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Jack Lopez

Tigers, Jack Lopez Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Tigers have agreed to a minor league contract with free-agent infielder Jack Lopez, as first reported by former big league infielder Carlos Baerga (on Instagram). Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press tweets that Lopez has signed a deal and will head to the Tigers’ spring facility in Lakeland, Fla. for minicamp.

The 29-year-old Lopez won a Silver Medal as part of Team USA during last summer’s Olympics. He made his Major League debut with the Red Sox not long after returning, going 2-for-13 with a pair of doubles in a tiny sample of seven games. He split the rest of his season between Double-A (five games) and Triple-A (68 games), batting a combined .285/.355/.413 with four homers, 17 doubles, a triple and 15 steals (in 17 tries) over the life of 273 plate appearances.

Lopez, a 16th-round pick by the Royals back in 2011, has appeared in parts of nine minor league seasons and logged a collective .241/.295/.331 batting line in that time. The vast majority of his professional experience has come at the two middle infield slots, with more time at shortstop than at second base. Lopez also has more than 1200 professional innings at the hot corner, in addition to some more sparse work in the outfield.

Baseball America at one point ranked Lopez among the middle tiers of the Royals’ farm system, noting that his range, soft hands and solid arm gave him a chance to handle shortstop at the big league level. That was seven years ago, and the the bat obviously hasn’t panned out as hoped, but Lopez will give the Tigers some defensive value and versatility to stash in the upper minors.

Red Sox Place Garrett Whitlock On Injured List

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4:56 pm: Boston has officially placed Whitlock on the IL, retroactive to September 20. He’ll be first eligible to return next Thursday. Ryan Brasier has been recalled to take his place on the active roster. Additionally, Boston reinstated infielder Christian Arroyo from the COVID-19 injured list. Utilityman Jack López has been removed from the active and 40-man rosters and returned to Triple-A Worcester in a corresponding move. López had been selected as a COVID replacement, so he needn’t be exposed to waivers to be bumped from the 40-man.

3:44 pm: The Red Sox are placing reliever Garrett Whitlock on the 10-day injured list due to a right pectoral strain, manager Alex Cora told reporters (including Alex Speier of the Boston Globe). Cora stressed that the club doesn’t view the injury as overly serious but wants to be cautious not aggravate the issue. He didn’t rule out the possibility of Whitlock returning after a ten-day minimal absence.

Even if Whitlock is able to make it by the middle of next week, his loss will still be a tough blow for a Boston team in a tightly-contested Wild Card race. The Red Sox enter play tonight up a game and a half on the Blue Jays for the top Wild Card position in the American League. The Yankees are only half a game back of Toronto for the league’s final playoff spot, and the A’s and Mariners are still within range themselves.

Whitlock has arguably been Boston’s best reliever this year, an improbably fantastic outcome for a Rule 5 draftee. Plucked from the Yankees’ system last winter, the right-hander has tossed 72 1/3 innings of 1.99 ERA ball across 45 appearances. He’s benefitted from a bit of good fortune to post such a strong run prevention mark — particularly with regards to stranding baserunners — but there’s little question Whitlock has had a strong year. He’s got better than average strikeout (26.8%), walk (5.8%), ground-ball (49.5%) and swinging strike (12.8%) rates.

That continued strong work has unsurprisingly gained Whitlock more important opportunities as the season has gone on. After deploying him in mostly mop-up situations early in the year, Cora has increasingly leaned on Whitlock in higher-leverage game states over the past couple months. The 25-year-old has continued to perform well in those key spots, holding opponents to a .151/.220/.283 line over 59 plate appearances deemed “high-leverage” by FanGraphs. With Whitlock down, Hansel Robles, Matt Barnes and the resurgent Garrett Richards look likeliest to shoulder the most important innings late in games.

Red Sox Place Danny Santana On COVID List, Select Jack Lopez

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Just four days after Danny Santana was reinstated from the COVID-related injury list, the Red Sox have sent the utilityman back to the COVID-IL.  Infielder Jack Lopez has had his contract selected from Triple-A, and Lopez will take Santana’s spot on the active roster.

Santana has tested positive for COVID-19, MLB.com’s Ian Browne reports (via Twitter), so he will miss at least 10 days while quarantined.  Santana previously spent only two days on the COVID-IL due to symptoms, rather than any positive tests.  He now becomes the latest Red Sox player to test positive in what has been a long-lasting outbreak within the Boston clubhouse.  While some players have started to return to action, Santana is the tenth Sox player currently on the team’s COVID list.

After an elbow injury limited Santana to 15 games with the Rangers in 2020, health issues have again plagued the utilityman in his first season in Boston.  Between a foot infection, a left quad strain, a left groin strain, and his two COVID-IL stints, Santana has appeared in just 38 games for the Red Sox, and batted only .181/.252/.345 in 127 plate appearances.  Santana’s minor league contract became a guaranteed deal worth $1.75MM when he made the big league roster, though a reunion between Santana and the Sox doesn’t seem very likely in 2022.

This is the second time Lopez has been selected to Boston’s roster in the midst of this coronavirus outbreak, resulting in the 28-year-old getting to make his Major League debut after nine seasons in the minors.  A 16th-round pick for the Royals in the 2011 draft, Lopez has spent much of his career in Kansas City’s farm system before moving to the Braves’ organization in 2019 and then signing with the Sox this past offseason.  Lopez hit .167/.231/.333 in his first 15 PA as a big leaguer.

Red Sox Sign Jose Iglesias

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11:46am: The Red Sox have announced the signing of Iglesias to a Major League deal and added him to the active roster. Additionally, Boston has reinstated reliever Josh Taylor from the Covid-19 list, selected the contract of right-hander Michael Feliz and returned Covid replacement players Kutter Crawford, Jack Lopez and John Schreiber to Triple-A Worcester. None of the three had to be passed through waivers to be sent down and removed from the 40-man roster because they were specifically appointed as Covid-19 replacements.

11:30am: Shortstop Jose Iglesias, who was released by the Angels over the weekend, is at Fenway Park today, per the Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham (Twitter link). The Globe’s Alex Speier tweets that the Red Sox are expected to announce the signing of Iglesias shortly. He’s represented by the MVP Sports Group.

The Red Sox, in the midst of a Covid-19 outbreak in their clubhouse, have a whopping 11 players in Covid protocol at the moment. That group includes infielders Xander Bogaerts, Christian Arroyo, Enrique Hernandez and Yairo Munoz, leaving the Sox in dire need of some infield help. Jonathan Arauz and Jack Lopez have been lining up in the middle infield in recent days, but Iglesias figures to step into that mix and begin logging some regular reps while the team awaits the return of Bogaerts and others.

It was a rough season for Iglesias in Anaheim — his lone year with the Angels. The 31-year-old wasn’t able to replicate last year’s enormous production at the plate — or even to come particularly close. It was just 150 plate appearances, but Iglesias posted a career-best .373/.400/.556 batting line with the Orioles in 2021 before slipping back to a .259/.295/.375 slash that falls more in line with his overall career numbers.

More troubling than a return to the norm at the dish, however, has been the decline in Iglesias’ glovework. He’s made 16 errors in 961 innings this year after making just 18 errors in 2393 innings from 2018-20 combined. Iglesias had never made more than 11 errors in a season but already has 10 throwing errors alone, in addition to six fielding errors. Defensive Runs Saved pegs Iglesias at a stunning minus-21 this season, while his Ultimate Zone Rating is a career-low minus-4.9.

Defensive struggles notwithstanding, Iglesias now returns to his original organization as a veteran reinforcement at a critical juncture. The Sox are quite unlikely to run down the Rays, who lead them by eight games in the standings, but are hoping to maintain a three-game lead over the upstart Mariners for the second AL Wild Card spot. They’re also just a half-game behind the Yankees for the top AL Wild Card spot and would surely like to eek ahead of their archrivals in order to seize home-field advantage in a theoretical Wild Card showdown.

The Red Sox originally signed Iglesias back in Sept. 2009 after he left his native Cuba. He spent the next several seasons rising through their minor league ranks and making a handful of big league appearances before settling in as their shortstop in 2013. Boston, however, sent him to the Tigers that summer in a three-team trade that sent Jake Peavy from the White Sox to the Red Sox and Avisail Garcia from Detroit to Chicago. (The White Sox picked up both Frankie Montas and J.B. Wendelken from the Red Sox in the trade as well.)

It’s something of a full-circle moment for Iglesias, who won’t be eligible for the postseason roster due to the fact that he’s joining the organization after Aug. 31. He’ll still have the opportunity to help his original club reach the postseason again, though, and this late change of scenery can also provide him an offseason for the league’s other teams as he preps to head back to free agency this winter.

Red Sox Select John Schreiber, Jack Lopez

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The Red Sox announced they’ve selected right-hander John Schreiber and infielder Jack López to the big league roster. Shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, has been placed on the injured list. Infielder Yairo Muñoz has also landed on the COVID IL after testing positive today, bringing Boston up to seven positive tests. Additionally, reliever Ryan Brasier has been activated from the 60-day IL to make his season debut, while utilityman Danny Santana is back from the 10-day IL.

It’s the continuation of a virus-forced roster churn for the Red Sox. Schreiber will step into the big league bullpen for the first time this season after being outrighted off the 40-man roster during Spring Training. The 27-year-old has 28 2/3 innings of MLB experience, all coming between 2019-20 with the Tigers. Schreiber managed above-average strikeout and walk rates in that brief look, but he was tagged for a few too many home runs en route to a 6.28 ERA.

After clearing waivers, Schreiber was assigned to Triple-A Worcester. While Schreiber has had trouble keeping the ball in the yard in the majors, that hasn’t been the case at the minors’ top level, where he’s served up just three homers all year. He’s posted a 3.10 ERA with Worcester, showing the ability to work multiple innings when necessary.

López is up for his first big league opportunity. A longtime Royals farmhand, the versatile infielder also saw some time in the Braves’ organization but has spent this season in the Boston system. He’s spent the bulk of the season with Worcester, hitting .260/.321/.378 over 218 plate appearances. López is getting the start tonight at second base, where he’ll likely team with Santana and Jonathan Araúz to cover the middle infield with Bogaerts and Muñoz unavailable.

Brasier has been a reliable member of the Red Sox relief corps over the past couple seasons. He’s been held back by injury for the entire year. After suffering a calf strain early in the season, Brasier was struck in the head by a comebacker in June during his rehab. He has worked his way back to full strength and could be a key high-leverage option right away for the Red Sox with Matt Barnes, Hirokazu Sawamura and Josh Taylor all unavailable for virus-related reasons.

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