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Curtis Terry

Orioles Sign Curtis Terry To Minor League Contract

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The Orioles announced this morning they’ve added first baseman Curtis Terry on a minor league deal. The team did not indicate he’s receiving an invitation to big league camp.

Terry, 26, has 13 games of MLB experience under his belt. That came with the Rangers two seasons ago, when the right-handed hitter posted an .089/.146/.133 line through his first 48 plate appearances. It wasn’t a strong MLB debut but came on the heels of a .275/.349/.533 showing with 22 longballs through 99 games with their top affiliate in Round Rock.

Texas outrighted the former 13th-round pick off their roster at the end of the 2021 campaign. Terry signed a minor league deal with the Twins and spent the entire 2022 season at Triple-A St. Paul. He had a solid if unspectacular showing, posting a .250/.348/.429 line with 10 homers in 342 plate appearances. He walked in 11.7% of those trips while only striking out 16.4% of the time. That wasn’t enough to get an MLB look from the Twins and he returned to minor league free agency this offseason.

Baltimore has made an effort to stockpile first base depth. They acquired Ryan O’Hearn from the Royals to promptly run him through outright waivers. The O’s also succeeded on their second attempt to pass Lewin Díaz through the wire unclaimed. Both players figure to have priority over Terry on the first base/designated hitter organizational depth chart given their lengthier MLB résumés and left-handed bats that better complement righty-swinging starter Ryan Mountcastle. Terry figures to open the season with either Triple-A Norfolk or Double-A Bowie as upper minors depth.

Twins Sign Curtis Terry To Minors Deal

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The Twins recently signed first baseman Curtis Terry to a minor league contract, according to Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. He’d elected minor league free agency after being outrighted off the Rangers’ 40-man roster at the end of the season.

Terry had spent his entire career in the Texas organization, joining the club as a 13th-round draft pick in 2015. The big first baseman spent his first four-plus seasons in the low minors, flashing solid power potential but posting unimpressive strikeout and walk numbers.

After a slow progression up the minor league ladder, Terry broke through in 2021. Pushed directly from High-A to Triple-A Round Rock, the 25-year-old posted strong offensive production to earn a big league look. After hitting .294/.375/.583 through his first 269 plate appearances with the Express, Terry was selected onto the big league roster in July. He only appeared in 13 MLB games, struggling over 48 trips to the dish. And Terry couldn’t quite keep up his early-season pace even after being optioned back to Round Rock, where he finished the year a .275/.349/.533 hitter.

Terry has played exclusively first base or designated hitter in his professional career. That lack of defensive value obviously places immense pressure on him to hit, but Terry’s coming off a decent Triple-A debut and adds some right-handed power to the top levels of the Minnesota system.

Rangers Outright Ronald Guzman, Three Others

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Nov. 6: Ronald Guzman has elected free agency, per ESPN’s Enrique Rojas (via Twitter).

Nov. 5: The Rangers announced this afternoon that four players — first basemen Ronald Guzmán and Curtis Terry, infielder Anderson Tejeda and reliever Matt Bush — have cleared outright waivers. All four will be eligible for minor league free agency.

Guzmán came up as a well-regarded prospect and served as Texas’ regular first baseman for a good chunk of his first two MLB seasons. He didn’t hit for enough power to offset high strikeout rates, though, posting just a .229/.307/.415 line that checked in sixteen percentage points below the league average by measure of wRC+ from 2018-19. Guzmán hasn’t played much over the past couple seasons, missing almost all of the 2021 campaign after tearing the meniscus in his right knee in April.

Like Guzmán, Bush also barely played this past season because of injury. The 35-year-old suffered a flexor strain in April and missed almost the entire year, although he did return after a long rehab to pitch on the season’s final day. It has now been three years since Bush’s last extended action, as he also missed all of the 2019 and 2020 campaigns because of an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery.

Tejeda and Terry are career-long members of the organization with scant big league experience. The former has tallied 94 MLB plate appearances over the past two years, spending most of this past season at Double-A and Triple-A. The latter earned a thirteen-game major league cameo at the end of 2021 after hitting .275/.349/.533 with the Rangers’ top affiliate in Round Rock.

Rangers Place Three On Covid-19 List

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The Rangers have placed infielder Brock Holt and right-handers Drew Anderson and Mike Foltynewicz on the Covid-19-related injured list, per a club announcement. Lefty Wes Benjamin and first baseman Curtis Terry are up from the taxi squad to fill spots on the active roster, but the Rangers will play today’s game with a 25-man active roster. Texas has also scratched catcher Jonah Heim due to Covid protocols and will start Jose Trevino behind the dish instead, per an additional announcement. Heim has not yet been placed on the Covid-related injured list.

Today’s placements come just days after Charlie Culberson was placed on the Covid IL. They’ll leave the Rangers with a rather short-handed bench and likely result in some additional roster machinations in the days to come. However, while the Rangers are down a pair of third basemen — Holt and Culberson — Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News tweets that a promotion of top third base prospect Josh Jung is “not in the plans” for the team. Yonny Hernandez and Andy Ibanez will split time at the hot corner while Holt and Culberson are away from the team.

The Rangers now have four open spots on the 40-man roster and will be able to promote players from Triple-A — even those not on the 40-man roster — as replacements without needing to subsequently pass them through waivers in order to return them to Round Rock once Holt, Anderson, Foltynewicz and Culberson make their returns.

Rangers Option Nick Solak, Designate John Hicks

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The Rangers announced Friday that they’ve selected the contract of minor league first baseman Curtis Terry (as previously reported) and opened a spot on the 40-man roster by designating catcher John Hicks for assignment. Texas also reinstated catcher Jose Trevino from the 10-day injured list and, perhaps most notably, optioned struggling infielder Nick Solak to Triple-A Round Rock.

Hicks, 31, smacked four home runs in 10 games for the Rangers prior to his DFA but was squeezed out by Trevino’s return. He’s 8-for-31 on the season with those four dingers and has also posted a .275/.352/.440 slash in 122 Triple-A plate appearances.

Of course, Hicks has had numerous chances in the Majors prior to the 2021 season and has yet to establish himself as a consistent MLB presence. He made his big league debut with the Mariners back in 2015 and then saw action in parts of four straight seasons with a rebuilding Tigers club. He’s a career .236/.279/.401 hitter with a 32 percent caught-stealing rate but more questionable marks in the pitch framing and pitch blocking departments. Texas will have a week to trade him, place him on outright waivers or release him.

Solak, 26, opened the season as the primary second baseman in Arlington and got out to a blistering start. He carried an OPS north of .900 as far into the season as early May, but his production has been in a rapid tail spin since that time. Over his past 255 plate appearances, Solak is hitting just .190/.256/.273. It’s been nearly a month since he logged multiple hits in a game, and since that two-hit night back on June 29, he’s posted a .149/.216/.191 batting line.

Given those struggles, it’s plenty understandable that the Rangers feel it’s in his best interest to get something of a reset. It’s unlikely that this will impact Solak’s service time or general path to free agency. He entered the season with a year and 41 days of service time and would remain on track for free agency post-2025 so long as he accumulates a total of 131 days of service in 2021. He’s already at 113 days of service time this year, so unless he remains in the minors through season’s end, he’ll accumulate the necessary service to sustain that trajectory.

Rangers To Select Curtis Terry

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The Rangers are expected to select the contract of first baseman Curtis Terry to the big league roster this weekend, according to Kennedi Landry of mlb.com.

Terry, a 13th round pick in the 2015 draft, is currently ranked the 26th best prospect in the Rangers’ system, according to MLB Pipeline. FanGraphs has him further down, at number 61 among Texas farmhands. The 24-year-old first baseman is having an excellent year at the plate. Through 269 plate appearances at Triple-A, he’s slashing .294/.375/.583, producing a wRC+ of 129. This is his first year in the upper levels of the minors, having reached High-A in 2019, before the 2020 minor league season was wiped out.

Terry has consistently put up great offensive numbers in his minor league career, with that being his most exciting tool. The scouting report at MLB Pipeline describes him as “an all-bat player” because he is a “well below-average runner with limited range at first base.” With a profile like that, Terry will have to be well above-average hitter to stick in the big leagues. The scouting report at FanGraphs has similar concerns about the overall profile but notes that he could have a saving grace with “his excellent breaking ball recognition.”

For the Rangers, there’s no harm in calling him up and seeing how he handles big-league pitching. The team is in last place in the AL West and fully in rebuild mode. Nate Lowe has been getting the bulk of first base playing time this year and has been hitting well, with a wRC+ of 115 on the year. But since the team doesn’t have a regular DH and has been using that lineup slot on a rotating basis, it should be easy enough to get both Lowe and Terry into the lineup when they want to. And speculatively speaking, it’s possible they could split time on a platoon basis, as Lowe hits from the left side and Terry from the right. It’s also possible that the lineup could lose Joey Gallo this week, as he has been one of the hottest names on the trading block this year, with the Padres and Yankees among the team to have known interest.

Regardless of whether a trade is in the works or not, a transaction of some kind will be required since Terry is not currently on the 40-man roster.

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