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Zach Penrod

Red Sox Reinstate, Option Zach Penrod

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The Red Sox have reinstated left-hander Zach Penrod from the 60-day injured list and optioned him to Triple-A Worcester, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive. The move doesn’t impact Boston’s active roster but their 40-man is now full. They had opened a spot on the weekend by designating lefty Sean Newcomb for assignment.

Penrod, 28 next month, got to make a brief major league debut last year. He tossed four innings over seven appearances for Boston, posting a 2.25 earned run average in that small sample. He struck out three opponents and walked four.

He’s been held back by a lack of health this year. He had some elbow soreness during the spring and went for an MRI. While that imaging only found inflammation, manager Alex Cora nonetheless relayed that Penrod was going to miss significant time. He was placed on the 60-day IL on Opening Day, with his injury listed as an elbow sprain.

He now seems to be healthy enough to take the mound, as he started a rehab assignment on the weekend. He’ll likely need a few more outings before he’s a realistic candidate to get called up, but he’ll soon provide the Sox with a lefty depth arm. In 2024, he logged 62 2/3 innings on the farm with a 4.16 ERA, 34.8% strikeout rate and 12.4% walk rate.

Photo courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck, Imagn Images

Red Sox Place Liam Hendriks On 15-Day IL

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March 28: Despite the season-opening IL placement, Hendriks is not facing a severe injury, Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic writes. He’s already been examined by Dr. Keith Meister, who performed his Tommy John surgery, and received a cortisone injection to help alleviate some inflammation and discomfort stemming from a compressed nerve. There’s no structural damage in Hendriks’ elbow. He’ll be shut down from throwing for three to five days but expects to resume throwing during next week’s series against the Orioles.

March 27: The Red Sox announced a slate of transactions to finalize their Opening Day roster, including a surprise placement of righty Liam Hendriks on the 15-day injured list due to elbow inflammation. Fellow right-hander Cooper Criswell, who had appeared ticketed for Triple-A Worcester, will instead break camp with the big league club.

Boston also selected the contracts of lefty Sean Newcomb and top prospect Kristian Campbell. Both have formally made the Opening Day roster. Lefties Chris Murphy and Zach Penrod were placed on the 60-day injured list to open spots. Murphy is recovering from UCL surgery performed last spring. Penrod was diagnosed with a left elbow sprain earlier in camp.

Additionally, the Red Sox placed Masataka Yoshida on the 10-day IL as he continues building back up from offseason shoulder surgery. Righties Brayan Bello (shoulder strain), Kutter Crawford (patellar tendinopathy) and Lucas Giolito (hamstring strain) were all placed on the 15-day IL, as expected.

Hendriks, who turned 36 last month, is entering the second season of a two-year, $10MM deal. The Red Sox signed him knowing that he’d miss most of all of the 2024 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. The expectation early in camp was that he and offseason signee Aroldis Chapman could compete for ninth-inning work. The tide changed quickly. Chapman fanned 14 of the 30 batters he faced and held opponents to two runs in 7 1/3 innings. Hendriks allowed seven runs on 14 hits in just 6 1/3 frames. He didn’t walk anyone but also only whiffed four of the 32 hitters he faced.

The Red Sox haven’t yet provided a timetable for when Hendriks might return to the mound. For now, there’s no indication that he’s dealing with a long-term injury. Presumably, manager Alex Cora will have more information regarding his potential timetable when he meets with the media later today.

Zach Penrod Facing Significant Absence Due To Elbow Inflammation

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Red Sox lefty Zach Penrod underwent an MRI due to an elbow issue recently, and manager Alex Cora provided an update to reporters (including MassLive’s Chris Cotillo) today on Penrod’s status. While the MRI revealed no structural damage and only elbow inflammation, Cora acknowledged that he’s been shut down for the time being and that Penrod will “be out for a while” even though surgery is not currently on the table.

It’s surely a frustrating development for the 27-year-old rookie, who made his debut near the end of the 2024 season with a 2.25 ERA in seven relief outings. Penrod briefly pitched for the Rangers in rookie ball but spent most of his professional career to this point in indy ball before getting picked up by the Red Sox partway through the 2023 campaign. He dominated Double-A pitching last year but hit something of a wall at Triple-A with a 5.93 ERA in 27 1/3 innings of work across 15 starts. That didn’t stop the Red Sox from giving Penrod a September call-up last year, but despite his solid ERA in the majors he did struggle with more walks (4) than strikeouts (3) at the highest level.

Even so, Penrod appeared likely to be the club’s top lefty depth option entering 2025 behind the trio of southpaws locked into the Opening Day bullpen. Offseason additions Aroldis Chapman and Justin Wilson figure to join Brennan Bernadino on the club’s Opening Day roster to give batters a different look than the rest of the club’s pitching staff, which is dominated by right-handers with ace Garrett Crochet as the only other lefty. Outside of Penrod, all of the club’s minor league depth on the 40-man roster is right-handed, though injured players Patrick Sandoval and Chris Murphy as well as non-roster veteran Matt Moore all pitch left-handed and could help to balance out the roster’s handedness at some point.

It’s not entirely clear how long Penrod is slated to miss, but Cotillo notes that the expectation at the moment is that Penrod won’t be returning to the mound “anytime soon.” That suggests a lengthy rehab process, and given the risks associated with elbow issues it shouldn’t be a surprise if the club is extremely cautious with Penrod as they look to avoid aggravating his ailing elbow to the point where surgery is necessary. Given that, MLB.com notes that Penrod won’t be returning until at some point in May at the earliest, though even that timeline could be an aggressive estimate and it wouldn’t be unusual for Penrod to miss several months due to the ailment.

Red Sox, Matt Moore Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Red Sox have agreed to a minor league contract with left-hander Matt Moore, reports Rob Bradford of WEEI. He’ll presumably head to big league camp for the remainder of spring training.

Moore, 36, has spent the bulk of the past two seasons with the Angels. He made a couple of quick pit stops in Cleveland and Miami following the Angels’ Aug. 2023 mass waiver purge, but more than 90% of his appearances since 2023 have come in a Halos uniform.

Once ranked among the game’s top three prospects alongside Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, Moore had a nice start to his career but never got fully back on track following 2014 Tommy John surgery. He got back up 198 innings of 4.08 ERA ball in 2016 but wasn’t the borderline ace-caliber pitcher he looked to be when first breaking into the majors.

Moore struggled with the Giants and Rangers in 2017-18 and then missed nearly all of the 2019 season with the Tigers after suffering a knee injury in just his second start of the season. A nice 2020 run in Japan led to a 2021 deal with the Phillies, but Moore again struggled as a starter and was moved to a swing role.

Returning to the Rangers on a minor league deal in 2022, Moore found new life and a second act in his career upon a full-time shift to short relief. He pitched 74 innings of 1.95 ERA ball that season, parlaying that rebound effort into successive one-year deals in Anaheim.

The first of those two seasons was better than the second. Moore’s 2024 results (5.03 ERA in 48 1/3 innings) are skewed by a pair of disastrous outings; he combined to yield nine runs (one-third of his season-long total) in just one inning of work during those two appearances. Moore also saw a dip in average fastball velocity in 2024, falling from 94 mph to 92.7 mph. That lost velocity and his late struggles with command could be attributable to the forearm strain that ended his season in August, however.

Generally speaking, Moore has been a quality arm for the bulk of the past three seasons. During that time, he’s tossed 175 innings of 2.98 ERA ball and fanned one quarter of his opponents while issuing walks at a 10.8% clip. Moore has worked primarily in high-leverage settings, coming away with 46 holds and six saves. He’s been placed in position to pick up a hold or save 57 times over the past three seasons and succeeded doing so in 52 of those opportunities.

As it stands, the Red Sox project to have two lefties in Alex Cora’s bullpen: Aroldis Chapman and Justin Wilson. Both signed guaranteed one-year deals in free agency earlier this winter. Lefties Zach Penrod and Brennan Bernardino are both on the 40-man roster as well, but there’s an injury scare with regard to the former at the moment. MassLive’s Chris Cotillo reports that Penrod has been dealing with elbow soreness and is headed for an MRI. There’s some concern, and Cora suggested when talking about Penrod’s outlook that the team was looking at bringing another lefty into the mix. That’ll be Moore.

Moore joins a list of experienced non-roster relievers trying to win a spot in the ’pen. He’s the second notable name to sign such a pact this week. The Sox inked righty Adam Ottavino on Tuesday. Righties Michael Fulmer, Austin Adams, Isaiah Campbell and Wyatt Mills are all non-roster invitees in camp with Boston, as are lefties Sean Newcomb and Jovani Moran.

By definition, Moore is an Article XX(b) free agent — which is to say he has six-plus years of major league service time and finished out the prior season on a major league roster or 60-day injured list. Under the 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement, Article XX(b) free agents who sign minor league deals are granted uniform opt-out dates. Those opt-out opportunities will come five days before Opening Day (March 22, in this case) and then on May 1 and June 1. Moore will have the ability to elect free agency on each of those dates if he has not been added to the Red Sox’ 40-man roster.

Red Sox Select Zach Penrod, Designate Tyler Heineman

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The Red Sox announced five transactions this morning, including the news that left-hander Zach Penrod’s contract has been selected to the big league roster.  Catcher Tyler Heineman was designated for assignment to open up a spot on the 40-man roster, and left-hander Cam Booser and right-hander Zack Kelly were both optioned to Triple-A Worcester to create space on the active roster.  Boston also called up southpaw Bailey Horn from Triple-A.  Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe (X link) was the first to report on the Penrod, Booser, and Horn transactions, while MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo (via X) reported yesterday that Kelly was being optioned.

Kelly and Booser were two of six pitchers used by the Red Sox in Friday’s 5-4 loss to the Yankees, so today’s moves brings some fresh arms into Boston’s relief corps.  For Penrod, he is now on the verge of his Major League debut, making quite a culmination of a six-year pro career that began as an undrafted free agent.

Penrod pitched briefly with the Rangers’ rookie league club in 2018 but he then spent two years on the sidelines due to both a Tommy John surgery and the canceled 2020 minor league season.  The southpaw returned to pitch in the independent Pioneer League from 2021-23, and this performance caught the eye of Red Sox scouts and led to a minor league deal partway through the 2023 season.  This year, Penrod has a 4.16 ERA over 62 2/3 combined innings at Double-A and Triple-A ball, as well as a huge 34.8% strikeout rate.

There is a pretty wide variance in those minor league numbers, as Penrod posted a 2.80 ERA in 35 1/3 Double-A innings and a much heftier 5.93 ERA in 27 1/3 frames in Worcester.  Control has been a bit of a question mark for Penrod throughout his career, and his walk rate also spiked up to 16.1% in Triple-A after a more palatable 9.1% number in Double-A action.

Still, the strikeouts are playing at both levels, and Penrod’s upper-90s fastball makes him an interesting bullpen weapon for the Red Sox to explore.  Penrod has mostly started throughout his pro career but worked out of the pen for 10 of his 15 appearances in Worcester, so Boston figures to use him in a long relief role here at the tail end of the 2024 season.  As Alex Speier of the Boston Globe explored back in May, Penrod’s development of a slider as a third pitch after his fastball and changeup could help him carve out a path as a starter, but the 27-year-old is surely pleased to work in the majors in any capacity.

The Red Sox acquired Heineman in a trade with the Mets back in February, and he has spent almost the entire season in the minors save for two games at the MLB level.  Connor Wong and Reese McGuire handled most of the catching duties for the Sox this season, and after Danny Jansen was acquired at the trade deadline, McGuire was outrighed to Triple-A and Heinemen was pushed even further down the depth chart.

With his two appearances in a Red Sox uniform, Heineman has now now suited up for five different teams at the big league level over his five seasons in the Show, and he has also been organizational depth for six other franchises.  Heineman has hit .216/.297/.280 over 286 career plate appearances, with 174 of those PA coming as a member of the Pirates and Blue Jays in 2022.  Because Heineman has been outrighted before, he has the ability to elect free agency and reject an outright assignment from Boston if he clears DFA waivers.

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