Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Rangers Outright Chris Rowley

By | at

The Rangers announced Monday that they’ve outrighted right-hander Chris Rowley off the 40-man roster after he cleared waivers. Texas’ 40-man roster now sits at a total of 39 players.

Rowley, 28, began the season in the Blue Jays organization but was claimed off outright waivers by the Rangers back in late July. While he didn’t appear for the big league club, Rowley did turn in 41 2/3 solid innings at the Triple-A level in the Rangers organization, working to a 3.46 ERA with 7.1 K/9, 3.5 BB/9 and a 44.4 percent ground-ball rate. In all, he has a 3.34 ERA in 145 2/3 Triple-A frames this season.

Despite a fairly encouraging performance in the minors, it doesn’t seem that Rowley will get a chance to improve upon his limited Major League experience. He tossed just two-thirds of an inning for the Jays earlier this season, plus another 18 2/3 innings in 2017, and has yielded a total of 17 runs in those 19 1/3 MLB innings. While that’s obviously not a very encouraging sample of work, Rowley does have a career 2.90 ERA in the minors — including a 3.13 mark in 207 innings at Triple-A.

Rowley doesn’t have much heat on his fastball, averaging 88.8 mph in the Majors, and he’s never been one to miss many bats or rack up grounders at a prolific rate. However, his typically low walk rates and solid run-prevention numbers in the minors should make him a somewhat appealing depth option this offseason — be it for the Rangers or another club.

Dodgers Recall Julio Urias

By | at

After a rehab process that spanned more than 14 months, left-hander Julio Urias is back in the Majors. The Dodgers announced Monday that they’ve recalled the 22-year-old from Triple-A Oklahoma City — his first look in the big leagues since undergoing shoulder surgery last June.

Urias’ rapid ascent to the Majors is among the most impressive we’ve seen out of a pitcher in recent memory. The still-young lefty arrived on the scene in May 2016 — well shy of his 20th birthday — and gave the Dodgers 77 innings of 3.39 ERA ball with 84 strikeouts against 31 walks across multiple big league stints over the remainder of that season. Urias was one of the game’s 10 best prospects before debuting in ’16 and was looked at as a potential building block for the Dodgers’ rotation before last summer’s surgery.

That’s still the best-case scenario for Urias, of course, though surgery to repair the anterior capsule in his left shoulder at such a young age was a disheartening development that created a somewhat increased degree of uncertainty moving forward. For the time being, it’s likely he’ll be used out of the bullpen, as he’s only thrown 11 2/3 innings across three minor league levels since returning from that surgery. He’s racked up 19 strikeouts in that time but also issued six walks and been tagged for seven earned runs.

Some rust is to be expected for Urias, but a healthy run in September and perhaps in October, even in a relief role, would be a significant step forward as the Dodgers map out his trajectory in 2019 and beyond. It seems likely that Urias will again be viewed as a starter in the future, though Los Angeles will keep a close eye on his workload as he distances himself from major shoulder surgery.

Indians Activate Andrew Miller

By | at

Sept. 10: The Indians announced that Miller has indeed been activated from the disabled list.

Sept. 9: The Indians are planning to activate left-hander Andrew Miller from the 10-day DL on Monday, Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports (Twitter link).  This would make it slightly beyond a minimum stint for Miller, who originally hit the DL on August 29 due to an external impingement in his throwing shoulder.

Of course, this is also Miller’s third trip to the disabled list this season, as the southpaw has been limited to just 27 appearances (24 innings) due to previous absences dealing with hamstring and knee problems.  The knee inflammation was a particularly large issue, costing Miller over two months of the season.  It’s safe to say that these injury problems are a reason behind Miller’s numbers, as the reliever hasn’t quite been his usual dominant self, though most pitchers would be more than satisfied with a 3.38 ERA, 2.54 K/BB rate, and 12.4 K/BB.

A fully healthy and in-form Miller, however, is arguably the most dominant bullpen weapon in all of baseball, particularly given his ability to pitch multiple innings.  As the 2016 playoffs demonstrated, Miller can be an enormous force in a postseason series, so his return will be a huge boost to a Cleveland team that has been lacking in bullpen consistency all season.  (Though the Tribe’s relief numbers have improved lately, thanks to Oliver Perez’s continued late-career resurgence, and the acquisition of Brad Hand.)  A strong showing over the season’s last few weeks and into October would also go a long way to rebuilding Miller’s free agent value, as the 33-year-old hits the open market this winter.

White Sox Activate Jose Abreu

By | at

The White Sox announced Monday that they’ve activated first baseman Jose Abreu from the 10-day disabled list. He’d been out since mid-August after being rushed to the hospital due to lower abdominal pain and eventually undergoing an emergency testicular torsion surgery.

Abreu, 33, missed about three weeks of action as a result of the surgery and could ultimately fall shy of a fifth consecutive 25-homer, 100-RBI season to open his big league career. The Cuban-born slugger struggled through a disappointing first half but was on absolute fire in the second half prior to his surgery, hitting at a .330/.394/.652 clip through 127 plate appearances between the All-Star Game and his most recent game played (Aug. 20).

Despite his standing as a productive veteran slugger on a team that has rebuilding for the past two-plus years, Abreu hasn’t been rumored to be much of a trade candidate this year. He’ll be a free agent following the 2019 season, as things currently stand, though the Sox have in the past suggested that there’d be interest in keeping their clubhouse leader around beyond that 2019 campaign. Abreu is playing the 2018 season on a $13MM salary and will be eligible for one final arbitration raise this winter before he’d be scheduled to hit the open market.

Athletics’ Jesus Luzardo Hires Scott Boras

By | at

Athletics prospect Jesus Luzardo recently changed representation and is now a client of the Boras Corporation, as ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick first reported via Twitter.

Luzardo, 20, has had a meteoric rise in 2018 and is among the game’s more highly regarded prospects, having ascended from Class-A Advanced all the way up to Triple-A this season. Along the way, he’s pitched to a combined 2.88 ERA with 10.6 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 and allowed just seven homers in 109 1/3 innings of work.

Luzardo was considered a high-risk prospect, and perhaps still is, when the A’s acquired him alongside Blake Treinen in the July 2017 trade that sent Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson from Oakland to Washington. He’d undergone Tommy John surgery prior to being drafted in the third round by the Nats in 2016 and, at the time of the trade, had pitched just 13 2/3 professional innings. That trade could scarcely have worked out better for the A’s at this point, as Treinen has stepped up as an elite reliever in his own right, while Luzardo could be knocking on the door of a big league promotion next season as a 21-year-old.

The A’s don’t currently have many Boras clients on the roster, though Luzardo joins two of the team’s best players, Matt Chapman and Sean Manaea, in that regard. The change in representation has been reflected in MLBTR’s Agency Database, which contains representation info on upwards of 3,000 Major League and Minor League players. If you see any notable errors or omissions, please let us know via email: mlbtrdatabase@gmail.com.

Minor MLB Transactions: 9/10/18

By | at

Here are Monday’s minor moves from around the game…

  • The Pirates outrighted left-handed reliever Buddy Boshers to Triple-A Indianapolis after he cleared waivers, per John Dreker of PiratesProspects.com (Twitter link). The 30-year-old lefty split the season between the Pittsburgh and Houston organizations but didn’t reach the Majors with either team. He’s posted a solid 3.32 ERA with 9.8 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 0.8 HR/9 and a 48 percent ground-ball rate through 57 Triple-A frames so far in 2018, but opposing lefties hit .303/.330/.434 against him this season. Boshers spent most of 2016-17 in the Majors with the Twins, pitching to a combined 4.56 ERA and generally holding lefties in check while struggling considerably against right-handed bats.

Poll: The Handling Of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Eloy Jimenez

By | at

Two of the most talented players in Triple-A will remain there throughout the month of September. Third baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Eloy Jimenez will not receive a cup of coffee in the majors this month, per recent announcements from the Blue Jays and White Sox, respectively.

To those well-versed in MLB service time rules and practices, this news induces a reaction closer to a yawn than a surprise; teams have been using the service clock to manipulate team control for quite some time, and there was no reason to believe that would change in regards to Guerrero Jr. or Jimenez. Recent examples of players whose service time has been suppressed by their respective teams in order to yield them an additional year of team control include Kris Bryant, George Springer and Ronald Acuna Jr., and that list is far from complete. Others still, including the likes of Francisco Lindor, have been held in the minors long enough to reduce their earning power.

That doesn’t mean agents are quieting down about the issue, though. Both players’ representatives have been vocal in regards to their clients’ dearth of a promotion, as well they ought to be considering they’ll miss out on a significant amount of money. Jimenez’ agent in particular blasted with White Sox for service time manipulation. “Especially with elite players like Eloy and (Blue Jays top prospect) Vlad (Guerrero) Jr., that’s the nature of the business,” said Dan Kinzer. “It’s not about the money. It’s the extra year of control.” Similarly, the MLBPA has spoken out against Chicago and Toronto on the subject.

Perhaps J.J. Cooper of Baseball America put it best in his recent piece on the subject: it’s impossible to objectively argue that these players don’t deserve a call up based on performance. Guerrero Jr. has hit .336/.414/.564 with a microscopic 7.8% strikeout rate since his promotion to Triple-A this season, while Jimenez owns an even more excellent .355/.399/.597 line to go along with a 13.2% strikeout rate. Put simply, opposing pitchers aren’t fooling these prospects, and there’s no real reason development-wise that they ought not be exposed to major-league pitching. That’s particularly true in light of the fact that the White Sox promoted low-ceiling prospect Ryan Cordell, while the Blue Jays selected Triple-A veteran Rowdy Tellez. Whatever good there is to say of these young players, any attempt to argue that they’ve done more to earn a promotion than Guerrero Jr. or Jimenez would require a staggering amount of cognitive dissonance.

These teams are clearly planning to restrain their top prospects within the confines of Triple-A until the third week of April 2019, regardless of how well they hit. That’s the point at which they’ll be guaranteed an additional year of team control that allows them to keep those future superstars around through the 2026 season rather than hit free agency after 2025. It’s a distinction that could potentially cost them eight figures in earning power apiece depending on how they develop in the majors.

The question I want to pose is, how do you feel about the overt suppression of service time to manipulate a player’s team control? (Poll link for app users)

Is Service Clock Manipulation Bad For Baseball?
Yes, but there's no good way to prevent it so oh well. 33.93% (4,315 votes)
Yes, it's abhorrent. 33.47% (4,257 votes)
No, it's not a big deal at all. 32.60% (4,147 votes)
Total Votes: 12,719

 

Trade Rumors App Privacy Policy

By | at

Privacy Policy

Trade Rumors is owned, operated, and maintained by Tim Dierkes (“us”). We respect your right to privacy and share your concern about the security of any data you may submit via our mobile application (“Trade Rumors”, or the “app”).

Your privacy is critically important to us. We have a few fundamental principles:

We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it.
We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.
We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services.

The following statement discloses the guidelines we have established for protecting the information you provide to us while using the app.

Personally Identifiable Information Collection

You may use Trade Rumors without needed to disclose personally identifiable information to the app. If you wish to participate on discussions on stories, you will need to create an account which requires providing your email address.

Pseudonymous Data Collection

In order to deliver push notifications, track app usage metrics, and run ads, Trade Rumors uses third party services which use unique device identifiers such as the advertising identifiers and push notification identifiers. These are considered pseudonymous data as they can not directly identify you as a person, just your device. We do not expose your personally identifiable information to these third parties.

Quick Hits: Judge, Seager, Rays

By | at

Yankees sophomore sensation Aaron Judge is still feeling pain when he swings a bat, per a tweet from Marc Carig of The Athletic. Certainly there’s still time for him to regain his health and strength in advance of the postseason (we still have three weeks until October, after all), but the news has to be disconcerting both for the Yankees organization and for Judge himself. The outfielder has been out of commission since July 26th after sustaining a chip fracture in his wrist, and though it was reported as recently as yesterday that he could be nearing a return after he was able to participate in on-field drills, the news that his pain level (still describes as a “4” on a 1-10 scale) casts some doubt on the notion that he could be back on the field within the next week or so.

  • Corey Seager expects to play shortstop for the Dodgers next year, as he tells Ken Gurnick of MLB.com. Seager has had massive misfortune this year in regards to injuries; he suffered a UCL injury early on in the season that required the infamous Tommy John procedure, and had to undergo a second procedure on his hip soon thereafter. Recently, though, he’s expressed confidence in his recovery from these surgeries. Seager is already off of crutches, and he looks forward to resuming a throwing program next month. “Based to this point, I’ll be ready to go,” Seager said. “I should, ’quote unquote,’ have a pretty normal spring. It will probably be a little slow in the beginning, but should be pretty normal.”
  • In light of the Rays’ success with creativity this season, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times details some of the most interesting aspects of the club’s strategy in 2018. Carig explores various aspects of the club’s advances back to contention, highlighted by the purging of veterans in order to bring focus to a new, young core. The coming out parties for players like Jake Bauers and Joey Wendle have been fun to watch, to be sure. But equally interesting has been their improvements in much broader aspects of the game: a few mentioned by Carig include the team’s improvement on the hard contact and line drive front, trimming of strikeouts, spike in batting average, and, of course, the adoption and implementation of the “opener” strategy.

Giants’ Ryder Jones Out For Season With Dislocated Knee

By | at

Giants rookie infielder Ryder Jones will not return this season after dislocating his knee, as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Bay Area was among those to report. Jones made seven plate appearances during his brief September call up.

It’s a sad and unfortunate situation for Jones, as the injury was something of a freak accident. The video in the link above shows how the 24-year-old dislocated his knee: it happened during an all-or-nothing-type swing in which he fouled a pitch into the seats behind third base. Jones immediately collapsed to the ground in immense pain, and needed help from the training staff to leave the field. The official diagnosis thereafter was a left knee patella dislocation, which apparently felt as painful as it sounds. The worst part is that this is the recurrence of a similar injury Jones suffered during the 2015 season.

Jones will reportedly undergo an MRI on Monday in order to determine if there’s any further damage beyond the initial diagnosis, and he’ll likely hit the 60-day disabled list at some point in the upcoming days to clear room for another September body. That will bring an abrupt end to an audition that was shaping up to be quite interesting; although Jones had only amassed seven plate appearances across four September contests, he’d already collected three hits including two homers.

Of course, there are risks that come with his profile. Jones struck out in the other four trips to the plate in 2018, and that certainly doesn’t help alleviate the pre-existing concerns about his plate discipline. During Jones’ MLB debut last season, he whiffed in 31.7% of his plate appearances while walking just 6.1% of the time. Across 171 trips to the plate in his career, Jones has now compiled a .185/.251/.318 batting line.

 

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

hide arrows scroll to top