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David Phelps Has “Significant” Lat Strain

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Blue Jays right-handed reliever David Phelps is dealing with a “significant” lat strain, manager Charlie Montoyo said Friday (via Scott Mitchell of TSN). Montoyo was unable to offer a timeline for Phelps’ return.

Lat strains often lead to lengthy absences for pitchers, and it sounds as if that will be the case for Phelps. The 34-year-old has already gone almost two full weeks without pitching, having most recently taken the mound on May 2.

Phelps, whom the Blue Jays signed for $1.75MM in free agency, delivered outstanding results prior to his placement on the 10-day injured list. Now in his second stint with Toronto (he previously spent time with the club in 2019), Phelps has thrown 8 1/3 innings of two-run ball (one earned) with 15 strikeouts, four walks, eight hits allowed, and four holds. He’s one of seven Blue Jays relievers on the IL, yet the team has still found a way to a 20-16 record.

Angels Activate Anthony Rendon, Designate Jon Jay

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The Angels have activated third baseman Anthony Rendon from the 10-day injured list and designated outfielder Jon Jay for assignment, the team announced.

The Angels are welcoming back Rendon from his second IL stint of the young season. He went on the shelf on April 12 with a left groin strain and landed back on it May 5 with a left knee contusion. When Rendon has been well to play, he has continued to offer high-end production, having slashed .276/.348/.466 (131 wRC+) with three home runs in 66 plate appearances. The Angels used Phil Gosselin and Jose Rojas at the hot corner during Rendon’s most recent trip to the IL.

Jay has yo-yoed on and off the Angels’ 40-man roster this year, as this is already the second time the club has designated him since the middle of April. The 36-year-old has gone 5-for-14 with all singles this season.

Padres Place Drew Pomeranz On 10-Day IL, Select Ivan Castillo

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The Padres have placed reliever Drew Pomeranz on the 10-day injured list with a left shoulder impingement and selected the contract of infielder/outfielder Ivan Castillo, Dennis Lin of The Athletic tweets.

This adds to a long history of injuries for Pomeranz, who spent time on the IL in 2020 – his first season of a four-year, $34MM contract – with a shoulder strain. Pomeranz more recently dealt with left forearm tightness during the spring, but he was ready to go when Opening Day arrived. Since then, he has continued to serve as an integral part of the Padres’ bullpen with a 1.98 ERA/2.98 SIERA and a strong 35.7 percent strikeout rate against a less impressive 12.5 percent walk rate over 13 2/3 frames. Additionally, Pomeranz ranks second on the team in holds (five), which will make him even more difficult to replace.

The injury to Pomeranz opens the door for the 25-year-old Castillo, who’s set for his big league debut. Castillo has already made his Triple-A debut this year and slashed an excellent .444/.516/.519 with two stolen bases across 31 plate appearances. FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen ranked the 5-foot-9 switch-hitter 34th in the Padres’ deep farm system earlier this week and wrote that “[h]e has fantastic feel for contact.” The question is whether that will transfer to the majors.

Cardinals Place Paul DeJong On 10-Day IL, Select Max Moroff

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The Cardinals have placed shortstop Paul DeJong on the 10-day injured list (retroactive to May 13) with a non-displaced left rib fracture, Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat reports. In corresponding moves, the team selected infielder Max Moroff and moved reliever Jordan Hicks to the 60-day IL.

It’s unknown how much time DeJong will miss, though the obvious hope is that this won’t potentially lead to a weeks-long absence. DeJong has again been the Cardinals’ go-to option at short, where he has started 35 of the first-place club’s 38 games. The 27-year-old has had a tough time offensively for the second straight season, though, having batted .177/.277/.371 (85 wRC+) with seven home runs in 141 plate appearances. Tommy Edman figures to get the bulk of the work at short with DeJong down, leaving second base to Matt Carpenter, Katie Woo of The Athletic tweets.

Moroff, whom the Cardinals signed to a minor league contract last winter, will get his first opportunity with the team as a result of DeJong’s injury. The 28-year-old has appeared in the majors with the Pirates and Indians, though he has slumped to a line of .183/.277/.319 (60 wRC+) with seven home runs in 244 trips to the plate. Moroff has, however, offered nice production in Triple-A ball, as his .239/.372/.413 mark with 37 home runs over 1,215 PA shows.

Hicks’ placement on the 60-day IL is another blow to St. Louis, which won’t get him back until at least July 1. It’s not out of the blue, though, as expectations were that Hicks would miss six or more weeks as of May 10. The flamethrowing right-hander, a Tommy John surgery recipient in 2019, is battling elbow issues again.

Dodgers Claim Travis Blankenhorn

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Infielder Travis Blankenhorn, who was designated for assignment by the Twins over the weekend, is headed to the Dodgers on a waiver claim, tweets SKOR North’s Darren Wolfson. Leroy Boyer of Blankenhorn’s hometown Pottsville Herald first reported that the 24-year-old was headed to the Dodgers. To make room for Blankenhorn, the Dodgers transferred injured righty Dustin May (Tommy John surgery) to the 60-day IL, per a team announcement.

A third-round draft pick in 2015, Blankenhorn appeared in only two games with the Twins — one last year and one in 2021. He’s tallied just four plate appearances in that time and collected one hit, a double. Blankenhorn has also totaled a mere 13 trips to the plate at the Triple-A level, though he has otherwise produced solid numbers in the minors.

Blankenhorn made his Double-A debut during the most recent full minor league season, 2019, and slashed .278/.312/.474 (125 wRC+) with 18 home runs and 11 stolen bases in 410 PA. FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen ranked Blankenhorn as the Twins’ 29th-best prospect coming into this season, writing that the 24-year-old is “a situational bat-first piece who might need a change of scenery to carve out the sort of bench role I think he’s capable of playing.”

Blankenhorn now has that change of scenery with the reigning World Series champions, whose infield depth has taken a couple shots in recent weeks. Zach McKinstry has been on the IL since April 20 with a strained oblique, and Edwin Rios needs season-ending surgery on a partially torn labrum in his shoulder.

Phillies Reinstate J.T. Realmuto From Covid-Related IL

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MAY 14: The Phillies announced that they have reinstated Realmuto and optioned righty Enyel De Los Santos to Triple-A.

MAY 13: 10:40am: Realmuto did not test positive, manager Joe Girardi tells reporters (link via Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia). He developed a fever and grew ill last night, however, so the Phils have moved him to the Covid list to perform testing. He is not traveling with the team at the moment.

10:10am: The Phillies announced this morning that catcher J.T. Realmuto has been placed on the Covid-19-related injured list. Fellow catcher Rafael Marchan is up from Triple-A Lehigh Valley to take his spot on the active roster for the time being.

The team did not indicate at this time whether Realmuto has tested positive or is on the Covid list as a close contact or for contact-tracing purposes. In the event of a positive test, he’d be away from the club for a minimum of 10 days.

Realmuto, 30, is out to the finest start of his career in 2021, slashing a robust .314/.418/.520 with four homers, seven doubles, a triple and three steals through his first 33 games. That excellent production comes despite suffering a fractured thumb that cost him much of Spring Training. Recently, Realmuto has missed a couple games due to a minor knee injury, though the expectation had been that he’d avoid the IL for that particular issue.

With Realmuto sidelined for a yet-to-be-determined period of time, the Phillies will turn catching duties over to Andrew Knapp and the aforementioned Marchan. That pairing certainly can’t be expected to replicate Realmuto’s contributions at the plate — few catchers could — but Knapp did turn in a .278/.404/.444 line through 89 plate appearances last year. He’s out to a much slower start in 2021, however, and is an overall .228/.332/.345 hitter in 712 Major League plate appearances. The 22-year-old Marchan is one of the organization’s top prospects and is out to a .250/.429/.313 start through 21 plate appearances in Triple-A. He went 4-for-8 with a homer and a walk in a brief MLB debut effort last summer.

Phillies’ Adam Haseley Returns From Personal Leave

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Outfielder Adam Haseley has rejoined the Phillies after a month-long leave of absence, Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer was among those to report.

Haseley stepped away on April 14 for personal reasons, leading the Phillies to place him on the restricted list. He can remain on that list for up to another 30 days, and in the meantime, Haseley will get back in shape at the Phillies’ facility in Clearwater, Fla. Expectations are that he will go on a minor league rehab assignment when he’s ready.

Haseley, now 25, was the eighth overall pick of the Phillies in the 2017 draft. He has since hit well in the minors, including a line of .294/.337/.471 (116 wRC+) with two home runs during his 78-plate appearance Triple-A debut in 2019. However, that success so far hasn’t carried over to the majors, where Haseley has batted .264/.322/.373 (84 wRC+) with five home runs in 355 PA. He got off to a slow start across 21 PA this season (.190/.190/.238) for a club that hasn’t found a solution in center field. Odubel Herrera, Mickey Moniak and Roman Quinn have joined Haseley in struggling to varying degrees.

Tigers Re-Sign Franklin Perez To Minors Deal

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The Tigers have re-signed right-hander Franklin Perez to a minor league contract, the team announced. Detroit put Perez on release waivers on Wednesday, but he cleared and will return to the organization he has been with since 2017. He won’t occupy a 40-man roster spot as a result of this deal.

Perez was a prospect of significance when the Tigers acquired him as part of their Justin Verlander trade with Houston, but he hasn’t been able to stay healthy since switching organizations. The Tigers’ version has thrown just 27 minor league innings, none above the High-A level, owing in part to ongoing shoulder problems. Perez won’t pitch at all this season after the Tigers revealed Tuesday that he will undergo right shoulder surgery.

Despite his health issues, the Tigers understandably don’t want to give up on Perez, who’s still just 23 years old. While he’s no longer the high-end farmhand he used to be, Perez still ranked as a top 35 Tigers prospect at Baseball America (No. 28) and FanGraphs (No. 34) entering the season. Of course, this latest setback hasn’t done anything to help Perez’s stock.

Dodgers Sign Nate Jones

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The Dodgers have signed veteran right-hander Nate Jones to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A Oklahoma City, per their Triple-A communications director Alex Freedman (Twitter link). Jones, a client of Sterling Sports Management, was designated for assignment and released by the Braves earlier in the week after a brief stint with Atlanta.

The 35-year-old Jones parlayed an excellent Spring Training effort into an Opening Day spot in the Atlanta ’pen but struggled mightily out of the gates with his new club. In 10 1/3 innings, he surrendered six runs (four earned) on the strength of eight hits and 10 walks.

Jones was once an excellent setup man with the White Sox but has struggled to stay on the field and put up lackluster results when healthy in recent seasons. In parts of eight seasons with the ChiSox, he pitched to a 3.12 ERA over the life of 291 1/3 innings. Whether he can ever reclaim that form remains to be seen, but Jones came out of the gates in 2021 with a still-very-healthy 95.8 mph average velocity on his heater. He’ll give the Dodgers some experienced depth in Oklahoma City and could eventually work his way onto the big league roster, particularly given the number of injuries in the L.A. bullpen. The Dodgers are currently without David Price, Corey Knebel, Brusdar Graterol and Scott Alexander.

Mariners Sign David Huff

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The Mariners announced Friday that they’ve inked veteran lefty David Huff to a minor league deal and assigned him to Triple-A Tacoma.

It’s been five years since the now-36-year-old Huff last pitched in the big leagues with the division-rival Angels. That pairing didn’t go particularly well, as Huff was clobbered for seven runs in a tiny sample of 5 1/3 innings. From 2011-15, Huff tossed 180 innings of 4.20 ERA ball between the Indians, Yankees, Dodgers and Giants.

In the years since his last big league appearance, Huff has spent considerable time pitching overseas and found a good bit of success along the way. He pitched with the Korea Baseball Organization’s LG Twins from 2016-17, totaling 199 innings of 2.66 ERA ball before jumping to Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. Huff spent the 2018-19 seasons pitching to a 4.50 ERA in 160 innings with Japan’s Yakult Swallows, and he tossed 14 1/3 solid innings last year in the independent Constellation Energy League during the shortened 2020 campaign. He’d previously signed a minor league deal with the D-backs for the 2020 season, but Huff was among the many minor leaguers cut loose after the season was halted.

Huff is a depth add for the Mariners at this point, but it’s feasible that given the number of injuries Seattle has incurred on its pitching staff, he could eventually get a look for a spot start or perhaps a long relief role out of the ’pen. The Mariners have lost James Paxton to Tommy John surgery and are in danger of losing righty Ljay Newsome to the same procedure. They also announced yesterday that Nick Margevicius has been diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome. Marco Gonzales, meanwhile, has been sidelined with a forearm strain, although the expectation is that he’ll return to the club sometime next week.

Regardless, the slate of injuries has thinned out the team’s Triple-A depth and pushed ballyhooed prospect Logan Gilbert up to the big leagues, where he’ll likely be given a chance to claim a rotation spot in the long term. As such, there’s room for a veteran like Huff to join the rotation in Tacoma and give the club a veteran option on which they can call, should a need arise.

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