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Minor MLB Transactions: 10/27/20

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The latest minor moves from around the game…

  • The Yankees announced that they have outrighted catcher Wynston Sawyer to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The team selected Sawyer’s contract in the middle of September, but he didn’t end up seeing any major league time in 2020. In his most recent professional action in 2019, Sawyer – an eighth-round pick of the Orioles in 2010 – batted .260/.333/.409 with two home runs in 171 plate appearances with the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate. The 28-year-old joined the Yankees on a minor league contract in February.
  • The Mariners have re-signed outfielder Connor Lien to a minors deal, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times tweets. Lien, 26, was a 12th-round pick of the Braves in 2012 who, to this point, has played his entire professional career with the franchise. He divided the most recent minor league season in 2019 between Double-A and Triple-A, where he combined to hit .211/.314/.441 with 11 homers over 246 trips to the plate.

Mariners Set 2021 Coaching Staff

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The Mariners on Monday announced their coaching staff for the 2021 season. The unit will remain largely unchanged, although Seattle has appointed Trent Blank as the team’s permanent bullpen coach and director of pitching strategy. He’ll replace Brian DeLunas, whose departure had been previously reported. DeLunas coached remotely in 2020 due to a preexisting kidney issues that place him at high risk with regard to Covid-19. Due to that arrangement, Blank shared bullpen coach duties in 2020 on an acting/interim basis.

Blank is entering his third season with the Mariners organization, having previously been hired as the club’s coordinator of pitching strategy prior to the 2019 campaign. The former Rockies farmhand spent four years with TMI Sports Medicine between his retirement as a player in 2015 and being hired by Seattle.

Manager Scott Servais is set to return to the Mariners for what will be his sixth season, and he’ll have the rest of his 2020 staff back at his side. That includes bench coach Jared Sandberg (heading into his second season in that role), hitting coach Tim Laker (third season), pitching coach Pete Woodworth (second season), first base/infield coach Perry Hill (third season), third base coach Manny Acta (fourth season), assistant hitting coach Jarret DeHart (second season) and field coordinator Carson Vitale (second season).

D-backs Claim Taylor Guilbeau From Mariners; M’s Outright Gerson Bautista

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The Diamondbacks have claimed left-hander Taylor Guilbeau off waivers from the Mariners, per an announcement from Seattle. The M’s also announced that righty Gerson Bautista has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Tacoma.

Now 27 years old, Guilbeau joined the Mariners as part of their return from the Nationals in a 2019 deal that sent relievers Roenis Elias and Hunter Strickland to Washington. Guilbeau went on to toss 20 innings of 2.70 ERA ball with a 59.1 percent groundball rate as a member of the Mariners, though he also struck out barely more hitters (10) than he walked (nine). He dealt with a shoulder strain in 2020 and saw his velocity tumble.

Bautista, whom the Mariners acquired in their pre-2019 trade with the Mets centering on Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz, has only thrown nine innings with Seattle. He racked up all of those frames in 2019, as the 25-year-old missed all of this season with a flexor strain in his right elbow.

Mariners Claim Domingo Tapia From Red Sox

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The Mariners announced that they have claimed right-hander Domingo Tapia from the Red Sox via waivers. Seattle now has 34 players on its 40-man roster.

Tapia, formerly a farmhand with the Mets and Reds, joined the Red Sox on a minor league contract last December. The hard-throwing 29-year-old wound up making his major league debut with Boston this past season and tossing 4 1/3 innings of one-run, four-hit ball with four strikeouts and two walks. Tapia has also spent time at the Triple-A level, where he has pitched to a 4.34 ERA and posted 6.8 K/9 against 3.9 BB/9 over 134 2/3 innings.

Matt Magill, Carl Edwards Jr., Nestor Cortes Jr. Elect Free Agency

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The Seattle Mariners outrighted three relievers to Triple-A, the team announced. Matt Magill, Carl Edwards Jr., and Nestor Cortes Jr. each elected free agency. The Mariners have 7 open spots on their 40-man roster.

Magill underwent arthroscopic debridement surgery on his right shoulder on Sept. 15, effectively ending his season. The surgery was performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles, per the team release. The 30-year-old reliever did a fine job for the Mariners in 2019 after Seattle purchased his contract from the Twins in July, posting a 3.63 ERA across 22 appearances totaling 22 1/3 innings. His 2020 was more fraught, however, yielding over 6 runs per 9 innings before going down with injury. Originally drafted in the 31st round by the Dodgers, Magill has appeared in the bigs with the Dodgers, Reds, Twins, and Mariners since his debut in 2013.

Edwards Jr. will be well-remembered by Cubs fans for his time in Wrigley Field where he spent the first 4 1/2 seasons of his career. One of a small cadre of relievers that gained manager Joe Maddon’s trust during their title run in the 2016 playoffs, Edwards Jr. remained a key member of the Cubs’ bullpen from 2015 to 2018 with a 3.06 ERA/3.12 FIP in 159 innings over 172 appearances with 12.3 K/9 to 4.9 BB/9. The String Bean Slinger lost his command as he stumbled through a difficult season in 2019. The Cubs eventually traded him to the Padres for Brad Wieck in a swap of bullpen projects.

Edwards Jr. signed with the Mariners as a free agent before 2020, appearing in just 5 games, though he looked sharp in those 4 2/3 innings, allowing just 1 earned run while striking out 6 to just 1 walk. A forearm strain sent him to the injured list on August 10th, ending his season. The 29-year-old will be an interesting reclamation project to track for someone next season. If he can return to the player he was with the Cubs, he’d certainly be a viable weapon out of the bullpen.

Like Magill and Edwards Jr., Cortes was put on the injured list in mid-August, and he too missed the remainder of the season. Cortes made one start and four relief appearances for the Mariners, giving up 13 earned runs across 7 2/3 innings. The 25-year-old has a 6.72 career ERA over parts of 3 seasons with the Orioles, Yankees, and Mariners.

Rangers Claim Art Warren

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The Rangers announced Wednesday that they’ve claimed right-hander Art Warren off waivers from the division-rival Mariners. The move brings Texas’ 40-man roster to a total of 39 players and drops Seattle’s to a count of 33.

Warren, 27, has just 5 1/3 big league innings under his belt, all coming in 2019 with Seattle. He averaged just north of 95 mph on his heater in that time and drew 70 grades on the pitch when he was rising through the system after being selected in the 23rd round of the 2015 draft. Warren worked almost exclusively with a four-seamer and a slider — his most frequently used offering — in that tiny sample of work.

Had their been a conventional minor league season in 2020, Warren likely would’ve been ticketed for Triple-A — a level at which he still has yet to pitch. He jumped straight from Double-A to the Majors when making that 2019 debut. In a total of 47 1/3 frames of Double-A ball, Warren carries a 1.71 ERA and has averaged a dozen strikeout per nine innings, although he’s also averaged five walks per nine. He still has a minor league option remaining after spending the 2020 season in the Mariners’ player pool at their alternate training site. Warren did get a call to the big leagues with Seattle this past season but didn’t get into a game before being optioned back out.

As Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times points out, via Twitter, the Mariners have a whopping eight players on the 60-day injured list who’ll either need to be reinstated or designated for assignment, so it’s not much of a surprise to see some continued roster maintenance. That group includes Tom Murphy, Mitch Haniger, Gerson Bautista, Matt Magill, Andres Munoz, Taylor Guilbeau, Carl Edwards Jr. and Nestor Cortes Jr. Not all are locks to stick on the roster — Edwards, in particular, could be on shaky ground — but Murphy, Haniger, Magill and perhaps Munoz are all ticketed for notable roles next year.

Hisashi Iwakuma To Retire

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The Yomiuri Giants announced yesterday that veteran right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma will retire at the conclusion of the current Nippon Professional Baseball season.  Shoulder problems have kept Iwakuma off the mound in 2020, but he will hang up his glove after a combined 17 seasons of action in NPB and Major League Baseball.

Iwakuma is best known to North American fans for his six-year run with the Mariners from 2012-17.  The righty posted a 3.42 ERA, 3.86 K/BB rate, 47.6% grounder rate, and 7.3 K/9 over 883 2/3 innings at the big league level, starting 136 of 150 games.  Highlights of Iwakuma’s Seattle tenure included an outstanding 2013 season that saw him finish third in AL Cy Young Award voting, and a no-hitter against the Orioles on August 12, 2015.

It’s easy to wonder what might have been had Iwakuma arrived in the majors prior to his age-31 season, and also perhaps what he could have been able to accomplish in both NPB and MLB had he not been bothered by shoulder injuries and some other health woes for a good deal of his career.  This injury history cost Iwakuma some money in his initial contract with Seattle, and even more notably, a potential three-year, $45MM free agent deal with the Dodgers in the 2015-16 offseason that Los Angeles abandoned after concerns about Iwakuma’s physical.  Even Iwakuma’s return to Japan resulted in only two innings with Yomiuri’s minor league team in 2019.

Over 1541 innings for the Kintetsu Buffaloes and Rakuten Golden Eagles from 2001-11, Iwakuma posted a 3.25 ERA, 3.44 K/BB rate, and 6.9 K/9.  2008 was his greatest year, as Iwakuma captured both league MVP honors and the Sawamura Award (Japan’s equivalent to the Cy Young Award) after posting a 1.87 ERA, 4.42 K/BB rate, 7.1 K/9, and a 21-4 record over 201 2/3 innings for the Golden Eagles.  Iwakuma was also a member of Japan’s winning squad in the 2009 World Baseball Classic, with Iwakuma being named to the all-tournament team.

We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Iwakuma on an excellent career, and wish him the best in retirement.

Mariners Outright Four Players

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The Mariners announced the outrights of four players: right-handers Brady Lail and Seth Frankoff, and catchers Joe Hudson and Joseph Odom. Hudson and Lail have elected free agency, while Frankoff and Odom were assigned to the club’s Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma. Seattle’s 40-man roster is down to 34 players.

Lail was claimed off waivers from the White Sox in August. He allowed eight runs (including five homers) in 15 innings down the stretch, striking out eleven against seven walks. Frankoff signed a minor-league contract the day after Seattle claimed Lail. He was eventually selected to the roster but only pitched in two games, allowing five runs in 2.2 innings. A longtime KBO starter, Frankoff will be eligible for minor-league free agency this offseason.

Hudson and Odom each unexpectedly picked up some of the slack behind the plate this season. Presumptive starter Tom Murphy missed the entire season with a foot fracture but figures to return to action next spring. Luis Torrens, who came over from the Padres in the Austin Nola trade, hit fairly well down the stretch and looks to have staked a claim to the backup job. Like Frankoff, Odom can elect minor-league free agency this winter.

Mallex Smith, Bryan Shaw, Jimmy Yacabonis Elect Free Agency

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Mariners outfielder Mallex Smith and right-handers Bryan Shaw and Jimmy Yacabonis have elected free agency, Greg Johns of MLB.com tweets. The Mariners outrighted all three players in September.

Seattle had high hopes for Smith when it acquired him from Tampa Bay before 2019 in a deal that also involved catcher Mike Zunino, among others. The Mariners seemed right to be bullish on Smith, who was coming off a 3.5-fWAR, 40-steal season at the time. Smith has continued as a stolen base threat since then (he swiped 40 bags in 2019), but the 27-year-old has otherwise struggled. He finished his M’s tenure with 613 plate appearances of .220/.290/.323 hitting and six home runs.

It was also an awful 2020 for Shaw, continuing a downward trend for the once-effective Cleveland reliever. After a woeful two-year stint in Colorado, Shaw joined the Mariners on a big league contract in July, but the deal didn’t work out for either side. The 32-year-old wound up tossing six frames, yielding 12 earned runs on 13 hits and issuing six walks in Seattle.

Yacabonis joined the Mariners in a minor trade with the Padres in August, but he also didn’t establish himself in the M’s bullpen. The 28-year-old gave up one earned runs on two hits and three walks in 2 1/3 innings.

Quick Hits: Matzek, Braves, Extensions, Mariners

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Tyler Matzek hadn’t thrown a Major League inning since the 2015 season, yet the southpaw has been a huge contributor to the Braves’ 2020 bullpen, posting a 2.79 ERA, 4.30 K/BB rate, and 13.3 K/9 over 29 regular season innings, and adding three shutout innings of work thus far in the playoffs.  Matzek’s five-year absence from the big leagues was marked by a 2017 spent entirely out of baseball, and then a stint pitching for the independent Texas AirHogs in 2018 and 2019 that got his career on track.  As AirHogs general manager Nate Gutierez told Steve Hummer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Matzek’s mindset heading to indy ball, “some guys come in defeated….When Tyler came in, we had open and honest conversations with him about where he was, which was a ways away from where he thought he needed to be.”

Some more from around baseball….

  • Matzek’s emergence further strengthen a bullpen that was one of the league’s best in 2020. Also instrumental at the end of games for manager Brian Snitker are Chris Martin and Mark Melancon, a pair of relievers originally acquired around the 2019 trade deadline. Those are among a series of moves the Alex Anthopolous-led front office has made to fortify the pitching staff over the past couple seasons, as Buster Olney of ESPN explores. Even more impactful, perhaps, are potential moves Atlanta didn’t make, as Olney notes that opposing teams tried to buy low on Max Fried and Kyle Wright after they started their careers with somewhat mixed results. To their credit, the Braves obviously stood pat on both pitchers, which has proven especially beneficial in Fried’s case.
  • There’s a widespread industry expectation teams will curtail spending this offseason in the wake of this year’s pandemic-driven revenue losses. That cost consciousness could manifest itself in plenty of extension offers for teams’ top young players, Olney further reports. The early career extension is hardly a new phenomenon; players like Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies and Scott Kingery have inked different variations of that type of deal in recent years. Olney expects an uptick in those kinds of offers in the coming months, with teams looking to lock in long-term cost certainty wherever possible. The Acuña and Albies deals demonstrate the massive returns on investment teams can reap when they strike early on the right players.
  • The Mariners will have some decisions to make in advance of this offseason’s deadline to protect players from the Rule V draft, as Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times explores. Taylor Trammell, Juan Then and Sam Delaplane are obviously going to be protected, Divish feels, but reliever Wyatt Mills and corner infielder Joe Rizzo present tougher calls. One other key roster decision will involve right-hander Kendall Graveman’s $3.5MM club option, Divish notes. The 29-year-old’s overall season numbers weren’t particularly impressive, but Graveman seemingly found another gear working out of the bullpen down the stretch.
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