Yankees Designate Ron Marinaccio For Assignment
The Yankees announced that right-hander Cody Poteet has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list and optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. To open a 40-man roster spot, fellow righty Ron Marinaccio has been designated for assignment.
Poteet landed on the 15-day injured list in June due to a right triceps strain, eventually getting transferred to the 60-day IL. He started a rehab assignment on August 20 and was coming to the 30-day limit for that assignment, meaning he had to be added back to the roster. He’ll give the Yanks some extra rotation depth for the next little bit but they’re highly unlikely to need it. They currently have a mix of Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Clarke Schmidt, Nestor Cortes and Luis Gil, with Marcus Stroman bumped into a long relief role.
Marinaccio, now 29, had a strong debut in 2022. He tossed 44 innings for the Yankees that year, allowing 2.05 earned runs per nine. His 13.3% walk rate was on the high side but he overcame that with a 30.9% strikeout rate.
Since then, his results have declined a bit. In 47 1/3 innings last year, he posted a 3.99 ERA. His 13.2% walk rate was almost an exact match from the previous year but his strikeout rate dropped to 27.3%. Here in 2024, he has been frequently shuttled back and forth between the Yankees and the Triple-A RailRiders. In his 23 1/3 big league innings, he has a 3.86 ERA. He reduced his walk rate to 10.1% but his strikeouts also dropped to 25.3%. In 39 2/3 innings for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, he has a 2.04 ERA, 25.8% strikeout rate and 8.8% walk rate.
There are some intriguing results in there but the righty is in his final option year and has already been sent down five times this season, so the Yanks weren’t going to have the same roster flexibility with him going forward.
They will have to put him on waivers in the coming days. He won’t be postseason eligible with any acquiring club, so there would be little short term appeal to a claim, but some club could grab him as a long-term play. He has just over two years of service time, meaning he still won’t be arbitration eligible as of this winter and would come with four years of club control beyond the current campaign.
Marlins Select Shaun Anderson
The Marlins announced that they have selected right-hander Shaun Anderson to their roster. Right-hander George Soriano has been optioned to Triple-A Jacksonville in a corresponding move. The club already had a 40-man vacancy.
The Marlins got steamrolled by Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers yesterday, eventually losing 20-4. Six guys took the mound to get through the game, including two position players. They had also used four pitchers on Wednesday and six on Tuesday, leaving the staff fairly taxed.
Anderson, 29, signed a minor league deal with the Rangers in April. He had a brief stint on their roster in May and was flipped to the Marlins for cash after being designated for assignment. He spent the next few weeks being frequently shuttled back and forth between the Marlins and the Jumbo Shrimp, though he was outrighted off the 40-man in August.
Between the Marlins and Rangers, he has tossed 14 major league innings this year but allowed 15 earned runs in that time for an unsightly 9.64 ERA. Naturally, his minor league numbers have been better. He’s logged 63 Triple-A innings between the two organizations with a flat 3.00 ERA, 23.4% strikeout rate and 5.9% walk rate.
The Fish are well out of contention but Anderson will give them a fresh arm as they play out the string on the season. He has been optioned four times already this season, meaning he can be optioned down once more before the year is out, if the Marlins need to shake up their pitching staff again in the coming days. He’ll be out of options next year.
Diamondbacks Designate Luis Guillorme For Assignment
The Diamondbacks announced that outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has been reinstated from the 10-day injured list. Infielder Luis Guillorme has been designated for assignment in a corresponding move.
Gurriel landed on the 10-day IL at the start of the month due to a strained left calf. Prior to landing on the shelf, he had been producing at a rate a bit above league average. He has 17 home runs on the year, a batting line of .274/.316/.428 and a 104 wRC+. He also has seven stolen bases and solid defensive metrics, leading to a tally of 1.8 wins above replacement on the year, per FanGraphs.
Getting that kind of production back is nice for the Snakes, assuming he can pick up where he left off, though manager Torey Lovullo might have to make some tough decisions in setting his lineup every day. Pavin Smith has been covering left field with Gurriel out and has a massive .296/.378/.591 line and 161 wRC+ on the year. Moving either to right field isn’t really an option as Corbin Carroll has picked things up after a weak start to the year. He was hitting .197/.282/.291 through the end of May but .254/.344/.520 since, the latter line leading to a 135 wRC+.
Joc Pederson is hitting well out of the designated hitter slot. Jake McCarthy is playing well in center and the same goes for Christian Walker at first base. Solid players like Josh Bell and Randal Grichuk are already getting little playing time and the return of Gurriel will further crowd things, though that’s a good problem for the Snakes to have as they look to lock down a playoff spot in the final days of the season. They are currently 85-68, tied with the Mets for the second and third Wild Card spots. The Padres are two games up on that pair while Atlanta is two games back.
Guillorme was signed to the roster a month ago while Ketel Marte was injured. Since then, he has appeared in 18 games and hit .162/.347/.216. Marte was reinstated from the IL September 6 and served as the designated hitter for a couple of games but has since retaken his spot at the keystone, cutting into Guillorme’s playing time. Guillorme has over five years of big league service time and can’t be optioned without his consent, so he has now been bumped off the roster entirely.
He’ll be placed on waivers in the coming days. He won’t be playoff eligible with any other club at this point, which limits any appeal of claiming him. He had a solid run as a utility guy for the Mets not too long ago, hitting a combined .278/.367/.344 over the 2020-22 seasons. But he hit just .224/.288/.327 last year and got himself non-tendered. This year, he has bounced between Atlanta, Anaheim and Arizona with a line of .205/.301/.273 in 79 games. If he passes through waivers unclaimed, he has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency, though perhaps he would consider accepting just in case Marte suffers an injury again and some postseason playing time opens up.
Reds Select Alan Busenitz
The Reds announced that they have selected the contract of right-hander Alan Busenitz. Left-hander Brandon Leibrandt was optioned in a corresponding active roster move. The club already had a 40-man roster vacancy.
Cincinnati got stomped by Atlanta yesterday, eventually losing 15-3. Starter Julian Aguiar allowed seven of those runs, lasting four innings. After Yosver Zulueta came in and allowed one run in one frame, Leibrandt entered and covered the final four, allowing another seven runs. Leibrandt threw 80 pitches in that mop-up duty and was surely going to be unavailable for a few days, so the club will swap him out for a fresh arm.
Busenitz, 34, signed a minor league deal with the Reds in the offseason and this is the second time they have selected his contract. The first was August 23, a day in which the club deployed a bullpen game against the Pirates. He was one of seven pitchers to take the mound for the Reds that day, completing one inning but allowing four runs, three of them earned. He was designated for assignment the next day and later cleared waivers, getting outrighted back to Triple-A Louisville.
His results have naturally been much better at that level. He has a 4.07 earned run average for the Bats, often tossing multiple innings at a time, as he’s logged 66 1/3 frames in his 49 outings. His 21.6% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate and 44.5% ground ball rate are all pretty close to par.
The Reds are out of contention but Busenitz can give them another relief option as they look to trudge through the final days of the season. He is out of options, so it’s possible he could be back on the waiver wire if the club needs to adjust its pitching staff yet again. The Reds don’t have a starter announced for Sunday’s game, so another bullpen game or spot start could be upcoming.
Blue Jays Outright Brian Serven
The Blue Jays sent catcher Brian Serven outright to Triple-A Buffalo, per the transaction log at MLB.com. Toronto designated him for assignment on Monday when they brought Tyler Heineman back via waivers.
Serven has occupied a 40-man roster spot since the end of Spring Training. He has spent a chunk of the season on optional assignment, hitting .265/.390/.379 with a trio of homers in 40 games for Buffalo. Serven appeared in 28 MLB contests and ran a .179/.243/.222 slash over 71 plate appearances. He’s a career .187/.247/.293 hitter across 101 games split between the Jays and Rockies.
The Arizona State product owns a .244/.325/.435 mark over parts of four seasons in Triple-A. Serven isn’t much of an offensive threat, though he has graded highly by public defensive metrics in 730 career innings. As a player with multiple career outright assignments, he has the ability to elect free agency. Even if he sticks in the Toronto organization for the last week of the season, he’ll be a minor league free agent at the start of the offseason. Serven’s defensive reputation should land him a minor league deal with a Spring Training invite.
Twins Outright Randy Dobnak
Twins right-hander Randy Dobnak passed through waivers unclaimed and has been assigned outright to Triple-A St. Paul, per the team’s transaction log at MLB.com. He was designated for assignment earlier this week when Minnesota claimed lefty Cole Irvin off waivers from the Orioles.
Dobnak has been outrighted in the past and thus has the right to reject the assignment, but he’s a lock to accept. Because he has fewer than five years of service time, he’d need to forfeit the remainder of this season’s $2.25MM salary and the $4MM he’s still owed beyond the current campaign ($3MM salary in ’25, $1MM buyout on a ’26 option) in order to elect free agency. There’s obviously no chance he’d do so, meaning he’ll head back to the Saints and remain with the Twins organization as a depth arm both for the remainder of this season and at least the 2025 season as well.
The 29-year-old Dobnak was a remarkable story back in 2019, when in just over a year’s time he rose from indie-ball pitcher and Uber driver to the Twins’ big league roster, even pitching in the playoffs that season. From 2019-20, Dobnak logged 75 innings of 3.12 ERA ball with a 15.7% strikeout rate, 5.7% walk rate and massive 58.8% ground-ball rate. On the back of that performance, Minnesota inked him a five-year, $9.25MM contract extension that contained a trio of club options. It was a low-cost move that provided the Twins ample contractual upside if Dobnak proved capable of sustaining anything close to that pace, but injuries and a decline in his performance have rendered the deal underwater.
Dobnak was clobbered for a 7.64 ERA in 2021 after signing that deal. He hit the 60-day injured list late that season with a strained pulley tendon in his right middle finger and missed much of the 2022 campaign with a similar issue. He pitched just 25 minor league innings that year and none in the majors. The Twins removed him from the 40-man roster and passed him through waivers that September. Dobnak was healthy again in 2023 but struggled to a 5.13 ERA in 126 1/3 Triple-A frames.
The 2024 season has been something of a rebound campaign, at least in the Triple-A ranks. Dobnak has made 23 starts and four relief appearances for the Saints, working to a 3.90 ERA with a 22.5% strikeout rate, 10.4% walk rate and 57.4% grounder rate in 129 1/3 innings. That performance earned him another look in the big leagues, but he was tagged for five runs nine hits and five walks in 7 2/3 innings before being designated for assignment once again.
Orioles Designate Craig Kimbrel For Assignment
The Orioles announced Wednesday that they’ve designated veteran right-hander Craig Kimbrel for assignment. Baltimore has recalled righty Bryan Baker from Triple-A Norfolk in his place.
Kimbrel, 36, was signed to a one-year, $13MM deal over the winter after All-Star closer Felix Bautista required Tommy John surgery last October. The club banked on Kimbrel’s track record and excellent strikeout rate helping to solidify the ninth inning, even after Kimbrel had a shaky finish to his 2023 stint with the Phillies — including three innings of NLCS work wherein he yielded four runs.
At least early in the year, Kimbrel was generally effective, even while walking a highwire. His walk rate was up, but so was his strikeout rate, and in spite of four blown saves in the season’s first half he pitched to a pristine 2.10 earned run average. As things have gone off the rails since the All-Star break, he’s ceded the ninth inning to deadline pickup and former Phillies teammate Seranthony Dominguez.
Dating back to July 14, Kimbrel has been decimated for 25 runs (23 of them earned) in 18 innings of work. He’s yielded 23 hits (five of them homers), walked 17 batters and plunked a hitter during that disastrous run. The tipping point was a six-run meltdown in last night’s loss to the Giants. Kimbrel faced eight batters, allowed three hits (two singles and a double), walked two hitters and allowed a runner to advance on a wild pitch in what was his worst and likely last outing of the 2024 season.
Kimbrel will be placed on waivers, and he’ll surely clear. He’d be ineligible for the postseason roster with another club, and a claiming team would be on the hook for the prorated remainder of this year’s $12MM salary and the $1MM buyout on next year’s club option. No team is going to make that move. He’ll clear waivers and be released, at which point the club option will be moot (though the O’s will still owe him that $1MM buyout). He could sign with any other club for the final few days of the season, but it’s possible he’ll simply wait until the offseason to seek out his next opportunity.
Kimbrel’s second half has been so gruesome that it’s overshadowed his excellent first half, but a run of two bad months shouldn’t torch any and all interest in him over the winter. He’s not the dominant high-leverage force he once was, but he still fanned 31.5% of his opponents this season and turned in a strong 11.8% swinging-strike rate. His fastball is down from an average of 95.8 mph in 2023 to 93.9 mph in 2024, per Statcast. It doesn’t seem likely that he’ll be handed a closing job this offseason, but assuming he wants to continue pitching, Kimbrel should find interest on lower-priced big league deals — perhaps with incentives based on games finished in the event that he ascends back to the closer’s role in his next destination.
Kimbrel currently ranks fifth all-time with 440 saves and is only six behind another still-active closer, Kenley Jansen, for the fourth spot on that list. Either pitcher could still catch Lee Smith for No. 3 all-time (478), but climbing north of 600 alongside Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman isn’t going to happen. In 809 2/3 career innings, Kimbrel has a 2.59 ERA, 56 wins, 26 holds and 1265 strikeouts (38.8%) to go along with those 440 saves.
Diamondbacks Release Dylan Floro
The Diamondbacks released reliever Dylan Floro after a weekend DFA, according to the MLB.com transaction log. Floro would almost certainly have declined a minor league assignment so a release was a formality once he was taken off the roster.
Arizona acquired Floro in one of the final moves of deadline day. The acquisition cost was modest, as they sent minor league signee Andrés Chaparro to the Nationals. (Chaparro has since made his MLB debut and is hitting .218/.273/.427 in 30 games.) Floro wasn’t the most exciting addition but he’d pitched quite well for Washington. He carried a 2.06 ERA in 52 1/3 innings for the Nats. That success was built on plus control and decent ground-ball rates rather than power, but the Snakes hoped he’d add veteran stability to the middle relief corps.
Things went downhill almost immediately. Floro worked scoreless appearances in three of his first four outings. The Phillies tagged him for three runs on August 11, the first of a handful of times that he was hit hard. Floro allowed multiple runs on three more occasions, including a five-run drubbing at the hands of the Brewers in his final appearance with Arizona on Saturday. He finished his Diamondback tenure with a 9.37 earned run average across 15 outings. His already modest 19.6% strikeout rate has nearly halved to 10.7% while the average velocity on his sinker has fallen to 88.4 MPH this month.
Floro is playing on a $2.25MM base salary. He’ll collect the remainder of that money. He also unlocked $1.25MM in bonuses based on appearances. He’d be ineligible for postseason play with another team, so he could sit out the final week and a half of this season. Floro would be a free agent in the offseason even if he caught on somewhere in the next couple days.
Entering his age-34 season, Floro might be limited to minor league offers. His overall 3.80 ERA in 68 2/3 innings is decent production for a middle reliever, but his market will surely be adversely impacted by the dismal finish. Washington signed him to a guaranteed deal coming off a lesser 4.76 ERA last winter, though his 2023 peripherals (23.4% strikeout rate, 54.4% grounder percentage) were better. Floro’s velocity is down more than two ticks relative to last season.
Pirates Select Jake Woodford
September 18: The Bucs have now made it official. Right-hander Kyle Nicolas has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to September 17, with a left oblique strain. That opens an active roster spot. Righty Ben Heller has been transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot. Heller landed on the 15-day IL August 30 due to right shoulder inflammation, so his season is over.
September 17: The Pirates will promote right-hander Jake Woodford to start tomorrow’s game in St. Louis, reports Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (X link). He’s on a minor league contract, so the Bucs need to select him onto the 40-man roster.
It’ll be Woodford’s second stint with the Bucs and his third appearance in the majors this season. The 27-year-old began the season with the White Sox, allowing 10 runs in 8 1/3 innings. He had a longer leash with Pittsburgh but continued to struggle. Woodford pitched to a 6.95 ERA across 22 frames before the Pirates designated him for assignment at the end of August.
This will be Woodford’s first appearance against the Cardinals. He’d played with St. Louis for his entire career until this season. The 39th overall pick of the 2015 draft, he pitched 184 2/3 innings over four MLB campaigns with the Cards. Woodford managed a respectable 4.29 earned run average overall, but he struggled to a 6.23 mark across 47 2/3 innings last season. The Cardinals non-tendered him as a result.
Pittsburgh’s 40-man roster is at capacity, so they’ll need to make a corresponding move tomorrow. Woodford is out of options and cannot be sent back to the minors without going on waivers. There’s a good chance the Bucs take him off the 40-man roster early in the offseason even if he sticks in the majors for the final two weeks of the regular season.
Dodgers Select Zach Logue
The Dodgers announced that they have reinstated right-hander Joe Kelly from the 15-day injured list and selected the contract of left-hander Zach Logue. Righties Bobby Miller and Michael Grove were optioned in corresponding moves. Righty Tyler Glasnow was transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot for Logue.
Logue just signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers last week. He had previously been with Atlanta but elected free agency after being designated for assignment. Since he signed after the end of August, Logue isn’t eligible to join the Dodgers for the postseason, but he’ll give them a fresh arm in the bullpen as they look to get through the regular season.
Despite briefly being on Atlanta’s roster, Logue hasn’t yet pitched in the big leagues this season, but his results on the farm have been good. He has made 25 appearances in the minors, 12 of those being starts. In his 97 1/3 innings, he has allowed 2.59 earned runs per nine. He has struck out 23.2% of batters faced while limiting walks to a 7.1% walk rate.
Since signing with the Dodgers, he made one start at Triple-A, lasting three innings. Perhaps he will provide the club with a multi-inning arm out of the bullpen, though Miller’s option also creates a hole in the rotation. The club also gives Yoshinobu Yamamoto more than four days between starts, meaning occasional bullpen games or spot starts are necessary.
Whatever shape it comes in, Logue’s contributions with the Dodgers should allow him to add to a spotty major league résumé. Once a notable prospect with the Jays, he went to the Athletics in the March 2022 trade that sent Matt Chapman north of the border. But Logue put up a 6.79 ERA with the A’s in 2022 and went to the Tigers on waivers. With Detroit, he put up a 7.36 ERA in 2023 and lost his roster spot.
That gives him a career ERA of 6.88 in 68 major league innings but his minor league results have been more encouraging this year. If he manages to hold onto a 40-man roster spot through the winter, he has less than a year of service time and can be retained well into the future but he’ll be out of options next year.
As for Glasnow, he landed on the 15-day IL August 13 due to right elbow tendinitis. It was revealed a few days ago that he has a sprain and is unlikely to return to the team this year. This transfer doesn’t close the door to a return in the playoffs. The 60-day count is retroactive to his initial IL placement, so he could technically be reinstated in the middle of October if he can return to health.