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Angels Re-Sign J.D. Davis To Minor League Deal

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Infielder J.D. Davis is returning to the Angels, per Jon Heyman of The New York Post. It’s a minor league deal, per Sam Blum of The Athletic. He had been designated for assignment by the Halos earlier this week. According to his transactions tracker at MLB.com, he was outrighted to Triple-A but elected free agency. Now it seems he has circled back to the Angels on a fresh pact.

Davis, 32, signed a minor league deal with the Angels in the winter. He hit .297/.357/.486 in ten Triple-A games before getting called up to the big leagues when Yoán Moncada landed on the injured list. The team didn’t use Davis much, sending him to the plate just nine times in almost three weeks on the roster before he was designated for assignment.

The upside with Davis is that he’s capable of providing strong offense. From 2019 to 2023, he hit 63 home runs in 1,804 plate appearances. His 27.4% strikeout rate was high but he walked at a strong 10.2% pace. The overall result was a combined .268/.352/.443 batting line for those years, production which led to a 119 wRC+. He did so while moving between third base, first base and left field, though he was only really close to an average fielder at first.

The past year-plus has been a bit challenging, however. He and the Giants went to an arbitration hearing in the 2023-24 offseason. Davis filed at $6.9MM and the team at $6.5MM, with the arbiter eventually choosing the player’s side. Arbitration salaries determined by a hearing are not fully guaranteed, so the Giants put Davis on waivers and released him after signing Matt Chapman to take over at third base. Davis collected about $1.11MM in termination pay and went to the open market.

He landed a new deal with the Athletics, one that guaranteed him $2.5MM, making up some of the money he lost from the shenanigans with the Giants. However, his tenure in Oakland was interrupted by a right adductor strain. He was later flipped to the Yankees but hit the IL with that club as well, due to an illness. He was eventually cut loose by the Yanks and finished the year on a minor league deal with the Orioles.

He didn’t hit especially well last year around those IL stints, producing a combined .218/.293/.338 line and 86 wRC+. He’s not a strong defender at third and isn’t a threat on the bases, so he doesn’t have much value when he’s not hitting. That’s surely why he had to settle for a minor league deal with the Halos heading into this year. Dating back to the start of 2024, Davis has a .212/.283/.325 line, which isn’t great. However, that’s a fairly small sample of 166 plate appearances while bouncing around to different clubs and battling injuries.

The Angels don’t have much certainty at the infield corners. They have Nolan Schanuel and Luis Rengifo taking the regular playing time at first and third respectively, but neither is having a great season. Rengifo is also capable of playing other positions. Tim Anderson and Kevin Newman are on the roster as bench infielders but Newman is mostly a middle infield guy while Anderson has only ever played up the middle. Newman has also never been a great hitter while Anderson is a few years removed from being productive at the plate. First baseman Niko Kavadas has just 30 games of major league experience.

Davis will head to Salt Lake and try to get into a groove for the first time in a while. As he does that, he’ll provide the Halos with a bit of extra depth at the infield corners and try to earn his way back to the big leagues.

Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images

Braves Re-Sign Jesse Chavez, Zach Thompson

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The Braves re-signed righties Jesse Chavez and Zach Thompson to new minor league contracts, per their transaction log at MLB.com. Both players were recently designated for assignment and passed through outright waivers unclaimed. Both elected free agency, and both had short stays on the market.

It seems that with regard to Chavez in particular, this cycle will play out in perpetuity. He can’t simply be optioned to the minors, but he’s clearly content to continue functioning as what’s effectively the 41st man on Atlanta’s 40-man roster. The team will likely continue to summon Chavez to the majors when a fresh arm is needed, then run him through the DFA/waiver process and re-sign him.

The 41-year-old Chavez has now pitched with Atlanta in each of the past five seasons. He’s departed on minor league deals with several other clubs but always found his way back to Truist Park. Chavez has pitched three big league innings this year, allowing a pair of runs on four hits and three walks with three strikeouts. He’s been outstanding in 8 1/3 Triple-A innings (one run, five hits, one walk, 13 strikeouts) and has a terrific 2.96 ERA in 204 MLB innings over the past five years, nearly all of which have come with Atlanta.

Thompson, 31, pitched 3 2/3 scoreless innings with Atlanta this season but was roughed up a bit in 4 1/3 minor league innings. The right-hander had a nice showing as a rookie with the Marlins in 2021 but struggled following a trade to the Pirates in the 2021-22 offseason. He’s totaled 200 1/3 innings at the MLB level and carries a 4.36 ERA, 18.3% strikeout rate and 8.6% walk rate. Thompson sits in the low 90s with his heater and doesn’t miss many bats, but he’s a nice spot start option to have stashed in Gwinnett — particularly with both Reynaldo Lopez and Spencer Strider on the injured list at the moment.

Rockies Place Ryan Feltner On Injured List

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The Rockies placed Ryan Feltner on the 15-day injured list with back spasms. The placement is retroactive to April 29. Righty Bradley Blalock is up from Triple-A Albuquerque in a corresponding move.

Feltner has been the best pitcher in a floundering Colorado rotation. He owns a 4.75 earned run average through 30 1/3 innings over six starts. His 18.5% strikeout rate is middling, but he’s getting grounders at a 48.5% clip while showing solid control. Feltner posted similar numbers in 30 starts a year ago. He pitched to a 4.49 ERA with a near-20% strikeout rate in a career-high 162 1/3 frames. It may not be the most exciting profile, but the former fourth-round pick has been a rare source of stability at the back of Bud Black’s rotation.

Colorado did not provide a timeline for Feltner’s return. According to the MLB.com injury tracker, he felt continued soreness in his lower back during a game of catch on Thursday. He also missed a bit of time in the second half of last season, but he made it back within a few weeks of going down with a shoulder strain.

If he’s in for a similarly brief absence, Feltner could find his name in trade rumors this summer. Colorado has been reluctant to entertain offers on players with contractual control — and sometimes on rentals even in losing seasons — but they’ll again enter deadline season as a seller. Feltner is playing on a $2.275MM salary in his first of four years of arbitration. The Rox’s track record suggests a trade is unlikely, but GM Bill Schmidt should receive calls from teams seeking affordable back-of-the-rotation help if Feltner is healthy.

Blalock could step into Feltner’s rotation spot, which is scheduled for tomorrow’s game against the Giants. Blalock started six of seven big league appearances last year as a rookie. He has come out of the bullpen for two of three MLB outings this season, allowing eight runs in seven innings. Blalock has started all three appearances with Albuquerque, giving up six runs while managing only 8 1/3 frames with 10 walks and seven strikeouts. Colorado’s other four starters — Kyle Freeland, Germán Márquez, Antonio Senzatela and Chase Dollander — have each posted an ERA of 5.22 or worse this season.

Casey Lawrence Elects Free Agency

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Right-hander Casey Lawrence has cleared waivers and elected free agency, per Mitch Bannon of The Athletic. The righty was designated for assignment by the Blue Jays earlier this week. He has the right to elect free agency as a player with a previous career outright.

Lawrence, 37, was claimed off waivers from the Mariners at the start of the week. The Jays were facing a bit of a pitching crunch at the time. They had optioned left-hander Easton Lucas to drop down to a four-man rotation. Then a rainout in the Bronx led to a doubleheader and the staff getting a condensed workload on the weekend.

The Jays then got bombed by the Red Sox on Tuesday, with starter Bowden Francis getting pulled after allowing seven earned runs in three innings. After Dillon Tate and Mason Fluharty combined to cover 3 1/3 frames, Lawrence took the final 2 2/3. He allowed three earned runs on six hits while recording one strikeout. Left-hander Eric Lauer was then called up to give the Jays another guy capable of covering multiple innings, with Lawrence bumped off as the corresponding move.

There is clearly some appeal in Lawrence’s services, in this exact type of role. The Mariners have added him to their roster three times this year. In each case, he made an appearance or two before getting quickly designated for assignment. He is out of options and can’t be sent to the minors without being removed from the 40-man roster entirely. He has the right to reject outright assignments, as mentioned.

The first two times Seattle bumped him off the roster, he elected free agency and returned on a fresh deal. The third time, he was claimed by the Jays, who utilized him in the same way. Now perhaps he will sign another fresh pact with one of those two clubs. Both clearly value his ability to mop up garbage innings as part of regular roster churn.

He has a 4.97 earned run average through 12 2/3 innings this year and a 6.59 ERA in 136 2/3 career innings. He recently spoke about his situation in self-aware terms, realizing that he may not have much time left in the majors, so he’s trying to appreciate the present before thinking about the next stage of his career. With several clubs dealing with pitching injuries around the league, he should be able to latch on somewhere else soon.

Photo courtesy of Steven Bisig, Imagn Images

Red Sox Place Walker Buehler On Injured List

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5:40pm: The Red Sox have now made it official. Buehler goes on the IL with right shoulder bursitis, while Dobbins has been recalled.

4:35pm: The Red Sox are placing right-hander Walker Buehler on the 15-day injured list due to inflammation in his right shoulder, manager Alex Cora announced (link via MLB.com’s Ian Browne). The club is hopeful that it’ll only be a minimum stint for the right-hander, who’d been slated to start tomorrow. MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo reported earlier in the day that righty Hunter Dobbins is expected to get tomorrow’s start. He made his big league debut last month and has looked sharp through two MLB starts.

Buehler signed a one-year, $21.05MM deal with the Red Sox in the offseason, matching the value of the qualifying offer which the Dodgers neglected to put forth when he reached the open market. It was a relatively sizable bet on a pitcher who looked lost for much of the 2024 season — his first full year back from Tommy John surgery — before some short but memorable postseason heroics for Los Angeles.

So far, Buehler’s tenure with the Red Sox has produced pedestrian results. He’s sitting on a 4.28 ERA with better strikeout and walk rates than he had in 2024 but also a career-low 93.5 mph average fastball. And while his 20.7% strikeout rate and 6.4% walk rate are indeed improvements on last year’s marks (18.6 K%, 8.1 BB%), that strikeout rate is a far cry from his peak 29.2% when he was pitching like a bona fide ace and Cy Young contender.

Buehler heads to the injured list just days after Boston finally got right-hander Lucas Giolito healthy and into a regular season game. Giolito required UCL surgery last spring and missed all of the 2024 season and the first month of 2025 as a result. The Sox have also been without Kutter Crawford (knee) all year and have only received two starts from Brayan Bello.

Even with all the injuries, Red Sox starters rank 14th in the majors with a solid 3.91 ERA. Ideally, Buehler will rejoin the starting staff in a couple weeks, but if he requires a bit of a lengthier stay, Dobbins has looked up to the task of filling in. The 2021 eighth-rounder pitched 125 2/3 innings of 2.61 ERA ball between Double-A and Triple-A last year. In 11 major league frames this season, he’s held opponents to three earned runs (2.45 ERA) on 11 hits and a pair of walks with 11 strikeouts. In Dobbins’ most recent Triple-A start, he held the Mets’ top affiliate to a run four hits and two walks with three punchouts across six innings.

Poll: Anthony Santander’s Slow Start

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After missing out on the top available free agent for the second consecutive offseason when they fell short in the Juan Soto sweepstakes, the Blue Jays remained in the hunt to find a slugger who could complement Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a hopefully resurgent Bo Bichette. Toronto had already brought Andres Gimenez into the fold as a glove-first regular, but his defensive-minded profile was never expected to be a huge boost to the lineup. After being connected to slugger Pete Alonso, third baseman Alex Bregman, and even a possible reunion with Teoscar Hernandez, the Blue Jays finally landed Anthony Santander on a five-year, $92.5MM contract that comes with enough deferred money to lower the net present value of the deal to around $70MM.

The switch-hitting Santander swatted 44 home runs for Baltimore last year while hitting .235/.308/.506 with a 129 wRC+. That power-driven profile had proven to be fairly consistent for the slugger in recent years despite his generally low on-base numbers; Santander slashed .244/.317/.478 with a wRC+ of 124 since the start of the 2022 season. That was a long enough track record to give the Jays reasonable confidence in his ability to perform as a middle-of-the-order bat for them entering his age-30 season.

It’s a bet that hasn’t paid off so far. In Santander’s first 132 trips to the plate as a Blue Jay, he’s hit just .178/.258/.314 with a wRC+ of just 65. That’s 35% worse than league average and, in conjunction with his lackluster defense, has left him tied for the eighth-lowest fWAR total among qualified major leaguers. His overall production has been similar to that of another low on-base, defensively limited corner bat in Jake Burger, whom the Rangers just optioned to Triple-A last night due to his own struggles.

A look under the hood does suggest that Santander shouldn’t be expected to be quite this bad. While his strikeout rate has jumped four percentage points from last year, that 23.5% figure is not very different than the 23.2% he posted in 2023, when he turned in a perfectly respectable 119 wRC+. What’s more, Santander is actually walking more than ever this year. He’s garnered free passes at a solid 9.8% clip, more than two percentage points higher than his career norm. While his swinging-strike rate and contact rate are both down relative to last year, both numbers are more or less in line with his 2023 season. Between a strikeout rate within his ordinary range and the highest walk rate of his career, that .258 on-base mark seems likely to improve alongside his BABIP, which sits at an extremely low .202.

Where there is a more significant negative change in Santander’s numbers is the power department. A look at Santander’s batted-ball metrics reveals some troubling signs. His 5.7% barrel rate so far this year is his lowest since 2018, and his 39.8% hard-hit rate is also the lowest he’s posted since the shortened 2020 season. His exit velocities appear to still be more or less in line with where they have been in recent years, but Santander’s launch angle is down several points. That’s resulted in a ten-point drop in Santander’s fly ball rate and a seven-point jump in his ground-ball rate. Hitting the ball into the dirt is hardly a recipe for success for a power hitter like Santander, whose sprint speed is in the 23rd percentile of big league position players, per Statcast.

Even if Santander will need to make some changes in order to get back to being that consistent 30-to-40 homer threat he was over the past two years, the deflated BABIP and strong walk rate do suggest that he should see at least some improvements, leaving him with an xwOBA 35 points higher than his actual wOBA. Even that .293 expected figure would be Santander’s worst in a full season of plate appearances, however. It’s a troubling trend and one that the Blue Jays and Santander will need to work to correct in the coming weeks in order to get his season back on track.

How do MLBTR readers think the rest of Santander’s first season as a Blue Jay will shake out? Will he manage to get things back on track well enough to post numbers similar to the expectations he’s created in recent years, or will he fall short? Have your say in the poll below:

How will Anthony Santander finish the 2025 season?
He'll bounce back enough to be an above-average hitter this year, but not return to the sort of impact he offered the Orioles in recent years. 52.71% (1,371 votes)
His power outage will continue, and he'll be an average to below average hitter come the end of the season. 28.10% (731 votes)
He'll bounce back to his 2022-24 level and post a wRC+ of 120 or better. 19.18% (499 votes)
Total Votes: 2,601

Angels Place Mike Trout On 10-Day Injured List

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May 2: The Angels formally announced that Trout has been placed on the 10-day IL, retroactive to May 1. First baseman Niko Kavadas has been recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake in a corresponding move.

May 1: The Angels are placing veteran star Mike Trout on the injured list, Ron Washington told reporters (including Sam Blum of The Athletic) after tonight’s game against the Tigers. Trout is dealing with a bone bruise on his left knee, though Washington emphasized that the injury is not considered “too serious” and that there’s been no structural damage to the 33-year-old’s knee. As noted by ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez, Trout suffered multiple meniscus tears in different parts of his left knee last year that required two separate surgical procedures. That’s the knee which he’s currently suffering from a bone bruise on.

While the fact that Trout’s ailment isn’t considered serious by Angels brass is at least somewhat encouraging, it’s hard to expect fans to take much solace in that given Trout’s lengthy injury history. Trout played just 29 games last year due to those aforementioned meniscus surgeries, and missed all but 36 games of the 2021 season due to a calf strain. He played in just 82 games in 2023 due to a hamate fracture, and the closest thing to a healthy season Trout has put together in this decade was his 2022 campaign where he played 119 games. Even that year, however, he was still sidelined for significant time due to back issues.

It’s a run of various injuries that now spans half a decade, and that lack of time on the field has knocked Trout off his pedestal as the game’s consensus top talent after holding that position virtually unchallenged for a decade. The 11-time All-Star and 3-time AL MVP’s numbers speak for themselves, as he’s a career .297/.408/.579 hitter with 387 homers, 214 stolen bases, 85.8 bWAR and 85.7 fWAR over the course of his 15-year major league career. This year, the Angels made the decision to move Trout off of his native center field and into right field in order to hopefully help him stay fresher and avoid injuries. Despite that change, Trout’s first trip to the injured list of the year comes with just 29 games under his belt, the exact same number he finished the 2024 season with.

In previous years, Trout has maintained superstar-level production even in seasons abbreviated by injury. While he was on the field for just 266 of Anaheim’s 648 games from 2021 to 2024, he did slash an incredible .276/.376/.575 (160 wRC+) and accumulate 12 fWAR across those 266 games. That’s not been the case this year, however. In 121 trips to the plate, Trout has actually been slightly below league average with a 96 wRC+. While he’s clobbered nine homers and walked at a healthy (if diminished) 9.9% clip, Trout’s elevated 29.8% strikeout rate and shockingly low .159 BABIP have left him hitting just .187 with a .264 on-base percentage. If he were to play a full season, Trout surely wouldn’t maintain that unbelievably low BABIP and would enjoy enough positive regression to be an above-average overall hitter, but the elevated strikeouts and decreased walks are a legitimate cause for concern about his ability to remain a superstar even if he were to stay on the field for a full campaign.

Of course, all of that will remain largely speculative until Trout gets back on the field for a significant period of time. While the club terming the issue a bone bruise seems to suggest that he’ll be able to come back relatively quickly, it’s a diagnosis that comes with a lot of variability in terms of timetable. On the more optimistic side of things, Cody Bellinger missed about a month when he suffered a bone bruise with the Cubs back in 2023. More concerning are the cases of Anthony Rendon in 2023 and Kyle Tucker last season.

Rendon fouled a ball off his left leg on July 4 two years ago and missed the remainder of the season with what the Angels termed a bone bruise despite the fact that Rendon himself told reporters he had actually been diagnosed with a fractured tibia. A similar situation played out elsewhere in the AL West between Tucker and the Astros last year, where Tucker missed just over three months due to what Houston initially termed a bone bruise but was later revealed to be a small shin fracture. It should be noted that smaller fractures like the ones Rendon and Tucker faced are no different from bone bruises in terms of the treatment prescribed, making the distinction immaterial in some ways.

Even so, that some players can come back from bone bruises after just a month while others could miss half a season or more due to a similar issue highlights the uncertainty that now faces Trout and the Angels. While it seems unrealistic to expect a firm timetable for Trout’s return given both that uncertainty and the veteran’s lengthy injury history, it’s fair to expect a significant absence at this point. Ryan Noda, Scott Kingery, and prospect Matthew Lugo are among the possible options who could be called upon to join Jo Adell and Taylor Ward in the Angels’ outfield mix while Trout is on the shelf, and switch-hitter Gustavo Campero could see more playing time after serving as the club’s fourth outfielder prior to Trout’s injury.

Royals Select Luke Maile

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The Royals announced that they have selected the contract of catcher Luke Maile. Infielder Tyler Tolbert was optioned to Triple-A Omaha to open an active roster spot. To get Maile onto the 40-man, right-hander Alec Marsh was transferred to the 60-day injured list.

The Royals already have Salvador Perez and Freddy Fermin on the roster, so this move gives them three catchers. However, Perez was removed from last night’s game due to left hip soreness, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com. Perez hasn’t been placed on the injured list but he’s not in the lineup today.

Perhaps he’ll be unavailable for a few days, which would explain why Maile is now up with the club. The 34-year-old veteran signed a minor league deal with the Royals in the offseason. He opted out when he didn’t make the Opening Day roster but returned on a fresh deal shortly thereafter.

He is out to a strong start in Triple-A, hitting .286/.434/.381, though a .379 batting average on balls in play is helping him out somewhat in a small sample. For his big league career, he’s generally been a glove-first guy. He has a .208/.274/.319 batting line in 1,250 plate appearances but comes with a strong reputation for his throwing, blocking and work with a pitching staff. He should back up Fermin while Perez gets a breather.

As for Marsh, it’s not surprising to see him hit the 60-day IL. He has been battling shoulder soreness since the offseason and has spent the entire season on the 15-day IL so far. As of about a week ago, he was slated to restart his throwing program after a setback. The 60-day clock is retroactive to the start of the season, so he is eligible for reinstatement later this month. But given his current status, he’ll need far longer than that to get in game shape.

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images

Rangers Option Jake Burger

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May 2: The moves have now been officially announced by the Rangers. As reported, Crim has been selected and Ornelas recalled, with Ahmed designated for assignment and Burger optioned.

May 1: The Rangers are demoting Jake Burger to Triple-A, according to a report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. First baseman Blaine Crim will be promoted to the majors in his place, according to Rosenthal. Burger has one minor league option remaining, so the Rangers will not need to pass him through waivers in order to send him to Triple-A. Crim is not yet on the 40-man roster and will need to have his contract selected. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reports that the swap from Burger to Crim will be paired with the club designating shortstop Nick Ahmed for assignment to open up a 40-man roster spot for Crim. That will create a new vacancy on the roster’s bench, which Grant suggests could go to utility infielder Jonathan Ornelas.

According to Rosenthal, Burger’s demotion to the minor leagues could be a fairly short one. He reports that the Rangers’ plan is to allow Burger an opportunity to “reset” in the minor leagues before bringing him back up to the majors in the near future. At the very least, the 29-year-old will report to Round Rock for the next ten days before he can be considered for a return to the majors. That’s the minimum stay for a player optioned to the minor leagues before they can be promoted back to MLB.

Even a short stay in the minors demonstrates how difficult Burger’s start to his Rangers career has been. Acquired from the Marlins back in December in exchange for infield prospects Maximo Acosta and Echedry Vargas as well as pitching prospect Brayan Mendoza, Burger was brought in to replace Nathaniel Lowe at first base on the heels of a year-and-a-half stint with the Marlins where he slashed .265/.315/.472 with a 112 wRC+ across 190 games. Last year’s production was less impressive, however, as he posted a 106 wRC+ overall. While he slugged 29 homers in 137 games, he struck out in 25.9% of his plate appearances and got on base at a lackluster .301 clip. Still, it was an above-average profile overall and the power intrigued the Rangers enough to invest in the slugger, who will remain under team control for three more seasons after this one.

Burger is only 29 games into his career with the Rangers, but the early returns on that investment have not exactly impressed. In 105 plate appearances this year, Burger has hit just .186/.229/.330 with a well below-average wRC+ of just 55. He’s struck out at a worrisome 30.5% clip, walked in just 2.9% of his plate appearances, and has so far failed to generate the trademark power that has become his carrying tool over the years. That all came together to leave Burger with the fifth-worst season among qualified first basemen this year by wRC+ and the sixth-worst by fWAR. Perhaps a more successful team would be more willing to display patience with a newly-acquired player, but the Rangers are currently 16-16 and have fallen to fourth place in the AL West behind the Mariners, Astros, and Athletics.

Those woes can largely be attributed to a lackluster offense. There have been some major bright spots; Wyatt Langford is looking like a potential superstar, Jonah Heim, Josh Jung, and Josh Smith have all been impressive, and Corey Seager looks like his typical star-level self when healthy. Unfortunately, Seager is currently on the injured list and other key pieces of the offense expected to help carry the load in his absence like Marcus Semien, Joc Pederson, and Burger have been disappointing in the early going. Given the veteran statuses of Semien and Pederson, Burger was the only one of that struggling trio who could be optioned to the minors and therefore by far the easiest to remove from the lineup for a temporary reset.

That makes Burger’s demotion in some ways about circumstances as much as it’s about performance. After all, while Burger’s plate discipline numbers early in the season have been worrying as he’s made worse swing decisions while whiffing inside the strike zone more often as compared to last year, underlying metrics actually paint quite a rosy picture about his expected power production. The slugger’s 13.4% barrel rate is higher than last year, and the same can be said for a 49.3% hard-hit rate that actually matches his breakout 2023 season with the Marlins and White Sox. Combine Burger’s expected slugging percentage of .411 (more than 80 points higher than his actual production) and his artificially low .234 BABIP, and it’s easy to see how Burger could turn things around in relatively short order.

He’ll need to fight his way back up to the majors in order to do that, however. In the meantime, the Rangers will turn to well-regarded prospect Blaine Crim to handle first base. Crim is nearly 28 years old, making him older for a prospect, and he was drafted by the Rangers all the way back in 2019 during the 19th round of that year’s draft. Despite that age and lack of pedigree, Crim is now in his third consecutive season with impressive results at the Triple-A level, where he has a career .286/.373/.486 slash line across 308 games. Crim’s been even more impressive so far this year, with a .313/.365/.565 slash line across 126 plate appearances. If he can come up to the majors and prove he can hit at the highest level, it would hardly be a surprise to see Crim remain in the mix even after Burger returns to action. After all, Pederson typically sits against left-handed pitching, and a right-handed bat like Crim could offer the Rangers a solid platoon partner for their struggling slugger going forward.

As for Ahmed, the 35-year-old is now in his 12th season in the majors and has appeared in just four games for the Rangers this year. He’s yet to record a hit in eight trips to the plate this year but does have a walk and a run scored to go with three strikeouts. Assuming he does get designated for assignment to make room for Crim, the Rangers will have one week to either attempt to pass Ahmed through waivers or work out a trade sending him elsewhere. Should Ahmed clear waivers, he would then have the opportunity to either accept an outright assignment to the minor leagues or elect free agency instead.

Yankees Place Jazz Chisholm Jr. On Injured List

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3:05pm: Boone says Chisholm’s strain is of the high-grade variety and he might miss four to six weeks, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

8:51am: The Yankees announced this morning that infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. is headed to the 10-day injured list due to a right oblique strain. The move is retroactive to April 30. Fellow infielder Jorbit Vivas has been recalled from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take Chisholm’s spot on the active roster.

Chisholm exited Tuesday’s game with discomfort in his side and sat out Wednesday’s contest. Manager Aaron Boone revealed earlier this week that Chisholm would undergo an MRI on Thursday’s off-day. That imaging clearly revealed enough for the Yankees to sit Chisholm down for the next week-plus. The team hasn’t formally provided a timetable for Chisholm’s return yet, though even Grade 1 oblique strains can sideline players for upwards of a month. There are instances of players making it back from very mild strains sooner than that, of course. Boone will surely provide more information on Chisholm’s injury outlook prior to tonight’s game.

The 27-year-old Chisholm has hit for plenty of power this season but has been far more strikeout-prone than he was in 2024. He’s slashing .181/.304/.410 with seven homers, three doubles, six steals (in seven attempts) and a career-best 12% walk rate. He’s also fanned in what would be a career-high 31.2% of his plate appearances and been dinged by a .200 average on balls in play — hence the low batting average.

Even with the basement-level batting average, Chisholm’s approach at the plate doesn’t look as alarming as one might expect. He’s actually chasing pitches out of the strike zone at the lowest clip of his career. His 21.1% chase rate sits nearly seven percentage points lower than league-average. In general, Chisholm is seeing more pitches than ever before. He’s swinging at a career-low 41.1% of the pitches he sees, and his 4.27 pitches per plate appearance is both a career-high mark and the 24th-highest among 168 qualified hitters.

The driving factor behind his strikeouts is easier to explain than to fix: Chisholm’s contact rate on pitches within the zone has cratered from 80.7% last year to 72.5% this season. (League average is just over 85%.) Chisholm’s strikeout rate had actually begun to come down in recent weeks; he’s fanned in one-quarter of his plate appearances over his past 80 trips to the plate — right in line with his 2024 levels — so perhaps the spike in punchouts can be chalked up to some early-season white noise. Time will tell.

In the meantime, Vivas will get his third recall to the majors and hope to finally be plugged into to the lineup this time. He’s been summoned to MLB two times in the past, but Boone has yet to write the 24-year-old’s name on the lineup card or even send him into a game as a pinch-hitter, pinch-runner or defensive replacement.

Vivas is doing his best to force the issue in Triple-A. He’s had a superb start to his 2025 season, batting .319/.426/.436 (139 wRC+) with a pair of home runs, five doubles, six steals (in 10 attempts) and more walks (12.9%) than strikeouts (6.9%). The lefty-swinging Vivas, acquired from the Dodgers in the 2023-24 offseason, can play both second and third base.

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