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Yankees Place Luke Weaver On Injured List

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June 3: Weaver is now officially on the IL, per a club announcement. Right-hander Carlos Carrasco has also been designated for assignment. It was reported yesterday that he had been placed on waivers. To replace those two, righty Fernando Cruz has been reinstated from the IL and righty Yerry De Los Santos has been recalled. The club also reinstated infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the IL with fellow infielder Jorbit Vivas optioned down to the minors.

June 2: The Yankees expect to place closer Luke Weaver on the 15-day injured list, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Weaver injured his hamstring while warming up during Sunday’s game. Passan notes that the team has yet to finalize a timetable but suggests it may be a four-to-six week absence.

Weaver has been one of baseball’s best relievers since landing in the Bronx. He turned in a 2.89 ERA while ranking third in MLB with 84 relief innings last year. Weaver punched out more than 31% of opponents. He recorded 22 holds and supplanted Clay Holmes as Aaron Boone’s closer in September. Weaver saved four more games while adding 15 1/3 frames of three-run ball in the postseason.

The offseason Devin Williams trade was supposed to push Weaver back into the setup role he’d held for the bulk of 2024. That arrangement lasted for around a month. Williams allowed three or more runs in three of his first 10 appearances. The Yankees pulled him from the ninth inning by the end of April, hoping that a setup role would allow him to find his footing in his new home.

Weaver drew back in as closer and has gone 8-9 in save chances. Despite a six-point drop in his strikeout rate, Weaver has been as effective as he was last season. He has only surrendered three runs in 25 2/3 frames. Boone will presumably provide an update on the team’s plans for the ninth inning when he meets with the New York beat before tomorrow’s series opener against the Guardians.

Williams has been far better of late, reeling off scoreless appearances in 10 of his last 11 outings. He’s striking out almost 40% of opponents in that time. Giving him the ninth inning is the most straightforward option. If the Yankees don’t want to do that, perhaps if they’re set on returning the role to Weaver once he’s healthy, then Mark Leiter Jr. or Fernando Cruz would be the other options. Cruz is expected back from shoulder inflammation tomorrow.

If Weaver does wind up requiring a 4-6 week recovery, the Yankees would get him back around the All-Star Break. They’d have a couple weeks to evaluate how their bullpen looks leading up to the trade deadline. Weaver is on track for free agency at the end of the season. He should have plenty of time to return and cement his status among the top two or three relievers in the class. He’ll probably be limited to a three-year deal as he enters his age-32 season, but he should command a strong annual value if he comes back without issue.

Yankees Designate Carlos Carrasco For Assignment

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June 3: The Yankees announced today that Carrasco has been designated for assignment while Cruz has been reinstated from the IL, as expected. Additionally, Luke Weaver landed on the 15-day IL, as was previously reported. Righty Yerry De Los Santos was recalled in a corresponding move. The Yanks also reinstated infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the IL and optioned infielder Jorbit Vivas.

June 2: The Yankees have placed right-hander Carlos Carrasco on outright waivers, reports Joel Sherman of The New York Post. Players can be placed on waivers without being designated for assignment, so it seems Carrasco is still on the roster for now. However, Sherman notes that righty Fernando Cruz could be coming off the injured list on Tuesday. The Yankees are off today, so it seems like Carrasco could be the corresponding move for Cruz tomorrow.

The veteran Carrasco was only just added to the Yankee roster yesterday. Their pitching staff had been used fairly heavily in the prior days. Facing the Dodgers this weekend, the Yanks used five pitchers in Friday’s 8-5 loss. Then on Saturday, they got creamed 18-2. Starter Will Warren only lasted an inning and a third in that game, forcing the Yankees to use seven other pitchers to get through the rest of the game. One of those was utility player Pablo Reyes but the larger point is that the bullpen got pushed pretty hard.

Carrasco was added to give the club a fresh arm just in case Sunday’s game was another nightmare but it thankfully went far smoother. Ryan Yarbrough started and gave the club six good innings in a game the club eventually won 7-3. Jonathan Loáisiga tossed the seventh and Devin Williams the eighth. Luke Weaver was going to toss the ninth but was held back due to some hamstring discomfort. Tim Hill came in instead and got the final three outs.

That seemingly puts Carrasco in the unfortunate position of losing his roster spot without getting into a game. He was with the Yankees earlier this year and logged 32 innings in a swing role but had a 5.91 earned run average in that time. He got bumped off the roster and cleared waivers. He accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and made two starts there. The first outing was fine but the second was rough, as he allowed five earned runs without making it out of the second inning.

It seems unlikely that Carrasco will be claimed. He just cleared less than a month ago and hasn’t been in great form since. However, it’s also theoretically possible that there’s a team which has been snakebit by injuries of late and is more willing to take a chance on Carrasco now than they were just a few weeks ago.

If he does go unclaimed and the Yankees outright him off the roster, he has more than enough service time to elect free agency. However, the last time he cleared, he accepted and reported to the RailRiders, so perhaps he would do so again.

Photo courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck, Imagn Images

Yankees Place Jazz Chisholm Jr. On Injured List

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3:05pm: Boone says Chisholm’s strain is of the high-grade variety and he might miss four to six weeks, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

8:51am: The Yankees announced this morning that infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. is headed to the 10-day injured list due to a right oblique strain. The move is retroactive to April 30. Fellow infielder Jorbit Vivas has been recalled from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take Chisholm’s spot on the active roster.

Chisholm exited Tuesday’s game with discomfort in his side and sat out Wednesday’s contest. Manager Aaron Boone revealed earlier this week that Chisholm would undergo an MRI on Thursday’s off-day. That imaging clearly revealed enough for the Yankees to sit Chisholm down for the next week-plus. The team hasn’t formally provided a timetable for Chisholm’s return yet, though even Grade 1 oblique strains can sideline players for upwards of a month. There are instances of players making it back from very mild strains sooner than that, of course. Boone will surely provide more information on Chisholm’s injury outlook prior to tonight’s game.

The 27-year-old Chisholm has hit for plenty of power this season but has been far more strikeout-prone than he was in 2024. He’s slashing .181/.304/.410 with seven homers, three doubles, six steals (in seven attempts) and a career-best 12% walk rate. He’s also fanned in what would be a career-high 31.2% of his plate appearances and been dinged by a .200 average on balls in play — hence the low batting average.

Even with the basement-level batting average, Chisholm’s approach at the plate doesn’t look as alarming as one might expect. He’s actually chasing pitches out of the strike zone at the lowest clip of his career. His 21.1% chase rate sits nearly seven percentage points lower than league-average. In general, Chisholm is seeing more pitches than ever before. He’s swinging at a career-low 41.1% of the pitches he sees, and his 4.27 pitches per plate appearance is both a career-high mark and the 24th-highest among 168 qualified hitters.

The driving factor behind his strikeouts is easier to explain than to fix: Chisholm’s contact rate on pitches within the zone has cratered from 80.7% last year to 72.5% this season. (League average is just over 85%.) Chisholm’s strikeout rate had actually begun to come down in recent weeks; he’s fanned in one-quarter of his plate appearances over his past 80 trips to the plate — right in line with his 2024 levels — so perhaps the spike in punchouts can be chalked up to some early-season white noise. Time will tell.

In the meantime, Vivas will get his third recall to the majors and hope to finally be plugged into to the lineup this time. He’s been summoned to MLB two times in the past, but Boone has yet to write the 24-year-old’s name on the lineup card or even send him into a game as a pinch-hitter, pinch-runner or defensive replacement.

Vivas is doing his best to force the issue in Triple-A. He’s had a superb start to his 2025 season, batting .319/.426/.436 (139 wRC+) with a pair of home runs, five doubles, six steals (in 10 attempts) and more walks (12.9%) than strikeouts (6.9%). The lefty-swinging Vivas, acquired from the Dodgers in the 2023-24 offseason, can play both second and third base.

Yankees Promote Jorbit Vivas

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The Yankees announced that they have recalled infielder Jorbit Vivas. He’ll be making his major league debut if they can get him into a game. He takes the roster spot of outfielder Trent Grisham, who has been placed on the paternity list.

Vivas, 24, has actually been up with the big league club before. In July of last year, he was recalled when infielder J.D. Davis landed on the 10-day injured list. However, he was optioned back down to the minors three days later without getting into a game, so he’s still looking for that MLB debut. Hopefully, he can find his way in this time, as it would be a bit heartbreaking for him to twice get called up and not get any big league action either time.

The Dodgers added him to their 40-man roster back in November of 2021, to keep him out of that year’s Rule 5 draft. He was flipped to the Yankees in December of 2023 alongside left-hander Victor González, with infielder Trey Sweeney going to the Dodgers. Sweeney would later be sent to the Tigers as part of the Jack Flaherty deal, along with Thayron Liranzo.

Vivas is in his final option year and has a huge .342/.432/.493 line through 20 Triple-A games. That’s obviously a small sample but would be a nice breakthrough if he could sustain even some of that. He hit all through the lower levels of the minors but then had a line of just .225/.339/.294 in 26 Triple-A games in the Dodgers’ system in 2023. With the Yanks last year, he got into 93 more games at the top minor league level and slashed .225/.347/.366 for a 93 wRC+.

The young infielder is capable of playing second or third base, with tiny amounts of experience at shortstop and left field as well. He also stole 46 bases over 2023-2024 and has four more already this year. That defensive versatility and speed could make him a nice utility player, especially if the bat is coming around. Paternity lists stints are for one to three games, so Grisham should be back with the club in short order.

Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images

DJ LeMahieu Diagnosed With Calf Strain

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Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu recently underwent an MRI after tweaking a calf muscle during his spring debut and has been diagnosed with a strain, LeMahieu himself told the Yankees beat this morning (via Greg Joyce of the New York Post). It’s a Grade 1 or 2 strain, and while there’s no official timetable yet, LeMahieu will go at least a “couple” weeks without any baseball activity at all. That seems likely to rule him out for Opening Day, though the team hasn’t yet formally announced as much. He’s meeting with the team’s medical staff this morning to map out a timetable.

It’s another health setback for the 36-year-old LeMahieu, who appeared in just 67 games last season due to foot and hip injuries. He wasn’t productive when on the field either, batting just .204/.269/.259 with a pair of homers in 228 trips to the plate. LeMahieu posted career-low marks in average exit velocity and hard-hit rate, and his 56.4% ground-ball rate was the second-highest mark of his career and sixth-highest in MLB (min. 220 plate appearances). For a player whose sprint speed checked into the 20th percentile of big league position players, that’s obviously not a good trend.

The Yankees originally signed LeMahieu to a two-year, $24MM deal in the 2018-19 offseason. It proved to be one of their best free agent pickups in recent memory, as he posted a mammoth .336/.386/.536 over those two years, finishing top-four in MVP voting in both 2019 and 2020. The Yankees re-signed LeMahieu for $90MM the following winter. That’s about the sum he was expected to land over a four-year pact, but the Yankees stretched it out over six seasons to lighten the luxury tax hit. He’s never recaptured that peak 2019-20 form, but LeMahieu was a solid and versatile contributor from 2021-23, hitting .258/.345/.375 with quality glovework at first base, second base and third base.

Despite the poor showing in 2024, LeMahieu entered camp squarely in the mix for regular reps at third base. The Yankees’ budget is seemingly at its limit. They’ve passed on adding an infielder at either second base or third base (Jazz Chisholm Jr. can play either spot) and appear committed to going with in-house options. LeMahieu, former top prospect Oswald Peraza and utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera have been vying for playing time at the hot corner.

LeMahieu’s remaining two years and $30MM were always going to put him on the roster with some type of role, but his injury opens the door for a younger option at third base — be it Peraza, Cabrera or perhaps Jorbit Vivas. Vivas didn’t make his spring debut until this week. He’d been dealing with some shoulder soreness, but he’ll likely join the third base competition now. He’s already on the 40-man roster.

Yankees Promote Jorbit Vivas

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12:55pm: The Yankees have formally announced the moves. Davis is headed to the IL with a bout of the stomach flu. His stint is retroactive to July 9, meaning he’ll be eligible for activation a week from now.

11:51am: The Yankees are calling up infield prospect Jorbit Vivas for his major league debut, reports SNY’s Andy Martino. He’s already on the 40-man roster, so only a 26-man roster move will be necessary. That’ll come in the form of a 10-day IL placement for infielder J.D. Davis.

Vivas, 23, came to the Yankees alongside lefty Victor Gonzalez in the offseason trade that sent infield prospect Trey Sweeney to the Dodgers. The 5’9″, 171-pound lefty hitter has primarily split his time between second base and third base in the minors. He’ll give the Yankees an option at both positions. Second base has been Vivas’ primary position (and the one at which he’s more well regarded defensively), but the Yankees have particularly struggled with regard to production from the hot corner this season.

In 169 plate appearances at the Triple-A level in 2024, Vivas has turned in a .258/.404/.424 slash. He’s swatted five homers, six doubles and a triple — chipping in nine stolen bases in 13 attempts. Vivas has also shown strong bat-to-ball skills and an incredibly disciplined approach, drawing a walk in 17.2% of his plate appearances against an 18.3% strikeout rate.

Baseball America ranked Vivas 14th among Yankees farmhands on their updated ranking of the team’s top-30 prospects just three days ago. MLB.com ranks him 15th in the system. BA’s scouting report suggests that his power is presently well below average but could still grow to the point where he can reach double-digit homers in a given season. (Being a lefty hitter at Yankee Stadium won’t hurt in that regard.) Still, Vivas’ most highly regarded tools are an above-average hit tool, average speed, a solid glove at second base and his terrific strike zone awareness.

Yankees second basemen this season have posted a collective .224/.296/.336. Most of that has been Gleyber Torres, who struggled mightily in April, rebounded in May/June, and has again fallen into a woeful July slump. At third base, the combination of Jon Berti, Oswaldo Cabrera and DJ LeMahieu has posted an even more bleak .236/.297/.314 slash. Given the dearth of production at both spots, Vivas should get the opportunity to spell both Torres and LeMahieu, who currently occupy the regular roles at those two positions.

Dodgers Trade Victor Gonzalez To Yankees

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11:03am: The two teams have announced the trade.

9:48am: The Yankees are acquiring left-handed reliever Victor Gonzalez and minor league infield prospect Jorbit Vivas from the Dodgers in exchange for minor league infielder Trey Sweeney, reports Alden Gonzalez of ESPN. Yesterday, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported that the Yankees were acquiring a pair of 40-man players from the Dodgers in exchange for a prospect not on New York’s 40-man. The trade clears a pair of spots on L.A.’s roster to accommodate the signings of Shohei Ohtani and Joe Kelly.

Gonzalez, 28, has a minor league option remaining but also comes to the Yankees with a solid MLB track record. He’s capable of stepping directly into manager Aaron Boone’s bullpen and will likely be viewed as a favorite to do so. He has far more big league experience than fellow southpaw Matt Krook, making Gonzalez an option to join Nick Ramirez as a second southpaw option for Boone.

Gonzalez missed the 2022 season due to an elbow injury that required an arthroscopic debridement procedure, but he’s logged 89 1/3 innings for the Dodgers from 2020-23, pitching to a 3.22 earned run average with solid strikeout and walk rates (23.2% and 8.4%, respectively) in addition to a massive 58.1% grounder rate. The Yankees tend to gravitate toward relievers with plus ground-ball rates and better-than-average velocity, and Gonzalez checks both boxes, averaging just under 95 mph with a sinker that tops out in the upper 90s.

Gonzalez’s 2023 season wasn’t as sharp as his dominant 2020 MLB debut, but he still posted a 4.01 ERA with strikeout and walk rates that were actually improvements over their 2021 levels. The lefty is also among the game’s best in terms of inducing weak contact, evidenced by a career 84.9 mph average exit velocity and 30.7% hard-hit rate — both drastically lower than this past season’s respective league averages of 89 mph and 39.2%.

The Yankees can control Gonzalez for an additional three seasons. He’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn just a $1MM salary in 2024 and will be due subsequent raises building off that foundation in 2025 and 2026 before reaching the open market in the 2026-27 offseason. Gonzalez offers a similar skill set to that of free agent Wandy Peralta, whom the Yankees have reportedly had interest in re-signing, but Gonzalez will come at a fraction of the fiscal cost.

New York also acquires the 22-year-old Vivas, who’s generally considered one of the better prospects in a deep Dodgers farm. MLB.com pegs him tenth in the system, while FanGraphs had him 11th and Baseball America ranked him 20th. All of those rankings are dated by a few months now, but there’s little that Vivas did during his 2023 campaign to radically drop his stock. He posted an excellent .280/.391/.436 slash with 12 homers, 21 steals and more walks than strikeouts in 109 games as a 22-year-old against older competition in Double-A last year.

Vivas jumped to Triple-A late in the season and turned in a lackluster .225/.339/.294 showing at the top minor league level, but that came in a tiny sample of 121 plate appearances and still came with elite walk (12.4%) and strikeout (15.7%) rates. He’s seen time at both second base and third base, though scouting reports on him question whether he’ll have the arm to ultimately handle the hot corner in the Majors. Even if he doesn’t, Vivas is a close-to-MLB-ready second base prospect with a plus hit tool, double-digit home run power and solid baserunning instincts.

In exchange for an affordable Peralta replacement and a quality second base prospect, the Yankees will surrender Sweeney, whom they selected with the No. 20 overall selection in the 2021 draft. Sweeney briefly reached Double-A as a 22-year-old in 2022, but the 2023 season was his first year with notable experience at that level. The 23-year-old handled himself well, batting .252/.367/.411 in a generally pitcher-friendly setting, popping 13 homers and swiping 20 bases with a gaudy 13.8% walk rate and lower-than-average 19.1% strikeout rate.

Sweeney is a well-regarded prospect himself, but perhaps a step below the rung many Yankees fans would expect based on his draft pedigree. FanGraphs ranked him third in the Yankees’ system, but MLB.com had him eighth and Baseball America tabbed him 15th. Sweeney is a bat-first prospect whose long-term future hinges on whether he can stick at shortstop, move to third base on a full-time basis, or settle in as a utility infielder who can bounce around the diamond. He’s a relatively near-MLB addition to the Dodgers’ system, effectively replacing Vivas but doing so without requiring a spot on the 40-man roster until next offseason.

Dodgers Select Five Players

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The Dodgers have filled their 40-man roster, adding five players to their roster in advance of the Rule 5 deadline per MLB.com’s Juan Toribio. The players being added are infielders Jacob Amaya, Eddys Leonard, and Jorbit Vivas, outfielder James Outman, and right-handed pitcher Michael Grove. In corresponding moves, outfielders Billy McKinney and Zach Reks have been designated for assignment.

Each of Amaya, Leonard and Vivas appeared on the back half of the Dodgers’ midseason top 30 prospects ranking at Baseball America. Amaya’s a well-regarded middle infielder but struggled offensively in Double-A this past season. Leonard and Vivas haven’t yet advanced beyond High-A, but they’re both infielders with good low minors numbers and some offensive upside.

The Dodgers acquired McKinney from the Mets in July. He struggled mightily down the stretch with L.A., though, and his overall .192/.280/.358 line over 300 plate appearances with three teams was well below-average. McKinney draws a fair amount of walks, but he’s never quite tapped into enough power to offset high strikeout totals and a limited defensive profile. He’ll either be traded or waived in the coming days.

Reks made a brief big league debut in 2021, tallying ten plate appearances over six games. He spent the rest of the season at Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he raked at a .280/.382/.539 clip in 379 plate appearances. Reks is already 28 and has essentially no big league body of work, but it’s possible another club takes a shot on his strong track record of minor league performance. He still has a pair of minor league option years remaining.

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