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MLB Mailbag: Grisham, Elly De La Cruz, Brewers, Bregman

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This week's mailbag gets into a qualifying offer for Trent Grisham, the likelihood of the Reds signing Elly De La Cruz long-term, preseason projections consistently whiffing on the Brewers, how a lockout might affect free agency in 2026-27, what it might take to extend Alex Bregman, and much more.

Dmitry asks:

I keep seeing that the Yankees wont re-sign Trent Grisham. What is the downside to a QO? is 22 million for a 3 win CF in his prime on a one year deal really that bad?

Grisham, 29 in November, is on pace for a 2.8 WAR season in about 139 games.  He's missed some time on the paternity list and a few games due to a hamstring issue.

Grisham was widely seen as a non-tender candidate in the offseason, but instead accepted a $500K pay cut to land at $5MM on a pre-tender deal.  He had an 87 wRC+ from 2022-24 over 1,288 plate appearances.  Despite avoiding the IL in 2024, Grisham played in only 76 games for the Yankees, who had an outfield of Alex Verdugo, Aaron Judge, and Juan Soto.

Prior to this year, Grisham was more of a sub-2-WAR backup outfielder or bottom of the order regular who was not considered worthy of a $6MM salary.

The main wart on Grisham's season is that he's only hit like this (126 wRC+) once before, in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.  But Grisham has a career-low strikeout rate with career-best power, plus good Statcast metrics. Though he owes some of his success to a huge April, he's still managed a 113 wRC+ since.  The Yankees sat Grisham a fair bit against lefties last year, but not this year, and he's been tolerable against them.

Once one of the faster players in baseball, Grisham lost several steps in 2023 and now sits in the 33rd percentile for sprint speed.  That might partially explain why the two-time Gold Glover has a negative Outs Above Average mark for the first time in his career.  Defensive runs saved shows a similar story.

When it hasn't been Grisham in center field for the Yankees this year, it's been Cody Bellinger.  Bellinger figures to take a $5MM buyout over his final $25MM salary for 2026, meaning both outfielders will be free agents.  Assuming the Yankees don't want to give Harrison Bader another try, their main free agent alternative would be Cedric Mullins.  The trade market could feature Luis Robert Jr. and little else at center.

Internally, Spencer Jones would be the main option if both Bellinger and Grisham depart.  Jones, 25 in May, has torched both Double-A and Triple-A pitching this year, dropping his strikeout rate from 33.7% to 26.0% at the higher level.

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Cubs To Place Miguel Amaya On Injured List With Sprained Ankle

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Cubs catcher Miguel Amaya had to be carted off the field during tonight’s matchup with the Blue Jays. He hurt his left ankle running to first base in the eighth inning. After the game, manager Craig Counsell told reporters (including Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times) that Amaya’s X-rays thankfully came back negative for a broken bone, but the backstop still sprained his ankle and will require a trip to the IL. While he has avoided the worst, this is nonetheless a tough blow for Amaya, who was playing in his first game back after suffering an oblique strain in May.

Chicago’s decision to keep Reese McGuire on the roster after reinstating Amaya now seems almost eerily prescient. The Cubs signed the veteran backup catcher to a minor league deal in the offseason and selected his contract when Amaya first went on the IL in May. One might have expected they would designate McGuire for assignment went Amaya returned, but instead, it was utility man Jon Berti who lost his roster spot.

Now the Cubs can simply go back to the catching setup they had been using for the past few months, a setup that was working perfectly well. Carson Kelly will remain the primary catcher with McGuire as his backup. Kelly has cooled down after a red-hot start, but he’s still hitting perfectly well for his position, as is McGuire. The two combined for a .723 OPS and 103 wRC+ during Amaya’s first IL stint, and they’ve both played strong defense behind the plate as well.

None of this is to say the Cubs won’t miss Amaya. The 26-year-old produced an .819 OPS and 126 wRC+ in 27 games prior to his oblique injury. He has a .797 OPS and 122 wRC+ in 83 games dating back to last July. A high BABIP and a low xwOBA suggest that degree of success is unsustainable, and the jury is still out on his defense, but that’s just the thing: Amaya is four years younger than Kelly or McGuire, with a lot less experience under his belt. He still has room to grow, and the Cubs want to figure out what kind of role he can play for their club over the next several years. It’s a lot harder to do that when he’s stuck on the shelf.

The Cubs have not yet addressed Amaya’s timeline, but it is certainly possible, and probably quite likely, that he’ll be back before the end of the year. Once rosters expand from 26 to 28 in September, it will be easier for the team to roster all three of Kelly, McGuire, and Amaya, should McGuire still be playing well if/when Amaya is ready to return.

Diamondbacks Release Kendall Graveman

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The Diamondbacks have released right-hander Kendall Graveman, according to his transactions log on MLB.com. He was designated for assignment on Monday.

Graveman, now 34, began his MLB career with a cup of coffee in Toronto in 2014 before the Blue Jays shipped him off to Oakland in the Josh Donaldson trade. He then spent the next four seasons putting up serviceable numbers as a back-end starter, until Tommy John surgery in 2018 led the A’s to non-tender him.

After a lost 2019 season and another injury-marred campaign in 2020, Graveman turned heads in his first full season as a reliever in 2021. Across 56 innings for the Mariners and Astros (Seattle dealt him to Houston before the deadline), he put up a 1.77 ERA and 3.30 SIERA, striking out 27.5% of batters and inducing groundballs at a highly impressive 54.9% rate. Of course, groundballs had always been his speciality, and it was the strikeouts that really showed he had tapped into something new.

Graveman signed a three-year, $24MM guarantee with the White Sox the subsequent offseason, and he avoided the injured list entirely over the first two years of the deal. In fact, his 133 appearances and 131 1/3 innings for Chicago and later Houston (he was traded again ahead of the 2023 deadline) both ranked 10th among AL relievers in that span. He pitched to a 3.15 ERA and 4.01 SIERA.

Unfortunately, the injury bug came back to haunt him in 2024, and Graveman missed the entire season after undergoing shoulder surgery. He inked a one-year, $1.35MM deal with the D-backs this past winter, though the value of the pact could more than double with performance bonuses. Yet, once again, Graveman opened the season on the injured list, this time with a back strain. He made his return in May, but over 19 games and 17 2/3 (interrupted in the middle with a hip impingement), the righty gave up 14 runs on 23 hits and 12 walks, striking out only nine. His velocity was down significantly on his four-seam, sinker, and slider, but truth be told, no one needed a radar gun to tell his stuff just wasn’t the same.

Thus, the D-backs eventually cut ties with Graveman, although they’re still on the hook for the remainder of his guaranteed salary. Now a free agent, he can look for another team to try to help him rediscover what briefly made him such a successful bullpen arm.

Giants Sign JT Brubaker To Minor League Deal

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The Giants have signed JT Brubaker to a minor league contract, according to his transaction log on MLB.com. He will report to the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats. The Yankees released the right-hander last week.

Brubaker, now 31, made 61 starts for the Pirates from 2020-22, more than any other pitcher on the team. Interestingly, his numbers in that span were quite similar to those of another Pirates righty, Mitch Keller. Brubaker gave Pittsburgh 315 2/3 innings with a 4.99 ERA, a 4.04 SIERA, and 3.0 FanGraphs WAR, while Keller tossed 281 1/3 frames with a 4.64 ERA, 4.67 SIERA, and 3.0 fWAR of his own. Brubaker beat out Keller for the Opening Day start in 2022, although Keller slightly outearned him (by less than $200,000) the following winter in their first year of arbitration eligibility.

Unfortunately for Brubaker, their paths notably diverged after that. While Keller made the All-Star team in 2023 and turned that strong performance into a five-year, $77 million extension in the offseason, Brubaker lost his 2023 campaign to Tommy John surgery. The Pirates traded him to the Yankees the following winter, and an oblique strain he suffered whilst rehabbing from his Tommy John kept him from coming off the IL in 2024. Then, he fractured three ribs this past spring, forcing him back to the injured list, where he stayed until June.

Finally, on June 21, Brubaker returned to the major leagues for the first time in almost three years. He did a good job limiting hits, and therefore runs, pitching to a solid 3.38 ERA, but he also gave up nine walks and one hit-by-pitch to just 10 strikeouts. His 4.67 xERA and 5.32 SIERA suggested his sub-4.00 ERA was too good to be true. Evidently, that’s what the Yankees thought, too, when they decided to release him and eat the money remaining on his contract for 2025.

The Giants will now give him a chance in their minor league system, and they’ll only have to pay him a prorated portion of the league minimum salary for any time he might spend on the big league roster. While injuries have plagued him the last three seasons, he was a productive innings eater for three years before that. San Francisco could certainly use the pitching depth, so it would not be surprising to see him back in the majors before the 2025 season is up.

Cubs Release Jon Berti

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Today: The Cubs released Berti today, according to his transaction log on MLB.com. Presumably, the veteran infielder cleared waivers and, considering he has enough service time to reject an outright with forfeiting any salary, the club chose just to grant him his release instead. He is now a free agent.

August 12: The Cubs announced today that catcher Miguel Amaya and right-hander Javier Assad have both been reinstated from the 60-day injured list. In corresponding active roster moves, the Cubs have optioned right-hander Nate Pearson to Triple-A and designated infielder Jon Berti for assignment. The 40-man roster had one vacancy, with Berti’s DFA clearing another.

Berti, 35, signed with the Cubs in the offseason. He has long been a scrappy and versatile utility player in the bigs, playing almost every position on the diamond while stealing bases and often producing offense around league average.

The Cubs came into the year with some uncertainty at third base and they threw a few things at the wall there. They traded Isaac Paredes to the Astros as part of the Kyle Tucker deal, opening a path for prospect Matt Shaw to earn the job. Just in case Shaw didn’t hit the ground running, they had some backup plans. They acquired Vidal Bruján, took Gage Workman in the Rule 5 draft, in addition to signing Justin Turner and Berti.

Most of those moves didn’t work out well, including Berti. He has hit just .210/.262/.230 in his 107 plate appearances this year. He hung around the roster as Shaw and other guys struggled. Workman was jettisoned long ago. More recently, Shaw has started to click and the Cubs also added Willi Castro ahead of the deadline. That bumped out Bruján a couple of weeks back and now Berti loses his roster spot as well.

With the trade deadline having passed, the Cubs will have to put Berti on waivers. Given his struggles and his salary, he won’t be claimed. He has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency. It’s possible the Cubs skip that formality and simply release him.

At that point, any club could sign Berti and would only have to pay him the prorated portion of the $760K league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That amount would be subtracted from what the Cubs pay. It’s possible he garners interest at that point from a club looking to bolster its bench. Berti came into this year with 97 steals, a .259/.337/.366 line and 95 wRC+ while playing everywhere except catcher and first base.

Without Berti, the Cubs are going with a three-catcher setup. While Amaya has been on the IL, Carson Kelly has been the primary backstop, backed up by Reese McGuire. No one in that trio can be optioned to the minors, so the Cubs are keeping all three of them, at least for now.

Assad’s return seemingly shuffles the rotation a bit. Assad is listed as tonight’s probable starter. Ben Brown was previously in that spot, so it seems he will slide back into a long relief role. Assad posted a 3.73 earned run average over 29 starts for the Cubs last year. He hasn’t been able to build on that here in 2025, as he suffered an oblique strain during spring training and then re-aggravated that strain during the season. He’ll be making his season debut north of the border tonight as the Cubs are in Toronto to face the Blue Jays.

Photo courtesy of Gregory Fisher, Imagn Images

Red Sox Outright Nick Burdi

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Today: The Red Sox have sent Burdi outright to Triple-A Worcester, according to his MLB.com transaction tracker. Burdi can choose to reject the outright assignment and elect free agency instead, but it is not yet clear if he plans to do so.

August 11, 6:58PM: Burdi’s DFA and Moran’s selection were officially announced.  The Red Sox also added recently-claimed catcher Ali Sanchez to the active roster, and optioned infielder David Hamilton and left-hander Chris Murphy to Triple-A.

August 11, 11:20AM: The Red Sox have designated right-hander Nick Burdi for assignment, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com. In a corresponding move, Boston is set to select the contract of left-handed reliever Jovani Moran from Triple-A Worcester, Cotillo adds.

Burdi himself indirectly indicated on social media that a move had been made, tweeting: “Thank you Red Sox for letting me put on a big league uniform again. Will see what the next chapter brings!”

The 32-year-old Burdi pitched 5 1/3 shutout innings for the Sox earlier this season before heading to the injured list due to a foot injury that ultimately moved him to the 60-day IL. He was reinstated earlier this month but optioned to Worcester rather than added back to the active roster. Burdi has been excellent in Triple-A, logging a 1.88 ERA, 32.7% strikeout rate and 10.2% walk rate in 24 innings.

Despite that success both in limited MLB action and in the upper minors, he’ll now head to waivers within the next five days. That’s the only course of action for Boston now that the trade deadline has passed. Every other club will have the chance to claim Burdi, with waiver priority based on the reverse order of MLB-wide standings.

A former second-round pick (No. 46 overall by the Twins in 2014), Burdi was a standout closer at Louisville whose triple-digit heat made him a potential impact reliever in the majors. Injuries have repeatedly derailed his career, however. He’s had a pair of Tommy John surgeries and also undergone thoracic outlet surgery.

Burdi has made brief appearances in parts of six major league seasons but has only 30 1/3 MLB frames under his belt, during which he’s posted a 5.34 ERA. With so many injuries under his belt — plus the lost minor league season in 2020 — Burdi has only pitched 207 1/3 professional innings (majors/minors combined) since being drafted back in ’14. His fastball, which used to average better than 98 mph, is sitting 95.7 mph in Triple-A this season.

Burdi’s spot on the roster will go to another former Twin. Moran, 28, was acquired from Minnesota in the December swap that sent catcher/infielder Mickey Gasper to the Twin Cities. He missed the first two-plus months of the season while finishing off the rehab from Tommy John surgery but has pitched well since returning to the mound in June. Moran has pitched 18 1/3 Triple-A innings and delivered a solid 3.44 earned run average. More encouraging is a massive 35.1% strikeout rate against a tiny 4.1% walk rate.

Moran was excellent for the 2022 Twins, turning in a 2.21 ERA with a 32.9% strikeout rate in 40 2/3 innings — albeit with an ugly 11% walk rate. His numbers tanked in 2023, however, as Moran posted an ERA north of 5.00 and walked nearly 15% of his opponents in a nearly identical sample of innings before undergoing Tommy John surgery after the season.

At his best, Moran has regularly missed bats at high levels but also issued walks too frequently. He’s primarily a two-pitch reliever who sits 93-94 mph with his four-seamer and couples it with a changeup he throws nearly as often as the heater. If the Sox can get Moran back on track, he’d be controllable for another five seasons, though there’s a ways to go before that’s any sort of real consideration. He has one minor league option year remaining, and that option hasn’t been used so far in 2025, as Moran hasn’t been on the 40-man roster yet. If he’s sent back down for 20 or more days at any point from here on, he’d be out of options next season.

Dodgers Place Brock Stewart On IL With Shoulder Inflammation.

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August 13: Roberts told reporters (including Harris) that tests did not find any structural damage in Stewart’s shoulder. Instead, the skipper described the injury as simply “wear and tear.” Stewart has received an injection and will be shut down for at least the next week. However, Roberts is hopeful the veteran will be back not long after, optimistically suggesting he could return in a few weeks’ time.

August 12: The Dodgers are placing reliever Brock Stewart on the injured list with shoulder inflammation, manager Dave Roberts told reporters (including Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic). He will be replaced on the active roster with Edgardo Henriquez (per Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times). Ardaya reported earlier today that Henriquez had joined the team in Anaheim.

Roberts said Stewart first felt the soreness in his shoulder four days ago (per Harris), which would mean before his outing against the Blue Jays on Saturday. Nevertheless, the skipper suggested the team caught the injury quickly (per ESPN’s Alden González). While the Dodgers have decided that Stewart’s injury necessitates a stint on the IL, the severity of the strain – and therefore his timeline to return – is not yet clear. He will go for further testing tomorrow.

Stewart, now 33, began his career with the Dodgers. They selected him in the 2014 draft, and he struggled his way through parts of four seasons with the big league club from 2016-19. In 36 games (11 starts), the right-hander produced a 5.46 ERA and a 4.93 SIERA. His strikeout rate was low, his walk rate was high, and he gave up 17 home runs in 84 innings pitched, resulting in a 5.70 FIP that was even higher than his ERA. His FanGraphs WAR and Win Probability Added were negative all four years.

After a brief stint with the Blue Jays to close out the 2019 campaign, Stewart did not pitch in the majors for the next three seasons. He spent time in the Cubs and Dodgers organizations in 2020 and ’21, but he did not appear in a game at even the minor league level, due to the cancelled minor league season in 2020 and Tommy John surgery in 2021.

Stewart signed a minor league deal with the Twins in 2022, and the following year, he finally enjoyed his breakout season. Then 31, he pitched 27 2/3 innings in 2023, giving up just two earned runs. Walks continued to be somewhat of an issue, but he struck out 39 of the 109 hitters he faced and gave up only 19 hits (.196 BAA). Unfortunately, elbow troubles popped up again halfway through the year, and he spent most of the final three months of the season on the IL. The year after that, it was shoulder injuries (and eventually surgery) that limited him to just 15 2/3 innings. He posted a bloated 5.17 ERA in that small sample, but his stuff still looked good, and his SIERA was a much more impressive 3.47.

His 2025 season started with yet another injury, but at least it was a hamstring strain rather than an arm issue. It proved to be mild, and Stewart was back on the mound in mid-April. From then on through the trade deadline, he was enjoying the most prolific season of his career. He set a new career high in appearances before the All-Star break, and he was one out shy of surpassing his previous career high in innings when the Twins flipped him to the Dodgers for James Outman on deadline day. While he didn’t look quite as sharp for L.A., perhaps related to his injury, he still entered today ranked among the league’s top 50 relievers (min. 35 IP) in ERA (2.63) and SIERA (3.22). His 27.7% strikeout rate was slightly down from where it was in 2023 and ’24, but his groundball rate was up (37.1%), and, more importantly, his walk rate was all the way down to 8.2%. In other words, the Dodgers will certainly miss his veteran presence on their already injury-plagued pitching staff. He joins fellow relievers Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates, Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech, Michael Grove, and Brusdar Graterol on the IL.

It is perhaps surprising that the Dodgers chose to make a pitcher with such a checkered injury history their primary deadline pickup for the bullpen. Then again, as evidenced by the sheer number of their pitchers who have hit the IL, the Dodgers clearly don’t shy away from injury-prone arms. What’s more, the Dodgers took time to review Stewart’s medicals before finalizing the trade (per Austin Green of The Athletic). That’s standard practice, but Green’s report seems to imply that this was at least a slightly more thorough review than usual.

Regardless, the Dodgers’ surprisingly quiet trade deadline now looks even more disappointing in hindsight. Yet, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman claims he doesn’t regret his approach. “We don’t live like that,” he told reporters, including Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “There’s deals that we thought made sense for us we pursued hard. It’s not like we had the potential to do a deal where we were like, ‘No’ and now we wish we would have.”

Should Trevor Story Trigger His Opt-Out?

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Shortstop Trevor Story can opt out of his deal with the Red Sox after this season. For much of his Boston tenure, that opt-out has been an afterthought. Lately, he has been on fire and made it seem like a legitimate possibility once again.

Rob Bradford of the Baseball Isn't Boring podcast asked Story about his upcoming decision. Story spoke of his love of playing in Boston, which sort of points against him opting out, but he also acknowledged that there's a "business side of it" as well.

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Angels Outright Scott Kingery

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The Angels announced that infielder Scott Kingery has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Salt Lake. He had been designated for assignment earlier this week when righty Shaun Anderson was selected to the roster.

Kingery has the right to reject this assignment but likely won’t. Players with at least three years of major league service time have the right to reject outright assignments in favor of electing free agency. However, they need five years of service to do so while keep their remaining salary commitments intact. Kingery is in that three-to-five window. He and the Angels avoided arbitration in the offseason by agreeing to a $770K salary. There’s a little under $200K still to be paid out, so he would have to walk away from that money to hit the open market.

Once a notable prospect with the Phillies, he signed a $24MM extension with them back in 2018. At the time, that was a record for a player who had not yet made his major league debut. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to give the Phils the return they were expecting. He hit just .229/.280/.387 in 1,127 plate appearances for the Phillies. He was often passed through waivers as that extension ran its course, with no other club wanting to take it on.

That deal was done when the Angels brought him aboard and gave him a 40-man spot to prevent him from reaching minor league free agency. They agreed to the aforementioned arbitration salary and then passed him through waivers prior to Opening Day. Due to the aforementioned conditions, Kingery accepted an outright assignment in March, sticking around as a non-roster depth player who could slot in at multiple defensive positions.

He was added back to the 40-man in May but has largely been on optional assignment. He got into 14 games for the Halos and took 27 plate appearances. He produced a .160/.222/.200 batting line in those and now has a .228/.279/.382 line for his career. In Triple-A this year, he has a .256/.317/.424 line. In the hitter-friendly environment of the Pacific Coast League, that translates to a 78 wRC+, indicating he’s been about 22% below league average.

Assuming he accepts this assignment and rejoins the Bees, he’ll look to play his way back to the majors. If not added back to the 40-man by season’s end, he’ll be able to elect minor league free agency, as is the case for all players with at least three years of service who are removed from a 40-man during a season.

Photo courtesy of David Richard, Imagn Images

Orioles Outright Houston Roth

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The Orioles announced that right-hander Houston Roth has cleared outright waivers and been assigned to Triple-A Norfolk. He had been designated for assignment earlier this week when the O’s claimed Daniel Johnson and selected right-hander José Espada.

Roth, 27, was selected to Baltimore’s roster on July 29th. As part of their deadline selloff, the O’s had already sent out Gregory Soto and Seranthony Domínguez at that time. Andrew Kittredge was also traded a couple of days later.

That allowed Roth to stick on the big league roster for a few days but he was optioned back to the minors before getting into a game. A week after being optioned, he was bumped off the 40-man and no club grabbed him off waivers. This is his first outright and he has less than three years of service time, so he doesn’t have the right to reject the assignment.

In his minor league career, he has often been able to get strikeouts but has also given out walks at a notable pace. This year, he has thrown 39 innings between Double-A and Triple-A with 2.08 earned run average, 26.1% strikeout rate and 11.8% walk rate.

Photo courtesy of Mitch Stringer, Imagn Images

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