Astros Outright Zack Short
Infielder Zack Short has been sent outright to Triple-A Sugar Land, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment a few days ago. He has the right to elect free agency though the log doesn’t say he will do so. Infielder Luis Guillorme has been released by the Space Cowboys, according to his transactions tracker.
Short, 30, signed a minor league deal with the Astros in the offseason. He was selected to the big league roster in early July as the club was dealing with injuries to Jeremy Peña, Brendan Rodgers, Zach Dezenzo and Guillorme.
Short got into 22 games, taking up a lot of Peña’s shortstop playing time. He hit .220/.291/.380 in 56 plate appearances, hitting two home runs but also striking out at 32.1% clip. The Astros bolstered their infield at the deadline by acquiring old friend Carlos Correa as well as Ramón Urías. In addition to that, Peña was able to come off the IL the day after the deadline.
All of those developments nudged Short off the roster. Since he’s out of options, he got pushed onto the waiver wire and has passed through unclaimed. If he decides to accept the assignment, he’ll provide the Astros with some non-roster depth. He hasn’t hit much in his big league career but can play the three infield spots to the left of first base as well as a bit of outfield.
Guillorme’s release is a bit curious since he was just re-signed to a new minor league deal five days ago. Perhaps he received a big league offer with another club or maybe the Space Cowboys needed to open a roster spot for Short.
He has generally been a subpar hitter in his career but has received strong grades for his second base defense while also having the ability to play shortstop and third base. He should be able to find another landing spot shortly, if he hasn’t already.
Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images
Twins Claim Brooks Kriske, Designate Darren McCaughan For Assignment
The Twins announced that they have claimed right-hander Brooks Kriske off waivers from the Cubs. They also announced their claim of Thomas Hatch from the Royals and their reinstatement of Luke Keaschall from the 60-day injured list, moves which were previously reported. To open spots for those three, they optioned outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. and righty Noah Davis to Triple-A St. Paul while righty Darren McCaughan has been designated for assignment.
Kriske, 31, has 27 2/3 innings of major league experience with an 8.78 earned run average. That ERA was even higher not too long ago, as Kriske has lowered it by throwing six scoreless innings for the Cubs this year. While putting up zeroes is nice, he worked around five walks while striking out four in that time.
It’s a small sample of work but Kriske has been really good in Triple-A this year. In 31 2/3 innings for Iowa, he has a 3.13 ERA, 39.4% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate. Those strikeouts aren’t really new for him but he’s usually paired them with more walks. From 2021 to 2024, he struck out 35.5% of minor league opponents but also gave out free passes at a 13.3% clip. He also spent some time pitching in Japan with a 26.9% strikeout rate and 15.2% walk rate.
The Twins are looking for warm bodies for their bullpen. Ahead of the deadline, they traded Jhoan Durán, Griffin Jax, Louis Varland, Brock Stewart and Danny Coulombe. They have since called up various minor leaguers to fill the void and have also now grabbed Kriske and Hatch. They are both out of options, which led to them ending up on waivers, so the Twins may bump them back off the roster later in the year. But for now, they provide the club with some fresh arms and add some extra depth.
McCaughan, 29, was also one of those fresh arms. The Twins selected him to the big league roster just yesterday. He didn’t pitch in yesterday’s game but the club apparently liked Kriske and/or Hatch better. Since McCaughan is also out of options, he has been bumped off the 40-man spot that he just got a bit more than 24 hours ago.
He now heads into DFA limbo. Since the trade deadline has passed, the Twins will have to put him on waivers. He has 61 1/3 major league innings on his track record with a 6.02 ERA, 16.2% strikeout rate, 8.1% walk rate and 37.7% ground ball rate. He has thrown 72 1/3 Triple-A innings this year with a 5.35 ERA, 20.1% strikeout rate, 7.6% walk rate and 34.1% ground ball rate.
Photo courtesy of Lily Smith, Imagn Images
Red Sox Designate Jorge Alcala For Assignment
The Red Sox announced Tuesday that they’ve designated right-handed reliever Jorge Alcala for assignment. Fellow righty reliever Isaiah Campbell was recalled from Triple-A Worcester to take his spot on the roster.
Boston acquired Alcala in a mid-June trade with the Twins — a deal sending minor league infielder Andy Lugo back to Minnesota. Alcala was an obvious change-of-scenery candidate at the time. The hard-throwing righty had run out of opportunities in Minnesota after allowing 24 runs in 24 1/3 innings (8.88 ERA). That marked Alcala’s second ERA north of 6.00 in a span of three seasons with the Twins. He posted solid run-prevention numbers in 2024 but was far too prone to both walks and homers.
Alcala’s time with the Red Sox looked better, at least on the surface. His 3.31 ERA is a clearly solid mark, but there were plenty of troubling trends under the hood. As was the case throughout his time in Minnesota, Alcala proved susceptible to free passes and the long ball. He walked 10.5% of the batters he faced with Boston and tossed three wild pitches. He was also tagged for four homers in just 16 1/3 frames (2.20 HR/9).
The recent results for Alcala, who turned 30 late last month, were too rough for Sox brass to overlook. He’s lasted a combined 3 1/3 innings over his past five appearances and been shelled for six runs (five earned) on eight hits (four homers) and four walks in that time. He allowed three runs, including a pair of home runs, in one-third of an inning yesterday in what proved to be his final appearance with the Sox.
Alcala will now head to either outright or release waivers within the next five days. He’s very likely to clear in either case. He’s earning $1.5MM this year and still has about $435K of that sum yet to be paid out. He’s out of minor league options, so an acquiring team would need to plug him right into the big league bullpen. Between that lack of options, his remaining salary and his recent struggles, it’s doubtful any team would claim him. Alcala has more than five years of big league service time, so even if the Red Sox outright him to Worcester, he can reject a minor league assignment in favor of free agency while retaining the remainder of that guaranteed money.
Marlins Release Matt Mervis, Rob Brantly
The Marlins have released first baseman Matt Mervis and catcher Rob Brantly, per the transaction log at MiLB.com. Both had been in the majors earlier this season but were playing with the Marlins’ Triple-A affiliate in Jacksonville after passing through waivers unclaimed and thus being removed from the 40-man roster.
Mervis, 27, got some Miami fans excited with an early-season home run binge, but it never seemed especially sustainable. The former Cubs farmhand popped six big flies in his first 13 games of the season, hitting .275/.333/.725 along the way. That was a sample of just 45 plate appearances, however, and Mervis fanned a whopping 18 times within that stretch (40%). His power has never been in doubt, but strikeout issues have long plagued Mervis and did so again following that early hot streak. He hit just .125/.213/.213 with a 37% strikeout rate over his next 89 trips to the plate before being designated for assignment and passing through waivers.
Things have gone better for Mervis in Jacksonville, where he’s hitting .250/.310/.614 with 13 homers in 145 plate appearances. However, much of that production is buoyed by a recent hot streak over the past week, and he’s still been set down on strikes in 27% of his plate appearances. This is his fourth season with notable time spent in Triple-A, and he’s had strikeout rates well higher than average in each of the past two (including a 30% strikeout rate in 350 Triple-A plate appearances with the Cubs last year).
Brantly, 36, was briefly summoned to the majors earlier this season when Miami needed an extra catcher, but what was supposed to be a big league stint lasting just a few days wound up turning into months. Brantly incurred a lat strain during that call-up and wound up landing on the 60-day injured list and picking up more than two months of service time.
Brantly has appeared in parts of 10 big league seasons but hasn’t topped 36 MLB plate appearances in a given year since 2013. He’s a .226/.286/.323 hitter in 472 big league plate appearances and has played in parts of 13 Triple-A seasons with more than 2700 plate appearances to his credit.
Tigers Re-Sign Tyler Owens To Minor League Deal
Right-hander Tyler Owens has re-signed with the Tigers on a minor league deal, reports Evan Woodbery of MLive Media Group. Detroit recently released Owens but the two sides have quickly reunited.
Owens, 24, was designated for assignment a week ago when the Tigers acquired Rafael Montero. At the time he was designated for assignment, Owens was on the minor league injured list due to a hip injury. Teams aren’t allowed to place injured players on outright waivers. Once Owens was in DFA limbo, the club had to either trade him or release him.
They eventually went with the latter option. Owens had a few days to field interest from all 30 clubs but decided to return to the Tigers on a new pact, a fairly common sequence of events in situations like this. He gets to stay in a familiar place while the Tigers get to keep the player without him taking up a roster spot.
Owens had a limited major league track record. He made his big league debut earlier this year by pitching three innings for Detroit, allowing one earned run. His recent minor league numbers have been solid. From the start of 2023 to the present, he has tossed 147 1/3 innings on the farm with a 3.73 earned run average, 23.1% strikeout rate, 9.4% walk rate and grounders on about half the balls in play he allowed.
Photo courtesy of Gary A. Vasquez, Imagn Images
Astros Re-Sign Jon Singleton To Minor League Deal
The Astros have agreed to a new minor league deal with first baseman Jon Singleton, as first reported by Michael Schwab of The Ice Box Insider. Singleton was designated for assignment shortly before the trade deadline and passed through waivers unclaimed. He briefly became a free agent after rejecting an outright assignment but will now return to the ‘Stros and presumably head to Triple-A Sugar Land for the time being.
Singleton was on the Astros’ 40-man roster heading into the season but was released after he didn’t make the club in spring training. He signed a minor league deal with the Mets and has spent the bulk of the season with their Triple-A club in Syracuse but was cut loose in June. Singleton quickly latched back on with Houston on a minor league deal and was briefly selected to the big league roster last month prior to his DFA.
That call to the bigs saw Singleton, 33, get into three games and go 1-for-9 in that tiny sample. He’s logged a combined 306 Triple-A plate appearances between the Mets and Astros organizations this year, slashing .224/.373/.451 with 16 home runs, a massive 18.4% walk rate and a 26.5% strikeout rate.
Singleton was the Astros’ primary option at first base last year, following the release of Jose Abreu. He wound up making 405 trips to the plate in 119 games and turning in a solid, if unspectacular .234/.331/.386 batting line (104 wRC+) with 13 homers. Singleton doesn’t hit lefties well and is a below-average defender at first base, but he draws plenty of walks and can hit for some modest power against right-handed pitching.
The Astros acquired lefty-swinging outfielder Jesus Sanchez from the Marlins prior to last week’s trade deadline, but they’re still very light on left-handed bats — particularly with Yordan Alvarez having missed most of the season due to a fracture in his hand. Singleton will add a lefty-swinging option to the depth chart — one who seems to be a sentimental favorite within the organization. This is the third minor league deal Singleton has signed with Houston since 2023, and he’s spent the vast majority of career in the Astros organization.
Orioles Claim Rico Garcia
The Orioles have claimed right-hander Rico Garcia off waivers from the Mets, reports Ari Alexander of KPRC 2. The latter club designated him for assignment earlier this week. The O’s have multiple 40-man roster vacancies from their deadline dealings. Garcia is out of options, so the O’s will need to make a corresponding active roster move whenever he reports to the team.
Garcia, 31, has been a fringe bullpen arm for the two New York clubs this year. He signed a minor league deal with the Mets in the winter and got called up in early July. He later went to the Yankees and then back to the Mets via waiver claims.
Around the transactions, his results have been quite good. He has thrown 15 1/3 innings over nine big league appearances this year, with a 3.52 earned run average. His 30% strikeout rate, 6.7% walk rate and 45.9% ground ball rate this year are all above-average figures.
That’s a small sample of work and he may not be able to maintain it over a larger time frame, particularly the control. Before getting called up, he tossed 30 1/3 Triple-A innings with a 4.45 ERA, 27.4% strikeout rate, 14.8% walk rate and 34.2% ground ball rate. He walked 11.5% of minor league batters faced last year and 17.2% in 2023. Put together, he has a 13.7% walk rate in 119 2/3 minor league innings dating back to the start of 2023.
Even if his major league numbers regress a bit, he’s a sensible flier for the O’s. They stripped down their bullpen ahead of the deadline, trading away Seranthony Domínguez, Gregory Soto and Andrew Kittredge. They have also lost Félix Bautista, Scott Blewett and Colin Selby to the injured list in recent weeks.
Those trades and injuries have opened up lots of opportunities in the Baltimore bullpen. As the club plays out the string on this lost season, they can pick up guys like this and give them auditions down the stretch. If things go well with Garcia, he can be cheaply retained beyond this season. He’ll finish 2025 with less than two years of service time, meaning he still won’t have qualified for arbitration and will be controllable for five more seasons.
Photo courtesy of David Frerker, Imagn Images
Yankees To Designate JT Brubaker For Assignment
The Yankees are designating right-hander JT Brubaker for assignment, according to a report from Robert Murray of FanSided. The corresponding move for Brubaker’s departure is not yet known.
Brubaker’s time with the Yankees has been punctuated by frequent injury. Acquired from the Pirates alongside $550K of international bonus pool space for a player to be named later (Keiner Delgado) in March of 2024, he’s only pitched 16 innings in the majors.
Brubaker was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery at the time of the trade sending him to the Bronx, though he was nearly at the one-year mark. He was targeting a midseason return but suffered an oblique strain during his rehab stint in July. He never made it back to the mound thereafter. This spring, he was quickly placed on the injured list after a comeback liner struck him in the chest and fractured three ribs. He was finally activated for his team debut in mid-June.
The 31-year-old Brubaker held opponents to six runs in 16 innings (3.38 ERA) but did so with a paltry 15.9% strikeout rate and a massive 14.3% walk rate. He also plunked a batter, meaning nearly 16% of his opponents in his brief run reached base without putting a ball in play. On top of his command troubles in the majors, Brubaker walked 12.5% of his opponents in five rehab appearances between Double-A and Triple-A (18 1/3 innings).
Though Brubaker didn’t pitch in the majors at all in 2023-24, he was solid for the Pirates in 2022, eating up 144 innings with a pedestrian 4.69 ERA but far more encouraging rate stats. Brubaker was dogged by a .334 average on balls in play that year but fanned 22.8% of his opponents against an 8.4% walk rate while generating a 44% grounder rate. Those were effectively league-average rate stats across the board — enough for metrics like FIP (3.92) and SIERA (3.97) to view him far more favorably.
With the trade deadline now in the rearview mirror, Brubaker will simply head to waivers. The Yankees have up to five days before they need to place him there. Brubaker has five-plus years of major league service, meaning he’ll be a free agent at season’s end. Any team that claims him would be on the hook for the remainder of this year’s $1.82MM salary (about $528K). It’s possible that a contending club looking for some long relief/rotation depth could place a claim, but given his walk issues and lengthy layoff from pitching, there’s a better chance he’ll clear. Because he has five years of big league service, he’d be able to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency and still retain the entirety of his guaranteed salary.
Pirates To Select Cam Sanders
The Pirates are selecting right-hander Cam Sanders, according to a report from Tommy Birch of the Des Moines Register. Alex Stumpf of MLB.com confirms that report, adding that right-hander Johan Oviedo is set to be optioned to the minors to make room for Sanders on the active roster. The Pirates have multiple 40-man roster vacancies, so no additional corresponding transaction will be necessary.
Sanders, 28, was a 12th-round pick by the Cubs back in 2018. He’s spent the past four seasons bouncing between the Double- and Triple-A levels with the Cubs and Pirates. He’s typically posted excellent numbers at Double-A and poor numbers at Triple-A and ultimately converted from starting to relief work with the Cubs last year. Now in the Pirates organization after electing minor league free agency over the winter, he’s looked utterly dominant in the upper minors with a 1.90 ERA in 18 appearances at Double-A to go with a nearly identical 1.93 ERA in 15 appearances at the Triple-A level.
Between the two levels, Sanders has punched out 30.5% of his opponents in 42 1/3 innings of work this year. Walks have been a problem for Sanders in the past, as he surrendered free passes at an unplayable 22.4% clip at Triple-A last year. He’s kept them under control this year, however, with a 12.0% walk rate overall that drops to just 9.7% when looking only at Triple-A. Sanders will need to continue throwing strikes if he’s to survive in the majors, but the quality of his stuff gives him possible late-inning upside if he can continue to show even passable command. He’ll now join a relief corps that recently lost closer David Bednar at this year’s trade deadline and will vie for work with the likes of Dauri Moreta, Kyle Nicolas, and Yohan Ramirez.
As for Oviedo, the right-hander made his first big league appearance since 2023 yesterday in a start against the Giants but surrendered two runs in one inning of work after walking three and striking out three. Acquired from the Cardinals in the Jose Quintana trade back in 2022, Oviedo posted a solid 4.31 ERA in 31 starts for the Pirates the following year and looked like a viable #4 starter of the future for the club before being sidelined by Tommy John surgery. He has a 3.12 ERA in six rehab starts in the minor leagues this year, but judging off yesterday’s difficult return he may need some more time to build up before returning to the majors in a more permanent role. The Pirates have Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, Andrew Heaney, and Mike Burrows holding things down at the big league level in rotation for the time being.
Blue Jays Release Chad Green
The Blue Jays released Chad Green yesterday after the veteran right-hander cleared waivers, according to a team announcement. Green is now eligible to sign with any of the league’s 30 clubs. He had been designated for assignment by the Jays just prior to the trade deadline.
A veteran of ten MLB seasons, the 34-year-old righty has struggled badly in 45 appearances for the Jays this year with a 5.56 ERA and an eye-popping 6.70 FIP across 43 2/3 innings of work. Green’s 6.8% walk rate remains more or less in line with the best seasons of his career, but his strikeout rate has dipped considerably. After punching out 32.4% of his opponents through the end of the 2023 campaign, he struck out batters at just a 21.9% clip last year. That number has dropped even further this season, down to 18.4%. In addition to the lack of whiffs, Green has allowed 14 home runs this year. That’s the most of any reliever in baseball so far this season, and only two relievers (Enyel De Los Santos and Tyler Alexander) allowed more homers than that over the entirety of the 2024 campaign.
It’s an ugly profile overall, and it seems unlikely that any team would be particularly enthused about offering him an immediate spot in their bullpen between the lack of strikeouts and his 16.4% barrel rate allowed. Certain underlying metrics do offer some room for optimism, however. Green’s 4.26 SIERA is only slightly below average, and his K-BB% is in line with quality relief arms like Caleb Ferguson and Taylor Rogers. Perhaps there’s a team out there that sees enough in Green that they’re willing to take a flier on him in the form of a minor league deal. Even with his poor numbers this year, it would certainly be understandable if a team decided to do so.
That’s because Green has a long track record of success in the majors prior to this year. From 2017 to 2022, Green was a dominant late-inning relief arm for the Yankees with a 2.96 ERA, a 33.4% strikeout rate, and a 3.01 FIP. He picked up ten saves in that time while joining arms like Aroldis Chapman, Dellin Betances, and David Robertson at the back of the Yankees’ bullpen. Perhaps a team sees some sort of adjustments they can help Green make in order to get back to being a viable setup man; his heater is still averaging 95.2 mph this year, and while advanced metrics like Stuff+ have signaled a decline in the quality of Green’s offerings in recent years, he still grades at average to slightly above average.
As for the Blue Jays, they’ll be on the hook for what’s left of his $10.5MM salary for the 2025 campaign. If Green gets added to an MLB roster at some point this year, he’ll be paid a prorated portion of the MLB minimum by his new club and that amount will be deducted from what Toronto owes him. With newly-added relievers Louis Varland and Seranthony Dominguez now in the fold, the Jays figure to do just fine without Green in their late-inning mix even if he does manage to turn things around with a new organization.