Dodgers To Place Will Smith On Injured List
The Dodgers will place Will Smith on the 10-day injured list tomorrow, manager Dave Roberts told reporters (including Bill Plunkett of The Orange County Register). They’ll select Chuckie Robinson onto the active roster to back up Dalton Rushing. L.A. opened the necessary 40-man roster spot by releasing Tyler Fitzgerald this afternoon.
Smith has been nursing a stiff neck for the past few days. He hasn’t played since Friday. The Dodgers can backdate his IL placement for up to three days, so he’ll be down until at least next Wednesday. Roberts downplayed the level of concern.
It has been a relatively slow start to the season for Smith. He’s hitting .249/.338/.382 with six home runs in 201 plate appearances. His plate discipline and batted ball metrics are mostly in line with those of previous seasons, so the Dodgers surely aren’t worried. Smith remains on the short list of the best catchers in the sport even if the slight dip may keep him from a fourth straight All-Star appearance.
Rushing, who is hitting .275/.352/.532 on the season, would be the #1 catcher on most other teams. He’s more than capable of holding the primary job for what should be a short-term absence. Rushing has started four straight around Monday’s off day. The Dodgers don’t have another day off until next Thursday, so they needed to get a healthy catcher up at some point.
That’ll fall to the 31-year-old Robinson, an organizational depth type. He played one game for the Dodgers last September and has had brief MLB stints with the Reds and White Sox. The Dodgers re-signed him on a minor league deal over the offseason and have kept him at Triple-A Oklahoma City. Robinson missed the first month of the season but has come back with a solid .274/.338/.466 start over 20 games. He’s a career .131/.169/.192 hitter at the big league level.
Rockies Outright Keegan Thompson
The Rockies sent righty Keegan Thompson outright to Triple-A Albuquerque, per the MLB.com transaction log. Colorado designated him for assignment yesterday when they needed a 40-man roster spot for outfield prospect Cole Carrigg. Waivers are a 48-hour process, so they evidently began that on Monday’s off day before formally announcing the DFA.
It’s the second time this year the Rox have gotten Thompson through waivers. He was designated for assignment at the end of Spring Training after failing to break camp. Thompson is out of options and can’t be sent down without going through waivers. The Rox selected him back onto the roster when Victor Vodnik went on the injured list in late May.
Thompson only got into five games over his three weeks on the MLB roster. He worked in mop-up relief and allowed 11 runs through 12 innings. Thompson had a solid enough 11:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but he allowed 19 hits and tossed three wild pitches. That was his first MLB work in two seasons. Thompson spent last year in Triple-A in the Cubs’ system.
The 31-year-old will likely return to Albuquerque. He has the right to elect free agency but would forfeit his split contract if he does so. Thompson is making $350K while in the minors and is paid at a prorated $1.3MM rate for any time on the big league roster. He presumably won’t walk away from that to pursue a minor league contract elsewhere. He has worked 32 1/3 innings in a swing role for the Isotopes, pitching to a 3.34 ERA despite a subpar 13.6% strikeout rate.
Astros Sign Trenton Brooks To Minor League Deal
The Astros signed outfielder Trenton Brooks to a minor league contract. Although the team never formally announced the move, Brooks is tonight’s lineup for their Triple-A affiliate in Sugar Land.
It’s another flier on a left-handed hitting outfielder for the Astros. They added LaMonte Wade Jr. on a big league deal last week, but he almost immediately went on the injured list with a hamstring strain. That moved Joey Loperfido back to the big league level. CJ Alexander and Zach Cole are on the Triple-A roster as lefty-hitting outfielders.
Brooks, 30, is back in affiliated ball after beginning this season in Korea. He signed with the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes on a $700K contract. Brooks didn’t perform as the team hoped, batting .217/.286/.259 over 41 games. KBO teams have a roster limit on foreign-born players, so they’re quick to move on from those who struggle. The Heroes waived him in mid-May to sign Keston Hiura.
A former 17th-round pick, Brooks has played 37 games at the major league level. He debuted with the Giants in 2024 and got some run with the Padres last year. Brooks has hit .136 with one home run and 19 strikeouts in 72 trips. As one would imagine, he has a much better track record against minor league arms. Brooks is a lifetime .279/.382/.472 slash line with nearly equal walk and strikeout rates in nearly 2000 career Triple-A plate appearances.
Padres Sign Nick Pratto To Minor League Deal
The Padres signed first baseman Nick Pratto to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A El Paso. The affiliate announced the move this evening.
Pratto had spent the season on a minor league contract with Texas. The Rangers released him just yesterday and he quickly finds a new landing spot. Pratto had spent the first month of the season on the development list, which is a non-injury reserve list for minor league players. That’s typically used when a player is making mechanical adjustments outside of game action.
The 27-year-old Pratto reported to Triple-A Round Rock at the end of April. He appeared in 26 games and hit .237/.287/.473 across 101 plate appearances. Pratto slugged five home runs among 10 extra-base knocks but struck out 33 times while only taking six walks. The swing-and-miss has been an issue throughout his career.
A first-round pick of the Royals in 2017, Pratto hit .216/.295/.364 for Kansas City between 2022-23. He made one appearance as a late-game substitute in 2024 but has otherwise spent the last two and a half years in the minors. The former top prospect has a .226/.327/.430 slash line with a 30% strikeout rate over six Triple-A seasons.
Tigers Acquire Jacob Waguespack
The Tigers have acquired right-hander Jacob Waguespack from the Brewers for a player to be named later or cash considerations. Evan Woodbery of MLive Media Group was among those to pass along the news. The righty was just signed to a minor league deal last month and won’t immediately need a roster spot with the Tigers, unless his deal had some sort of opt-out or upward mobility clause.
Waguespack, 32, began the season with the Brewers on a minor league deal. Milwaukee granted him his release in early May. After exploring his opportunities for a little over a week, they re-signed him to a new minor league deal.
He has been having a good year on the whole, though with some important notes. He has tossed 21 2/3 innings over 16 Triple-A appearances, allowing 1.66 earned runs per nine. He has received some help from a .238 batting average on balls in play and 73.2% strand rate. His 16.5% walk rate is very high but he has also punched out 36.3% of batters faced. He has 105 2/3 innings of big league experience with the Blue Jays and Rays, posting a 5.11 ERA in that time. He struck out 18.9% of batters faced and gave out walks at a 10.1% clip.
The Tigers have been working through a huge number of pitching injuries this year, with nine arms currently on the big league injured list. Tarik Skubal, Justin Verlander, Casey Mize and Kenley Jansen are all expected back soon, which could lead to some roster shuffling.
As they sort things out in the coming days and weeks, Waguespack can give them some extra depth without taking up a roster spot, unless his minor league deal had some sort of contract provision that will lead to the Tigers adding him to their 40-man. If that is the case, Waguespack is out of options and will need to be added to the active roster.
Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images
Orioles Sign Chadwick Tromp To Minor League Deal
The Orioles have signed catcher Chadwick Tromp to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He has been assigned to Triple-A Norfolk. He elected free agency earlier this week after being designated for assignment by Atlanta.
Tromp, 31, has seen scattered big league playing time over seven seasons. He has stepped to the plate 205 times in 79 games. That includes six games with Baltimore last year. On the whole, he has a .218/.225/.371 line in his career. He has generally received solid grades for his glovework but the light offense has kept him in a depth role. He has exhausted his options over the years, which has led to him bouncing on and off rosters, mostly as an injury replacement.
The Orioles currently have a bit of uncertainty in their catching mix. Adley Rutschman has a left hamstring issue while Samuel Basallo is dealing with a left wrist ailment. Sam Huff was added to the roster recently and has started the three most recent games, including tonight. Rutschman hasn’t appeared in a game since Sunday, when he served as the designated hitter. Basallo hasn’t started since Sunday, though he has made pinch-hit appearances in the past two games.
Tromp will give the O’s some non-roster depth while they navigate those injuries. If Rutschman or Basallo ultimately need a stint on the injured list, or both, Tromp could be added to the roster. If both manage to get healthy in the coming days, Huff is out of options and could end up designated for assignment. Huff was designated for assignment earlier this year and cleared waivers, which allowed the O’s to re-sign him to a new minor league deal after he elected free agency. But there is no guarantee that the same thing would happen again, so there’s sense in having Tromp around as a contingency for various scenarios.
Photo courtesy of Rafael Suanes, Imagn Images
Angels Select Logan Porter
4:19pm: The Angels have officially announced Porter’s selection. Rivero was placed on the 10-day IL with a left hamate fracture and will require surgery, reports Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. Kochanowicz was transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot.
10:31am: The Angels are set to select the contract of catcher Logan Porter, reports Ari Alexander of 7News. He signed a minor league deal with them five days ago after choosing free agency over an outright assignment with the Giants. Porter hasn’t even suited up for a game with the Halos’ Triple-A affiliate yet, but he’ll jump right to the big leagues after backup catcher Sebastian Rivero exited last night’s game due to an apparent hand injury.
Porter, 30, is joining his third big league team. He has brief experience in the majors with both the Royals and Giants, for whom he’s totaled a combined 47 plate appearances. Porter is just a .184/.326/.289 hitter in that time, but he’s a .244/.359/.389 hitter in parts of five Triple-A seasons. He’s light on power but has walked at a gaudy 14.4% clip in more than 1200 Triple-A plate appearances.
Porter also gives the Angels a defensively sound backup to starting catcher Logan O’Hoppe. He’s thrown out a roughly average 22% of runners who’ve attempted to steal on him in the minors (33% dating back to last season) and drawn quality framing grades with slightly below-average marks for his blocking abilities, per Baseball Prospectus.
The Angels have already utilized four different catchers in 2026. Porter will be the fifth, joining the quartet of O’Hoppe, Rivero, Travis d’Arnaud and Omar Martinez. He has a full slate of minor league options remaining, so the Angels don’t necessarily need to designate him for assignment when d’Arnaud and/or Rivero get healthy. The Halos will need to open 26-man and 40-man roster spots for Porter, but that should be pretty straightforward. His selection to the majors seems to point to an IL trip for Rivero, and righty Jack Kochanowicz can be shifted to the 60-day IL after undergoing Tommy John surgery this week.
Mariners Place Matt Brash On IL With Lat Strain
The Mariners announced a series of roster moves today. Infielder/outfielder Miles Mastrobuoni has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list and right-hander Domingo González has been recalled from Triple-A Tacoma. In corresponding active roster moves, infielder Ryan Bliss has been optioned to Tacoma while right-hander Matt Brash has been placed on the 15-day injured list with a lat strain, retroactive to June 9th. To open a 40-man spot for Mastrobuoni, righty Yosver Zulueta has been designated for assignment.
This is the second time this year that Brash has landed on the IL because of his lat. Inflammation in that muscle put him out of action for roughly the first three weeks of May. He came back for a few weeks but has evidently strained the muscle this time. The M’s haven’t yet provided any updates about his expected absence but it seems fair to expect an even longer absence than when he was just dealing with inflammation.
For however long he’s out, it’s an unfortunate blow for the Seattle bullpen. He has been a key setup arm for them throughout his career, with a 3.06 earned run average in 185 1/3 innings. That includes an ERA of 0.54 ERA in 16 2/3 innings around his injuries this year. He wasn’t going to maintain that kind of run prevention all year but his longer track record shows what he is capable of.
Seattle is working with a short bullpen since they are running a six-man rotation right now, leaving them with just seven relievers while most other clubs have eight. The one upside of Brash’s injury is that it allows the M’s to bring up a fresh arm at a time when the relief group is fairly taxed. Andrés Muñoz, Jose A. Ferrer, Eduard Bazardo and Gabe Speier have all pitched in two of the past three days.
Zulueta, 28, has never pitched for the Mariners in the big leagues. He was acquired from the Reds in January and has been on optional assignment this year. He has thrown 20 1/3 Triple-A innings with a 5.75 ERA. That has come in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League but Zulueta hasn’t helped himself by walking 16.3% of batters faced. His 21.4% strikeout rate isn’t awful and his 56.9% ground ball rate is quite good but that poor control is hard to work around in any setting.
That has generally been the issue with Zulueta throughout his career. He has big stuff, with his fastballs both averaging in the upper 90s, but he hasn’t been able to harness it. He now has 203 1/3 Triple-A innings under his belt with a 3.94 ERA and 26.9% strikeout rate but a big 14.3% walk rate. He has only walked 10.9% of batters faced in the majors but in a much smaller sample of 23 2/3 innings.
He is now in DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Mariners could take as long as five days to explore trade interest, but they could also put him on waivers sooner than that. He can still be optioned for the remainder of this year, so perhaps some club with an open roster spot will be intrigued enough to stash him and hope he reins things in a bit more.
He has never been outrighted in his career and has less than three years of service time, meaning he does not have the right to reject an outright assignment. If he is passed through waivers unclaimed in the coming days, the Mariners could keep him as non-roster depth.
Photo courtesy of Jeff Curry, Imagn Images
Blue Jays Designate Connor Seabold For Assignment
The Blue Jays announced that right-hander Connor Seabold has been designated for assignment. That opens an active roster spot for Max Scherzer, who has been reinstated from the 15-day injured list to start tonight’s game. Toronto’s 40-man roster count drops to 38, as Yariel Rodríguez was also designated for assignment this week.
Seabold, 30, began the year with the Jays on a minor league deal. They had planned to have him serve as multi-inning depth piece until his velocity ticked up a bit in camp, which caused them to try him in more of a traditional relief role.
They couldn’t find a spot for him on the Opening Day roster, so he triggered an opt-out and signed with the Tigers. He posted a 3.45 earned run average for Detroit, spending about two months on the roster before getting squeezed into DFA limbo. At that time, the Jays had suffered a number of injuries and had room for Seabold, so they sent minor league pitcher Juanmi Vasquez to the Tigers in a DFA trade.
Seabold has made five appearances for the Jays in the past two weeks, allowing three earned runs in 3 1/3 innings. That gives him an 8.10 ERA in that tiny sample of work. Looking at his season as a whole, he has a 4.26 ERA in 19 innings. His 17.2% strikeout rate is subpar but his 8% walk rate and 42.9% ground ball rate are decent figures.
Ultimately, that’s not enough for him to keep his roster spot. The Jays have been getting healthier of late, with Tommy Nance, Dylan Cease and now Scherzer coming off the IL this week. Seabold is out of options, so he has been pushed into DFA limbo yet again. That can last as long as a week, though the waiver process takes 48 hours. The Jays could take five days to see if Seabold has any trade value but they could also put him on waivers sooner than that.
If Seabold were to clear waivers, he would have the right to elect free agency since he has a previous career outright. However, since he has fewer than five years of big league service time, he would have to forfeit his remaining salary commitments in exercising that right. His deal with the Tigers in March was a split deal which came with an $800K salary in the majors. The minor league salary on that deal was not publicly reported. Perhaps it’s healthy enough that he would not want to walk away from it and would accept an outright assignment.
The returns of both Cease and Scherzer give the Jays the healthiest rotation they’ve had in months. Their starting group has really been decimated by injuries this year. José Berríos, Cody Ponce and Bowden Francis are done for the year. Cease, Scherzer and Trey Yesavage all spent time on the IL for lesser injuries. Shane Bieber and Lazaro Estrada are currently on the IL. Jake Bloss is on the minor league IL, still working his way back from last year’s Tommy John surgery. Despite all the injuries, the Jays gave up on Eric Lauer earlier in the year, trading him to the Dodgers.
Due to all those issues, the Jays have effectively been running a three-man rotation while Cease and Scherzer have been out, with Yesavage, Kevin Gausman and Patrick Corbin being the three. The Jays have been patching things together around those three, with bullpen games featuring guys like Spencer Miles, Chad Dallas and Simeon Woods Richardson in bulk roles.
Ideally, things stay healthy from here with Cease, Scherzer, Gausman, Yesavage and Corbin in the rotation. Dallas has been optioned to the minors and can be in the Triple-A rotation while Miles and Woods Richardson are still in the big league bullpen. Bieber, Bloss and Estrada are on rehab assignments right now and could be factors in the future. On the position player side, catcher Alejandro Kirk is also rehabbing and could be back with the big league club soon.
The defending American League champions probably hoped to be better than 33-35 at this point in the season but probably don’t feel too bad about how they weathered all those injuries. The weak performance across the A.L. means they are tied for a Wild Card spot with the Rangers, despite their losing record. With the injury situation leveling off, perhaps they can post better results going forward.
Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images
Dodgers Release Tyler Fitzgerald
The Dodgers have released infielder/outfielder Tyler Fitzgerald, per Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. He landed on the minor league injured list earlier this month, according to his transaction tracker at MLB.com. It appears the Dodgers wanted to remove him from the 40-man but injured players can’t be placed on outright waivers. He’ll be a free agent as soon as he clears release waivers, if he hasn’t already.
Not so long ago, Fitzgerald seemed to be on the verge of a breakout. With the Giants in 2024, he hit 15 home runs in 341 plate appearances and slashed .280/.334/.497 for a wRC+ of 132. Since he has the ability to play any spot on the infield or in the outfield, that was tremendously valuable. There were some yellow flags, since his .380 batting average on balls in play was helping him out a lot and he worked around a 31.7% strikeout rate, but it seemed like he could be a solid utility guy even if the offense backed up a bit.
Last year, even those who were expecting some regression were probably surprised by how far he fell. He finished the year with a .217/.278/.327 line and 72 wRC+, struggling enough to spend most of the second half on optional assignment in the minors. He also didn’t perform in Triple-A, slashing .246/.321/.379 for an 84 wRC+.
The Giants held him on the roster through the offseason but designated him for assignment in late March, just after the 2026 season began. He was traded to the Blue Jays for cash, with that club keeping him in the minors as depth. He hit .150/.150/.200 in a small sample of six Triple-A games before the Jays designated him for assignment and flipped him to the Dodgers in another cash deal.
With the Dodgers, he seemed to bounce back a bit, hitting .293/.400/.598 in 24 games for Triple-A Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, as mentioned, his progress was interrupted by injury. It’s not publicly known what injury Fitzgerald is dealing with but it has nudged him off the roster regardless. The Dodgers have Tommy Edman on a rehab assignment at the moment and he is currently on the 60-day IL, so perhaps this helps them to clear a spot for Edman’s return.
Regardless of the reason, Fitzgerald is sure to find a landing spot somewhere. Though he wasn’t good in the majors last year, his 2024 showing, his versatility and his recent form since joining the Dodgers are all intriguing. The nature of his injury will determine whether he can help any club in the short term or if he would be more of a long-term play at this point.
Photo courtesy of Kelley L Cox, Imagn Images