A series of minor transactions were announced by the Reds today, beginning with pitcher Luke Farrell, who has been claimed by the Chicago Cubs off waivers:
RHP Luke Farrell has been claimed off waivers by the Cubs. The #Reds 40-man roster is currently at 36 players.
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) October 4, 2017
The Reds claimed the 26 year-old Farrell off waivers from the Los Angeles Dodgers back in early August, and he was mostly effective in nine late-season appearances with Cincinnati, posting a 2.61 ERA over 10.1 innings. Farrell has a reasonable chance of being a bullpen arm in the future, but there’s no reason to lose sleep over the fact that he’ll be plying his trade elsewhere. So long, Luke. We hardly knew you, but we wish you the best of luck.
(We don’t have a picture of Luke Farrell, so we added a photo of Will Ferrell.)
Next up, three pitchers — Asher Wojciechowski, Alejandro Chacin, and Nick Travieso — all cleared waivers. The three have been outrighted to Triple-A Louisville.
The Reds picked up Wojciechowski off the scrap heap in late April, and the 28 year-old posted a 6.50 ERA in 25 appearances for the club, eight of which were starts. Wojo was decent out of the pen, however — 2-0, 4.00 ERA, 17 games — so he likely earned himself a shot at next year’s bullpen. He will almost assuredly be a non-roster invite to spring training.
Alejandro Chacin made his big league debut this season for the Reds, and the 24 year-old was mostly ineffective in six innings. He has, however, been extremely effective at every stop in the minors, and looks to be a serious contender for the Cincinnati bullpen next year and beyond. I’m glad he passed through waivers.
Nick Travieso, of course, is the most interesting name in the group. Travieso, you will recall, was Cincinnati’s first-round pick in the 2012 draft, a high school right-handed pitcher out of Fort Lauderdale. You should go read Doug Gray’s roundup of these transactions, which includes this, about Travieso:
Nick Travieso missed all of the 2017 season with a shoulder injury that wound up leading to surgery. He was technically on the big league roster all year and spent the season on the 60-day disabled list. For that he earned big league pay – don’t spend it all in one place, Nick. However, with the 40-man roster crunch upon the Reds it made sense to try and sneak him through waivers now, coming off of an injury when it was unlikely another team would take a chance on picking him up before showing he’s healthy.
Precisely.
Anyway, that’s that. Are you feeling the Hot Stove League excitement yet???
It seemed to me that Luke Farrell did rather well in his relief role for the Reds.
Just tell me they still have Shakleford and Bonilla
“We don’t have a picture of Luke Farrell, so we added a picture of Will Ferrell”…that seems reasonable. You wanna know what the most exciting thing about the Hot Stove League so far…when you chose the picture of Will Ferrell for Luke Farrell.
Luke pitched fairly well for the Reds, but he’s not funny at all. I prefer Will.
Chad, I agree also that Will is funnier than Luke (even though I’ve never met Luke and have no idea what his personality is….lol).
This is interesting. Japanese pitching sensation Ohtani was on display for several ML clubs- DW in attendance. Does anyone know how much $ the Reds would have available to sign him?
Reds waive 4 pitchers, none of which are named Deck. Even as late as August of this season, who’d have thunk it ?
Deck Maguire pitched very well at AA this year and unless Doug Gray tells me otherwise I would consider him a real prospect but… not for 2018. He got rushed to the majors in the context of September call ups and innings limits for some more advanced prospects (especially Castillo and Mahle). He’s not Luis Castillo so will not stick with the big club, but another year or two of experience and he may be ready to make a real contribution in the bullpen. He could perhaps be a starter as well but that would mean injury or ineffectiveness for a lot of prospects ahead of him so let’s hope not. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Deck.
Am I missing something, Deck’s numbers look much better than any of the guys waived?
LOL.
Between Mr. Red’s snappy reply and Chad’s witty picture, it’s safe to say the RLN batteries are getting re-charged from the drain of the season.
We are all ready for Dick Williams to pull off a Trader Jack McKeon impression, make some moves, and get the roster sorted and upgraded.
I do think this will be the most interesting Reds off-season since 2000.
Believe it or not, the Cubs pitching depth is thinner than the Reds, especially once Arrieta walks in free agency and 38 year old Lackey succumbs to father time. They only have one good starting pitching prospect, and he’s in the lower minors.
I expect them to bid for Arrieta and they probably know his real value better then other teams but they can always and will just go buy what they need.They will continue to do so until they have to pony up the big bucks to keep some of their star position players which may then cause them to have to pick and chose who they keep.
The apparent major need of the Reds is for the so called “ownership group” to figure out a way to sell partial or whole investment shares to some person or people who have lots of cash to burn and want to play some baseball.
Urgency on the field is ditch Hamilton in leadoff and hope someone else somewhere has bunting skills. Does it occur to anyone that if they had a leadoff batter with a 3 or 4 OBP Votto just might hit 400 !
Without the 2017 season that Cozart had at shortstop, the Reds don’t have enough offense/defense to compete for a playoff spot next season even if the pitching staff is a lot less hideous. Make the QO to Zack, or chase another pipedream in 2018.
They still can sign Bronson