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Reds Approached Matt McLain About Extension Before Opening Day

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The Reds floated a preliminary extension framework to Matt McLain before Opening Day, reports Gordon Wittenmyer of The Cincinnati Enquirer.  Talks didn’t get far, as the 25-year-old infielder told Wittenmyer that the numbers “just didn’t line up” with what his camp was seeking.

McLain missed all of last season recovering from shoulder surgery. The former first-round pick tore the labrum and damaged cartilage in his left (non-throwing) shoulder during Spring Training 2024. He was targeting an August return but suffered a stress reaction in his ribcage a week before he would have begun a minor league rehab stint. Cincinnati decided it wasn’t worth pushing him to get back in September, as it had become clear they weren’t going to make the playoffs.

It was an unfortunate follow-up after McLain’s strong rookie season. The righty-hitting infielder finished fifth in NL Rookie of the Year balloting back in 2023. He hit .290/.357/.507 with 16 homers and 14 steals across 403 plate appearances. He’s a potential All-Star second baseman if healthy. Last year’s injury could have made it difficult to align on an extension, though. It adds some risk to the long-term profile, but McLain presumably would not want to feel like he’s negotiating at a low point in his value. He told Wittenmyer there are no conversations ongoing while pointing out that he didn’t play last season.

There’s plenty of time for the teams to reengage down the line. McLain has yet to reach two years of service time. He should qualify for early arbitration as a Super Two player next offseason. He’ll go through the arbitration process four times and is not slated to hit free agency until the 2029-30 offseason. McLain is on track to get to free agency in advance of his age-30 season. He has connected on three homers in the early going this season, though he has also punched out in 11 of his 30 trips to the plate.

The Reds did get one extension done this spring, retaining backup catcher Jose Trevino on a two-year deal with $11MM in new money. General manager Brad Meador tells Wittenmyer the team has had “very preliminary and early” extension conversations with a number of players. It doesn’t seem anything has gotten close. Extensions are most common during Spring Training, but a lot of those discussions have carried beyond Opening Day around the league. Brandon Pfaadt, Garrett Crochet, Jackson Merrill, Kristian Campbell and Ketel Marte have all signed extensions within the past eight days.

Rangers Place Jack Leiter On Injured List, Recall Patrick Corbin

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The Rangers placed Jack Leiter on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 3, because of a blister on the middle finger on his throwing hand. Texas recalled veteran southpaw Patrick Corbin from Triple-A Round Rock in a corresponding move.

Leiter landed a season-opening rotation spot, at least in part because of Spring Training injuries to Jon Gray and Cody Bradford. His first two starts have been excellent. Leiter has reeled off 10 innings of one-run ball with 10 strikeouts. He has allowed only six hits and one walk. The former #2 overall pick has gotten whiffs on 14.5% of his pitches while averaging almost 98 MPH on his fastball. He had cruised through five scoreless innings with six punchouts against Cincinnati on Wednesday before the blister forced him out of the game.

While it’s unlikely to be a long-term absence, Leiter’s early-season run will be paused for at least two weeks. Texas has off days on April 10 and 14, so they may only need to deploy a fifth starter once before Leiter’s return. Tyler Mahle, Jacob deGrom and Kumar Rocker will take the ball for this weekend’s series against Tampa Bay. Corbin and Nathan Eovaldi will get the first two games of next week’s series at Wrigley Field in some order.

It’ll be the team debut for the 35-year-old Corbin. The veteran southpaw signed a one-year, $1.1MM free agent deal in mid-March. Between the late signing and the birth of his child just before Opening Day, Corbin did not get any Spring Training game action. He agreed to be optioned to Round Rock to build up. Leiter’s injury pushed him to the big leagues before he could make any Triple-A appearances. Corbin will presumably be on a low pitch limit for his first start of the season.

The two-time All-Star has eaten plenty of innings at the back of Washington’s rotation over the past few years. He posted a 5.62 ERA across 174 2/3 innings last season. Corbin has allowed an ERA above 5.00 in four consecutive seasons but topped 30 starts and 150 frames in each.

Yankees, Cooper Hummel Agree To Minor League Contract

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The Yankees reached agreement with corner outfielder/first baseman/catcher Cooper Hummel on a minor league deal, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. He had elected free agency yesterday after being outrighted off Houston’s 40-man roster. The Gaeta Sports Management client would be paid at an $820K rate for time spent in the big leagues, Passan adds. He’ll start his tenure at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Hummel is out of minor league options, so he needed to break camp with the Astros or be designated for assignment. The switch-hitter put a strong foot forward in Spring Training, hitting .316 with seven walks and nine strikeouts across 46 plate appearances. The Astros nevertheless opted not to carry him on their bench, tabbing former Rockies second baseman Brendan Rodgers as their final position player. They officially designated Hummel for assignment on Opening Day and placed him on waivers this week.

The 30-year-old spent one full season in the Houston organization. The Astros had claimed him off waivers from the Giants last spring. They outrighted him a couple weeks later but reselected his contract in June when they released José Abreu. Hummel spent most of the season in Triple-A, exhausting his final option year in the process. He went 0-8 with a pair of strikeouts in his big league work. He had a solid year in Triple-A, hitting .277/.419/.454 with a massive 17.9% walk rate through 442 plate appearances.

A former Milwaukee draftee, Hummel went to the Diamondbacks at the 2021 trade deadline as part of the return for Eduardo Escobar. He made a career-high 66 appearances for the Snakes the following season, putting up a .176/.274/.307 slash over 201 plate appearances. Arizona swapped him to the Mariners for former Rookie of the Year winner Kyle Lewis during the 2022-23 offseason. He bounced to the Mets and Giants before the move to Houston.

Hummel’s patient approach has resulted in an impressive .285/.419/.480 line across four Triple-A seasons. He has only made 16 big league appearances since the end of the ’22 season. Hummel has a decent amount of catching experience in the minors, but he divided his Triple-A time between the outfield and first base last year. He could potentially catch on occasion while joining Dominic Smith as non-roster first base depth.

Braves Re-Sign Jesse Chavez To Minor League Deal

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The Braves have re-signed right-hander Jesse Chavez to a fresh minor league deal, as reflected in his transaction tracker at MLB.com. The Apex Baseball client has been assigned to Triple-A Gwinnett.

The news is not surprising in the least. Chavez is a 41-year-old veteran who has bounced around to various teams in the league, but in recent years, he always seems to wind up back in Atlanta. Going into the 2021 season, he signed a minor league deal with the Angels. When he didn’t make that club’s Opening Day roster, he was released and signed with Atlanta. Going into 2022, he signed with the Cubs but was traded to Atlanta before the end of April. He was flipped to the Angels in early August as part of the Raisel Iglesias trade but was released and back in Atlanta before September. He re-signed with Atlanta for 2023. Going into 2024, he signed a minors deal with the White Sox but didn’t make the Opening Day roster and was with Atlanta before the end of March. The same thing happened this spring, only with the Rangers instead of the White Sox.

Chavez was added to Atlanta’s roster earlier this week and tossed two mop-up innings in Monday’s game. With the pitching staff fairly taxed and Chavez likely unavailable for a day or two, they designated him for assignment. He cleared waivers and elected free agency but is now back with the club on a new deal.

Despite his age, he has managed to stay very effective in recent years. Dating back to the start of the 2021 season, he has thrown 203 major league innings with a 2.93 earned run average, 24.3% strikeout rate, 7.6% walk rate and 42.4% ground ball rate.

He got squeezed off Atlanta’s roster but is now back to provide them with some non-roster depth. Given recent patterns, he should be back in the big leagues as soon as the bullpen is gassed again and they need a fresh arm.

Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images.

Dodgers Place Freddie Freeman On Injured List

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April 4: Catcher Hunter Feduccia was recalled today as the corresponding move, per a club announcement.

April 3: The Dodgers announced that they’ve placed Freddie Freeman on the 10-day injured list with a right ankle sprain. The placement is retroactive to March 31, so Freeman will be eligible to return a week from today.

Freeman has not played since Saturday. Manager Dave Roberts told reporters that the star first baseman tweaked his ankle when he slipped in the shower (via Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic). Freeman played through an ankle sprain down the stretch and throughout last year’s playoff run. He had a monster World Series despite the injury but nevertheless required surgery in early December. That procedure didn’t prevent him from starting the season, but the recent shower slip will require at least another week of rest.

IL placements can be backdated by up to three days. That the Dodgers elected not to place Freeman on the IL right away suggests they didn’t consider this a significant injury. It was enough to send him for an extremely rare IL stint though. Freeman last went on the shelf in 2020 for a positive virus test. His most recent non-illness IL stay came back in 2017, when a fracture in his left wrist knocked him out for more than two months.

Enrique Hernández drew into the lineup at first base for the Dodgers’ series against the Braves. While he went a combined 1-11, the Dodgers swept Atlanta to move to 8-0. The four top teams in the NL West have all gotten out to excellent starts — the 7-0 Padres join the Dodgers as the only remaining undefeated clubs — but the Dodgers obviously have plenty of talent to weather what seems likely to be a short-term absence.

Los Angeles didn’t announce a corresponding roster move. They’re off today, so there wasn’t any urgency to fill the spot, but waiting until tomorrow to place Freeman on the IL would have pushed back his retroactive date by a day. They can recall another hitter leading up to their weekend series in Philadelphia.

Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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

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Mariners Designate Hagen Danner For Assignment

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The Mariners announced that right-hander Hagen Danner has been designated for assignment. That opens a 40-man spot for Luis F. Castillo. It was reported yesterday that Castillo would be coming up to start today’s game, making for an odd bit of trivia as the other Luis Castillo started the prior game for the M’s. An active roster spot was already opened by optioning left-hander Jhonathan Díaz yesterday.

Danner, 26, hasn’t been with the Mariners for long. He was claimed off waivers from the Blue Jays in January. He then tossed 3 1/3 innings in the Cactus League, allowing five earned runs. He was then sent to Triple-A Tacoma and started his season with 2 2/3 scoreless innings there.

His overall track record as a pitcher isn’t terribly long. The Jays drafted him as a catcher and tried him at that spot for a few years, but his bat didn’t pan out and they moved him to the mound. He has since put up some decent numbers on a rate basis but with occasional injury absences. Due to those health issues, he still hasn’t thrown 40 innings in any one season.

He has one third of an inning in the majors, which was back in 2023, and then 116 2/3 minor league innings from 2021 to the present. In that minor league work, he has a 2.93 earned run average, 28.3% strikeout rate and 8.7% walk rate.

The M’s will now have a week of DFA limbo to figure out what’s next. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so any trade interest would have to be gauged in the next five days. Danner still has an option, so he could be stashed in the minors by any club willing to give him a 40-man spot. If he were to pass through waivers unclaimed, the Mariners could hold onto him as some non-roster depth.

Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images

Poll: Do Season-Opening Streaks Carry Extra Weight?

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MLB’s regular season is officially underway, and clubs are already in the thick of the race to the postseason. One of the biggest storylines of the season so far has surrounded three teams that have gone streaking to open the year. The Dodgers (8-0) and Padres (7-0) have both yet to lose a game, while the Braves (0-7) have yet to win after opening the season against those two clubs. Those streaks have led to all three clubs getting plenty of attention, particularly the Dodgers as they became the first team in MLB history to follow up a World Series championship by starting the next season with eight straight wins.

Perhaps even more focus has been placed on Atlanta, however, as the club was widely expected entering the season to be a top contender for not only the NL East, but also the World Series this year. Though the club finished second to the Phillies in a recent MLBTR poll about who would win the division this year, Atlanta received 32% of the vote, nearly double the third-place Mets’ 18% figure. The playoff odds at Fangraphs told an even rosier story, as the club was given a 93.2% chance to make the playoffs prior to the season beginning, as well as a 63.7% chance at winning the division and a 15.7% chance at a World Series championship that was second only to the Dodgers themselves.

The club’s 0-7 start has caused those odds to plummet, however, as Fangraphs now affords the Braves just a 70.5% chance at making the postseason, with a 32.6% chance at winning the division and a 9.1% chance to win the World Series. It’s a steep drop for just one week of games, and by contrast the Padres have seen their projected fortunes improve just as much, going from a 30.6% chance to make the postseason heading into Opening Day all the way up to a 54.4% chance entering play today. Even the pessimistic playoff odds the Braves are facing don’t hold a candle to the perception of many fans and media members, however. Much has been made of the fact that no team in baseball history has recovered from a 0-7 start to make the postseason, and that the 1980 Braves (81-80) and 1983 Astros (85-77) are the only clubs to even finish with a winning record.

With that being said, however, it must be noted that this only applies to teams that began the season with a 0-7 record. Plenty of teams have made the playoffs with seven-game losing streaks on their resumes, particularly in recent years as the postseason has begun to expand. Just last year, the Royals made the playoffs with two separate seven-game losing streaks to their names. The 2017 Dodgers infamously suffered a 1-16 stretch that included an 11-game losing streak before turning things around and making it to Game Seven of the World Series.

Of course, that’s not to say all of the sentiments surrounding these clubs are built on the biases that could surround a small-sample performance. The Dodgers were viewed around the league as the best team in baseball well before the 2025 season began, not only because they won the World Series last year but also because they aggressively improved the club by adding Blake Snell, Tanner Scott, and Roki Sasaki (among others) this winter. Meanwhile, concerns about Atlanta’s path into the postseason this year could be argued to have just as much to do with a deep group of potential playoff teams in the NL, the PED suspension of Jurickson Profar, and shoulder surgery for Reynaldo Lopez as they do the team’s actual record on the field.

It also can’t be entirely dismissed that some streaks have more impact on a club’s future competitiveness than others. Naturally, large swings in the standings are more likely to have a relative impact in the first half of the year than the second half, as they can factor into the decisions club executives make over the summer regarding whether to buy or sell at the trade deadline. That impacts the overall talent level of a club in a way that streaks such as the aforementioned strings of losses suffered by the 2017 Dodgers and 2024 Royals, all of which occurred after that season’s deadline, simply cannot replicate.

Where do MLBTR readers fall on this topic? Are the strings of wins the Dodgers and Padres are presently enjoying and the string of losses in Atlanta more meaningful than they would be if they occurred later in the season instead? Or does the fact that every game counts the same in the standings at the end of the season mean it’s no different than any other streak? Have your say in the poll below:

Do Streaks Matter More At The Start Of The Season?
No, every game counts the same. 66.35% (1,670 votes)
Yes, it's more impactful for a team to start the season on a streak than it is for one to happen later in the season. 33.65% (847 votes)
Total Votes: 2,517

Nationals Place Michael Soroka On Injured List Due To Biceps Strain

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The Nationals announced that right-hander Michael Soroka has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 1st, due to a right arm biceps strain. Fellow righty Jackson Rutledge has been recalled in a corresponding active roster move.

At this point, it’s unclear how serious Soroka’s injury is. He tossed five innings against the Blue Jays on Monday but departed with an apparent injury. After the game, manager Dave Martinez told reporters that Soroka had bicep cramps and framed the move as precautionary. Andrew Golden of The Washington Post was among those to relay the update.

Golden relays today that Soroka threw on the field before Wednesday’s game and the club wanted to see how he felt after that session before making a decision. It seems they have decided to put him on the shelf for at least another 12 days, since they backdated the IL move by three, the maximum allowed.

Whether this proves to be a notable injury or not, health issues have been a big part of the Soroka narrative. Back in 2019, he posted a 2.68 earned run average over 29 starts for Atlanta, finishing second to Pete Alonso in National League Rookie of the Year voting. But staying healthy has been a big challenge since then. Most significantly, he tore his right Achilles on two separate occasions. He wasn’t able to pitch much over the 2020 to 2023 seasons, missing 2021 and 2022 entirely.

He was flipped to the White Sox ahead of 2024 and had mixed results in Chicago. He started in the rotation but had a 6.39 ERA through nine starts and got moved to the bullpen. His first few relief appearances weren’t great but he finished strong. He logged 24 1/3 innings over his last 11 appearances with a 1.48 ERA, 42.7% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate. However, he was on the IL for about two months, with a shoulder strain putting him out of action from mid-July to mid-September.

He hit free agency with a bit of positive momentum, generating interest both as a starter and a reliever. He landed with the Nats on a one-year, $9MM deal with the plan being to give him another shot at a starting gig.

That plan is now on pause at least for a little while. Presumably, the Nats will put him back in the rotation if he only missed a short amount of time. They aren’t expecting to be competitive this year and likely have an eye on trading Soroka in July. He would have more value as a successful starter than as a reliever. Though given his injury history, there may come a point where they decide it’s better to keep him in short stints if they think he will have a better shot at staying healthy that way.

In the meantime, a rotation opportunity will be open for someone else, alongside MacKenzie Gore, Trevor Williams, Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker. They were off yesterday and start a six-game homestand tonight before another off-day on Thursday. After that, they have a ten-game road trip. Rutledge has starting experience but began this season working out of the bullpen in Triple-A. DJ Herz, Cade Cavalli and Josiah Gray are all on the injured list. Shinnosuke Ogasawara and Andry Lara are on the 40-man roster but currently on optional assignment. Each has already made a Triple-A start and could be recalled in the coming weeks.

Photo courtesy of Kevin Sousa, Imagn Images

The Opener: Mariners, Henderson, Minor Leagues

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As the 2025 regular season continues, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:

1. Mariners 40-man move incoming:

The Mariners are reportedly poised to select the contract Luis F. Castillo today, who will start today’s game against the Giants and Justin Verlander after teammate and veteran righty Luis Castillo started the club’s last game on Wednesday. In order to make way for that quirky bit of trivia, Seattle will need to clear a 40-man roster spot. With no obvious candidates for the 60-day injured list on the roster, the Mariners will likely need to designate one of their players for assignment, at which point they’ll have one week to either trade that player or successfully pass them through waivers.

2. Henderson likely to be activated:

Gunnar Henderson opened the season on the injured list, but manager Brandon Hyde told reporters (including Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner) that it’s “probable” the star infielder will be activated from the injured list to start the club’s series opener against the Royals in Kansas City, for which Baltimore will be facing veteran right-hander Seth Lugo coming off his dominant 2024 season where he finished as the runner up to Tarik Skubal in AL Cy Young award voting. The Orioles have gotten off to a difficult 3-4 start to this point in the season, but the return of Henderson after a year where he broke out to the tune of a .281/.364/.529 slash line and finished fourth in AL MVP voting should go a long way to improving the club’s offense. The return of Henderson figures to kick Jackson Holliday off shortstop back to second base, with Jordan Westburg returning to third base after covering the keystone and Ramon Urias heading for the bench.

3. Minor League Opening Day:

While the major leagues had their Opening Day last week and Triple-A followed suit shortly there after, the rest of minor league baseball has not yet began their seasons. That changes today with the arrival of Opening Day for Double-A, High-A, and Single-A affiliates all around baseball. The earliest of those games is a game between the Double-A affiliates of the Orioles and Pirates, the Chesapeake Baysox and the Altoona Curve. That game begins at 5pm CT this evening, though of course all three levels have 15 games scheduled to run throughout the evening. Prospect hounds will get their first opportunities to catch glimpses of the 51 of MLB.com’s Top 100 prospects who are currently in the lower full-season levels of the minors, including top-ten talents like Twins outfield prospect Walker Jenkins, Tigers outfield prospect Max Clark, and Guardians second base prospect Travis Bazzana.

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