Mining the News (5/30/24)

American League

Rangers

• Evan Carter has been playing through his back injury for a while.

He missed time in the Minors with a stress fracture in his back in 2021, so the Rangers have been trying to be cautious with him.

That being said, manager Bruce Bochy said he believes Carter tried to play through this particular back injury without disclosing to the coaching or training staff how much it affected him.

“With Evan, I think he knew, honestly,” Bochy said. “I don’t think he was being totally honest with us. Even the last game, I guess, it was really starting to bother him. It was pretty evident. Now when you look back at some of the at-bats, he just had a hard time getting his swing off.

Rays

• Shane Baz might be in the minors to manipulate his service clock.

Though there’s some logic to keeping him in Durham and monitoring him, it will nonetheless have consequences for Baz. The righty came into this season with two years and 14 days of major league service time. Had he stayed on the active roster or injured list all season, he would have finished this year at 3.014, just enough to automatically qualify for arbitration and to be on track for free agency after 2027. If he ends up spending significant time on optional assignment, he could alter both of those trajectories, though he could still get to arb as a Super Two guy even if he’s shy of the three-year mark.

For now, he’ll continue with whatever plan the Rays have for building him up over the remainder of the season. Perhaps his return to the big leagues will be motivated by an injury to one of his teammates or it could just be based on some sort of workload checklist that Baz has to hit.

Yankees

• For now, there are no plans to limit Luis Gil.

Boone said the Yankees are keeping a close eye on Gil. He didn’t rule out a workload limit at some point but said that currently it’s “full steam ahead.”

Pitching coach Matt Blake said the Yankees will use a variety of data points to track Gil’s readiness. In spring training he said the Yankees used workouts to get a baseline of what Gil looks like when he’s healthy, mentioning range of motion and “power output.” The team also uses slow-motion video to judge how his delivery progresses. The footage captures minute details regarding the shapes and speeds of his pitches, his release points and where he’s landing on the mound. The team also consults with Gil.

National League

Braves

• David Fletcher is stretching out to be a knuckleball pitcher.

Yes, that David Fletcher.

The utility infielder told team officials several weeks ago that he had a knuckleball, and they agreed to let him show what he could do with it in a game. When they saw it was a legit knuckler, they told him they’d use him at least once a week as a pitcher at Gwinnett and see what he could do. Fletcher was thrilled.

After four relief appearances — two good, two not so good — he got a start Wednesday against the Norfolk Tides and pitched five innings of three-hit ball in a 5-2 win, allowing two runs and one walk with six strikeouts, including a strikeout of baseball’s No. 1 prospect, Jackson Holliday.

No one is getting carried away with it just yet, but the Braves plan to see how far Fletcher can go with his knuckleball-based repertoire. It’s such a rare pitch these days, perhaps he could eventually factor in as a pitcher with the Braves.

• The team has made several moves to work Spencer Schwellenbach into the rotation.

[Schwellenbach] was then informed that his next start was actually coming in Atlanta, less than 13 months after making his pro debut last April.

“I was not expecting it,” Schwellenbach said. “I was totally taken off guard and very happy about it.”

But the Braves had been hatching this plan for a while — really ever since learning the severity of Smith-Shawver’s injury last week. They adjusted their bullpen plans the past few days and leaned on Charlie Morton to eat more innings than they typically would have during Monday’s loss in preparation for Schwellenbach’s debut.

• AJ Smith-Shawver was working on his changeup before going on the IL.

Smith-Shawver had two walks and four strikeouts and topped out at 99.3 mph with his fastball. The Braves were especially pleased with Smith-Shawver’s secondary pitches, including his changeup, which accounted for 20 of his 87 pitches. He used the changeup for strike 3 on first-inning punchouts of Mike Tauchman and Cody Bellinger, each swinging.

“I’ve been working on that all year, just trying to throw it more (for) strikes down in the zone, just kind of executing it more often,” Smith-Shawver said.

His 6.10 ERA in eight Triple-A starts didn’t concern Braves officials because they knew he’d been working on his off-speed pitches, rather than just mowing down minor-league hitters with 98-100 mph heaters. “That (changeup) is what I’ve spent the majority of my time down there working on,” he said.