The Dodgers have agreed to a minor-league deal to bring right-hander Zach McAllister back to the organization, according to reports. The right-hander, who spent a short amount of time with the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate late last season, was somewhat surprisingly cut loose by the Rangers at the end of Spring Training despite having signed a big league deal with Texas.
McAllister, 31, was a mainstay in the Indians’ bullpen from 2015-17 but struggled through a career-worst season in 2018. He signed with the Rangers over the winter on a $1MM Major League contract and seemingly pitched well in Spring Training — 3.00 ERA, 10-to-2 K/BB ratio in 12 innings — making his release all the more unexpected. Last year, McAllister was torched for a 6.20 ERA in 45 innings between Cleveland and Detroit. His velocity remained consistent, however (95.3 mph average fastball), and he posted a solid 39-to-10 K/BB ratio. Prior to that dismal season, McAllister gave Cleveland 183 1/3 innings of 2.99 ERA relief with 10.0 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9 over a three-year span.
The Dodgers don’t have an immediate opening in their ’pen, so McAllister will quite likely head to Triple-A Oklahoma City for now. Kenley Jansen, Joe Kelly, Pedro Baez and Dylan Floro are the top right-handed relief options for skipper Dave Roberts, whose bullpen also contains out-of-options righty Yimi Garcia. The Dodgers do have an open spot on the 40-man roster, so if they decide in the near future that McAllister warrants a closer look against MLB opposition, they’ll only need to make a 25-man roster move to accommodate him.
Seems like whoever wrote the article left out the fact that McAllister played for Cleveland for many years. He was a mainstay on the Indians staff in general from 2011-2018.
I think bullpen was the key word there. He was a starter before that. I suppose there was no real reason to omit that though.
From the looks of the bullpen and Roberts yankin the starting pitchers too early (as usual), there should be some room to let some new arms in. Roberts is horrible!
It’s early in the season where it’s fairly common for managers to yank pitchers early.
Also, in regards to last nights game atleast. Urias is still young, almost all pitchers that are throwing at his age are on some kind of pitch/innings limit. Hes also coming back from serious shoulder injury, and yet to have thrown a full season worth of innings in his career.
Urias coming out early was fine it was still his managing of the bullpen.
Roberts does it all the time. Nothing has changed from any other season hes been with the Dodgers. They should have never extended him. He’s a notch below Don Mattingly, and not by much.
respectfully disagree… Mattingly was horrible managing his clubhouse…
Evidence: Yasiel Puig acted like a petulant teenager and created division and rancor among his teammates. Roberts came in and set down ground rules for all his players, even demoting Puig to the minors until he got his feces toegether… I’m not a fan of all hus decisions, but he is hamstrung a bit by the Dodger’s executives love of sabermetrics in deciding on-field decision making…
Yeah just read what I typed. I meant Roberts a notch above Mattingly. Definitely take Roberts, but still don’t like him.
I think the more they baby these players, the more injuries are going to happen. It’s getting worse every year. Starting pitchers are gonna start being on a 50 pitch count and they will put in a new rule that all you need is to start 3 innings to get the win. The wussy Millennial take over of baseball.
The only guy he yanked too early was Stripling. Urias was diminishing yesterday and already on a pitch count. So wow a whole 1 time this season. Lets fire the best manager they had since Lasorda
lol best manager since Lasorda. That’s not saying much. Roberts has been pulling pitchers early since hes been with the Dodgers. For some reason I was hoping it would change this year. I was wrong.
The only thing wrong is you sorry. Roberts is absolutely guilty of this in the past but he was 100% right yesterday w Urias. Not even debatable.
I’m gonna say Urias could have stayed in longer and done better then what Kelley put up. The longer the starting pitching stays in, the better chance of a W coming our way. Early season crap is ridiculous. If they aren’t ready to throw over 100 pitches and go 7 plus then they need to train differently. It’s a long season but Friedman and Co. manipulates the injury list where they rest the starters when they need to. Get out there and throw the ball and stop being such wussies..
Roberts fine at running a cohesive clubhouse and managing team with directions from FO. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Okay, nice sign by the Dodgers.
How about McAllister over Kelley?
Dodgers should splurge on Kimbrel.
I liked watching McAllister pitch right up until 2018. What I noticed was that while he still had his same fastball as before, for some reason, his pitches straightened out in 2018.
Every pitch he threw all season was on an absolute straight line trajectory to the plate and he got lit up. Which was odd, because he had decent movement in past seasons.
I’ve never seen that before where a pitcher still has good velocity, but loses all of their movement. Not sure what underlying issue would cause that.
Giants will give you Will Smith with maybe a low level prospect for Alex Verdugo? There’s your bullpen fix, hahaha.
Although I question Roberts’ use of pitchers at times (especially game 4 of the World Series) I put more blame on the front office. Let’s save a buck or two and sign Kelly instead of Britton or Ottavino or a number of other real quality relievers that were available. Still scratching my head at that decision. I think Friedman needs to go now! Let’s also look at the trades he couldn’t make, like the deal to get Verlander. Instead he trades for Darvish. If he makes the deal for Verlander, the Dodgers would have at least one if not two WS rings right now.
I’ll have to agree with you on your Verlander comment