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Padres To Recall Chris Paddack

By Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 7:03pm CDT

Padres ace Chris Paddack, optioned to the minors June 12, will return to start in the majors this Saturday, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

It was an eyebrow-raising decision when the Padres demoted Paddack a week ago, though the move quickly became understandable when it was revealed they did it to give him a breather. The 23-year-old right-hander has already pitched 65 2/3 innings this season, which comes close to the professional-high 90 frames the former Tommy John surgery recipient amassed in the minors in 2018.

One of the game’s elite prospects entering the season, Paddack has lived up to the billing thus far. He owns a 3.15 ERA/3.73 FIP with tremendous strikeout and walk rates (9.87 K/9 and 1.78 BB/9) through the first 12 starts and 65 2/3 innings of his major league career. But Paddack has stumbled somewhat since the outset of May, when his ERA sat at just 1.55, which likely played into the Padres’ decision to send him to the Single-A level on a short-term basis.

Upon Paddack’s return, he’ll rejoin a team which continues to hang around the National League’s playoff race. Winners of four in a row, the Padres are only 2 1/2 games back of the NL’s second wild-card spot at the moment.

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San Diego Padres Chris Paddack

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Diamondbacks Sign Carlos Asuaje

By Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 6:14pm CDT

The Diamondbacks have reached a minor league agreement with infielder Carlos Asuaje, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports.

Asuaje’s now returning to a major league franchise after spending the first few months of the season in the Korea Baseball Organization. The Rangers released Asuaje last December, allowing him to sign with the KBO’s Lotte Giants, but the Korean club let the 27-year-old go on June 9. Asuaje hit .252/.356/.368 in 194 plate appearances with the Giants this season.

To this point, all of Asuaje’s major league action has come with the Padres. He debuted in San Diego in 2016 and then managed a .240/.312/.329 line (75 wRC+) with six home runs in 586 PA through last season. Asuaje picked up nearly all of his playing time at second base along the way.

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Arizona Diamondbacks Transactions Carlos Asuaje

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Diamondbacks To Sign First-Rounder Blake Walston

By Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 5:48pm CDT

The Diamondbacks have reached an agreement with first-round left-hander Blake Walston, the team announced. Walston received $2.45MM, just below the $2,653,400 slot value, Jim Callis of MLB.com tweets.

The Walston agreement brings the Diamondbacks closer to finishing their heavy lifting with respect to this year’s draft. They already signed fellow top 60 picks Corbin Carroll, Brennan Malone, Drey Jamison and Ryne Nelson before reaching a deal with Walston. That group helped comprise quite a 2019 haul for the Diamondbacks, who entered this draft with a league-high $16,093,700 to spend on their selections.

Arizona received the pick it used on Walston because it failed to sign 2018 first-rounder Matt McClain a year ago. In Walston, the team’s getting a prospect whom FanGraphs, Baseball America, ESPN’s Keith Law and MLB.com each ranked in or near the top 50 players available entering the draft. Law (subscription required) noted the high school hurler from North Carolina could be difficult to sign, but the Diamondbacks now have the 17-year-old under wraps.

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2019 MLB Draft Signings Arizona Diamondbacks Blake Walston

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Joey Gallo Begins Rehab Assignment

By Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 4:24pm CDT

Rangers outfielder Joey Gallo is set to begin a rehab assignment at the Rookie level, the team announced. Gallo will have 20 days to work his way back to the majors, barring setbacks.

Gallo hasn’t played since suffering a left oblique strain June 1. The injury cut off a superstar-caliber start for Gallo, who was amid a career-best season when he went down. The lefty-swinging Gallo burst out of the gate with a .276/.421/.653 line (170 wRC+), 17 home runs and a personal-high 3.3 fWAR in 214 plate appearances. The 25-year-old looked like a strong bet to reach the 40-HR mark for the third straight season at the time of his injury, but it’ll be all the more difficult now considering the time he has missed. Gallo has sat out 17 games and counting to this point.

The Gallo-less Rangers have gone an impressive 10-7 in his absence, putting them in a dead heat with the Red Sox for the American League’s second wild-card spot. Even with Gallo, Texas is a long shot to actually end up in the postseason, but his return can only improve its odds of making a Cinderella run.

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Texas Rangers Joey Gallo

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Pitcher Notes: Zimmermann, Yanks, Cahill, Mariners, White Sox

By Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 4:06pm CDT

The Tigers announced that they’ve reinstated right-hander Jordan Zimmerman from the 10-day injured list. Zimmermann, who hasn’t taken a major league mound since April 25 because of a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow, will start Wednesday. Zimmermann’s nearly two-month absence added injury to insult in what has been a terrible Tigers tenure for the 33-year-old. A run as a front-line starter for the Nationals convinced the Tigers to give Zimmermann a five-year, $110MM contract entering 2016, but he has come up way short of expectations since then. Now 33, Zimmermann owns a 5.29 ERA/4.92 FIP with 6.34 K/9, 2.26 BB/9 and a 36.7 percent groundball rate in 427 innings as a Tiger.

  • Yankees southpaw Jordan Montgomery seemingly isn’t recovering as hoped from June 2018 Tommy John surgery, as Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News reports. Montgomery exited a live batting practice session Tuesday after throwing 15 pitches. Manager Aaron Boone said afterward Montgomery “had a little discomfort.” The Yankees hope Montgomery will be able to help their pitching staff later in the season, Ackert notes, but that seems even less likely now. The 26-year-old functioned as a full-time starter from 2017-18, a 182 2/3-inning span in which he recorded a solid 3.84 ERA/4.09 FIP with 8.23 K/9, 3.10 BB/9 and a 41.4 percent grounder rate.
  • Angels righty Trevor Cahill will make a rehab start Friday with Triple-A Salt Lake, Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register was among those to report. Cahill has been on the IL since June 8 with soreness in his pitching elbow. The offseason signing got off to a horrible start before then, as shown by a 7.18 ERA/6.37 FIP in 57 2/3 innings.
  • The shoulder MRI that Mariners righty Felix Hernandez underwent Tuesday didn’t show any new issues, per Greg Johns of MLB.com (Twitter links). As a result, Hernandez – out since May 11 – will resume his rehab, likely throwing a few bullpen sessions before taking the ball again in the minors. Meanwhile, teammate and fellow righty Sam Tuivailala will begin a rehab stint at the Single-A level Friday. Tuivailala, a July 2018 Mariners trade acquisition, has been out since last August with a right Achilles injury.
  • The White Sox have placed southpaw Manny Banuelos on the 10-day IL with shoulder inflammation and recalled righty Carson Fulmer, Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times tweets. This is the second time in 2019 that shoulder issues have sent Banuelos to the shelf. Injuries have been a common theme throughout the pro career of Banuelos, once a well-regarded prospect with the Yankees. The 28-year-old has pitched to an ugly 6.90 ERA/6.78 FIP with 8.28 K/9, 5.91 BB/9 and a 33.3 percent grounder rate in 45 2/3 innings (13 appearances, eight starts) with the White Sox this season.
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Chicago White Sox Detroit Tigers Los Angeles Angels New York Yankees Notes Seattle Mariners Felix Hernandez Jordan Zimmermann Manny Banuelos Sam Tuivailala Trevor Cahill

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Twins Place Marwin Gonzalez On IL, Select Sean Poppen

By Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 2:57pm CDT

The Twins have placed utilityman Marwin Gonzalez on the 10-day injured list with a right hamstring strain, the team announced. They also sent reliever Blake Parker to the family medical emergency list. To replace Gonzalez and Parker, the Twins recalled utility player Willians Astudillo and selected righty Sean Poppen’s contract from Triple-A Rochester. The club also transferred lefty Adalberto Mejia to the 60-day IL.

Gonzalez was one of the Twins’ highest-profile acquisitions last winter, when they signed the ex-Astro to a two-year, $21MM guarantee. The 30-year-old didn’t make an ideal first impression with the Twins, as he owned a meager .579 OPS as recently as May 10. But the switch-hitting Gonzalez has come alive since then for the first-place club, evidenced by his .255/.323/.420 line (98 wRC+) with nine home runs across 254 plate appearances. Defensively, the versatile Gonzalez has primarily played third base this season, but he has also logged multiple appearances at first, second and in the corner outfield.

Poppen, 25, is in line to make his Twins debut three years after they chose him in the 19th round of the 2016 draft. Kiley McDaniel of FanGraphs wrote back in May 2018 that Poppen possesses “three pitches that flash above average and good control.” Poppen has gotten off to an outstanding start this year in his first Triple-A action, having posted a 1.55 ERA/3.61 FIP with 10.55 K/9 and 3.72 BB/9 over 29 innings.

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Minnesota Twins Transactions Adalberto Mejia Marwin Gonzalez Sean Poppen

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Pirates Activate Trevor Williams, Option Mitch Keller

By Jeff Todd and Connor Byrne | June 19, 2019 at 2:53pm CDT

The Pirates announced today that they have activated right-hander Trevor Williams. To open an active roster spot, the club optioned fellow righty Mitch Keller.

Williams ended up missing just over a month of action with a side strain. Before going on the injured list on May 17, the 27-year-old Williams pitched to a matching 3.33 ERA/3.33 FIP with 7.0 K/9, 1.67 BB/9 and .67 HR/9 in 54 innings. Williams, Joe Musgrove and the currently injured pair of Jordan Lyles and Jameson Taillon have been the Pirates’ most productive starters this season. Lyles, out since June 10 with left hamstring tightness, will make a minor league rehab start Sunday, Adam Berry of MLB.com tweets.

Pittsburgh turned to Keller, 23, in hopes the premier prospect would help provide answers for an injury-laden rotation. Instead, Keller has allowed 14 earned runs on 21 hits and six walks through 12 innings and three starts thus far. But Keller was fairly effective in a loss to Detroit on Tuesday, when he yielded two earned runs (four total) on four hits and two walks in five innings, and has already notched 15 strikeouts in his big league career.

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Pittsburgh Pirates Jordan Lyles Mitch Keller Trevor Williams

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The Mets Bullpen: Makeover Fail?

By Jeff Todd | June 19, 2019 at 2:32pm CDT

It’s still too soon to make any conclusive statements on the outcome of the Mets’ offseason roster revamping efforts. Relief pitching, in particular, can turn on a dime. But it’s safe to say that the team’s bullpen makeover is not looking pretty at this moment.

GM Brodie Van Wagenen made the relief corps a key part of his offseason strategy. He had already sewn up much of the roster work by mid-December, at which time he declared that the organization had “shored up the bullpen with two premium arms.” The club went on to add a pair of lefties and entered camp thinking it had made huge strides in the pen.

The relief additions absorbed a large chunk of the Mets’ somewhat limited transactional capital. Setup man Jeurys Familia took a $30MM guarantee over three years, while southpaw Justin Wilson went for $10MM in two seasons. Combined, that was just over half the cash promised by the Mets in free agency. Adding high-octane young closer Edwin Diaz meant taking on big money through the Robinson Cano contract and coughing up recent #6 overall draft choice Jarred Kelenic, who is streaking up prospect boards. The deal also sent out veteran righty Anthony Swarzak, who hasn’t been perfect but does carry a 3.12 ERA with a 33:14 K/BB ratio on the season.

Not so much, as it turns out. The Mets are leading the league lead in blown saves, having accrued a huge volume of them in the past thirty days. The relief unit has fared poorly as a whole in terms of bottom-line results, though it has hardly been the worst (that’d be the division-rival Nats) in sapping win-percentage. While the overall picture isn’t catastrophic, the failures have been magnified by situational timing.

Glance at the Mets-specific WPA leaderboard and you’ll find Seth Lugo leading the way. That’s unsurprising, as the holdover hurler has been the team’s most effective relief pitcher. The only other clear positives in WPA? Wilmer Font, Tim Peterson, Hector Santiago, and Ryan O’Rourke — an assemblage of pitchers who have combined for more walks than strikeouts. Only Font, who has turned in passable work as a long man, is even still on the roster. Diaz leads the team in WPA-added (4.11), but has wiped out the positive contributions with several meltdowns (-4.64).

That’s … sort of the opposite of what the Mets were hoping for. An efficiently constructed bullpen can eat innings well enough when a game is out of reach and maximize a team’s chances of winning the games in which it’s positioned to do so. We often excuse sequencing luck and situational failings for other starters and position players, citing a need to look at broad samples. That’s true to an extent in the relief world, but at the end of the day, high-leverage performance and bottom-line results are the entire game for short-work pitchers.

So, it has been a wreck thus far, but can we at least explain away some of the struggles? And can the pen be salvaged?

Let’s start with the new additions — especially, the marquee closer. Diaz is still just 25. He’s averaging over 97 mph with his heater and carrying the same spin rates he did in his unreal 2018 effort. While his swinging-strike rate is down a touch from last year, it’s a healthy 17.7%. He’s pounding the zone like he did in 2018. The difference? He has gone from a .281 BABIP-against and 10.6% HR/FB rate to .406 and 19.2%, respectively. Statcast tells us there’s likely some luck in there — Diaz’s .276 xwOBA falls well under his .331 wOBA — but also some cause for concern. Opposing hitters are compiling a whopping 47.8% hard-contact rate and 15.2 degree launch angle. It seems the physical tools are still in good working order, so this may be a matter of finding some adjustments or simply waiting out a spell of misfortune.

That’s reasonably promising. Diaz was acquired to get results, but there’s no particular reason to think he can’t get back to doing so. The Mets still need to get him the ball with a lead, however, and there are greater questions with regard to the man that was hired to be the top setup option.

Familia was back to being his sturdy and reliable self in 2018 after an injury-riddled ’17 campaign. But he’s now on the shelf for the second time this year with shoulder issues. And he carries a 7.81 ERA with 28 strikeouts and 21 walks in 27 2/3 innings. The worries go well beyond the results. Familia has lost velocity and chases out of the zone, resulting in a swinging-strike drop. There’s some promise in the Statcast numbers, as Familia is only allowing 32.1% hard contact and has an even bigger x/wOBA spread than Diaz (.071). That’s some consolation, but there’s still quite a bit of uncertainty — especially in the near term — for the 29-year-old.

There are health problems as well for Wilson, who has been limited by elbow troubles and is now dealing with another setback. It’s hard to draw many conclusions from the 9 1/3 innings that the southpaw did throw. He sat in his customary 95 mph range but threw first-pitch strikes at a career-worst 50% rate, exhibited a swinging-strike drop, and allowed two long balls. The Mets’ other southpaw addition, Luis Avilan, was hammered before going down with his own elbow problems.

The situation is rather grim at the moment. Of their new additions, only Diaz is presently available. He and Lugo are holding down the high-leverage spots, with the struggling Robert Gsellman third on the totem pole despite a 4.81 ERA. Font has delivered decent results of late, but isn’t getting strikeouts and has bounced around the league in recent seasons. And those are the established members of the staff.

Otherwise, the Mets are carrying a group of unfamiliar arms. Daniel Zamora and Chris Flexen have not been good in short samples. Stephen Nogosek is a total wild card. Brooks Pounders has an awesome pitching name, but has already had a bit of a journeyman existence at 28 years of age. He has good numbers at Triple-A, but there’s a reason the Indians let him go. That group of unestablished hurlers followed an array of others who already failed to grab hold of MLB jobs. The Mets have now cycled through twenty relievers, one of whom (Nogosek) has yet to debut. Unsurprisingly, the cupboard is rather bare. The club hasn’t yet trotted out veteran Ervin Santana or called up youngster Anthony Kay, but the former hasn’t looked good and the latter is being developed as a starter. Arquimedes Caminero is the only other hurler in the organization with substantial MLB experience that hasn’t yet received a shot to this point. You can be sure he would have if he had shown any kind of spark at Syracuse.

Unfortunately, there’s really not much for the front office to do at this point but wait and hope while continuing to take chances on the spare pieces that shake loose from other clubs. That process has resulted thus far in Font and Pounders. The Mets simply aren’t in position — 3 games under .500, 7.5 off of the division pace — to force a significant trade. They’d be looking for multiple pieces regardless. It may take a miracle for Van Wagenen is to pull off this makeover, at least in the present campaign.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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MLBTR Originals New York Mets

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Yankees Release Danny Farquhar

By Jeff Todd | June 19, 2019 at 2:21pm CDT

The Yankees have released veteran right Danny Farquhar, according to MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch (via Twitter). He had been with the organization on a minor-league deal.

Farquhar, 32, was attempting to work back towards the MLB mound after suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm last season. It’s remarkable that he was even able to make that effort, let alone progress to the point that he was assigned to the Yanks’ top affiliate.

Unfortunately, the early showing wasn’t terribly promising. Farquhar surrendered three long balls and seven earned runs over three innings in two outings at Triple-A. While he also recorded four strikeouts, the Yankees were evidently satisfied that they wouldn’t be interested in his services at the MLB level this year.

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Marlins Acquire Cesar Puello

By Jeff Todd | June 19, 2019 at 2:01pm CDT

The Marlins have acquired outfielder Cesar Puello from the Angels, per a club announcement. Cash considerations are going to Los Angeles for the recently-designated Puello.

That explains the just-reported move to designate Rosell Herrera. In other news, the club placed starter Pablo Lopez on the 10-day injured list, as anticipated. Southpaw Jose Quijada will take the open roster spot for the time being. The club will ultimately still need to find a space for hurler Zac Gallen, who is slated to be promoted tomorrow.

The Fish have little to lose in giving a shot to Puello, who surprised in fill-in duty for the Halos. He slashed .390/.500/.683 in fifty plate appearances after racking up a .299/.434/.507 line in his 166 trips to the plate at Triple-A. Once considered a prospect of note, Puello has received only limited MLB opportunities but carries a .844 OPS in over fifteen hundred attempts at the highest level of the minors.

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Los Angeles Angels Miami Marlins Transactions Cesar Puello

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