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Tigers Reinstate Parker Meadows From 60-Day IL

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The Tigers announced that outfielder Parker Meadows has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list. Fellow outfielder Justyn-Henry Malloy has been optioned to Triple-A Toledo in a corresponding active roster move. To open a 40-man spot, right-hander Ryan Cusick has been designated for assignment. Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press reported the Meadows and Malloy moves prior to the official announcement.

Meadows, 25, will be making his season debut as soon as he gets into a game. Way back in February, he was battling some inflammation in his upper right arm. It was later revealed that this was due to issues with the musculocutaneous nerve. He was placed on the 60-day IL in late March, indicating he wouldn’t be an option for the Tigers in the first two months of the season.

He seems to be fine now. He has played eight rehab games over the past two weeks and put up a stout .259/.394/.556 line in those. His throwing was a concern when the issue first cropped up but he’s been playing the field during his rehab, so he’s presumably fine in that regard as well.

Now that he’s back, it should be a boost for the Tigers. Meadows hit .241/.317/.413 for a 106 wRC+ in 119 games over the previous two seasons. He also stole 17 bases and received strong marks for his center field defense. FanGraphs credited him with 3.1 wins above replacement in that time, even though he had played less than a full season’s worth of games.

The Tigers have had a number of health problems in the outfield this year. In addition to Meadows, Matt Vierling and Wenceel Pérez have also missed significant time. Vierling was recently reinstated but went right back on the IL after just a few days.

The club has managed to weather that storm about as well as could have been expected. Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter have both been great while utility guys like Javier Báez and Zach McKinstry have also made nice contributions. Now that Meadows and Pérez are back, that should further strengthen a team that already leads the majors with a 39-21 record.

Cusick, 25, was just claimed off waivers from the A’s a few days ago. He will likely wind up back on waivers again in the coming days and it’s possible he’ll clear. As the best team in baseball, the Tigers are last on the waiver priority list, so the other 29 clubs passed on him just a few days ago.

A former first-round pick of Atlanta, Cusick’s minor league work hasn’t produce much optimism yet. He posted poor numbers for the A’s in the minors in 2022, 2023 and through the first half of 2024. A move to relief last year inspired some optimism, as he posted a 1.73 ERA in his final 26 innings. However, his results have backed up here in 2025. He had a 6.75 ERA in 14 2/3 Triple-A innings before the A’s designated him for assignment. Since being claimed, he has tossed one scoreless inning for Toledo.

Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images

Pirates Claim Ronny Simón, Designate Tanner Rainey For Assignment

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2:25pm: The Pirates announced that they have claimed Simón and optioned him to Triple-A Indianapolis, with Rainey designated for assignment as the corresponding move.

1:25pm: The Pirates have claimed infielder Ronny Simón off waivers from the Marlins. The latter club designated him for assignment last week. Right-hander Tanner Rainey has been designated for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot for Simón. Mike Rodriguez first reported that Simón would be joining the Pirates. Craig Mish of the Miami Herald reported that it would be a waiver claim. Alex Stumpf of MLB.com reported that Rainey was the corresponding move.

Simón, 25, got his first major league call just over a month ago. The Marlins selected his contract on April 20th and he stuck on the roster until he was designated for assignment on May 30th. He got into 19 games and stepped to the plate 56 times, producing a batting line of .234/.327/.277.

That was a fairly unremarkable performance from a statistical point of view but Simón got thrust into the spotlight in an unusual way. As relayed Jason Foster and Christina De Nicola of MLB.com, Simón had a nightmare game against the Padres last week. The Fish were up 6-0 on Tuesday but several errors and general defensive miscues from Simón allowed the Friars to engineer an 8-6 comeback victory.

Amid the chaotic contest, Simón was seen wiping tears from his face. After the game, he received plenty of encouraging messages from his teammates and even his opponents. Per the MLB.com story, Padres such as Manny Machado, Luis Arráez and Fernando Tatis Jr. sent supportive texts to Simón after the game. In addition to that challenging on-field experience, Simón also had to deal with getting sent into DFA limbo a few days later. However, he has quickly found a new home by landing with the Pirates.

Simón’s major league time isn’t much to go on. Presumably, the Pirates are paying more attention to his minor league work. In 2,328 minor league plate appearances, he has a .266/.341/.446 line and 108 wRC+. Before getting called up this year, he got into 15 Triple-A contests and had a massive .354/.441/.521 line in that small sample.

As of July of last year, FanGraphs considered Simón to be one of the top 20 prospects in the Rays’ system, noting that his switch-hitting and defensive versatility gave him a good shot to eventually become a utility player. He has experience at the three infield positions to the left of first base as well as the outfield corners. He’s generally been able to steal about 20-35 bases annually. The Rays didn’t give him a 40-man spot at the end of last year, which led him to sign a minors deal with the Marlins coming into 2025.

He still has a full slate of options, so the Pirates can keep him in the minors if they don’t have room at the big league level. Rainey’s DFA does open an active roster spot but the Pirates might recall a pitcher rather than playing with the pitching staff shorthanded.

Rainey, 32, signed a minor league deal with the Pirates in the offseason and was selected to the roster about a month ago. He has since tossed 7 2/3 innings over 11 appearances, allowing nine earned runs. There’s surely a bit of luck in there, especially from a 35.7% strand rate that is ridiculously low, but he also hasn’t done himself any favors by walking 16.2% of batters faced. On the positive side, his 24.3% strikeout rate and 45% ground ball rate are solid numbers.

He’ll now head into DFA limbo, which can last for as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Pirates could take five days to try to line up a trade. Rainey’s overall track record includes 197 big league innings with a 5.44 ERA. From 2019 to 2024, he logged 182 1/3 of those innings with a 4.49 ERA, 28.5% strikeout rate and 14.1% walk rate.

Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images

Trade Rumors Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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MLBTR's Steve Adams hosted a live chat today, at 2pm CT, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers.

Steve Adams

  • Good afternoon! I'll get this started at 2:30pm CT, but feel free to send in some questions ahead of time if you prefer!
  • Greetings all! Let's get underway a bit early

Mrs Murphy

  • Is it time to wave the white flag in Atlanta? This offense is just a lost used to be.What’s next for them?

Steve Adams

  • Quite a few questions like this from Braves fans, and understandably so, given the poor performance of late, but I generally don't think it's too late for almost any team in MLB, with the obvious exceptions (Rox, Marlins, White Sox, probably the O's and A's).

    Atlanta is 5.5 back in the Wild Card chase and "only" four games under .500, which is pretty remarkable when you consider the early struggles and all the time they've had without Strider and Acuña.

    Heck, the 2021 Braves were three under .500 at the deadline, and they went on to win the World Series. The Mets and Astros were 10 under .500 this time last year. The 2019 Nats and 2022 Phils were buried even further.

  • I was underwhelmed by the Braves' offseason, and losing Profar to a PED suspension is brutal, but it's still a talented core with plenty of winnable series on the near horizon. They get the Rockies, A's, Angels, Orioles, Marlins and a currently struggling D-backs club all before the All-Star break.

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Marlins Outright Matt Mervis

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Marlins first baseman Matt Mervis passed through waivers unclaimed following his recent DFA and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Jacksonville, reports Craig Mish of SportsGrid and the Miami Herald.

Mervis, 27, generated some buzz among Marlins fans when he homered six times in an eight-game stretch early in the season. Even during that blistering hot streak, however, he fanned in 39% of his plate appearances. The lefty-swinging slugger has always had good power but has never made contact in the majors. Mervis’ lack of hit tool and poor swing decisions caught up to him quickly after that power surge. From April 17 through his DFA in late May, he slashed .125/.213/.213 with a 36% strikeout rate and only one home run.

This is the third season in which Mervis has seen big league time. He’s tallied 261 plate appearances between the Cubs and Marlins but managed only a .165/.238/.322 batting line (53 wRC+) due in large part to a 34.5% strikeout rate. His 66.9% contact rate in that time ranks 470th out of 485 big leaguers (min. 250 plate appearances).

In parts of four Triple-A seasons, Mervis has fared far better. He’s a .269/.371/.511 hitter in 1045 plate appearances and, more encouragingly, has only fanned in 23.3% of his plate appearances there. He’ll spend time in Jacksonville continuing to work on his plate discipline and swing decisions. There’s little doubting Mervis’ power; he bashed 36 home runs in the minors back in 2022 and has connected on 73 round-trippers over his past 1369 plate appearances in the minors. Miami doesn’t have anyone firmly blocking him at first base, so if he can make some gains in Triple-A, another look could be in store for him later this season.

D-backs Release Joe Mantiply

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The Diamondbacks released lefty Joe Mantiply after his recent DFA, per their transaction log at MLB.com. Assuming he clears release waivers, he’ll be a free agent who can sign with any team tomorrow afternoon.

Mantiply, 34, has been a frequent presence in Arizona’s bullpen dating back to 2021. From ’21-’24, he pitched 198 1/3 innings with a 3.63 ERA, a 22% strikeout rate, a 6.1% walk rate, a 51.9% grounder rate, 50 holds and three saves. In 2022, specifically, he was one of the team’s most frequently used relievers in high-leverage spots.

The 2025 season has been an abject disaster for Mantiply, however. He fired a perfect inning in his first appearance of the season and immediately tanked thereafter. By the time Arizona optioned Mantiply to Triple-A Reno on April 19, he’d been tagged for a calamitous 13 runs in just 7 1/3 innings across eight relief outings. He got another look in mid-May and was quickly optioned again after surrendering four runs in 2 1/3 innings.

Even Mantiply’s time in Triple-A was generally a struggle. He allowed four runs in his first appearance with Reno and five in his final one. Those ugly outings bookended a strong run of 9 2/3 shutout innings, but the overall results were grim. In 9 2/3 MLB frames this year, Mantiply has a 15.83 ERA. He’s posted a 5.56 mark in 11 1/3 Triple-A innings.

Mantiply has always been a soft-tosser, but his fastball has bottomed out in 2025, averaging a career-low 88.2 mph. He sat 91.3 mph with the pitch back in 2021-22, when he was at his best, and was at 89.5 mph last year. He’s still filling up the strike zone, but doing so with diminished stuff has yielded diminished returns.

By all accounts, Mantiply is healthy at the moment. Teams are always in need of left-handed bullpen help, and Mantiply has a generally solid track record in the majors, so he ought to get another chance to turn his season around with a new club before too long. He’ll almost certainly need to pitch his way back to the majors on a minor league deal, however. He’s being paid $1.7MM this year, and the D-backs will remain on the hook for the rest of that salary — minus the prorated minimum for any team he spends with another club’s big league roster.

Mariners To Acquire Joe Jacques

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12:10pm: Ari Alexander of KPRC 2 reports that the Mariners are sending right-hander Will Klein to the Mariners for Jacques. Klein was just designated for assignment by the Mariners a few days ago. The Dodgers will need to open a 40-man roster spot for him.

Klein has just 7 1/3 innings of major league experience, which all came last year. He allowed nine earned runs in that time. This year, he’s been in Triple-A and has posted a 7.17 ERA at that level with a strong 30.5% strikeout rate but also a massive 18.1% walk rate. That’s generally been his recipe throughout his minor league career.

7:11am: In an early morning deal, Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports that the Mariners are acquiring southpaw Joe Jacques from the Dodgers. The return headed to Los Angeles is not yet known, though unlikely to be significant given Jacques’s status as a player on a minor league deal.

Jacques, 30, was a 33rd-round pick by the Pirates all the way back in 2018. He climbed the minor league ladder with Pittsburgh and ultimately reached Triple-A with them before posting a 3.12 ERA across three levels of the minors in his final season with the organization. It wouldn’t be until 2023 when he made his big league debut as a member of the Red Sox, for whom he pitched to a pedestrian 5.06 ERA in 26 2/3 innings of work. He generated an excellent 64.7% ground ball rate, but struck out only 16.4% of his opponents while walking 8.2%. Overall, Jacques profiled as a roughly average to slightly below average reliever based on his peripheral numbers, including a 4.53 FIP and a 4.12 SIERA.

Jacques remained on Boston’s 40-man roster throughout the 2023-24 offseason, but ultimately made just one appearance at the big league level in 2024 before he was designated for assignment and plucked off waivers by the Diamondbacks. He had a similar experience with Arizona, appearing in one game before he was eventually designated for assignment to make room on the roster for newly-acquired reliever A.J. Puk. Those two outings in the majors last year saw him surrender three runs on six hits and a walk across three innings of work while striking out two. Meanwhile, the lefty pitched to a 5.48 ERA in 42 2/3 innings of work at the Triple-A level.

It was a lackluster performance overall, but when Jacques reached minor league free agency he was quickly snapped up by the Dodgers on a minor league deal back in November. Jacques has struggled to a 6.04 ERA in 22 1/3 innings at Triple-A so far this year, although a 3.82 FIP and a .391 BABIP suggest there could be some bad luck baked into those numbers. Clearly, the Mariners saw enough in the underlying metrics to have interest in acquiring him. Yesterday was a day many players on minor league deals around the league had the opportunity to trigger opt outs and upward mobility clauses; if that came to play in this deal, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Seattle add Jacques to the 40-man roster once the deal becomes official.

One possible reason for Seattle to have interest in Jacques is their dearth of left-handed pitching options. Gabe Speier is the only lefty on the Mariners’ pitching staff at the moment, and while he’s currently in the midst of a resurgent season that’s made him a legitimate high-leverage option he’s just one season removed from a 5.70 ERA in 29 appearances. Jhonathan Diaz and Tayler Saucedo are both in the minors on the 40-man roster, but Diaz has been used primarily as a starter this season while Saucedo has surrendered four runs in 3 2/3 big league innings this year. It’s a thin enough group to justify the addition of another arm to the mix, especially one like Jacques that has a minor league option remaining.

Mariners Outright Blake Hunt

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Catcher Blake Hunt went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment by the Mariners and has been assigned outright to Triple-A, per the team’s transaction log. He hasn’t been outrighted in the past and doesn’t have three years of big league service, so Hunt does not have the right to reject the assignment in favor of free agency. He’ll remain with the organization on a crowded catching depth chart.

Hunt, 26, has been traded four times but still never taken the field for a big league game. The Padres selected him with the 69th overall pick back in 2017 and traded him to the Rays in the Blake Snell blockbuster. Hunt was with the Rays through 2023 before being traded to the Mariners in exchange for fellow minor league catcher Tatem Levins. Six months later, Hunt was on his way to the Orioles in exchange for reliever Mike Baumann, and after being designated for assignment in Baltimore later last year, he was shipped back to the M’s for cash.

Hunt is a glove-first catcher who draws strong marks for his minor league framing and blocking skills, in particular, per Baseball Prospectus. He’s long been touted for above-average to plus raw power but been dinged for a hit tool and an approach (or lack thereof) that don’t allow him to tap into that power often enough. He’s a career .232/.284/.413 hitter in parts of three Triple-A seasons, including a .231/.271/.407 slash this season that’s right in line with those career marks.

Seattle, of course, has the top catcher in all of baseball right now in switch-hitting slugger Cal Raleigh. Veteran Mitch Garver is backing Raleigh up and at least reaching base at a respectable .321 clip, but he’s hitting .204 with nowhere near the power he once displayed. Hunt is one of several catching options in the upper minors for the Mariners, who also have journeymen Jacob Nottingham and top prospect Harry Ford on their Tacoma roster.

Ben Rortvedt Accepts Outright Assignment With Rays

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Catcher Ben Rortvedt, who was designated for assignment by the Rays last week, has cleared waivers and been sent outright to Triple-A Durham. He had the right to elect free agency but has chosen to accept. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times was among those to relay the information.

Players with at least three years of big league service time have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency. However, exercising that right means forfeiting any remaining salary commitments, unless a player has at least five years of service time.

Rortvedt is between three and four years. He qualified for arbitration for the first time after last season. He and the Rays avoided arbitration by agreeing to a $1.125MM salary for 2025. Rortvedt has pocketed about a third of that already but would have to walk away from the rest of it in order to head to the open market, so it’s not surprising that he has chosen to report to Durham.

For the Rays, they get to keep a bit of experienced non-roster depth behind the plate. Rortvedt had a solid season for them in 2024, getting into 112 games and stepping to the plate 328 times. His .228/.317/.303 slash line wasn’t tremendous, as his 87 wRC+ indicates he was about 13% below league average at the plate. However, catches are usually about 10% below league-wide par, so Rortvedt’s offense was passable enough.

He also received solid marks for his work behind the plate. Putting the two together, FanGraphs considered him to be worth 1.4 wins above the replacement on the year, with Baseball Reference putting him a bit lower at 0.9 WAR.

The Rays were satisfied enough to give him a raise and bring him back for 2025 but his bat has disappeared. Rortvedt slashed .095/.186/.111 in 70 plate appearances before getting designated for assignment last week. A tiny .122 batting average on balls in play wasn’t helping him out but his batted ball metrics all trended in the wrong direction as well. The Rays signed Danny Jansen in the offseason and then acquired Matt Thaiss last week, pushing Rortvedt down the depth chart. Since Rortvedt is out of options, he got pushed off the 40-man entirely.

Though he’s not having a strong season, he should get some regular playing time for Durham and could perhaps get his offense back on track. If he’s able to do so, he could be the first man up if either Jansen or Thaiss suffers an injury. Logan Driscoll is also on the 40-man roster but he started the year on the minor league injured list due to an ankle injury and still hasn’t played an official game this year.

If Rortvedt isn’t called up by the end of the season, he will be able to elect free agency, as is the case with all players with three-plus years of service who are outrighted off a 40-man roster during the season.

Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images

Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast

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On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.

The 2025 season is chugging along. If you have a question about the campaign, a look ahead to the deadline or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.

Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.

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

Craig Kimbrel’s Braves Deal Contains Rolling Opt-Out Clause

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The Braves signed veteran closer Craig Kimbrel to a minor league deal in the middle of March. He hasn’t been called up to the big leagues yet but it seems that could happen at any time with any club. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that Kimbrel’s deal has a clause that Rosenthal refers to as a “rolling opt-out”. This clause means that, if any other club offers him a major league job, Atlanta has to promote him or let him go.

The way Rosenthal describes it, it sounds more like an upward mobility clause than a strict opt-out. With an opt-out clause, a player usually has a specific date wherein he can trigger the clause and become a free agent. With an upward mobility clause, when the player triggers it, it gives teams around the league a chance to give the player a major league roster spot. There’s usually a time frame of 48 hours for such decisions. If any club wants the player, the original signing team then has to decide to call him up or let the claiming team have him.

Semantics aside, what seems to be unique in this case is the “rolling” nature of the clause. Rather than having specific dates mentioned in the contract, it seems that any of the 29 other clubs could trigger the clause at any time by offering Kimbrel a gig in the big leagues. If that happens, Atlanta would then have to decide to call him up or let him go.

That makes it somewhat surprising that Kimbrel isn’t in the majors already. He has thrown 17 innings in the minors this year, mostly at Triple-A but also with a few appearances at Double-A. He has a combined 1.06 earned run average on the year. His 12.5% walk rate is a bit high but he has struck out 32.8% of batters faced and kept 45.7% of balls in play on the ground. A .171 batting average on balls in play isn’t sustainable but his 2.43 FIP suggests he’s still doing quite well when correcting for some regression.

That’s a fairly small sample of work in the minor leagues but Kimbrel also has his lengthy major league track record. He is fifth on the all-time saves leaderboard with 440. He has a 2.59 ERA over 809 2/3 innings, along with a 38.8% strikeout rate and 10.4% walk rate.

More recently, his results have been less consistent, which is why he settled for a minor league deal coming into this year. He was quite shaky in 2019 and 2020, posting ERAs north of 5.00 in both of those seasons. He generally had better results for the 2021-23 campaigns but struggled again in 2024. He posted a 5.33 ERA with the Orioles last year, getting released in September.

Perhaps teams are putting more stock in last year’s struggles in the majors, as opposed to this year’s good results in the minors. His deal also comes with a $2MM base salary if he’s called up. Presumably, that’s prorated, leaving a bit less than $1.3MM to be paid out at this point. That’s relatively small by MLB standards but teams are often reluctant to add money in midseason pickups. Joel Payamps just passed through waivers unclaimed even though he was quite effective in 2023-24. His $2.995MM salary this year might have been a factor, in addition to the fact that his results have backed up.

Whatever the reasons, Kimbrel still doesn’t have a major league opportunity. But given that a number of clubs around the league are dealing with bullpen challenges and pitcher injuries are inevitable, a path could open for him. Given the specifics of this clause, he only needs one of the 30 clubs to bite.

Photo courtesy of Kareem Elgazzar, Imagn Images

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