a mechanical adjustment he made last August. Gordon ended 2018 on a positive note and has come back with a vengeance this year, evidenced by his .356/.456/.667 line with three home runs and more walks (seven) than strikeouts (five) in 57 plate appearances. He has already totaled 1.0 fWAR, compared to a paltry 0.5 in 1,057 PA from 2016-17.
Now the latest on a few other AL notables…
- Big-ticket offseason pickup James Paxton has struggled so far as a member of the Yankees, which led the left-hander to talk with his sports psychologist, Sweeny Murti of WFAN tweets. The former Mariner revealed he had been putting too much pressure on himself to succeed with his new team, though he now believes he’s on the right track. Paxton also found out from Yankees special advisor Carlos Beltran that he was tipping his curveball grip in his most recent start, an ugly showing in Houston on April 10. He’ll attempt to incorporate Beltran’s advice against Boston on Tuesday.
- Speaking Sunday with reporters, including Bryan Hoch of MLB.com and Erik Boland of Newsday, Yankees center fielder Aaron Hicks said he feels “great” and could take on-field batting practice in the next week. There’s still no timetable for his return, though. Hicks has been dealing with a lower back issue since early March, shortly after the Yankees inked him to a seven-year, $70MM contract extension. Although his absence has deprived the Yankees of one of the game’s preeminent center fielders, battle-tested reserve Brett Gardner has delivered passable offensive production (90 wRC+ in 61 plate appearances) in his stead.
- Red Sox utilityman Brock Holt is eligible to come off the 10-day injured list Monday, but he won’t return until at least “late in the week,” Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com writes. Holt, who has been on the IL since April 6 with a scratched right cornea, will see a doctor Tuesday and could then embark on a rehab assignment. Prior to his injury, the 30-year-old Holt got off to a slow start, as have fellow Red Sox second basemen Dustin Pedroia and Eduardo Nunez.