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AL West Notes: Tillman, Rodney, Ohtani, Diaz, Gonzales

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Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram runs through some potential September call-ups for the Rangers, listing outfielder Scott Heineman, left-hander Brady Feigl and veteran right-hander Chris Tillman as potential options who are not on the 40-man roster. Per Wilson, the Rangers are intrigued by Tillman as a potential piece for the 2019 rotation, and a September call-up would serve as an audition of sorts. Tillman hasn’t had any big league success since 2016 and has missed time with a groin injury since signing a minor league deal with the Rangers. However, he has a fairly lengthy MLB track record, and the Rangers are thin on upper-level pitching depth. At the very least, Tillman could be a candidate to head to Spring Training as a non-roster invitee in 2019, though perhaps with a strong September showing the team would consider a guaranteed deal.

Here’s more from the AL West…

  • Fernando Rodney doesn’t know what the Athletics’ plans for him are as pertains to the 2019 season, but the league’s leading arrow-shooter made clear to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle last week that he has every intention of playing. Whether the A’s exercise a $4.25MM club option on Rodney remains to be seen, but the 41-year-old right-hander has certainly given his new team plenty of reason to consider retaining him. Rodney has fired off eight scoreless innings with a 7-to-2 K/BB ratio since being acquired in exchange for young righty Dakota Chalmers earlier this month. As Slusser notes, he’s four saves shy of Francisco Cordero’s all-time record for a Dominican-born player. Rodney is keenly aware of that fact, acknowledging that he’d hoped to set the record with the Twins and still has his sights set on doing so in the future.
  • Angels pitcher/DH Shohei Ohtani seems to be champing at the bit to make his next major-league start after a long layoff following the diagnosis of a UCL sprain. As Jeff Fletcher of the Southern California News Group reports on Twitter, the prized 24-year-old feels he’s ready to go after throwing fifty pitches today in a simulated game. While skipper Mike Scioscia indicated that Ohtani’s stuff is crisp, the club is surely prioritizing the long-term in deciding how to proceed. This campaign won’t end in a postseason appearance, after all, and Ohtani’s right arm is of critical importance to the Halos’ hopes in 2019 and beyond.
  • Corey Brock of The Athletic takes a look at the rise of Edwin Diaz to one of the game’s elite closers (subscription required). Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto, manager Scott Servais, bullpen coach Brian DeLunas and first base coach Chris Prieto are among those to weigh in on Diaz’s ascension from a prospect who never appeared on a major Top 100 list to the second-fastest player ever to reach 100 big league saves. As Dipoto recalls, there was a fair bit of internal debate in his first offseason as GM with the team about whether to develop Diaz as a starter or a reliever. It was eventually decided to see how Diaz’s stuff would play in shorter stints and, if things didn’t go well, to then transition him back to the Majors. Diaz uncorked a 101 mph fastball on his first pitch out of the Double-A bullpen, per Dipoto, and the right-hander’s ensuing dominance made the organization’s decision fairly straightforward. Brock also chats with Astros manager A.J. Hinch and a few of Diaz’s teammates about his emergence as one of the game’s premier relievers.
  • In other Seattle pitching news, the Mariners have placed southpaw Marco Gonzales on the 10-day DL with a cervical neck muscle strain, per a club announcement. He’ll be replaced on the active roster by outfielder Guillermo Heredia. As Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times writes, it’s still not clear how the M’s will address the newly opened rotation hole. While it’s possible southpaw James Paxton will be ready to go in time to take the ball on Wednesday, when Gonzales had been scheduled to start, that would mean moving up his schedule. It’s certainly not an optimal situation for a Seattle club that is trying to catch up to the division-leading Astros and Athletics. Gonzales entered the month of August with a strong 3.37 ERA, but has faded of late. He coughed up eight earned runs in just three innings in his most recent start and has seen his earned-run average climb all the way to 4.32. It has been a compelling season for the 26-year-old, regardless, but as Divish explains the southpaw may be wearing down now that he has reached 145 2/3 frames on the year — a significant workload for a pitcher who has been limited by injuries for most of the past three campaigns.

AL West Notes: Springer, Iwakuma, Meyer

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Some injury updates from around the AL West…

  • George Springer will be in the Astros’ starting lineup tomorrow, manager A.J. Hinch told reporters (including Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle).  The outfielder made his return to the field today with a pinch-hit appearance, marking Springer’s first action after missing Houston’s previous six games due to an injury to his left quad.  Between the quad problem and a DL stint due to a left thumb sprain, Springer has only appeared in four games since August 5, one of several injury absences that has contributed to the Astros’ narrowed lead over Oakland in the AL West race.  Even before the injuries, however, Springer was stuck in a protracted slump; he has only a .201/.304/.346 slash line over his last 272 plate appearances.
  • Hisashi Iwakuma pitched his first inning of the 2018 season, allowing one run on two hits during the frame as he began an A-ball rehab assignment (hat tip to MLB.com’s Jake Rill).  It was Iwakuma’s first action of any kind since a minor league start in June 2017, as shoulder problems limited him to six Major League starts in 2017 and have continued to keep him sidelined all of this year, despite his undergoing arthroscopic surgery last September.  If Iwakuma can stay healthy, Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto has suggested that the veteran righty could see some action in Seattle’s bullpen before the season is out.
  • Angels right-hander Alex Meyer recently received a cortisone shot in his bothersome throwing shoulder, GM Billy Eppler told Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register and other reporters.  Despite this setback in Meyer’s lengthy recovery from shoulder surgery, he is expected to resume throwing in a few days’ time.  Meyer underwent the procedure to fix his torn shoulder labrum last September, and wasn’t expected to return until the 2019 season, so this setback doesn’t necessarily hint at larger problems for the 28-year-old as he tries to resume his career.

Juan Nicasio To Undergo Season-Ending Knee Surgery

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Mariners reliever Juan Nicasio is scheduled to undergo season-ending knee surgery, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times tweets. It seems the procedure will be “cleanup surgery, nothing catastrophic,” Corey Brock of The Athletic adds.

Nicasio has dealt with right knee issues throughout the season and endured multiple stints on the disabled list as a result. The 31-year-old last pitched Aug. 2, when he allowed two earned runs in two-thirds of an inning in a loss to Toronto. He’ll wrap up his season with a hideous 6.00 ERA across 42 innings, though FIP (2.99), xFIP (3.17) and SIERA (2.58) suggest Nicasio deserved far better in the run prevention department. Nicasio logged excellent strikeout and walk rates (11.36 K/9, 1.07 BB/9), to his credit, and he was victimized by an unusually high batting average on balls in play (.402) and an abnormally low strand rate (58.1 percent).

Assuming Nicasio returns at full strength in 2019, the Mariners will hope he experiences some positive regression during what will be a contract year. Seattle signed Nicasio to a two-year, $17MM guarantee in free agency last winter, but the deal obviously hasn’t panned out thus far for the club.

Injury Notes: Chapman, Judge, Sale, Santana, Goody, Iwakuma

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Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman went in for a platelet-rich plasma treatment on his ailing left knee, David Lennon of Newsday tweets. Skipper Aaron Boone indicated that the plan is to reevaluate the high-powered lefty in two weeks’ time. That’s a bit less promising than the initial suggestion that Chapman could be back after the minimum ten-day DL stint, though there’s no indication as of yet that there’s any real concern that the injury could carry over into the postseason. For a Yankees team that is all but locked into a Wild Card play-in game, getting Chapman up to full speed by the end of September is of much greater importance than having him available for the final month of the regular season.

  • Meanwhile, the Yankees are still waiting for a breakthrough from star outfielder Aaron Judge. As Boone stated, and MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch tweeted, the team has “stopped guessing” as to when Judge’s fractured wrist will be in good enough shape to allow him to resume swinging. In this case, perhaps, there’s a bit more reason to be anxious. It has been a long layoff for Judge, after all, and he’ll want to get as many plate appearances as possible before October arrives. Clearly, though, there’s not much the team can do but wait and hope the wrist improves.
  • The news is slightly more promising — though no less clear — on Red Sox southpaw Chris Sale. He’s “doing better” and “getting close,” per Boston manger Alex Cora, as Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald reports on Twitter. With a healthy division lead, the Boston organization is in no need of Sale’s services for the next five weeks. But he’s essential to the team’s World Series hopes, so getting his balky shoulder sorted out is a top priority.
  • The injured finger of Twins hurler Ervin Santana won’t require surgery, skipper Paul Molitor said and Phil Miller of the Star-Tribune tweeted. That said, the veteran is going to remain shut down until “doctors come up with a plan.” With the Twins’ season sunk and Santana not looking himself since making a brief return to the majors, the objective here is to set him up as well as possible for the future rather than rushing him back in 2018. While no decision has been made as to whether Santana will pitch again for the Twins this year, it could well be that he has already taken the mound for the club for the last time. Minnesota is unlikely to pick up its $14MM option over the right-hander, who will presumably be a popular bounceback target in the offseason to come.
  • Indians righty Nick Goody isn’t in need of a new ulnar collateral ligament, Jordan Bastian of MLB.com tweets, but he is headed in for some kind of procedure. That’s rather promising news, given that the 27-year-old was making the rounds to several noted surgeons recently. Goody has missed much of the 2018 season with arm woes, making for a disappointing follow-up to his strong 2017 performance. Last year, Goody worked to a 2.80 ERA with 11.9 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9 over 54 2/3 frames. He had been on track to reach arbitration via Super Two status this fall. While he’ll have enough MLB service time to reach it, he won’t be eligible since he has not spent 86 days on the active roster this season.
  • It seems the Mariners and Hisashi Iwakuma haven’t given up entirely on the veteran hurler this year. Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto said in a regular appearance on 710 ESPN (write-up via Brent Stecker) that the 37-year-old is nearing a rehab stint, in fact, though it doesn’t sound as if there’s particular cause for optimism that he’ll be a real factor this year. Iwakuma only made six starts in 2017 and hasn’t made it back to competitive action this season. Still, Dipoto suggested he’d do everything possible to get him up to the majors as a reliever down the stretch.

Minor MLB Transactions: 8/23/18

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Here are the day’s minor moves from around the league…

  • The Mariners announced Friday that left-hander Ross Detwiler and infielder Zach Vincej, each of whom was designated for assignment earlier this week, have cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Tacoma. Detwiler was selected to the big league roster when Mike Leake had to be scratched due to injury. He gave the Mariners six innings of three-run ball against the Astros on short notice in what ultimately wound up to be a losing effort. The veteran southpaws has spent the summer with Seattle’s top affiliate in Tacoma and could emerge as an option with expanded rosters in September, if Seattle wants to add some additional lefties to its bullpen. As for Vincej, he’ll remain in the organization and hope to receive another look as well. He went 2-for-4 in his lone MLB appearance earlier this season and is a career .268/.336/.359 batting line in the minors while playing shortstop, second base and third base.

Mariners Designate Ross Detwiler

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It was a short-lived return to the majors for Ross Detwiler, who was designated for assignment today by the Mariners, per a club announcement. He’ll be replaced on the active roster by righty Nick Rumbelow.

Seattle had called up the 32-year-old Detwiler only recently and ended up asking him to provide six innings of relief last night. While he only allowed three earned runs and helped preserve some other pen arms, the extended appearance also ensured he’d be removed from the roster since it rendered him unavailable for several days to come.

Detwiler opened the year in the indy ball ranks before landing with the Seattle organization. The southpaw worked to a 5.15 ERA with 5.8 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 in his 71 2/3 innings at Triple-A before seeing action in the majors for his tenth season.

Mariners Select Ross Detwiler, Designate Zach Vincej

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The Mariners announced that they’ve selected the contract of left-hander Ross Detwiler from Triple-A Tacoma and designated infielder Zach Vincej for assignment to open space on the 40-man roster. Righty Chasen Bradford was optioned to Tacoma to open a spot for Detwiler on the active roster.

The move will give the Mariners some important length in the bullpen, as Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times tweets that Mike Leake has been scratched from tonight’s start due to illness. Reliever Nick Vincent will start in his place, so the Mariner look to have a bullpen day on their hands with Leake unable to take the ball.

Detwiler, 32, returns to the big leagues after spending the entire 2017 season at the Triple-A level between the Athletics and the Cubs. The former No. 6 overall pick was a solid back-of-the-rotation arm for the Nationals earlier in his career and had success out of the Nationals’ bullpen in 2014 as well. However, his career took a turn for the worse following a trade to the Rangers in 2015, and he was clobbered for a combined 6.73 ERA in 107 innings between Texas, Atlanta, Oakland and Cleveland from 2015-16.

Detwiler opened the 2018 season with the York Revolution of the independent Atlantic League and pitched 30 strong innings before the Seattle organization purchased his rights. In 71 1/3 frames with Tacoma, he’s posted an uninspiring 5.15 ERA with a 46-to-24 K/BB ratio. He was slated to start tonight before being scratched from his start, though, and since he’s been working in the rotation anyhow, he could enter the game in relief of Vincent and give the Mariners several innings.

Vincej, 27, went 2-for-4 in his lone game with the Mariners earlier this season but has spent the rest of the year in Tacoma. An offseason waiver claim out of the Reds organization, he’s capable of playing multiple infield positions and has batted .246/.314/.346 with six homers, 13 doubles and a pair of triples in 391 plate appearances so far in Tacoma. He’s a former 37th-round pick (Reds, 2012) who owns a career .268/.336/.359 batting line in the minors while playing shortstop, second base and third base.

Quick Hits: Contender Schedules, Pazos, Weaver, Mets, Giants

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With several divisions throughout Major League Baseball still up for grabs and numerous contenders still in the hunt for the Wild Card, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports runs through the strength of the rest-of-season schedule for each of the 14 teams with realistic hopes of securing a postseason bid. The Diamondbacks draw the unwelcome distinction of facing the toughest schedule of any team in baseball between now and season’s end, Passan notes, pointing out that from Sept. 6-26 they’ll play 20 games in 20 days against a grouping of teams with a combined .560 winning percentage. The Indians, meanwhile, land on the other end of the spectrum. Despite the fact that they have seven games against the Red Sox remaining, the rest of their schedule is more or less a romp through the hapless AL Central, with 10 games against the Royals and six against the White Sox highlighting what should be an easy path to the AL Central crown.

Some other miscellaneous items for your afternoon perusal…

  • Lefty James Pazos has been among the Mariners’ best relievers over the past two seasons, but Seattle optioned him to Triple-A on Sunday. Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times examines the move, citing manager Scott Servais in writing that the organization feels that Pazos is in need of some mechanical corrections to get back into top form. Specifically, Servais indicated that Pazos “hasn’t been as consistent with his fastball” over the past six weeks or so, which has gotten him into trouble at times. The Mariners don’t expect Pazos to spend much more, if any, than the 10-day minimum in the minors as he works out the kinks, but Servais notes that he’s been falling behind hitters of late due to that fastball inconsistency. The organization, per Divish, has a “very detailed” plan for Pazos to follow in what sounds to be a brief trip to Tacoma.
  • Cardinals manager Mike Shildt tells Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the decision to move right-hander Luke Weaver from the rotation to the bullpen was “not an easy one.” Weaver looked to be among the game’s more promising young starters in 2017, and he’s shown flashes of brilliance in 2018, too, but has generally been inconsistent. Weaver cites his own lack of fastball control as the root of his struggles in a harsh self-evaluation but sounds to be taking the move in stride. “This move is not a slap in the face,” says the soon-to-be 25-year-old. “It’s about … finding a way where I can help the team, wherever it is. … It’s not going to shake me.”
  • The upcoming Mets/Giants series will provide fans with a contrast between a club that has excelled in terms of building minor league depth (the Giants) and one that has failed at doing so in recent seasons (the Mets), writes Tim Britton of The Athletic (subscription required). Britton notes that in Ryan Vogelsong, Santiago Casilla, Andres Torres and several others, San Francisco has consistently found value in minor league free agency. This season alone, he observes, the Giants have three minor league signees — Derek Holland, Dereck Rodriguez, Alen Hanson — who’ve provided the team with more than a win above replacement (per Fangraphs); conversely, the Mets have had only two players over the past four seasons combined that have reached even half a win by that same measure: Rene Rivera and Jose Reyes. Britton explores the Giants’ method of aggressively approaching minor league free agency, headed by assistant GM Jeremy Shelley, in an interesting look at the stark difference between the two clubs.

Orioles Claim John Andreoli

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The Orioles claimed outfielder John Andreoli off waivers from the Mariners, the club has announced. Andreoli had been designated for assignment yesterday. Baltimore has sent him to Triple-A Norfolk.

Andreoli is quite an interesting player. The 28-year-old enjoyed a solid season with the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate, hitting .287 with a .397 on-base percentage across 388 plate appearances. The disclaimer is that an unsustainable .381 BABIP is largely to thank for that, so it wouldn’t be shocking to see those figures drop by 50 points apiece if he regresses to the mean. In addition, the former 17th-rounder has exhibited very little power; he sports an ISO of just .114. He made his major league debut this season, notching a hit and a walk in six plate appearances prior to being designated for assignment yesterday.

Andreoli is capable of playing all three outfield positions, meaning he stands a chance of working his way into Baltimore’s outfield mix next season should be perform well in September. The Orioles will lose long-time franchise icon Adam Jones to free agency this winter, and as such there’ll be a large opening in the outfield for which Andreoli could throw his hat into the ring.

Mariners Select Gordon Beckham, Designate John Andreoli

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The Mariners announced today that they have selected the contract of veteran infielder Gordon Beckham. He’ll help the club fill out its infield mix while shortstop Jean Segura is on paternity leave. To create a 40-man opening, the Seattle organization designated outfielder John Andreoli for assignment.

Beckham, who’ll soon turn 32, has played two-dozen MLB games over the past two seasons with the M’s. He has spent most of his time of late, though, at Triple-A Tacoma. This year, the ten-year major-league veteran has posted a strong .311/.411/.479 slash with 52 walks against 46 strikeouts in his 370 plate appearances at the highest level of the minors.

The 28-year-old Andreoli, meanwhile, reached the majors this year only long enough to record his first and only big-league base hit. He’s in his first year in the Mariners org after spending seven professional campaigns in the Cubs system. Andreoli has posted a .287/.397/.401 slash in 388 plate appearances with Tacoma in 2018.

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