Yankees Activate Aaron Hicks, Designate Shane Robinson
The Yankees announced that they’ve activated outfielder Aaron Hicks from the disabled list and designated fellow outfielder Shane Robinson for assignment in a corresponding move. Hicks will return to the lineup tonight as the designated hitter for the Yanks.
The switch-hitting Hicks will be a welcome addition to the Yankees’ lineup. Hicks went 2-for-4 on Opening Day for the Yankees this season before surprisingly landing on the DL due to a strained intercostal muscle the following day. Last year, the 28-year-old former first-rounder slashed .266/.372/.475 with 15 homers and 10 steals in 361 plate appearances over the life of 88 games, but oblique strains on both his right and left sides hampered his ability to stay on the field. Nonetheless, Hicks demonstrated enough for the Yankees to consider him their primary center fielder heading into 2018, and he’ll likely reclaim that role moving forward.
As for the 33-year-old Robinson, he always looked to be a short-term add for the Yankees, though it likely still stings to be cut loose after reaching three times and swiping a base in his lone game with the Yankees. The speedy veteran’s contract was only selected Tuesday, and he went 1-for-3 with a couple of walks in last night’s emotionally charged game against the Red Sox.
Robinson has been up and down between the Majors and Triple-A for much of his pro career, appearing at the big league level in each of the past seven seasons but never reaching 200 plate appearances in a year. Overall, he’s a lifetime .227/.296/.297 hitter in the Majors and a .281/.341/.388 hitter in more than 1600 Triple-A plate appearances.
Yovani Gallardo Elects Free Agency
The Reds announced that right-hander Yovani Gallardo has cleared waivers and rejected an outright assignment to the minors in favor of free agency. Cincinnati had designated him for assignment earlier this week.
Gallardo’s tenure with the Reds will go down as a brief 2 1/3-inning stint over a span of just three games. Cincinnati picked up the veteran righty after he didn’t make the Brewers’ Opening Day roster, but the 32-year-old will once again hit the open market in search of a new club.
Gallardo was a quality big league starter from 2009-15, averaging 32 starts and 191 innings of 3.69 ERA ball per season with Milwaukee (and, in 2015, with the Rangers). However, his strikeout rate began to deteriorate in 2013. His fastball, which averaged 92.5 mph during his best seasons, fell to an average of 90.4 mph in his lone season with Texas, and the start of his Orioles career was marred by a shoulder/biceps issue which shelved him for roughly six weeks. He gained some of his velocity back in 2017 with Seattle, though that spike is likely in part attributable to a brief move to the bullpen.
Over the past two seasons, Gallardo has struggled to a 5.57 ERA with just 6.5 K/9 against 4.4 BB/9 and 1.4 HR/9 as he’s become increasingly susceptible to the long ball. Still, a club in need of some rotation depth could certainly look to bring the veteran into the fold as a depth option — depending on his willingness to head to the minors. It’s possible that a club particularly thin on pitching, such as the Marlins, could look to plug Gallardo directly into its staff (that’s merely my own speculation), though most clubs would view him as more of a Triple-A depth option at this point.
White Sox Select Contract Of Chris Volstad
The White Sox announced this morning that they’ve selected the contract of veteran righty Chris Volstad from Triple-A Charlotte. He’ll join the pitching staff tonight, with left-hander Carlos Rodon shifting from the 10-day DL to the 60-day DL to create a spot on the 40-man roster. Chicago already announced after yesterday’s game that right-handed reliever Gregory Infante had been optioned to Charlotte, so Volstad will take his place in the bullpen for now.
This’ll be Volstad’s second run in the Majors with the South Siders, as he logged 19 1/3 innings for the Sox last season and recorded a 4.66 ERA with a 10-to-5 K/BB ratio. The 2018 season actually represents Volstad’s third consecutive year with the White Sox organization, as he also spent the entirety of the 2016 season pitching for Triple-A Charlotte.
Now 31 years of age, Volstad debuted as a 21-year-old with the 2008 Marlins and impressed with a 2.88 ERA across his first 84 1/3 innings, though his 5.5 K/9 rate and 3.8 BB/9 mark prompted metrics like FIP, xFIP and SIERA to forecast a more pessimistic outlook. Volstad would go on to tally 584 innings for the then-Florida Marlins from 2008-11, working to a collective 4.59 ERA with 5.8 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9 before being traded to the Cubs in the 2012 deal that sent Carlos Zambrano to Miami.
Volstad’s one season with the Cubs was a disaster, and he’s since bounced around the game, seeing MLB time with the Rockies and Pirates, Triple-A time with the Angels and spending a season with the Doosan Bears of the Korea Baseball Organization.
As for Rodon, the move to the 60-day DL looks to be largely a formality. He opened the season on the 10-day DL while recovering from shoulder surgery that he underwent late last September and has been working his way back toward a big league return. At last check, GM Rick Hahn suggested that a late-May return could be a best-case scenario for Rodon, so he wasn’t expected to be activated in the near future anyhow. Rodon’s initial placement on the DL was retroactive to March 26, meaning the earliest he can now be activated would be May 25.
Rays To Select Contract Of Johnny Field
The Rays announced tonight that they’ve optioned right-hander Ryan Weber to Triple-A Durham and will formally select the contract of minor league outfielder Johnny Field prior to Thursday’s game. Tampa Bay will have to make a corresponding 40-man roster move to accommodate Field, although that announcement won’t be made until tomorrow, per the team.
Field, 26, was the Rays’ fifth-round pick back in the 2013 draft and will be making his Major League debut when he first finds his way into the lineup for Tampa Bay. While he’s not considered to be among the organization’s top prospect at present, Baseball America did rank him 27th among Rays farmhands a couple offseasons ago, praising his feel for hitting and superb work ethic. Field had a lackluster season in 2017, but he’s posted an overall line of .268/.318/.437 in parts of three Triple-A campaigns (including a fast start in 2018).
The 27-year-old Weber pitched just a third of an inning for the Rays yesterday after being brought up to the big league club a day prior. Given that he has options remaining and experience in both the rotation and bullpen, he could be shuttled back and forth between St. Petersburg and Durham for much of the season as the Rays work with an unconventional alignment of their pitching staff that’ll assuredly require the club to frequently tap into its minor league system.
Minor MLB Transactions: 4/11/18
Here are Wednesday’s minor moves from around the league…
- Right-hander Jacob Turner has cleared waivers and been assigned to Triple-A New Orleans by the Marlins, tweets Joe Frisaro of MLB.com. Turner, 26, was designated for assignment over the weekend after yielding 10 runs on 13 hits and five walks through his first 5 2/3 innings to open the season. The former top prospect has previously been outrighted in his career, so he had the opportunity to reject the assignment in favor of free agency, though it doesn’t seem as though he’s chosen to go that route. He’ll give a thin Marlins pitching staff some depth at the Triple-A level, where has a 4.17 ERA in 336 1/3 career innings to go along with averages of 6.7 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9.
Giants Promote Andrew Suarez, Move Madison Bumgarner To 60-Day DL
The Giants announced today that they have promoted lefty Andrew Suarez, as expected. To create space on the 40-man roster, the club moved star hurler Madison Bumgarner to the 60-day DL. An active roster spot was opened by optioning reliever Steven Okert.
Suarez, 25, will follow Tyler Beede in making his debut for a San Francisco organization that has been hit hard by rotation injuries. There is a bit of good news on that front, as Jeff Samardzija is on track to return next week, as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area tweets. For now, though the club will see what it has in some young hurlers.
Suarez, 25, was a second-round pick in the 2015 draft. He has been a steady performer while climbing the ladder in the Giants’ farm system, first reaching the top rung last year. In his 155 2/3 total innings in 2017, split between Double-A and Triple-A, he carried a 3.30 ERA with 7.8 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 while generating grounders on nearly half the balls put in play against him.
As for Bumgarner, it is not exactly a surprise to see him put on ice for the full sixty days while he returns from a fractured pinky finger. That injury, which occurred late in camp, was expected to keep him out until early June anyway. Though the veteran had hoped to return sooner than initial projections, he could still conceivably beat the target by a few weeks after today’s placement.
Padres Activate Franchy Cordero, Place Manuel Margot On 10-Day DL
The Padres have announced that outfielder Franchy Cordero has been activated from the disabled list and will lead off and play center field in today’s day game at Coors Field. He’ll take the place of Manuel Margot, who is going on the DL with bruised ribs.
Cordero, 23, has been on the 40-man roster since late in 2016, so no further roster maneuvers will be required to facilitate his arrival. The toolsy youngster entered the season rated tenth by MLB.com among the prospects in a deep San Diego farm system.
This will be the second attempt at the big leagues for Cordero, who received a thirty-game run last year. He’ll obviously need to improve upon the .276 OBP he carried in that short sample. Despite his less-than-excellent first look at the majors, Cordero posted a big 2017 season at Triple-A, with a .326/.369/.603 batting line and 17 home runs in 419 plate appearances, and is off to a hot start there again this year. (He had technically opened the season on the MLB disabled list and was playing on a rehab assignment.)
Meanwhile, Margot is set for an early-season respite after taking a pitch to the chest. He was already cleared of any fractures, so it seems likely this’ll be a relatively short stay. Margot has struggled to post just seven hits through his first 49 plate appearances, only two of which have gone for extra bases. The organization will surely exercise patience, though, with a player who is already a premium asset in the field. Margot showed a fair bit of promise last year, when he slashed .263/.313/.409 with 13 home runs and 17 steals in his 529 plate appearances.
Nationals Designate Miguel Montero
The Nationals have designated catcher Miguel Montero for assignment, per a club announcement. That’ll open an active roster spot for the activation of backstop Matt Wieters and clear a 40-man place for Moises Sierra, whose contract was selected with fellow outfielder Adam Eaton hitting the DL.
[RELATED: Updated Nationals Depth Chart]
Montero, 34, received the nod as the reserve catcher to open the season after signing a minors deal over the winter. His contract included a $1.3MM salary in the majors, though according to Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com (Twitter link) it was not fully guaranteed.
While he was once a solid regular behind the dish, Montero has trailed off in recent seasons. He still knows how to draw a walk, but is just a .211/.316/.343 hitter since the start of the 2016 season and didn’t quite reach that standard in his Grapefruit League action this spring. On the defensive side, Montero’s once-sparkling framing numbers dropped in 2017 and he had marked difficulty controlling opposing runners on the bases.
Of course, some of those same sorts of questions are still also facing Wieters, who is coming off of a forgettable 2017 season in D.C. He’ll look to get back on track now that he has recovered from a minor oblique injury, though it’s possible he will increasingly need to share time with the younger Pedro Severino, who bypassed Montero after Wieters went down. It’s questionable at best whether Severino will hit consistently in the majors, but at this point the Nats have good cause to give him an opportunity to show he can. On the whole, the catching situation remains a major source of uncertainty for the D.C. organization.
Brewers Designate J.J. Hoover
The Brewers have designated righty J.J. Hoover for assignment, per a club announcement. Milwaukee cleared another roster spot by optioning outfielder Brett Phillips.
These departures will make way for the addition of two new righties to the active roster. Junior Guerra and Jorge Lopez are both coming up to supplement the pitching staff.
[RELATED: Updated Brewers Depth Chart]
Hoover did not make the Milwaukee Opening Day roster out of camp, but was brought up just a week into the season. He ended up coughing up a game-ending home run last night. Even if the Brewers were willing to look past that performance, the club needed fresh arms and evidently decided that Hoover was the most expendable player on the roster.
The move could cost the Brewers the chance to hang onto Hoover, who turned in a solid performance this spring. In his 10 1/3 frames, he allowed just one run on six hits, though he also recorded only five strikeouts. He also filled some useful innings last year for the Diamondbacks, posting a 3.92 ERA with 11.8 K/9 (on a career-high 12.0% swinging-strike rate) and 5.7 BB/9 in 41 1/3 innings.
Instead, the team will give Lopez a shot at helping to bolster a relief unit that has worked more innings than those of all but three other teams. He spent most of 2017 as a swingman at the Double-A level, working to a 4.25 ERA with 9.1 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9. With a background as a starter, Lopez can perhaps offer some length to the Milwaukee pen.
Guerra, meanwhile, is scheduled to start tonight’s game. The 33-year-old struggled last year after his astounding, late-career breakout in 2016. But he turned in a strong showing in camp and a nice first outing at Triple-A. The Brewers would obviously love to see Guerra return to something like the form he showed in ’16, when he ran up a 2.81 ERA in 121 2/3 innings, after watching their rotation limp to a 4.92 ERA through its first dozen collective starts on the season.
Rays Acquire Jeremy Hazelbaker From Diamondbacks
The Rays have acquired outfielder Jeremy Hazelbaker from the Diamondbacks in exchange for cash, the teams announced. To clear a spot on the 40-man roster, Tampa Bay has transferred right-hander Jose De Leon to the 60-day disabled list.
Hazelbaker, whom the D-backs designated for assignment late last week, will head to Triple-A Durham. De Leon underwent Tommy John surgery during Spring Training, so he’ll be out for the entirety of the 2018 season.
The 30-year-old Hazelbaker will give the Rays some depth across the board in the outfield, as he’s plenty experienced in center and in both outfield corners. The left-handed-hitting Hazelbaker was the talk of MLB two years ago when he broke camp with the Cardinals and posted an absurd .317/.357/.683 slash in the month of April. However, he cooled off considerably over the remainder of the season and was ultimately waived by St. Louis and claimed by Arizona.
Last year with the D-backs, Hazelbaker logged 61 plate appearances and again posted some eye-popping numbers, hitting .346/.443/.577 with two doubles, two homers and two triples. In all, Hazelbaker is a .258/.327/.500 hitter in in 285 MLB plate appearances, and he owns a .277/.336/.452 slash in parts of seven Triple-A seasons.