Rays Sign Kyle Gibson To Minor League Deal
4:25pm: The Rays announced that they have signed Gibson to a minor league contract.
3:20pm: Right-hander Kyle Gibson is signing with the Rays, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. It’s unclear if it’s a major or minor league deal. If it’s a big league deal, the Rays have an open 40-man spot after designating catcher Ben Rortvedt for assignment earlier today, so they would only need to make a corresponding active roster move.
Gibson, 37, is a veteran with a solid track record but he is having a rough season so far. He lingered in free agency for a long time, eventually signing a one-year, $5.25MM deal with the Orioles less than a week before Opening Day. Since he missed spring training, he agreed to be optioned to the minors to get built up. He was called up at the end of April but got pounded, allowing 23 earned runs in 12 1/3 innings over four starts. The O’s then designated him for assignment and released him.
That leaves Baltimore on the hook for the remainder of that salary, meaning any club can sign Gibson and only pay him the prorated portion of the league minimum salary, with that amount subtracted from what the O’s pay.
It seems the Rays are willing to overlook Gibson’s 16.78 ERA in 2025 to focus more on his career track record. He has 1,878 big league innings under his belt with a 4.60 ERA on the whole. As recently as last year, he was a solid innings eater at the back-end of a rotation. He made 30 starts for the Cardinals in 2024, logging 169 2/3 frames with a 4.24 ERA, 20.9% strikeout rate, 9.4% walk rate and 44.8% ground ball rate.
The Tampa rotation has been without Shane McClanahan all year but has otherwise been remarkably healthy. Apart from one Joe Boyle spot start, every other game has been started by the quintet of Taj Bradley, Ryan Pepiot, Drew Rasmussen, Zack Littell and Shane Baz. No one in that group has an ERA higher than 4.94 this year. The Rays also have guys like Boyle, Joe Rock and Ian Seymour on the 40-man roster and pitching in Triple-A.
Regardless, there’s no real harm to adding Gibson since the O’s are responsible for most of his salary. The Rays could be adding a bit of non-roster rotation depth or perhaps they want Gibson to jump into their big league bullpen and serve as a long reliever. It’s also possible that one of their big league starters has some sort of ailment that has not yet been publicly reported. Time will tell what the Rays have in mind for Gibson’s usage but he’s a respected veteran with a solid track record and essentially no cost.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Kucin Jr., Imagn Images
Royals Select Andrew Hoffmann
The Royals announced that they have selected the contract of right-hander Andrew Hoffmann. Left-hander Evan Sisk has been optioned to Triple-A Omaha as the corresponding active roster move. The club’s 40-man roster had a couple of vacancies and moves to 39 with this move.
Hoffmann, 25, gets up to the big leagues for the first time. Drafted by Atlanta, he was flipped to the Royals almost three years ago, as part of the Drew Waters trade in July of 2022. A starter at that time, he posted some fairly uninspiring numbers for a few years but has been working exclusively in relief this year with signs of improvement.
He tossed 202 1/3 innings on the farm over the 2023 and 2024 seasons, allowing 5.74 earned runs per nine. His 22.8% strikeout rate was close to average but his 10.2% walk rate was on the high side. Here in 2025, he has thrown 25 1/3 innings over 19 Triple-A appearances with a 2.84 ERA, 33% strikeout rate, 8% walk rate and 58.7% ground ball rate.
That strong performance has vaulted him up to the majors, though the circumstances of the big league club likely played a role as well. With Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans both landing on the injured list recently, the club opted for a bullpen game yesterday, using seven pitchers to get through the contest. Sisk was one of those seven, which was his second straight appearance.
The Royals have one more game to get through before the pressure will ease off a bit. They are off on Thursday and again on Monday. It’s possible that Lugo will be back this weekend while Ragans could join the next turn through the rotation. Hoffmann will give them a fresh arm for at least today’s contest, which will be started by Noah Cameron.
Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images
Rockies Sign Orlando Arcia
May 28: The Rockies have just made it official, announcing their signing of Arcia. Infielder Aaron Schunk has been optioned as the corresponding move. The 40-man roster count goes from 38 to 39.
May 27: Arcia and the Rox are in agreement on a big league deal, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post.
May 26: The Rockies and free agent infielder Orlando Arcia are in the final stages of contract talks, according to Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El Extra Base. Should the deal be completed, it will mark a quick turn-around in the open market for Arcia, who was released just yesterday by the Braves after he cleared waivers. Arcia is repped by World Sports Agency.
Ezequiel Tovar is locked in as Colorado’s everyday shortstop, so adding Arcia probably means the Rockies are either looking at the 30-year-old as a depth piece. Second baseman Adael Amador hasn’t hit much at all since being called up to the majors, so the Rockies might be considering sending him back down to Triple-A since Thairo Estrada is close to returning from the injured list. This leaves Arcia, Kyle Farmer, Tyler Freeman and Aaron Schunk on hand as the bench depth, barring another move.
Arcia has mostly played shortstop during his 10 Major League seasons, and his generally solid glovework has helped him carve out that long career despite a modest .241/.294/.373 slash line. His most consistent offensive run came with the Braves in 2022 and during the first half of the 2023 season, and Arcia was even named to the All-Star team for his strong performance at the plate in the opening months of the 2023 campaign.
Since then, however, Arcia’s bat has normalized back its usual levels, and he lost his starting shortstop job in Atlanta to Nick Allen. Arcia has appeared in only 14 games this season, and batted .194/.219/.226 in 32 trips to the plate. Since Arcia was no longer in the team’s plans, the Braves designated him for assignment and released him earlier this week.
Owed $2MM in 2025, Arcia is still owed around $1.376MM of that salary, plus his contract contains a $2MM club option for 2026 with a $1MM buyout. The Rockies only owe the prorated MLB minimum portion of what remains of his 2025 salary, with Atlanta booting the rest of the bill.
The price tag is small enough that the Rockies may have felt it was worth it to bring in a veteran player with some relatively recent success on his track record — perhaps as a trade chip for the deadline, or perhaps just as an upgrade over its other backup infield options. Since Colorado certainly looks like it will be a seller at the deadline, any number of roster spots could be opening up after July 31. If Arcia himself isn’t moved, he can cover innings for the Rockies in the event that perhaps Estrada, Farmer, or Freeman are moved, or if the Rox explore a bigger trade like moving Ryan McMahon.
Diamondbacks Sign Nicky Lopez To Minor League Deal
The Diamondbacks have signed infielder Nicky Lopez to a minor league deal, per Alex Weiner of Arizona Sports. The veteran has been assigned to the Triple-A Reno Aces and should join that club in the coming days.
Lopez, 30, has been fairly nomadic this year. He signed a minor league deal with the Cubs in February but then opted out when he didn’t make the Opening Day roster. He signed a big league deal with the Angels but was designated for assignment about three weeks into the season. He elected free agency and returned to the Cubs on a major league deal. He lasted about a month on that roster before getting another DFA and heading to the open market yet again, which allowed him to sign this deal with Arizona.
Around those transactions, he has a .042/.179/.042 line in 28 plate appearances this year. For his career, his offense has been better than that but still below league average. He has a .245/.310/.311 line and 72 wRC+ in 2,374 plate appearances on the whole.
Though he lacks punch at the plate, Lopez can provide value with his glove. He has over 2,000 career innings at both middle infield positions. Defensive Runs Saved considered him good at short until souring on him recently. Outs Above Average is still a fan, giving Lopez a +33 in his career, though a lot of that is an outlier +25 in 2021. Both metrics consider him solidly above average at the keystone. He’s also spent time at the infield corners and in left field.
The Diamondbacks have a fairly crowded infield mix at present. Josh Naylor, Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo and Eugenio Suárez are getting regular playing time from right to left, with Jordan Lawlar and Tim Tawa mixing in as well. Pavin Smith and Randal Grichuk are platooning in the designated hitter spot most of the time.
But as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as a bad minor league deal. The Snakes also just lost a different veteran infielder as Ildemaro Vargas opted out of his minor league deal this week, so Lopez will effectively replace Vargas as the club’s veteran non-roster infielder.
Photo courtesy of Benny Sieu, Imagn Images
Orioles Select Matt Bowman
The Orioles have selected the contract of righty Matt Bowman and optioned fellow right-hander Yaramil Hiraldo to Triple-A Norfolk, per a team announcement. Baltimore already had an open 40-man roster spot, so optioning Hiraldo is the only necessary corresponding transaction. Baltimore also announced recently that infielder/outfielder Terrin Vavra, who was designated for assignment over the weekend, cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A.
Bowman, 33, is now in his second Orioles stint of the season. Baltimore designated him for assignment earlier in the month and outrighted him to Norfolk. He responded with 4 2/3 shutout innings of relief (four strikeouts, two walks) and promptly punched a ticket back to the big leagues. He’s appeared in 16 games for the O’s in 2025 and totaled 17 1/3 innings with a 5.19 ERA, a 15.2% strikeout rate and a 3.8% walk rate. That strikeout rate is nearly seven percentage points shy of league average, but Bowman’s super walk rate also checks in about five percentage points lower than average.
Baltimore is Bowman’s seventh club in seven big league seasons. He’s a former 12th-round pick who’s also spent time with the Cardinals, Reds, Yankees, Twins, Mariners and Diamondbacks since debuting with St. Louis back in 2016. In 233 1/3 innings, he sports a 4.24 ERA, 18.7% strikeout rate, 8% walk rate and 52.9% ground-ball rate.
Vavra, 28, is an organization favorite. The son of former Twins and Tigers coach Joe Vavra, Terrin was a 2018 third-rounder out of the University of Minnesota by the Rockies. Colorado traded him to Baltimore in 2020’s Mychal Givens swap, and he’s spent the majority of the past half decade calling the Orioles organization home.
The younger Vavra played in the bigs with the O’s in 2022-23 and has accepted multiple outright assignments and re-signed multiple minor league deals with the Orioles. He’s a .254/.331/.303 hitter in the majors (159 plate appearances) and a .287/.383/.418 hitter in parts of four Triple-A seasons (583 plate appearances).
Rays Designate Ben Rortvedt For Assignment
May 28: The Rays announced this morning that Rortvedt has indeed been designated for assignment. Thaiss has been added to the active roster and will presumably be with his new team for this afternoon’s series finale versus Minnesota.
May 27: The Rays intend to designate catcher Ben Rortvedt for assignment, reports Marc Topkin of The Tampa Bay Times. That will clear an active roster spot for new backup catcher Matt Thaiss, who was acquired from the White Sox this afternoon. Topkin notes that Rortvedt was bidding emotional farewells to his teammates after tonight’s loss to Minnesota.
Rortvedt is out of options. The Rays cannot send him down without putting him on waivers. They’re not going to carry three catchers or move on from starter Danny Jansen, so the Thaiss pickup made a Rortvedt DFA more or less inevitable. The lefty-hitting Rortvedt went 0-3 with a strikeout tonight and is down to an .095/.186/.111 slash line through 70 plate appearances. His strikeout and walk numbers are solid enough, but he has only managed one extra-base hit while ranking near the bottom of the league in hard contact rate.
Tampa Bay acquired Rortvedt from the Yankees in a three-team deal on the eve of Opening Day 2024. He started a little more than half the team’s games last season, batting .228/.317/.303 across a career-high 328 plate appearances. The Rays signed Jansen to an $8.5MM free agent deal to supplant Rortvedt as the primary catcher. The drop in his already poor offense has now squeezed him off the roster. While Thaiss has very little power himself, he’s at least getting on base at a huge .382 clip over 35 games this year.
A former second-pick of the Twins, Rortvedt is a capable defensive catcher. He has graded as a slightly above-average framer and blocker in his career. He has solid arm strength and has thrown out six of 27 attempted base-stealers. Once the Rays officially announce the DFA, they’ll have five days to explore trade scenarios. They’d place him on waivers if they don’t find a trade partner. An acquiring team would need to plug him directly onto the MLB roster.
Mets, David Villar Agree To Minor League Deal
The Mets are in agreement with infielder David Villar on a minor league contract, reports Anthony DiComo of MLB.com. The CAA client had elected free agency after being outrighted by the Giants last week.
Villar, 28, joins the second organization of his career. He had been with San Francisco since they selected him in the 11th round of the 2018 draft. The right-handed hitter showed some promise during his rookie season three years ago. He hit nine home runs with a .455 slugging percentage in 52 games. He would have needed to improve upon a 32% strikeout rate to find long-term success, though.
The Giants never gave him much of a chance to do so. Villar appeared in 46 games the following season, and he hit just .145 while striking out 32% of the time. That more or less closed the book on his MLB tenure in San Francisco. He has appeared in only 20 big league contests over the past two seasons. Villar has tallied well over 1200 Triple-A plate appearances over the last three years. He’s a lifetime .273/.381/.507 hitter with 61 home runs at the top minor league level.
That minor league production has also come with a decent amount of swing-and-miss. Villar has punched out at a near-26% clip in Triple-A. He has cleared outright waivers twice in the past two months, suggesting every team has trepidation about him making enough contact to produce at the big league level. The Mets already have a decent amount of corner infield talent, so it’d probably take an injury to one of Mark Vientos, Pete Alonso or Brett Baty to open an MLB opportunity.
Genesis Cabrera Elects Free Agency
Lefty reliever Génesis Cabrera elected free agency after clearing outright waivers, according to the MLB.com transaction tracker. He’d been designated for assignment by the Mets on Saturday. Outfielder José Azocar, who was taken off the 40-man roster at the same time as Cabrera was, remains in DFA limbo.
The 28-year-old Cabrera returns to the open market after signing an offseason minor league contract with New York. The Mets called him up at the start of this month after losing A.J. Minter and Danny Young to injury. Cabrera was briefly the only southpaw in Carlos Mendoza’s bullpen. New York acquired José Castillo in a minor trade with Arizona and seemingly prefer him. They also brought up Brandon Waddell as a long man over the weekend.
Cabrera managed decent results during his few weeks on the MLB roster. He worked 7 2/3 frames of three-run ball, striking out seven while issuing three walks. He averages around 96 MPH on his sinker and four-seam fastball, better than average velocity from the left side. That has resulted in decent swing-and-miss rates over his career, but it hasn’t been enough to offset spotty command. Cabrera had walked at least 10% of opposing hitters in every big league season before this year’s small sample. He’d dished out five free passes in eight Triple-A innings before being called up.
That Cabrera went unclaimed on waivers suggests he’ll likely need to take another minor league contract. He shouldn’t have any issue finding interest as a Triple-A depth option. The Mets could try to bring him back themselves. Colin Poche and Anthony Gose are working as left-handed bullpen pieces for their top farm team in Syracuse.
Rockies Release Scott Alexander
Left-hander Scott Alexander has been released by the Rockies, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He had been designated for assignment by Colorado last week. He’ll head to the open market once he’s cleared released waivers, unless he has already.
This was the expected outcome once Alexander was DFA’d. He joined the Rockies on a $2MM deal this offseason. He went on to post a 6.06 earned run average over his first 19 appearances with the club. Given that performance, no club would want to take on his salary. If he had cleared outright waivers, he would have had the right to elect free agency and keep that money, as a veteran with well beyond five years of major league service time.
The Rockies are skipping that formality and sending him more directly to the open market, which could potentially lead to him garnering more interest. The Rockies remain on the hook for what’s left of his salary. Any other club could sign him and would only have to pay him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the roster, with that amount subtracted from what the Rockies pay.
While Alexander is currently sitting on a rough ERA for this year, it’s worth considering the Coors Field effect. He has a 7.20 ERA in Denver this year but a more reasonable 4.26 ERA on the road. Those are small samples of 10 innings and 6 1/3 innings respectively but Alexander also has a 48.7% ground ball rate in Denver compared to 63.2% elsewhere.
Getting those grounders has been the key to his major league career, which spans almost a decade at this point. He debuted back in 2015 and has since posted a 66.6% ground ball rate in 325 2/3 innings. Zack Britton is the only pitcher in baseball with a better grounder rate in that time, among pitchers with at least 300 innings pitched. That has helped Alexander post a 3.34 ERA in his big league time. Considering that track record and the low price tag, it’s possible the southpaw field some calls in the coming days.
Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images
Tigers Place Matt Vierling On Injured List
The Tigers are placing third baseman/outfielder Matt Vierling back on the injured list. Per Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press, Vierling is going on the 10-day IL due to right shoulder inflammation. Outfielder Wenceel Pérez has been reinstated from the 60-day IL in a corresponding move. The Tigers’ 40-man count climbs from 38 to 39.
There aren’t many details about Vierling’s current status but it’s an ominous development nonetheless. His shoulder issues first popped up three months ago. In late February, the club announced that he had been diagnosed with a right rotator cuff strain. He spent several weeks trying to get healthy and was reinstated from the IL on Friday. Now just a few days later, he’s back on the IL due to that same shoulder.
There will surely be more updates on Vierling’s status in the coming days, but it feels like a bad sign that he has apparently aggravated the shoulder that has already been an issue for basically the entire year. “We put him on the injured list which should tell you we don’t think he can play,” manager A.J. Hinch said, per Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic. “We’ll have more information as we get more tests, and more doctors need to weigh in.”
Over 2023 and 2024, Vierling hit a combined .259/.320/.406 for the Tigers, producing a 104 wRC+. He did that while primarily playing third base and the outfield. Third base has been a bit of a hole for Detroit this year, as they have a collective .202/.279/.285 line from that position. Jace Jung got optioned to the minors a couple of weeks ago after he couldn’t do much at the plate. Utility players like Zach McKinstry, Andy Ibáñez and Javier Báez have seen time at the hot corner and will have to continue to do so.
In the outfield, the Tigers have been without Vierling, Pérez and Parker Meadows for much of the season. They’ve managed to get good production from the grass regardless, thanks largely to Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter, while McKinstry, Báez and others have chipped in as well. That group will again have to hold things down in the outfield without Vierling, though as least the return of Pérez gives them another option.
Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images