The Oakland Athletics released starting pitcher Marco Estrada today, the team announced.
The move doesn’t come as a total surprise, as Estrada has not pitched for Oakland since April 16th. It’s a disappointing turn nonetheless for the veteran Estrada. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser tweets that Estrada was simply unable to get healthy, which led to his release.
After his 5th and final start of the season on April 16th, the A’s placed Estrada on the injured list with a lumbar strain, but didn’t officially move him to the 60-day injured list until July. Since the end of July, Estrada made 5 starts between three levels of the minor leagues, but he just hasn’t gotten healthy enough to make his way back to the big league club.
Estrada seemed like a good fit for Oakland’s patchwork rotation when he signed a one-year, $4MM deal late in January. His five starts all resulted in Oakland losses, however, and he’ll finish his tenure with a 6.85 ERA/7.53 FIP.
Should this be the end of the line for the 36-year-old Estrada, he would finish 62-68 in 194 career stars and 89 relief appearances with a 4.29 ERA/4.45 FIP/4.59 xFIP totaling 12.3 rWAR/11.4 fWAR. A 12-year career that began in DC with the Nationals has included stops with the Brewers, Blue Jays, and now Athletics.