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Heliot Ramos Day-To-Day With Sore Thumb

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Heliot Ramos has been battling a right thumb injury for the last week, telling reporters (including Shayna Rubin of the San Francisco Chronicle) that the discomfort has factored into his lack of production over the Giants’ last few days.  The thumb issue forced him to make an early exit from the Giants’ 6-4 loss to the Reds on Saturday and Ramos also didn’t play in today’s game.  The outfielder is day to day for now, though since the Giants’ next off-day isn’t until August 16, the club might be forced into a 10-day injured list placement for Ramos if the swelling doesn’t come down.

A longtime staple of top-100 prospect lists, Ramos didn’t show much in limited MLB action in 2022-23, but he has fully broken out after San Francisco called him back up to the Show in early May.  Ramos is hitting .285/.344/.491 with 15 home runs in 320 plate appearances, and this production earned him a spot on the NL All-Star roster.  Ramos’ emergence has helped keep the Giants in the playoff race, so missing him for any amount of time (IL placement or not) is a blow to the lineup.

Marlins Claim Derek Hill

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The Marlins announced that they have claimed outfielder Derek Hill off waivers from the Giants.  Hill was just designated for assignment yesterday, so he’ll quickly turn around and join his third different organization within the last two weeks.

The Giants themselves just claimed Hill on a waiver claim on July 23, after the Rangers put the outfielder on DFA waivers.  Hill’s brief stint in San Francisco included 13 plate appearances over five games, and for the 2024 season as a whole, Hill has hit .255/.293/.455 with three home runs in 58 plate appearances with the Rangers and Giants.  His time in Texas was technically two separate stints, as after he elected free agency after being outrighted off the Rangers’ roster earlier this season, he rejoined the team on another minor league contract.

Hill is out of minor league options, and thus the Marlins would also have to designate him for assignment if the Fish ever want to move Hill off the active roster and try to move him to the minors.  This is certainly a possibility given the ever-churning Miami roster, but since the Marlins have plenty of holes to fill in the wake of their trade deadline selloff, Hill might have some opportunity to stick around in a depth role.

Hill has appeared in each of the last five Major League seasons, with a .233/.281/.337 slash line over 362 career PA in the Show.  His plus speed and ability to handle all three outfield positions has translated to all levels, and Hill has much more impressive hitting numbers against Triple-A pitching.

Blake Snell Throws No-Hitter Against Reds

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Blake Snell made some more baseball history last night when the two-time Cy Young Award winner threw a no-hitter against the Reds.  The 18th no-hit game in the history of the New York/San Francisco Giants franchise, Snell’s gem saw him rack up 11 strikeouts against three walks on 114 pitches.  It was also the first time Snell had ever thrown eight full innings in any of his 202 career starts, let alone a complete game.

The no-no continues what has now become one of the better pitching stretches of all time.  Snell has an 0.55 ERA over his last five starts (33 IP), in what has been an incredible turn-around after an injury-plagued first half of the season.  Signing with the Giants only in the midpoint of March, the lack of a proper Spring Training resulted in Snell posting a 9.51 ERA in his first 23 2/3 innings and six starts, as well a pair of trips to the injured list.  It was after his latest return from the IL that Snell began his amazing five-start run, capped off with his legendary game yesterday in Cincinnati.  While the Giants received plenty of trade interest in Snell prior to last Tuesday’s deadline, keeping an in-form ace will go a long way towards helping San Francisco’s chances at the playoffs.

Doug Creek Passes Away

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Former major leaguer Doug Creek has passed away, according to multiple sources, including The Journal out of Martinsburg, West Virginia. The left-hander died at the age of 55 due to the effects of pancreatic cancer.

Creek was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1969 and went on to attend Georgia Tech. He worked as a starting pitcher for the Yellow Jackets and was drafted by the Cardinals with a seventh-round pick in 1991. In the minor leagues, he continued working out of the rotation until he got near the majors and was then shifted into a relief role.

He was able to make his major league debut with the Cards in 1995, tossing 6 2/3 scoreless innings that year. Prior to the 1996 season, he was traded to the Giants alongside Rich DeLucia and Allen Watson for Royce Clayton and a player to be named later, who was later named as Chris Wimmer.

Creek made 63 appearances for San Francisco in 1996 but with a 6.52 ERA. In 1997, an attempt was made to get Creek stretched back out, though without success. He had a 6.75 ERA in three major league starts and a 4.93 ERA in Triple-A. He went overseas for the 1998 season, pitching for the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He made six starts and one relief appearance with a 5.65 ERA.

He returned to North American ball and then spent the next few years as a journeyman left-hander, pitching for the Cubs, Devil Rays, Mariners, Blue Jays and Tigers. He finished his career with 289 1/3 innings pitched over 279 appearances. He had a 5.32 ERA, 22.2% strikeout rate and 15.1% walk rate. After leaving the baseball field, he headed out to the water. According to his obituary, he became a charter boat captain in Tampa Bay and competed as an angler on the Redfish Circuit.

We at MLBTR join the baseball world in sending our condolences to Creek’s family, friends, former teammates and coaches and all those mourning his passing.

Giants Designate Derek Hill For Assignment

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The Giants announced a series of roster moves today. Outfielder Mark Canha, acquired before the trade deadline, was added to the roster. They also selected outfielder Jerar Encarnación, a move that was previously reported, and reinstated right-hander Sean Hjelle from the bereavement list. To open roster spots for those three, the club optioned catcher Blake Sabol and infielder David Villar while outfielder Derek Hill was designated for assignment.

Hill, 28, was claimed off waivers from the Rangers just over a week ago. He got into five games since then, producing a line of .250/.308/.417 in 13 plate appearances. Combined with his time with the Rangers earlier in the season, he has a line of .255/.293/.455 for the year, which translates to a 107 wRC+ in 58 plate appearances.

Despite that generally cromulent performance, Hill keeps getting nudged off rosters since he’s out of options. The Rangers signed him to a minor league deal in the offseason and he got up to the majors with them for a couple of weeks starting in late May before being cut and re-signing another minor league deal with that club. He was selected back to the roster in late June and got another few weeks before going to the Giants on waivers.

Now that the trade deadline has passed, Hill will be on waivers again shortly since the Giants will have no other choice. Perhaps Hill will be claimed by some club that just did some selling at the deadline and has playing time available. If he were to be grabbed off waivers, the claiming club would be receiving a guy who has yet to qualify for arbitration and who can be controlled for four additional seasons after this one.

He hasn’t been able to do too much with his major league opportunities. Despite this year’s performance, he has a career line of .233/.281/.337 in 362 plate appearances. But he has 12 steals and some decent marks for his outfield glovework at all three spots. He’s also hit .297/.360/.492 in just under a thousand plate appearances in the minor leagues since the start of 2021, with that production translating to a wRC+ of 115, which could tempt a club to give him some at-bats down the stretch here in 2024.

MLBTR Podcast: Trade Deadline Recap

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The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Tim Dierkes, Steve Adams and Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

  • Were the prospect prices high in this year’s trades? Is this a new normal due to the expanded playoffs creating a seller’s market? (2:15)
  • The three-team trade involving the Dodgers, White Sox, Cardinals, Erick Fedde, Miguel Vargas and others (15:40)
  • The Rays and Cubs, the buy-sell tightrope and the trade involving Isaac Paredes and Christopher Morel (29:30)
  • The Astros acquire Yusei Kikuchi from the Blue Jays for a three-player package and the connection to the the Dodgers acquiring Jack Flaherty from the Tigers but the Yankees reportedly being scared off by his medicals (48:00)
  • The Guardians acquire Alex Cobb from the Giants and acquire Lane Thomas from the Nationals (58:35)
  • The Orioles acquire Trevor Rogers from the Marlins and acquire Zach Eflin from the Rays (1:09:10)
  • Will teams have to be more aggressive in the offseason going forward if the expanded playoffs will make less good players available at the deadline? (1:20:35)
  • The Rockies and Angels held onto a lot of trade candidates (1:23:35)
  • The Marlins leaned in hard to seller status (1:31:40)
  • The Padres built a super bullpen (1:44:50)
  • The Braves acquire Jorge Soler from the Giants (1:47:40)
  • The Royals acquire Lucas Erceg from the Athletics (1:54:40)

Check out our past episodes!

  • Trade Deadline Preview – listen here
  • Top Trade Candidates, Hunter Harvey To KC And The Current State Of The Rays And Mets – listen here
  • Brewers’ Pitching Needs, Marlins Rumors And The Nats Prepare To Sell – listen here

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

Giants To Select Jerar Encarnacion

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The Giants are planning to add outfielder/first baseman Jerar Encarnacion to the active roster prior to tomorrow’s series opener against the Reds, reports Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic. Encarnacion is currently traveling with the team to Cincinnati, he adds. The Giants will need to formally select Encarnacion’s contract to the 40-man roster, but with multiple vacancies at the moment, they’ll only need a corresponding 26-man move to activate him.

It’s been an unusual rise to the majors for the 26-year-old Encarnacion. He briefly made his big league debut with the 2022 Marlins after spending four years ranked near the back half of their organizational top 30 prospects but hit just .182/.210/.338 in 83 plate appearances. Miami passed him through waivers unclaimed last summer, and Encarnacion became a minor league free agent at season’s end. He found minimal interest from MLB clubs and wound up signing with los Guerreros de Oaxaca in the Mexican League.

Encarnacion decimated Mexican League pitching, hitting .366/.439/.989 with an outrageous 19 home runs in just 107 trips to the plate. Even in an extreme hitter-friendly setting, that output caught the attention of big league clubs. The Giants scooped him up on a minor league deal and sent him to Triple-A Sacramento, where he’s turned in a .352/.438/.616 slash with 10 homers in 146 plate appearances. As with the Mexican League, the Triple-A Pacific Coast League is immensely hitter-friendly, but Encarnacion’s production still sits 59% better than league-average there, by measure of wRC+.

Although he’s primarily been a corner outfielder in his career, the hulking 6’4″, 250-pound Encarnacion does have more than 600 innings of experience at first base. That includes five games in the past week for the Giants. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area tweets that the Giants have been getting him some fresh reps there in advance of an expected call to the majors.

Encarnacion will add a right-handed bat with clear plus power to the Giants’ first base and corner outfield mix. San Francisco presently has Wilmer Flores on the injured list (and struggling to produce even when healthy), while fellow righty-swinging corner bat David Villar is hitting .257/.270/.457 with a 35% strikeout rate. That’s a sample of only 37 plate appearances, but Villar also hit just .142/.236/.315 in 140 MLB plate appearances last season.

Encarnacion himself has had considerable strikeout issues in the past, so he’s hardly a sure thing to hit in the majors this time around. He fanned in a staggering 38.8% of his Triple-A plate appearances with the Marlins just last season, though he also walked enough (15.1%) and hit for enough power (26 homers, .224  ISO) to salvage a .228/.347/.452 batting line in Jacksonville. He’s cut his strikeout rate to 24% with the River Cats this season and is still drawing walks in 12.3% of his trips to the plate. Those encouraging trends, coupled with the gargantuan production he’s displayed in Mexico and Sacramento, make Encarnacion a more interesting post-deadline call-up than a garden variety change-of-scenery prospect.

Giants Acquire Mark Canha

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Mark Canha is headed back to the Bay Area. The Giants acquired the veteran outfielder from the Tigers for minor league reliever Eric Silva.

It’s surprising to see the Giants swing a late deal for an impending free agent. San Francisco had been positioned more as sellers in the few days leading up to the deadline. They subtracted a few players on guaranteed contracts (e.g. Jorge Soler, Luke Jackson, Alex Cobb) but resisted a more significant roster shakeup. The Giants held the likes of Blake Snell, Michael Conforto and LaMonte Wade Jr.

Their late pivot to Canha suggests they’re still holding onto some hope of erasing a four-game deficit in the NL Wild Card picture. While they weren’t super active buyers, they can rotate Canha through designated hitter in the hope that he can approximate Soler’s lost production. The 35-year-old isn’t having his best season, carrying a .231/.337/.350 slash over 377 plate appearances. He’s drawing walks at a strong 11.1% clip but only has seven homers. His 21% strikeout rate is around league average and up more than four percentage points from last season.

It’s Canha’s worst offensive season since he established himself as an above-average player six years ago. He has continued to hit while put in favorable platoon situations, though. Canha owns an impressive .286/.400/.457 slash versus lefty pitching. San Francisco’s corner outfield and first base mix is very left-handed. Each of Wade, Conforto and Mike Yastrzemski hit from that side of the plate. Canha can spell anyone from that trio against southpaws while potentially taking some situational work at designated hitter, where Marco Luciano is expected to get the majority of the playing time.

Canha is a San Jose native who played collegiately at Berkeley. He spent the bulk of his career across the Bay Area with the A’s, where he played for current Giants skipper Bob Melvin. That surely played a role in the Giants taking a flier on him as a rebound target. They’re assuming roughly $3.77MM remaining on his $11.5MM salary. San Francisco is in the first luxury tax bracket and taxed at a 20% rate on that money. Their overall acquisition cost comes out to roughly $4.5MM. Canha will return to free agency at year’s end.

San Francisco also parts way with Silva, whom they drafted in the fourth round in 2021. He began his career as a starting pitching prospect but has worked exclusively in relief this year. The 21-year-old righty has spent the season at Double-A Richmond, working to a 4.35 earned run average through 41 1/3 frames. He’s striking out upwards of 29% of batters faced against a 10.3% walk rate.

Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris was in the San Francisco front office back in 2021. He’s surely familiar with Silva, whom Baseball America ranked as the #25 prospect in the San Francisco farm system. He’ll be eligible for the Rule 5 draft during the 2025-26 offseason.

Robert Murray of FanSided first reported the Giants were acquiring Canha. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel was first to report Silva was headed to Detroit.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Angels Acquire Mike Baumann From Giants

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2:10pm: The Angels announced that they have acquired Baumann from the Giants for cash considerations.

2:00pm: The Angels are acquiring right-hander Mike Baumann from the Giants, reports Robert Murray of FanSided on X. The righty was designated for assignment by the Giants a few days ago. It’s unclear what that club is receiving in return. The Angels have open 40-man spots and won’t need to make a corresponding move.

Baumann, 28, spent his entire professional career with the Orioles prior to 2024 but has spent the year bouncing around the league. He exhausted his final option year in 2023 and has therefore found himself on the transaction logs many times. He was designated for assignment by the O’s in May and has since gone to the Mariners, Giants and now Angels in small trades after DFAs.

Pitching for three different clubs this year, he has a 4.84 earned run average in 35 1/3 innings. His 20.8% strikeout rate, 10.7% walk rate and 40.2% ground ball rate are each a bit worse than league average.

But he seemed to be a solid bullpen piece as recently as last year. He tossed 64 2/3 innings for Baltimore with a 3.76 ERA, 22.3% strikeout rate and 42% ground ball rate, though the 12.1% walk rate was on the high side.

The Angels traded away Carlos Estévez recently and could make further subtractions from their pitching staff. Tyler Anderson and Griffin Canning are each controlled through 2025 and could be moved today. Guys like Matt Moore and Hunter Strickland are impending free agents. Bauman will finish this year with over two years of service time, meaning he could be retained for four further seasons if he continues to hang onto a roster spot.

Guardians To Acquire Alex Cobb

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The Guardians and Giants are in the process of finalizing a trade that will send veteran right-hander Alex Cobb from San Francisco to Cleveland, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Zack Meisel of The Athletic reports that there’s an agreement in place, with Cleveland sending minor league lefty Jacob Bresnahan and a player to be named later to San Francisco in the swap.

Cobb has yet to pitch this season after opening the year on the injured list while rehabbing from offseason hip surgery. He was expected back sooner in 2024, but multiple setbacks — including a shoulder issue and blister troubles — slowed his recovery. He’s on the cusp of being reinstated from the injured list at this point, however, and could pitch within the next week. Joel Sherman of the New York Post tweets that the Guardians’ plan for Cobb is to make one final rehab start before his reinstatement. He last pitched on the 26th and should be on turn to throw again tomorrow.

The 36-year-old righty is in the final season of what was originally a two-year, $20MM deal but became a three-year, $28MM contract after the Giants chose to exercise a $10MM club option rather than pay a $2MM buyout. He’s still owed $3.333MM of this year’s salary between now and season’s end.

Though Cobb has yet to pitch in 2024, he’s been a rock-solid rotation arm for the Angels and Giants over the past three seasons, pitching to a combined 3.79 ERA with a 22.8% strikeout rate and 6.9% walk rate in 394 1/3 innings. He’s started 74 games in that time, averaging about 5 1/3 frames per outing.

The Guardians, who’ve lost Shane Bieber for the season and had to option Triston McKenzie and Logan Allen due to notable struggles, have been relying on a patchwork staff including veteran Carlos Carrasco and journeyman Ben Lively. Lively has exceeded expectations, but Carrasco has struggled to a 5.68 ERA in 95 innings (19 starts). The Guards recently called on rookie southpaw Joey Cantillo for his MLB debut as well. The only steady presences in the rotation at the moment are righties Tanner Bibee, Gavin Williams (who opened the season with a monthslong IL stint) and Lively.

In return for Cobb, the Giants will add Cleveland’s 13th-round pick from the 2023 draft (Bresnahan) and a PTBNL. The 19-year-old Bresnahan was an over-slot add for Cleveland in the 13th, signing for a $375K bonus ($225K of which counted against the Guardians’ pool). That’s the equivalent of a signing bonus near the tail end of the fifth round in the draft.

Baseball America ranked Bresnahan as the No. 491 prospect in last year’s draft. He’s not considered to be among the Guardians’ top prospects but has had a nice start in the low minors after getting hit hard in last summer’s pro debut. He’s pitched 50 innings between Cleveland’s Rookie-level ACL and Class-A affiliates, logging a 2.70 ERA with a 32.5% strikeout rate and 8.9% walk rate. BA’s scouting report on Bresnahan from the draft notes an upper-80s/low-90s heater (which could add velocity as he continues to mature) and a changeup that has the potential to be an above-average pitch.

With Cobb now out of the fold in San Francisco, the Giants will likely go with young Hayden Birdsong to follow Logan Webb, Blake Snell, Robbie Ray and Kyle Harrison. The Giants surely wanted to get Birdsong a look after he’s impressed in six big league starts (2.97 ERA, 30 1/3 innings, 30.2 K%, 11.9 BB%) and shown well in the upper minors as well. With Cobb out of the mix, that’s now easier to accomplish.

That said, the Giants could easily have gone to a six-man rotation. They’ve been anything but adherent to the conventional five-man rotation under the watch of president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, after all. The Cobb trade was very likely as much about the modest return and an opportunity for Birdsong as it was shedding the remainder of Cobb’s contract once a taker presented itself. The Giants shed the remainder of Jorge Soler’s contract in last night’s deal with the Braves, and adding Cobb to the pile trims more than $30MM off the books in total — all while dropping the Giants down a tier in terms of luxury-tax penalization.

The Giants will be hard-pressed to actually duck beneath the $237MM threshold, barring a trade of a major contract like Snell or Ray, but the Cobb trade alone will spare them a bit shy of $4MM when factoring in his remaining salary and their 20% tax on his contract’s AAV.

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