Minor MLB Transactions: 9/6/17
We’ll use this post to track the day’s minor moves:
- The Mariners have outrighted utilityman Shawn O’Malley to Triple-A, per a club announcement. He had previously been designated for assignment. As Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune notes on Twitter, that’s more or less a formality at this stage of the year, as O’Malley will be able to enter the open market at year’s end as a minor-league free agent. Of course, he’ll still be on hand if a need arises over the next three weeks. O’Malley, 29, has not appeared in the majors this year but did see 89 games of action for Seattle in 2016. The former fifth-round draft pick hit just .229/.299/.319 in his 232 plate appearances last year, though, and then missed a big chunk of time earlier this season owing to an appendectomy and shoulder problems. O’Malley has hit just .205/.250/282 in twenty games of action at Triple-A in the current campaign.
- Also outrighted, per the Padres, was righty Kevin Quackenbush. He had entered the season on track to qualify for arbitration at season’s end, but only appeared in twenty contests while struggling to a 7.86 ERA with 7.9 K/9 and 5.5 BB/9. Quackenbush is still just 28 and has had far more productive stints in the majors in the recent past. He also managed a 3.90 ERA in his 27 2/3 Triple-A frames. While his outlook with the Pads remains cloudy, then, he could receive a shot at earning a bullpen spot — in San Diego or elsewhere — in Spring Training next year.
Cardinals Acquire Juan Nicasio
The Phillies announced that they have traded right-hander Juan Nicasio to the Cardinals in exchange for minor league infielder Eliezer Alvarez. Philadelphia had recently claimed Nicasio off outright waivers from the Pirates. Nicasio will give the Cardinals’ bullpen a boost, though since he’s been acquired after Aug. 31, he won’t be eligible for the postseason roster if St. Louis qualifies. Nicasio is a free agent after the season.
Nicasio’s time with the Phillies will last all of a week, bringing to a close one of the more puzzling sequences in recent August trade history. The Pirates were unable to pass Nicasio through revocable trade waivers last month, ultimately pulling him back off waivers and placing him on outright waivers and instead losing him to the Phillies, who had top waiver priority, for nothing other than salary relief that amounted to roughly $600K.
The move was confusing enough that Pittsburgh GM Neal Huntington felt the need to explain the team’s rationale to the media. Per Huntington, Nicasio was claimed by a “playoff-caliber” team on trade waivers — it’s not clear if that Cardinals were that club, though it’d make sense — and the Bucs opted to place him on outright waivers in hopes of getting him to an AL contender rather than helping a “direct competitor.” (Trade waivers are league-specific, whereas outright waiver priority ignores league and is solely determined in reverse order of MLB standings.)
Nicasio will ultimately end up with a direct competitor of the Pirates anyhow, though he won’t be able to pitch in the postseason. Moreover, the Phillies will make out extremely well in this deal, as Alvarez entered the season ranked 10th on Baseball America’s list of the Cardinals’ top 30 prospects. He currently ranks 19th among St. Louis farmhands in the eyes of Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. In essence, the Phillies were able to claim a Cardinals prospect off waivers, which ultimately cost them about $138K in terms of salary (the pro-rated portion of Nicasio’s week-long tenure with the team).
For the Cardinals, Nicasio immediately becomes one of their best relievers. Through 61 1/3 innings, Nicasio has averaged 8.95 K/9, 2.64 BB/9 and a 46.9 percent ground-ball rate en route to an excellent 2.79 ERA. The 31-year-old has averaged a career-best 95.4 mph on his heater in 2017 and is sporting a 10.7 percent swinging-strike rate that would rank third among current St. Louis relievers (not including the injured Trevor Rosenthal, who led the team’s bullpen in that regard).
Alvarez, 23 next month, has spent the season with St. Louis’ Double-A affiliate, hitting .247/.321/.382 with four homers and eight steals (in 11 tries). Those numbers don’t immediately stand out, though it’s worth noting that Alvarez skipped Class-A Advanced entirely and was considerably younger than the league average in Double-A.
Callis and Mayo note in their free scouting report that Alvarez has a line-drive approach with a knack for making hard contact and could eventually grow into more power. He’s an above-average runner and could profile as a regular at second base down the line if everything breaks right for him. Alvarez was added to the Cardinals’ 40-man roster last winter to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, so he’ll go onto the Phillies’ 40-man roster and fill the spot that was vacated by trading Nicasio.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Angels Activate Garrett Richards, Designate Mike Morin, Vicente Campos
The Angels announced that they’ve activated right-hander Garrett Richards from the 60-day disabled list and selected the contract of right-hander Deolis Guerra from Triple-A Salt Lake prior to tonight’s game. To clear room on the 40-man roster, right-handers Mike Morin and Vicente Campos have been designated for assignment.
In 2014-15, Richards looked like an emergent ace on the Angels’ staff, but injuries have wrecked his past two seasons. Richards tossed just 34 1/3 innings last season, as he was limited by a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. However, he did not opt for Tommy John surgery, as most victims of UCL tears do, instead opting for stem cell treatment that allowed him to avoid going under the knife.
This year, though, a nerve issue in his right biceps cropped up in April, sending Richards back to the disabled list once again. The 29-year-old has made just one appearance for the Angels all season and will look to finish out the year on a strong note to provide some hope that he can be healthy in 2018.
Morin, 26, had a terrific rookie campaign back in 2014 but has logged a 5.38 ERA in 105 1/3 innings since that promising debut season. Morin hasn’t had much trouble missing bats in the Majors, but his strikeout rate has dropped in the minors in recent years. He’s averaged just 5.7 K/9 in 39 1/3 innings in Triple-A this year, though he’s also posted a strong 1.6 BB/9 rate and notched a very solid 3.20 ERA there.
Campos, 25, has an 8.22 ERA through 23 innings across three minor league levels this season. The Halos picked him up off waivers from the D-backs last offseason, knowing that he was facing an eight-month recovery from a fractured forearm that required surgery last September. Campos received a bit of fanfare as a prospect with the Yankees last year before being traded to the D-backs in exchange for Tyler Clippard. In 503 minor league innings, he has a 3.80 ERA with 8.1 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9.
The 28-year-old Guerra will be making his second appearance on the Angels’ 40-man roster. He was outrighted earlier this year but remained in the organization after clearing waivers. Guerra notched a 3.21 ERA with 6.1 K/9 and 1.2 BB/9 in 53 1/3 innings with the Angels last year and recorded a brilliant 1.98 ERA with a 41-to-8 K/BB ratio in 41 Triple-A frames after this season’s outright assignment.
Giants Designate Carlos Moncrief For Assignment
The Giants have designated outfielder Carlos Moncrief for assignment in order to clear a spot on the roster for fellow righty Roberto Gomez, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Sacramento (Twitter link via Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area).
Moncrief, 28, spent most of his career with the Indians organization but has been with the Giants for the past two seasons. He’s batted .287/.349/.421 with two homers and four steals through 190 Triple-A plate appearances this season but slashed just .211/.256/.237 through 43 plate appearances with the big league club this year after making his MLB debut.
Gomez, also 28, notched a 4.07 earned run average with 8.2 K/9, 3.5 BB/9 and a 46 percent ground-ball rate in 97 1/3 innings with the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate. Gomez has made 38 appearances in Sacramento, 25 out of the bullpen and 13 starts.
Orioles Designate Jayson Aquino, Promote Austin Hays
The Orioles announced that they’ve promoted outfield prospect Austin Hays to the Majors and designated left-hander Jayson Aquino to clear space on the 40-man roster. Hays will be making his Major League debut the first time he enters a game for the O’s.
The 22-year-old Hays has ridden a monster season in the minors to the No. 97 slot on MLB.com’s list of the game’s top 100 prospects and to his first MLB promotion. The 2016 third-rounder opened the year in Class-A Advanced and slashed .328/.364/.592 with 16 homers through 280 plate appearances before being bumped to Double-A Bowie. Remarkably, Hays posted a near-identical .330/.367/.594 batting line with, again, 16 home runs in 283 PAs following that promotion.
Aquino, 24, has spent the past two seasons in the Orioles organization but has totaled just 15 2/3 frames in the Majors. He’s logged a disappointing 6.32 ERA in that time to go along with a 16-to-6 K/BB ratio. Aquino has posted more appealing numbers in Triple-A, though, working to a 4.24 ERA with 7.0 K/9 against 3.2 BB/9 in 114 2/3 innings out of the Norfolk rotation in 2017.
Red Sox Activate Carson Smith, Designate Kyle Martin
The Red Sox announced that they have activated right-handed reliever Carson Smith from the 60-day disabled list and designated fellow righty Kyle Martin for assignment to clear a spot on the 40-man roster.
Now 27 years old, Smith was acquired by the Red Sox in the 2015-16 offseason with the hope that he could serve as a setup man for Craig Kimbrel. The hard-throwing Smith was brilliant during his 2015 rookie campaign with the Mariners, pitching to a 2.31 ERA with 11.8 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and a 64.3 percent ground-ball rate in 70 innings. Unfortunately for the Red Sox, Smith suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament after just three appearances in a Red Sox uniform and hasn’t appeared in a Major League game since.
September will give the Sox time to evaluate Smith for a potential postseason bullpen spot and will also certainly provide an audition of sorts for the 2018 campaign, when they’ll again hope that he can join Joe Kelly, Matt Barnes and others in forming a bridge to Kimbrel.
As for Martin, the 26-year-old made his Major League debut this season but tossed just 2 1/3 innings in the bigs. Martin has posted some gaudy strikeout rates in the past as a minor leaguer, averaging better than a strikeout per inning from 2014-16 and more than 10 K/9 in 2015-16. He reached Triple-A for the first time in 2017 and logged a 4.36 ERA with 8.4 K/9, 4.4 BB/9 and a 33.1 percent ground-ball rate in 53 2/3 innings.
Mariners Release Evan Scribner
The Mariners announced on Tuesday that they’ve requested release waivers on right-hander Evan Scribner. Seattle also announced that outfielder Jacob Hannemann, who was claimed off waivers from the Cubs yesterday, and first baseman Dan Vogelbach are both being brought up to the Majors.
Scribner, 32, has been on the 60-day disabled list for most of the season due to a flexor strain. That marks the second straight season that has been nearly entirely wiped out by injury for Scribner, as he tossed just 14 1/3 innings in the Majors last year, owing to a strained right lat.
Seattle initially acquired Scribner from the division-rival Athletics in a minor December swap that sent right-hander Trey Cochran-Gill to Oakland. Scribner had posted an otherworldly 64-to-4 K/BB ratio through 60 innings with the A’s a year prior, though he also featured lackluster velocity and was susceptible to the long ball.
In a total of 21 1/3 innings as a member of the Mariners’ bullpen, Scribner posted a 3.80 ERA with a similarly excellent 21-to-2 K/BB ratio (one of the walks was intentional in nature), though he also served up three home runs in that relatively brief time.
Pirates Announce Extensions Of Neal Huntington, Clint Hurdle
The Pirates have announced matching, four-year extensions for both GM Neal Huntington and manager Clint Hurdle. Both are now under contract through the 2021 season; salary terms are unreported.
Hurdle’s deal was reported yesterday, though Huntington’s situation remained unclear. As we covered at the time, both of these key organizational figures were entering an offseason of uncertainty, with the Bucs possessing team options for the 2018 campaign.
Rather than simply taking the one year already contemplated in their prior contracts, Pirates president Frank Coonelly decided to reward both Huntington and Hurdle with yet greater commitments, calling each “selfless leaders who have made us a far stronger organization, both on and off the field.” Both had previously worked for one or three-year terms.
Some fans will find some cause for consternation in the timing of the move. After all, the Bucs are again failing to play to expectations after a 2013-15 run of success that reinvigorated hopes and fan interest. And the club has drawn fairly persistent accusations of being unwilling to spend when necessary. Most recently, hackles raised with the club’s curious move at the end of August to dump the salary of quality reliever Juan Nicasio. (At least as public perceptions go, it probably doesn’t help that Nicasio was claimed by the cross-state-rival Phillies, who had even less reason to pay his salary at this stage of the year.)
Still, it’s hard not to credit the work of the Huntington-Hurdle duo. The former came over from the Indians organization in advance of the 2008 season; while it took some time, and awaited the arrival of Hurdle a few years later, the club finally broke its long-running losing streak. Utilizing creative methods worthy of a book, Huntington’s front office — with Hurdle chipping in from the clubhouse and dugout — managed to field a roster that won 280 and lost 206 games from 2013 through 2015.
While those teams never advanced in the postseason, and things haven’t gone as well since, that doesn’t necessarily fall entirely on the shoulders of the GM and manager. The team’s exciting trio of outfielders was seen as perhaps the game’s best entering 2016; for a variety of reasons, they’ve combined to put up just 12 WAR over the last two years. Unlike some other organizations that have emerged in recent seasons, too, the Bucs have continued to carry less than $100MM in Opening Day payroll.
While the team has just not quite gotten enough from a variety of spots on the roster, Huntington has done well in acquiring and re-signing Ivan Nova, getting Felipe Rivero for pending free agent Mark Melancon, and acquiring and then extending the solid David Freese (who has been especially important with the unexpected loss of Jung Ho Kang). Every recent move hasn’t been a winner — the signings of Daniel Hudson and Ryan Vogelsong, for example — though perhaps the most strident complaints have been about opportunities that may have been missed owing mostly to payroll constraints.
All told, the current roster still holds plenty of talented players on appealing contracts. But some of the organization’s biggest stars — McCutchen and Gerrit Cole, in particular — are nearing free-agent eligibility, posing major questions (fraught with complicated baseball and public relations elements) to the front office and ownership group. How the Bucs will navigate the potentially turbulent waters remains to be seen, but the helmsmen will remain the same — albeit now with significant contractual protection to weather any short-term disappointments.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
White Sox Release Derek Holland
The White Sox announced that they have placed lefty Derek Holland on release waivers. Chicago announced a series of other moves as well. Top prospect Yoan Moncada has been activated from the DL, while the team purchased the contract of lefty Jace Fry and brought him up from Double-A.
Holland will almost certainly clear waivers, in which case he’d return to the open market while the remainder of his $6MM annual salary remains on Chicago’s books. Though he can still sign with another organization, so long as one is willing to free up a 40-man spot, Holland would not be eligible to pitch in the postseason.
The 30-year-old southpaw simply has not had quite the bounceback season he and the Sox hoped for when he signed on over the winter. Holland has managed only a 6.20 ERA over 135 innings, allowing 31 long balls while carrying 6.9 K/9 against 5.0 BB/9 in that span.
If there’s something to build off of, it’s the fact that Holland has been available all year after dealing with significant injuries in recent campaigns. Still, he averaged just 91.7 mph on his fastball, well off his career average of around 94. A variety of other underlying indicators suggest that hitters weren’t having much trouble seeing what was coming their way. For instance, Holland coaxed batters to offer at pitches outside the zone just one quarter of the time while surrendering 38.4% hard contact — both representing career-worst figures.
Braves Promote Luiz Gohara
The Braves have selected the contract of young lefty Luiz Gohara and scheduled him for his MLB debut tonight, as David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported. Atlanta will push back Julio Teheran, who had been scheduled to start.
Gohara, who only recently turned 21, came to the Atlanta organization in an offseason swap that also netted the Braves interesting relief prospect Thomas Burrows. The Mariners originally signed Gohara out of his native Brazil in time for him to join the organization briefly in 2013; due to a rules quirk, he was not eligible for the Rule 5 draft last year but would have been this coming winter.
With the Braves set to add Gohara to the 40-man roster anyway, then, the club decided to give him a taste of the majors before ending his whirlwind campaign. He has already thrown far more innings (123 2/3) than ever before, spread across three levels of the minors.
Gohara opened the season at High-A, marking his first experience there. But it wasn’t long before he moved up to Double-A, where he threw well enough to merit another bump to the highest level of the minors. All told, Gohara carries a 2.62 ERA with 10.7 K/9 and 3.2 BB/9 on the year.
As he has swiftly ascended the ladder, Gohara has climbed prospect ranking charts. ESPN.com’s Keith Law (#39), Baseball America (#77), and MLB.com (#91) have all moved him into their rankings of the game’s top prospects. While conditioning and durability remain long-term concerns for the talented southpaw, he has certainly shown this year that he is capable of converting his big-time raw stuff into productivity over the course of a full season.
It’s not yet known whether Gohara will have a shot at earning a rotation spot out of camp next year, but he could force the club’s hand with a big showing to end the season. For now, Atlanta will be content watching another interesting young arm rise to the majors. The team has already called up Sean Newcomb, Max Fried, and Lucas Sims for their first MLB action this year.