MLB Player News

Nieves, 34, batted .140 in 50 at-bats with the Brewers this past season and has a .221/.268/.289 batting line over parts of eight seasons in the majors. He could contend for the backup catcher job during spring training.

Bradford was shut down this week with elbow soreness, and even though the MRI came back clean, the Rangers shut him down from throwing for at least a week. He will then need to ramp back up and build up his pitch counts, so the team is opting to take it slow with him. That could mean that Jack Leiter, who has impressed this spring, opens the season in the rotation, but Bochy is “not laying odds” as to whether that will be the case or not.

There is heavy rain in the forecast for this afternoon, so the Rangers are choosing to have deGrom pitch his innings earlier in the day in the backfields of the complex rather than risk getting rained out in the afternoon. This would normally not even be a story, but it’s Jacob deGrom, so we feel the need to ensure you that this has nothing to do with injury.

The 22-year-old former first-round pick hit just .188/.278/.375 in MLB spring training with eight strikeouts in 18 plate appearances. That said, he had a strong year in 79 games across Double-A and Triple-A this year and will head back to Triple-A Sugar Land to begin the season. Astros manager Joe Espada said second base “is a place where I think (Matthews) can find comfort and he can be an above-average defender.” We should expect Matthews to play second base regularly in Triple-A this season, and a strong start to the year could mean that he pushes for an MLB call-up early this summer, especially with Jose Altuve now set to mainly play the outfield.

Tomczyk mentioned that the Pirates “envision [Hayes] being available for game activity in the coming days as well.” Hayes has already played in seven spring games so far, so another week of games should give him plenty of reps to be ready for opening day. Injuries have sapped the 28-year-old of some of the upside fantasy managers were hoping for a few years ago, but he figures to play every day at third base for the Pirates, so if he can remain healthy, he could still be a target in deeper formats.

The Pirates have not said which part of Falter’s arm is not recovering well, but they did say that removing him from the scheduled start was “out of an abundance of precaution.” At this point, it seems unlikely the left-hander will miss any time, but if this injury were to progress, it could open the door for Bubba Chandler to push his way into the Pirates’ rotation.

Diaz has not appeared in a game over the last two days, but it appears he is simply sick, not injured. That’s good news with so many catches going down with injuries early in spring training.

This is the first time Walker has swung a bit since being scratched from the lineup on March 5th. Depending on how his body responds to the swings, he could move to live batting practice swings and then get back into spring training games. With two weeks until the regular season, he’s cutting it a bit close, but there’s a good chance that he’ll be back by Opening Day, as long as he doesn’t experience any setbacks.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone made it clear that Cabrera was not dealing with any sort of injury; he’s simply sick. Cabrera is the favorite to start at third base for the Yankees to begin the season and is hitting .286/.333/.392 in 30 plate appearances this spring. He doesn’t have a ton of power or speed, but he makes a good amount of contact and hits in a good lineup, which makes him a fine late-round pick in deeper formats.

Manaea has been sidelined with a strained oblique since the start of spring training, but his follow-up MRI was clean. This means the veteran is essentially starting his spring training now and might need about a month to ramp up to enough pitches to appear in an MLB game. With the regular season two weeks away, that would mean that Manaea will miss about 2-3 weeks of the season. That makes him an ideal late-round pick in leagues where you can put him on the IL for the start of the season.

Astros manager Joe Espada had said that they would let Cam Smith play the outfield in an MLB spring training game “soon,” and that day appears to be today. The 22-year-old has impressed this spring and has put himself firmly in the mix to break camp with the team. While he has not played a professional game in the outfield, he did play some outfield in college, so perhaps the transition won’t be as difficult as it would be otherwise.