Mets Release Jake Diekman
TODAY: As expected, the Mets have released Diekman, according to Mike Puma of the New York Post (X link).
JULY 29: The Mets announced Monday that they’ve designated left-hander Jake Diekman for assignment and selected the contract of fellow lefty Matt Gage from Triple-A Syracuse to take his spot on the roster.
Diekman, a 37-year-old veteran reliever, joined the Mets on a one-year, $4MM deal back in February. In 32 innings for the Mets, Diekman has punched out nearly 28% of batters faced, though his longstanding control issues persisted. Last year, Diekman benefitted from only 6% of his flyballs leaving the yard, a trend which has reversed in ’24 as he’s seen a whopping 29.2% of flies go for homers. As a result, Diekman has allowed seven home runs already this year – four of which came in his last seven appearances. Mets manager Carlos Mendoza used Diekman in high leverage spots in May and June, but as you’d expect, that’s changed in July.
Diekman’s contract includes a $4MM club option for 2025 that becomes guaranteed with 58 games. The lefty currently has 43 appearances. Though someone might want to pick Diekman up, other teams’ desire to avoid that ’25 vesting option means Diekman will likely be released by the Mets and sign a new deal.
Of late, Mendoza and the Mets have been leaning on Edwin Diaz, Jose Butto, and Dedniel Nuñez in the highest-leverage relief situations. The club picked up righty Ryne Stanek in a trade with the Mariners late last week. Gage will join incumbent lefties Alex Young and Danny Young after posting a 3.42 ERA, 30 K%, and and 12.4 BB% in 26 1/3 innings for the Dodgers’ and Mets’ Triple-A affiliates.
Rays Select Kameron Misner, Place Richie Palacios On 10-Day IL
TODAY: The Rays officially selected Misner and placed Palacios on the 10-day IL yesterday with a right knee sprain. Manager Kevin Cash told Topkin and other reporters that Palacios will miss roughly 4-6 weeks in recovery, and there is enough uncertainly this early in the rehab process that Palacios could potentially miss the rest of the regular season.
The injury is a tough break for Palacios, who has gotten a nice chunk of playing time as a part of the Rays’ regular rotation of position players. Palacios has a 104 wRC+, from a slash line of .233/.350/.332 and five homers in 301 plate appearances. The 27-year-old has also stolen 19 bases in 20 attempts, while getting a lot of action at second base and in the two corner outfield positions.
AUGUST 1: The Rays are planning to promote outfielder Kameron Misner from Triple-A Durham, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. He’ll join the active roster in place of Richie Palacios, who is headed for the 10-day injured list after tweaking his knee in yesterday’s loss to Miami. Tampa Bay will need to select Misner’s contract but has three vacancies on the 40-man roster after their slate of deadline trades.
Now 26, Misner was once a highly-regarded draft prospect. The Marlins selected him 35th overall in the 2019 draft coming out of the University of Missouri. He’d briefly reached Double-A in the Miami system by the time they sent him to Tampa Bay in an intra-state trade to land veteran infielder Joey Wendle.
The book on Misner has been the same dating back to his college days. He has big power in a 6’4″ frame. He takes plenty of walks and has a surprising amount of athleticism for a player his size. Scouting reports have always questioned his pure hitting ability, though, with some evaluators putting a 30 (well below-average on the 20-80 scouting scale) on his hit tool.
Misner has spent nearly two full seasons in Durham and continued to perform to those expectations. He’s a career .236/.360/.453 hitter in nearly 1000 Triple-A plate appearances. Misner has 36 home runs, a massive 15.7% walk rate, and has stolen 48 bases in 57 attempts over 224 games. The left-handed hitter has also struck out in more than a third of his trips to the plate, the biggest reason he hadn’t gotten a major league call despite the big on-base and power numbers.
The Rays have used Misner mostly in center field in the minors. He’ll probably get more action in the corners on the MLB roster. That’s especially true with the Rays losing Palacios, who has started 40 games in a corner outfield spot this season. Palacios has made a career-high 88 appearances overall, hitting .233/.350/.332 through 301 trips to the plate. He’s on his third team in as many seasons after the Rays swapped him from the Cardinals for reliever Andrew Kittredge over the winter.
Tampa Bay and St. Louis lined up another reliever for outfielder deal this week, as the Rays shipped Shawn Armstrong to the Cards while taking a flier on former top prospect Dylan Carlson. The switch-hitting Carlson could get the majority of left field reps while Misner adds a power bat to Kevin Cash’s bench.
White Sox Release Corey Knebel
The White Sox released right-hander Corey Knebel earlier this week, as reported by Sox Machine’s James Fegan (X link) and other members of the team’s beat. MLB.com’s profile page for Knebel lists the transaction as an “elected free agency,” which implies that Knebel exercised an opt-out clause in the minor league contract he signed last winter.
Knebel suffered a capsule tear in his right shoulder almost two years ago, and after missing the 2023 season entirely, he returned to action in June as part of a rehab assignment with Chicago’s rookie league affiliate. Moving up the ranks to high-A and then to Triple-A once he was officially activated from the IL in July, Knebel ha a 5.91 ERA over 10 2/3 total innings this season, though five of his seven earned runs were surrendered in one rough outing at high-A ball.
At Triple-A, Knebel had a perfect 0.00 ERA across 5 1/3 innings, with a 44.4% strikeout rate and 11.1% walk rate. Despite that impressive work in the small sample size, it doesn’t seem as though the White Sox intended to bring Knebel up to the majors. While it certainly be argued that the 27-85 White Sox (losers of 18 straight games) need all the help they can get, it would appear that the team is prioritizing innings for younger pitchers the rest of the way, and thus Knebel likely chose to go elsewhere.
The 32-year-old Knebel last pitched in the majors in 2022, when he had a 3.43 ERA in 44 2/3 innings out of the Phillies’ bullpen. The shoulder capsule tear is the latest in a series of long-term injuries — he missed all of 2019 due to Tommy John surgery, and a lat strains limited him to 25 2/3 innings as a member of the Dodgers in 2021.
Over 306 2/3 innings over parts of eight seasons in the bigs, Knebel has a 3.26 ERA, highlighted by his 2017 All-Star season as the Brewers’ closer. This track record means that he’ll very likely catch on with another team on a minor league deal, and more good numbers in the minors will give him a shot of getting back to the big leagues before the 2024 season is out.
Red Sox Outright Reese McGuire, Yohan Ramirez
The Red Sox had a few DFA resolutions this afternoon (relayed on X by Jen McCaffrey of the Athletic). Boston confirmed the perviously reported news that Chase Anderson was headed to free agency. The Sox also outrighted catcher Reese McGuire and reliever Yohan Ramírez while releasing left-hander Brandon Walter.
Boston pushed McGuire off the roster with the Danny Jansen acquisition. The lefty-hitting catcher had backed up Connor Wong all season. McGuire started the season hot but his offense has plummeted over the past few months. He’s hitting .209/.280/.295 through 158 plate appearances overall. Acquired from the White Sox at the 2022 trade deadline, McGuire has a .264/.315/.370 slash in parts of three seasons with Boston.
The 29-year-old McGuire has just under five years of major league service. That’s the cutoff at which a player can decline an outright assignment in favor of free agency while keeping the guaranteed money on his contract. For McGuire to test the market now, he’d need to forfeit the nearly $500K remaining on his $1.5MM arbitration salary. That makes it likely he’ll report to Triple-A Worcester and serve as non-roster catching depth for the rest of the season. He’d be a minor league free agent next winter if the Sox don’t put him back on the MLB team.
Ramírez, also 29, finally goes unclaimed after hitting the waiver wire for the fifth time in his career. The out-of-options righty has played for four teams this year alone. He’s logged 45 innings — most of them with the Dodgers — across 38 appearances. Despite roughly league average strikeout and walk numbers, Ramírez has been tagged for a 6.20 earned run average. He spent less than a week on Boston’s MLB roster. Claimed off waivers from L.A. on July 28, he was designated for assignment three days later so the Sox could call up infielder Nick Sogard.
After crossing the three-year service threshold this summer, Ramírez earned the right to elect free agency in lieu of an outright assignment. The Sox didn’t announce whether he’ll do so. Unlike McGuire, Ramírez was playing on a pre-arbitration deal, so he wouldn’t be leaving any kind of guaranteed money on the table if he wanted to explore other opportunities. If he reports to Worcester, he’d also be eligible for minor league free agency in the offseason unless the Sox reselect his contract.
Walter’s release was an inevitability once Boston designated him for assignment on Tuesday. The left-hander has been on the minor league injured list all season. Teams are not allowed to place injured players on outright waivers and Walter can’t be traded after the deadline since he had been on the 40-man roster. That left a release as the only outcome.
The Sox could try to bring him back on a minor league contract if he clears release waivers, but he’d be free to explore other opportunities. The 27-year-old Walter appeared in nine games for Boston last season in his first MLB action. He allowed a 6.26 ERA through 23 innings in a long relief capacity. The University of Delaware product has a solid 3.61 mark over parts of four minor league seasons, working mostly from the rotation.
Mariners Claim Jonathan Hernandez
The Mariners announced they’ve claimed reliever Jonathan Hernández off waivers from the division-rival Rangers. Seattle designated righty Brett de Geus for assignment to open a spot on the 40-man roster. The M’s also announced that trade pickup JT Chargois has joined the team and will step into the MLB bullpen. Gregory Santos lands on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to August 1, with biceps inflammation.
Hernández, 28, changes teams for the first time in his career. He spent more than a decade as a member of the Rangers organization after signing in January 2013. Hernández reached the big leagues in the second half of the 2019 season, not long after his 23rd birthday.
The right-hander had a couple solid seasons to start his MLB career. He turned in a 2.90 ERA across 31 innings during the shortened 2020 schedule. He lost the entire following season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April ’21. Hernández returned for the second half in 2022 and looked to be picking up where he’d left off. He tossed 30 1/3 frames of 2.97 ERA ball for the stretch run. He picked up four saves and 10 holds while finishing 16 games as a medium-leverage reliever.
Things have gone downhill over the past two seasons. Hernández struggled to a 5.40 earned run average a year ago. Texas shuttled him back and forth between Triple-A on a few occasions, burning his final minor league option in the process. That meant the Rangers needed to keep him on the MLB roster this season.
Texas gave Hernández plenty of runway, affording him 41 innings across 26 appearances, but his results didn’t turn around. He allowed a 5.05 ERA with a career-worst 19.9% strikeout percentage and a lofty 14.4% walk rate. The Rangers pushed him out of their bullpen (and thus off the 40-man roster) on Tuesday with their deadline pickup of Andrew Chafin from the Tigers.
Seattle will try to help Hernández right the ship. They’ll also need to keep him on the big league roster unless they decide to designate him for assignment themselves. Hernández still averages nearly 97 MPH on his sinker and misses a decent number of bats with his slider. That solid raw stuff has too often been undercut by poor command, but there’s minimal cost for the M’s in taking a look. They’re assuming a little less than $400K on his $1.245MM salary for the stretch run. Hernández would be under arbitration control for another two seasons if he holds his bullpen spot in Seattle.
The Mariners added de Geus to their 40-man roster back in April. He has made four big league appearances, working 3 1/3 frames of one-run ball. Seattle has mostly kept the 26-year-old on optional assignment to Triple-A Tacoma, where he has allowed a 6.60 ERA across 30 innings in the Pacific Coast League.
de Geus is a former teammate of Hernández with the ’21 Rangers, who plucked him from the Dodgers in the Rule 5 draft. He combined for 50 innings of 7.56 ERA ball between the Rangers and Diamondbacks that season and didn’t get back to the big leagues until this year. Seattle will likely put him on waivers this weekend.
As for Santos, the offseason trade pickup missed most of the first half due to a lat strain. He returned to make six appearances before leaving Wednesday’s appearance with biceps soreness. He’ll miss at least the next two weeks, though Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times fortunately tweeted this afternoon that imaging came back clean.
Padres To Select Lake Bachar
The Padres are going to select right-hander Lake Bachar to their 40-man roster and option him to Triple-A El Paso, reports Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune on X. The righty triggered an opt-out in his contract but the Friars will stop him from getting away by adding him to their roster. They have an open 40-man spot after designating Austin Davis for assignment earlier this week.
Bachar, 29, gets a major league roster spot for the first time. The Padres drafted him with a fifth-round pick back in 2016 and had climbed as high as Double-A by the end of 2019. But then the pandemic wiped out the minor leagues in 2020 and he missed all of 2021 while recovering from Tommy John surgery.
He was able to return to a mound in 2022 but struggled initially. He tossed 45 1/3 Double-A innings that year with a 6.15 earned run average. In a piece at Baseball America earlier this year, Sanders relays that a splitter camp run by Hideo Nomo in the spring of 2023 seemed to help Bachar unlock something. The righty posted a 2.69 ERA at Double-A last year, striking out 27.5% of batters faced while giving out walks at a 10% clip.
Per Bachar’s transactions tracker at MLB.com, he reached free agency at the end of 2023 but re-signed with the Friars on a minor league deal. It seems there was an opt-out in that minors pact, which has allowed Bachar to get himself a 40-man roster spot. He has thrown 57 2/3 Triple-A innings this year with a 4.06 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate and 11.3% walk rate.
Cubs Claim Trey Wingenter
The Cubs have claimed right-hander Trey Wingenter off waivers from the Red Sox, as first relayed by Hunter Noll of Beyond the Monster on X. The righty was designated for assignment by Boston in the trade deadline transactions frenzy earlier this week. The Cubs have optioned him to Triple-A Iowa, per Taylor McGregor of the Marquee Sports Network on X.
Wingenter, 30, signed a minor league deal with the Tigers in the offseason. In early July, he triggered an assignment clause in his contract that forced the Tigers to trade him if some other club was willing to give him a 40-man roster spot. The Sox were willing to give him that spot and acquired him for righty CJ Weins.
Though Wingenter spent almost a month on Boston’s roster, he was mostly on optional assignment and only made two appearances for the big league club. Those two outings did not go well, as he allowed seven earned runs in 2 1/3 innings. When combined with his previous work with the Padres and Tigers, he now has a 5.84 earned run average in 89 1/3 major league innings with a strong 31.9% strikeout rate but high walk rate of 12.3%.
After their deadline deals, the Cubs had an open roster spot to work with and have used it to grab Wingenter. His major league results haven’t been great but there are reasons he’s worth a flier. His fastball velocity has averaged in the 95-97 miles per hour range. Though he’s had trouble harnessing it at times, he’s also been able to get punchouts. He’s also been in good form in the minors this year, with a 3.03 ERA in 38 2/3 innings at that level. Though he’s walked 11.1% of Triple-A hitters he’s faced this year, he’s also struck out 34.5% of them.
He’s in his final option year and can be kept at Iowa for the rest of the year if the Cubs want, but he’ll be out of options next year. He has just over four years of service time and will be eligible for arbitration in the offseason.
Athletics Reinstate Darell Hernaiz
The Athletics announced today that infielder Darell Hernaiz has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list. In corresponding moves, infielder Brett Harris was optioned to Triple-A Las Vegas and right-hander Luis Medina was transferred to the 60-day IL. The club’s 40-man roster count stays at 40.
Acquired from the Orioles in the 2023 Cole Irvin trade, Hernaiz was added to Oakland’s 40-man roster in November of last year to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. He then made the club’s Opening Day roster here in 2024 but hit just .182/.243/.182 in his first 75 major league plate appearances. In early May, he landed on the IL due to a severe left ankle sprain that has kept him out of action for roughly the past three months.
The A’s will naturally be hoping for more offense now that he’s healthy. Considering he’s slashed .300/.376/.418 at the Triple-A level between last year and this year, it’s a reasonable expectation on their part. He’s capable of playing second base, third base and shortstop and will likely rotate between those spots.
As for Medina, this transfer was inevitable as it was reported last week that he would require Tommy John surgery. He’ll remain on the 60-day IL for the remainder of the year but will need to be reinstated after the season is over, as there’s no IL between the World Series and Spring Training.
Diamondbacks Outright Brandon Hughes, Thyago Vieira
The Diamondbacks announced that both right-hander Thyago Vieira and left-hander Brandon Hughes have been sent outright to Triple-A Reno. Vieira was already off the 40-man roster because he was designated for assignment last week when the club acquired lefty A.J. Puk, but there was no similar reporting about Hughes, so this move drops the club’s 40-man roster count to 39.
Hughes, 28, signed a minor league deal with the Snakes in the offseason. He was selected to the club’s roster in late April but has mostly been on optional assignment this year. When he has been up in the majors, it hasn’t gone well, as he’s allowed 16 earned runs in 14 innings thanks to eight home runs allowed.
His time in Triple-A has naturally gone much better than that. He has a 2.08 ERA in his 34 2/3 innings for the Aces. His 18.4% strikeout rate and 11.4% walk rate are both a bit subpar, so his 82.6% strand rate probably gets a big assist in producing that ERA.
Hughes was evidently freely available to all clubs in the past few days but they all passed. This is his first career outright and he lacks three years of service time, so he doesn’t have the right to reject this outright assignment but he’ll qualify for minor league free agency if not added back to the roster by season’s end.
Vieira, as mentioned, was designated for assignment last week. He was claimed off waivers by the Diamondbacks in early June. He had a 2.87 ERA in 15 2/3 innings but undoubtedly benefited from a .220 batting average on balls in play and 81.4% strand rate. Since all teams passed on the chance to claim him, they probably focused more on his 21.2% strikeout rate and 13.6% walk rate, which are both subpar.
Like Hughes, this is his first career outright and he’s shy of three years of major league service time. He doesn’t have the right to elect free agency and will have to report to Reno to work in a non-roster capacity.
Marlins Claim John McMillon
The Marlins have claimed right-hander John McMillon off waivers from the Royals, according to announcements from both clubs. The righty was designated for assignment when Kansas City acquired infielder Paul DeJong. Miami had open roster spots after its deadline selloff and their 40-man roster count goes to 39.
McMillon, now 26, wasn’t selected in the shortened five-round 2020 draft and then signed with the Royals as an undrafted free agent. He is a pitcher who was been considered to have a wide range of potential outcomes because he can regularly send batters back to the dugout but also to first base. He has 129 2/3 innings on his minor league résumé with a 4.79 earned run average. He has struck out 35.2% of batters faced in that time but also given out walks at a massive 17.7% clip.
He was selected to the Royals’ roster in August of last year and pitched four major league innings for them. He allowed one earned run and struck out eight opponents without issuing a walk. But he’s been on optional assignment for all of this year, pitching 30 1/3 innings of the minor league total mentioned above. He’s still walking 17.7% of batters that step into the box but his 23.8% strikeout rate is a bit of a dip from previous seasons, leading to a 6.53 ERA.
It’s understandable that the Royals gave up on a pitcher that clearly still needs some fine tuning, while he’s a sensible flier for the Fish. McMillon can still be optioned for the rest of this season and two more campaigns. They just traded away A.J. Puk, Tanner Scott, Bryan Hoeing, JT Chargois and Huascar Brazobán in the past few days, blowing a huge hole in their bullpen. McMillon is an upside flier with plenty of time for the Marlins to unlock it.