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Trey Amburgey

Reds Sign Five Players To Minor League Deals

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The Reds announced last night, before the MLB implemented a lockout, that they had signed five players to minor league deals. They are right-handed pitchers Brandon Bailey and Trey Wingenter, catcher/infielder Andrew Knapp, outfielder Trey Amburgey and infielder/outfielder Allen Cordoba. All five have received invitations to spring training.

Knapp, 30, had been with the Phillies since they selected him in the 2013 draft, seeing MLB action in each of the past five seasons, largely in a reserve capacity. He had a tremendous showing in the shortened 2020 campaign, hitting .278/.404/.444 in 33 games. However, he crashed back to earth in 2021, slashing .152/.215/.214  in 62 games. He was outrighted by the Phillies at the end of the season and elected free agency. The Reds will likely use Tyler Stephenson as their everyday catcher, but after trading Tucker Barnhart to Detroit, there’s room for Knapp to jump into a backup role.

Wingenter, 27, showed some promise out of the Padres’ bullpen in 2018 and 2019. Over those two seasons, he pitched 70 innings, with an ERA of 5.14. His tremendous strikeout rate of 33.1% was offset by a bloated 13% walk rate. He underwent Tommy John surgery in July of 2020 and has been mostly out of action since, though he did get into a handful of Complex League games in August of this year. The Padres non-tendered him earlier this week.

Bailey, 27, was initially acquired by the Reds from the Astros in a 2020 trade. He pitched 7 1/3 innings for the Astros at the MLB level that year, his only big league experience to date. In 2019, he pitched 92 2/3 innings at the Double-A level with an ERA of 3.30. He underwent Tommy John surgery in February of this year and missed the entire season. He was non-tendered earlier in the week, with his return on a minor league deal reported at that time.

Amburgey, 27, was selected by the Yankees in the 13th round of the 2015 draft. He made his major league debut this season but was only given four plate appearances in two games. In 71 Triple-A games in 2021, he hit .276/.337/.475, but with a concerning strikeout rate of 28.1%.

Cordoba, who turns 26 in a few days, was a Rule 5 selection of the Padres in 2016 and stayed on the roster for all of the 2017 season. He was only 21 years old at the time and had never played above Rookie ball. He hit .208/.282/.297 that year in 100 MLB games. Since that time, he’s played in the minors for the Padres, spending 2021 at Double-A, hitting .299/.392/.446. He was outrighted off San Diego’s roster last week.

Yankees Activate Anthony Rizzo, Aroldis Chapman

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The Yankees announced they’ve activated first baseman Anthony Rizzo from the COVID-19 injured list. He’s in tonight’s lineup against the archrival Red Sox, hitting second. Additionally, closer Aroldis Chapman is back from the 10-day IL. In corresponding moves, outfielder Jonathan Davis and reliever Nick Nelson were optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

To create space for Rizzo on the 40-man roster, New York activated outfielder Trey Amburgey from the 10-day IL and returned him to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Because Amburgey was originally selected to the big league roster as a replacement for a player who had gone on the COVID-19 IL, he could be removed from the 40-man and sent back to the minors without being placed on waivers.

Rizzo returns ten days after testing positive for the coronavirus. For the first time, he’ll pair with Luke Voit, who was activated from his own IL stint at the time Rizzo landed on the shelf. It’s an abundance of offensive riches for the Yankees, who’ll have to also find playing time for Joey Gallo, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton between the outfield, first base and designated hitter.

Chapman landed on the IL on August 7 with inflammation in his throwing elbow. While a bit of an ominous-sounding diagnosis, it turned out to only require a near-minimal stint. In his absence, Chad Green, Zack Britton and Jonathan Loáisiga picked up save opportunities, but that role will again fall to Chapman, manager Aaron Boone confirmed to reporters (via Erik Boland of Newsday). The hard-throwing southpaw rebounded from a dreadful few weeks in the middle of the season to post seven consecutive scoreless outings leading up to his IL stint.

The Yankees have almost completely bounced back from the spread of COVID-19 in the clubhouse over the past couple weeks. Reliever Clay Holmes is the only player remaining on the COVID IL for the red-hot Yankees, who have won twelve of their last fifteen to catch the Red Sox and A’s in the American League Wild Card race.

Yankees Select Trey Amburgey, Activate Zack Britton

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The Yankees announced Thursday that they’ve selected the contract of minor league outfielder Trey Amburgey to the Major League roster and reinstated lefty Zack Britton from the 10-day injured list. In a pair of corresponding roster moves, both Nestor Cortes Jr. and Wandy Peralta were placed on the Covid-19-related injured list. The team has not provided further updates on their status. Players on the Covid list do not count against a team’s 40-man roster, so no further corresponding move was necessary to place Amburgey on the 40-man.

Amburgey, 26, was the team’s 13th-round pick back in 2015. He’s never been considered one of the organization’s top prospects and posted mostly average results while rising through the minor league ranks. However, his 2019 campaign in Triple-A was a bit above the league average, and his second go-around at that level has been enormously productive.

Through 161 plate appearances so far in 2021, Amburgey has tattooed Triple-A pitching at a .312/.379/.582 clip. He’s connected on seven home runs, 15 doubles and a triple while walking at a healthy 9.9 percent clip and fanning in 24.2 percent his plate appearances.

Amburgey has played the outfield corners exclusively so far in 2021, but he does have 753 innings of center-field work under his belt — including 122 innings there back in Triple-A during the 2019 season. That makes him an option to work into the mix at multiple spots, as the Yankees have received generally poor collective output from both left field (.232/.297/.363, 83 wRC+) and center field (.182/.289/.312, 71 wRC+) so far in 2021. Right fielder Aaron Judge has been characteristically excellent, both with the glove and the bat, but the outfield group as a whole has been a key factor in the Yankees’ underwhelming 2021 campaign.

The 33-year-old Britton, meanwhile, will return from his second IL stint of the season — the second a much shorter one than the first. Britton was out from Opening Day through June 12 due to arthroscopic surgery that removed bone chips from his left elbow. He tossed just 4 1/3 innings upon his activation before going down with a hamstring strain that sidelined him another three weeks.

Britton’s return will come at a time when the Yankees’ other high-priced bullpen lefty, Aroldis Chapman, has been melting down at the most alarming rate of his career. Chapman carried a near-immaculate 0.39 ERA through early June before imploding in a four-run loss to the Twins at Target Field in which he failed to retire any batters. He’s now allowed runs in five of his past ten outings, including three of his past four, and pitched to a disastrous 18.90 ERA over those ten outings. Since that June 10 meltdown, Chapman has yielded 14 earned runs on 15 hits and 11 walks in just 6 2/3 frames. Four of those hits have left the yard, and he’s also hit a batter. He’s faced 46 batters and allowed 27 of them to reach.

Given those struggles, it wouldn’t at all be a surprise to see a returning Britton and the steadier Chad Green supplant Chapman in high-leverage and/or save situations. (Although Green himself just imploded for four runs in his final first-half outing.) Britton, of course, has more closing experience than just about any “setup” man around the game, having racked up 153 saves in his career — including an AL-best 47 back in 2016 with the Orioles.

The Yankees are turning to Amburgey and Britton at a pivotal time for the club. They’ll face the division-leading Red Sox in eight of their next ten games, with the only reprieve coming via a two-game set against the Phillies.

The Yankees’ season in many ways hangs in the balance; they’re already eight games behind Boston in the AL East and four and a half games back in the AL Wild Card chase. A strong showing in these eight games could rally the club and push the front office into buy mode with the July 30 trade deadline looming, but if the Sox are able to topple the Yankees in the majority of these eight games, it could serve as a proverbial nail in the coffin of the 2021 Yankees, who’d have some interesting veterans to peddle in advance of the deadline.

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