Orioles righty Josh Lucas cleared waivers and has accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Norfolk, per a team announcement. He was designated for assignment when Baltimore claimed former A’s righty Aaron Brooks off waivers. Brooks has now been formally added to Baltimore’s big league roster, the team also announced.
It’s the second time that Lucas, 28, has accepted an outright assignment with the Orioles this season rather than head out into free agency. In two stints with the big league club, Lucas has pitched to a 5.74 ERA. To his credit, Lucas has 16 strikeouts in 15 2/3 innings and has continually shown an ability to keep the ball on the ground at an above-average clip. He’s not a hard thrower, averaging 90-91 mph on his heater, but he’s nevertheless managed to be fairly stingy in terms of surrendering home runs throughout his minor league career.
In 114 career innings of Triple-A ball, Lucas has a 3.47 ERA with 8.7 K/9, 2.6 BB/9 and 0.5 HR/9. Given the patchwork state of the Orioles’ roster, it seems quite possible that another opportunity in the Majors could present itself later in the year (which undoubtedly factored into Lucas’ decision to accept the assignment).
Lucas should try to go to Japan, make more money over there
Each team can only have so many non Japanese players on their team per season. Maybe his agent asked around and there was no interest in him… anywhere.
Yes, however they often move foreign players off and onto the active roster so Lucas should be able to get a spot. It must be that they aren’t offering enough money for him and his agent to consider it.
Foreign teams tend to go with sluggers or starters for their intl slot. I don’t believe many foreign teams have foreign relievers. I haven’t fact checked that but I believe that is the case.
npb.jp/eng/teams/ None in the KBO or CPBL though, but EVERY team in the NPB does.
There you go. Maybe he doesn’t want to go to japan. Not sure I would either if I still had ML hopes. Maybe in a year or two he’d head over.
Is rather be a AAA baseball player than what all of us do now.
when this years orioles don’t want you, you’re bad
Clearly they want him they kept him in AAA. They weren’t worried about losing him but they want him.