9:24am: The Tigers formally announced the moves. Manning goes directly to the 60-day injured list in order to open a spot on the 40-man roster for Diaz, although that’s a technicality, as he can be activated as soon as the season is over. The 60-day minimum does not carry over into next season. Carpenter, meanwhile, heads to the 10-day injured list with a lumbar strain, also ending his 2022 campaign.
9:12am: The Tigers have selected the contract of righty Miguel Diaz and will place both right-hander Matt Manning and outfielder Kerry Carpenter on the injured list, tweets Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press. Kody Clemens has been recalled from Triple-A Toledo alongside Diaz, filling the extra spot on the roster. Manning reported some arm fatigue and tightness in his forearm last night, and while manager A.J. Hinch stated that the team doesn’t believe there’s a serious injury at play, they’ll shut him down for the remainder of the season out of caution (via The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen, on Twitter).
Manning, 24, is the only of the Tigers’ vaunted rotation trio to avoid undergoing surgery this season, though he still missed a substantial portion of the season due to shoulder troubles. Assuming this is indeed a minor arm issue, though, he can be penciled in for Spring Training readiness, which can’t necessarily be said for either Casey Mize (Tommy John surgery in June) or Tarik Skubal (flexor tendon surgery in August). Detroit staked considerable hopes in that trio, and with good reason. Each of the three has impressed on the mound when healthy, but as is so often the case with pitching prospects, injuries have altered the calculus.
Manning’s season will draw to a close with just 63 Major League innings and another 20 1/3 Triple-A frames from a rehab assignment. He was sharp when on the mound, however, giving the Tigers a 3.43 ERA with an 18.3% strikeout rate, a 7.2% walk rate and a 40.1% ground-ball rate. Manning took considerable steps forward from last year’s ugly debut (5.80 ERA in 85 1/3 innings), recording improvements in strikeout rate, walk rate, swinging-strike rate and chase rate on pitches off the plate — all while yielding a much lighter average exit velocity. Injury concerns notwithstanding, there are ultimately quite a few positive takeaways from his second big league season.
Diaz, 27, will get a late look after working 65 innings out of the bullpen in Toledo and pitching to a 4.29 ERA with a 24.2% strikeout rate, 10.5% walk rate and a hefty 52.3% grounder rate. The right-hander spent the 2017-21 seasons in the Padres organization, dating back to his time as a Rule 5 pick out of the Brewers system in 2016.
San Diego selected Diaz directly out of A-ball and carried him on the roster all season in 2017. The lack of upper-minors seasoning showed, as Diaz was rocked for a 7.34 ERA through 41 2/3 innings as a seldom-used, low-leverage bullpen option. He pitched 42 innings with the Friars just last season, however, logging a much-improved 3.64 ERA with a sharp 26.2% strikeout rate but a bloated 11% walk rate.
Carpenter’s back injury will end a meteoric rise through the system for the former 19th-round pick (2019). After a nondescript run in Double-A last year, Carpenter — who never ranked among the organization’s best prospects — belted 30 home runs and posted OPS marks north of 1.000 in a combined 400 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A before ascending to the Majors.
Carpenter swatted another six round-trippers and hit .252/.310/.485 in 113 plate appearances at the MLB level, firmly inserting himself into the mix for an outfield spot in 2023 and beyond. He won’t get the opportunity to end that storybook season on his own terms, but his rise is one of very few bright spots in an otherwise largely catastrophic Tigers season.
Carpenter out is disappointing. Wanted to see what they have in him through the end of the season.
Carpenter looks so natural out there. Disappointing news on Matt. How can anyone by surprised at this point?
Hey, at least our Lions are pretending to be decent; and there’s hope for the Wings.
What I liked about Carpenter was that he was, for the most part, steady. A lot of times, guys come up and do really good, and then they drop off. He looks, “natural”, like Newman said, or that he belongs in the bigs.
“Arm fatigue and tightness in his forearm” does not sound comforting in the least. Hopefully this trio can still put together a nice healthy competitive run together but they are starting out less Hudson/Mulder/Zito and more Isringhausen/Pulsipher/Wilson
Hopefully Carpenter’s back is nothing because he’ll be fun to watch over a full season next year
Turnbull/Skubal/Manning/Mize/Brieske plus Faedo/R. Garcia for long relief and Funkhouser as closer – the Tigers’ 60d-IL pitching staff looks solid to me. Let’s just hope that only Mize will be kept away for long in 2023.
Not only does Carpenter’s injury suck as well, it also really stings. Like others said, he was looking good and could have used the last games as audition for an OF spot next to Greene and A. Meadows.
Gruß,
BSHH
He will have plenty of chance to audition for an OF spot next spring.
It’s almost certain he’ll be on our opening day roster. His appearances will likely be evenly split between OF and DH.
Alex is better than Beau.
That is now 9 players on the 60 day IL. Not sure why DIaz was added. He is 27 and never had much success at the MLB level over parts of 4 years and did not have a particularly good year in Toledo as well.. A chance for a look-see maybe but given how many players need to be added back off the 60 day IL after the year can’t believe the Tigers would actually consider keeping Diaz on the roster through the winter. Would think the Tigers would have been better served by bringing back Bryan Garcia or Elvin Rodriguez.
El. Rodriguez struggled at AAA, so B. Garcia seems to be the better choice. He might be just called-up for the Seattle doubleheader, though.
Gruß,
BSHH
Diaz has pretty limited MLB time and 41 of his 108 innings were when SD yanked him out of low A ball when he was 22 and carried him on their MLB roster just so they could keep him via rule 5.
He switched from the slider being his primary secondary to his change up in 2021 and for what it’s worth in the 42 innings he threw last year for SD he was actually a pretty decent middle reliever.
If he can keep his walks down (big if), he actually may be a useful reliever.
Hopefully the new president and gm will go out and sign a few pitchers to hold us over in 23-24 until everyone returns healthy. TJ surgery is usually 2 years before pitchers return to prior ability if they ever do! Verlander was an exception
Only Mize is for certain to be on the IL next spring. They should have a plethora of pitching available, without signing anyone. Turnbull, Rodriguez, Manning, Skubal, Brieske, Faedo, Wentz, Garcia, Alexander and Hill are all available as starters. Drew Hutchinson could even come back on a minor league deal. For the bullpen they have Soto, Lange, Jimenez, Cisnero, Funkhouser, Foley, Vest, Chafin (rumored to be staying) and DeJesus. They could use another lefty arm for the pen. Regardless, if they add, it should be a premium arm. No more filler.
With the team being shutout so many times this year, pitching wasn’t the real problem. As we may see in the near future, the Avila years were not that bad. I like how the Tigers are playing now, and we seen a lot of pitching depth this year. As a Tiger fan I’m happy with how it’s going now, and we’ve always have the hope, they’ll do better next year.
If they’d just stop winning they could guarantee himself a top 5 draft pick. No reason to let the Royals out lose you.
Sorry, the Royal just suck. Its not an option.
No one could have predicted the amount of injuries and underperforming players the Tigers would have this year. It’s like a perfect storm, but the silver lining is there is a ton of pitching depth. Maybe Harris can swap this depth for some major league hitting. Otherwise it’s praying players like Baez, Schoop, Haase, Torkelson and Meadows return to form and act as the hitters they should/could be in 23…
You forgot Candelario!
I’m just glad MIguel Diaz got out of Cobra Kai.
I suspect many of the field players are done as Tigers: Cabrera, Badoo, Candelario, Schoop, Clemens, Barnhart, maybe Reyes and Willi Castro. Need to sign a legit bat.
There’s a 100% chance Schoop will exercise his player option for $7.5MM and I think he could remain on the team as a utility player because of his stellar defense. I also wouldn’t be shocked if we re-signed Barnhart as backup catcher for a lot less money.
The curse of Al Availa continues. If he’s not the lame duck gm then nobody can take advantage of his premium pitching prospects and anemic offense. Tigers need to seriously stop trying to develop at the major league level and just put as much focus on the farm as possible. Locking in talent that’s forced to play there over over paying the market for the field that doesn’t god bless them. They never should have put the foot on the pedal this season but Availa needed to do something and it cost him a job he wasn’t in a position to handle. Nobody wants to play in Detroit. That needs to change for these guys to be successful and take things to the next level and it’ll be years before that mindset changes about the city or organization.
The Tigers will have to jump into the free agent market, just to be a .500 team.