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Nationals Place Erick Fedde, Tanner Rainey On Injured List

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MAY 20: Fedde tested positive for COVID-19, Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post was among those to report. He had previously been vaccinated and is asymptomatic. Rainey, who has not been vaccinated, is isolating as a close contact.

MAY 19: The Nationals announced they’ve placed right-handers Erick Fedde and Tanner Rainey on the injured list. One of the two players has tested positive for COVID-19, while the other was deemed a close contact, tweets Maria Torres of the Athletic. To replace Fedde and Rainey on the active roster, Washington recalled righties Paolo Espino and Kyle McGowin from Triple-A Rochester.

Fedde has been a reliable member of the Nats rotation over the season’s first month-plus. He’s made eight starts and tossed 39 1/3 innings with a 4.35 ERA/4.58 SIERA. With Stephen Strasburg on a rehab assignment and nearing a return from the injured list, manager Dave Martinez recently suggested Fedde was a candidate for a short-term move to the bullpen (via Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post). For the time being, though, he’ll be out of action.

The Nationals will also be without one of their more frequently utilized relievers. The hard-throwing Rainey looked to have cemented himself as a key setup piece in Martinez’s bullpen last season, tossing 20 1/3 innings of 2.66 ERA ball with an elite 42.7% strikeout rate. It’s been a disastrous start in 2021 for Rainey, however. He missed time in Spring Training because of a muscle strain near his collarbone. That didn’t require a regular season IL stint, although it’s possible the delay affected his performance. Rainey has lost a tick on his average fastball and struggled over his first 16 appearances. The 28-year-old has seen his once-lofty strikeout rate plummet to 24.6%, while his walk percentage has spiked to an untenable 19.7%. Given those poor peripherals, it’s unsurprising Rainey has allowed eleven runs (ten earned) over his first 12 1/3 frames.

Espino, 34, has made eight appearances (including a spot start when Strasburg first went on the IL). He’s managed a 2.57 ERA/4.78 SIERA in 14 innings. McGowin has scuffled, allowing four runs in 7 1/3 frames with five walks and four strikeouts.

Braves Outright Jeff Mathis

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The Braves announced that catcher Jeff Mathis has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Gwinnett. As a player with more than three years of MLB service, Mathis had the right to refuse a minor league assignment. However, he has decided to accept a spot on the Atlanta taxi squad and will remain in the organization as non-roster depth, reports David O’Brien of the Athletic (Twitter link).

Atlanta designated Mathis for assignment when they acquired Kevan Smith from the Rays yesterday.  The 38-year-old Mathis had only gotten into three games with the Braves before they removed him from the roster. He went 0-9 with five strikeouts in that limited stretch.

Of course, Atlanta wasn’t expecting Mathis to offer much at the plate. Throughout his career, he’s been among the league’s least productive hitters. Mathis’ value is in his high-end defense, and he’s particularly well-regarded for his game calling and ability to work with a pitching staff. The Braves will be happy to keep the respected veteran around behind their current catching duo of William Contreras and Smith. Projected starter Travis d’Arnaud is out for at least the next couple of months after tearing a ligament in his thumb.

Red Sox Plan To Select Danny Santana’s Contract This Weekend

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The Red Sox are planning to have infielder/outfielder Danny Santana active for this weekend’s series against the Phillies, reports Enrique Rojas of ESPN Deportes (via Twitter). Santana, who inked a minor league deal with the Red Sox in Spring Training, was slowed by a foot infection that required surgery but has been playing well over the past week in Triple-A. Boston will need to select him to its 40-man roster, so a corresponding 40-man move will need to be made. Santana has an opt-out clause in his deal this Sunday, tweets MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo, so the move will need to take place by then.

Santana, 30, has played eight minor league games and looked sharp in his return to the field. He’s 13-for-30 with three homers and three doubles to go along with a 3-to-7 BB/K overall in 35 trips to the plate. When he’s formally added to the roster, he’ll give the Red Sox yet another versatile, multi-position option to rotate around the field — a skill set they clearly prioritized heading into 2021. Santana, Enrique Hernandez and Marwin Gonzalez can all play just about position, and like Gonzalez, Santana is a switch-hitter.

The veteran Santana will be hoping to put a miserable, injury-ruined 2020 season in the rear-view mirror and bounce back to the form he showed in a career year with the 2019 Rangers. That ’19 campaign saw Santana erupt with a .283/.324/.534 batting line, 28 home runs and 21 steals in 511 trips to the plate while playing all four infield spots and all three outfield positions. However, outside of that juiced-ball season, Santana has just 14 home runs in 1228 plate appearances.

Santana’s elbow didn’t afford him the chance to follow up on that ostensible breakout showing, as he landed on the injured list after scuffling through 63 plate appearances in 2020. He ultimately required surgery to repair an elbow strain — a procedure that came with a recovery period of seven to eight months. He’s now past that rehab timeline and looks to have put both the elbow and foot troubles behind him.

It’s been a strange career for Santana, who burst onto the scene as a Rookie of the Year candidate with the 2014 Twins when he hit .319/.353/.427 with seven homers and 20 steals in 430 plate appearances. Santana’s production absolutely cratered the following year, however, and he didn’t have a single productive season (or even close to it) in the four years between that rookie year and his out-of-the-blue 2019 campaign. From 2015-18, Santana tallied 735 plate appearances between the Twins and Braves but posted a brutal .219/.256/.319 line.

Time will tell which version of Santana the Red Sox are getting, but a bench that includes him, Gonzalez and Hernandez would be one of the most versatile in baseball. It should be pointed out that Gonzalez is struggling mightily to begin his Red Sox tenure, having batted just .205/.293/.295 through his first 150 plate appearances, so it’s possible that Santana’s arrival will come at the expense of Gonzalez’s playing time.

D-backs Nearing Deal With Noe Ramirez

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The Diamondbacks are close to wrapping up a deal with free-agent reliever Noe Ramirez, reports Zach Buchanan of The Athletic (Twitter link). He elected free agency just two days ago rather than accept an outright assignment with the Angels, who’d designated him for assignment.

Ramirez, 31, was traded from the Angels to the Reds over the winter as part of Cincinnati’s Raisel Iglesias salary dump. He returned to the Halos after the Reds cut him loose late in Spring Training, avoiding the bulk of his arbitration salary in the process. Ramirez allowed a pair of runs in 3 1/3 innings with the Angels this year before being designated for assignment.

Prior to that odd Anaheim-to-Cincinnati-to-Anaheim volley, Ramirez was a fairly steady middle reliever for the Halos. From 2017-20, he pitched 180 1/3 innings of 4.04 ERA ball while recording a 26.4 percent strikeout rate and a 10.5 percent walk rate. Unlike most pitchers in today’s game, Ramirez is a soft-tosser, sitting in the 89-90 mph range with his fastball. Ramirez relies primarily on a changeup to generate swings and misses; he’s finished off 344 plate appearances with that pitch in the big leagues, and opponents are hitting just .195/.227/.289 in those instances. His slider was a decent pitch for him earlier in his career but has been hit hard in recent seasons.

Ramirez hasn’t yet reached four years of big league service time, so in the event that he reaches the Majors and returns to form, he’d be controllable via arbitration through the 2023 season. As Buchanan further notes, this may not be a “minor league” deal for all that long, as the D-backs’ bullpen has struggled to perform while being hit with some injuries as well. Tyler Clippard has yet to throw in 2021 due to a shoulder strain, while Chris Devenski is said to be weighing surgery at the moment. Young righty J.B. Bukauskas just hit the IL due to a flexor strain as well.

Diamondbacks relievers rank 29th in the Majors with a 5.61 ERA, 27th with a 4.81 FIP and 26th with a 4.16 SIERA. They also have the game’s third-lowest collective strikeout rate (21 percent) and sixth-highest homers-per-nine mark (1.49).

Royals Sign Anthony Swarzak

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Though the team hasn’t made a formal announcement to this point, the Royals have signed veteran reliever Anthony Swarzak to a minor league contract. The move is reflected on the transactions log at MLB.com, and Swarzak is listed on the roster with the organization’s top affiliate in Omaha. The Royals also inked former Rockies, Rangers and Cubs right-hander Eddie Butler earlier this month and did so without a formal announcement. Butler has tossed four innings in Triple-A with the Storm Chasers already.

Swarzak, 35, didn’t pitch in the Majors in 2019 but returned to the big leagues with the D-backs in 2021. It was a brief and unsuccessful pairing, as the well-traveled righty yielded five runs on seven hits and a walk with four strikeouts through just 4 2/3 innings. Arizona designated Swarzak for assignment on April 18 and released him a week later. Prior to that brief run with the D-backs, Swarzak’s most recent big league stint was a solid run with the 2019 Braves, during which he tossed 39 1/3 innings of 4.31 ERA ball.

While he’s pitched for nine Major League teams across parts of 11 seasons and accrued more than eight years of big league service time, Swarzak remarkably hasn’t spent consecutive seasons with a team since 2013-14 with the Twins, who selected him in the second round of the 2004 draft. Swarzak spent five seasons in Minnesota but has since spent time with the Indians, Yankees, Brewers, White Sox, Mets, Mariners, Braves and D-backs. If he makes it to the Majors with the Royals, they’ll be his tenth MLB club and his fourth AL Central team. In 645 2/3 big league innings, Swarzak has a 4.36 ERA with a 17.8 percent strikeout rate and a 7.3 percent walk rate, although his strikeout rate has spiked considerably since moving to short relief stints in the second half of his career.

As for 30-year-old Butler, he ranked as one of the game’s best pitching prospects with the Rockies after being selected with the No. 46 overall pick back in 2012. He posted strong numbers up through Double-A before struggling a bit in Triple-A, and his work at the MLB level has produced just a 5.80 ERA in 263 2/3 innings. Butler has since pitched in the KBO and on the independent circuit. He was slated to open the 2021 season with the Atlantic League’s Southern Maryland Blue Crabs before the Royals signed him earlier this month.

Chris Davis Out For Season

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Orioles first baseman and designated hitter Chris Davis will miss the rest of the season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left hip, per Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (via Twitter). Recovery time is projected to be four to five months.

Shortstop Richie Martin is also out for the time being with a non-displaced fracture in the radius bone of his left wrist, per Kubatko. The Orioles expect him to return after somewhere between eight and twelve weeks.

The Orioles had already gone the first month and a half of the season without Davis because of a lower back strain. Now, in light of this news, it will go down as another lost season for the former star. Baltimore re-signed Davis to a seven-year, $161MM contract prior to the 2016 season, but the move has blown up in the club’s face. Now 35 years old, Davis hit an atrocious .196/.291/.379 with 92 home runs over 2,118 plate appearances from 2016-20. The Orioles owe him annual salaries of $23MM through 2022.

This will also count as a year to forget for Martin, whom the Orioles took from the Athletics in the 2018 Rule 5 Draft. Martin totaled 309 PA as an Oriole in 2019 and hit .208/.260/.322 with six home runs and 10 stolen bases. He hasn’t played in the bigs since then.

Blue Jays Sign Casey Lawrence

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The Blue Jays have signed Casey Lawrence to a minor league contract, per an announcement from the York Revolution of the independent Atlantic League. Lawrence had signed with the indie ball club in March but is now returning to the affiliated ranks. He has been assigned to Triple-A Buffalo.

Lawrence might be a familiar name to some Jays fans. The right-hander made his MLB debut with Toronto in April 2017 but was claimed off waivers by the Mariners about a month thereafter. He went on to log a decent number of innings out of the Seattle bullpen from 2017-18. Altogether, Lawrence compiled a 6.64 ERA over 38 appearances (including two starts) in the big leagues over that two-year stretch.

Seattle granted Lawrence his release following the 2018 season so he could pursue an opportunity in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He spent much of the following year with a minor league affiliate of NPB’s Hiroshima Carp before returning stateside in 2020. Lawrence spent last season at the Twins alternate training site but didn’t get a big league call. The 33-year-old will look to work his way back to the majors for the organization with which he began his career.

Yankees Reinstate Gleyber Torres From Injured List

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Before this evening’s game against the Rangers, the Yankees announced they reinstated shortstop Gleyber Torres from the injured list. Torres is in the starting lineup tonight, hitting fifth. To create active roster space, fellow infielder Rougned Odor was placed on the paternity list.

Torres has been out of action since May 11 after testing positive for COVID-19. The 24-year-old had previously been fully vaccinated and was fortunately said to be asymptomatic. He’ll now look to turn around his season line, which currently sits at .240/.331/.304 across 142 plate appearances. It’s the second consecutive year in which Torres has reached base a fair amount but not hit for power, a surprising development after he slugged .535 and popped 38 homers during his age-22 season in 2019.

Odor had just returned from an IL stint himself- in his case, due to a left knee sprain. The 27-year-old has just a .182/.280/.379 line over his first 75 plate appearances in the Bronx. Nevertheless, the Yankees have been intrigued enough by Odor to give him 19 starts at second base, and he figures to get some more work at the position when he returns. Players on the paternity list can miss between one and three games.

Angels Select Dillon Peters

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The Angels announced that they have selected left-hander Dillon Peters and optioned righty Jaime Barria. The club outrighted Peters last winter.

The 28-year-old Peters appeared in the majors during the previous four seasons with the Marlins and Angels. Peters has recorded a 5.83 ERA/5.22 SIERA with a 16.7 percent strikeout rate and a 9.9 percent walk rate over 132 2/3 big league frames. He has also had trouble at the Triple-A level, where he has logged a 6.15 ERA in 169 2/3 innings.

Mets To Place Taijuan Walker On 10-Day IL

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4:55pm: McWilliams and Tarpley are on the COVID list, Healey tweets.

4:46pm: The team has officially placed Walker and fellow hurlers Sam McWilliams and Stephen Tarpley on the IL, Thosar relays. New York also activated outfielder Cameron Maybin, whom it acquired from the Cubs on Tuesday.

4:06pm: The Mets will place right-hander Taijuan Walker on the 10-day injured list, Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News was among those to report. Walker is dealing with tightness in his left side.

The Mets now have four notable starters on the IL, with Walker joining Jacob deGrom (right side tightness), Noah Syndergaard (Tommy John surgery recovery) and Carlos Carrasco (hamstring strain) on the shelf. Nevertheless, the Mets have gone 20-16 and are in possession of a one-game lead in the National League East.

For his part, Walker – whom the Mets signed to a two-year, $20MM guarantee in free agency – has more than held his own in 2021. The former Mariner, Diamondback and Blue Jay, 28, has pitched to a 2.05 ERA over eight starts and 44 innings. That’s obviously going to be difficult production to replace, but the Mets seem hopeful Walker won’t miss much time, per manager Luis Rojas (via Tim Healey of Newsday).

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