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Rich Hill

Minor MLB Transactions: 8/2/25

By Nick Deeds | August 2, 2025 at 10:57pm CDT

Here’s the latest on a trio of players who were recently designated for assignment. All information is courtesy of the transactions log on that respective player’s MLB.com profile page.

  • Veteran southpaw Rich Hill has elected free agency after being DFA’d by the Royals earlier this week. Hill, 45, is the oldest active big leaguer and held off on signing a contract this year until he joined the Royals on a minor league deal back in May. He was added to Kansas City’s big league roster late last month and made two starts for the club, pitching to a 5.00 ERA in nine innings of work with eight walks against just four strikeouts. It was a lackluster pair of outings for the veteran, and he’s served as more of an innings-eating depth starter as he’s entered his mid-40s with a 5.38 ERA over 159 innings of work since the start of the 2023 campaign. The lefty has 21 years in the majors with 14 different MLB clubs under his belt at this point, however, and if one of the other 16 clubs in the league picks him up at some point down the stretch he’d surpass Edwin Jackson (with whom he’s now tied after joining the Royals) as the player to suit up for the most clubs in MLB history.
  • Outfielder Sean Bouchard has been outrighted to the minor leagues after being DFA’d by the Rockies late last week. The 29-year-old was a ninth-round pick by the Rockies back in 2017 and made his big league debut with the club during the 2022 season. He’s spent each of the past four seasons in a Rockies uniform as an up-and-down bench player, and in his first two seasons he excelled with a .304/.428/.563 slash line in 48 games. Unfortunately, he’s struggled badly in 63 games over the past two seasons, hitting just .178/.272/.274 with a 33.1% strikeout rate. Bouchard now figures to serve as non-roster depth for the Rockies down the stretch, but will have the opportunity to elect free agency after the 2025 campaign if not added back to the 40-man roster.
  • Right-hander Tyler Owens has been released after being DFA’d by the Tigers earlier this week. The 24-year-old made his big league debut with Detroit earlier this year and surrendered one run on three hits and three walks across three innings of work while striking out one batter during that abbreviated cup of coffee. Owens had been sidelined by a hip injury was he was removed from the club’s 40-man roster, which means he could not be assigned outright to the minors and had to be released after clearing waivers. He’s now free to sign with any MLB club, though a 5.40 ERA in 30 Triple-A innings with nearly as many walks (21) as strikeouts (27) makes it likely that he’ll be limited to only minor league offers.
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Colorado Rockies Detroit Tigers Kansas City Royals Transactions Rich Hill Sean Bouchard Tyler Owens

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Royals Designate Rich Hill For Assignment

By Mark Polishuk | July 29, 2025 at 3:07pm CDT

The Royals announced that veteran southpaw Rich Hill has been designated for assignment.  The move opens up roster space for right-hander Thomas Hatch, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Omaha.

After being released by the Red Sox last September, the 45-year-old Hill didn’t sign a contract until inking a minors deal with Kansas City in May.  Hill pitched 11 outings of ramp-up work in the minor leagues before his contract was selected to the Royals’ roster a week ago today, and he’ll head into DFA limbo with a 5.00 ERA to show for his two starts in a K.C. uniform.

Hill allowed just one earned run over five innings against the Cubs but received no run support in a 6-0 loss on July 22, and the Braves touched him up for four earned runs (on six walks, three hits, and two homers allowed) in as many innings in a start yesterday.  That was apparently enough for the Royals to designate Hill, and he may now be headed for yet another chapter in a career that has now stretched across 21 Major League seasons.

If Hill clears waivers, he obviously has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment to Triple-A, so the ball is in his court as to his next step.  Hill may opt to just remain with the Royals, and while the club could release him, the Royals may want some rotation depth available in Omaha with so many other starters on the injured list.

A waiver claim isn’t out of the question, given how many teams need starting depth right now, and could still need more arms depending on how the trade deadline shakes out.  Pitching-needy clubs could wait until after the 5pm CT deadline on Thursday to put in a claim on Hill, should they have a sudden hole to fill in a rotation following a trade or two.

Should Hill head to free agency once more, it remains to be seen if he’ll be able to find another minor league contract elsewhere, given how long it took him to land with the Royals.  Yet another reunion with the Red Sox can’t be ruled out, or Hill could try to find a brand-new organization in an attempt to secure a unique place in the record books.  Hill and Edwin Jackson share the record for most career teams (14), so suiting up with a 15th different club at the big league level would make Hill the most well-traveled player in MLB history.  Retirement is naturally another option, if Hill decides to finally hang up his cleats after 24 total years in pro ball.

To put it in perspective, Hatch was only seven years old when Hill was drafted by the Cubs in 2002.  Hatch signed a minor league deal with K.C. during the offseason and has yet to see any big league action — his contract was previously selected on June 5 but just for the first game of a doubleheader, and Hatch was DFA’ed before the nightcap.

Assuming that this stint with the Royals leads to an in-game appearance, it will mark Hatch’s first time on a Major League mound since the 2023 season.  The 30-year-old Hatch posted a 4.96 ERA over 69 MLB innings with the Blue Jays and Pirates from 2020-23 before he spent the 2024 campaign in Japan with the Hiroshima Carp.  Hatch has a 4.22 ERA, 20.1% strikeout rate, and 7.2% walk rate across 91 2/3 innings and 18 Triple-A starts this year, and he’ll be the next pitcher to try and fill a hole in Kansas City’s injury-riddled rotation.

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Kansas City Royals Transactions Rich Hill Thomas Hatch

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Royals Designate Tyler Gentry For Assignment

By Steve Adams | July 22, 2025 at 3:06pm CDT

The Royals announced Tuesday that they’ve designated outfielder Tyler Gentry for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to left-hander Rich Hill, whose previously reported promotion from Triple-A Omaha is now official. Righty Andrew Hoffmann was optioned to Omaha to open an active roster spot for the 45-year-old Hill.

Gentry, 26, made his big league debut last year but went hitless in his five plate appearances. He’s spent the 2025 season in Triple-A, where he’s struggled to a .205/.277/.365 batting line with five homers, 16 doubles, two triples, a 7.6% walk rate and a 28.5% strikeout rate in 249 plate appearances. This is his third season in Triple-A and also his least-productive. The 2020 third-round pick posted big numbers in High-A and Double-A as he climbed the minor league ladder but has struggled at the top level.

Gentry is a right-handed hitter who has had good success against lefties in the past. He’s a corner outfielder who’s played primarily right field but does have 461 career innings in left field as well. This is his second of three minor league option years.

The Royals will either trade Gentry or place him on outright waivers within the next five days. Waivers would require an additional 48 hours to process. He hasn’t been outrighted in the past and doesn’t have three years of major league service time, so if Gentry goes unclaimed on waivers, the Royals can assign him outright to Omaha and keep him as a depth option while no longer dedicating a 40-man roster spot to him.

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Kansas City Royals Transactions Andrew Hoffmann Rich Hill Tyler Gentry

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Royals To Select Rich Hill

By Steve Adams | July 21, 2025 at 1:23pm CDT

Rich Hill is headed back to the majors for a 21st season. The Royals plan to select Hill’s contract from Triple-A Omaha, Robert Murray of FanSided reports, and he could pitch for them as soon as tomorrow. Hill signed a minor league contract with Kansas City back in May, and he’s been pitching with their Triple-A club all summer.

The Royals currently have Cole Ragans, Alec Marsh and Michael Lorenzen on the injured list. Marsh hasn’t pitched all season due to a shoulder impingement. Ragans has been out over a month due to a strained rotator cuff. Left-handed reliever Daniel Lynch IV is also on the 15-day injured list due to a nerve issue in his elbow. Hill has been working in Omaha’s rotation and could make a spot start, or he could give manager Matt Quatraro another left-handed relief option while Lynch is on the shelf.

Hill, 45, has had mixed results while pitching for the Storm Chasers. He’s posted a 5.36 ERA in 42 innings, though the bulk of the damage against him came in two rough outings. He’s had a pair of quality starts and another pair of solid five-inning efforts. Hill has allowed one run over his past seven innings and fanned 11 opponents in that time. Hill unsurprisingly isn’t throwing hard, but the 88.4 mph average on his four-seamer is up from last year’s 87.6 mph average during his Triple-A stint with the Red Sox.

Time will tell whether this latest promotion comes with any staying power, but it’s remarkable that Hill continues to pitch at a competitive enough level to get major league looks in his mid-40s. He made a brief return to the Red Sox last August, and once he toes the rubber for Kansas City, he’ll have appeared in 21 consecutive MLB seasons. Hill from 2010-14, totaling just 75 2/3 MLB frames in that five-year period, but he’s hung around to pitch at least 3 2/3 major league innings each season dating back to 2005.

Since Hill’s improbable resurgence with the 2015 Red Sox and 2016 A’s, he’s tacked another 938 innings of 3.66 ERA ball onto his unique career. Notably, the Royals will be the 14th team for which Hill has suited up at the MLB level. That ties him with right-hander Edwin Jackson for the most teams in major league history.

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Latest On Rich Hill, Royals

By Steve Adams | June 18, 2025 at 11:26am CDT

Rich Hill is still cruising along at 45 years young, biding his time in the minor leagues with the Royals while waiting for a big league opportunity. The southpaw recently passed on a June 15 opt-out date in his minor league arrangement with Kansas City, Robert Murray of FanSided reports, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s sticking with the Royals indefinitely. Murray adds that the Royals wouldn’t stand in Hill’s way if another team presented him a big league offer. Whether it’s expressly written in Hill’s contract or there’s merely a handshake agreement, it seems Hill effectively has a rolling upward mobility clause — similar to the situations of Craig Kimbrel and James McCann in Atlanta.

Hill is the oldest player in affiliated ball, but you wouldn’t know it based on his results. He’s pitched 24 minor league innings and limited opponents to a 3.38 ERA despite sitting just 88.9 mph on his fastball. He’s punched out 33.7% of his opponents against a 7.4% walk rate.

Hill started ramping back up with the Royals’ Complex league affiliate — mentoring many young teammates in his short time there — but has now made three starts in Triple-A and continued looking sharp: 16 innings, 2.81 ERA, 29.7% strikeout rate, 10.9% walk rate. He’s pitched five, six and five innings in his three starts with Omaha, running his pitch count up to 94 in his most recent outing.

It’s been a few years since Hill has enjoyed sustained big league success. He logged a respectable 4.27 ERA in 124 1/3 innings for the 2022 Red Sox and had a nice first half with the 2023 Pirates before fading badly after a trade to San Diego. That second-half slide contributed to a 2024 plan that saw Hill wait until the final third of the season to sign, hoping to stay fresh for a contender down the stretch. It didn’t really work out as hoped; Hill pitched just 3 2/3 innings in the majors last year (all with the Red Sox).

This year’s timing seems like it could have the potential for better results. Hill signed with the Royals in mid-May and is now fully built up at a time when there are several clubs around the league in need of pitching but very few arms available on the trade market. The Royals themselves could be one such team, with Cole Ragans gathering multiple opinions due to a rotator cuff injury that seems sure to sideline him for a significant period. Righty Alec Marsh is also on the 60-day IL for Kansas City.

Of course, at any point in the season, there are myriad teams looking for options while arms are in short supply. Several of Hill’s former clubs — Twins, Cubs, Dodgers, Mets, Padres — have notable starting pitchers on the injured list at present. All are quite familiar with Hill as a pitcher, teammate and person. The Astros, Rangers and Blue Jays have each incurred recent injuries in their starting rotations as well.

Hill isn’t likely to dial it back to his 2015-20 form (2.92 ERA in 505 innings), but he could potentially hold down a fourth or fifth starter’s gig for a team in need while their injured arms mend and/or until the trade market picks up in earnest. At the moment, it seems like he’s all but freely available to a club that is willing to give him a look in what would be his 21st season with at least some action at the major league level.

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Kansas City Royals Rich Hill

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Rich Hill Has June 15 Opt-Out In Royals Deal

By Darragh McDonald | June 9, 2025 at 1:57pm CDT

Veteran left-hander Rich Hill signed a minor league deal last month. It appears the club will soon have to make a decision on whether or not to call him up. Robert Murray of FanSided reports that there’s a June 15th opt-out in that deal.

Since signing that pact, Hill has made four minor league starts, two in the Complex League and then two more for Triple-A Omaha. He went four scoreless in the first outing but allowed four earned runs in four frames in the next one. In his first Triple-A start, he allowed three earned runs in five innings. Most recently, he went six innings without allowing an earned run.

Put it together and Hill has a 3.32 earned run average in 19 innings. He struck out 31.5% of batters faced and only walked 4.1%, though those numbers were far better in the two Complex League outings, striking out 41.9% of batters faced with no walks there compared to a 23.8% strikeout rate and 7.1% walk rate in the Triple-A starts.

However you cut it up, it’s a small sample of work. Hill is 45 years old and it’s hard to guess how effective he can be against major league hitters at this point. He had a decent stretch as recently as the first half of 2023, posting a 4.23 ERA through his first 13 starts with the Pirates. However, he faded from there, with a 6.57 ERA in the remainder of the season. The Bucs flipped him to the Padres but San Diego ended up bumping him to the bullpen and he finished the year with a 5.41 ERA overall.

He tried to get creative last year, with a plan of not signing until midway through the season. The idea was to spend more time with his family and also save his bullets for a second-half playoff push. It didn’t play out as he imagined, however. He signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox in the middle of August and got called up for four relief outings before being released.

Hill has a lot of big league success under his belt, including solid seasons with ERAs near 4.00 in both 2021 and 2022. But given his age and the less consistent results of late, he’s more of a gamble now.

The Royals also don’t have a strong starting pitching need. In fact, they have one of the best rotations in baseball. Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo were on the injured list not too long ago but both are now active again. Noah Cameron got some starts to cover for those injuries and has been great, with a 0.85 ERA through five appearances now. He won’t be able to keep that up forever, especially with a subpar 16% strikeout rate. Still, even if he’s the club’s #6 behind Lugo, Ragans, Kris Bubic, Michael Wacha and Michael Lorenzen, that’s a great setup for the club.

The club is off today and also has off-days on the next two Mondays. Cameron is listed as tomorrow’s probable starter but it’s possible he’ll get optioned after that, now that Lugo and Ragans are back. He could then be recalled towards the end of the month if the club wants a sixth starter when they start a stretch of 16 games in a row. Kyle Wright is also on a rehab assignment and building up his workload at the moment.

There’s not an amazing path for Hill, unless the Royals want to add some long relief to the bullpen. It’s possible the situation changes in the coming days. Perhaps Lugo or Ragans will re-aggravate their respective injuries, or someone else could get hurt. Though other clubs around the league are already dealing with plenty of injury absences, so perhaps there are better opportunities for Hill elsewhere.

Hill should have a chance to make one more Triple-A start before his opt-out decision but it’s possible he’ll be a free agent again soon. If he makes it to the majors, with the Royals or any other club, he’ll be easily the oldest player in the league. Justin Verlander is currently the oldest at 42 years old, born in February of 1983. Hill was born in March of 1980, almost three years earlier.

Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images

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Royals Sign Rich Hill To Minor League Deal

By Darragh McDonald | May 13, 2025 at 2:10pm CDT

The Royals announced that they have signed left-hander Rich Hill to a minor league deal. He will report to the club’s spring training/Complex League facility in Surprise but will be heading to Triple-A Omaha soon.

The veteran lefty has already defied the normal aging curves and seems determined to do so again. Now 45 years old, Hill would easily be the oldest player in the majors if he eventually has his contract selected. 42-year-old Justin Verlander is oldest active player at the moment.

Hill has a long and storied career that dates back to his 2005 debut. He had some success in the subsequent years, followed by a long stretch of being injured and/or ineffective. He returned to prominence about a decade ago, amazingly having some of his best seasons while in his mid-30s.

Lately, the results haven’t been quite as strong. His last full season was 2023, in which he finished with a 5.41 earned run average. That was fairly lopsided, as he had a 4.76 ERA with the Pirates but then struggled badly after being traded to the Padres.

He believed that he could be better with an unconventional approach, so he intentionally waited until late in 2024 to sign a new deal. This would allow him to spend more time with his family, in addition to saving his best results for later in the year, theoretically giving him a better chance to thrive in competitive games down the stretch.

The plan didn’t quite work out. He signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox in the middle of August. After a couple of weeks in the minors, he was added to the big league roster but wasn’t given a rotation job. He made four low-leverage relief appearances before being designated for assignment and then released.

Over the winter, he said he was still planning to pitch in 2025, but without trying the same late-signing strategy. As recently as three weeks ago, he said he was still throwing and hoping to sign. Whether it’s by design or simply due to a soft market, Hill is now splitting the difference somewhat. He is signing and getting started later in the year, but with a few extra months of potential ramp-up time relative to last season.

The Royals don’t really need starting pitching. They have one of the best rotations in the majors, something that MLBTR’s Anthony Franco recently took a detailed look at. They have a strong front four in Cole Ragans, Kris Bubic, Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, with Michael Lorenzen a serviceable back-end guy as well. Noah Cameron, one of the better pitching prospects in the majors, is on the 40-man and pitching in the Triple-A rotation.

However, there’s little harm in adding some extra depth, just in case the injury bug bites. The Royals have also recently seen both Alec Marsh and Kyle Wright suffer setbacks in their rehabs, so perhaps they have added Hill in response to those developments.

Even if they don’t need him, they can let him take the ball and get into game shape. If he finds himself in good form as the trade deadline approaches, they could perhaps flip him to some other club with a greater rotation need. It’s also possible that the deal contains some opt-outs or upward mobility clauses, so Hill can get out of the deal if the Royals don’t call him up.

If Hill is able to get back to the majors, with the Royals or some other club, he would get a chance to add to his career stat lines. He has 1,409 big league innings over his career with a 4.01 ERA, 24% strikeout rate and 9.1% walk rate.

Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images.

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Kansas City Royals Transactions Rich Hill

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Rich Hill Still Planning To Pitch This Year

By Anthony Franco | April 22, 2025 at 10:55pm CDT

Rich Hill continues to throw in hopes of signing soon, he tells Chris Cotillo of MassLive. Cotillo adds that multiple teams — including one from the AL East that is not the Red Sox — have shown interest in the 45-year-old lefty.

Hill told The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser in January that he planned to continue pitching. There haven’t been any definitive reports within the past three months, but Hill evidently still hopes to reach the big leagues for a 21st consecutive season. Last year, he waited until the middle of August to agree to a minor league contract with the Red Sox (on what was his eighth different deal with Boston). The Sox called him up a couple weeks later but released him after 3 2/3 innings.

Last year’s late signing was deliberate. Hill wanted to spend time with his family early in the season, while the later signing would theoretically keep him fresh and allow him to prioritize a deal with a potential playoff team. That didn’t really work out as hoped, as Hill didn’t get much of a look on a Boston team that was only a fringe contender. He has previously suggested he could pursue more of a traditional full-season schedule this time around, though he obviously remains unsigned nearly a month after Opening Day.

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Rich Hill, Jesse Chavez Plan To Pitch In 2025

By Steve Adams | January 21, 2025 at 4:22pm CDT

Veteran pitchers Rich Hill and Jesse Chavez are 45 and 41 years young, respectively, and both recently told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that they intend to pitch in 2025. Both hurlers appeared in the majors this past season, albeit quite briefly in Hill’s case.

Hill made clear from the beginning of the 2023-24 offseason that his plan was to sign midseason. Doing so, he hoped, would keep his arm fresh down the stretch after he faded badly in 2023. More importantly, it would afford him more time to be at home early in the year with his family and to coach his son’s team. He wound up signing an incredible eighth contract with the Red Sox in August but pitched just 3 2/3 MLB frames before being designated for assignment and released.

As recently as 2022, Hill pitched a full season and was generally effective, despite that being his age-42 campaign. That year saw him make 26 starts, pitch 124 1/3 innings and notch a respectable 4.27 ERA with a 20.7% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate — despite averaging just 88.5 mph on his four-seamer. He was out to a solid start in 2023 with the Pirates, working to uncannily similar numbers through 13 starts (4.23 ERA, 21.5 K%, 7.4 BB%). Hill hit a wall at that point, however, and limped to a 6.57 ERA over his final 74 innings.

Hill hinted earlier this offseason that while he was still (at the time) undecided about pitching in 2025, if he did so it would likely again be on more of a full-season schedule. He’s also suggested he wouldn’t limit himself to pitching with teams near his Boston-area home. Only time will tell whether a club takes a look, but there’s little harm in what would surely be a minor league deal and non-roster invitation to camp.

As for Chavez, he’s coming off a much different year. Though he’s on the “wrong” side of 40, Chavez looked solid. In 63 1/3 innings for the Braves, he notched a sharp 3.13 ERA with a passable, albeit below-average 20.8% strikeout rate and a quality 7.2% walk rate. Chavez’s sinker sat at a career-low 90.7 mph, and his cutter lagged further behind at 88.5 mph on average. But the crafty right-hander nevertheless enjoyed plenty of success, due in no small part to solid command and a plethora of weak contact.

Atlanta generally used Chavez in low-leverage spots last year, but he was a member of the team’s setup core as recently as 2023, when he picked up 13 holds and regularly appeared in medium- and high-leverage situations over the life of 36 games.

Despite his age, Chavez has now turned in four straight seasons with a sub-4.00 ERA. His collective earned run average dating back to 2021 is a sparkling 2.91, and he’s logged at least average walk rates every year along the way, with the ’24 campaign being the only one of the four wherein his strikeout rate was below-average. Chavez has posted better-than-average grounder rates in each of the past two seasons, too.

Chavez seems to find his way back to the Braves every season. He signed a minor league deal with Atlanta in 2021, was selected to the major league roster in June and quickly emerged as a key bullpen piece. He inked a minor league deal with the Cubs in 2022, made the Opening Day roster with Chicago, and was traded to the Braves less than three weeks later in exchange for Sean Newcomb, who’d been designated for assignment. The Braves traded him to the Angels at that year’s deadline, but when the Angels placed Chavez on waivers late in August, there were the Braves to once again claim him back.

Chavez signed a minor league deal with Atlanta in November 2022 and spent most of the 2023 season on their roster. He inked a minor league deal with the White Sox last winter, was cut loose late in camp and, to the shock of no one, signed a minor league deal with the Braves. They selected him to the 40-man roster three days later.

Another minor league deal between Chavez and the Braves isn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion, but it sure wouldn’t come as much of a surprise, either. The fit is even more sensible with Atlanta already having lost right-hander Joe Jimenez to knee surgery that’ll probably wipe out his entire 2025 season.

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Free Agent Notes: Stratton, Martin, Hill, De Jesus

By Mark Polishuk | November 24, 2024 at 11:02pm CDT

The Pirates have non-tendered Hunter Stratton in each of the last two offseasons, and after re-signing him to a minor league contract last winter, a team source tells Justin Guerriero of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the Bucs want to do the same this time around.  Stratton suffered a ruptured patellar tendon in late August after a freak injury that saw the right-hander stumble into the stone wall behind home plate at PNC Park while pursuing a loose ball.

A subsequent knee surgery ended Stratton’s season, and he was given a recovery timeline of 7-10 months.  In the very best-case scenario, Stratton would be able to return on Opening Day, but the longer end of that timeline would keep him out until the end of June.  A clearer return date might emerge once Stratton gets deeper into his rehab, which also might impact when the Pirates or any other team might ink him to a new contract.  Stratton has a 3.26 ERA over 49 2/3 career bullpen innings over the last two seasons with Pittsburgh, with an impressive 4.9% walk rate and excellent soft-contact numbers.

More notes on some other players on the open market….

  • Chris Martin has suggested that 2025 will almost certainly be the final season of his career, and MassLive.com’s Sean McAdam believes Martin “likely looking to pitch closer to his Texas home.”  The 38-year-old Martin has spoken about his desire to spend more time with his growing family, so this could factor more into his decision-making process than necessarily chasing the biggest offers available.  Martin was born in Arlington and already pitched with his hometown Rangers during the 2017-18 seasons, and naturally the Astros would also be a logical destination if geography is Martin’s chief concern.  Martin figures to draw a lot of attention from teams all over the map, as he posted a 3.45 ERA and an elite 1.7% walk rate in 44 1/3 innings for the Red Sox in 2024.
  • Speaking of pitching close to home, Rich Hill told MLB Network’s Jon Morosi (X link) that he is open to pitching anywhere as he weighs whether or not to return for a 21st Major League season.  Hill lives in the greater Boston area and he pitched for the Red Sox in 2024, though the locale didn’t directly factor into Hill’s decision to join the Sox for the fourth different time in his career.  Hill’s desire to coach his son’s Little League team did impact his strategy of waiting until the second half of the 2024 season to sign, as he only landed a minors deal with the Sox in August.  When discussing his future plans earlier this month, Hill hinted that he would likely pursue a full-season schedule this time, though he hadn’t yet decided if he was going to pitch into his age-45 campaign.
  • Also from Morosi in another X entry, left-hander Enmanuel De Jesus is drawing interest from two unnamed Major League teams.  De Jesus posted a 3.68 ERA, 24.45% strikeout rate, and 6.04% walk rate over 171 1/3 innings with the KBO League’s Kiwoom Heroes in 2024, but the Heroes won’t be offering him a new contract for the coming KBO season.  The southpaw has a 4.01 ERA across 749 1/3 career innings and nine seasons in the affiliated minors, mostly with the Red Sox before pitching in the Giants organization in 2022 and the Marlins organization in 2023.  De Jesus’ only MLB experience came with Miami during that 2023 season, as he pitched 6 1/3 innings over two appearances and was hit hard for an 11.57 ERA.  While De Jesus worked more as a swingman in 2021-22, he has largely pitched as a starter throughout his career, including starting all 30 of his games with the Heroes.  A return to the KBO League with another team might be in the cards if De Jesus strictly wanted to start, or he could be open to a variety of roles if he is pursuing a path back to North American baseball.
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