Here are today’s minor moves from around the league:
- The Braves have signed catcher/first baseman David Freitas to a minor league contract, according to Chris Cotillo of SB Nation (Twitter link). Freitas spent last season with the Cubs, his fourth organization since Washington chose him in the 15th round of the 2010 draft. The 27-year-old hasn’t yet cracked the majors, but he has hit a solid .273/.361/.421 across seven seasons in the minors.
- The Mariners have re-signed righty Ryan Cook to a minor league deal, writes MLB.com’s Greg Johns. Cook signed a one-year, $1.1MM deal with the M’s last offseason but never actually pitched for them, sitting out the season due to injury. He had Tommy John surgery last month and will miss the 2017 season as well. Cook has pitched parts of five seasons in the big leagues, pitching the majority of his innings with the Athletics, and has a career 3.43 ERA, 9.1 K/9 and 3.9 BB/9.
- The Dodgers have signed lefty Patrick Schuster to a minor league deal, Baseball America’s Matt Eddy tweets. The 26-year-old struggled in 8 2/3 innings with the Athletics and Phillies in 2016, although he pitched well at the Triple-A level, where he had a 1.21 ERA, 9.3 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 and dominated fellow southpaws over 46 2/3 frames. The Phillies outrighted him at the end of the season.
- The Padres have signed 31-year-old 1B/OF Jamie Romak to a minor league deal, Eddy tweets. Romak played sparingly for the Yokohama Bay Stars in Japan in 2016 and produced just a .113 batting average over 85 plate appearances, but he had been a reliable minor league slugger before that. He has 200 minor league home runs to his name, including 27 in a .284/.363/.549 season with Reno in 2015.
coolsiesmatt
Interesting play by DiPoto on Ryan Cook. He’ll sit out the entire 2017 season on this minor league deal so I guess the plan is to get him into offseason ball next year and see how he progresses, so they apparently value him as a controllable asset in 2018.
Question: He signed an MLB deal I believe last offseason but spent the entire season on the 60 day DL, did he still earn a year of service time?
angels fan 3
I believe he did earn service time as I recall hearing tropeano and Heaney are earning service time while on the dl recovering from tommy john
davidcoonce74
Yes, players on the major league DL earn service time.
jd396
The cover photo entitled “Man Stares Longingly At Baseball” is pretty great.
JDSchneck
Braves have easily had the best offseason so far. 2 quality starters, one reliever, plus a hopeful catching prospect
CardinalsNation1
I wouldn’t say best. Just most active at the moment. Oan Dickey was anything but quality during his time in Toronto.
bravesfan
sneaky good move by the braves. with have very little talent at catching in the minors..