Tigers, Nick Sandlin Agree To Minor League Deal
The Tigers are in agreement with reliever Nick Sandlin on a minor league contract, as first reflected on the MLB.com transaction log. The Ballengee Group client will report to Triple-A Toledo. Sandlin elected free agency after being waived by the Angels last week.
Sandlin, 29, had a solid four-year run as a middle reliever in Cleveland to begin his MLB career. The Southern Mississippi product turned in a 3.27 earned run average in just under 200 innings for the club. They traded him to Toronto alongside Andrés Giménez over the 2024-25 offseason. Sandlin missed most of his lone season with the Blue Jays due to an elbow injury and was cut loose in November.
After offseason surgery, Sandlin joined the Halos on a minor league contract. He made the MLB roster in April and was hit hard in eight appearances. Sandlin gave up 11 runs on nine hits and eight free passes (five walks and three hit batters) over 8 2/3 innings. He only recorded six strikeouts with a career-low 10.2% swinging strike rate.
The Tigers will see if they can get him on track in the minors. Sandlin throws from a low arm slot and leans most heavily on a plus slider. He missed a decent number of bats early in his career, though his average fastball speed has progressively dropped from 94 mph as a rookie to 91-92 over the years.
Detroit’s bullpen is middle of the pack in ERA (3.83) and strikeout rate (22.7%). They’re in the bottom third of the league in swinging strikes for a second straight season. Setup man Will Vest has been on the injured list since April 29 with what seems to be minor forearm inflammation.
D-Backs Trade Alek Thomas To Dodgers
The Diamondbacks and Dodgers announced a trade sending center fielder Alek Thomas to L.A. for minor league outfielder Jose Requena. The Dodgers will assume the approximate $1.4MM remaining on Thomas’ $1.9625MM arbitration salary. He’ll reportedly be optioned to Triple-A Oklahoma City, while the Dodgers designated fellow outfielder Michael Siani for assignment last night to open a 40-man roster spot.
Arizona designated Thomas for assignment last week when they called up top outfield prospect Ryan Waldschmidt. The Dodgers take a flier on the 26-year-old, a former second-round pick who was one of the better prospects in MLB when he debuted in 2022. He’s a highly-regarded center fielder who had hit at every stop in his minor league career. That hasn’t carried over against MLB pitching, as Thomas has been a well below-average hitter over his four-plus seasons in the big leagues.
Thomas is an extremely aggressive hitter, ranking in the top 15 this season in both overall swing rate and chases off the plate. He has particularly struggled against secondary stuff as a result, and the very low walk rates have consistently tamped down his on-base percentage. Thomas has a career .230/.273/.361 batting line in just shy of 1500 plate appearances. It’s the ninth-lowest OBP among hitters who have tallied at least 1000 trips since the start of the ’22 season.
While he hasn’t developed offensively, Thomas has a strong reputation with the glove. His sprint speed and defensive grades have dipped slightly since he suffered a left hamstring strain early in 2024, but he still rates as an above-average defender and baserunner.
The D-Backs have considered trades of both Thomas and Jake McCarthy for a few seasons. They’re now both gone to division rivals, as they shipped McCarthy to Colorado over the offseason. Waldschmidt and Jorge Barrosa are manning center field between Corbin Carroll and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
Thomas still has a minor league option remaining, so he’ll begin his time in the L.A. organization in Triple-A. The Dodgers are operating without a true backup center fielder behind Andy Pages, but they can’t option Santiago Espinal or Miguel Rojas. Although fourth outfielder Alex Call is a better fit in a corner spot and has a couple options remaining, he’s hitting well in a limited role as a right-handed platoon player. The Dodgers should also get Kiké Hernández back from the injured list two weeks from now.
The Dodgers spend a couple million dollars to swap in Thomas for Siani as a fifth outfielder. In addition to the salary obligations, they’ll also pay just over $1.5MM in luxury tax commitments. That’s of little concern for the Dodgers, who can retain Thomas via arbitration for at least two more seasons. He needs to spend another 20 days on the MLB roster in 2026 to surpass four years of service time, which would keep him on track for free agency after the ’28 campaign. If he spends at least 20 days in the minors, he’ll be out of options next year.
Siani is also a speed and defense center fielder. He bounced around the league via waivers over the offseason, twice being claimed by the Dodgers. He has been on optional assignment all season, batting .225/.355/.303 without a home run while striking out 30 times in 107 plate appearances in Oklahoma City. He’s also in his final option year and will be traded or placed back on waivers within the next five days.
Requena is a 17-year-old who hasn’t played a professional game. Listed at 6’3″ and close to 230 pounds, he’s a right-handed hitter who signed as an amateur out of Venezuela in January. Ben Badler of Baseball America unsurprisingly wrote at the time that Requena is a corner outfielder whose profile is built on raw power and plus arm strength. He’ll likely make his professional debut in the Dominican Summer League.
MLBTR’s Steve Adams first reported that Thomas was being traded to the Dodgers. Francys Romero confirmed that Requena was the return. Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic reported that the Dodgers were assuming Thomas’ salary, while Jack Harris of The California Post confirmed he’d be optioned to Triple-A. Image courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images.
Mets To Select A.J. Ewing
The Mets are calling up top outfield prospect A.J. Ewing, reports Will Sammon of The Athletic. He should make his big league debut tomorrow when the Mets welcome Jack Flaherty and the Tigers to Citi Field. New York will need to create space on the active and 40-man rosters.
It’s an aggressive promotion the Mets are hoping will spark life into an offense that ranks 29th in scoring. The 21-year-old Ewing opened this season in Double-A. New York just promoted him to Triple-A Syracuse on April 27 and will give him an MLB look after 12 games there.
Ewing was a fourth-round pick out of high school in the 2023 draft. The Mets selected him with the #134 overall selection, their compensation for losing Jacob deGrom, and signed him away from a commitment to Alabama. It turned out to be an excellent find for New York’s scouting department, as Ewing’s plate discipline and athleticism have vaulted him up prospect lists.
The lefty-hitting Ewing has hit .290 with an on-base percentage close to .400 over parts of four minor league seasons. He’s out to an even better start this year, running a .339/.447/.514 line over 132 plate appearances between the top two levels. Ewing has walked nearly 17% of the time against a 15.2% strikeout rate. He’s also 17-18 in stolen base attempts, one year after he swiped 70 bags during his climb from Low-A to Double-A.
There are some parallels with the Mets’ decision to have Carson Benge break camp after he’d played just 24 Triple-A games. Benge had an ice cold start to his MLB career but has been one of the team’s best hitters over the past couple weeks. He has officially graduated out of prospect status, leaving Ewing as the Mets’ best prospect in Baseball America’s most recent update of the league’s Top 100 minor league talents. BA slotted Ewing the #33 prospect in the game. MLB Pipeline ranks him 78th overall and second in the system behind right-hander Jonah Tong.
Listed at 6’0 and 160 pounds, Ewing doesn’t have immense raw power. He has 15 professional home runs, just five of which have come since the start of the 2025 season. Baseball America and Keith Law of The Athletic each wrote over the offseason that Ewing makes more hard contact than the home run total might suggest, though his approach is geared more toward line drives and getting on base than hitting for power.
Ewing had some strikeout concerns early in his minor league career. He has toned that down considerably over the past year-plus, but he’ll face a much bigger challenge against MLB pitching. There’s no question about his athleticism, though, and Ewing’s plus-plus speed should make him an asset on the bases and give him defensive value.
Drafted as a second baseman, Ewing moved to the outfield in 2024. He has made four starts at second this year but is primarily a center fielder. He should step into the everyday center field role between Benge and Juan Soto for the time being. The Mets placed Luis Robert Jr. on the injured list in late April with a disc herniation. His return timeline is uncertain. They’ve divided center field between Tyrone Taylor and Benge — with MJ Melendez drawing into the lineup in right field — since Robert went down.
Taylor’s glove has made him a favorite of president of baseball operations David Stearns, but he has a .219 OBP through his first 76 plate appearances. Melendez came out of the gates hot but is 3-19 since the calendar flipped to May. He spent most of last year in Triple-A for a Kansas City team that had one of the worst outfields in MLB.
Melendez and Taylor certainly haven’t been the Mets’ biggest problems, but they’re easy enough to bump out of the lineup. New York’s .287 on-base percentage is the worst in MLB, meaning Ewing would only need to carry over a fraction of his minor league production to be an improvement. If both he and Benge are performing once Robert is back from the injured list, the Mets could give him reps at second base over the scuffling Marcus Semien and trade some defense for offense.
Benge, Melendez, Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez are the only hitters on New York’s MLB roster who have minor league options. It seems safe to assume Benge and Alvarez aren’t getting demoted. Baty isn’t hitting but is the primary third baseman with Francisco Lindor and Ronny Mauricio hurt and Bo Bichette needed at shortstop. Melendez has been hitting third against right-handed pitching, itself an indictment of the rest of the lineup. There’s a decent chance the Mets designate someone for assignment tomorrow. Vidal Brujan, Andy Ibáñez and Austin Slater are all in bench roles.
Ewing entered the season as a Top 100 prospect at each of BA, MLB Pipeline and ESPN. He therefore meets the criteria to win himself a full year of service time if he finishes top two in Rookie of the Year voting. (The Mets cannot receive an extra draft choice because they didn’t call him up by the middle of April.) He’d otherwise fall short of a full service year and be under club control for six seasons beyond this one. He’ll be on track for early arbitration as a Super Two player during the 2028-29 offseason, but future optional assignments to Triple-A could change that trajectory.
Image courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images.
Braves, Jose Azocar Agree To Minor League Deal
The Braves and outfielder Jose Azocar are reuniting on a new minor league deal, per the team’s transaction log at MLB.com. He’d previously been designated for assignment by Atlanta and briefly elected free agency after clearing waivers.
Azocar, 30 today, went hitless in his only two plate appearances with Atlanta (and in his lone Braves plate appearance last season as well). He’s a career .243/.288/.318 hitter in 420 big league plate appearances. Azocar has swiped 20 bags and popped two homers in the majors. Most of his big league time has come with the Padres, though he also appeared in a dozen games with the Mets last year.
Azocar is out to a fine start in Triple-A this year. He’s taken 113 plate appearances with Atlanta’s Gwinnett affiliate and slashed .270/.348/.420 with a couple homers, eight steals, a 10.6% walk rate and a 16.8% strikeout rate. Those slash stats are near mirror images of Azocar’s career marks in Triple-A. He’s played parts of six seasons at the top minor league level and notched a .276/.321/.416 batting line in 1203 plate appearances.
While he’s never been a huge threat with the bat, Azocar possesses plus speed (88th percentile in 2025, per Statcast) and is a quality defender in all three outfield spots. He’s spent 459 big league innings in center, 370 in right and 238 in left. Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average both peg him as at least average in all three slots, with Azocar’s center field work standing as his most effective to date.
The Braves placed Eli White — another speedy, glove-first, righty-swinging outfielder — on the injured list earlier this morning. However, his IL placement coincided with Ha-Seong Kim‘s return from the injured list, which is going to mean less infield work for Mauricio Dubón and Jorge Mateo, both of whom can play the outfield. With that pair supporting the trio of Mike Yastrzemski, Michael Harris II and Ronald Acuña Jr., there’s no need for another speed-and-defense outfielder on the bench. If the Braves incur more injuries in the outfield, however, Azocar could get another look, given that the Braves don’t have any minor league outfielders on the 40-man roster.
Orioles Select Josh Walker
The Orioles announced that they have selected left-hander Josh Walker to their roster. Right-hander Trey Gibson was optioned to Triple-A Norfolk in a corresponding active roster move. To open a 40-man spot, outfielder Heston Kjerstad was transferred to the 60-day injured list.
Walker, 31, has generally put up good numbers in the minors but has struggled in limited big league opportunities. He finished last season on Baltimore’s roster after they claimed him off waivers in August. They then signed him to a major league deal for 2026 and designated him for assignment a few days later. That may seem like a strange sequence but the O’s were presumably hoping that the salary, which has not been publicly reported, was enough to get him through waivers to be stashed as non-roster depth. This didn’t immediately pay off, as Atlanta claimed him in November. Baltimore was able to claim him back in December and then finally outrighted him in January.
He has tossed 14 1/3 innings for Norfolk this year, allowing 4.40 earned runs per nine. That ERA doesn’t jump off the page but he has perhaps deserved better. His 8.9% walk rate is around average while his 28.6% strikeout rate and 51.5% ground ball rate are both comfortably better than par. His 61.6% strand rate in that small sample is on the unfortunate side, which may have pushed some extra runs across, which is why his 3.48 FIP is roughly a run better than his ERA.
As mentioned, Walker has often done well in the minors without major league success. He has a 6.59 ERA in 27 1/3 big league innings. But dating back to the start of 2022, he has thrown 146 minor league innings with a 3.95 ERA. His 11.4% walk rate in that sample is high but he paired that with a 30.3% strikeout rate. He will now give the Orioles a fourth lefty in their bullpen alongside Keegan Akin, Dietrich Enns and Grant Wolfram. Walker still has one option remaining and can be easily sent back to Norfolk in the future.
Kjerstad has been on the 10-day IL all season due to a right hamstring strain. His 60-day count is retroactive to that initial IL placement, so he’ll be eligible for reinstatement in a few weeks. He began a rehab assignment on Saturday. Rehab assignment for position players can last 20 days, so the length of that rehab assignment roughly aligns with his IL timeline. If he is able to come off the IL later this month, he still has an option and could be bound for more time in the minors.
Photo courtesy of Morgan Tencza, Imagn Images
Marlins Outright Stephen Jones
Right-hander Stephen Jones has been sent outright to Triple-A Jacksonville, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment last week.
It’s been a strange week for Jones, who started the season with Double-A Pensacola after signing a minor league deal with the Marlins. Miami added him to the big league roster on May 7th. He explained to members of the media, including Kevin Barral of Fish on First, that he had just been promoted to Triple-A. He sat in the bullpen for one game without being used by the Jumbo Shrimp before being told he was going to the big leagues. He didn’t pitch for the Marlins that night and was designated for assignment the next day.
It appears that Jones was nothing more than an emergency arm. The Fish had designated Chris Paddack for assignment on May 5th and would eventually give his rotation spot to Robby Snelling on the 8th. In the interim, they had an extra bullpen spot to use. They first recalled William Kempner for Paddack. After Kempner tossed on inning on the 5th, they optioned him out for Dax Fulton. Then Fulton tossed four innings on the 6th. Since he wasn’t going to be available for a few days, they swapped him out for Jones. They didn’t use Jones and then bumped him off the roster for Snelling.
The end result of all that shuffling is that Jones is now in position to potentially be a phantom player, one who makes a major league roster but never appears in a game. This is his first outright and he has less than three years of service time, so he has to accept the assignment.
He started this year with 16 2/3 innings at Double-A with a 3.24 earned run average. His 25.7% strikeout rate and 46.3% ground ball rates were good but he walked 17.6% of hitters who came to the plate. His previous stints in Triple-A have not gone well, with a 12.60 ERA in 60 innings at the top minor league level. He’ll look to post better results going forward in order to get back onto the roster.
Photo courtesy of Jim Rassol, Imagn Images
Blue Jays Designate Eric Lauer For Assignment, Place Addison Barger On IL
The Blue Jays announced that left-hander Eric Lauer has been designated for assignment. His roster spot goes to right-hander Yariel Rodríguez. It was reported yesterday that the Jays would be selecting Rodriguez to the roster. The Jays also placed infielder/outfielder Addison Barger on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to May 10th, with right elbow inflammation. Outfielder Yohendrick Pinango has been recalled to take Barger’s spot.
It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride for Lauer and the Blue Jays. He signed a minor league deal with the club heading into the 2025 season. He was added to the major league roster in late April as the Jays were dealing with some injuries and some poor performances.
Lauer ended up sticking around and played a notable role in the club’s strong season. Often getting shuffled between the rotation and the bullpen, Lauer made 15 starts and 13 relief appearances. On the whole, he logged 104 2/3 innings with a 3.18 earned run average, 23.9% strikeout rate and 6.1% walk rate. He added another 8 2/3 innings in the postseason with a 3.12 ERA, as the Jays went all the way to Game Seven of the World Series.
From there, things have turned sour, both in terms of performance and Lauer’s relationship with the club. The Jays retained him for 2026 via arbitration but the two sides couldn’t agree on a salary, eventually going to a hearing. It was a unique case because Lauer had been in arbitration before and raised his salary to $5.075MM in 2023. But he struggled and lost his roster spot, spending 2024 in the minors and in Korea, before having a bounceback with the Jays in 2025.
He filed at $5.75MM and the Jays at $4.4MM. The club won. He appeared to be frustrated by that outcome, telling Hazel Mae of Sportsnet that he felt his earning power was damaged by getting bumped to the bullpen late in the year when the Jays acquired Shane Bieber and called up Trey Yesavage.
Coming into 2026, there was a time where it looked like Lauer would again be pushed to a bullpen role. The Jays had signed Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce, in addition to re-signing Max Scherzer. With those three joining Kevin Gausman, José Berríos, Yesavage and Bieber, it looked like quite a crowded group. Lauer again seemed less than enthused, telling reporters that he preferred to be a starter.
In the end, he got his wish. Berríos, Bieber and Yesavage started the season on the IL. Yesavage has since been activated but the Jays have also lost Ponce and Scherzer to the IL. The injuries were enough for Lauer to get a rotation spot, even with Patrick Corbin being signed to jump into the mix.
But Lauer’s results haven’t been nearly as good as last year’s. He has made eight appearances this year. Technically, only six of those were starts, as he pitched behind an opener twice. That was something he also wasn’t happy about, per Keegan Matheson of MLB.com. “To be real blunt, I hate it. I can’t stand it,” he said. He added that the switch messed with his habits as a starter.
Whether it’s due to his routine being messed up or residual effects from batting the flu earlier this year, Lauer has a 6.69 ERA on the season. His 16% strikeout rate and 9.9% walk rate are both significantly worse than last year. His fastball has only averaged 90.4 miles per hour on the year. That’s a big drop from last year’s 91.7 mph, which was on the low end to begin with.
Perhaps the combination of the poor numbers and Lauer repeatedly going public with his frustrations has prompted the Jays to move on, even though they don’t have an obvious rotation solution and the schedule is about to get tricky. Subtracting Lauer leaves them with Gausman, Cease, Yesavage and Corbin in four spots. It doesn’t appear as though any of the guys on the IL are close to returning, so the club will need to figure out something by next week. They start a series against the Rays tonight, with Gausman, Corbin and Cease lined up. They are off on Thursday but then play 17 in a row after that.
Perhaps they will opt for some sort of bullpen game and/or piggyback situation. Spencer Miles has been pitching reasonably well and went three innings in front of Lauer yesterday, though that would be risky since he is so inexperienced. Miles came into this year as a Rule 5 guy with only 14 2/3 minor league innings under his belt, none above Low-A. Rodríguez has starting experience and pitched two innings in his most recent minor league outing. They could call up someone else from Triple-A, with Josh Fleming, Austin Voth, CJ Van Eyk, Chad Dallas and Grant Rogers all pitching in the Triple-A rotation at the moment, though no one in that group is currently on the 40-man roster. They could scoop up an external addition, with Chris Paddack being one starter who just became a free agent.
Lauer heads into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Jays could take as long as five days to explore trade interest. Given his salary and recent performance, he probably doesn’t have a lot of trade value.
If he were to clear outright waivers, he has enough service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency while keeping his money. The Jays might skip that formality and simply release him. If that comes to pass, they would remain on the hook for the contract. Any other club could sign him and pay him the prorated league minimum, which would be subtracted from what the Jays pay.
Barger’s IL placement is frustrating, since he just came off the IL due to a separate issue. He got out to a slow start this year and hit the IL due to a left ankle sprain. He was reinstated off the IL and was only able to play one game before this elbow inflammation has put him right back on the shelf. That’s less than ideal for the Jays as injuries have played a big role in their season so far. In addition to the aforementioned pitching issues, they have seen Barger, George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, Nathan Lukes and Anthony Santander miss time. Those injuries have surely contributed to a lackluster 18-22 start this year.
Now that Barger is out again, the Jays will return to having an outfield group consisting of Daulton Varsho, Myles Straw, Davis Schneider, Jesús Sánchez and Pinango. They just optioned Pinango when Barger got healthy but he has quickly come back. Position players normally have to wait ten days after being optioned before being recalled but an exception is made when someone goes on the IL. Pinango has a .423/.444/.462 line this year but with an unsustainable .478 batting average on balls in play, so he’s surely due for some regression.
Photo courtesy of Nick Turchiaro, Imagn Images
Rays Outright Justyn-Henry Malloy
The Rays announced Monday that outfielder Justyn-Henry Malloy cleared waivers and was assigned outright to Triple-A Durham. Tampa Bay designated him for assignment over the weekend. Malloy doesn’t have a prior outright or three years of major league service, so he doesn’t have the choice to reject the assignment and opt for free agency. He’ll remain in the organization as non-roster depth.
Malloy came to the Rays in a cash swap with the Tigers back in January. Detroit had previously designated him for assignment. The 26-year-old was a sixth-round pick by Atlanta back in 2019 and went to Detroit as the headline piece in 2022’s Joe Jimenez swap. At the time, Malloy wasn’t a nationally ranked prospect but was a clear arrow-up commodity, having slashed .289/.408/.454 between Double-A (54 games) and Triple-A (eight games) during his age-22 season. He continued to post terrific Triple-A numbers in parts of three seasons with the Tigers’ Toledo affiliate, but Malloy still hasn’t hit in the majors.
Granted, the Tigers never gave Malloy a full season of big league at-bats to figure things out, but that’s a tough order for a win-now club with a young player who’s struggling at the plate. For all his minor league success, Malloy flailed away with a .203/.291/.366 line through 71 games as a rookie in 2024. He struck out in a whopping 37% of his 230 plate appearances. Things were better in a smaller sample last year, when Malloy batted .221/.346/.308 in 127 turns at the plate and scaled his strikeout rate back to 25.2%.
That’s still below-average production, however, and any hope for a rebound following a change of scenery has been dashed with a catastrophically poor performance in Durham thus far. Malloy has stepped into the batter’s box 132 times over the course of 34 games and recorded an anemic .128/.273/.266 batting line. By measure of wRC+, that’s 55% worse than average in the Triple-A International League. Malloy has walked at a stout 15.2% clip but also gone down on strikes in 31.1% of his plate appearances. He’s not impacting the ball when he does make contact, either; his 30.4% hard-hit rate is the lowest of his career in any Triple-A or MLB season.
Given the big league struggles and Malloy’s calamitous start to the season, it’s not particularly surprising that he passed through waivers. He’ll try to get back on track and force his way up for a major league look with Tampa Bay, but he has a long road ahead of him if he’s to play himself back into big league consideration.
Mets Outright Eric Wagaman
The Mets have sent infielder/outfielder Eric Wagaman outright to Triple-A Syracuse, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment last week.
Wagaman, 28, has never appeared in a big league game as a Met. He was claimed off waivers at the end of April and optioned to Triple-A Syracuse. He was briefly recalled at one point but then was optioned again without appearing in a game.
It’s possible the Mets had this outcome in mind when they claimed him. They only rostered him for about a week. Since this is Wagaman’s first career outright and he has less than three years of service time, he doesn’t have the right to elect free agency. The Mets will therefore get to keep him in the system without him taking up a roster spot.
Both Wagaman and the Mets will presumably be focused on getting him into a nice groove at the plate. From 2022 to 2024, he made 897 plate appearances in the minors. His 9.5% walk rate and 16.9% strikeout rate in that span were both strong figures. He hit 35 home runs. He produced a combined batting line of .276/.348/.473, leading to a 131 wRC+, indicating he was 31% better than league average.
That got him up to the majors late in 2024 with the Angels and he spent the entire 2025 season in the big leagues with the Marlins. But between those two clubs, he slashed .250/.293/.381 for a wRC+ of 85. His strikeout rate was still good but he wasn’t drawing walks as much as he did on the farm. He also hit just 11 home runs in 588 plate appearances.
It’s clear that teams still see some potential. The Marlins designated him for assignment in December but they were able to get minor league pitcher Kade Bragg from the Twins in a trade. Wagaman scuffled in Triple-A to start this year, hitting .159/.284/.254 in 18 games. That led to him being designated for assignment again, this time claimed by the Mets.
If Wagaman can get back to that strong form he showed from 2022 to 2024, the Mets could consider calling him up if they have a need in the majors. Wagaman has experience at the four corner spots, though he’s played mostly first base. The Mets have the worst record in baseball at 15-25 and would be in position to sell guys at the deadline if they don’t turn things around. That’s not a position the club wants to be in but the upside is that they can experiment with fringe guys down the stretch to see if anything clicks.
Photo courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck, Imagn Images
Pirates Re-Sign Ryan Harbin To Minor League Deal
The Pirates have re-signed right-hander Ryan Harbin to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He has been assigned to Triple-A Indianapolis but likely won’t appear in a game for that club immediately due to injury.
Harbin, 24, was added to Pittsburgh’s 40-man roster in November. The Bucs didn’t want to lose him in the Rule 5 draft after an intriguing 2025 season. His 4.69 earned run average didn’t look great but there were other numbers with more allure. His 16% walk rate was way too high but he struck out 31.9% of opponents and induced grounders on 45.5% of balls in play. He got some bad luck from a .361 batting average on balls in play and 66.1% strand rate, which is why his 3.41 FIP was more than a run lower than his ERA.
He could have worked his way into a big league opportunity here in 2026 but that hasn’t played out so far, as he suffered a teres major injury in February. That injury came with a six-week shutdown period. He was placed on the 60-day injured list in the minors in mid-March.
In late April, the Pirates needed a 40-man spot for Chris Devenski. They could have recalled Harbin and put him on the 60-day IL in the majors, but doing so would have meant paying Harbin a big league salary and giving him major league service time. They decided to go another way, cutting him from the roster. Injured players can’t be put on outright waivers, so the Bucs had to release him.
That put them at risk of Harbin signing elsewhere, but it seems it worked out okay from the team’s perspective. The Pirates now get to keep him without using a roster spot and without paying him big league money. Once he recovers from his injury, he’ll look to get back on track and hopefully earn his way back onto the roster.
Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images