Marlins To Select Josh Ekness
The Marlins are selecting the contract of right-hander Josh Ekness from Triple-A Jacksonville, according to SportsGrid’s Craig Mish. Miami only had 39 players on its 40-man roster so Ekness will take that last open slot, and he’ll take the 26-man roster spot of right-hander Cade Gibson, who was optioned to Triple-A after yesterday’s 6-5 loss to the Phillies.
Gibson was charged with four earned runs over just 1 2/3 innings of relief on Friday, plus he threw 50 pitches during that rough outing. He’ll head back to Triple-A while the Marlins bring Ekness’ fresh arm into the bullpen, and Ekness will be making his MLB debut whenever he appears in a game.
Ekness’ 5.68 ERA and 10.2% walk rate over 12 2/3 innings for Jacksonville this season are nothing special, though some outlier metrics (like a .400 BABIP and a 59.1% strand rate) are likely to blame for that inflated ERA. The key statistic from the Marlins’ perspective was surely Ekness’ 35.6% strikeout rate, which is a tick above the impressive swing-and-miss numbers he has shown earlier in his minor league career.
A 12th-round pick for the Marlins in the 2023 draft, Ekness ranks 30th on MLB Pipeline’s ranking of Miami’s top 30 prospects. He relies heavily on two plus pitches — a fastball with upper-90s velocity, and a sweeper that sits in the mid-80s. As Mish puts it, Ekness “has closer stuff,” and “profiles as a potential future leverage arm” if he can harness his control.
Miami has gotten pretty good results out of its relief corps this season, despite the struggles of closer Pete Fairbanks. With Fairbanks now on the 15-day injured list due to nerve irritation in his throwing hand, the Marlins’ bullpen is in a bit of flux, which could provide Ekness with an opportunity to stick on the 26-man roster.
Mariners To Select Nick Davila
The Mariners are selecting right-hander Nick Davila‘s contract from Double-A Arkansas, the New York Post’s Joel Sherman reports. Lefty Josh Simpson is being optioned to Triple-A in a corresponding move. The M’s have an open spot on their 40-man roster.
The 27-year-old Davila will be making his big league debut whenever he appears in a game. It is a little unusual to see a team promote a player from Double-A rather than Triple-A, but it could be that the Mariners are particularly intrigued by Davila’s red-hot start to the season. Davila has a 2.00 ERA, a 29.4% strikeout rate, and eye-popping walk (2.9%) and grounder (69.6%) rates over nine relief outings in Arkansas this season.
It’s a small sample size, and obviously facing MLB hitters is a much taller order than Double-A competition. But, Davila has shown good control in the past, and he has shown flashes of his ability to miss bats. Even if the Mariners might just be calling on Davila to be a fresh arm in the bullpen for a few days, it’s still a career milestone for the right-hander and an opportunity to show what he can do during what might be a cup of coffee-type of promotion.
Davila began his career as an undrafted free agent with the Tigers in 2020, though Davila would surely have been drafted if the pandemic-shortened 2020 draft had been longer than only five rounds. Davila has been pitched in Seattle’s farm system for the last four seasons, and his 18 2/3 innings with Tacoma in 2023 represents his only taste of Triple-A ball. Injuries sidelined him for most of the 2024 campaign, but Davila returned to post a 3.55 ERA over 50 2/3 Double-A innings in 2025, though with a 10.1% walk rate and only an 18.3K%.
Nick Martini, Jacob Barnes Sign With Mexican League Teams
A pair of players who were in the big leagues last season signed with Mexican League teams. Reliever Jacob Barnes joined the Algodoneros de Unión Laguna yesterday, while outfielder Nick Martini signed with the Piratas de Campeche tonight.
Barnes, who recently turned 36, has made 334 career appearances while pitching in the big leagues in 10 straight years. The righty was in the Opening Day bullpen for the eventual American League champion Blue Jays last year. Barnes made six early-season appearances, allowing nine runs (eight earned) through eight innings. The Jays outrighted him off the 40-man roster in late April, bringing him back on a minor league contract.
That didn’t go well, as Barnes allowed nearly seven earned runs per nine over 25 Triple-A innings. Toronto released him in August. Barnes has a mid-90s fastball and was a serviceable middle reliever for the Nationals in 2024, when he worked to a 4.36 ERA across 66 innings. He’ll be teammates with swingman Erasmo Ramírez and infielder Emmanuel Rivera, each of whom also logged MLB time last season and signed with the Algodoneros in the middle of April.
Martini, a lefty-hitting outfielder, played in 43 games for the Rockies last season. He was on the MLB roster for the first two months. Martini hit .225/.288/.294 over 111 plate appearances and was designated for assignment at the end of May. He landed with the A’s on a minor league deal, hitting .259/.383/.434 over four months at Triple-A Las Vegas without getting another MLB opportunity.
A veteran of parts of six seasons, Martini has shown strong on-base skills throughout his minor league career. He doesn’t have much defensive value, but his career .248/.328/.382 slash at the MLB level isn’t far below average. He’s a .290/.397/.451 hitter in nearly 3000 Triple-A plate appearances.
Lou Trivino Opts Out Of Phillies Deal
Veteran reliever Lou Trivino exercised the May 1 opt-out right in his minor league contract with the Phillies, reports Matt Winkelman. According to the MLB.com transaction tracker, the team then granted Trivino his release.
Trivino pitched well over his month at Triple-A Lehigh Valley. The 34-year-old righty struck out 20 of 56 batters faced (36%) while issuing four walks. He surrendered 15 hits and 10 runs, though only four of those were earned. Trivino’s sinker and four-seam fastball each sat in the 94-95 mph range and he used three other pitches — cutter, slider and changeup — with regularity.
This was Trivino’s second stint with the Philly organization. He signed a minor league deal last August and was selected onto the MLB roster at the end of the month. He worked nine innings of three-run ball to close the season. Trivino pitched for three different clubs overall and tallied a 3.97 earned run average across 47 2/3 MLB innings a year ago. It was first big league action in three seasons, as he’d missed most of 2023-24 due to Tommy John surgery.
Philadelphia’s bullpen ranks 19th in MLB with a 4.22 ERA. That’s somewhat inflated by a .328 average on balls in play, the second-highest mark (behind Minnesota’s). Philly relievers are 12th in strikeout rate. Chase Shugart and Tanner Banks each have a minor league option remaining, but the Phils opted to keep them on the MLB roster while allowing Trivino to explore other opportunities. The Phillies did select a non-roster reliever yesterday when they called up long man Trevor Richards.
Pirates Release Ryan Harbin
May 1: As expected, the MLB.com transaction log indicates that Harbin has been released. It stands to reason Pittsburgh will try to bring him back on a minor league contract.
April 29: Pirates right-hander Ryan Harbin has been designated for assignment, per a club announcement. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to veteran reliever Chris Devenski, whose previously reported promotion to the major league roster is now official. Lefty Hunter Barco was optioned to Triple-A to open a 26-man roster spot for Devenski.
Harbin, 24, was the Pirates’ 17th-round pick back in 2019. The Bucs added him to the 40-man roster this past November in order to protect him from being selected by another organization in December’s Rule 5 Draft. He was rocked in his first taste of Triple-A last summer but had pitched 50 combined innings between High-A and Double-A prior to that, logging a 2.88 ERA with a massive 36% strikeout rate.
The 6’4″, 228-pound Harbin relies primarily on a three-pitch mix: a four-seamer that averaged 97.2 mph last year, a slider that sat 87 mph and a sinker that averaged 96.7 mph. He also mixed in a very occasional cutter (87.8 mph) and splitter (89.8 mph), though his usage rate on both pitches in Triple-A sat just north of 5%.
With a good start to the season in Triple-A, Harbin might have gotten his first big league look this year. Instead, injuries have derailed his season. Harbin suffered a strained teres major during spring training not long after being optioned to minor league camp. The Bucs put him on the 60-day injured list in the minors. He hasn’t pitched yet in 2026, and there’s no clear timetable for his return to the mound. Injured players cannot be placed on outright waivers, so now that he’s been designated for assignment, Harbin will either be traded to another club or released.
Joey Lucchesi Elects Free Agency
May 1: Lucchesi has again exercised free agency after clearing outright waivers, according to the MLB.com transaction tracker. It wouldn’t be surprising if he again returns on a minor league deal.
April 29: The Angels recalled lefty Mitch Farris from Triple-A Salt Lake and designated fellow left-hander Joey Lucchesi for assignment, the club announced Wednesday.
Lucchesi was selected to the major league roster Sunday, marking his second stint of the season with the Halos. The 32-year-old pitched in Sunday’s game and again last night, combining for an inning of work and surrendering three runs. The well-traveled southpaw has totaled 3 1/3 frames in the majors with the Angels this season and been tagged for five runs on seven hits, six walks and a hit batter. He’s fanned four of his 24 opponents (16.7%).
Lucchhesi made 56 solid starts for the Padres in 2018-19, his first two seasons in the big leagues, but has since bounced around the league, working mostly as a reliever and swingman. Dating back to the 2020 season, he’s pitched 142 2/3 innings for four teams (Padres, Mets, Giants, Angels) and logged a 4.16 ERA with a 19.4% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate.
The Angels have already designated Lucchesi for assignment once this season. He passed through waivers unclaimed, elected free agency, and quickly re-signed on a new minor league contract. About two weeks later, he was back in the majors. A similar sequence could well play out again, though a team in need of some left-handed depth could always scoop him up to fill a short-term need. Lucchesi will be traded, placed on waivers or released within the next five days. Waivers are a 48-hour process, meaning his latest DFA will be resolved within a week’s time.
Randal Grichuk Elects Free Agency
The Yankees announced that outfielder Randal Grichuk has elected free agency in lieu of accepting an outright assignment. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment earlier this week.
Grichuk, 34, signed a minor league deal with the Yankees in the offseason. That deal came with a $2.5MM salary if he got added to the roster, which he did, cracking the Opening Day squad. He is a right-handed hitter and has traditionally been better against lefties. The Yanks were hoping he could be a nice complement to their lefty-heavy lineup. Unfortunately, he has hit just .227/.261/.364 against southpaws this year. That line leads to a 71 wRC+, indicating he has been 29% below average in that split. He hit .194/.212/.323 overall.
That performance got him bumped into DFA limbo and none of the 29 other teams wanted to claim his contract off waivers. Players with at least five years of big league service time can reject outright assignments while keeping their salary commitments in tact. The Yankees will remain on the hook for the remainder of that $2.5MM. Another club could now sign Grichuk and would only have to pay him the prorated portion of the $780K league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That amount would be subtracted from what the Yankees pay.
Grichuk’s recent form isn’t much to garner interest. Last year’s .228/.273/.401 line was better than this year’s but still subpar, translating to a wRC+ of 82. Defensively, Grichuk is essentially a corner-only guy now. He has lots of center field experience but has just two innings at that position since the end of the 2023 season.
He’s not too far removed from being a useful complementary player. With the Diamondbacks in 2024, he slashed .291/.348/.528 for a 139 wRC+. Roughly two thirds of his plate appearances were against southpaws but he had above-average results against pitchers of either handedness. That led to him securing a $5MM guarantee for 2025 but, as mentioned, his results weren’t as good. He had to settle for a minor league deal for 2026. Even when he got called up, his base salary was half of the year prior.
Though 29 teams just passed on the chance to get him off waivers, signing him now would be much cheaper. On a prorated basis, the league minimum would be less than a third of his salary and it would also come with no commitment, as teams could cut bait at any time.
Photo courtesy of Darren Yamashita, Imagn Images
Orioles Place Ryan Helsley On IL With Elbow Inflammation
The Orioles announced that right-hander Ryan Helsley has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 29th, with right elbow inflammation. Fellow righty Albert Suárez has been selected to take Helsley’s place on the active roster. The 40-man roster had a couple of vacancies and the addition of Suárez brings the O’s up to 39 players on there.
It’s an out-of-nowhere IL stint for Helsley, as there wasn’t any previous indication that anything was wrong. He last pitched on Tuesday, recording a clean inning and earning a save as the O’s beat the Astros 5-3. His fastball averaged 99.3 miles per hour, right around his season average and a slight increase over his previous two outings. He didn’t pitch in the past two days but Baltimore didn’t have save chances in the interim. The game on Wednesday was postponed. The two games in yesterday’s doubleheader were not close, one being decided by six runs and the other by seven.
The club will presumably have more information later but it’s always a bit ominous when a pitcher’s throwing elbow is involved in an injury. For the O’s, they will have to figure out how to proceed with yet another hit to their bullpen. Their previous closer, Félix Bautista, underwent shoulder surgery in August of last year. That procedure came with a timeline of about a year. He could perhaps be back late in 2026 but it’s also possible he misses the entire season, which is why Helsley was signed to fill the closer’s role.
The O’s also have Dietrich Enns and Yaramil Hiraldo on the IL, meaning Helsey is now the fourth reliever on the shelf. Guys like Andrew Kittredge, Rico Garcia, Anthony Nunez or Grant Wolfram could step up to absorb some higher-leverage roles.
For Helsley personally, it could be a rough development as well. Not so long ago, he was one of the top relievers in the game and was trending towards cashing in as a free agent. Unfortunately, he had an ill-timed dip in performance in 2025, his walk year. His earned run average shot up to 4.50 after being around 2.00 in the previous three seasons.
He signed a two-year, $28MM deal with the Orioles, a pact which contained an opt-out halfway through. That would give Baltimore a replacement for Bautista in the closer’s role. For Helsley, ideally, he would return to form and then go back to free agency in search of a longer deal and a bigger guarantee.
The results have been mostly good so far, through 10 2/3 innings. His 15.2% walk rate is way too high but his 32.6% strikeout rate is a nice bounceback after it dropped to 25% last year. Obviously, a major elbow injury would kill that plan, so this will hopefully be just a minor issue and eventual footnote in his season.
Suárez, 36, began the season with the O’s on a minor league deal. His contract was selected a few days into the season. He spent close to a month in the bullpen as a long reliever, tossing 13 innings over five appearances with a 3.46 ERA.
Despite those pretty solid results, he was squeezed off the roster a few days ago. He cleared waivers and then elected free agency on Wednesday. It was reported at that time that he and the O’s would likely work out a new minor league deal. According to Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com, his new minor league deal was approved just a few hours ago. He was initially going to join the Norfolk Tides in Nashville before being rerouted to be added to the big league roster as a replacement for Helsley.
Photo courtesy of Mitch Stringer, Imagn Images
Paul DeJong Opts Out Of Yankees Deal
Veteran infielder Paul DeJong has opted out of his minor league contract with the Yankees and is now a free agent, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports.
DeJong is only hitting .203 in Triple-A, but he’s clobbered six homers and walked at a 19% clip in 83 plate appearances, leaving him with an overall .203/.361/.516 batting line (127 wRC+). New York brought him in as a depth option in the offseason, knowing Anthony Volpe would miss the beginning of the year recovering from shoulder surgery. However, the Yanks also have Jose Caballero and Oswaldo Cabrera as infield options, and after signing DeJong they also acquired infielder Max Schuemann from the A’s. Volpe is set to return in the near future, and all of Caballero, Schuemann and Cabrera are still on the 40-man roster, leaving DeJong little path to a big league promotion.
A veteran of nine big league seasons, DeJong is a slick fielding, right-handed hitting shortstop who’s capable of playing anywhere on the infield. He strikes out too often (career 27.9%) and doesn’t walk enough to completely offset that (7.1%). DeJong has plenty of power though, evidenced by 146 round-trippers and a .187 ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average) in the majors. He’s a career .229/.294/.416 hitter in exactly 3500 big league plate appearances.
DeJong has played in each of the past nine major league seasons and logged at least 208 plate appearances in every 162-game season in that time (plus 174 plate appearances in the shortened 2020 campaign). He spent the 2025 season with the Nats and hit .228/.269/.373 in 208 trips to the plate. He’d have logged more playing time were it not for a fractured nose — suffered when an errant fastball hit him in the face — that sidelined him for two months.
There are plenty of teams with starting infielders on the shelf at the moment, which could lead to a new opportunity for DeJong. The Astros (Jeremy Peña), Athletics (Max Muncy), Orioles (Jordan Westburg, Jackson Holliday) and Mets (Francisco Lindor) are among the clubs dealing with prominent infield injuries. There are surely several other teams that might have interest in adding a quality defender with some pop to help out the big league bench or to stash in the upper minors (with a clearer path to the majors for DeJong).
Cardinals Designate Luis Peralta For Assignment
The Cardinals designated lefty Luis Peralta for assignment Friday, the team announced. His 40-man roster spot goes to fellow southpaw Jared Shuster, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Memphis. The Cards opened an active roster spot by optioning righty Hunter Dobbins to Triple-A following yesterday’s season debut.
St. Louis only claimed Peralta off waivers out of the Rockies organization three days ago. He’s yet to even pitch in a game in their system and will now be in limbo for up to a week as he awaits the outcome of this morning’s DFA. The Cardinals will have five days to either trade Peralta or place him back on outright waivers. Since outright waivers are a 48-hour process, it could take up to seven days for a resolution.
The 25-year-old Peralta has pitched in parts of two big league seasons, both with the Rockies. He’s logged 31 1/3 MLB frames and been charged with 21 earned runs (6.03 ERA) on 33 hits, 23 walks and four hit batters. He’s fanned 30 of his 150 opponents. Peralta is effectively a two-pitch reliever, working off a four-seamer that averages 94.7 mph and a curveball that sits 81.7 mph. He mixes in an extremely occasional mid-80s changeup; only two percent of his MLB pitches have been changeups.
Peralta had a huge 2024 season in the minors, logging a pristine 0.94 ERA with a 40.1% strikeout rate and 11.2% walk rate in 47 2/3 innings across three minor league levels. He’s been hit hard and missed time with a hip injury over the two subsequent seasons. If the Cardinals can succeed in passing him through waivers, he’ll have to head back to Triple-A Memphis, as he lacks the prior outright or three years of MLB service time needed to reject an outright assignment to the minors. He’s already been claimed once and has a pair of minor league options remaining, however, so it’s possible another club will scoop him up.
Shuster has already had one stint with the Cards this season. The 27-year-old pitched 3 2/3 innings and allowed two runs before being designated for assignment, clearing waivers and accepting an outright assignment to Memphis.
A former first-round pick by the Braves, Shuster has pitched in parts of four major league seasons without much success. He owns a lifetime 5.26 ERA in 145 1/3 innings and has posted strikeout and walk rates that are both worse than league average. He’s been tagged for nine earned runs in 9 2/3 Triple-A frames this season.
It could very well be another short stay on the roster for Shuster. The Cardinals needed a fresh arm in the bullpen after Dobbins was chased in the fifth inning yesterday. They needed five relievers to get through the rest of the game. All five threw at least 15 pitches. Ryne Stanek and JoJo Romero have both pitched on consecutive days and combined for 37 and 38 pitches, respectively. The Cards would probably prefer to stay away from either, if possible.