Dodgers Acquire Ryan Loutos, Claim J.P. Feyereisen
The Dodgers have acquired right-hander Ryan Loutos from the Cardinals in exchange for cash and claimed righty J.P. Feyereisen off waivers from the Diamondbacks, reports Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. The Loutos trade was previously reported by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Dodgers moved righties Blake Treinen and Michael Kopech to the 60-day injured list to open 40-man roster spots for the two pickups.
Loutos, 26, has had a somewhat unusual trajectory to the big leagues, as explored in this profile from Goold last year. Due to his computer science background, the Cards hired him to develop an app to help minor leaguers use data, and let him pitch as well. “I know what I need to do to improve. I know what I could do,” Loutos said. “But I also know from their shoes what they see: ‘OK, let him play for a while. See what happens. Worst-case scenario, we maybe offer him a job in the front office. Best-case scenario, maybe he’s in the big leagues someday.’”
So far, the playing part has worked out okay. He made his major league debut last year, though it was brief. He tossed 2 1/3 scoreless innings over three appearances. From the start of 2023 to the present, he has logged 134 innings on the farm with a 5.10 earned run average, 24.2% strikeout rate and 10.7% walk rate.
Feyereisen, 32, has a much longer big league track record. In 2021, he tossed 56 innings between the Brewers and Rays with a 2.73 ERA. He managed to top that performance in 2022, tossing 24 1/3 scoreless innings, with a 29.1% strikeout rate and 5.8% walk rate. However, a shoulder injury intervened and stopped him from building on those numbers.
He underwent shoulder surgery and was traded to the Dodgers ahead of the 2023 season. He hasn’t been able to fully re-establish himself in the majors since then. He eventually spent that entire 2023 season on the IL, not making an official appearance anywhere. The Dodgers shuttled him to Triple-A and back in 2024. He only got to pitch 11 big league innings, with an 8.18 ERA in those. His 5.48 ERA in Triple-A wasn’t especially impressive either.
He was outrighted off the roster last year, allowing him to elect free agency and sign a minor league deal with the Diamondbacks coming into 2025. He got called up a couple of weeks ago after posing a 0.96 ERA in Triple-A. He then allowed two earned runs in two innings for the Snakes before getting designated for assignment and put on waivers.
For the Dodgers, they are likely happy to have some fresh arms, one of which they are already familiar with. With Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow both on the IL due to shoulder inflammation, they are down to a four-man rotation of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May. The club is keeping Sasaki and Yamamoto on the weekly schedule the pitchers are accustomed to from their time in Japan.
That situation, plus plenty of other injuries, have led to a great deal of creativity in cobbling the staff together. Pitchers like Landon Knack, Justin Wrobleski, Bobby Miller and Ben Casparius have made spot starts. Yoendrys Gómez, recently claimed off waivers from the Yankees, is working a long relief role. Both Loutos and Feyereisen have options, so the Dodgers are adding some arms with some roster flexibility. The team is about to start a stretch of playing ten straight games. After one off-day, they will play another nine straight.
To open spots for those two, Kopech and Treinen hit the 60-day IL. Kopech’s move isn’t especially surprising. He’s been on the 15-day IL all year long due to a shoulder impingement and still hasn’t begun a rehab assignment. Even if he were to start one now, he would need a few weeks as a sort of delayed spring training. He could be reinstated from the IL in a couple of weeks but that doesn’t seem to be likely.
The move for Treinen is more notable. He started the season healthy but landed on the 15-day IL April 19th due to right forearm tightness. This transfer to the 60-day IL indicates the Dodgers don’t expect him back before the middle of June. He is 36 years old, turning 37 in June, and has a recent history of arm injuries. He only tossed five innings in 2022 due to shoulder problems and then underwent surgery which wiped out his 2023 campaign.
He got back on track last year with a 1.93 ERA in 46 2/3 innings, plus another 12 1/3 postseason innings with a 2.19 ERA, helping the Dodgers win the World Series. The team believed in that bounceback enough to give him a two-year, $22MM deal in free agency, the largest deal for a reliever going into his age-37 season or older since Mariano Rivera‘s deal with the Yankees back in 2010.
Shortly after Treinen landed on the IL last month, manager Dave Roberts described the injury as a “low-grade sprain of the forearm” and downplayed the severity by saying “we’re in the dodged-a-bullet category.” It’s unclear if Roberts was just masking the extent of the injury or if something changed, but Treinen now appears to be slated for an absence of at least a couple of months.
Photo courtesy of John Geliebter, Imagn Images.
Cardinals Designate Ryan Loutos For Assignment
The Cardinals have designated right-hander Ryan Loutos for assignment, per the team. He’s the corresponding move for the previously reported promotion of infielder/outfielder Jose Barrero. The Cards have formally announced the selection of Barrero’s contract and optioned infielder Thomas Saggese to Triple-A Memphis.
Loutos, 26, made his big league debut with the Cardinals last summer, appearing in three games and tossing 2 1/3 innings of shutout ball. The undrafted free agent originally signed with the Cards after the 2021 draft and has steadily climbed the minor league ranks, posting solid numbers with the exception of a rough 2023 campaign.
In 2024, Loutos pitched 53 innings and tallied 18 saves in Triple-A. He logged a 3.40 ERA in Memphis, punched out 25.8% of his opponents and issued walks at a 10% clip. It wasn’t necessarily a dominant performance, but Loutos sat 94.3 mph with his heater and induced swinging strikes at a roughly average rate. His velocity is up a bit this season, sitting 94.6 mph in Triple-A, and he’s held opponents to three runs on seven hits and a pair of walks with six strikeouts in seven innings. All three of those runs allowed came in his first appearance of the season. He’s since rattled off seven shutout frames.
The Cardinals will have to either trade Loutos or place him on waivers within the next five days. Waivers would be another 48-hour process, meaning the maximum length of his stay in the proverbial DFA limbo will be one week.
Cardinals Outright Alfonso Rivas
May 23: Rivas cleared waivers and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Memphis, the Cardinals announced. He’ll remain with the organization.
May 20: The Cardinals announced Monday that they’ve designated first baseman/outfielder Alfonso Rivas for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster will go to right-hander Ryan Loutos, whose previously reported selection to the MLB roster has now been confirmed by the club. Righty Chris Roycroft was optioned to Triple-A Memphis to open space for Loutos on the active roster.
Rivas was claimed off waivers out of the Angels organization back in January. The 27-year-old has continued to show his typical keen eye at the plate in Memphis this season, walking at a hearty 12.8% rate, but he hasn’t hit for his usual average or power. Overall, he’s batting just .246/.364/.323 in 158 plate appearances with the Redbirds.
The well-traveled Rivas played sparingly in the majors each year from 2021-23, spending time with the Cubs, Pirates and Padres. He’s a .243/.324/.349 hitter in 459 big league plate appearances to this point in his career.
Tepid as his output in Memphis has been, Rivas entered the season with a lifetime .313/.424/.492 batting line in parts of four Triple-A seasons. He’s walked in nearly 15% of his plate appearances across five campaigns at the Triple-A level, and while he’s more of a gap hitter than true slugger — 48 doubles to just 15 homers in nearly 800 Triple-A plate appearances — he’s nevertheless been quite productive there outside this season.
Rivas has primarily been a first baseman in the minors but has a few hundred innings of corner outfield experience as a professional. He’s in the final of three minor league option seasons and is still two seasons shy of even reaching arbitration eligibility. A club looking for a left-handed bat with strong on-base skills could potentially take a look. Rivas has been designated for assignment three prior times in his career but has never made it through waivers, so MLB clubs are clearly intrigued by his bat — even if he hasn’t yet been all that productive in the majors.
The Cardinals will have a week to trade Rivas or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. If they can succeed in getting him through waivers, they can keep him in the organization without needing to dedicate a 40-man roster spot to him. Rivas has neither the MLB service time nor the prior outright assignment required to reject an outright to the minors after going unclaimed on waivers.
Cardinals To Promote Ryan Loutos
The Cardinals are calling up right-hander Ryan Loutos, according to the WashU Baseball Updates X feed. The team will need to make adjustments to both its 26-man and 40-man rosters, as Loutos isn’t on the Cards’ 40-man.
This will be the first MLB exposure for Loutos, a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis who signed with the Cards as an undrafted free agent in 2021. It means that the 25-year-old has now beaten the vast majority of players from that draft class to the majors, marking another step in Loutos’ unusual baseball career. As Geoff Pontes of Baseball America wrote in a 2022 interview with the right-hander, “the Cardinals coveted Loutos as much for his potential fit as a front office candidate as they did for his skill as a baseball player.” Loutos is a computer science major who has already been working with the Cardinals’ analytics department.
In terms of on-field contributions, Loutos pitched pretty well in 2022 before struggling to a 6.40 ERA over 71 2/3 relief innings at Triple-A Memphis in 2023. Loutos had a solid 24.1% strikeout rate but also a 11.3% walk rate, and that latter number has actually gotten worse to the tune of a 13.6BB% this season. However, Loutos also hasn’t allowed any homers, has generated a 50% grounder rate, and upped his K% to 27.3% in posting a 1.72 ERA in 15 2/3 frames for Memphis in 2024.
It was enough to merit Loutos a ticket to the Show, even if it might be just a short-term stint to provide a fresh arm to the St. Louis bullpen. The Cardinals have leaned pretty hard on their pen over the last few games, so some extra help could be required when the Cards begin a series Monday with the hot-hitting Orioles.