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Reds Place Eugenio Suarez, Scott Schebler On Disabled List

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The Reds announced that they’ve placed third baseman Eugenio Suarez and outfielder Scott Schebler on the 10-day disabled list today. Suarez was diagnosed with a broken thumb after being hit by a pitch in yesterday’s game against the Pirates, while Schebler hasn’t played in a week due to a right elbow/ulnae nerve contusion (also stemming from a hit-by-pitch). Schebler’s DL stint is retroactive to April 6 — the maximum three-day period by which a DL placement can be backdated.

In their place, Cincinnati has recalled infielder Alex Blandino and right-hander Zack Weiss from Triple-A Louisville. Each player will be making his MLB debut the first time he gets into a big league game.

Blandino, 25, was the 29th overall pick in the 2014 draft but hasn’t seen his stock take off as the Reds would’ve hoped when investing such a lofty pick in the former Stanford star. Blandino, who hit .265/.382/.453 with a dozen homers and 36 doubles between Double-A and Triple-A last season, does rank in the organization’s top 20 prospects in the estimation of most major outlets, though. Fangraphs (No. 14) and MLB.com (No. 18) ranked him favorably, while ESPN’s Keith Law was more bullish and placed Blandino 10th (subscription link) among Reds farmhands. He’s generally regarded as a second/third baseman with quality on-base skills but average power at best.

Weiss, meanwhile, comes with just 29 innings of experience above Class-A Advanced — 28 in Double-A last season and one in Triple-A in 2018. He’s been slowed by elbow issues throughout his professional career but has also missed enough bats (11.2 K/9) and limited walks well enough (2.5 BB/9) in parts of five seasons that the Reds added him to the 40-man roster in the offseason.

Some Reds fans, of course, could be disheartened not to see Nick Senzel tabbed as an immediate replacement for Suarez, who figures to be on the shelf for more than the 10-day minimum as he recovers from his broken thumb. The former No. 2 overall draft pick is widely regarded as one of the top five to 10 prospects in all of baseball, and it’s believed that he’ll make his MLB debut at some point in 2018.

However, the Reds could gain an extra year of control over Senzel merely by waiting until this weekend to promote him for his first look in the Majors. And beyond any service time questions, it’s also possible that the organization simply doesn’t want to rush the highly touted infielder to the big leagues. Senzel has played in just three Triple-A games and logged only 57 games in Double-A last season. Senzel posted a .633 OPS in a small sample of plate appearances this spring in Major League camp with the Reds.

Additionally, with Suarez locked up to a new seven-year extension, it seems clear that Senzel will be moving off of third base in the long run. He’s played second base in his first three Triple-A games this year, but those are his lone (regular-season) professional games anywhere other than the hot corner, so there’s some logic in getting him additional reps in the middle infield before calling on him in the Majors as well.

Cardinals Activate Greg Holland

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2:29pm: Holland has indeed been activated, with Mayers being optioned out to Memphis to clear a spot on the 25-man roster, tweets MLB.com’s Joe Trezza.

9:40am: Monday marks the day that Greg Holland is eligible to be activated and added to the Cardinals roster, and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes that the Cards intend to do just that in advance of tonight’s game against the Brewers.

Holland signed a one-year, $14MM contract with the Cardinals on Opening Day and figures to slide into the team’s closer role, where he’ll supplant the struggling Dominic Leone. Goold notes that a roster move will need to be made and suggests that right-hander Mike Mayers, who has pitched sparingly thus far in 2018, could be optioned out to open a spot for the new St. Louis closer. The Cardinals would prefer Mayers to log regular innings, per Goold, as opposed to receive sporadic work as a long man. One reliever who, unsurprisingly, isn’t presently in danger of being optioned for Holland or for the eventual return of Luke Gregerson is flamethrowing young righty Jordan Hicks, whom manager Mike Matheny praises in Goold’s piece.

The Cardinals punted their second-round pick in order to add Holland on his one-year deal, taking advantage of a collapsed market for the 2017 NL saves leader. In doing so, they’re banking on the belief that Holland’s disastrous August — 14 runs and four homers in 9 2/3 frames — was attributable to some arm fatigue in his first season back from Tommy John surgery and is not a portent for similar struggles down the line.

Holland will likely be eased into things with the Cardinals, as he’s still made just two appearances for the Cardinals’ Class-A Advanced affiliate, during which he was tagged for a solo homer but also recorded a pair of strikeouts without issuing a walk. For the time being, though, it’s easy to imagine that the Cardinals could be reluctant to pitch him on back-to-back days — and certainly not on three consecutive days.

[Related: St. Louis Cardinals depth chart]

With Holland now on board, he’ll front a relief corps also featuring Leone, Hicks, Tyler Lyons, Bud Norris, Matt Bowman, John Brebbia and Sam Tuivailala. That group is hardly set in stone, as Gregerson’s return will push one of the less-experienced arms off the active roster. (Brebbia was only just recalled over the weekend and could potentially be optioned back to Memphis down the line.) St. Louis is also light on left-handed relief at the moment due to the fact that both Brett Cecil and Ryan Sherriff are also on the disabled list. There’s no hard timeline on the return of either southpaw, though Sherriff’s outlook is less troubling, as he’s on the shelf with a fractured toe. Cecil, meanwhile, hit the DL with a shoulder strain in late March and, as Goold notes, felt pain in his ankle yesterday and was prescribed at least a day in a walking boot.

AL West Notes: Healy, Bradford, Hamels, Thompson

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The Mariners announced today that they’ve placed first baseman Ryon Healy on the 10-day disabled list due to a sprained right ankle. The move is retroactive to yesterday, so Healy will be eligible to return from the DL in nine days’ time, though no specific timeline was given for his rehab. Right-hander Chasen Bradford, an offseason waiver claim from the Mets, has been recalled from Triple-A Tacoma to take his place on the roster.

Healy, 26, is off to just a 2-for-22 start to his Mariners career and has now been dealt a pair of injuries early in his Seattle tenure, as he also missed several weeks of Spring Training following surgery on his right hand. He did knock in three runs with a double on Saturday, though he’ll now have to wait more than a week (at least) to try to build on that momentum. In his absence, the Mariners can turn to Daniel Vogelbach to line up at first base or go with utility options such as Taylor Motter or Andrew Romine at first base, leaving Vogelbach to DH in place of the also-injured Nelson Cruz.

More out of the AL West…

  • Rangers lefty Cole Hamels is entering a transitional phase of his career, writes Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News, as his significantly diminished velocity now forces him to become more of a finesse lefty than a power pitcher. Hamels has never been a flamethrower, per se, but he averaged 92 mph or better on his fastball for the vast majority of his career, including last season in 2017. Through his first three starts of the 2018 campaign, however, Hamels has averaged just 89.7 mph on his heater. While some pitchers build up velocity over the course of a season, Hamels has never started out a year with this lack of life on his fastball. “I’m in between in terms of identifying what I need to do and going out and doing it,” Hamels tells Grant. “You can’t be in between on those two types of pitches and executing them.” To his credit, Hamels has racked up 23 strikeouts in just 16 innings, but he’s also issued nine walks, served up five homers and is currently toting a cumbersome 5.06 ERA.
  • Trayce Thompson thought several years ago that he could be included as part of the prospect package the White Sox sent to the Athletics to acquire Jeff Samardzija, writes Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. Marcus Semien eventually headlined a package that did not include Thompson, but Oakland eventually got their hands on him over the weekend by claiming him off waivers from the Yankees. Thompson is thrilled to be reunited with Semien, one of his closest friends, and to be playing in the Bay Area, where his brother Klay stars for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. “It was a long week for sure, one of the longest weeks of my life,” said Thompson, who was placed on waivers by two different teams last week. “When the Yankees got me, initially I thought it was a good opportunity, they have a lot of guys hurt and stuff … Then they told me their plan to try to spin me back through waivers and maybe get me to Triple-A — that’s not the news as a baseball player you want to hear.” Thompson acknowledges that he could once again be the odd man out in Oakland in the near future and speaks about the roller-coaster-like feeling of being on the bubble of multiple big league rosters in an interview that’s well worth a read for some insight into the human component of MLB transactions.

Rockies Agree To Minor League Deal With David Holmberg

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The Rockies have agreed to a minor league pact with left-hander David Holmberg, reports SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo (via Twitter). The Meister Sports Management client will give Colorado some additional depth both in the rotation and bullpen after spending the bulk of the 2017 campaign with the White Sox.

Holmberg, 26, appeared in 37 games (seven starts) for the ChiSox last year and totaled 57 2/3 innings of work — a career-high for him at the big league level. The former second-round pick (White Sox, 2009) posted a 4.68 ERA but struggled mightily with his control, as he walked more batters (34) than he struck out (33) in that time. Righties and lefties alike hit Holmberg hard in 2017, and fielding-independent pitching metrics were more bearish than his ERA (6.80 FIP, 6.02 SIERA).

The southpaw has had considerably more success in Triple-A, however, where he’s logged a total of 299 2/3 innings in his career and worked to a 4.23 ERA with 5.5 K/9 against 2.9 BB/9. Holmberg was more of a fly-ball pitcher for most of his time in the mid and upper levels of the minors, but he’s recently begun to induce quite a few more grounders, notching a ground-ball rate just south of 49 percent over the past two seasons in Triple-A.

[Related: Colorado Rockies depth chart]

The Rockies are largely set on lefty relievers in the Majors, with Chris Rusin, Mike Dunn and Jake McGee all slotted into manager Bud Black’s bullpen. There’s no immediate opportunity in the big league rotation, either, where Jon Gray, German Marquez, Chad Bettis, Kyle Freeland and Tyler Anderson are starting as Jeff Hoffman mends his shoulder on the disabled list. But Holmberg could conceivably slot into either the rotation or bullpen for Triple-A Albuquerque as he hopes to earn another look at the big league level.

Angels Notes: Rotation, Ramirez, Kinsler

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The Angels were extremely active this offseason but did little to address their rotation outside of the acquisition of rapidly budding star Shohei Ohtani. Brilliant as Ohtani’s has been early in the season, the Halos find themselves with three starters on the disabled list (Matt Shoemaker, Andrew Heaney and JC Ramirez) and limited depth beyond what’s on the big league roster. Angels GM Billy Eppler spoke with Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times about the lack of depth moves to address his starting staff this winter. “Nine felt like a reasonable number,” said Eppler of his starting options. The Halos felt they had a greater need to deepen their infield mix and, accordingly, dedicated resources to the acquisitions of Zack Cozart and Ian Kinsler. Eppler notes that if it’s determined that they need to further add to the rotation, owner Arte Moreno is likely to support those needs. As Eppler points out, Moreno took on notable salary with just a month to go in the 2017 season, adding Justin Upton and Brandon Phillips in a pair of high-profile August trades.

More out of Anaheim…

  • Maria Guardado of MLB.com notes that the injury to Ramirez is particularly concerning. The right-hander landed on the DL over the weekend with tightness in his right forearm, which is ominous for any pitcher given that it can be a precursor to a diagnosis of UCL damage. But the 29-year-old Ramirez already missed the final six weeks of the 2017 season due to a slight tear in his UCL, which he and the team elected to treat with stem-cell therapy rather than surgery. Shaikin notes in his column that an announcement on Ramirez’s status is likely to be made today. Guardado adds that Shoemaker is undergoing additional tests today, so a more precise diagnosis on him could be known soon. In more positive news, manager Mike Scioscia expressed confidence that the team will get Heaney back in the near future (via Guardado’s column).
  • As for Kinsler, he tells ESPN’s Mark Schwarz that he’ll be activated from the disabled list for Tuesday’s game against the Rangers. A groin strain cost Kinsler the first 10 days of the regular season, prompting the Angels to shift would-be third baseman Zack Cozart from the hot corner to second base in his absence. Luis Valbuena has been lined up at third base with Cozart at second, but Kinsler’s return will give the Angels the defensive alignment they drew up this offseason.

MLB Weekend Roster Roundup: Arrieta, Knebel, Sabathia, Yelich

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ROSTER MOVES BY TEAM
(April 6th thru April 8th)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

 

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AMERICAN LEAGUE

  • CLEVELAND INDIANS | Depth Chart
    • Activated from 10-Day DL: OF Michael Brantley
      • Brantley played LF and batted 5th in his ’18 debut.
    • Optioned: OF Tyler Naquin (4/6)
    • Placed on 10-Day DL: OF Lonnie Chisenhall (strained calf)
    • Promoted: OF Tyler Naquin (4/8)
      • Naquin started in RF and batted 8th on Sunday.

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FUTURE EXPECTED MOVES

Pitching Notes: Lincecum, Musgrove, Wheeler

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A few pitching notes from around the majors…

  • Rangers right-hander Tim Lincecum’s ongoing blister issues forced him to postpone a bullpen session Sunday, according to TR Sullivan of MLB.com. Given that he didn’t pitch at all last season and then went without a contract until March 7, Lincecum was already behind schedule before the blister on his right middle finger cropped up last month. It’s now unclear whether he’ll be ready by the beginning of May, the Rangers’ target for him entering the season.
  • Pirates righty Joe Musgrove is eligible to come off the 10-day disabled list Monday, but that’s not going to happen, manager Clint Hurdle told Jerry Dipaola of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and other reporters Sunday. Musgrove, who’s dealing with a muscle strain in his right shoulder, will first need to make multiple rehab starts, per Hurdle. Right now, though, he’s in a “no-throw” period, the skipper revealed. Musgrove, 25, was arguably the headliner in the Pirates’ return for righty Gerrit Cole, whom they traded to the Astros over the winter. Cole’s thriving in Houston, yet the 7-2 Pirates have held their own without him thus far.
  • The Mets will recall righty Zack Wheeler for a start in Miami this upcoming Wednesday, Mike Puma of the New York Post was among those to report on Twitter. It’ll be the first time the ballyhooed quintet of Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom Steven Matz, Matt Harvey and Wheeler have taken consecutive turns through New York’s rotation, Anthony DiComo of MLB.com notes. Wheeler, whose career fell off track after undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2015, opened the year in the minors and tossed five innings of six-strikeout, one-run ball in his initial Triple-A start of 2018 on Friday. He’s likely to be a short-term fill-in for the Mets, who are awaiting the season debut of Jason Vargas. The southpaw underwent surgery on his right hand last month.

Rays Place Brad Miller On DL, Select Ryan Weber’s Contract

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The Rays have placed first baseman Brad Miller on the 10-day disabled list, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times tweets. The club selected the contract of right-hander Ryan Weber from Triple-A Durham in a corresponding move, thus giving it a full 40-man roster.

Miller suffered a groin injury while running the bases Sunday against the Red Sox, who overcame a 7-2 deficit in the eighth inning to post six runs and pull out an 8-7 win over the Rays. It was the most disappointing defeat yet in a slow start for Tampa Bay, which is a major league-worst 1-8 through the first week-plus of the season. Miller hasn’t exactly helped the Rays’ cause, having hit a so-so .222/.300/.370 (96 wRC+) through 30 plate appearances. However, that’s better production than Miller logged in 2017, a season in which he slashed .201/.327/.337 (83 wRC+) in 407 PAs. C.J. Cron stands out as the most logical replacement for Miller on the Rays’ 25-man roster.

Weber, a Tampa Bay native who signed a minor league pact with the Rays in the offseason, has thrown 68 1/3 innings (22 appearances, eight starts) since debuting with the Braves in 2015. The 27-year-old has registered a 5.00 ERA/4.47 FIP with 5.53 K/9, 1.45 BB/9 and a 55.7 percent groundball rate between Atlanta and Seattle. Weber has been far better at preventing runs at the Triple-A level (2.16 ERA, 5.1 K/9, 1.5 BB/9 in 167 innings), and he’ll hope for that type of success with the Rays, whose bullpen took a beating Sunday.

Eugenio Suarez Diagnosed With Fractured Thumb

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4:50pm: Suarez will go on the DL on Monday, per MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon, who expects the Reds to replace him with Pennington and Gosselin.

2:39pm: Reds third baseman Eugenio Suarez has suffered a fractured right thumb, C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic was among those to report. The injury occurred when Suarez took a pitch off the hand from the Pirates’ Jameson Taillon on Sunday.

It’s unclear how much time Suarez will miss, though he’s likely to head to the disabled list, thus depriving the Reds of one of their top players. The 26-year-old has gotten off to an excellent start this season, having batted .296/.424/.630 with a pair of home runs in 33 plate appearances, after landing an extension last month. The Reds guaranteed Suarez $66MM over seven years on the heels of a breakout 2017 in which he posted 4.0 fWAR and slashed .260/.367/.461 with 26 HRs in 632 trips to the plate.

The Reds replaced Suarez with veteran infielder Cliff Pennington on Sunday. He could continue to man third while Suarez is out, then, while Phil Gosselin represents another potential replacement on the club’s 25-man roster. Forty-man options in the minors include Alex Blandino and Shed Long, both of whom are with Triple-A Louisville. Infielder Nick Senzel, one of the best prospects in baseball, is also at the highest level of the minors in the Reds’ system. Senzel, 22, could be a candidate for a promotion, though he’s not on Cincinnati’s 40-man roster.

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