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Fantasy Baseball: Stash Party

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Hello, friends.

With just one week until the calendar flips to June, you know what that means -- that's right, we're only seven days away from me dressing up like Pikachu for our son's second-annual Pokemon birthday party so a whole pack of feral six-year-olds can throw homemade Pokeballs at me. Please, keep me in your thoughts.

*This will end the official costume count for the school year, with PikaNick joining DumbleNick(2x), Giggles McNickels the Leprechaun, and the Tin Diesel Man. 

This time of year also means that prospect cash-in season is picking up steam again after the first waves have passed. Pressing team needs (but definitely not service clock manipulation), mean more and more top prospects will soon be hitting the field. With that in mind, let's look at a handful of guys who could be getting the call soon.

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Ben Lively To Undergo Tommy John Surgery

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Guardians right-hander Ben Lively will undergo Tommy John surgery and a flexor tendon repair, the team announced. The righty is expected to miss 12 to 16 months. That means he’ll miss the remainder of the 2025 season and maybe all of ’26 as well. He’s already on the 15-day injured list and will be moved to the 60-day IL whenever Cleveland needs his 40-man roster spot.

“Earlier this week, RHP Ben Lively sought a second opinion on his injured right elbow with Dr. Keith Meister in Arlington, TX,” the club’s statement reads. “Dr. Meister confirmed the presence of a flexor tendon injury while also noting medial elbow joint laxity due to an insufficient ulnar collateral ligament. Both team physicians and Dr. Meister believe the joint laxity is placing added stress on the flexor muscles and have recommended UCL reconstruction along with flexor tendon repair. No surgical date has been set but is expected in the coming days with Dr. Meister. Return to play timeframes in similar cases are 12-16 months.”

Lively was unexpectedly tabbed as Cleveland’s Opening Day starter this season after an illness ruled Tanner Bibee out for that assignment. The 33-year-old didn’t have a great outing, surrendering three runs over five innings in Kansas City. However, he has arguably been Cleveland’s best starting pitcher through the season’s first month and a half. After posting a 3.81 ERA in 151 innings a year ago, he worked to a 3.22 mark across nine starts this year. He’s up to nearly 200 innings with a 3.68 ERA in a Cleveland uniform since signing for a modest $750K as a free agent during the 2023-24 offseason.

It has been the most successful stretch of Lively’s big league tenure. He’d spent parts of two seasons apiece as a depth starter with the Phillies and Royals early in his career. He then pitched in Korea for three seasons before returning stateside with the Reds in 2022. Lively allowed 5.38 earned runs per nine with Cincinnati and was waived at the end of that year. Cleveland saw enough to give him a major league contract, and they were rewarded with generally solid results until he left the mound with forearm pain during a start against the Brewers last week.

There’s a decent chance this will end his Guardians tenure. Lively is playing this season on a $2.25MM contract after qualifying for arbitration for the first time. He’d be due a slight raise next year if tendered a contract. The Guardians will need to decide whether to offer him something in the $3MM range to spend most or all of next season rehabbing, then pay a similar salary for a hopefully healthy ’27 campaign. He’d be nearing his 35th birthday at that point. Lively doesn’t throw hard or miss many bats, so the team may feel they can more cheaply replace his production and non-tender him.

In the short term, it’s a hit to an already questionable starting staff. Cleveland starters rank 19th in both ERA and strikeout rate. They’re 23rd in innings pitched. Lively led the group in ERA. Slade Cecconi, who was acquired from the Diamondbacks for Josh Naylor over the winter, was activated from his own IL stint on Saturday to take Lively’s rotation spot. He worked five innings of three-run ball in his team debut. He slots behind Bibee, Gavin Williams, Luis Ortiz and Logan Allen for the time being. Shane Bieber and John Means are potential second-half reinforcements as they work back from their own UCL procedures.

Pirates Ownership Reportedly Intervened In Past Efforts To Trade David Bednar

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The Pirates are a mess. They fired manager Derek Shelton after a 12-26 start and currently sit 11.5 games out of a playoff spot. Their situation is dire enough that fans and pundits alike have wondered whether they might trade Paul Skenes just 1.5 years into his big league career. That’s never seemed likely, and a Pirates official recently said there’s “no way” the team would consider that, but the fact that it even needs to be said speaks to the current status of the team.

Pittsburgh’s ongoing rebuild simply hasn’t worked as hoped. Trades of Starling Marte, Josh Bell, Adam Frazier, Joe Musgrove, Jameson Taillon, Richard Rodriguez and others haven’t netted nearly enough talent. Other possible trade chips have been held onto and seen their stock dwindle. One player who many have expected to be on that list of traded Pirates stars over the years is closer David Bednar, but he’s still in Pittsburgh and working to rebuild his stock after a poor 2024 season and after being optioned to Triple-A amid some early-2025 struggles.

Bednar may well have been traded by now, it seems, if were up to the front office alone. But Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports in his latest mailbag column that ownership has previously “stepped in” to prevent the baseball operations staff from trading him.

It’s not clear when a potential Bednar trade might’ve been coming together. He’s been the subject of rumors dating back to the 2022 season, when the Pirates reportedly rejected what at the time were described as “tempting” offers for both Bednar and outfielder Bryan Reynolds. Bednar’s name has been synonymous with each of the two subsequent trade deadlines as well, and he’ll surely be talked about again this summer. Hiles notes that he does not expect ownership intervention this time around — presumably a reflection on Bednar’s struggles over the past calendar year, his mounting price tag ($5.9MM in 2025) and his dwindling level of club control (through the 2026 season).

Ownership stepping in to meddle in baseball operations affairs is hardly a situation that’s unique to the Pirates. Over the years there have been various reports of Angels owner Arte Moreno going over his front office’s head in free agency and more recently of quashing a potential Shohei Ohtani trade late in his tenure with the team. Astros owner Jim Crane operated without a GM in place for months after former GM James Click’s ouster in Houston and signed Jose Abreu and Rafael Montero to regrettable free agent deals while serving as the de facto head of baseball operations. You can go all the way back to 2012 and find reports of Rockies owner Dick Monfort nixing a trade that would’ve sent Jorge De La Rosa from Colorado to Baltimore in exchange for then-prospect Eduardo Rodriguez.

Bednar likely holds some extra value in the eyes of Pirates chairman Bob Nutting and the rest of the ownership group. He’s a Pittsburgh native who grew up rooting for the Pirates and quickly became the most (and only) productive player acquired from the aforementioned trade of Musgrove. Those Pittsburgh roots presumably make Bednar a bit more marketable, although his hometown ties to the area were not expressly mentioned by Hiles as a reason for ownership’s intervention in those trade talks.

Regardless of the reason, it’s likely that prior ownership protest prevented GM Ben Cherington and his staff from capitalizing on Bednar closer to peak value. Bednar broke out as a top-notch setup man in 2021 and by 2022 had assumed the closer’s role in Pittsburgh. From 2022-23, he pitched 119 innings with a 2.27 ERA, 30.6% strikeout rate, 7.6% walk rate and 0.53 homers per nine frames — all while compiling 58 saves for a team that only won 138 games. A hearty 42% of the Pirates’ victories in that two-year period were nailed down by Bednar.

Back in 2022, Bednar would’ve come with four and a half more seasons of club control. In 2023, that’d have (obviously) been three and a half. The asking price for an All-Star closer in his pre-arb years would presumably have been substantial. By 2024, Bednar’s value had plummeted. He missed several weeks in the first half due to an oblique strain and lugged an unsightly 4.95 ERA into the trade deadline. If ownership stepped in to quash a trade at that point, it’d be a bit more understandable, as selling low on a pitcher as talented as Bednar understandably may not have been viewed favorably. Again, the timetable surrounding the events isn’t clear.

Whether due to ownership or lack of sufficient offers, Bednar stayed put last summer — and the Pirates are probably better off for it. It’s true that he struggled enough early on to briefly be optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis, but that brief reset looks to have done wonders. In 13 1/3 innings since returning, Bednar has posted a sharp 3.38 ERA with exceptional rate stats. He’s punched out 20 batters (37% of his total opponents) against just one walk (1.9%). His velocity is as strong as ever, with a fastball sitting 97.1 mph, and he’s inducing grounders at what would be a career-high 48.5% clip (way up from last year’s 37.1%).

If Bednar can continue anywhere close to that pace over the next month or two, he’ll be an in-demand asset once again. With the Pirates in a total state of collapse and Bednar only controlled through 2026, he’d seem like a very strong candidate to change hands this time around. That’s perhaps even truer given that from midseason 2024 through early 2025, it looked like the Pirates had missed their opportunity to trade him for anything of note at all.

Rockies Designate Scott Alexander For Assignment

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The Rockies announced that right-hander Tanner Gordon has been recalled to start tonight’s game, a move necessitated by Chase Dollander landing on the injured list yesterday. In a corresponding move for Gordon, left-hander Scott Alexander has been designated for assignment. The club’s 40-man count drops from 39 to 38.

Alexander, 35, was signed by the Rockies in the offseason. Colorado gave him $2MM on a one-year deal to serve as a veteran arm in a bullpen that was generally lacking in experience. That hasn’t worked out. His 53.4% ground ball rate this year is above league average but below his usual pace. He’s never been a huge strikeout rate guy but his 8.3% clip is low even by his personal standards. That has led to a 6.06 earned run average in 16 1/3 innings.

That performance has bumped him off the roster. Given his numbers and his salary, no club is likely to claim him off waivers. As a veteran, he has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment while keeping his salary in place. He will likely be on the open market soon, either by being released by the Rockies or by electing free agency.

If that comes to pass, the Rockies would be on the hook for what’s left of his salary. Any other club could sign him at that point and would only have to pay him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That amount would be subtracted from what the Rockies pay.

It’s possible some clubs would be interested in that arrangement, despite this year’s numbers. From 2015 through 2024, Alexander tossed 309 1/3 big league innings with a 3.20 ERA. His 18% strikeout rate was a few ticks shy of par but he got grounders at a massive 67.4% rate. Among pitchers with at least 300 innings pitched in that decade, only Zack Britton kept the ball on the ground at a higher clip.

The numbers in 2025 haven’t been great but it wouldn’t be a surprise if some team thought Alexander could bounce back, especially by getting away from Coors Field. He has a 7.20 ERA at home this year compared to a 4.26 ERA on the road. His 48.7% grounder rate at Coors is far lighter than his 63.2% rate in away games this season.

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin, Oncea-Imagn Images

Mariners Outright Casey Lawrence

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The Mariners announced Friday that right-hander Casey Lawrence again passed through waivers following a recent DFA. He’s been assigned outright to Triple-A Tacoma.

Lawrence has the right to reject the assignment and elect free agency, although at this point, whether he chooses to do so seemingly has little bearing on his future with the organization. Lawrence has been designated for assignment by Seattle a whopping four times in the past six weeks — plus another time by the Blue Jays, who briefly claimed him from Seattle. (He elected free agency following that DFA and re-signed with the Mariners.) Each time, he’s returned to the Mariners.

In 2025 alone, Lawrence has had four stints with the Mariners, and there’s little reason to think it’ll stop there. He appears perfectly content to function as an effective 41st player on the 40-man roster, being selected to the roster whenever the big league club needs some extra length in the bullpen and then quickly being placed on waivers. The 37-year-old righty clearly has a good relationship with the organization and is comfortable in the Tacoma area, which is no surprise given that he also spent the entire 2024 season pitching for the Mariners’ Triple-A squad there.

Lawrence has pitched in six MLB games this year — five with Seattle, one with Toronto — and eaten up 17 2/3 innings in a long relief role. He’s logged a 4.08 ERA in that time, including a flat 3.00 mark in his 15 frames as a Mariner. He’s averaging just 88 mph on his fastball and carries a minuscule 8.8% strikeout rate, but Lawrence has also walked only one of the 80 men he’s faced (1.3%).

It’s not the smoothest way to earn a living, but by my count he’s picked up 23 days of major league service time this year. Even with a league-minimum split on the contracts he’s signing — and the Mariners are presumably compensating him a bit better than that — he’d have already earned a bit more than $96K in just big league salary, before factoring in any minor league pay. Assuming he has several more stints of this nature ahead of him, he’ll take home a fair bit more cash in 2025 than your standard mid-30s journeyman on the fringes of big league rosters, however unorthodox the road to that endgame may be.

Athletics To Promote Logan Davidson

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The Athletics are promoting infielder/outfielder Logan Davidson to the majors, reports Martín Gallegos of MLB.com. He’s not yet on the 40-man roster, so the club will need to open a spot for him. Moving Zack Gelof to the 60-day injured list would be one one way of doing that but it also seems like the A’s are planning to make a series of moves today.

Last night, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that the A’s would be shaking up their roster on the heels of a nine-game losing streak, with outfielder Denzel Clarke to be promoted. Manager Mark Kotsay also relayed that infielder Gio Urshela would be heading to the 10-day injured list with a left hamstring strain. The full slate of moves hasn’t yet been announced but it seems that Davidson will also be a part of them.

Now 27, Davidson was the Athletics’ first-round pick back in 2019. The A’s grabbed him 29th overall and signed him to a slot-value bonus of more than $2.4MM. He quickly became one of the club’s top prospects but his stock then faded.

Even as a college player, his obvious power came with concerns about the swing-and-miss in his game. Those fears have been borne out in his time as a minor leaguer. After the minor leagues were canceled in 2020, Davidson took 1,437 plate appearances in the minors across the 2021 to 2023 seasons with a 27.6% strikeout rate. His 11% walk rate was good but he had a fairly modest tally of 31 home runs. The result was a combined line of .246/.332/.379 and an 85 wRC+ over those three campaigns. He largely fell off lists of the top prospects in the system in that time.

Since then, he has regained some promise, to a degree. He overcame some hip injuries that were plaguing him and was healthy enough to get into 87 Triple-A games last year, plus 41 more this year. The strikeouts are still a big flag but there have been some positives as well. In 347 plate appearances last year, he struck out at a 31.1% clip but launched 14 homers. So far this year, in 186 Triple-A plate appearances, he has just two homers and a 31.2% strikeout rate. However, his 20.4% walk rate is a massive spike from last year’s 7.8% clip at Triple-A.

Dating back to the start of 2024, he has 543 plate appearances, mostly at the Triple-A level but with a handful in the Complex League as well. In that span, he has a 30.8% strikeout rate, 12.5% walk rate, 17 home runs, .303/.400/.506 line and 120 wRC+.

Being a productive hitter while striking out that often will be hard to maintain in the majors, but Davidson can at least be useful in other ways. He stole seven bags last year and has added seven more swipes already this year. Defensively, he has been bouncing all around the diamond, having played every position except the battery.

At the time they selected Davidson with a first-round pick, the A’s were probably hoping to get more than a utility guy. But considering where his stock was a couple of years ago, that might not be a terrible outcome. Time will tell how the A’s plan to deploy him. As mentioned, Urshela is going to the IL. He had been in a bench role, with Miguel Andujar taking over at third and Luis Urías at second lately. Perhaps Davidson will therefore slot into a multi-positional bench role, with his switch-hitting ability enhancing his versatility.

Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images

Reds Sign Garrett Hampson To Major League Deal

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The Reds announced Friday that they’ve signed veteran utilityman Garrett Hampson to a one-year, major league contract. He’ll go directly onto Cincinnati’s big league roster. In a pair of corresponding moves, outfielder Rece Hinds was optioned to Triple-A Louisville, and righty Carson Spiers was transferred from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL. The Reds also announced the reinstatement of ace Hunter Greene from the injured list, as expected. Righty Lyon Richardson had been optioned to Louisville on yesterday’s off-day to clear a spot on the roster for Greene.

Hampson, 30, opened the season with the D-backs. He’d signed a minor league deal with Arizona over the winter but broke camp with the team after nice spring performance. He received only 41 plate appearances in about six weeks with the Snakes, however, turning in only a .167/.359/.167 batting line. Hampson did draw 10 walks, but he was 5-for-30 with a quintet of singles in his official at-bats and produced poor batted-ball metrics when he made contact. The Diamondbacks designated Hampson for assignment and released him last week.

The Reds are Hampson’s fifth big league team in four years. He spent the first five seasons of his career with the club that originally selected him in the third round of the 2016 draft, the Rockies, but has since bounced to Miami, Kansas City, Arizona and now Cincinnati. Hampson hasn’t been productive with the bat over the course of that journey around the big leagues, hitting just .237/.308/.323 in 750 plate appearances since Opening Day 2022. He’s a plus runner who can handle just about any position on the diamond, however, which surely enhanced his appeal to a banged-up Reds club.

Cincinnati currently has Noelvi Marte, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Jeimer Candelario, Jake Fraley and Tyler Callihan all on the injured list (the 60-day IL, in Callihan’s case). Those injuries, coupled with the offseason trade of Jonathan India, have thinned out what once appeared to be an extremely deep group of infielders. Presently, the Reds have Spencer Steer at first base, Matt McLain at second, Elly De La Cruz at shortstop and utilityman Santiago Espinal at third base. Gavin Lux can play all over the diamond but has been used much more as an outfielder than an infielder this season. The Reds are also carrying three catchers at the moment, which further creates a need for some versatility in the other players they decide to carry on the bench.

Hampson will provide some needed infield depth while Marte & Co. heal up in the weeks ahead. He’ll also give the Reds a righty-swinging option to plug into an outfield mix that currently includes Lux, Austin Hays, TJ Friedl and Will Benson.

White Sox Outright Yoendrys Gómez

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The White Sox announced to reporters, including Scott Merkin of MLB.com, that right-hander Yoendrys Gómez has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Charlotte. He had been designated for assignment earlier this week.

While no player wants to be booted out of the major leagues, it’s possible that this is the best result for Gómez in the short term. He came into 2025 out of options, which has led to him bouncing around the league in a long relief role. He started the year with the Yankees but was designated for assignment about three weeks into the season. He was claimed off waivers by the Dodgers but lasted a little over a week with that club. The Sox then claimed him on May 10th and he was DFA’d on the 20th.

Around those transactions, he logged 17 2/3 innings over 12 long relief outings, posting a 6.62 earned run average in the process. But now that he has cleared waivers, perhaps the Sox will let him get stretched back out as a starter in Charlotte.

That’s a role in which he has shown some promise in the past. Though he made his professional debut in 2017, the canceled 2020 season and a Tommy John surgery in 2021 kept him from climbing too high on the minor league ladder. He went into 2022 without having pitched any higher than Single-A.

Over the 2022 through 2024 seasons, he went through High-A, Double-A, Triple-A and the majors. He logged 195 2/3 innings on the farm over those three seasons with a 3.36 ERA. His 11.6% walk rate in that time was certainly high but he also punched out 27.2% of batters faced. Baseball America considered him one of the top 30 Yankee prospects in each season from 2019 to 2024.

But as mentioned, his out-of-options status has had him in a sort of holding pattern for this year. He hasn’t shown enough for a proper big league rotation job, with a 5.23 ERA in 31 big league innings over three seasons. He has been bouncing around to various clubs in a mop-up role.

While losing his roster spot probably isn’t fun, it might at least be a chance to get back into a groove as a starter. The White Sox have a fairly inexperienced rotation, so there could be opportunities available later in the year. Adrian Houser was just signed but he’s on a one-year deal and should be traded this summer if he’s throwing well. Davis Martin, Jonathan Cannon, Sean Burke and Shane Smith all came into this season with less than a year of service time. Injuries are also fairly inevitable, with the Sox having already lost Drew Thorpe and Ky Bush to Tommy John surgery this year.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Hui, Imagn Images

Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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MLBTR’s Anthony Franco held a live chat this afternoon, exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers!

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Royals Designate Hunter Renfroe For Assignment

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The Royals announced Friday that they’ve designated veteran outfielder Hunter Renfroe for assignment. Infielder Nick Loftin has been recalled from Triple-A Omaha in a corresponding move. Renfroe is being paid $7.5MM in the second season of a two-year, $13MM contract and will very likely be released in the coming days.

Kansas City gave out a pair of surprising two-year deals with player opt-outs in the 2023-24 offseason: one to Renfroe and another to veteran reliever Chris Stratton. Both struggled in year one of the contract and picked up said player option. Both players have been cut loose within days of each other, less than one-third of the way through the second season of those pacts.

The 33-year-old Renfroe had a big performance in June and July last season but struggled immensely outside those two months. From August onward, he batted only .211/.244/.333, finishing out the season with a sub-par .229/.297/.392 slash in 424 plate appearances. Renfroe understandably wasn’t keen on taking that batting line back to the open market, particularly not ahead of his age-33 campaign.

Any hopes of a rebound have faded, however, as the veteran slugger has declined even further at the plate this season. In 108 turns at the plate, Renfroe is hitting just .182/.241/.242 (32 wRC+, or 68% worse than league-average offense). He’s yet to hit a home run this season.

Given the magnitude of those struggles, there’s no way Renfroe will be claimed on waivers. Finding a trade partner should be nearly impossible as well. The overwhelming likelihood is that he, as was the case with Stratton, will be released on the heels of his DFA. At that point, the Royals would be on the hook for the remainder of his $7.5MM salary. A new team would owe Renfroe only the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the MLB roster.

Renfroe was a buy-low candidate even in the 2023-24 offseason (hence the surprise surrounding a two-year deal with a player opt-out). He’d slashed .233/.297/.416 between the Angels and Reds a year prior. He hasn’t had an above-average season at the plate since a 29-homer campaign with the 2022 Brewers, and once-strong defensive grades have declined considerably over the past few seasons. Renfroe did smack 60 homers and hit .257/.315/.496 in just under 1100 plate appearances between Boston and Milwaukee in 2021-22, so someone will probably take a flier on a minor league contract, but he’s a project at this stage of his career.

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