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Cubs Release Yan Gomes

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The Cubs have released veteran catcher Yan Gomes, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That was the expected outcome after he was designated for assignment last week. He’s now a free agent and can sign with any club.

Gomes is a veteran with over a thousand games in the majors and a 37th birthday coming up next month. He has spent most of that as a solid defender behind the plate with some inconsistent but potent offense. He doesn’t draw a lot of walks and can be strikeout prone, but he’s generally been a reliable source of double-digit home runs whenever he gets regular playing time.

Going into the 2022 season, the Cubs signed him to a two-year deal with a $13MM guarantee and a $6MM club option for 2024. His first season with the Cubs was a bit of a disappointment but he hit 10 home runs last year and slashed .267/.315/.408 for a wRC+ of 95. That means he was 5% below league average overall but that’s a strong result for a catcher.

The Cubs picked up the option for 2024 but the results from Gomes took a nosedive. In 96 plate appearances with the Cubs this year, he slashed .154/.179/.242. He walked just 2.1% of the time while getting punched out at a massive 37.5% clip and the defensive metrics soured on him as well.

The club was also seeing significant struggles from youngster Miguel Amaya, turning the catching position into a black hole on the roster. Amaya is just 25 years old and has five years of club control beyond this one, so the Cubs weren’t likely to give up on him based on a few rough months, but he has exhausted his option years and can’t be sent down to the minors. That left Gomes squeezed off the roster with a few months left on his contract.

No other club was going to acquire Gomes based on how rough he’s been this year, as doing so would involve absorbing what’s left of his salary, just over $3MM. He has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment, so the Cubs have released him, which leaves them on the hook for the remainder of that money.

Any of the other clubs can now sign him while only paying him the prorated version of the major league minimum salary, with that amount subtracted from what the Cubs pay. Despite his rough season, perhaps that will spur some team to take a low-cost chance on him based on his track record. He has 137 career home runs and a .246/.295/.412 slash line overall, with that translating to an 89 wRC+.

Injury Notes: Luplow, Brown, Darvish

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Outfielder Jordan Luplow, who signed a minor league deal with the Phillies in March, is done for the year with a right knee ACL tear. The account @Kram207 was among those to relay the info on X.

Luplow has mostly been a small-side platoon guy in his career, as the right-handed hitter has a line of .227/.338/.495 against lefties over several seasons. This year, he had stepped to the plate 254 times at the Triple-A level with a line of .255/.343/.450. His splits were closer to even with the IronPigs, though in a small sample of 184 plate appearances against righties and 70 against lefties.

Perhaps there would have been a path to playing time in the Philadelphia outfield. Johan Rojas struggled enough to get optioned down to the minors. Brandon Marsh and David Dahl are lefties with notable platoon splits. The right-handed counterparts in their platoons are Whit Merrifield and Cristian Pache, who are both struggling.

With this season-ending injury for Luplow, that won’t be an option for the Phils to even consider anymore. Perhaps Edmundo Sosa will be a factor on the grass, since he has a bit of experience out there and played well while Trea Turner was on the IL. The Phils don’t have a lot of holes heading into the July 30 trade deadline but adding an intriguing righty bat to the bench could be one target, especially with Luplow no longer there as a depth option.

Some other notable injury updates from around baseball…

  • The Cubs placed right-hander Ben Brown on the injured list a couple of weeks ago with a neck strain, though subsequent reporting provided the more ominous-sounding diagnosis of a stress reaction in his neck. The timeline was and is murky, but Brown was able to throw from 90 feet recently, per Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune. Brown says that he was told at the time of his diagnosis that he’s already through the worst of his ailment. Montemurro describes the prognosis as a “two- to three-month burnout period,” with the first month being the worst. Brown and Jordan Wicks hit the IL within a week of each other, thinning the Cubs rotation and forcing Kyle Hendricks back into a starting role. The club is 37-41 but that still has them two games out of a playoff spot in the weak NL race. The club will try to ramp Brown up from here as long as there are no symptoms and hopefully get him back into the mix as his body allows. He has a 3.58 ERA on the year through 55 1/3 innings.
  • The Padres are another club in that NL race with some rotation injuries but Yu Darvish will be back tomorrow, with AJ Cassavell of MLB.com relaying the word from manager Mike Shildt on X. Darvish had made 11 starts with a 3.20 ERA before landing on the IL with a left groin strain. He and Joe Musgrove landed on the shelf at the same time, forcing the club to use less experienced hurlers like Randy Vásquez and Adam Mazur. With Mazur posting an ERA of 7.10 in his first four starts and getting optioned recently, the return of Darvish should give the San Diego rotation a boost. The Friars are 41-41 and currently holding the final Wild Card spot in the National League, but there are seven clubs within three games of them.

Cubs Place Mark Leiter Jr. On 15-Day Injured List

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The Cubs announced that right-hander Mark Leiter Jr. has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to a right forearm strain.  Left-hander Luke Little has been called up from Triple-A Iowa to take Leiter’s spot on the 26-man roster.

After posting a sterling 0.90 ERA over his first 20 innings of the season, Leiter’s performance has dipped sharply, with a ghastly 15.58 ERA over 8 2/3 innings in his last 12 appearances.  Leiter’s last four outings specifically saw him touched up for eight earned runs over 3 1/3 innings of work, so it seems possible that these games might’ve been impacted by the forearm strain if Leiter had been trying to pitch through some discomfort.

All in all, Leiter has a 5.34 ERA over 28 2/3 innings this season, yet with a much more respectable set of secondary metrics.  Leiter’s SIERA is only 2.96, as a .338 BABIP and a 55% strand rate have been working against him.  On the plus side, Leiter has a strong 48.7% grounder rate, quality hard-contract numbers, and a 30.2% strikeout rate that sits in the 91st percentile of all pitchers.

Leiter’s walk rate is below average, but that was also true during the 2022-23 seasons, when he emerged as a very effective weapon out of Chicago’s bullpen.  Leiter posted a 5.53 ERA in 114 innings with the Phillies and Blue Jays in 2017-18, but then didn’t pitch another big league inning for three full seasons, due to a Tommy John surgery, the pandemic-shortened nature of the 2020 season, and a stint in the Tigers’ farm system in 2021 that didn’t result in a call-up to the Show.

The Cubs signed Leiter to a minor league deal prior to the 2022 season, and then another minors contract in the 2022-23 offseason.  The moves have become nice hidden-gem discoveries for the team, as Leiter had a 3.75 ERA and 27.2% strikeout rate over 132 innings in 2022-23, albeit with an 8.9% walk rate.  Working first as a swingman, Leiter became a key set-up man behind closer Adbert Alzolay last season.

Unfortunately, Leiter now joins Alzolay and Julian Merryweather on the injured list, as the Cubs are without their three top bullpen arms.  Merrywether is expected to return from a stress fracture in his ribs by around the All-Star break, while Alzolay’s return from a right flexor strain is still up the air.  Details on Leiter’s forearm strain haven’t yet been revealed, but naturally any kind of a forearm issue is a big concern, particularly for a pitcher who already has one Tommy John procedure on his record.

These injuries and a lack of performance overall has made the Cubs’ bullpen into a weak link on the roster, though not much has gone right for the team over what has been a disastrous six weeks of baseball.  Beginning the season strong with a 24-17 record, Chicago has stumbled to a 13-23 mark over its last 39 games.  The NL’s parity has meant that the Cubs are still just two games out of a wild card slot despite a 37-40 record, yet Chicago will need to regain momentum quickly before the team is perhaps forced into some hard decisions at the trade deadline.

Blue Jays Claim Jose Cuas Off Waivers From Cubs

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The Cubs announced this afternoon that right-hander Jose Cuas has been claimed off waivers by the Blue Jays. Cuas was designated for assignment earlier this week in order to make room for righty Ethan Roberts on the club’s 40-man roster. The move puts Toronto’s 40-man roster at capacity.

Cuas, who will celebrate his 30th birthday later this week, made his big league debut with the Royals back in 2022 but was traded to the Cubs in exchange for outfielder Nelson Velazquez at the trade deadline last summer. He was a decent middle reliever for the Royals during his time in Kansas City, pitching to a 4.08 ERA (106 ERA+) with a 4.41 FIP in 79 1/3 innings of work for the club between the 2022 and ’23 campaigns. Unfortunately for both Cuas and the Cubs, the wheels began to come off for the sidearming righty upon his arrival in Chicago last year.

While his 3.04 ERA in 27 appearances for the Cubs down the stretch last summer was actually fairly strong, it came with concerning peripherals. His strikeout rate dipped from a strong 27.1% during his time with the Royals last year to a worrisome 19% in Chicago, while his walk rate simultaneously ballooned from a manageable 10% figure in Kansas City all the way up to 14% for the north siders. While a strong 55.6% groundball rate allowed Cuas to keep the damage to a minimum, he was no longer looking the part of a quality middle relief option.

Things took an even worse turn for Cuas in 2024 when his groundball rate plummeted to just 31%. While his walk rate dropped down to a career-best 9.2% figure, that came at least in part as a result of opposing hitters teeing off Cuas pitches with a 14.3% barrel rate and a 45.2% Hard Hit rate. While Cuas’s strikeout rate crept back up to a more acceptable 21.5% this year, that still wasn’t enough to stop the right-hander from surrendering 12 runs (11 earned) in 13 1/3 innings of work for the Cubs this year, leaving him with a 7.43 ERA and a 5.99 FIP.

Despite those deep struggles during his time in Chicago, it’s not hard to see why the Blue Jays would want to take a chance on the righty. After all, when Cuas’s arsenal is working well, his sinker/slider combo allows him to strike out around a quarter of the batters he faces while keeping walks to a clip of around 10% and eliciting grounders on around half of his batted balls. That’s certainly the profile of a valuable pitcher, even though Cuas has not been able to put it all together at the big league level yet during his career.

Even if he isn’t able to reach that potential, the right-hander still provides the Blue Jays with an optionable relief arm on a minimum salary who can be shuttled from Triple-A to the majors as necessary. That’s a valuable commodity for any bullpen, but especially for a Blue Jays bullpen that has posted a league-worst 4.83 FIP to this point in the 2024 campaign. Should the club turn to Cuas at some point, he’d likely factor into the middle relief mix alongside the likes of Zach Pop and Genesis Cabrera.

Marlins Acquire Ali Sanchez From Cubs

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The Cubs traded minor league catcher Ali Sánchez to the Marlins, tweets Tommy Birch of the Des Moines Register. According to the MLB.com transaction tracker, Miami sent cash in return.

Sánchez was not on Chicago’s 40-man roster. He won’t immediately take a spot on Miami’s. He’ll head to Triple-A Jacksonville for the time being, joining his third organization of the season in the process. The Venezuela native signed a somewhat surprising big league contract with the Pirates last offseason. Pittsburgh outrighted him off the 40-man roster at the end of Spring Training, sending him back to free agency. Sánchez inked a non-roster deal with the Cubs a week into the season and had been playing for Triple-A Iowa.

He appeared in 41 games, hitting .240/.338/.388 in 148 trips to the plate. That’s a step down from the .311/.375/.492 batting line he’d posted with Arizona’s Triple-A affiliate in 2023. Reno, where the D-Backs’ top farm team plays, is one of the sport’s most favorable hitting environments. Sánchez, a typically light hitter, connected on 11 homers in 67 games there. He hit three longballs with Iowa.

While he doesn’t bring much power to the table, Sánchez has decent contact skills. He has drawn walks in 12.2% of his plate appearances on the season against an 18.9% strikeout rate. He’s generally regarded as a capable defender, though he only cut down six of 46 attempted basestealers with Iowa.

The Cubs have gotten almost nothing out of their catching duo of Miguel Amaya and Yan Gomes. They nevertheless opted against bringing Sánchez up. Chicago signed Tomás Nido to a major league contract while designating Gomes for assignment this morning.

Miami is one of the only teams whose catchers have been less productive than the Amaya/Gomes pairing. Marlins catchers — almost exclusively Christian Bethancourt and Nick Fortes — have hit an MLB-worst .155/.192/.237 over 232 plate appearances. Miami isn’t going to expend much to upgrade the position in a lost season. Sánchez could play his way into an MLB look with a productive showing in Jacksonville. Bethancourt, Fortes and Jhonny Pereda are the catchers on the 40-man roster.

Cubs Sign Tomas Nido, Designate Yan Gomes For Assignment

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10:20am: The Cubs have made the moves official.

9:55am: The Cubs are making a change behind the plate, signing veteran catcher Tomas Nido to a big league contract and designating Yan Gomes for assignment, as first reported by Bleacher Nation’s Michael Cerami. Nido, an ACES client, was released by the Mets on Monday after being designated for assignment last week. The Mets are on the hook for the majority of this year’s $2.1MM salary. The Cubs will only owe Nido the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the roster.

The 30-year-old Nido inked a two-year, $3.7MM contract prior to the 2023 season, buying out his final two seasons of arbitration eligibility. He was outrighted off the 40-man roster last season following a dismal .125/.153/.125 start through 61 plate appearances but chose to accept a Triple-A assignment due to the fact that electing free agency would’ve required him to forfeit the remainder of the guaranteed money on his contract.

Nido was selected back to the big leagues this season when Francisco Alvarez hit the injured list with a thumb injury that required surgery. During his most recent stint with the Mets, Nido surpassed five years of MLB service time, which allowed him to reject his latest outright assignment in favor of free agency while still retaining the remainder of his salary. He batted .229/.261/.361 through 90 plate appearances with the Mets this season.

That level of production is par for the course for Nido, a career .214/.251/.313 hitter in 895 trips to the plate at the big league level. Offense has never been the focal point of Nido’s game, however. He’s an high-end defensive backstop who draws plus grades for his framing and pitch-blocking, coupling those skills with a career 21% caught-stealing rate that’s right in line with this year’s league average.

Even Nido’s lackluster 2024 output at the plate or his similarly uninspiring career batting line would be an upgrade over what the 36-year-old Gomes has mustered this season. Gomes was near league-average at the plate just last season (.267/.315/.408, 10 homers, 95 wRC+) but has cratered with a career-worst .157/.179/.242 batting line in 96 plate appearances this season. Gomes fanned in just 18% of his plate appearances with the 2022-23 Cubs and entered 2024 with a career 23.1% mark in the majors, but he’s whiffed a massive 36 times this season (37.5%).

Like Nido, Gomes has a strong defensive reputation, but the numbers don’t bear that out this year. He’s thwarted just three of the 24 runners who’ve attempted to steal against him (12.5%) — well shy of his excellent 32% career mark. The Brazilian-born backstop’s once-premium framing numbers are below-average for a second straight season, meanwhile, and Statcast also pegs him below-average at blocking pitches in the dirt in 2024.

As is the case with Nido, Gomes is playing out the final season of a guaranteed contract. Chicago signed him to a two-year, $13MM pact in the 2021-22 offseason. Gomes’ performance last year made it a straightforward call for the team to exercise a $6MM club option (a net $5MM decision, given the option’s $1MM buyout). Even Gomes’ detractors couldn’t have reasonably predicted a decline of this magnitude, however. Gomes’ struggles are a major reason that Chicago backstops have been the third-worst in all of baseball at the plate, leading only the White Sox and Marlins in that regard.

The Cubs will still be on the hook for the remainder of Gomes’ $6MM salary once he inevitably becomes a free agent. (No team is going to trade for or claim what’s left on the contract). Once he’s released, Gomes will be free to sign with any club. A new team would only owe him the league minimum for any time spent on the big league roster. That sum would be subtracted from what the Cubs owe him through season’s end.

Mike Tauchman Out Roughly Four Weeks With Groin Strain

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The Cubs will be without Mike Tauchman for a few weeks. Chicago placed their right fielder on the 10-day injured list this evening with a strained left groin. Miles Mastrobuoni is up from Triple-A Iowa to take the active roster spot.

Manager Craig Counsell told the Chicago beat that Tuchman’s strain is of the Grade 2 variety (relayed on X by the Chicago Tribune’s Meghan Montemurro). Counsell suggested it’ll be around a month before the injury is fully healed. That could take Tuchman’s rehab close to the July 30 trade deadline.

The lefty-swinging Tauchman has emerged as a surprising contributor for Chicago. He hit .252/.363/.377 over a career-high 401 plate appearances a season ago. As MLBTR’s Nick Deeds explored last month, the lefty-hitting Tauchman has hit his way to regular playing time in the Wrigley Field outfield. Tauchman carried a .257/.375/.407 line at the time of Nick’s post. His production has tailed off a bit since then, as he ran a .263/.330/.338 slash in 88 plate appearances over the past month. That hadn’t changed his standing, as Counsell has continued to pencil him in atop the lineup.

That’ll be on hold after Tauchman came up limping beating out an infield single. Nico Hoerner jumps to the top of the order for tonight’s game. The Cubs moved Cody Bellinger from center to right field with Pete Crow-Armstrong taking over in center. Seiya Suzuki is serving as the designated hitter. Crow-Armstrong will probably see the biggest uptick in playing time with Tauchman on the shelf.

The Cubs enter tonight’s game with a 34-39 record. Chicago washed away a strong April with a 16-27 showing going back to May 1. They’ve dropped into 13th place in the National League, but everyone in the NL besides the Marlins and Rockies is still in the playoff picture. Chicago is only two games back of the Giants, who currently hold the last Wild Card spot. They’re among 8-10 teams in the Senior Circuit whose approaches to the trade deadline will be determined by how well they play over the next six weeks.

Cubs Acquire William Simoneit From Phillies

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The Cubs have acquired catcher William Simoneit from the Phillies, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. The backstop has been assigned to Double-A Tennessee for now. He wasn’t on Philadelphia’s 40-man roster and therefore won’t require a spot with the Cubs. The Phils receive cash considerations in return.

Simeonit, now 27, signed with the Athletics as an undrafted free agent in 2020. From 2021 to 2023, he got into 244 minor league games from High-A to Triple-A. He produced a combined batting line of .259/.359/.408 in that time, which led to a 108 wRC+.

The Phils nabbed him away from the A’s in the minor league phase of the 2023 Rule 5 draft. His results have fallen off since the organizational switch, as he’s hit .145/.286/.306 between Double-A and Triple-A this year, striking out in 39% of his trips to the plate. The Phillies recently lost some catching depth with J.T. Realmuto requiring knee surgery but still decided they would rather have the cash than Simoneit.

The Cubs have received very little from their catching position this year, something that manager Craig Counsell recently discussed. As of today, Miguel Amaya is hitting .185/.248/.267 on the season while Yan Gomes has a line of .154/.179/.242. Neither of those two can be optioned and the club doesn’t have another catcher on the 40-man.

Alí Sánchez is in the system as non-roster depth but Simoneit will now join him in that capacity. It’s obviously been rough going to start this year for Simoneit but perhaps he can get back to into his pre-2024 form.

Cubs Select Ethan Roberts, Designate Jose Cuas

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The Cubs announced that they have selected the contract of right-hander Ethan Roberts from Triple-A Iowa.  In a corresponding move to create a 40-man roster spot, right-hander Jose Cuas has been designated for assignment.

Roberts signed a minor league deal with Chicago back in December, and he had an opt-out in that contract on June 15, according to The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma.  Since Sharma indicated that Roberts chose to pass on that opt-out, it could be that he already had some advance notice that the Cubs were going to call him up soon to the majors, and the righty is now in line to receive his first MLB action since April 2022.

Roberts made his big league debut that season and posted an 8.22 ERA over 7 2/3 innings in the Show before injuries derailed his career.  A Tommy John surgery in June 2022 kept Roberts on the shelf for the entirety of the 2023 season, and he only officially got back on the hill last month.  Roberts has thrown 11 1/3 scoreless innings across three minor league levels — 9 2/3 IP with with Triple-A Iowa (9 2/3 IP), two-third of an inning in one Double-A game, and one inning of Arizona Complex League ball — but the spotless ERA masks the fact that Roberts has issued eight walks in those 11 1/3 frames.

Even though Roberts also had an inflated walk rate during his brief cup of coffee as a big leaguer, the control issues are a new problem for a pitcher who did a good job of limiting free passes earlier in his minor league career.  It could be that Roberts was simply working off the rust after his long layoff, and the Cubs were still satisfied enough to select Roberts’ contract and add a fresh arm to their bullpen.  For his minor league career as a whole, Roberts has a 2.84 ERA, 26.25% strikeout rate, and 7.08% walk rate across 139 2/3 innings (almost all as a reliever) since the Cubs made him a fourth-round pick in the 2018 draft.

Cuas has been optioned back and forth from Triple-A a few times this season, amassing a 7.43 ERA in 13 1/3 big league innings.  Acquired from the Royals prior to last year’s trade deadline, Cuas has a 4.26 ERA in 116 1/3 career MLB frames since the start of the 2022 season, but control has also been an issue given his 12.1% walk rate.

Since Cuas is also still optionable for the 2025 season, rival teams might be interested in a waiver claim in order to add another reliever to their depth chart for more than just the current campaign.  Cuas (who turns 30 later this month) has upped his strikeout numbers considerably over the last two seasons but has also had a subsequent spike in his walk rate.

Mike Brumley Passes Away

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Former big league player and coach Mike Brumley passed away yesterday in a car accident, as initially reported by MLB.com’s Mark Bowman (X link).  Brumley was 61 years old.

A second-round pick for the Red Sox in the 1983 draft, Brumley played in 295 big league games over parts of eight seasons from 1987-1995.  The early years of his pro career were defined by his inclusion in a pair of trades involving future Hall-of-Famers — the Red Sox traded Brumley and Dennis Eckersley to the Cubs for Bill Buckner in May 1984, which led to Brumley making his MLB debut in a Chicago uniform in 1987.  The Cubbies then dealt Brumley and Keith Moreland to the Padres in February 1988 in the swap that brought Goose Gossage and Ray Hayward to Chicago.

Overall, Brumley was traded four different times as part of his journeyman career.  He saw action with six different teams at the Major League level, and his 92 games with the Tigers in 1989 marked the most playing time he received in a season.  Besides the Cubs and Tigers, Brumley also played with the Mariners, Red Sox, Astros, and Athletics, and he was a member of four other organizations (Padres, Orioles, Angels, Marlins) without ever appearing with any of those teams in a big league game.  He hit .206/.261/.272 over 697 plate appearances while playing mostly shortstop, and also bouncing around the diamond as a second baseman, third baseman, and all three outfield positions.

Brumley moved into a long coaching career after his playing days ended, including stints as a minor league manager with Angels and Dodgers affiliates, while also working as a roving instructor for the Dodgers and as a field coordinator in the Rangers’ organization.  His work in a big league dugout came with two of his former teams — Brumley was a third and first coach with the Mariners from 2010-13, and then an assistant hitting coach with the Cubs during the 2014 season.

Brumley went on to work as a minor league hitting coordinator with the Braves in 2021, and built some lasting bonds with several members of Atlanta’s organization that lasted well beyond his lone season in the role.  Austin Riley today spoke at length about his friendship with Brumley, crediting him behind only Riley’s father as his greatest “role models in my baseball career.”

We at MLB Trade Rumors send our condolences to Brumley’s family, friends, and colleagues.

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