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Giants Activate Mitch Haniger, Austin Slater

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The Giants are welcoming back a pair of outfield reinforcements. San Francisco reinstated both Mitch Haniger and Austin Slater from the 10-day injured list prior to tonight’s matchup with the Cardinals. To clear spots on the active roster, the Giants optioned infielder/outfielder Brett Wisely to Triple-A Sacramento and placed first baseman/corner outfielder Darin Ruf on the 10-day IL with inflammation in his right wrist.

Haniger’s return is the biggest development. He’s now in position to make his club debut. Signed to a three-year, $43.5MM guarantee over the offseason, the longtime Mariner went down with a Grade 1 oblique strain in Spring Training. That cost him the first three weeks of the regular season but didn’t prove a serious long-term concern. He’s in left field tonight and hitting third against St. Louis southpaw Jordan Montgomery.

The 32-year-old outfielder appeared in four rehab games for Sacramento. He picked up four hits in 13 at-bats, clearing the fences twice. Haniger is coming off a .246/.308/.429 showing over 57 games during his final season in Seattle.

Slater also opened the year on the IL, in his case due to a hamstring strain. The role-playing outfielder had a quality .264/.366/.408 line over 325 plate appearances last season. He spent the bulk of his defensive time in center field, garnering mixed reviews for his glovework. He eases into action as the designated hitter in his first MLB game of the year after picking up six hits in 18 at-bats on a rehab stint for Sacramento. Slater will lead off tonight.

The pair of right-handed hitters add some balance to a lineup that is off to a dreadful start against left-handed pitching. Only the Tigers (.264) have a lower on-base percentage against southpaws than San Francisco’s .271 mark, while their .337 slugging ranks 27th in the majors. Those struggles were part of the reason the Giants reunited with Ruf, who has a .261/.370/.348 line in nine games this season.

Marlins To Select Bryan Hoeing

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The Marlins are turning to right-hander Bryan Hoeing to start tomorrow evening’s game in Atlanta, manager Skip Schumaker told the team’s beat (relayed by Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald). Hoeing doesn’t occupy a spot on the 40-man roster, so the club will have to formally select his contract.

A seventh round pick in 2019, Hoeing made it to the big leagues for the first time last year. He pitched in eight games (seven times out of the bullpen), allowing 17 runs in 12 2/3 innings of work. The Louisville product had spent the majority of the season with Miami’s Triple-A affiliate, where he started 17 of 18 outings. He pitched to a 5.07 ERA for their top affiliate in Jacksonville, inducing grounders at a very strong 53.7% clip but only punching out 12.1% of opponents.

At the end of the season, Miami successfully ran Hoeing through outright waivers. He remained in the organization and returned to Jacksonville, where he’s off to an excellent first few weeks. He’s allowed only six runs (four earned) in 17 1/3 frames over his first four appearances. Hoeing has maintained his stellar ground-ball rate while significantly upping the whiffs. He’s punched out just under 30% of batters faced while nearly doubling his percentage of swinging strikes per pitch.

Even in a limited sample, that was enough for the 6’6″ hurler to pitch himself back onto the radar. Hoeing still has two minor league option years remaining, so the Fish can cycle him between Miami and Jacksonville for the foreseeable future if he’s able to hold his 40-man roster spot for an extended stretch.

Miami’s 40-man roster is full, so they’ll need to make a corresponding move tomorrow. The Marlins just selected journeyman left-hander Sean Nolin onto the big league club this afternoon. Speculatively speaking, it’s possible they’re planning on a short-term stay in the majors for Nolin.

Red Sox Option Brayan Bello

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The Red Sox announced that left-hander Brennan Bernardino has been recalled from Triple-A, with right-hander Brayan Bello optioned in a corresponding move.

The Sox started the season short-handed in the rotation, as all of Bello, Garrett Whitlock and James Paxton started the season on the injured list. That allowed Tanner Houck, who has worked as both a starter and a reliever in recent years, to get a rotation spot out of the gate. Bello and Whitlock returned from the IL recently, giving the club a difficult decision to make since Houck had gotten off to a decent start. Through four outings, he has struck out 25.6% of batters faced while walking 9.3% and getting ground balls on 58.9% of balls in play. Despite those strong peripherals, his 4.29 ERA is fairly average thanks to a 20% HR/FB rate.

Though that’s not exactly ace-level work, he’s still been arguably the club’s best starter this year. Chris Sale has an ERA of 8.00, Corey Kluber is at 8.50, Nick Pivetta at 4.58 and Whitlock at 6.19. Bello has only made two starts but is at 9.82. Although Houck has frequently moved from the rotation to the bullpen and back, it would have been difficult to bump him right now when he’s arguably been the club’s best starter this year. The club has been running out a six-man rotation recently but has multiple off-days coming up on the schedule, which would make it challenging to continue that. Today’s move provides a bit of clarity on the path forward, allowing Houck to hold that rotation spot for now and see if he can stretch his results over a larger sample.

As for Bello, he hasn’t got out to a great start this year, getting shut down in spring with forearm tightness and missing the beginning of the season. He returned recently but allowed eight earned runs over 7 1/3 innings in his first two starts. He’ll head down to Worcester to try to get into a groove again after the bumpy start to the campaign. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him back up in short order, as he posted a 2.34 WRA in the minors last year and was a fixture of top prospect lists before graduating last year.

Even if Bello succeeds in Worcester, there might be some crowding in the Boston rotation with Sale, Kluber, Pivetta, Whitlock and Houck having the five spots for now. In addition to that, Paxton is rehabbing in the minors, though his last outing was a disaster. He tossed 43 pitches while recording only two outs and allowed seven earned runs.

Brewers Designate Javy Guerra For Assignment

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3:55pm: Bush will be shut down for two to four weeks, per Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

3:04pm: The Brewers announced a series of roster moves Monday, all pertaining to the bullpen. Right-hander Javy Guerra has been designated for assignment, with his spot on the 40-man roster going to veteran lefty Alex Claudio, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Nashville. Milwaukee also placed righty Matt Bush on the 15-day IL with tendinitis in his right rotator cuff and recalled right-hander Jake Cousins from Nashville.

Guerra, 27, was once one of the top prospects in baseball when he was a shortstop, but he converted to the mound several years ago and has been trying to establish himself as a flamethrowing reliever. He’s seen MLB time with the Padres, Rays and Brewers but has yet to find much consistency. So far in 8 1/3 innings with the Brewers, who acquired him from the Rays in exchange for a PTBNL (Victor Castaneda) back in November, he’s tossed 8 1/3 innings but allowed eight runs on 10 hits, nine walks and a pair of hit batters.

Guerra has averaged a blazing 98.4 mph on his heater this year and 98.1 mph overall in parts of five big league seasons on the mound, but command has regularly been an issue. Overall, he’s tallied 52 innings of relief work between those three previously mentioned clubs and walked nearly as many batters (12.1%) as he’s struck out (14.5%). The Brewers will have a week to trade him or attempt to pass the out-of-options righty through waivers.

Bush’s injury comes on the heels of some pronounced struggles for the 37-year-old this year. He’s pitched 7 2/3 innings but been tagged for seven runs on six hits and six walks with eight strikeouts. It’s a small sample, but that’s a 17.1% walk rate through his first nine appearances, which is nearly 10 percentage points higher than the combined 7.7% mark he posted from 2016-22. Add in that Bush’s average fastball is down from 97.4 mph in 2022 to 94.8 mph in 2023, and there are a few pretty glaring signs that he perhaps has not been pitching at full strength. The Brewers have not yet provided a potential timetable for his return.

Claudio, 31, is a familiar face for Brewers fans, having spent the 2019-20 seasons pitching in the Milwaukee bullpen. He returned on a minor league contract over the winter and has gotten out to a nice start in Nashville, allowing a pair of runs with a 5-to-2 K/BB ratio and a mammoth 73.3% ground-ball rate in his six innings of work so far.

Hearty ground-ball rates are nothing new for Claudio, who’s posted a career 59.8% mark over the life of 347 2/3 innings at the big league level. He struggled upon departing the Brewers organization, pitching to a 5.51 ERA in 32 2/3 innings with the 2021 Angels, but Claudio’s broader body of MLB work is solid: 3.60 ERA (3.83 FIP, 3.67 SIERA), 17% strikeout rate, 6.5% walk rate, 59.8% grounder rate, 14 saves, 51 holds. He does have emphatic platoon splits, however, which makes the three-batter minimum a particularly disadvantageous rule change for Claudio.

Cousins, 28, has given up five runs in 4 1/3 innings with Nashville so far, though virtually all of the damage against him came in one outing. What’s surely of greater intrigue to the organization is that he’s punched out 11 of the 24 batters he’s faced so far (45.8%).

Cousins has just 43 1/3 innings of big league work under his belt to this point in his career, but he’s averaged 95.9 mph with his sinker, 95.3 mph with his four-seamer and notched a massive 17% swinging-strike rate. His 14.7% walk rate and six plunked batters (out of 184 faced) show command that needs some serious refinement, but Cousins has the stuff to miss bats in droves. If he can throw more strikes, as he’d done so far in Triple-A (two walks in 24 batters faced), he has the potential to become a legitimate high-leverage arm. That’s far easier said than done, of course, but it’s easy to see why the Brewers continue to be intrigued by Cousins.

Submit Your Questions For The MLB Trade Rumors Podcast

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Each week on the MLB Trade Rumors podcast we’ll answer questions submitted by our readers. With the next episode due out Wednesday morning, we’re looking for MLBTR readers to submit a voice memo with their question and we’ll pick three to answer.

If there’s anything you’d like to get our thoughts on then please submit your questions via a voice memo to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.

Voice memos will be played out on air so speak clearly and cleanly. Please start your recording with your name and try and keep it as succinct as possible – no more than 15 seconds. An example might be: “Hey guys, Simon here in Minneapolis, what are your thoughts on the Pablo Lopez extension and do you think the Twins will try and extend any of their other starters?”

We look forward to hearing from you!

In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

You can also listen to Episode 3 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts! On that episode, Tim Dierkes and I discussed Tim’s free agent power rankings, Shohei Ohtani’s next contract, the Ian Happ and Pablo Lopez extensions and much more.

Marlins Select Sean Nolin

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The Marlins have announced to reporters, including Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald, that they have selected the contract of left-hander Sean Nolin. Right-hander George Soriano was optioned to make room on the active roster while righty Jeff Lindgren was designated for assignment to open a spot on the 40-man.

Nolin, 33, is a journeyman to the extreme. A Blue Jays draft pick back in 2010, he then bounced around to the systems of the Athletics, Rockies, White Sox and Mariners, before expanding his range to independent ball and overseas. He spent the 2020 season with the Seibu Lions in Japan, returned to North America in 2021 for a stint with the Nationals and then went to the Kia Tigers in Korea last year. He posted a 2.47 ERA in 124 innings with the Tigers last year.

Nolin returned to North America this offseason, signing a minor league deal with the Twins in February. It was reported over the weekend that the Marlins had acquired him from the Twins and he’ll now join the big league club. He made one appearance in Triple-A, logging four innings on Wednesday. He’ll give a fresh arm to a pitching staff that has been taxed in a few ways of late. Injuries to Johnny Cueto and Trevor Rogers have dealt a few blows to the rotation. The club also had to play a doubleheader on Saturday, using nine different pitchers to get through that twin bill against the Guardians. Nolin has a career 5.74 ERA in 18 games, eight of those in the 2013-2015 period before getting 10 more with the Nats in 2021.

As for Lindgren, 26, this is the second time this year he has been selected to the roster and quickly designated for assignment, even though the season is just a few weeks old. Since he cleared waivers and was outrighted the first time, he’ll now have the right to reject a second outright and elect free agency if he clears waivers again. He got a five-inning emergency outing in his first stint but didn’t get into a game this time around. He posted a 4.21 ERA in the minors last year.

A’s Designate Dermis Garcia For Assignment

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The Athletics announced Monday that they’ve designated first baseman Dermis Garcia for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster will go to lefty Sam Long, whom they acquired from the Giants in exchange for cash yesterday. Long is going directly onto the active roster, and in a corresponding move, righty Adrian Martinez has been placed on the 15-day injured list with a right elbow strain.

Garcia, 25, was a longtime Yankees prospect who never got a call to the big leagues before reaching minor league free agency. He signed with the A’s in March of 2022 and parlayed a .264/.349/.498 showing (106 wRC+) into his big league debut. He got into 39 games with the 2022 A’s, batting .207/.264/.388 with five home runs, a 6.4% walk rate and a dismal 44% strikeout rate.

Making contact has long been an issue for Garcia, who has regularly shown above-average power but has also regularly punched out in more than 30% of his plate appearances in a given season. Overall, he’s fanned in 33.4% of his minor league plate appearances. The A’s will have a week to trade Garcia or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.

The injury to Martinez is a concerning development for an A’s club that has struggled immensely to develop pitchers and has thus far received underwhelming results from the early stages of its current rebuild. The 26-year-old Martinez, one of two players acquired from the Padres in exchange for Sean Manaea, posted sharp minor league numbers for the majority of his time with the San Diego organization but has been hit hard with the A’s — both in limited MLB action and in their ludicrously hitter-friendly Triple-A Las Vegas setting.

Oakland has had the worst starting staff in baseball this season, and it hasn’t been particularly close. Martinez has been working primarily out of the bullpen for them in 2023 but has done so in multi-inning stints, logging 17 1/3 frames of relief with a 6.75 ERA.

Martinez started the season quite strong, with a 3.27 ERA through 11 innings, but he’s been torched for nine runs in a combined 6 1/3 innings over his past two appearances. The Venezuelan-born righty actually has a decent 20.1% strikeout rate and 7.2% walk rate in 75 Major League frames, but he’s been undone by a sky-high 1.92 HR/9 mark. The A’s haven’t announced a timetable for his return. Given that Martinez threw as many as 70 pitches in a single relief outing, it’s feasible that he could have eventually been a rotation option for the team if needed. That may still be the case, but it’s now dependent on how long he’ll be sidelined. The A’s have not yet announced a potential timetable or any details beyond the initial diagnosis.

Dodgers To Promote Michael Busch

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The Dodgers are going to promote prospect Michael Busch, reports Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times. Busch will take the roster spot of Max Muncy, who is going on the paternity list. Busch is already on the 40-man roster and won’t require a corresponding move in that regard. The Dodgers are off tonight but start a series in Pittsburgh tomorrow, when the move should be made official.

Busch, 25, was a first round pick of the Dodgers, getting selected 31st overall in 2019. He has since been posting excellent numbers in the minors, showing both tremendous power and patience in the box. He spent all of 2021 in Double-A, walking in 14.1% of his plate appearances and hitting 20 home runs in 107 games. Last year, he split his time between Double-A and Triple-A, hitting 32 home runs in 142 games between those two levels, walking in 11.5% of his trips to the plate. His combined .274/.365/.516 batting line translated to a 118 wRC+. Busch was added to the club’s 40-man roster in November to protect him from being selected in the Rule 5 draft. He’s off to a roaring start here in 2023, hitting .337/.461/.506 through 21 Triple-A games.

If there’s a knock on Busch, it’s on the defensive side of things. A first baseman in college, he’s spent a bit of time there recently but has seen the bulk of his action as a professional at second base. He’s also had short stints at third base and left field. Playing all of those different positions is less a reflection of versatility and more a suggestion that he’s not really a strong defender and is a work in progress as the Dodgers try to find a home for him in the field. Some evaluators have compared him to the player he’s replacing today, Muncy, as both players combine power and plate discipline with some degree of defensive versatility.

The Dodgers had a relatively modest offseason by their standards, letting notable players depart while signing various veterans to one-year deals. That’s allowed them to give some runway to various younger players, such as Miguel Vargas, James Outman, Michael Grove and Ryan Pepiot, though the latter two are now on the injured list. Busch will be latest youngster to get a crack at the big leagues.

Coming into this year, Busch was ranked around the middle of many top 100 prospect lists, including Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. The first two of those are potentially significant, given the rules under the new collective bargaining agreement. It’s too late in the season for Busch to get to a full year of service time the traditional way, but his status as a top prospect provides him with an alternate path. Under the new CBA, players with less than 60 days of service time that are on two of the preseason top 100 lists of Baseball America, MLB Pipeline or ESPN can earn a full year of service regardless of when they were called up if they finish in the top two of Rookie of the Year voting.

That may end up being a fairly moot point in this case, as it seems possible that Busch will only get a brief stay in the bigs while Muncy is on the paternity list. But if he somehow manages to stick around and perform well enough to get some decent Rookie of the Year votes, he could get himself to that full year. He didn’t crack the top 100 at ESPN but the BA and MLB Pipeline ranks are enough to get that on the table.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Ohtani’s Hot Start On The Mound Continues, Ks 11 In 7 Scoreless

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On Star Wars Night in Anaheim, Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani shined the brightest. The two-way phenom turned in another brilliant start against the Royals on Friday, tossing seven shutout innings and striking out a season-high 11, and leading the Angels to a 2-0 win. 

Ohtani’s season ERA improves to 0.64. He has struck out 32.9% of hitters and has held them to an impressive .093 batting average. 

Friday’s start was the 2021 AL MVP’s first-ever start on three days of rest, thanks to the shortened start on Monday against the Red Sox. It was not an issue for Ohtani, who opened the game by striking out the side. It was the first time this season that the Japanese right-hander did not walk the leadoff hitter. 

Ohtani said that he felt good despite the short rest. “I slept pretty well, and so I came in pretty fresh. I didn’t really have that [short rest] in mind,” Ohtani said. 

Ohtani struck out the last six hitters to wrap up his dominant outing. Hitters whiffed on 42% of their swings, for a total of 22 whiffs, and just three of Ohtani’s pitches were hit hard into fair territory. 

An interesting change in this particular start was the increased cutter and curveball usage. Ohtani threw his cutter 21 times, which is as much as he has thrown it on all of his other starts combined. He threw his curveball nine times, including one looping 68 mph pitch, and hitters whiffed on four of them. 

Ohtani felt like he mixed his pitches well. “It was a good balance [of pitch types], the third time around the order I was able to mix in the curveball well,” Ohtani said. “I felt that hitters were sitting on the breaking ball, but if I threw two different types they’d have a more difficult time.” 

Baseball Savant’s release point chart shows Ohtani’s consistent release point. All six pitches that Ohtani threw on Friday all come from a similar release point but have drastically different movements and speeds ranging from 68 mph to 100 mph, making it difficult for hitters to predict what pitch comes next. 

Angels manager Phil Nevin said that since Ohtani calls his own pitches, he studies hitters and understands when he can use a specific pitch. “From a hitter’s standpoint, I would have no idea what to prepare for,” Nevin said.

Today’s game was the first time Ohtani was caught by Chad Wallach after Logan O’Hoppe was placed on the 10-day injured list. Ohtani was thankful for Wallach. “He was great, he framed the balls on the corners well and got me strikes,” Ohtani said. Wallach also helped out Ohtani at the plate, hitting the go-ahead two-run homer in the bottom of the third.

Ohtani’s next scheduled start is on April 27th against the Athletics at 4:07 EST/1:07 PT.

Steven Brault, Starlin Castro Sign With Atlantic League Team

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Left-hander Steven Brault, right-hander Brett de Geus and infielder Starlin Castro have signed with the new and yet to-be-named Atlantic League team based in Frederick, Md., the team announced this week (Twitter links).

Brault, 30, spent the 2022 season in the Cubs organization but was on the injured list for the majority of the season. The former Pirates hurler originally inked a one-year, Major League deal with the Cubs in the offseason, but that was reworked as a minor league pact following some injury concerns. Those proved to have merit, as Brault pitched in just 16 innings between the minors and the big leagues, due in large part to a shoulder strain.

The few innings Brault managed to pitch with the Cubs were solid. He tossed nine frames and allowed three runs on eight hits with an 8-to-5 K/BB ratio. Brault is best known for his six-year run with Pittsburgh, where he frequently bounced between the Pirates’ rotation and bullpen, ultimately tossing 343 1/3 innings of 4.77 ERA ball in 107 appearances (52 starts, 55 in relief).

Castro, 33, hasn’t appeared in the Majors since the Nationals released him in the summer of 2021 on the heels of a 30-game suspension under Major League Baseball’s joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy. He had a brief 28-game stint in the Mexican League last year, where he batted .240/.312/.323 in 109 plate appearances for los Leones de Yucatan. A stint in the the Dominican Winter League didn’t go any better this past offseason; Castro managed only a .219/.250/.250 output in 168 plate appearances.

From 2010-21, Castro played in 1573 Major League games and logged nearly 6600 plate appearances with the Cubs, Yankees, Marlins and Nationals. He holds a career .280/.319/.412 batting line.

The 25-year-old de Geus was one of the top picks in the 2020 Rule 5 Draft but struggled to a 7.56 ERA in 50 innings between the Rangers and Diamondbacks that season. The former Dodgers farmhand spent the 2022 season in the D-backs organization, tossing 22 2/3 of 5.96 ERA ball with their Double-A affiliate.

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