Rangers To Sign Rowdy Tellez To Minor League Deal
TODAY: The deal between the Rangers and Tellez is now official, as relayed by Sean McFarland of the Dallas Morning News. Tellez will report to Triple-A for tonight’s game.
July 4: The Rangers are signing free agent Rowdy Tellez to a minor league contract, reports Will Sammon of The Athletic. Tellez was released by the Mariners last week.
Now more than ever, Tellez seems to be a one-dimensional player, offering big power against right-handed pitching and not much else. He has put up negative defensive metrics at first base in every season of his career, including -5 DRS and -5 OAA in 393 innings this year with Seattle. Unsurprisingly, he is also a poor baserunner, with the second-slowest sprint speed among qualified runners in 2025. According to FanGraphs, he has also produced negative baserunning value in all eight seasons of his career.
Of course, no one ever expected Tellez to be a valuable defender or baserunner. What was surely more disappointing to the Mariners were his declining contact and on-base skills. He was chasing and whiffing significantly more than he had in recent years, and the result was his worst walk-to-strikeout ratio since his first big league cup of coffee in 2018. His power was still present. Indeed, he was barrelling balls up at the highest rate of his career (15.9%), and accordingly, he crushed six doubles and 11 home runs in just 62 games and 185 trips to the plate. Yet, despite the fact that the Mariners shielded him from left-handed pitching so effectively, his worsened plate discipline canceled out his .891 OPS on contact, and his overall batting line with Seattle was below league average (92 wRC+).
With all that said, Tellez’s .217 BABIP with the Mariners was well below his .259 career average entering the season, and the 54-point gap between his .293 wOBA and .347 xwOBA is the 12th-highest in the league (min. 180 PA). So, there is still some reason to believe that Tellez can overcome his shortcomings to be a productive major leaguer in 2025. And if any team is going to give him the chance to try, it makes sense that it’s the Rangers. Their team-wide 91 wRC+ against right-handed pitching is the fifth-worst in the sport, ahead of only the Pirates, Royals, White Sox, and Rockies. With Joc Pederson still weeks away from making his return from the IL, signing Tellez is a low-risk and potentially high-reward move by Texas.
Astros Sign Hector Neris
2:56PM: Neris’s deal is official and he is active for today’s game, according to Matt Kawahawa of the Houston Chronicle. Right-hander Jason Alexander has been optioned to Triple-A in the corresponding move.
2:25PM: The Astros are set to sign right-hander Hector Neris to a Major League contract, KPRC 2’s Ari Alexander reports. The Angels designated Neris for assignment and then released the veteran reliever this week after he cleared waivers, but Neris didn’t have to wait long on the open market for his next deal.
Neris posted a 2.69 ERA over 133 2/3 innings for Houston during the 2022-23 seasons, as well as a 1.50 ERA over six playoff innings during the Astros’ run to the 2022 World Series. He signed a one-year, $9MM deal with the Cubs during the 2023-24 offseason, and after Chicago released him last August, Neris rejoined the Astros but didn’t really recapture the magic, delivering only a 4.70 ERA in 15 1/3 innings over the remainder of the 2024 campaign.
A pair of minor league contracts with the Braves and Angels saw Neris receive some MLB time with both clubs this season, and Neris has a 7.80 ERA over 15 combined innings with the two teams. A big 29.4% strikeout rate has been countered by an 11.8% walk rate, and Neris has allowed three home runs over his small sample size of big league activity.
Neris’ 3.47 SIERA is perhaps a truer reflection of his performance, which is probably why the Astros opted to guarantee a roster spot to the 36-year-old. His past history as a known quantity and clubhouse favorite in Houston also undoubtedly played a role, as both parties will see if Neris can regain his old status as an innings-eating bullpen workhorse. The Astros’ bullpen has been one of the very best in baseball this season, so the team has the luxury of giving Neris an audition to see if he can even further deepen the relief corps.
Braves Release Alex Verdugo
TODAY: The Braves released Verdugo after he cleared waivers, the Athletic’s David O’Brien writes.
JULY 2: The Braves have designated outfielder Alex Verdugo for assignment, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Verdugo’s spot on the roster will go to fellow outfielder Jurickson Profar, who will be reinstated from the restricted list after serving an 80-game PED ban.
Verdugo, 29, signed a one-year, $1.5MM contract with Atlanta late in the offseason. He first filled a reserve role behind Jarred Kelenic but wound up thrust into a more prominent role when Kelenic’s prolonged struggles to hit big league pitching saw him optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett. Verdugo raced out to a hot start with the Braves, hitting .322/.385/.441 in his first 65 plate appearances, but his production has cratered since that time. Dating back to May 6, Verdugo has registered an anemic .203/.257/.225 batting line (37 wRC+) in 148 turns at the plate.
This year’s run with the Braves largely mirrors Verdugo’s 2024 with the Yankees. His early hot streak in New York lasted longer than his hot streak in Atlanta, but his struggles as a Yankee were also more protracted. Verdugo has now tallied 834 plate appearances across the past two seasons and generated a dismal .234/.292/.339 batting line. That’s a far cry from his 2019-23 form, when he batted .283/.338/.432 and served as a solid regular in the outfield corners for the Dodgers and Red Sox.
Even Verdugo’s once-excellent defensive grades have deteriorated in recent years. Defensive Runs Saved still gave him a slightly positive mark (+1) in 426 innings this season, but that’s nowhere near his 2019-24 levels, when he garnered a gaudy +31 mark in 6150 innings. Statcast’s Outs Above Average pegged Verdugo as a scratch defender in 2024 but has him at minus-5 in 2025. Verdugo’s sprint speed used to rank well above average but is now in the 21st percentile of big leaguers, which has obviously cut into his range in left field.
The Braves can trade or place Verdugo on outright waivers at any point in the next five days, although given his guaranteed salary and lack of production, the likeliest outcome will be a release. If and when he clears release waivers, any other club could sign Verdugo and owe him only the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the major league roster. That sum would be subtracted from what Atlanta owes him, but the Braves will remain on the hook for the vast majority of his 2025 salary.
Blue Jays Place Yimi Garcia On 15-Day Injured List
The Blue Jays announced that right-hander Yimi Garcia has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to a left ankle sprain. Right-hander Robinson Pina was called up from Triple-A to take Garcia’s spot on the active roster.
Garcia was only just activated from a prior IL stint on Wednesday, as the reliever had missed just under six weeks due to a shoulder impingement. The righty’s brief return to Toronto’s roster consisted of one appearance and one inning of work that saw Garcia surrender a game-tying two-run homer to Aaron Judge, though Garcia was still the winning pitcher in the Jays’ 11-9 win over the Yankees.
That outing boosted Garcia’s ERA to 3.86 over 21 innings and 22 games. Garcia has been missing a lot of bats (27.8% strikeout rate), but he has a 13.3% walk rate that would be far and away the highest of his 11 big league seasons. While Garcia hasn’t necessarily been at his sharpest, he has still been a key high-leverage arm out of the Blue Jays’ bullpen, and he’ll now be out again until at least beyond the All-Star break.
The lack of depth at the back of Toronto’s rotation has led the team to lean hard on its bullpen, as the Jays rank eighth in baseball with 337 2/3 relief innings pitched. The Blue Jays figured to be targeting starting and relief pitching at the deadline already, and their needs in the pen will be exacerbated if there’s now any question about Garcia’s availability in the rest of July.
Mets Sign Zach Pop, Designate Tyler Zuber
TODAY: The Mets officially announced Pop’s signing. Right-hander Austin Warren was optioned to Triple-A in one corresponding move, and 40-man roster space was created when right-hander Tyler Zuber was designated for assignment.
Zuber has a 5.27 ERA in 54 2/3 innings of parts of four MLB seasons with the Royals, Rays, and Mets. He came to New York from Tampa in a deadline deal a year ago and has mostly pitched in the Mets’ minor league system, as his big league tenure in Queens consists of a single appearance and two relief innings in the Mets’ 7-1 loss to the Phillies on June 22.
JULY 3: The Mets and right-hander Zach Pop are in agreement on a major league contract, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Whenever it is official, corresponding moves will be required to get him onto to the 40-man and active rosters.
Pop, 28, just spent a few weeks on the Mariners’ roster. He made four appearances, the first three of which were fairly normal. The fourth one, however, was a disaster. Put into a game against Minnesota with Seattle losing 2-0 in the sixth, Pop allowed seven earned runs in one inning, via two walks and six hits, including two home runs. That gave him an unsightly 13.50 earned run average for the year. He was then designated for assignment and elected free agency.
In his career, Pop has gotten many chances thanks to his intriguing velocity. He averages 96 miles per hour on his sinker, though that has led to more ground balls than strikeouts. In 161 career innings split between the Marlins, Blue Jays and Mariners, he has a 4.75 ERA, 18.1% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate and 55.2% ground ball rate.
He exhausted his final option year with the Jays last season. The Jays still had some hope of utilizing him in 2025, as they tendered him a contract. He had qualified for arbitration as a Super Two player and the two sides avoided arb by agreeing to a $900K salary for this year.
He stuck on Toronto’s 40-man through the winter but experienced some elbow soreness during camp. The Jays designated him for assignment on Opening Day to open a 40-man spot. Since he was injured at the time, he couldn’t be put on outright waivers, so he was released. That left the Jays on the hook for the majority of that salary, allowing any other club to pay him the prorated version of the minor league minimum for any time spent on the roster.
That led to a minor league deal with the Mariners. During his brief stint on their major league roster, he passed three years of service time, which gave him the right to elect free agency yesterday even though it was his first career outright.
For the Mets, their pitching staff has been hit pretty hard in the past few weeks, so they need all the help they can get. They currently have 12 pitchers on the injured list. Their starting rotation has lost Kodai Senga, Tylor Megill, Griffin Canning and Paul Blackburn in the past few weeks. They just placed Blackburn and reliever Dedniel Núñez on the IL today, after playing a doubleheader yesterday. Justin Hagenman and Rico Garcia were called up to give the club a couple of fresh arms.
David Peterson is starting tonight’s contest against the Brewers. Tim Britton of The Athletic relays that the club plans to have Hagenman, Frankie Montas and Brandon Waddell start the next three games against the Yankees. After that, the club will get a much-needed day off but it’s going to be a challenge for them to limp through the weekend.
Pop will give them a fresh arm at virtually no cost. As mentioned, he is out of options and would need to be removed from the 40-man if the club wants to remove him from the active roster. If he somehow manages to hold a spot until the end of the year, he can be retained beyond this season via arbitration.
Photo courtesy of Bruce Kluckhohn, Imagn Images
Diamondbacks Activate Corbin Carroll From 10-Day IL
Corbin Carroll is returning to the Diamondbacks’ lineup, as the club announced that the outfielder has been reinstated from the 10-day injured list. Utilityman Tim Tawa was optioned to Triple-A in the corresponding move.
Carroll last played on June 18, when he was hit in the left wrist by a pitch from Blue Jays southpaw Justin Bruihl. The result was a chip fracture and a trip to the IL that officially began on June 21, though thankfully, it appears as though Carroll dodged the bullet of a more serious injury. Carroll felt good enough to play in an Arizona Complex League game on Thursday and he took part in a live batting practice session yesterday.
Before he was sidelined, Carroll was enjoying a huge season, and a return to the form he showed in winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2023. The 149 wRC+ Carroll has posted through 323 plate appearances this season is indeed even higher than his 132 wRC+ in 2023, and a big step up from his relatively disappointing 107 wRC+ last year. Carroll is hitting .255/.341/.573 with 20 homers and a league-best nine triples this season, also contributing strong baserunning and (in the view of the Outs Above Average metric) plus defensive in right field.
Getting Carroll back so quickly is a huge boost to the Diamondbacks, who remain on the outskirts of the playoff race with a 43-45 record. Arizona is 4.5 games back of the final NL wild card spot with three other teams sitting between the D’Backs and the Padres, who hold that last wild card berth. The Snakes will have to make up some serious ground in July to more properly get themselves into the hunt, and to potentially avoid a significant selloff at the deadline.
Dodgers Release Luis Garcia
The Dodgers have released Luis Garcia, according to the right-hander’s MLB.com profile page. Garcia was designated for assignment last week and (upon clearing waivers) had the right to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency, though L.A. streamlined that process by parting ways with the 38-year-old.
Signed to a minor league contract this past winter, Garcia made the Dodgers’ Opening Day roster, and posted a 5.27 ERA over 27 1/3 innings with the club. The righty’s 4.25 SIERA was more respectable, as Garcia’s sky-high .388 BABIP greatly hampered his grounder-heavy approach. Bad batted-ball luck notwithstanding, Garcia also hurt himself by allowing a lot of hard contact, and walking batters at a 12.7% rate. That elevated walk rate was an unwelcome return to the control problems Garcia faced earlier in his career, though he had seemingly harnessed his control by posting a more palatable 7% walk rate from 2021-24.
Garcia missed about a month of the season due to an adductor strain, and made two final appearances for Los Angeles before he was DFA’ed. The 13-year veteran will now be changing addresses yet again after already pitching for seven different teams at the big league level over his lengthy career. This long track record figures to get Garcia another look from some team on a minors deal, and the reliever was still posting quality results as recently as the first half of 2024, before the deadline trade that sent Garcia from the Angels to the Red Sox.
If Garcia indeed signs elsewhere, new team would only owe him the MLB minimum salary for any time spent in the majors. That money would be subtracted from the remainder of Garcia’s $1.5MM salary for the 2025 season, which will be otherwise covered by the Dodgers.
Mets Notes: Butto, Senga, Megill
The Mets placed right-hander Jose Butto on the 15-day injured list on Friday, with a retroactive placement date of July 1. Right-hander Chris Devenski was called up from Triple-A to take Butto’s spot on the active roster. Butto is dealing with an undisclosed illness, and manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters (including the New York Post’s Mike Puma) that the club expects to activate the righty for the first game back after the All-Star break.
Now in his fourth season in New York, Butto has been used as a full-time reliever for the first time in his MLB career and the bottom-line results have been solid. He has a 2.47 ERA over 43 2/3 innings and 31 appearances, albeit with a troublesome 11.2% walk rate and a 21.8% strikeout rate that is also below the league average. Butto’s 4.01 SIERA reflects the sizeable gap between his actual performance and expected performance, though he does have a strong 49.6% grounder rate, and very good chase and whiff rates despite his relative lack of strikeouts.
While Butto’s illness doesn’t appear to be too serious, his absence creates yet another hole in the Mets’ injury-riddled pitching staff. The Amazins now have 13 different pitchers on their IL, ranging from relatively minor situations like Butto to multiple hurlers who have been out for extended periods of time, or won’t pitch again in 2025.
One of the biggest names on the IL might be nearing a return, as Kodai Senga is slated to pitch for Double-A Binghampton in a rehab outing today. Senga hasn’t pitched since June 12, when a right hamstring strain cut short a start against the Nationals. Since it was just a Grade 1 strain, however, the Mets were optimistic that Senga wouldn’t miss too much time, and it is possible Senga might need just the one rehab outing before rejoining the big league rotation.
After injuries sidelined Senga for almost all of the 2024 season, he has returned in good form this year, posting a 1.47 ERA over 13 starts and 73 2/3 innings. A 4.14 SIERA reveals that Senga isn’t nearly as dominant as his ERA suggests, though his Statcast numbers are generally above average apart a 10.6% walk rate is only in the 17th percentile of all pitchers. Nonetheless, Senga’s relatively quick return is a huge boost to a Mets rotation that has been short-handed by injuries all season, let alone this second wave of health woes that have hit the staff in the last couple of weeks.
Tylor Megill was one of those most recent absences, as the right-hander hit the 15-day IL in mid-June due to an elbow sprain. Despite the ominous nature of such injuries, Megill said at the time of the IL placement that he was only dealing with inflammation, and MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo wrote yesterday that a recent MRI showed that the inflammation had decreased to the point that Megill can resume throwing.
Since Megill has been shut down for three weeks, he’ll begin with some light work throwing off flat ground today, but the hope is that he won’t take too long to fully ramp up to starting readiness. Megill has a 3.95 ERA/3.61 SIERA in 68 1/3 innings and 14 starts for New York this season, with an outstanding 29.2% strikeout rate that helps cover for a subpar 10.8% walk rate.
Padres Outright Logan Gillaspie
TODAY: Gillaspie cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A El Paso earlier this week, the Padres announced. Gillaspie made the start for El Paso in yesterday’s game.
JUNE 30: The Padres announced Monday that they’ve reinstated right-hander Logan Gillaspie from the 15-day injured list. Rather than add the out-of-options righty back to the active roster, San Diego has designated him for assignment.
Gillaspie, 28, has been out since late April due to an oblique injury. He appeared in three games for the Friars in 2025, tossing seven innings and holding opponents to just two runs. He did so with matching 12.9% strikeout and walk rates, however, and gave up quite a bit of loud contact along the way (92.1 mph average exit velocity, 45.5% hard-hit rate).
This is the fourth straight season in which Gillaspie has logged at least some big league time. He’s pitched a total of 44 2/3 MLB frames between the Orioles and Padres, logging a combined 4.63 earned run average with a 14.5% strikeout rate, 6% walk rate and 35.7% ground-ball rate. Gillaspie has averaged 95.1 mph on his four-seamer in his career (94.7 mph in 2025) and typically pairs the pitch with an 83-84 mph slider, an 87-88 mph changeup and an 82-83 mph curveball (in descending order of use). At least in his brief three-inning look this year, he’d also begun to mix in a cutter that sat 91.5 mph.
Gillaspie has worked exclusively as a reliever ever since reaching High-A. Originally signed by the Brewers as an undrafted free agent, he’s now pitched in in four Triple-A seasons as well, logging a 4.37 ERA, 23.3% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate in 129 2/3 innings. The Padres can trade Gillaspie or place him on waivers at any point in the next five days. Waivers are a 48-hour process, so his DFA will be resolved within a week’s time. Since Gillaspie has never been outrighted and doesn’t have three years of big league service, he’ll stick with the organization as a depth arm in Triple-A if he passes through waivers unclaimed.
Orioles Outright Matt Bowman, Emmanuel Rivera
The Orioles announced today that right-hander Matt Bowman and infielder Emmanuel Rivera have cleared outright waivers and accepted assignments to Triple-A Norfolk. Both players had been designated for assignment in recent days.
Bowman, 34, signed a minor league deal with the club in December. Since then, he has bounced on and off the club’s roster. Four times this year, he has been selected to the roster, designated for assignment, cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to the Tides.
Around those transactions, he has thrown 23 1/3 innings for the O’s with a 5.79 earned run average, 15.7% strikeout rate, 5.6% walk rate and 34.6% ground ball rate. For his career, he now has 239 1/3 big league innings under his belt with a 4.32 ERA, 18.7% strikeout rate, 8% walk rate and 52.4% ground ball rate.
The constant shuttling might be unwelcome for some but it appears Bowman is content with his relationship with the Orioles, as he has the right to reject outright assignments but hasn’t done so this year. The O’s seem likely to be deadline sellers later this month and have a number of trade candidates on their pitching staff, so perhaps Bowman can get a more stable role in the final two months of the schedule.
Rivera, 29, has between three and five years of major league service time. That means he has the right to reject an outright assignment but would have to forfeit his remaining salary commitments in order to do exercise that right. He and the club avoided arbitration in the winter by agreeing to a $1MM salary.
The combination of that contractual situation and his out-of-options status has led to him also bouncing on and off the Baltimore roster, with this being his third outright of the year. Around those transactions, he has posted a .229 /299/.271 batting line while providing solid defense at third base, along with occasional appearances at the other infield corner.
Similar to Bowman, he could get more regular playing time down the stretch. The O’s could perhaps move corner infielders like Ryan O’Hearn, Ryan Mountcastle and/or Ramón Urías in the coming weeks.
Photo courtesy of Reggie Hildred, Imagn Images