The Rangers released righty Spencer Patton from their Triple-A affiliate, MLB.com’s Kennedi Landry tweets. He’s a free agent who can now sign with any other club.
Patton, 34, made a return to the Majors in 2021 on the heels of a sharp four-year run in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, where he pitched to a 3.68 ERA over the life of 205 2/3 innings with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. He was a solid member of the Texas relief core last year, tossing 42 1/3 innings of 3.83 ERA ball with a strong 27.9% strikeout rate, an 8.7% walk rate and 41.3% grounder rate. Patton picked up his first two big league saves with the Rangers in 2021 and tacked on another 11 holds.
The 2022 season hasn’t gone as well, though Patton was mostly solid in seven big league frames back in April but missed several weeks with an oblique strain and was removed from the 40-man roster upon being activated from the injured list. The Rangers passed him through waivers back in May.
Patton yielded three runs on four hits and three walks with five strikeouts in the Majors earlier this year and, up until a week ago, was enjoying a fine season with Triple-A Round Rock. The right-hander worked to a 3.42 ERA with a 36-to-10 K/BB ratio through his first 26 1/3 innings in Triple-A but has unraveled in epic fashion over his past three appearances. Patton was shelled for six runs (four earned) in just an inning of work on Aug. 6 and has yielded another seven runs over his next two appearances. Overall, Patton has been rocked for 13 runs (11 earned) in his past three innings of Triple-A work.
That disastrous stretch has sent his Triple-A ERA soaring to 6.44 — nearly double the point at which it sat just 11 days ago. That said, there’s no indication of an injury, and Patton has performed at an otherwise solid level for the bulk of his time since returning from Japan. A team in need of some bullpen depth down the stretch could very well give him a look in the coming days in hopes of getting him back to his 2021 form.
The Bucs dumpster dive, they can take him to add to their list of worthless ones players
Well one thing is for sure. Billy Eppler and co won’t be bothered to look into it
The Mets are lazy when it comes to signing minor league contracts
this a logical 40 man move. lets hear how the rangers spent half a billiion dollars and weren’t instant competitors. semien and seager and gray have been awesome, likely to join jung, foscue, duran, smith, taveras, thompson, leiter, white, rocker, with carter, acuna, osuna, acosta, etc as the next wave we hope a few will stick from.. the rangers are going to throw 30 really good things at the wall, 6 will stick and people will wonder where they got them from. mlbtr writers can call it a skinny rebuild, but it was a generational rebuild. the 2000’s were great, ‘haven’t been relevant in 20 years’. OK have fun being wrong.
Whatever the details are, they spent big and got a bunch of very good players and still aren’t good. Good for them for improving where a lot of teams would’ve stood pat, but it goes to show you can’t turn a team around with free agent signings.
you can. and you can do it over multiple seasons. good for them not losing 120 this year. but also good for 2023. why try to sign 7 people in an offseason, when adding 3 one year and 4 the next year is much more realistic?
And Semien has been pretty far from awesome, he’s been ok.
They already removed him from the 40 man roster in June. He’s probably not in their plans for next year so they gave him an oportunity to catch on somewhere else.
Hopefully Spencer still has gas in the tank, can right the ship, and find a professional home.
that’s a really professional response. whatre you doing on MLBTR?