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Athletics Select Jason Alexander

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The Athletics announced that they have selected the contract of right-hander Jason Alexander. In corresponding moves, righty Joey Estes was optioned to Triple-A Las Vegas while left-hander Brady Basso was placed on the 60-day injured list.

Alexander, 32, is known for inspiring many George Costanza GIFs to be shared on social media but is also a baseball player. His major league track record is fairly limited. In 2022, he tossed 71 2/3 innings with the Brewers over 11 starts and seven relief appearances. He allowed 5.40 earned runs per nine, struck out 14.3% of batters faced, issued walks to 8.7% of opponents and got grounders on 50.2% of balls in play.

He hasn’t been in the big leagues since then. A shoulder injury hampered him throughout the first half of 2023. He started a rehab assignment in June but then the Brewers outrighted him off their roster in July. He had a 6.14 ERA in the minors that year and then elected free agency ahead of 2024. He signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox and logged 138 1/3 innings for their Triple-A club with a 4.42 ERA.

He also signed a minor league deal with the A’s ahead of this season. He tossed 9 2/3 innings over five spring appearances, allowing six earned runs. He then reported to Vegas and made one start, tossing 3 1/3 innings with one earned run allowed.

The A’s were in Denver over the weekend, which is always challenging for a pitching staff. Friday’s game went 11 innings with the A’s using five relievers. On Saturday, they used only three, but they all had pitched in Friday’s contest as well. Yesterday, Estes lasted only three innings, which led to Mitch Spence tossing 4 1/3 innings in relief. Overall, the relief group is fairly taxed and Spence is probably going to be unavailable for a few days, so Alexander is up to give them another arm capable of eating multiple innings.

Estes, meanwhile, will look for a reset in Vegas. He posted a 5.01 ERA last year and earned a rotation job out of camp this year. However, his first two starts have led to 12 earned runs allowed in seven innings, so he’s currently sitting on a bloated 15.43 ERA. His optional assignment opens a rotation hole but they may not need to fill it right away. The A’s have an off-day on Thursday and then another on Monday. They then play six in a row before another off-day on the 21st.

After that, they will play 16 straight games, but they can perhaps skate by with a four-man staff for now. It’s also possible that Spence could be given the gig, since he was kept in the majors while Estes was sent down.

As for Basso, he was shut down in early March due to a shoulder strain and started the season on the 15-day IL. His status is unclear but it seems the A’s don’t expect him back before late May, based on this transfer.

Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images

Astros Select Logan VanWey

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April 7: Per Matt Kawahara of The Houston Chronicle, the moves are now official. Garcia was transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot for VanWey.

April 6: The Astros are promoting right-hander Logan VanWey to the majors, according to a report from Ari Alexander of KPRC2. VanWey’s contract will be selected from the minor leagues and he’ll join the team during their coming trip to Seattle, which begins with a game tomorrow evening. The righty’s first appearance for the Astros will be his big league debut. Alexander reports that right-hander Luis Contreras will be optioned to the minors to make room for VanWey on the active roster. The club will need to make a 40-man roster move to accommodate the addition of VanWey, although this could be easily accomplished by transferring right-hander Luis Garcia to the 60-day injured list.

VanWey, 26, went undrafted out of college and was signed by the Astros out of the Pioneer League, where he made nine starts with the Glacier Range Riders. After being signed by Houston in 2022, VanWey threw eight scoreless innings for the club’s Florida Complex League team but didn’t make his full-season debut until 2023. The right-hander was initially assigned to the High-A level to open the season, but his 3.71 ERA in 17 innings of work combined with a 25.6% strikeout rate was enough to get him a promotion to Double-A. VanWey did even better at the new level, with a 3.00 ERA in 30 innings of work with an amazing 32.5% strikeout rate, though it did come with an elevated 13.2% walk rate.

Nonetheless, VanWey made it to the Triple-A level during his first full season in affiliated ball. While he was torched for three runs in just 1 1/3 innings of work during that first stint with the Astros’ Sugar Land affiliate, he posted far better numbers in a full season at the level last year. In all, VanWey worked 72 2/3 innings across 60 appearances in 2024 with a 3.22 ERA, a 31.5% strikeout rate, and a 12.9% walk rate. While that wildness still stood out as a potential concern, the right-hander’s overall numbers were made all the more impressive by the fact that he was pitching in the inflated offensive environment of the Pacific Coast League; just three pitchers with at least 40 innings of work at the level posted a lower ERA than VanWey for the Space Cowboys last year.

That strong performance earned VanWey the chance to compete for a job in the Astros’ bullpen this spring. He did quite well for himself, with a 1.32 ERA in 13 2/3 frames. His 26.8% strikeout rate was below his usual expectations, but a solid 8.9% walk rate more than made up for that. Even so, VanWey was left off of the club’s Opening Day roster and reported to Triple-A to open the year, where he’s struck out a third of his opponents across four outings. His latest stint in the minors appears to be over for the time being, however, as VanWey will now reportedly head to Seattle to join the big league Astros. Going from an undrafted free agent pitching in indy ball to the majors in just three years is an accomplishment by itself, but now the 26-year-old will be tasked with getting big league hitters out and contributing to an Astros bullpen that has little certainty outside of its dynamic late-inning duo of Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader.

As for Contreras, the 28-year-old righty made his big league debut last year with a brief cup of coffee that lasted just six innings. This year, he’s surrendered two runs in three innings of work but struck out an excellent 46.2% of his opponents in his limited time in the majors since the start of the season. He sports a career 3.65 ERA in 101 frames at Triple-A and will likely be an up-and-down reliever riding the shuttle between the majors and Triple-A for the Astros throughout the year given his high-octane stuff and ability to be optioned to the minors.

Pirates Promote Tsung-Che Cheng

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3:45pm: The Pirates have now made these moves official. Triolo’s injury was described as a lumbar spine strain.

1:25pm: The Pirates are going to promote infielder Tsung-Che Cheng to the majors, reports Alex Stumpf of MLB.com. He is already on the 40-man roster but will be making his major league debut as soon as he gets into a game. Fellow infielder Jared Triolo will head to the 10-day injured list due to a lower back injury.

Cheng, 23, was an international signing out of Taiwan in 2019. His profile has a solid foundation from his speed and defense. Offensively, his approach has been leaned more to the contact-oriented side without too much power. Baseball America currently ranks him as the #19 prospect in the Pirates’ system.

He has appeared in 402 minor league games across various levels thus far in his career, with 1,684 trips to the plate. His 12.5% walk rate and 19.8% strikeout rate are both better than average, with 34 home runs in that time. Overall, he has hit .260/.359/.411 for a 117 wRC+. He has racked up double-digits steals in each year of his career. Lately, Cheng hit .353/.400/.647 in spring training but then .071/.133/.071 in five games for Triple-A Indianapolis.

Defensively, Cheng has primarily played shortstop but has also taken notable playing time at second base and occasional stints at third. He seems likely to take over Triolo’s utility role. The Bucs have had Isiah Kiner-Falefa at short, Ke’Bryan Hayes at third and Adam Frazier at second on most days but with players like Triolo, Enmanuel Valdéz and Endy Rodríguez also factoring into the infield mix. Triolo was a late scratch from yesterday’s contest due to back soreness and will now get a chance to heal up while Cheng helps fill in the gap.

Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images

Poll: Automated Ball-Strike System In MLB

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After years of fans and people around the game alike advocating for it, the automated ball-strike system was implemented in big league Spring Training this year. That was widely believed to portend its arrival in the majors, which MLB commissioner Rob Manfred all but confirmed in an interview published yesterday where he suggested that the system could be in regular season games as soon as the 2026 season, pending approval from the MLBPA. With that being said, Manfred suggested that the details of how ABS is implemented into the majors could wind up being collectively bargained. If that’s the case, its implementation could be delayed until after the upcoming CBA negotiations following the 2026 season.

During Spring Training, a challenge system was used not unlike the one already utilized in the majors for instant replay on the bases. Each team started the game with two challenges available to them, and would retain their challenge after using it successfully or lose it after using it incorrectly. As noted by Ronald Blum of the Associated Press just before Opening Day, teams challenged 2.6% of called pitches during the spring with just over four challenges per game and a success rate of 52.2% overall. If those numbers were to hold, that would mean the ABS challenge system overturns just two ball-strike calls in the average regular season game.

While official reports on the accuracy of ball-strike calls from MLB umpires are not available, a report published by Boston University’s Mark T. Williams that looked at the issue back in 2019 using data from the 2018 campaign suggested that MLB umpires made 14 incorrect ball-strike calls per game that year. If that figure holds true into today, that would mean that the challenge system overturns less than 15% of incorrect ball-strike calls made. What’s more, Williams’s report suggests that umpires tend to make more mistakes in certain situations, such as calling true balls as strikes in two-strike counts. Despite that, there’s nothing in Blum’s data to suggest that more calls got overturned in those sorts of key situations than usual. While teams challenged 6.9% of full count calls, just 44% of those challenges were correct.

Given the relative lack of impact felt by the presence of the challenge system this spring, it’s easy to wonder if perhaps using a fully automated system that entirely removes umpire discretion from the equation would be preferable. It’s hard to dispute that it would lead to more accurately called games, which could have a far more significant impact on outcomes than the challenge system had during Spring Training. Manfred suggested in yesterday’s interview that umpires themselves would actually prefer a fully automated system to the challenge system currently being used, perhaps because it would avoid putting a spotlight on their mistakes.

On the other hand, it’s open for debate whether or not taking ABS to that level would be truly preferable. Incorrect calls aren’t necessarily innately bad; after all, fans, players, managers, and umpires have worked with a somewhat nebulous definition of the strike zone since the advent of baseball itself. What any individual thinks of as the strike zone is unlikely to be perfectly identical to the zone used in ABS, and that’s supported by the fact that nearly half of challenges made to umpire calls wound up being incorrect. That suggests players aren’t always more in tune with what the true strike zone looks like than umpires are, and a move to fully automated ball-strike calls could be a jarring adjustment for both pitchers and hitters as they adapt to a more accurate but wildly unfamiliar strike zone.

That could be part of why the players, according to Manfred, prefer a challenge system to fully automated ball-strike calls. Another factor in the players’ preference for a challenge system could be how full ABS would change the catcher position. Pitch framing has long been a key aspect of catcher defense behind the plate, and it’s become even more focused upon over the past decade. Players with elite framing skills like Jeff Mathis and Austin Hedges have managed to make careers out of their ability to steal strikes for their pitchers over the years, but a fully automated strike zone cannot be influenced by pitch framing.

A challenge system, meanwhile, still allows them to use their framing prowess to convince umpires (as well as a hitter considering a challenge) that a true ball was a strike. It even adds another level of intrigue to the catcher position, as Blum notes that catchers had the highest success rate when challenging ball-strike calls this spring. Catchers successfully overturned 56% of challenged ball-strike calls, compared to exactly 50% for hitters and just 41% for pitchers. Given the wide disparity between catchers and pitchers in terms of success rate at challenge ball-strike calls, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see most clubs have their catchers handle the majority of ball-strike calls when on defense under a challenge system.

How do MLBTR readers think the implementation of ABS should be handled? Should the league stick with the challenge system used in Spring Training despite its relatively low impact, or go to a fully-automated system despite potential player objections? Or perhaps you believe that ABS shouldn’t be used in the majors at all? Have your say in the poll below:

Red Sox Select Robert Stock

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The Red Sox announced that they have selected the contract of right-hander Robert Stock. Fellow righty Cooper Criswell was optioned to Triple-A Worcester to open an active roster spot. The Sox had a 40-man vacancy after trading Quinn Priester to the Brewers earlier today.

If Stock gets into a game, it will be his first big league appearance in years. He pitched in the bigs from 2018 to 2021 but has been away from the show since then. During that previous stretch in the majors, he pitched for the Padres, Red Sox, Cubs and Mets. He tossed 72 2/3 innings, allowing 4.71 earned runs per nine. He struck out 23.1% of batters faced, gave out walks to 12.2% of opponents and got grounders on 49.8% of balls in play.

He has continued playing baseball since then, travelling the globe in the process. In 2022, he made 29 starts for the Doosan Bears in the KBO League in Korea, posting a 3.60 ERA. He was back in North America in 2023, having signed a minor league deal with the Brewers. But he got lit up in 23 innings, posting an 8.22 ERA, before getting released and landing in Indy Ball.

He pitched for Tecos de los Dos Laredos of the Mexican League last year, putting up a 3.38 ERA in 98 2/3 innings over 19 starts. He hung around in Mexico for winter ball, playing for Naranjeros de Hermosillo. He tossed 84 1/3 innings in 14 starts for that club with a 1.60 ERA, prompting the Red Sox to sign him to a minor league deal in January. He logged three spring innings for the Sox, allowing four earned runs. He then reported to Triple-A Worcester, tossing 8 1/3 scoreless innings over one start and one long relief appearance.

For the Sox, Saturday’s game against the Cardinals was postponed by the weather, forcing a Sunday doubleheader. The Sox won both games yesterday but one of them went to ten innings. They used nine pitchers on the day overall. Criswell threw the final three innings of the nightcap and likely wouldn’t have been available for the next few days.

With the group fairly taxed, Stock has been added to give the bullpen an extra guy capable of throwing multiple innings. If another fresh arm is needed in the coming days, Stock is out of options. That means he would have to be bumped off the 40-man in order to be removed from the active roster.

Photo courtesy of Rick Cinclair, Imagn Images.

Sam Menzin Resigns As Tigers’ Assistant GM Amid Lewd Photo Allegations

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April 7: Per a report from Britt Ghiroli and Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic, Menzin was under investigation for sending photos of his genitals to female staffers and was about to be fired before he resigned.

April 5: Tigers assistant general manager Sam Menzin resigned his position on Thursday, according to The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen.  Menzin had been working in this role since August 2021, and he briefly served as the club’s acting front office boss during the roughly six-week period between the firing of former GM Al Avila and Scott Harris’ hiring as the new president of baseball operations.

Though Menzin is only in his mid-30s, he had been one of the Tigers’ longest-tenured front office employees, as he started as a front office intern back in 2012.  He worked his way up the ladder in a variety of different roles, with a focus on the player development department.  Chris McCosky of the Detroit News notes that one of Menzin’s recent responsibilities included overseeing some upgrades to the Tigers’ Spring Training facility.

The timing of the resignation (just a week into the season) is a little unusual, and no reason was given for Menzin’s departure.  Speculatively speaking, it could be that Menzin simply felt it was time for a fresh start, if there was perhaps little room for immediate future advancement within Detroit’s front office.  Harris doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, and Jeff Greenberg was hired after the 2023 season in the GM role as Harris’ chief lieutenant in baseball ops.  Menzin was one of four assistant GMs in the front office, along with Ryan Garko, Rob Metzler, and Jay Sartori.

Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast

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On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.

The 2025 season is now in swing, which means it’s time to wildly overreact to small sample sizes. If you have a question about the season, a look ahead to the deadline or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.

Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.

In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

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

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Cardinals Place Ivan Herrera On Injured List, Select Yohel Pozo

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April 7: The Cardinals made these moves official today. To open the necessary 40-man spot, left-hander Zack Thompson was transferred to the 60-day IL. He was shut down in early March due to a tear in his left lat muscle. He is now ineligible to be reinstated until 60 days from Opening Day, which would be late May.

April 6: The Cardinals are planning to place catcher Ivan Herrera on the injured list due to left knee inflammation tomorrow, as club manager Oli Marmol told ESPN’s Buster Olney on this evening’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. Marmol added that initial test results came back clean on Herrera’s knee and that it remains structurally sound despite the impending IL placement. As relayed by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Cardinals will select the contract of catcher Yohel Pozo to pair with Pedro Pages behind the plate while Herrera is on the shelf. A 40-man roster spot will need to be vacated to accommodate Pozo.

As noted by Goold earlier today, Herrera’s injury occurred during Game 1 of a double-header between the Red Sox and Cardinals this afternoon and required Herrera to be helped off the field after he felt discomfort when running from first to third on a single. Herrera appeared to be doing better later in the day, as John Denton of MLB.com notes that the backstop was moving around the clubhouse without pain during the layoff between today’s two games against Boston. Even so, it’s hardly a surprise that Herrera is headed for the injured list given physical toll that catching takes on a player’s knees. With Herrera suffering from knee inflammation, that could mean a fairly significant absence even with imaging having revealed no structural damage.

It’s a substantial loss for the Cardinals. Herrera has enjoyed a scorching start to the year, hitting .400/.455/1.100 in his first 22 plate appearances this year with four home runs, three of which came during a single game against the Angels earlier this week. That’s obviously a small sample size, but even Herrera’s career slash line in the majors entering play today sat at an impressive .296/.371/.444, good for a wRC+ of 130 across 102 games. That’s a strong mark for any hitter, but it’s nothing short of phenomenal from the catcher position and would make Herrera one of the best offensive backstops in the sport if maintained over the full 2025 campaign.

Any hope of that will have to be put on hold for now, however, as Herrera is ticketed for the injured list for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, it appears that Pages will step in as the club’s regular catcher. Pages has gotten off to a solid start this year in his own right, going 4-for-10 with a double and a homer against just one strikeout in five games. The 26-year-old is generally not regarded as offering the same offensive ceiling as Herrera, however, and hit just .238/.281/.376 in 68 games for the Cardinals last year. With that being said, he’s a solid defensive catcher who can offer consistently passable offense behind the plate and should have little trouble holding things down while Herrera is away.

Perhaps more interesting than Pages’s turn as the starting catcher is the club’s plans for the backup catcher spot on the club. Veteran Willson Contreras spent the entirety of his big league career as a catcher until this offseason, when the Cardinals moved him to first base. Though generally regarded as an average-to-below-average defensive option behind the plate, Contreras has generally been serviceable as a bat-first catcher throughout his career. That made it something of a shock that the club is not only opting to call up Pozo to serve as Pages’s backup, but that the club didn’t even use Contreras behind the plate during today’s double-header, instead having Pages catch nearly two full games. That suggests that Contreras won’t even be used behind the plate on an emergency basis, even though a lineup with him behind the plate and Alec Burleson or Luken Baker at first base would surely be more offensively robust than one featuring either Pages or Pozo.

Regardless, with Contreras locked in at first base it seems that backup catching duties will go to Pozo for the time being. The 27-year-old made his big league debut with the Rangers back in 2021 but hasn’t appeared in the majors since. He got into 21 games with Texas that year, hitting a decent .284/.312/.378 in 77 plate appearances along the way. In the years since then, Pozo has been serving as a depth option for the Rangers, Athletics, and now Cardinals at the Triple-A level and has done nothing but rake while doing so. In 329 games across five seasons at the Triple-A level, Pozo has slashed a strong .321/.343/545. While he can’t be reasonably expected to post anything close to that in the majors, his strong work at the highest level of the minors does suggest he may be able to offer some pop in his bat, making him a solid partner for Pages behind the plate while Herrera is out.

Fantasy Baseball Subscriber Chat With Nicklaus Gaut

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Nicklaus Gaut will be talking fantasy baseball with Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers today at 11am central time.  Get your question in early or participate in the live event at the link below!

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