Dodgers Outright Wander Suero

Dodgers righty Wander Suero went unclaimed on waivers following his DFA and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Oklahoma City, per the team’s transaction log. The 31-year-old righty has enough service time to reject the assignment in favor of free agency. The team hasn’t made an announcement one way or another, but Suero is listed as active on the OKC Dodgers’ roster.

Suero appeared in four games with the Dodgers, pitching 6 2/3 innings but yielding six runs on four hits and four walks. Suero did fan exactly a quarter of his opponents (seven of 28), but he struggled not only to find the zone but to locate within it, as two of those hits left the yard.

Prior to this brief run the Dodgers, the entirety of Suero’s big league experience had come with the Nationals, for whom he pitched in 2018-21. The righty logged 185 1/3 frames with the Nats, at times serving as one of Davey Martinez’s setup men (33 holds). He posted a combined 4.61 ERA with Washington, striking out a solid 25.4% of opponents against a roughly average 8.4% walk rate. Suero wasn’t especially homer prone and didn’t give up many free passes, but he struggled with men on base, stranding a below-average 67.8% of runners he allowed. Still, fielding-independent metrics like FIP (3.80) and SIERA (3.78) thought his skills were better than his bottom-line results.

Suero has had a nice year in Oklahoma City so far, holding opponents to four runs on ten hits and eight walks with 17 strikeouts in 14 2/3 innings (2.45 ERA). It’s the fifth season in which he’s spent time at the Triple-A level, and he owns a career 3.59 ERA with a 22% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate through 110 1/3 innings there.