D-Backs Place Robbie Ray On 10-Day DL With Strained Oblique
TODAY: Ray has officially been placed on the 10-day DL, per a club announcement. Reliever Silvino Bracho has been called up to replace him on the active roster.
The diagnosis is a grade two strain for Ray, as Zach Buchanan of The Athletic was among those to tweet. There’s still quite a lot of potential variability in the amount of time Ray could miss, but that portends a fairly lengthy stint on ice. Southpaw starter Tyler Skaggs, for instance, suffered a similar injury almost exactly one year ago, and did not return until early August of 2017.
YESTERDAY: Diamondbacks left-hander Robbie Ray departed his start against the Nationals on Sunday with a strained right oblique, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic was among those to report. Ray exited after 1 1/3 innings and 21 pitches.
Given what we know about oblique strains, it seems like a strong bet that Ray will head to the disabled list in short order. It’s unclear how much time he’ll miss, though this injury often sidelines players for several weeks. As Zach Buchanan of The Athletic notes, Diamondbacks reliever Randall Delgado has been out since the beginning of spring training with an oblique strain.
An extended absence for Ray would leave the D-backs without two members of their season-opening rotation, as righty Taijuan Walker recently succumbed to an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. While Ray’s injury isn’t nearly that catastrophic, it may nonetheless deprive the D-backs of one of the game’s premier strikeout artists for a while. The 26-year-old has averaged a ridiculous 14.64 strikeouts per nine across 26 1/3 innings this season, though he has somewhat offset that with an untenable walk rate (5.53 BB/9). Ray has also induced grounders at only a 32.2 percent clip, which has helped lead to a high home run-to-fly ball rate (19.2 percent) and a bloated ERA (4.88). He managed a stingy 2.89 ERA over 162 innings last year, when his walk, grounder and homer numbers were significantly better.
Even though Ray’s run prevention hasn’t been in top form yet, the D-backs still managed to win four of his five starts prior to Sunday. After unexpectedly clinching a playoff spot last year, Arizona has raced to a 19-7 mark and a five-game lead in the NL West early in 2018. But the Diamondbacks’ starting depth, which was a question mark entering the season, is being put to the test.
Should Ray miss time, the D-backs could turn to either Braden Shipley or Troy Scribner – two Triple-A hurlers on their 40-man roster – to join Zack Greinke, Zack Godley, Patrick Corbin and Matt Koch in their rotation. The club doesn’t have any other healthy depth starters on its 40-man, though veteran Kris Medlen is on hand at Triple-A. Medlen hasn’t been effective this year, however, with a 6.00 ERA/5.91 FIP in 18 innings (four starts).
Twins To Promote Fernando Romero
Twins skipper Paul Molitor announced today that the club would promote top pitching prospect Fernando Romero to join the rotation, as Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN was among those to tweet. He’ll take the ball on Wednesday night.
Romero, 23, has steadily moved up the ladder since entering the Twins’ system in 2012. He cracked the top-100 prospect lists of MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus entering the current season, following a year in which he threw 125 innings of 3.53 ERA ball, with 8.6 K/9 and 3.2 BB/9 along with a 52.0% groundball rate, at the Double-A level.
The results have continued into the 2018 season, as Romero has now held opposing teams to a 2.57 earned run average through 21 frames in his first few outings at the Triple-A level. He’s continuing to get plenty of groundballs with his high-velocity sinker, though his 20:10 K/BB ratio isn’t exactly scintillating and may hint at the need for further refinement of his slider and change.
Some prospect hounds see some risk in Romero’s profile, particularly as to whether he’ll have long-term health issues and/or whether he’ll stick in the rotation. For now, though, they’ll bet on his talent with the organization badly in need of a shot in the arm after a 9-14 start to the season.
Fellow righty Phil Hughes will be bumped into a relief role to accommodate Romero’s move into the rotation, though a roster move has yet to be announced. Hughes was knocked around in two poor starts to open the year, and is coming off of two consecutive poor and injury-plagued seasons, so he’ll look to get back on track in the bullpen.
Phillies Place Victor Arano On 10-Day DL
The Phillies have placed righty Victor Arano on the 10-day DL, per a club announcement. He has been diagnosed with a strained right rotator cuff.
To replace Arano on the active roster, the Phils have promoted fellow right Zach Eflin. That move had been anticipated, as he’ll make a start tomorrow night — thus filling the rotation spot vacated (at least temporarily) by Ben Lively.
It does not seem there’s much cause for long-term concern regarding Arano, a 23-year-old reliever who has swiftly turned into a key cog for the Phils. The strain is said to be “mild,” MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki tweets.
Certainly, the Phils will hope the young hurler is not facing more than a brief respite. After a strong debut in 2017, Arano entered the current season with fairly high expectations. He has delivered beyond any reasonable hope thus far, allowing just one earned run on five hits and one unintentional walk over a dozen frames. Throwing his slider on more than half of his deliveries to the plate, Arano has carried an 18.1% swinging-strike rate through his 22 2/3 total MLB innings.
Eflin, meanwhile, will look to improve upon his less-than-promising major-league numbers to date. Through 127 2/3 innings over the past two seasons, he carries a 5.85 ERA with 4.7 K/9 and 2.0 BB/9. There’s probably an opportunity to grab ahold of a starting job if he throws the ball well, though there’s no indication at this point that Lively will be out for long.
Pirates Move Steven Brault To Bullpen
The Pirates are moving left-hander Steven Brault to the bullpen, tweets Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic. For the time being, that means that righty Nick Kingham will remain in the rotation and get another start on Friday on the heels of yesterday’s historic debut, during which he took a perfect game into the seventh inning.
Manager Clint Hurdle told reporters, however, that there are no guarantees for Kingham beyond his second start. The club has a number of off-days on the horizon, and righty Joe Musgrove is expected to return later this month. Of course, Kingham already bought himself a second start after what looked to be a spot start Sunday, and it stands to reason that another strong performance could further force the Pirates’ hand. Ivan Nova, Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams and Chad Kuhl will continue to hold down the top four spots in the Pittsburgh rotation, with either of Kingham or Musgrove now looking to be the leading candidates for the final spot.
[Related: Updated Pittsburgh Pirates depth chart]
Brault, meanwhile, will give the Pirates a much-needed lefty in a bullpen where closer Felipe Vazquez is the lone southpaw. Josh Smoker opened the season in the ‘pen but has since been optioned to Triple-A, leaving Hurdle with a heavily right-handed relief corps.
Even if Kingham is in the Majors to stay, he’s spent enough time in the minor leagues this season to fall shy of a full year of MLB service time. He’ll be controlled through the 2024 season at the very least, though he’s currently on track to qualify as a Super Two player, meaning he’d be eligible for arbitration four times rather than the standard three.
Daniel Norris Requires Groin Surgery, Will Miss Eight To Twelve Weeks
The Tigers announced today that left-hander Daniel Norris has been placed on the 10-day disabled list due to a left groin strain. Manager Ron Gardenhire further explained to reporters that Norris will undergo surgery to alleviate pressure in the area, and Norris himself revealed that he’ll miss the next eight to 12 weeks as a result of the procedure (Twitter links via MLB.com’s Jason Beck). He’ll have the surgery Thursday, tweets Katie Strang of The Athletic. Left-hander Chad Bell was recalled from Triple-A to take Norris’ spot on the roster for now.
Norris, who turned 25 last week, was a feel-good story back in 2016 when he returned from thyroid cancer and tossed 69 1/3 innings of 3.38 ERA ball in 13 starts with Detroit. The Tigers originally picked up Norris, Matthew Boyd and Jairo Labourt in the 2015 David Price blockbuster with the Blue Jays in hopes of landing multiple long-term rotation pieces. Norris at one point looked to be on his way to become that mid-rotation fixture they’d coveted, but he’s stalled out a bit over the past 13 months. Since Opening Day 2017, he’s posted an unsightly 5.38 ERA with 8.0 K/9, 4.1 BB/9 and 1.2 HR/9 in 117 innings (20 starts, seven relief appearances). Norris also missed time last season with a strained left groin, so it stands to reason that the injury has been a significant part of his recent struggles.
[Related: Detroit Tigers depth chart]
While the injury could sideline Norris into July or even August, there’s till ample time for him to rebound back to health and prove he can be a viable piece of the pitching staff moving forward. The Tigers control Norris all the way through the 2021 season, although he will be out of minor league options next year, so he’ll need to stick in the Majors beginning next spring at the latest. Nonetheless, given the upside the former top prospect possesses and given the Tigers’ rebuilding status, there’s no reason to think he won’t be given every opportunity to solidify himself as a Major League contributor once he returns from injury.
With Norris now out of the picture for the foreseeable future, the Tigers will utilize Michael Fulmer, Francisco Liriano, Mike Fiers, Jordan Zimmermann and Boyd in the starting rotation.
MLBTR Chat Transcript: Braves, Trade Targets, Reds
Click here to read the transcript of today’s chat with Tim Dierkes.
David Hale Elects Free Agency
The Twins announced Monday that righty David Hale cleared outright waivers after last week’s DFA and rejected an assignment to Triple-A in favor of free agency. He’ll hit the open market in search of a new club after extremely brief stints with the Yankees and Twins thus far in 2018.
Hale, 30, signed a minor league pact with the Yankees over the winter and headed to Triple-A to open the season. After 14 2/3 innings there with a 5.32 ERA but a much more encouraging 10-to-2 K/BB ratio and 50 percent grounder rate, New York selected his contract to add some length to a depleted bullpen. He tossed two shutout innings for the Yankees but was designated for assignment anyhow, only to be claimed by the Twins and subsequently tagged (by the Yankees) for four runs in three innings of relief.
In all, Hale has totaled 183 2/3 innings at the big league level, most of which came with the Braves and Rockies. In that time, he’s posted a 4.56 ERA with 6.1 K/9, 3.2 BB/9 and a 51.9 percent ground-ball rate. Though he doesn’t miss many bats, Hale has done a good job in terms of limiting hard contact (career 27.1 percent). He’s worked as both a starter and a reliever and has a minor league option remaining, so he could provide some depth for a club with more 40-man roster flexibility than either the Twins or Yankees has to offer at present.
AL East Notes: Gray, Rays, Teoscar
Sonny Gray has been clobbered by opposing hitters this season, and Sheryl Ring of Fangraphs suggests that the root of his struggles could be an organizational pitching philosophy that the Yankees seem to be employing. As Fangraphs’ Jeff Sullivan highlighted in an excellent piece earlier this month, the Yankees are using far and away the fewest percentage of fastballs in the league in 2018 — continuing a trend of increasingly diminished fastball usage in recent years. Ring notes that Gray, however, has never thrown fewer than 55 percent heaters (combining both his four-seamer and two-seamer/sinker). Gray’s success against lefties, in particular, has been in no small part attributable to the success of his fastball up and in on lefty bats, she observes. While there could obviously be multiple factors at play — Ring also notes a mechanical disparity between Gray’s wind-up from 2015 and from 2018, for instance — it certainly seems plausible that Gray’s increased use of breaking pitches is making it more difficult to position himself in favorable counts. He’s thrown a first-pitch strike to just 50 percent of the hitters he’s faced in 2018 — down from a career-best 61.7 percent in 2017.
More from the division…
- Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times takes an interesting look at the number of pitchers developed by the Rays in recent years, pointing out that there have been more games started by pitchers who were originally Rays (45 of 722) in the Majors this season than any other team. That doesn’t include starters-turned-relievers like Wade Davis, Jake McGee and Felipe Vazquez. As Topkin notes, that could be used as a damning method of lamenting the frequency with which Tampa Bay has to trade its talent or as a credit to the organization’s general ability to develop quality pitching. Topkin’s column runs through the best of the best in that group of original Rays and also looks at some names who could ascend that list.
- Teoscar Hernandez‘s superlative play with the Blue Jays dating back to last September means he won’t be going back to Triple-A Buffalo anytime soon, as Steve Buffery of the Toronto Sun writes. Manager John Gibbons notes that while the organization saw “a pretty good player” last year when acquiring Hernandez at the non-waiver deadline, Hernandez has improved in 2018 thanks to improved plate discipline and strike-zone recognition. “Who knows what happens (when Donaldson and Tulowitzki come off the DL), but [Hernandez has] got a chance to be an elite player in this game because he does things so easily,” said Gibbons. “He uses the whole field and he’s got as much power as anybody you’re ever going to find.” Hernandez is hitting .316/.391/.702 through 64 plate appearances in 2018 and has posted a collective .283/.340/.641 slash with a dozen homers in 159 PAs since coming over in a trade last July.
AL Central Notes: Tomlin, Zimmermann, Draft
Right-hander Josh Tomlin could be approaching a crossroads in his career with the Indians, writes Zack Meisel of The Athletic (subscription link). The 33-year-old has made four starts this season and surrendered at least five runs in each of them, totaling 19 earned runs in 17 2/3 innings of work out of the rotation. Tomlin’s starts have too often put a tax on the bullpen, Meisel writes, and haven’t given a struggling Indians lineup the ability to compete to keep the game close. Injuries to Danny Salazar and Ryan Merritt have preserved Tomlin’s spot for now, but his road won’t get any easier moving forward, as his next start is set to come at Yankee Stadium. Tomlin, it should be noted, has had plenty of sustained success in the big leagues and posted excellent K/BB numbers in 2016-17 while making 55 largely serviceable starts in the Cleveland rotation. However, Meisel posits that one of Adam Plutko, Shane Bieber or veteran Alexi Ogando could be looked at as an alternative sooner rather than later if Tomlin isn’t able to return to form.
More from the division…
- Similarly, an injury to Tigers left Daniel Norris will likely dissuade the club from making any kind of drastic move of putting Jordan Zimmermann in the ‘pen, writes Evan Woodbery of MLive.com. However, Woodbery notes that Zimmermann’s tenure in Detroit is rapidly beginning to resemble the final few years of Anibal Sanchez‘s ill-fated five-year deal. Zimmermann’s K/BB numbers early in the season are more encouraging than in 2016 or 2017, he points out, but the bottom-line results still aren’t there. Woodbery suggests that manager Ron Gardenhire is losing patience, as he’s openly questioning the quality of Zimmermann’s pitches — an uncharacteristic trend for manager that has historically shied away from being too critical of his veterans in a public setting.
- Carlos Collazo and J.J. Cooper of Baseball America still project the Tigers to select Auburn right-hander Casey Mize with the first overall pick in the 2018 draft. As they explain, while organizations like the Astros and Braves have saved money with top picks in recent drafts and reallocated the savings to first-round talents who are considered tough signs later in the draft, that strategy is riskier than it would be in most years this time around. Mize is “a cut above everyone else” in the draft, per the Baseball America duo, and the Tigers would be gambling by trying to get creative at the top of the draft when two clubs (Kansas City and Tampa Bay) will each have three selections between Detroit’s first and second picks. Collazo and Cooper have expanded their mock draft out to pick No. 15 in their latest version.
Danny Espinosa Opts Out Of Blue Jays Deal
10:25am: Espinosa exercised an opt-out clause in his contract with the Jays, tweets Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.
8:25am: Veteran infielder Danny Espinosa has been released by the Blue Jays organization, per an announcement from Toronto’s Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo.
The 31-year-old Espinosa opened the 2017 season at the big league level with the Angels but has since bounced to four other organizations in that time. He saw brief stints in the Majors with both the Mariners and Rays (eight games apiece) before season’s end in 2017, and he was with the Yankees in Spring Training before being granted his release and latching on with the Jays on a minor league pact.
Espinosa has had a rough start to the Triple-A season with the Bisons, hitting .232/.271/.286 with 15 strikeouts against three walks in 60 trips to the plate. That inauspicious slash comes on the heels of a combined .197/.286/.344 batting line in 896 plate appearances at the big league level across the 2016-17 seasons.
Though the past couple years have been a struggle at the plate for the switch-hitter, he’s long carried a strong defensive reputation and is capable of playing both middle-infield spots. He’s also just a season removed from slugging 24 homers for the Nationals in 2016, indicating that there’s still some pop in his bat.
Toronto’s offseason pickups of Yangervis Solarte, Aledmys Diaz and Gift Ngoepe created plenty of middle-infield competition within the organization, and the promotion of international signee Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to the Majors only further impeded Espinosa’s path to a potential roster spot. He’ll now look to latch on with what will somewhat remarkably be his sixth organization of the past calendar year — presumably one with lesser middle-infield depth than the Jays have at present.