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Pirates Designate Miguel Andujar For Assignment

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The Pirates announced that they have activated left-hander Rob Zastryzny from the injured list, with outfielder Miguel Andujar designated for assignment in a corresponding move.

Andujar, 28, was selected to the club’s roster three weeks ago but has hit just .161/.212/.387 in his 33 plate appearances since then. He had earned that call-up with a .284/.364/.500 showing in Triple-A but wasn’t able to bring any of that production up to the big leagues with him.

It’s yet another unfortunate development in Andujar’s career, one that seemed so promising a few years ago. He hit .297/.328/.527 for the Yankees in 2018, finishing second to Shohei Ohtani in Rookie of the Year voting. Unfortunately, he required season-ending shoulder surgery after just 12 games in 2019 and hasn’t seemed the same since. Once he returned to health in 2020, the Yankees had filled his third base position with players like DJ LeMahieu and Gio Urshela, which squeezed him out of regular playing time. Over the past few years, he’s continued to hit well in Triple-A but struggled whenever given another shot at the majors. Going back to the start of 2020, he’s hit .291/.346/.508 in the minors but just .237/.268/.354 in the big leagues.

The Bucs will now have a week to either trade Andujar or pass him through waivers. He’s making a salary of $1.525MM this year, which could factor into how this plays out. While some teams might be intrigued by his past success and Triple-A numbers, they would have to be willing to take on that money. Andujar was passed through waivers in January without anyone putting in a claim. He would have had the right to reject an outright assignment at that time but would have had to forfeit that money and ultimately accepted, which could be the same script that is followed in the coming days.

MLB Trade Rumors Podcast: The Cardinals’ Contreras U-Turn, Mitch Keller’s Breakout, The Padres

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Episode 7 of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Simon Hampton is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss:

  • The Cardinals’ U-turn on having Willson Contreras catch (4:22)
  • Mitch Keller’s breakout season with the Pirates, and whether he can be their ace moving forward (10:32)
  • When can Reds fans expect to see Elly De La Cruz in the big leagues? (17:09)
  • Eduardo Rodriguez’ form for the Tigers, and whether Detroit can contend this season (20:56)
  • The Padres’ slow start to the season (25:34)

Check out our past episodes!

Pirates Discussing Contract Extension With Mitch Keller

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The Pirates and representatives for right-hander Mitch Keller have been in talks about a contract extension, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports.  There isn’t any sense whether or not the two sides are particularly close to an agreement, though Pirates owner Bob Nutting suggested last month that the club was looking to extend more core players now that Bryan Reynolds had completed his own long-term deal.

MLBTR’s Steve Adams cited Keller as a logical extension candidate at the time, and he further described Keller’s breakout over the last two seasons in a recent piece for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers.  Since cutting back on the usage of his four-seam fastball in 2021, Keller has blossomed, with Steve observing that “fast forward to 2023, and Keller’s pitch arsenal is even more diverse thanks to a revamped cutter.  He’s throwing his four-seamer, sinker and cutter all at a 21-24% clip, mixing in a sweeper and curve that he uses about equally…It’s a much different arsenal than in 2021, when Keller was throwing 57% four-seamers, 24% cutters, 14% curveballs and mixing in a show-me changeup.”

It wasn’t like Keller’s emergence came out of nowhere, as he was a second-round pick in the 2014 draft and a regular on top-50 prospect lists during his climb up Pittsburgh’s minor league ladder.  His first few shots at the majors didn’t go well, however, as Keller posted a 6.02 ERA over 170 1/3 innings from 2019-21.

After a promising step forward in 2022, Keller has now looked more like a front-of-the-rotation arm during his excellent start to the 2023 campaign.  Today’s outing against the Orioles was the latest example, as Keller allowed just four hits and no walks while recording 13 strikeouts over seven shutout innings.  This gem improved Keller’s ERA to 2.38 over 56 2/3 IP, and just about all of his Statcast numbers are well above the league average.

Keller just turned 27 last month, and he is earning $2,437,500 this season in his first of three arbitration-eligible years.  This means Keller will be entering his age-30 season when he enters free agency during the 2025-26 offseason, unless the Pirates lock him up beforehand on an extension.

Keller’s agents at Tidal Sports Group might logically point to Logan Webb’s recent five-year, $90MM extension with the Giants as a comp for a potential deal for their client.  Webb is seven months younger than Keller, but the two have comparable big league service times and somewhat similar resumes as pitchers who went through a rough beginning to their MLB careers before posting consecutive quality seasons.

Of course, Webb had fully completed his second good year at the time of his extension while Keller only really started to pitch well midway through the 2022 campaign and his 2023 success does represent only nine starts.  That said, Keller’s price tag is only rising as he continues to post great results, so he could choose to bet on himself and wait until after the season to pursue an extension.

The fact that the perennially low-payroll Pirates are even engaged in long-term contract talks represents a turning point for the club, as while a brutal slump in May has curbed the enthusiasm of the team’s 20-9 start to the season, Pittsburgh still has a 22-19 record.  The Bucs have just one winning record in the previous seven seasons, as the team’s previous contending roster ran out of steam, and the club then engaged in a lengthy rebuilding process.

The early results have indicated that the Pirates’ rebuild may be wrapping up, and to that end, Nutting has authorized the two biggest contracts in franchise history.  While still smaller than the priciest contracts of most other teams around the majors, the Pirates signed Ke’Bryan Hayes to an eight-year, $70MM extension in April 2022, and then extended Reynolds with seven years and $100MM of new money last month.  The Pirates aren’t likely to ever become truly big spenders, yet locking up certain cornerstone talents is a proven method for smaller-market teams to gain some cost certainty over premium talent.

Pirates Outright Chase De Jong

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Pirates reliever Chase De Jong has cleared waivers and been sent outright to Triple-A Indianapolis, according to the transaction log at MLB.com. He’s gone unclaimed on waivers multiple times in his career, giving him the right to elect minor league free agency.

De Jong has spent parts of three seasons with Pittsburgh. He started nine games with middling results in 2021 but found more success upon moving to the bullpen last year. De Jong threw 71 2/3 innings over 42 appearances for the Bucs, compiling a 2.64 ERA. It was mostly low-leverage work and De Jong’s peripherals weren’t aligned with his strong run prevention.

The right-hander struck out a below-average 20.1% of batters faced while walking 10.2% of opponents. De Jong’s run prevention and ability to work multiple innings nevertheless secured his 40-man roster spot throughout the winter. The Bucs kept the out-of-options De Jong in their season-opening bullpen, but he lost his roster spot with a slow start. Through 9 1/3 frames, he’s allowed 11 runs on 13 hits and five walks. De Jong’s swinging strike rate fell from a serviceable 10.5% rate to a modest 5.2% clip.

De Jong will now decide whether to report to Indianapolis or scour the market for other opportunities. He’d likely be limited to minor league offers as a free agent but could look elsewhere for clearer paths back to the MLB roster and/or a potential opt-out date in a non-roster contract. De Jong has pitched parts of seven seasons in Triple-A, working to a 5.59 ERA with a 19.3% strikeout percentage over 211 innings.

Pirates, Ryan Borucki Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Pirates and left-hander Ryan Borucki have agreed to a minor league deal, per the team’s transactions log at MLB.com. Borucki elected free agency earlier in the week after the Cubs passed him through waivers unclaimed.

Borucki, 29, has logged big league time in each of the past five seasons — the vast majority coming as a member of the Blue Jays. He posted a 3.87 ERA in 17 starts as a rookie back in 2018 but has pitched almost exclusively out of the bullpen since, due in large part to elbow surgery that wiped out most of his 2019 season. Since returning, the left-hander has posted a 4.66 ERA in 65 2/3 big league innings, fanning 22.3% of his opponents against a 12% walk rate.

Borucki opened the 2023 season with the Cubs’ top affiliate in Iowa, where he was roughed up for a dozen runs on 13 hits and six walks with 11 strikeouts in nine innings. In need of a fresh arm for the bullpen, the Cubs selected Borucki’s contract in late April, but he was designated for assignment before even getting into a game.

It’s been a tough few years for Borucki, but even when struggling to a 5.68 ERA in 25 1/3 innings between Toronto and Seattle in 2022, the southpaw averaged 95.1 mph on his sinker and posted a strong 12% swinging-strike rate. He’s moved away from his changeup and begun to rely primarily on his sinker and slider over the past two seasons, which has helped him up his ground-ball rate to a hefty 54.3% in that time.

The Bucs currently have lefty relievers Jarlin Garcia and Rob Zastryzny on the injured list. Garcia, notably, is on the 60-day and does not have a timetable for his return. Rule 5 pick Jose Hernandez has been the only left-handed option in manager Derek Shelton’s bullpen for the past couple weeks. Borucki won’t immediately be added to the mix, but he gives the Pirates an experienced option to take a look at in Triple-A.

Pirates To Designate Chase De Jong For Assignment

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The Pirates are continuing to reshape the edges of their active roster, as they’re set to designate right-hander Chase De Jong for assignment and select the contract of outfielder Josh Palacios from Triple-A Indianapolis, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Twitter link).

De Jong, 29, had what looked to be a breakout 2022 showing with the Bucs after bouncing between the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Mariners, Twins and Astros organizations over the first 10 years of his big league career. Last year’s 71 2/3 frames were a career-high for the former second-round pick, and he turned in a sharp 2.64 ERA with a 20.1% strikeout rate against a 10.2% walk rate while working as a durable multi-inning reliever.

Things have gone awry quickly in 2023, however. De Jong has appeared in five games and been tattooed for 11 earned runs on 13 hits (three home runs), five walks and a hit batter while only fanning five of his 47 opponents (10.6%). His swinging-strike rate has plummeted from a respectable 10.5% in 2022 to 5.2% so far in 2023.

Promising as De Jong’s bottom-line results were in 2022, his pedestrian strikeout/walk rates and favorable BABIP (.222) and strand rate (86.3%) always made some level of regression seem likely. The extent to which they’ve snowballed was hardly a guarantee, but De Jong’s track record prior to last year’s excellent showing was rough; in 98 innings from 2017-21, he was tagged for a 6.52 ERA with similarly bearish marks from fielding-independent metrics. Overall, in 179 total innings at the MLB level, De Jong carries a 5.18 ERA, 17.6% strikeout rate, 10.2% walk rate, 30.7% ground-ball rate and 1.76 HR/9.

De Jong is out of minor league options, so the Pirates’ only course of action if they wanted to make a change was to designate him for assignment. They’ll have a week to trade De Jong or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. Even if he goes unclaimed, he’d have the option to reject the assignment by virtue of the fact that he’s been outrighted previously in his career.

Palacios, 27, is a former Blue Jays prospect who’s seen brief MLB time with Toronto (2021) and Washington (2022). He’s batted just .207/.267/.232 in a tiny sample of 91 Major League plate appearances but is a far more accomplished hitter in Triple-A, where he’s batted .305/.391/.462 in parts of three seasons. That includes a Herculean start to his 2023 season in Indianapolis, where he’s tallied 60 plate appearances and logged a ludicrous .434/.500/.774 slash line with four homers, four doubles, a triple and three stolen bases (in three attempts). Palacios has drawn six walks (10.6%) against just seven strikeouts (11.7%) and seen time in all three outfield spots.

Pirates To Recall Luis Ortiz

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Pitching prospect Luis Ortiz is with the Pirates and is expected to start Tuesday’s game, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He’s already on the 40-man roster but the club will need a corresponding move to get him onto the active roster. The club announced that he’s on the taxi squad today, meaning the move won’t be official until tomorrow.

The 24-year-old Ortiz wasn’t initially a highly-touted prospect, signing with the Pirates as an international amateur in 2018 for a modest bonus of just $25K. However, he’s vaulted himself onto the map with some strong work in recent years. He spent 2021 in Single-A, posting a 3.09 ERA in 87 1/3 innings that year. He struck out 30.1% of batters faced, walked just 7.4% and got grounders on 49.1% of balls in play.

Last year, Ortiz began the season at Double-A and tossed 114 1/3 innings with a 28.6% strikeout rate, 9.5% walk rate and 46.8% ground ball rate. He ran into some home run troubles, however, as 19 long balls inflated his ERA to 4.64 at that level. Nonetheless, he impressed enough to get bumped to Triple-A for a couple of starts and then got called to the majors, taking the ball four times at the end of last year with a 4.50 ERA. He flashed triple-digit velocity on his fastball and even got to 99 mph on his two-seamer while also throwing a slider and a changeup.

Based on that excellent year, he started to garner the attention of prospect evaluators. Baseball America ranked him the #74 prospect in baseball coming into this year and FanGraphs had him at #77. He was sent to Triple-A to begin this year and is doing very well so far with a 2.23 ERA through his first seven starts. His .214 batting average on balls in play and 82.2% strand rate suggest there’s a bit of good luck in there, but he’s getting grounders at a 54.1% clip while striking out 22.8% of opponents and walking 8.7%.

The Pirates have a need for another starter with Vince Velasquez recently landing on the 15-day injured list due to elbow inflammation. It’s still unclear how long he will be out of action, but it seems Ortiz will likely get a few turns through the rotation next to Mitch Keller, Rich Hill, Roansy Contreras and Johan Oviedo.

Ortiz got 23 days of service time during his call-up last year and there will be 146 days left in this year’s season when he is activated tomorrow. Even if he were to stay with the big league club the rest of the season, he would end up at 169 days of service, just shy of the 172 needed to get to the one-year mark. Even if he’s now up for good, he wouldn’t reach free agency until after the 2029 season, though he would be well positioned for reaching Super Two status after 2025. Some rookies can get a full year of service time even after a late call-up by placing high in Rookie of the Year voting, but it requires being on two out of the three top 100 prospect lists from Baseball America, ESPN and MLB Pipeline. Ortiz made it onto the BA list but not the other two, meaning he won’t qualify.

That may end up being a fairly moot point if Velasquez returns in a few weeks and Ortiz gets send back to the Triple-A. Then again, Oviedo and Contreras each have an option year remaining and have been struggling of late. Perhaps there’s some chance that Ortiz can pitch well enough that he sticks and one of the others is sent back to Indianapolis when Velasquez returns.

The Pirates started out scorching hot but have cooled off significantly by losing their last seven. They are still 20-15 on the season but the excitement around the club has dimmed a bit in the past week. If they end up falling out of contention, both Hill and Velasquez would make for sensible trade deadline candidates given that they are veterans on one-year deals. That could make some more room for all their young pitchers in the rotation as the season goes along, but it would be a different situation if they manage to stay in the playoff race.

For now, the club will get a look at one of their top prospects to see how he fares against big league hitters this time around and if he can cement himself as a future building block of their rotation.

Pirates Select Chris Owings

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1:35pm: The Pirates announced that they’ve selected Owings’ contract and optioned Mathias to Triple-A.

10:36am: The Pirates are set to select the contract of veteran utilityman Chris Owings, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He’s not on the 40-man roster, although the Pirates have an open spot after outrighting Drew Maggi over the weekend. They’ll still need to clear a spot on the 26-man roster.

Owings, 31, is out to a strong start with the Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate in Indianapolis, batting .273/.360/.523 (121 wRC+) with a pair of homers, five doubles and a 10% walk rate (against a 26% strikeout rate) in his first 50 trips to the plate. The Pirates will be the seventh Major League team for which he’s played, and this will be the 11th season in which he’s logged at least some time on a big league roster. He’s played every position other than catcher and first base over the first decade of his big league career.

Owings hasn’t topped 68 plate appearances in a big league season since 2019 and hasn’t appeared in 100 games since the 2018 campaign. His versatility and strong Triple-A production — career .306/.347/.482 in eight seasons — regularly make him a popular depth piece on minor league contracts like the one he signed with the Pirates. Substantial playing time in the Majors has been tough to come by in recent years, however, in part due to injury but also due to substandard performance at the plate.

Though Owings was generally productive with the Rockies in 2020-21, thumb and hamstring injuries limited him to just 94 plate appearances in that time. His .298/.372/.536 batting line with Colorado was obviously quite strong, but it’s a small sample that looks like an outlier when compared to Owings’ broader track record. In nearly 2500 career trips to the plate, Owings is a .239/.287/.366 hitter — including just a .107/.254/.143 output in 68 plate appearances with the Orioles in 2022.

Presumably, Owings will take on a bench role with the Pirates, who already have a pair of righty-swinging infield/outfield pieces on the bench in Miguel Andujar and Mark Mathias. Andujar is out of minor league options, so he can’t be sent down without first clearing waivers — and even then, he’d have the right to reject the assignment in lieu of free agency due to the fact that he’s already been outrighted once in his career (earlier this year by Pittsburgh). Mathias does have one minor league option remaining, though he’s also sporting a solid .275/.370/.325 batting line in 46 plate appearances.

Pirates Place Vince Velasquez On IL, Outright Drew Maggi

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The Pirates announced today that right-hander Vince Velasquez has been placed on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation. His roster spot will go to fellow righty Chase De Jong, who has been reinstated from his own IL stint, which was due to a lumbar spine muscle sprain. Additionally, infielder Drew Maggi cleared waivers and was outrighted to Double-A Altoona. The club’s 40-man roster count is now down to 39.

Velasquez was removed from yesterday’s game after throwing just 54 pitches in three innings. During the broadcast, he could be seen grabbing at his throwing elbow, video courtesy Justice delos Santos of MLB.com. After the game, he spoke to Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and didn’t seem especially worried. “I’m pretty optimistic about it,” Velasquez said. “I’ve been in situations like this before. I’m glad I stopped when I needed to. If I would’ve kept going it probably would’ve been more severe. I just have to be optimistic and then go from there.”

Despite that lack of concern, it seems the club will give him a chance to rest up, either out of an abundance of caution or because testing revealed a bit more severity than he expected. It’s still unclear what kind of absence the club is forecasting but they will proceed without Velasquez for at least a couple of weeks.

Velasquez has long been an intriguing pitcher with some strong strikeout numbers at times but he’s been fairly inconsistent and also had trouble with the long ball. For his career, he has a 4.84 ERA with a 25% strikeout rate, allowing home runs on 14.2% of fly balls. Signed by the Pirates to a one-year, $3.15MM deal this offseason, he’s had a good start to his 2023 with a 3.06 ERA after seven starts. There might be a bit of good luck in there, however, as his .250 batting average on balls in play and 82.4% strand rate are both on the fortunate side of average. His 4.10 FIP and 4.51 SIERA suggest he’s actually been closer to his norm than he might appear on first blush.

For as long as he’s out of action, the Bucs will likely need to find a fifth starter to join Mitch Keller, Roansy Contreras, Rich Hill and Johan Oviedo. They have a few off-days later in the month that will lessen the need, but they’ll likely need at least a spot starter or a bullpen game to get them through to their next day off on May 11.

Luis Ortiz would be one option, as he’s on the 40-man roster and already made his major league debut last year. He has a 2.45 ERA through six Triple-A starts so far this year and is scheduled to start for Indianapolis tonight. The Bucs also now have an open 40-man spot and could turn to a non-roster option. Quinn Priester is one of their top prospects but he has a 5.96 ERA through his own six-start opening to the year for Indianapolis. He also started yesterday and won’t be an option for a few days.

The open roster spot comes via Maggi’s outright. The infielder became a feel-good story recently when the Pirates selected him a couple weeks ago. He had spent over a decade toiling away in the minors, having made his professional debut in Low-A back in 2010. He was with the Pirates at that time but subsequently bounced to the systems of the Angels, Dodgers, Cleveland, Twins and Phillies before finally making his MLB debut this year, just shy of his 34th birthday. He got into three games before being optioned to the minors last week.

Maggi actually has a previous outright in his career, as he was briefly on the Twins’ 40-man roster in 2021. That gives him the right to reject this assignment and elect free agency, though it’s not clear if he’s chosen to exercise that right or not.

Steven Brault Moving To Outfield With Atlantic League Club

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Former Pirates and Cubs left-hander Steven Brault signed with the Atlantic League’s new Frederick club last week, and it seems he’ll do so as the hopeful first step down a new career path. Brault has already played left field for his new club, and MLBTR has learned that the 31-year-old plans to become a position player on a full-time basis. He’ll hope to use this opportunity in the Atlantic League to land a minor league deal with an affiliated club and eventually return to the Majors as an outfielder.

Brault may never have garnered as much attention as some of the other best-hitting pitchers in the National League, but he certainly qualifies among them. Back in college, Brault was a .397/.416/.554 hitter in 199 plate appearances. He batted .419/.419/.484 in 36 minor league plate appearances and is a career .258/.275/.337 hitter with a homer — a second-deck, 441-foot bomb — four doubles and just a 14.9% strikeout rate in 101 big league trips to the plate. He’s gone 1-for-8 to begin his season with Frederick. Baseball America’s scouting reports on Brault from his early days in the Orioles system note that he was a plus athlete and the first player in Rocky Mountain Conference history to earn all-conference first team honors as both a position player and a pitcher.

Brault’s move away from the mound comes on the heels of several injury-plagued seasons. Shoulder and lat strains regularly hampered Brault from 2019-22, limiting him to a combined 192 2/3 frames in the Majors over that four-year period. Most of those innings came in 2019, when he tossed a career-high 113 2/3 frames but also missed more than a month with a shoulder strain.

In his career on the mound, Brault at times looked like a viable starter and multi-inning reliever, but injuries derailed some otherwise promising stretches on more than one occasion. In all, he’s tallied 352 1/3 innings at the big league level with a 4.73 ERA, 18.8% strikeout rate, 11.3% walk rate, 0.97 HR/9 and 45.5% ground-ball rate.

Only time will tell whether Brault can successfully make the move to the other side of the ball at age 31, but it makes for an interesting subplot to keep an eye on throughout the season. His raw batting numbers in the Majors certainly don’t leap out relative to other full-time hitters, but it’s clear that Brault has more of a knack for handling the bat than the majority of now-former mound counterparts.

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