- Gleyber Torres continues to be bothered by a nagging groin injury, as the issue forced the Yankees second baseman to make an early exit from yesterday’s 5-3 loss to the Red Sox. Torres isn’t in today’s lineup, as it appears New York is giving him at least one day of rest — considering how Monday is an off-day for the Yankees, it seems conceivable that Torres also might not play Sunday in order to receive a more extended break. The groin problem is the latest wrinkle in what has been a rough season for Torres, who is hitting only .223/.297/.344 with eight home runs in 355 plate appearances.
Yankees Rumors
Phil Bickford Elects Free Agency Following DFA By Yankees
Reliever Phil Bickford elected free agency in lieu of an outright assignment by the Yankees, according to a team announcement. New York had designated the right-hander for assignment on Sunday. He evidently cleared waivers.
Bickford only spent a little more than a week on the MLB roster. He signed a minor league pact in early April after being released by the Mets at the end of camp. The former first-rounder pitched to a 2.93 ERA across 27 2/3 innings with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He struck out almost 30% of opposing hitters against a 10.3% walk rate. That’s a few more free passes than ideal but isn’t unmanageable.
It was an impressive enough minor league showing to get Bickford a brief look in the Bronx. He couldn’t carry that over against MLB competition. Bickford worked five innings, allowing nine runs (eight earned) on eight hits and a walk. Bickford tossed scoreless outings in his first two appearances before allowing runs in each of his final three games. That included a five-run outing against the Blue Jays on Saturday in which Bickford only logged two outs.
The 28-year-old (29 next week) topped 50 MLB innings in every season from 2021-23. Bickford managed a 2.81 ERA between the Brewers and Dodgers three years ago. He allowed nearly five earned runs per nine in the next two seasons, albeit with solid strikeout and swinging strike numbers. Bickford will likely sign another minor league deal in the next few days. The Yankees could look to bring him back, as it’s not uncommon for players to re-sign with their prior organization after declining an outright assignment.
Yankees Designate Phil Bickford, Select Josh Maciejewski
The Yankees announced that right-hander Phil Bickford has been designated for assignment. The move opens a roster space for left-hander Josh Maciejewski, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A.
Bickford’s own minor league contract was selected to New York’s roster just on June 21, and the veteran righty allowed eight earned runs over five innings (in five appearances) for an ugly 14.40 ERA. The majority of that damage took place in Saturday’s game, as Bickford was charged for five runs in just two-thirds of an inning of relief work in the Yankees’ 9-3 loss to the Blue Jays.
Today’s move brings a fresh arm into the Yankees bullpen, and returns Bickford to the DFA wire for the third time in his career. Bickford’s previous designations resulted in a change of uniform — the Dodgers claimed him off waivers from the Brewers in May 2021, and the Mets acquired Bickford as part of a deadline day trade last August. Since Bickford is out of minor league options, the Yankees had to designate him and risk losing him on waivers before the club is free to outright him off the 40-man roster.
Maciejewski was designated and outrighted himself back in April, shortly after he made his Major League debut in the form of a single inning of relief work in New York’s 7-0 win over the Marlins on April 8. A 10th-round pick for the Yankees in the 2018 draft, Maciejewski is more of a pitch-to-contract type of hurler than a strikeout artist, and he has a 4.95 ERA over 83 2/3 career Triple-A innings. His second trip to the majors will see Maciejewski join Caleb Ferguson and Tim Hill as the left-handed options in New York’s relief corps.
Jed Hoyer Discusses Trade Deadline, Cubs’ Struggles
The Cubs’ 4-2 loss to the Brewers Friday dropped Chicago to a 38-45 record, and a .458 winning percentage that tops only the Marlins and Rockies among all National League teams. With a 17-31 mark in their last 48 games, the Cubs simply haven’t been playing good baseball for the better part of two months, leading to a lot of speculation about the team’s plans heading into the July 30 trade deadline.
President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer addressed this topic and many others when speaking with reporters (including The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma and ESPN’s Jesse Rogers) prior to yesterday’s game, saying “I don’t think it’s time yet for that full conversation” given that the deadline is still a month out. However, Hoyer admitted that “we’ve backed ourselves into a bit of a corner” and things needs to turn around quickly.
“We have to play well this month,” Hoyer said. “I think you have to be a realist when you get to that point….You have to make the best decisions for the organization based on the hand you’re dealt that year. We’ll see what that is.”
It was just last season that the Cubs were 45-51 on July 20 before rattling off an eight-game winning streak that convinced Hoyer to make moves to bolster the roster at the deadline, rather than sell. Jeimer Candelario was acquired in a trade with the Nationals and helped Chicago post a scoring 18-9 record in August 2023, though a late-season fade left the team just short of a playoff berth.
If the Cubs get on track with another big win streak, or if they keep losing at this pace, Hoyer’s deadline decision will be relatively easy. Given the team’s win-now mode and the investments made in the roster, it might also be fair to say that the Cubs will be more prone to adding at the deadline if they’re even near the .500 mark but still within striking distance in the wild card race. (Even now, Chicago is just five games out of the last NL wild card berth.)
Turning to how the Wrigleyville squad might approach selling, their same roster-building endeavors also lead to a lack of obvious trade candidates. As Rogers notes, most of the Cubs’ roster is under longer-term control, either via contracts or players under arbitration control. While Chicago hasn’t played well, the idea of the Cubs blowing things up and having a fire sale of their core simply isn’t realistic, so any deadline selling would surely be made with an eye towards contending in 2025.
Hector Neris and Kyle Hendricks are free agents this winter and Neris’ track record would lead to some interest from bullpen-needy teams, even though he and Hendricks have both struggled for much of the season. Cody Bellinger can become a free agent if he opts out of the last two years and $52.5MM of his current contract, though his decent but unspectacular play creates some doubt as to whether or not an opt-out would lead to Bellinger finally landing a big-ticket multi-year contract. This same gray area in regards to Bellinger’s status as a rental or a possible longer-term piece would impact his possible status as a trade candidate come the deadline.
The Cubs opted to keep Bellinger at last year’s trade deadline, though it could be a different story this year barring another July surge. “Teams like the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers have recently had a noticeable scouting presence around the” Cubs, according to The Athletic’s Will Sammon, Katie Woo, Patrick Mooney, and Ken Rosenthal, and Bellinger has long been linked to the Yankees on the rumor mill. The 37-45 Rangers are in even worse shape than the Cubs, but the defending World Series champs are another team who could pivot to selling if they can start winning in July.
Until the deadline nears, all Hoyer and his front office can do is hope their struggling lineup and bullpen in particular perform better. Hoyer’s disappointment was clear, as he said “when you look at where we’ve performed this year with a team that’s stronger [on paper], it’s lesser. Is that frustrating to me? Absolutely. If it’s frustrating to me, I have to imagine it’s frustrating to the fans.”
Clayton Andrews Elects Free Agency
Yankees left-hander Clayton Andrews rejected an outright assignment to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in favor of free agency, the team announced. Andrews wasn’t claimed off waivers following his recent DFA. As a player who’s been previously outrighted earlier in his career (back in April by the Yankees), he had the right to decline a minor league assignment. He’ll now explore other opportunities around the league (though a new minor league deal with New York is certainly possible).
The 27-year-old Andrews appeared in one game with the Yankees this season and allowed three runs in just one-third of an inning. He’s been tagged for an unsightly 10 earned runs in a total of 3 2/3 MLB frames over the past two seasons between the Yankees and Brewers — his only big league work to date.
Andrews’ 2024 struggles extend beyond that brief time on the big league roster. He’s tossed 24 2/3 innings in Triple-A and been tagged for a 5.84 ERA with nearly as many walks (20.4%) as strikeouts (25.9%). That said, he pitched 57 innings of 2.53 ERA ball with a hearty 31.1% strikeout rate for the Brewers’ Triple-A club in Nashville as recently as last season.
Andrews has a 3.66 ERA in 91 career Triple-A innings and an overall 3.49 earned run average in parts of six minor league seasons since being selected in the 17th round by the Brewers back in 2018. Walks have always been an issue for the undersized (5’6″) lefty, but Andrews has fanned 29% of his Triple-A opponents and nearly one-third of his total minor league opponents since being drafted.
Yankees Outright Victor Gonzalez, Clayton Andrews
7:06pm: New York also outrighted lefty reliever Clayton Andrews, per the transactions log at MLB.com. The Yankees had designated him for assignment last week when they signed Tim Hill. Andrews, 27, has only made one big league appearance this year. He has logged 24 2/3 frames in Scranton, allowing a 5.84 earned run average. The former Brewer has managed solid strikeout and grounder rates but walked more than one-fifth of batters faced.
New York has outrighted Andrews twice this season. Players with multiple outrights have the ability to elect free agency instead of heading back to Triple-A. It’s not clear whether he will do so.
2:51pm: The Yankees announced Wednesday that left-hander Victor Gonzalez passed through outright waivers unclaimed and has been assigned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He was designated for assignment last week. The southpaw has enough big league service time to reject the assignment but not enough to retain the remainder of his $860K salary upon electing free agency, so he’ll likely accept the assignment.
Gonzalez, 28, came to the Yankees alongside minor league infielder Jorbit Vivas in an offseason trade that sent minor league infielder Trey Sweeney back to the Dodgers. His time on the big league roster didn’t go as hoped. While Gonzalez posted a solid 3.86 earned run average in 23 1/3 frames, he did so while issuing more walks (13.4%) than strikeouts (11.3%). He continued to post terrific ground-ball numbers (55.1%), but this is the fourth straight season his strikeout rate has dropped. His 93.3 mph average velocity on his once 95-mph sinker also marked a career-low.
Debuting with the Dodgers back in 2020, Gonzalez looked like a potential bullpen powerhouse. Armed with that then-95-mph bowling ball sinker, he pitched 20 1/3 innings of 1.33 ERA ball with an excellent 28.7% strikeout rate against a microscopic 2.5% walk rate — all while inducing grounders at a mammoth 69.2% clip.
Injuries have hobbled him since that debut and sapped his repertoire, however. He’s dealt with plantar fasciitis, knee troubles and most notably a bout of elbow inflammation that eventually led to arthroscopic surgery. In three and a half seasons since that outstanding debut effort, Gonzalez has combined for a total of 136 innings (majors and minors included).
Gonzalez was out of minor league options, so the Yankees had no choice but to designate him for assignment if they wanted the chance to send him to the minors. He’ll now head to Triple-A and try to earn another look later in the season. He’d need to be re-added to the 40-man roster for that to happen, of course. Failing that, Gonzalez will have the right to become a minor league free agent at season’s end, given his status as a player with three-plus years of service who was outrighted off a 40-man roster.
Soto: Plan To Address Contract “In The Offseason”
Juan Soto will be the top free agent in the upcoming class and is trending towards the largest contract in MLB history — assuming one counts the Shohei Ohtani deal based on its approximate $461MM net present value. There has never been much doubt that the 25-year-old superstar would test the market, even after Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner left open the possibility of discussing a midseason extension last month.
Soto implied as much this evening in a conversation with Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Asked by Heyman whether he expected the Mets to be involved in the bidding, Soto replied “we will see. In the offseason we will figure it out. I’ll let [agent Scott Boras] do his thing. We’re going to see.” The three-time All-Star followed up by speaking glowingly of his time with the Yankees.
Steinbrenner’s comments aside, the Yankees presumably haven’t been all that optimistic about keeping Soto off the market. GM Brian Cashman said in February that the team fully anticipated Soto would test free agency (link via Bryan Hoch of MLB.com). The Yankees will certainly make a significant effort to keep him in the Bronx next winter.
Soto famously declined a 14-year, $440MM extension offer from the Nationals before Washington traded him in 2022. The Padres similarly expressed a desire to work out a long-term arrangement in the early portion of last offseason. That obviously didn’t materialize and he was traded again. There aren’t any publicly reported specifics on contract terms that either San Diego or the Yankees have floated. Heyman said last month (X link) that Soto had declined seven extension offers within the last five years. That has long made it seem like a foregone conclusion that he and his camp would take things to free agency.
He may well do so coming off the best season of his career. Soto hit his 19th home run of the season tonight and is on pace to top last year’s personal-high 35 longballs. He carried a .305/.431/.563 slash line into today’s game. That’d be the highest slugging percentage he’s posted in a 162-game schedule. It’d be the second-best on-base mark he has managed in a full season.
Yankees Acquire J.D. Davis
The Yankees announced this afternoon that they’ve acquired infielder J.D. Davis and cash considerations from the A’s in exchange infielder Jordan Groshans. Davis had been designated for assignment by the A’s earlier this week. The Yankees transferred right-hander Nick Burdi to the 60-day injured list in order to make room for Davis on the 40-man roster.
Davis, 31, signed with the A’s in late spring after the Giants released Davis during Spring Training in order to get out from under most of the $6.9MM salary he had been awarded in arbitration over the winter. He managed to secure a guarantee of just $2.5MM from Oakland, a far cry from his previously-awarded arbitration salary even after factoring in the roughly $1.1MM in termination pay he received from San Francisco.
After that late spring controversy, Davis went on to appear in 39 games with the A’s where he slashed a roughly league-average .236/.304/.366 in 135 trips to the plate while splitting time between first base, third base, and DH. While his offensive numbers this year leave something to be desired, Davis’s positional versatility and track record as an above-average hitter make him a perfect fit for the Yankees’ current needs.
The club lost starting DH Giancarlo Stanton to the injured list earlier today, and first baseman Anthony Rizzo was also placed on the shelf not long ago due to a fractured forearm. Rookie Ben Rice has scuffled a bit in his first few games replacing Rizzo at first base, while the club has no obvious alternative to Stanton as an everyday DH in-house. Even at third base, where the club is currently relying on the combination of Oswaldo Cabrera and DJ LeMahieu, New York has gotten a wRC+ of just 78 — this ranks second-worst of all AL third-base units, ahead of only the White Sox.
Enter Davis, who entered the 2024 season with five consecutive seasons of solid production with the Mets and Giants. Since the start of the 2019 season, Davis has slashed a solid .265/.349/.438 with a wRC+ of 118. While he’s struck out a 27.1% clip during that time, he’s walked at a healthy 10% rate while flashing 20-homer power. That sort of production would be a major upgrade for a Yankees club that has generally struggled to produce offense outside of the outfield this year even before losing Stanton for at least the short-term. Davis seems likely to slide into the everyday DH role for the Yankees while Stanton is unavailable, but could also spell Rice at first base against left-handed pitching and even contribute at third alongside LeMahieu and Cabrera.
On days where Davis is playing the infield, the Yankees could offer Aaron Judge or Juan Soto the opportunity to get a half-day of rest as a DH and improve the club’s outfield defense by inserting glove-first center fielder Trent Grisham into the mix. When Stanton eventually returns to reclaim regular DH, the Yankees could pick and choose from Davis, Rice, Cabrera, and LeMahieu based on how everyone is performingt. That being said, if Davis can even maintain his production as an Athletic in the Bronx he should be a shoe-in for at least semi-regular playing time around the Yankees infield even after Stanton’s eventual return.
In exchange for Davis’ services, the Yankees are sending Groshans to Oakland. The 24-year-old’s stint in the Yankees organization was a relatively brief one, as the club claimed him off waivers from the Marlins back in February. He was outrighted off their 40-man roster in early March and has struggled to this point in the 2024 season with a .232/.310/.281 slash line while playing all four infield spots in 50 games split between the Double- and Triple-A levels. That follows a similarly rough performance at Triple-A with Miami last year; in 528 plate appearances across 125 games in 2023, Groshans slashed a paltry .244/.339/.330 with just six home runs.
Despite Groshans’ struggles over the past two seasons, it’s not hard to see why the A’s would be willing to give the youngster a shot. After all, the infielder was the 12th overall pick in the 2018 draft by the Blue Jays and received plenty of top prospect buzz earlier in his career, including a stint as a consensus top-50 prospect in the sport back in 2021. That pedigree combined with Groshans’ stronger numbers at the Double-A level earlier in his career provide some reason for optimism that he could contribute at the big league level at some point.
That possibility is surely an attractive one for an Oakland club that has struggled to find a consistent option at third base this year while cycling between Davis, Abraham Toro, and Tyler Nevin at the position. Toro will be out until at least the All-Star break recovering from a hamstring strain, leaving even more opportunity for Groshans to win some playing time at the hot corner.
Yankees Place Giancarlo Stanton On 10-Day Injured List
3:26PM: Stanton confirmed to Hoch and other reporters that he did get a PRP shot today, and estimated that he’ll spend about four weeks on the IL.
3:10PM: Stanton might receive a PRP injection but the strain is considered “mild,” Boone told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch and other reporters. The Yankees don’t yet have a timeline on when Stanton might return to action.
9:42AM: The Yankees announced this morning that they’ve placed slugger Giancarlo Stanton on the 10-day injured list. Infielder Oswald Peraza was recalled to the big league roster in the corresponding move, as first reported by El Extrabase’s Daniel Alvarez-Montes last night.
Stanton, 34, departed yesterday’s game against the Braves in the top of the sixth inning after feeling tightness in his left hamstring while running the bases earlier in the game. Manager Aaron Boone indicated to reporters (including The Athletic’s Brandon Kuty) after the game that Stanton was scheduled to undergo tests today to determine the severity of the issue but noted that Stanton was in “good spirits” and that the club was hopeful the issue wasn’t too serious. The results of Stanton’s testing today are not yet known, although the club evidently believes that he’ll need to miss at least the next ten days before he can return to action. Being cautious with Stanton, who has a long history of lower half injuries throughout his career, is understandable given the risk of aggravating the hamstring further if he were to attempt to play through the injury.
Even so, it’s a frustrating turn of events for both Stanton and the Yankees given the veteran’s resurgence at the plate to this point in the season. Long one of the game’s most feared sluggers, Stanton posted relatively pedestrian numbers over the past two seasons, slashing just .202/.286/.442. That production was only good for a 103 wRC+ that’s essentially league average, and not particularly close to the value the Yankees were surely hoping to get from a full-time DH who they pay an average of $25MM to annually. The veteran’s production in 69 games this season has been far closer to what the Yankees are surely hoping for from him, as he’s impressed with a .246/.302/.492 slash line (126 wRC+) while crushing 18 home runs in just 281 trips to the plate.
New York will have to go without that strong production in the middle of their lineup for at least the foreseeable future, delivering another blow to an offense that has generally struggled to produce outside of star sluggers Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. Stanton shelved, it’s possible the Yankees could look to improve their outfield defense by placing Trent Grisham in center field, kicking Judge back over to his native right field while allowing Soto to move into a DH role. Grisham has struggled to a wRC+ of just 71 at the plate this year, though his quality work with the glove could still make him a more attractive option than more frequently relying on Oswaldo Cabrera (78 wRC+) or DJ LeMahieu (51 wRC+) outside of their current role splitting time at third base.
Taking Stanton’s place on the roster is Peraza, who has been sidelined for almost the entire season to this point due to a shoulder strain. In 28 games at the Triple-A level since returning from injury, Peraza has struggled to a .178/.313/.215 slash line that suggests he’s unlikely to be the solution for replacing Stanton’s production offensively, although the former consensus top-50 prospect would likely be the club’s best defensive option at third base and could free LeMahieu and Cabrera up for more frequent appearances at DH or first base, where youngster Ben Rice has been getting his first taste of big league action while Anthony Rizzo recovers from a fractured forearm.
Yankees Sign Chasen Shreve To Minor League Deal
The Yankees have signed left-hander Chasen Shreve to a minor league deal, as reported by Dan Martin of the New York Post. The southpaw had previously been pitching for the Rangers’s Triple-A affiliate in Round Rock on a minors deal but evidently opted out of that deal and returned to the open market at some point since his last appearance with them on June 14.
Shreve, who will celebrate his 34th birthday next month, is a veteran of ten MLB seasons who first made his big league debut with the Braves back in 2014. Shreve was swapped to the Bronx the following offseason alongside David Carpenter in exchange for Manny Banuelos. In parts of four seasons with the Yankees, Shreve pitched to a 3.92 ERA with a 4.99 FIP across 180 relief appearances. He was then packaged with right-hander Giovanny Gallegos and shipped to the Cardinals in exchange for first baseman Luke Voit partway through the 2019 season.
Since leaving the Bronx, Shreve has pitched for the Mets, Pirates, Tigers, and Reds at the big league level in addition to the aforementioned Cardinals. He’s posted a 4.26 ERA that’s exactly league average by measure of ERA+ over 169 innings of work, including a roughly league average performance with Detroit and Cincinnati last year. In 44 2/3 innings of work across 50 appearances, Shreve pitched to a 4.63 ERA and 4.28 FIP with a solid 23.3% strikeout rate against a 7.3% walk rate.
During his time on a minor league deal with Texas, Shreve has looked nothing short of dominant at Triple-A with a 1.61 ERA in 22 1/3 innings across 20 appearances while striking out 29.6% of batters faced. If he could recreate anything close to those numbers at the big league level he’d certainly be a welcome addition to the Yankees bullpen, which has lost Jonathan Loaisiga, Nick Burdi, and Ian Hamilton since the season began while also watching pieces like Caleb Ferguson and Ron Marinaccio struggle. It seems likely that Shreve will head to Triple-A for the time being, although it would hardly be a surprise to see the club call upon the veteran at some point in the near future, particularly after they recently DFA’d lefties Clayton Andrews and Victor Gonzalez earlier this week.
