Here are Friday’s minor moves from around the league…
- The Pirates have inked former Brewers right-hander and Angels farmhand Johnny Hellweg to a minor league pact and assigned him to Double-A, Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets. Saturday will mark the four-year anniversary of the now-28-year-old Hellweg’s most recent MLB appearance, as the 6’7″ righty had Tommy John surgery in 2014 and has struggled in minor league stints with Milwaukee and San Diego since that time. Hellweg has spent most of the past two years pitching for the New Jersey Jackals of the independent Can-Am Association, where he’s posted some gaudy strikeout totals. In 38 innings of relief this year, the former starter owns a 62-to-16 K/BB ratio, and he’s only given up two homers in a total of 59 indy ball frames. It’s obviously late in the season, but the Bucs could view this as a 2018 minor league audition for Hellweg.
It’s the long-awaited John Holdzkom sequel!
There’s a blast from the not too distant past. You’re right, this is a very similar situation for a similar style pitcher, except that Holdzkom had no MLB experience when we grabbed him. He completely flamed out, apparently: hasn’t pitched professionally that I could find since White Sox released him couple years ago. Never recovered from injury sustained while a Bucco, I think.
Was a shame taht Holdzkom got injured. Maybe Hellweg can recover from his TJ and the Bucs can help him figure things out. Could use another BP arm
Need to get Henderson Alvarez from the Ducks next.
Phillies already did.
LOL Almost sounds like the line in Major League…….I wish we had him 2 years ago…..we did….. 4 years then…..
Really? I must have missed it here.
Just another N Huntingdon Dollar General pick up !!!!!
He is mainly a fill in for AA Altoona. The BP shortage extended down to there because of the call ups to Pgh shorted Altoona because they promoted a few AA guys to Indy. Cheap arm to fill the gap in the Altoona pen and if they get lucky, they get lucky.