Joe Wieland has agreed to a minor league deal with the Athletics, according to his MLB transactions log.
Wieland, 33, spent the 2022 season in the Rays’ minor league system after bouncing around for a handful of years between Nippon Professional Baseball, the Korea Baseball Organization, and the independent Constellation Energy League. A former top-100 prospect after being selected by the Rangers in the fourth round of the 2008 MLB Draft, he last appeared in a Major League Baseball game back in 2016 with the Mariners and currently carries a rough 6.32 ERA in 52 2/3 total MLB innings.
The journeyman right-hander will likely be nothing more than a depth piece for Oakland leading into the 2023 campaign, but he picked a favorable spot to perhaps get an opportunity to jump back into the bigs. In his time at Triple-A Durham last summer, Wieland worked to a 3.00 ERA with eight strikeouts across 12 frames.
He’s trying to play for every West Coast team.
Not MY island…….Joe Wieland!!!!
Joe’s career is busy doing the for the love of game tour. That or he has zero employable skills to fall back on.
Baseball Reference shows $2.175 mil earned in the 13-16 seasons of mlb play, add overseas salaries and I’d say in less than 10 years this guy has eclipsed the average US workers total lifetime salary or close to it.
And he is still 33.
Not a bad gig if you can get it. Love of the game most surely still factors in to the equation but even at these levels with employable skills for other jobs, the pay is still proportionally in favor of playing the game while you still can – even if you are a “hanger on / never was” guy for 10 years.
I think the best take from the article is how a 1st round top 100 prospect turned out as something to think about when fans don’t like their prospects (otherwise known as suspects) traded for a legitimate mlb player.
We get enamored but our up and coming prospects for what they are supposed to bring for the next 10 years to easily (I’ve been there).
Fourth round – but you’re otherwise spot on. After seeing the Twins getting hosed by the Marlins I wonder how many players that are drafted in the first ten rounds actually play more than one year in the majors? How many international signings play more than one season in the majors?
I believe a lot of the prospects moved in these deals – and probably almost all that are at A or below level never pan out. It doesn’t mean it’s waste of time to acquire and fill the minor league teams. However I agree with the premise of giving little value to lower level prospects in trades. Best to acquire them when you’re selling at trade deadline.
Yep – misread that.
Have you ever pitched in the majors? I’d say not! Are you a C**T? I’d say probably
Go A’s. Most under rated rotation in baseball
I have a feeling Fujinami is going to have better numbers than Ohtani and Darvish. just have to stay healthy somehow.
1. Irvin
2. Fujinami
3. Waldichuk
4. Muller
5. Rucinski
That Mike Adms trade went well for Texas.
You didn’t do bad on that trade but only had him for 1+ years and gave up two fairly high prospects – both of which all these years later are still pitching even if never at the level of their projections.
This was my point earlier – fans get hooked into the prospect values to easily. What looked like a great long term trade for SD turned out to be meh.
At the time of the trade, Mike was expendable on that team so he was getting traded and it was for what appeared to the the proverbial “prospect haul”.
I do t think it worked out “bad” for the Padres. Erlin filled a rotation spot during early years of a rebuild process. It just don’t turn out as the prospect status would have hoped.
Absolutely, Texas got the better end die to Mikes performance over 1.5 seasons.
It’s also difficult to evaluate a trade like that in a vacuum. You can look at Weiland and say he only threw 38 innings of 5.31 ERA ball for San Diego, so they lost the trade. Despite that, Weiland was part of the Matt Kemp trade and when SD traded him away he still profiled as a back of the rotation starter so he brought some value.
Hindsight 20/20 we know now that the Kemp trade was bad for SD because Grandal ended up killing it for LA, but Weiland’s value still helped make that Kemp acquisition possible for SD. They totally could have/should have used his trade value on a better target, but the point is SD got more out of that trade for him than just his brief on field performance for them.
So I had to look up the Constellation Energy League… just 4 teams and a 20 game season in Texas in 2020. What was cool to me was that all 4 teams were managed by former MLB players: Greg Swindell, Dave Eiland, Pete Incaviglia, and Roger Clemens (co-managing with his son Koby, with another son Kody as one of his players).
I really enjoyed this guy’s STP songs….