We’ll use this post to run down the day’s minor moves:
- After being designated for assignment yesterday, catcher Chris Herrmann was released by the Diamondbacks, per a club announcement. The 30-year-old won’t get a chance to prove he can return to the strong batting output he produced in 2016 — at least in Arizona. That effort earned Herrmann a career-high 256 plate appearances last season, but he managed only a .181/.273/.345 batting line. He has, however, enjoyed a solid spring, swatting two long balls and carrying a .300/.324/.567 slash in 34 Cactus League plate appearances.
- The Nationals have brought back Alejandro De Aza on a minor-league deal after releasing him to avoid the necessity of a $100K retention bonus, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo tweets. Soon to turn 34, De Aza is at this point mostly an organizational depth piece, though he has at times in the not-so-distant past been a significant contributor at the MLB level. Indeed, he carries an approximately league-average overall offensive line through nearly three thousand major-league plate appearances, most of which have come since the start of the 2012 season. De Aza played only briefly in the majors last year with the Nats and hit .280/.368/.403 in his 212 Triple-A plate appearances.
- Also re-signing after being released was infielder Gordon Beckham, who’ll head to the minors with the Mariners, per Cotillo (via Twitter). The 31-year-old had a torrid spring but, like De Aza, has generally been on the downswing of late after receiving quite a lot of opportunities earlier in his career. Until last year, Beckham had played in at least 88 MLB contests annually since cracking the majors (despite minimal minor-league seasoning) in 2009. But his chances, which were already on the decline, largely petered out in 2017, as he made it into just 11 games in the majors. In his 355 plate appearances at Triple-A in the Mariners organization, Beckham posted a .262/.313/.393 batting line.
- The Diamondbacks have sent outfielder Ramon Flores to the Red Sox, Cotillo also tweets. It is not apparent what Arizona is getting back in return, or whether Flores might even be the PTBNL in the recent swap between the teams. Either way, it’s a minor transactions. Flores signed a minors deal with Arizona and has struggled this spring. He carries only a .204/.281/.256 slash line in 331 plate appearances, but has generally hit well at Triple-A. Last year, Flores hit .312/.409/.460 with ten home runs and 68 walks against 70 strikeouts in his 493 trips to the plate at the highest level of the minors.
Flores? Perhaps emergency OF injury depth since the team cannot bring up Castillo due to payroll threshold issues.
What’s the point of that 100,000 dollar retention bonus if everybody just agrees to do these work around maneuvers?
The thing with these deals is that most of the time, guys are given the opportunity to look elsewhere for big league opportunities and if they can’t find one, they go back to the place where they had originally signed (as they probably signed for a specific reason), do what they have to do in the minors and get the opt-out clause in May/June if they can.
Like Burjos, LeBlanc, Flaherty all got major league deals days following their releases. That’s really what these players are looking for in that few day period.
Glad that Beckham is still in the system. He’ll be up at some point. His presence down in Tacoma as a vet will be valuable. He’s also still fun to watch.