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Rockies To Sign Brett Oberholtzer

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The Rockies have inked a minors deal with lefty Brett Oberholtzer, Mike Ashmore of the Courier News and Home News Tribune reports. He had been slated to pitch for the indy ball Somerset Patriots.

Oberholtzer is a 28-year-old who was originally selected by the Braves in the eighth round of the 2008 draft. He was dealt to the Astros in the 2011 Michael Bourn swap and later sent on to the Phillies in 2015’s Ken Giles trade. In addition to appearing in the majors with the ’Stros and Phils, Oberholtzer has appeared briefly with the Angels.

All told, Oberholtzer carries a 4.36 ERA with 6.1 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 across 324 frames at the game’s highest level. He did not crack the bigs last year, but did make 24 starts for the Blue Jays’ top affiliate, pitching to a 4.12 ERA with 5.6 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9.

Orioles Claim Jace Peterson

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The Orioles have claimed infielder Jace Peterson off waivers from the Yankees, per a club announcement. A 40-man roster spot was opened by moving righty Gabriel Ynoa to the 60-day DL.

Peterson, who’s nearing his 28th birthday, has played very little this year while bouncing on and off of the Yankees’ roster. In need of an additional utility infield option, the O’s took advantage of Peterson’s waiver wire availability to nab him.

In parts of five seasons in the majors, Peterson is a .234/.319/.331 hitter with 15 home runs and 22 steals. That won’t generate much excitement for a player who is primarily a second baseman. But the former Padres and Braves prospect is capable of playing all over the field; he even lined up briefly in short and center in recent campaigns.

Nationals To Place Shawn Kelley On 10-Day DL

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The Nationals are lining up a series of roster moves as they continue to deal with a barrage of early-season maladies. Most notably, righty Shawn Kelley is heading to the DL after departing last night’s game with an injury, Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post reports on Twitter.

It seems Kelley is dealing again with a bout of ulnar nerve irritation, MLB.com’s Jamal Collier of MLB.com tweets. Just how long he’ll be down isn’t clear, but he’ll at least need to allow the problem to subside and could ultimately require some rehab outings.

Kelley has shown some signs of a revival in his first six innings on the season, recording nine strikeouts without issuing a single walk. But he has also continued to surrender home runs at an unacceptable level, with three leaving the yard thus far in 2018 after he coughed up a dozen in 26 frames last year.

Outfielder Rafael Bautista and infielder Adrian Sanchez will head onto the active roster, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweeted. Both are already on the 40-man after debuting last season. Infielder Matt Reynolds will be optioned out to make way, as Collier suggested on Twitter and Castillo confirms in a tweet.

Perhaps the Nats will hope that the young call-ups can provide some energy, but neither holds out much promise of boosting a lagging offense. Bautista has rarely posted quality numbers with the bat in the minors and is hitting .304/.342/.362 through 75 plate appearances in 2018. Sanchez has an even lighter track record but is off to a .286/.349/.411 start to the current season at Syracuse.

Braves Designate Miguel Socolovich, Promote Max Fried

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The Braves have designated righty Miguel Socolovich for assignment, per a club announcement. He’ll be replaced on the active roster by southpaw Max Fried.

Socolovich came up for a pair of appearances, allowing three earned runs in three innings. The 31-year-old carries a 4.41 ERA in his 85 2/3 career frames at the MLB level.

Fried, meanwhile, likely features more prominently in the team’s long-term plans. The former top prospect cracked the majors last year and gave the Braves 26 innings of 3.81 ERA pitching. But he had only just ascended to the upper minors in 2017 and opened the current season back at Triple-A.

Thus far in the current campaign, Fried has allowed only three earned in 15 2/3 innings over his three starts, with 16 strikeouts and seven walks. The free passes continue to be a bit of a concern, as he has steadily given up more than four per nine innings since joining the professional ranks.

It’s unclear at this point whether Fried will get a chance to join the Atlanta rotation, but it seems likely he’ll open in a long relief role. Notably, since he’s already on the 40-man, the move leaves the Braves with an opening that could be filled in the near future by the just-signed Jose Bautista.

Phillies To Sign Trevor Plouffe

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TODAY: Plouffe could earn at a $1.5MM annual rate in the majors on the contract, which also includes some opt-out chances, per Jon Heyman of Fan Rag (via Twitter).

YESTERDAY: The Phillies have struck a minor-league deal with veteran third baseman Trevor Plouffe, according to Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News (via Twitter). (H/t to Eric English, who first tweeted the connection.)

Details are sparse beyond the fact that it is a minors arrangement. Plouffe spent the spring in camp with the Rangers but ultimately asked for his release after failing to crack the MLB roster.

The 31-year-old Plouffe returned to the open market in search of an opportunity to earn his way back to the majors. He has at times been a solid regular at the hot corner, and carries a .242/.304/.410 slash with more than a hundred long balls in over three thousand MLB plate appearances in eight seasons. Now, though, Plouffe is coming off of a brutal 2017 season in which he hit just .2198/.272/.318 over 313 trips to the plate.

It seems likely that Plouffe will mostly be viewed as a depth piece for the Phils. The club already has Maikel Franco lined up at third base and does not appear to have a clear use for a corner infield reserve on the major-league roster as things stand.

Cardinals Notes: Wainwright, Mikolas, Martinez

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The Cardinals are off to a solid start to the year, though the NL Central is shaping up to be quite the battleground in 2018. Maintaining health throughout the season could end up being a major factor in deciding the division race. The long view is what motivated Cards righty Adam Wainwright to go on the DL at this point, as MLB.com’s Joe Trezza reports. His elbow has flared up a bit, though the 36-year-old suggested he’s confident that he’ll be able to return in relatively short order. The hope is that some rest and minor mechanical tweaks will allow Wainwright to take most of his scheduled starts in the final season of his contract. Of course, even if the veteran hurler is down longer than expected, the team has plenty of options, as Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explores.

Here’s more from St. Louis:

  • Another key hurler for the Cardinals, recent signee Miles Mikolas, has thrown well upon his return to the majors. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch documents some of the ways in which Mikolas has thrived. In particular, he has been one of the most efficient starters in all of baseball, due in no small part to the fact that he has issued just a pair of walks in 26 innings. Goold traces this element of Mikolas’s game back to his successful stint in Japan, during which he gained mental and physical control of his pitching. It’s early, to be sure, but the two-year, $15.5MM pact Mikolas signed over the winter has looked like a bargain.
  • Cardinals fans will also want to check out two other recent pieces from the Post-Dispatch on the team’s pitching staff. Jose de Jesus Ortiz offers a look at staff ace Carlos Martinez, who says he believes he is pitching better than ever. That the 26-year-old has found another gear is certainly a scary thought for the rest of the league. And Goold examines the intriguing case of Bud Norris, who is now closing out games and sporting a career-high 15.3% swinging-strike rate. It’s a worthwhile read that goes well beyond the field of play.
  • On the position-player side, the Cards appear to have unearthed another hidden gem in first baseman Jose Martinez. The late-blooming 29-year-old has done nothing but hit in the majors and is off to a .329/.409/.526 start to the current campaign. Trezza penned an interesting look at Martinez’s unlikely path to the majors. The St. Louis scouting department and front office aptly identified and targeted the burly slugger, eventually snagging him from the cross-state rival Royals. Of course, the results have outstripped even the most optimistic expectations. “We were confident he could be a good right-handed hitter off the bench,” says Cardinals GM Mike Girsch. “That’s what we thought we were getting. Since then, he’s been raking.” While he’s currently performing like a mid-prime star, Martinez won’t even reach arbitration eligibility until 2020.

Reds Release Barrett Astin

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The Reds announced that they have released right-hander Barrett Astin. He had been outrighted off of the 40-man roster last fall.

The 26-year-old Astin is a former third-round pick who landed in Cincinnati as the player to be named later in the 2014 swap that sent Jonathan Broxton to the Brewers. Astin cracked the majors last year, but issued seven walks while recording only two strikeouts in his eight innings of action.

Though he had a promising season at Double-A in 2016, Astin has largely struggled at the highest level of the minors. He carries a 5.91 ERA in 56 1/3 total innings for Triple-A Louisville and has surrendered over a dozen base hits per regulation game along with 7.8 K/9 and 4.0 BB/9.

Yankees Acquire A.J. Cole, Designate David Hale

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The Yankees have acquired righty A.J. Cole from the Nationals, per club announcements. Cash considerations will go to the Washington organization in return. To clear a roster spot, the Yankees designated fellow right-hander David Hale for assignment.

Cole, 26, had recently been designated by the Nats after a poor start to the current season. Originally a fourth-round pick, he was a part of two notable trades swung by the organization, first going to the Athletics in the Gio Gonzalez swap and then returning to D.C. (along with Blake Treinen and Ian Krol) in the three-team arrangement in which the Nationals sent Michael Morse to the Mariners and the A’s picked up John Jaso.

Entering the season, the Nationals planned to utilize Cole as their fifth starter. But he struggled in two turns through the rotation, leading the club to bump him to the pen in favor of Jeremy Hellickson. Cole ultimately made two relief appearances but failed to show signs of improvement. In his 10 1/3 innings on the season, he has allowed 15 earned runs and six home runs while compiling ten strikeouts against six walks.

Cole is out of options, so he’ll go directly onto the Yankees’ MLB roster, where he could work as a longman from the bullpen. He’ll replace Hale, who threw two scoreless innings tonight for the Yanks but had opened the year at Triple-A. In his three starts there, he worked to a 5.52 ERA with a 10:2 K/BB ratio in 14 2/3 innings. He has not seen the majors since 2016; in parts of four seasons in the bigs, Hale owns a 4.48 ERA over 178 2/3 frames.

Rockies Place Chris Rusin On 10-Day DL, Move Carlos Estevez To 60-Day DL

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The Rockies have announced a trio of pitching moves. Southpaw Chris Rusin will head to the 10-day DL with an intercostal strain, with fellow southpaw Harrison Musgrave replacing him on the active roster.

Bringing up Musgrave meant opening a 40-man spot, which the Rox accomplished by shifting reliever Carlos Estevez to the 60-day DL. He opened the year on the 10-day list owing to an oblique issue, but is now said to be dealing with an elbow strain. The team says Estevez is not at risk of requiring Tommy John surgery, Nick Groke of The Athletic tweets, though he’ll now have to sit for at least the first two months of the current campaign.

Rusin, 31, has been a huge asset for the Colorado pen over the past two seasons. The converted starter has consistently given good innings — often, more than one at a time — after having failed to stick in the rotation. Since a rough first outing, Rusin has been effective. His fastball velocity has been in line with prior seasons and he was generating grounders and swinging strikes at rates generally commensurate with his recent work.

While the Rockies wait for their longman to return, they’ll get a look at a 26-year-old lefty who has yet to reach the game’s highest level. Musgrave has spent the past couple seasons in the upper minors, where he has worked exclusively as a starter. He’s carrying a 3.38 ERA with ten strikeouts and two walks in his 10 2/3 innings at Triple-A Albuquerque thus far in 2018.

Dodgers Designate Wilmer Font

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The Dodgers have designated right-hander Wilmer Font for assignment, per a club announcement. His roster spot will go to top prospect Walker Buehler, whose promotion — to make his first-ever MLB start — was previously reported.

Font, who’ll soon turn 28, received his first real shot at the majors to open the 2018 season. The results, however, just haven’t been there, as he has surrendered 13 earned runs in 10 1/3 innings.

There’s just one walk — of the intentional variety — on Font’s stat line, so he’s been in the zone. But he has also coughed up 18 base hits, five of which have left the yard, and generated soft contact on just one of every ten balls put in play against him.

Despite the struggles, it would not be surprising to see another organization roll the dice on the out-of-options Font. After all, he turned in an impressive 2017 effort at Triple-A. In 134 1/3 innings spread over 25 starts last year at the highest level of the minors, Font worked to a 3.42 ERA with even more impressive peripherals (including 11.9 K/9 against just 2.3 BB/9).

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