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White Sox Sign Clayton Richard

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The White Sox have inked left-hander Clayton Richard to a minor-league deal, per LaMond Pope of the Chicago Tribune  on Twitter. He’ll report to the team’s alternative training site.

Richard, 36, has eleven years of MLB experience under his belt. He had a nice run earlier in his career before injuries intervened. Richard hasn’t found much success of late.

Last year, Richard took ten starts with the Blue Jays, limping to a 5.96 ERA with 4.4 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 over 45 1/3 innings. Given those most recent results, it seems fair to presume that the South Siders view the veteran southpaw as a depth option.

Pirates Select Yacksel Rios

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The Pirates have selected the contract of righty Yacksel Rios. Fellow right-hander Michael Feliz was moved to the 45-man injured list.

Rios was outrighted off of the 40-man roster in late June. The 27-year-old will now get another shot. He owns a 6.20 ERA through 65 1/3 total MLB frames over the past three seasons.

It’s obviously somewhat ominous news to see Feliz move right onto the lengthier injury list. He came down with forearm issues yesterday. Clearly, the team anticipates a rather lengthy absence for the 27-year-old.

Marlins Announce Numerous Roster Moves

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As they prepare to resume play, the Marlins have announced a flurry of additions to the active roster (as covered on Twitter by reporters including Jordan MacPherson of the Miami Herald). Just who’ll move to the COVID-19 injured list remains to be seen.

Most of these players were picked up in the last week or so as the organization’s coronavirus outbreak unfolded. The Fish will select the contracts of righties Nick Vincent and Josh A. Smith, infielders Logan Forsythe and Eddy Alvarez, and catcher Ryan Lavarnway.

Also coming up are a host of other fill-ins that had already gone onto the 40-man roster. Outfielders Matt Joyce and Lewis Brinson are coming off of the injured list. Righties Justin Shafer, James Hoyt, and Mike Morin will join lefties Josh D. Smith, Richard Bleier, and Brian Moran in the bullpen.

Most notably, perhaps, are the additions of youngsters Jordan Yamamoto, Monte Harrison, and Jorge Guzman. Yamamoto had 15 solid starts in 2019 and will be looking to lock down a job for the foreseeable future. As for Harrison, a former top-100 prospect, it’ll be his first taste of the bigs. Guzman is a live-armed young hurler who’ll get his first look.

In other news from Miami, both president Derek Jeter and manager Don Mattingly pushed back on the prevailing narrative surrounding the team’s coronavirus issues. While the leaders acknowledged that some players may have let their guard down, they rejected any rumors that players had recklessly engaged in risky activities away from the ballpark.

Jeter also rejected the notion that the Marlins’ players had made their own decision to take the field against the Phillies after several players tested positive. He says the organization simply played a scheduled game and noted that the league and opposing team had full knowledge of the testing results.

Angels To Promote Jo Adell

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The Angels will promote top prospect Jo Adell, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network (via Twitter). The club is off tonight, so he’ll have his first shot at playing in the majors tomorrow evening.

Adell entered each of the past two seasons as a consensus top-ten prospect leaguewide. Selected out of high school in the first round of the 2017 draft, he has certainly hit his ceiling as a prospect. Now we’ll see whether he can do so as a major leaguer.

Given the timing of the promotion, Adell will not be able to accrue a full season of MLB service this year. He’s now on track to reach free agency after the 2026 season. If he holds down a roster spot from this point forward, Adell will surely qualify for arbitration in advance of the 2023 season as a Super Two player.

The 21-year-old Adell has generally thrived on his way up the ladder. He didn’t impress at Triple-A last year after a late-season promotion, but he showed well in the Arizona Fall League and doesn’t really have anything left to prove. All told, Adell owns a .298/.361/.518 batting line in the minors.

Most prospect watchers expect Adell to grow into added power. He’s already driving the ball all over the field and has the wheels to take extra bases. That speed also serves Adell well in the outfield, where he also possesses a big arm.

There’s really not much not to like. Adell does have some swing and miss but not so much that it’s considered a likely hindrance. As with any prospect, there’s a wide variance of potential outcomes. But Halos fans have every reason to be excited to welcome another premium talent to the roster.

Shelby Miller Opts Out Of 2020 Season

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Righty Shelby Miller has opted out of the 2020 season, the Brewers announced. He had been working out at the team’s alternative training site.

Miller, once an exciting young MLB hurler, has fallen on hard times on the mound of late. He has thrown only 82 innings in the majors over the past three seasons due to a combination of injuries and ineffectiveness.

The Brewers had inked Miller to a minor-league pact in hopes of unlocking some of his former promise. Now, we’ll have to wait and see whether Miller elects to mount another comeback attempt next spring.

Miller joins a still-growing list of players who have opted out of the campaign.

MLB To Cancel Field Of Dreams Game

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Major League Baseball has decided to cancel the “Field of Dreams Game” it had previously scheduled for August 13. The Cardinals and White Sox were supposed to square off in the famed Iowa cornfield.

The Cardinals are currently waiting to see just how bad an internal COVID-19 outbreak turns out to be. No matter how far it has spread, a significant portion of the team will be sidelined for some time and the organization will be forced to scramble to fill out a club.

While that would seem at first glance to be a rather important factor in the decision, Rosenthal says that wasn’t the driving force. Rather, it’s “a logistical problem,” per the report. It’s not entirely clear why those considerations are only now counseling in favor of cancellation, but it was undoubtedly a tricky undertaking even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Cardinals Will Not Travel For Scheduled Series In Detroit

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2:57pm: Indeed there are 13 total positives, including seven players, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets.

2:34pm: The Cards will not go to Detroit as scheduled, Mark Saxon of The Athletic tweets. It seems now they’ll ultimately scratch at least seven contests, he adds.

It also sounds as if the number of players on the roster with infections is still on the rise. Saxon tweets that at least eight members of the organization have tested positive, six of them players. And another source indicates that the number may actually be 13 total positives.

2:21pm: The Cardinals have yet to announce the results of Sunday’s round of Covid-19 testing, but Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets that the Tigers have already been informed that tomorrow’s scheduled game against the Cards in Detroit is “highly unlikely” to be played. Tonight’s game had already been postponed, and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that the entire Detroit/St. Louis series is in jeopardy. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes that the Cardinals remain in Milwaukee, awaiting test results, despite the fact that they’d been previously scheduled to travel today.

Last Friday, a pair of Cardinals players tested positive for Covid-19, prompting the team’s scheduled game in Milwaukee to be postponed. The hope had been that a doubleheader could be played Sunday, but an additional Cardinals player and three staff members reportedly tested positive Saturday. Yesterday brought more positive results, although Goold notes in the aforementioned column that the club had some “inconclusive” test results. The precise numbers aren’t quite clear at present, but it seems at this point that the Cards’ slate of cases is smaller than the Marlins’ outbreak. That, of course, could continue to change as additional tests are performed. The Marlins had seven known cases on Sunday, July 26, but that had ballooned to 20 (18 players, two staffers) just four days later.

The origin of the Cardinals’ outbreak may well have been from players breaking health-and-safety protocols. Former big leaguer Jerry Hairston Jr. tweeted over the weekend that multiple Cardinals players visited a casino recently, and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets today that he’s heard the same: “at least a couple” Cardinals players did head to a casino in their downtime. MLB has since further tightened its protocols on leaving the team hotel, he adds, but it’s nonetheless a discouraging reminder that the league’s safety protocols still aren’t being (and perhaps never will be) adhered to in universal fashion. That said, it’s also curious to see Heyman indicate that protocols had previously “strongly discouraged” leaving the team hotel but now prohibit that practice. Making a change at this stage feels reactive rather than proactive — and it’d be perfectly fair to question why it took a second outbreak for that change to come about.

As we saw with the Marlins’ outbreak, the tentacles on this type of team-wide infection can be far-reaching. The Phillies, Yankees, Orioles, Blue Jays and Nationals all had their schedules upended to varying degrees in the days following the Marlins’ season being “paused.” The Brewers have already been impacted in this instance, and it seems quite likely that the Tigers will encounter a similar fate. The Cardinals are scheduled to host the Cubs this weekend, and depending on the forthcoming test results, it’s possible that series could be impacted as well.

White Sox Activate Nomar Mazara

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The White Sox announced Monday that they’ve activated right fielder Nomar Mazara for his season debut. In a pair of corresponding moves, catcher Yermin Mercedes was optioned to their alternate training site and right-hander Jimmy Lambert was placed on the 45-day injured list.

Mazara has yet to live up to the top prospect hype that surrounded his MLB debut with the Rangers, but he’s been a steady 20-homer producer with slightly above-average offense against right-handed pitching (career 103 wRC+). And while he’a already a four-year MLB veteran by virtue of his early call to the bigs in Arlington, his youth leaves the hope for some yet untapped upside at the dish.

As MLBTR’s George Miller explored a few months back, Mazara is quite impactful when hitting to the opposite field, by virtue of the fact that he elevates the ball with much greater regularity than when pulling the ball. Mazara’s number of pulled grounders are alarming and indeed have limited his output to this point in his career. However, he generally ranks above the league average in terms of average exit velocity, barrel rate, expected slugging percentage and a number of other Statcast metrics that portend some remaining upside. Mazara will likely be platooned with righty-hitting Adam Engel early in the season, per Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times, but there’s obvious potential for Mazara to work his way into a larger role.

Even if Mazara simply maintains the status quo, though, that’s not an entirely bad thing for the Sox. Granted, plugging in a slightly above-average bat to the lineup doesn’t sound like a huge boost, but in nine games this season, White Sox right fielders have turned in a putrid .167/.211/.333 slash. Mazara’s lifetime .271/.337/.462 line against right-handed opponents looks all the better when juxtaposed with that to-date production (or lack thereof) from Chicago right fielders. Engel’s career .253/.299/.390 slash against lefties isn’t great — though it is better than Mazara’s career levels — but that platoon arrangement should lead to some improvement for what has already been a strong White Sox lineup.

The White Sox acquired Mazara in December trade that sent minor league outfielder Steele Walker to the Rangers. Mazara is playing out the 2020 season on a one-year, $5.56MM contract (prorated to about $1.97MM) and is controllable through the 2021 season via the arbitration process.

Phillies To Resume Season Tonight

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The Phillies announced this morning that their latest wave of testing again revealed no new positive Covid-19 tests. The team is traveling to New York to play the Yankees in the Bronx tonight, per the announcement. Jake Arrieta is lined up to face Gerrit Cole in tonight’s series opener, and Aaron Nola is starting tomorrow night’s game, per the team.

It’ll be the first game for the Phillies since last Sunday’s game against the Marlins. The Miami organization housed Major League Baseball’s first team outbreak, prompting the Phillies’ season to be paused as the league conducted additional testing and contact tracing. The Phillies did wind up with positive tests among the team’s coaching and clubhouse staff, which might have served to further delay their return to the field, but their players have consistently tested negative. They’ll get back to game action tonight in New York but are well behind schedule, with just three games in the books to date.

In a season that would’ve only included six scheduled off-days, the loss of a full week right out of the gate is particularly tough for the Phillies. They’ll seek to make up for lost time with doubleheaders and some added games on what would’ve otherwise been days off. As it stands, they’re set for a four-game, home-and-home series against the Yankees this week before hosting the Braves at Citizens Bank Park next weekend.

Padres Add Three To Player Pool

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The Padres announced that they’ve added left-hander Travis Radke and infielders Seth Mejias-Brean and Jason Vosler to their 60-man player pool. All three will head to the club’s alternate training site. The additions bring San Diego’s pool up to a total of 57 players.

Radke, 27, pitched well across three minor league levels in 2019, working to a combined 2.64 ERA with 9.5 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 in 71 2/3 innings of relief work. He allowed only two home runs in that time and posted a ground-ball rate north of 60 percent as well. A 25th-round pick back in 2014, Radke underwent Tommy John surgery that cost him the entire 2016 season and much of the 2017 season. Radke has never been considered a high-end prospect within the organization, but he carries a cumulative 2.22 ERA since returning from surgery and also threw well in a 2018 Fall League stint.

Mejias-Brean made his MLB debut with the Friars last season and clubbed a pair of home runs in a brief look that included 33 plate appearances. The 29-year-old can play all over the infield and is a career .269/.334/.382 hitter in just shy of 1500 plate appearances at the Triple-A level.

San Diego acquired Vosler, now 26, in the 2018 trade that sent right-hander Rowan Wick to the Cubs. He split his time evenly between first base and third base with the Padres’ Triple-A club last year, posting a quality .291/.367/.523 slash with 20 long balls, 19 doubles and four triples in 425 trips to the plate. Between the right-handed-hitting Mejias-Brean and the lefty-swinging Vosler, the Padres look to have added some largely MLB-ready infield depth that can cover multiple positions and platoon scenarios.

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