Welcome back to Top of the Order
Every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love. The final stretch of the season is now upon us, and it sure is going to be fun. The Orioles and Yankees are jockeying for the AL East title, with a first-round bye almost certainly going to the winner. The NL Wild Card is a beautiful mess, with four teams fighting for the three spots and two other clubs, the Cubs and Cardinals, still lurking in the distance. And the under-the-radar Tigers are roaring, trying to pull out a last-minute postseason berth after selling at the trade deadline.
Last month, when I wrote about the players who were added off the waiver wire, I mentioned that another batch of waiver claims would come at the end of August, after more teams fell out of contention. So now that we’re well into September, let’s take a look at some of the notable players who’ve switched teams over the last few weeks.
Kansas City lost a huge piece of its offense when Vinnie Pasquantino went down with a broken thumb that will certainly sideline him for the rest of the regular season and likely longer. But if there’s any silver lining to that injury, it happened on August 29 instead of a few days later; the timing allowed for general manager J.J. Piccolo to quickly pivot and acquire two players for a potential playoff roster: Tommy Pham and Robbie Grossman.
Relievers are like pizza: even the most middling can get the job done. Shawn Armstrong and Michael Tonkin are probably more useful than iffy pizza, but they’re not seismic additions either. Still, the pickings are slim this time of year, so it wasn’t surprising to see both claimed by teams looking to make the playoffs.
Duke Ellis is a fun claim. The 80-grade speedster was plucked by the Yankees from the Mariners to potentially serve as a Terrance Gore-like pinch runner in the playoffs. The rookie has just five major league plate appearances between the White Sox and Yankees, but also five steals!
If there’s anything good about being a bad team at this time of year, it’s that you get first crack at players who are placed on waivers. This has led to some interesting players getting more extended looks with teams out of the playoff race:
• The Marlins have continued to reshape their roster despite their season-long struggles, claiming relievers Mike Baumann (I wrote about him a couple weeks ago), Lake Bachar, and Anthony Veneziano.
• Dillon Tate isn’t a total draft bust — he made the majors after all — but you’d expect the fourth overall pick in the draft to amount to more than what Tate has thus far.
