Allard, 28, just opted out of a minor league deal with the Guardians. He had been pitching well at the Triple-A level prior to getting out of that deal. He had thrown 30 2/3 innings for Columbus, allowing 4.11 earned runs per nine. He struck out 22.4% of batters faced, gave out walks to 7.2% of opponents and induced grounders on 45.3% of balls in play.

The lefty doesn’t throw particularly hard, averaging around 90 miles per hour with his four-seamer and sinker. But he has nonetheless been able to find some major league success at times. He had a 2.63 earned run average in 65 innings with Cleveland last year, though he had some help from a 79.2% strand rate. His 3.54 FIP and 4.41 SIERA pointed to him being a regression candidate. For his big league career as a whole, he has a 5.47 ERA over parts of nine seasons. That includes a 10.38 ERA in a small sample of 8 2/3 innings with the Guards earlier this year.

For the Phillies, the back of their rotation is a big question mark right now. The first three spots are golden, as they have Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez and Jesús Luzardo in those. Aaron Nola is struggling but there’s not much the club can do about that, given his contract and status in the organization. Andrew Painter has been in the rotation all year until this week. He has a 7.06 ERA for the season. His struggles finally became too much to bear yesterday, as he was sent down to the minors.

Bryse Wilson was added to the roster today. He could take a rotation spot or be used as a long reliever. Alan Rangel and Jean Cabrera are on the 40-man roster, though Cabrera has a 9.39 ERA on the farm this year. Rangel’s 3.99 ERA is more palatable but he has just 14 innings of big league experience.

The Phillies have reportedly been exploring the market for back-end starters. Even if they don’t put anything together soon, they will likely enhance their efforts to add starting pitching as the deadline draws nearer. For now, Allard gives them an experienced depth arm who has been putting some decent numbers lately. If Allard eventually gets a roster spot, he is out of options.

Photo courtesy of Gary A. Vasquez, Imagn Images

Wilson, 28, signed a minor league deal with the Phillies in the offseason. He was released in June, perhaps after triggering an opt-out clause, but then re-signed with the club on a new minor league deal. It was reported yesterday that Wilson had triggered an upward mobility clause in that deal.

It’s understandable why the Phils would give him a roster spot. The back of their rotation has become an issue. They started the year with both Taijuan Walker and Andrew Painter in rotation spots. When Zack Wheeler was able to return from his surgery recovery, Walker was jettisoned. Painter held his spot but his struggles mounted. His outing yesterday bumped his earned run average for the year to 7.06, which led Philly to kick him to the minors.

The Phils have a strong front three in Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez and Jesús Luzardo. They aren’t getting good results from Aaron Nola but he’s not going anywhere due to his contract and his stature within the organization.

Wilson could be a candidate to fill Painter’s spot, at least for a while. Wilson has some big league track record, both as a starter and a reliever. He has appeared in 163 games, 57 of those being starts. He has logged 461 innings, allowing 4.82 earned runs per nine. His 16.6% strikeout rate isn’t strong but he has limited walks to a 7.5% pace.

This year, his results have been trending up. For the year as a whole, he has a 6.29 ERA in 54 1/3 Triple-A innings, but with most of the damage coming early on. He has a 3.94 ERA since the start of May, with a 24.1% strikeout rate, and his past three outings have been scoreless.

The Phils are reportedly searching the market for back-end starters. They have an off-day on Friday, so they may not need to decide on a fifth starter right away. For now, Wilson gives them a length option in the bullpen, but he could perhaps make a start next week if they don’t find any other options. Alan Rangel and Jean Cabrera are spot starter candidates on the 40-man, although Cabrera has a 9.39 ERA on the farm this year. If Wilson is nudged out of the club’s plans at any point, he is out of options.

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The Twins selected Arcia to the major league roster last month after they optioned Royce Lewis to third base and moved Brooks Lee from shortstop to the hot corner. The 31-year-old wound up appearing in 19 games and taking 50 plate appearances. He hit .271/.300/.354 with a homer in that span. He’ll now return to the Saints (the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate), for whom he slashed .318/.376/.556 with eight homers in 165 plate appearances prior to his call to the majors.

Arcia has played in parts of 11 major league seasons and accrued nearly nine years of service in the process. The younger brother of former Twins outfielder Oswaldo Arcia, Orlando once ranked among the sport’s 10 best prospects but never came close to reaching his ceiling with the Brewers, his original organization. He had a nice two-year run with the Braves after being traded to Atlanta, hitting .258/.319/.419 in 767 plate appearances from 2022-23.

Since that quality run in Atlanta, Arcia’s bat has regressed. He’s batted .217/.265/.338 over his past 866 big league plate appearances and is now a lifetime .240/.292/.369 hitter in 3587 plate appearances as a major leaguer. He’ll have plenty of playing time in St. Paul right now with top shortstop prospect Kaelen Culpepper recently hitting the injured list due to a hip strain. Even if the Twins give Culpepper a shot to prove he’s their shortstop of the future once he returns, Arcia could work his way back to the big leagues with another injury in the Minnesota infield or if infielder/outfielder Tristan Gray (.244/.288/.370) continues to struggle.

It’s an unfortunate early birthday present for Roycroft, who turns 29 on Sunday. An undrafted free agent in 2019, the righty started his professional career in independent ball before the Cards scooped him up in 2022. He worked his way up through the minors as a reliever who could generate ground balls. He was added to the 40-man roster in May of 2024.

His first season in the bigs was fairly successful. Roycroft logged 34 1/3 innings out of the St. Louis bullpen, allowing 4.19 earned runs per nine. His 21.3% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate were both a bit worse than average but he induced grounders on 53.5% of balls in play.

Since then, the results haven’t been nearly as pleasant. Dating back to the start of last season, he has a 9.35 ERA in 26 innings. He has still generated grounders on 53.1% of balls in play in that time but he only struck out 13.6% of opponents and gave out walks at a 14.3% pace. He has mostly been in the minors this year and has put up a 5.84 ERA at the Triple-A level.

That performance has led the Cards to push him off the roster and into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Cards could take as long as five days to explore trade interest, but they could also put him on the wire sooner than that. If he were to clear waivers, he would stick around as non-roster depth. Since he doesn’t have a previous career outright nor three years of big league service time, he would not have the right to elect free agency.

Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images

Banfield, 26, signed a minor league deal with the Reds in the offseason. He presumably had some kind of opt-out or upward mobility clause in that deal, as that usually explains why a team would add a player to its roster but then immediately option him back to the minors. Giving him the 40-man spot prevents him from getting away but doesn’t require the team to bump anyone else off the active roster.

It has been a good season in Louisville for Banfield so far. He has six home runs in 189 plate appearances, a .281/.337/.439 line and 103 wRC+. That indicates he has been 3% better than league average, though he’s gotten some help from a .344 batting average on balls in play.

Banfield has a good defensive reputation, so it’s possible the Reds view any offensive output as a bonus. He hit just .233/.285/.343 at the Triple-A level across 2024 and 2025 but still got a brief look in the majors with the Reds last year, getting into seven games. He was non-tendered at the end of the year and then re-signed his aforementioned minor league deal.

The Reds have Tyler Stephenson and Jose Trevino as their catchers at the big league level. Higgins was on the 40-man but on optional assignment. It seems the Reds preferred Banfield in that job, so they have swapped him in. Stephenson is an impending free agent and Trevino’s deal is only guaranteed through 2027, so there could be some long-term openings for playing time. Banfield can be optioned for the rest of this year and one additional season.

Higgins, 33, also signed a minor league deal with the Reds in the offseason. He was added to the roster in April, outrighted in May, but then selected back to the roster a few days later. Around the transactions, he took 32 plate appearances in 14 games and hit .231/.276/.269. He now has a .212/.289/.340 line in 286 career trips to the plate. He has generally received favorable marks for his defense in the minors.

Since Higgins has been previously outrighted in his career, he has the right to reject this outright assignment and elect free agency. The last time the Reds outrighted him, he accepted and was back on the roster a few days later. Now that Banfield is ahead of him on the chart, perhaps that makes him more likely to test the open market.

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Rajcic, 24, was a sixth-round pick of the Cards in 2022. He was a prospect of note as he climbed the ladder, working as a starter, but his results backed up as he reached the higher levels of the minor leagues. This year, the Cards have been using him exclusively as a reliever. He did technically make one start but that was for two innings as an opener.

The results of the switch have been encouraging. Rajcic has thrown 40 2/3 Triple-A innings over 26 appearances, allowing 2.88 earned runs per nine. His 8.6% walk rate is around average while his 28.4% strikeout rate and 48.5% ground ball rate are both notably better than par. His four-seamer and sinker are both averaging around 95 miles per hour as he also mixes in a slider, curveball and changeup.

Roycroft has been up and down all year and it took him 42 pitches to get through an inning and a third in last night’s game. He was probably going to be unavailable for a bit after that performance anyway, so he has been sent down once more. That will give Rajcic a chance to potentially make his major league debut and see how his stuff plays against big league hitters. Since this is the first time Rajcic has been added to a big league roster, he has a full slate of options and could be easily sent back to the farm when the Cards need a fresh arm again in the future.

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Wilson, 31, appeared in 21 games with the O’s and took 46 plate appearances prior to being designated for assignment. He hit .231/.348/.333 in that brief stretch, which marked his fourth season with some degree of major league experience. Wilson debuted with the 2023 Phillies and has totaled 291 plate appearances in the majors since. In that time, he’s slashed .240/.331/.413 — about 8% better than league-average production, by measure of wRC+.

Solid as that overall showing is, it came in frontloaded fashion. Wilson posted big numbers in brief auditions with the 2023-24 Phils before struggling to a .198/.282/.369 performance in a career-high 125 plate appearances with Philadelphia last year. He’s a right-handed hitter who’s batted .248/.351/.456 when facing lefties but just .229/.302/.352 against fellow righties.

Wilson has played first base, second base, third base and both outfield corners in the majors. He’s a career .248/.340/.462 hitter in parts of six minor league seasons. He gives the Mariners some righty-swinging depth at several positions and a generally productive Triple-A bat to round out the Tacoma roster. Seattle is currently without righty-swinging left fielder Randy Arozarena, lefty-hitting infielder/outfielder Brendan Donovan and righty-hitting utilityman Will Wilson (the latter of whom is reportedly weighing season-ending surgery).

At the moment, the Mariners are carrying a pair of veteran infield/outfield options on the bench: Rob Refsnyder and Connor Joe. Refsnyder has struggled greatly in his first season with the M’s. He signed a one-year, $6.25MM deal in free agency after a nice four-year run in Boston but has hit only .143/.214/.242 in 104 plate appearances. Joe is batting .189/.302/.324 in 43 plate appearances as a Mariner. Should either (or both) continue to struggle, it’s possible the Mariners could view the newly signed Wilson as a right-handed alternative off the bench.

The 28-year-old Brennan reached three years of big league service with the Giants this season, which technically gives him the right to reject his assignment in favor of free agency. However, Brennan signed a split major league contract with San Francisco this offseason after being non-tendered in Cleveland. That deal pays him at a $900K rate in the majors and a $400K rate in the minors. Rejecting an outright would mean forfeiting those rates of pay, so Brennan will almost certainly accept the assignment and stick with the Giants as depth.

Brennan appeared in 11 games for rookie skipper Tony Vitello’s club this season. He picked up 23 plate appearances and tallied only two hits — both of them singles. Brennan didn’t draw a walk but also only punched out three times. He posted a huge 93.9% contact rate, but despite the frequency of contact, Brennan didn’t hit the ball hard. He also popped up to the infield three times in that tiny sample.

It may only have been 23 plate appearances, but those 23 turns at the plate are a microcosm of Brennan’s broader career. He’s played parts of four seasons in the majors with the Guardians and showed a similar penchant for high contact rates but low impact when he puts the ball in the play (with a susceptibility to infield flies). Brennan is a career .263/.301/.365 hitter in 889 big league plate appearances. He’s only struck out at a 12.7% clip but sports just a 4.7% walk rate. The 2019 eighth-rounder has averaged a well below-average 85.9 mph off the bat in the majors and has just a 31% hard-hit rate.

Brennan is a solid right field defender with plus-bat-to-ball skills, above-average speed and a pair of minor league options remaining. His low-power, contact-driven approach dates back to the minors, evidenced by a career .324/.368/.464 line and 12.6% strikeout rate in 744 Triple-A plate appearances. The Giants have Harrison Bader, Heliot Ramos and Jared Oliva on the major league injured and Grant McCray on the minor league injured list. Casey Schmitt, Drew Gilbert and Jung Hoo Lee are getting frequent run in the outfield right now, but Brennan might only be one injury away from getting another look on the big league roster. For now, he’ll play regularly with the RiverCats and wait for another opportunity.

Adcock was pushed off the 40-man roster when San Diego needed to select another catcher, Blake Hunt, onto the MLB team. The Padres are without their top two catchers, Freddy Fermin and Luis Campusano, so they’ve needed 40-man spots for Rodolfo Durán and Hunt. Adcock, who signed a major league contract in December, did not appear in a big league game with San Diego.

The 29-year-old righty has pitched parts of three seasons at the big league level. Adcock has suited up with the Mariners and Mets, working to a 5.48 ERA across 23 innings. The Elon product spent the first two months of the season on the minor league injured list. He was only activated at Triple-A El Paso on June 3. Adcock walked three of five opponents and allowed two runs in his first appearance. He rebounded with perfect frames in his next two outings before being bumped from the roster.

Adcock has a prior outright and can elect free agency instead of remaining with the Chihuahuas. He’d likely be limited to minor league offers if he tests the market.

Gonzales signed an offseason minor league deal. He’d spent all of last year unsigned after undergoing flexor surgery at the close of the 2024 season. Gonzales started 12 of 13 Triple-A appearances and allowed nearly eight earned runs per nine across 47 1/3 innings. The 34-year-old southpaw had a modest 15.2% strikeout rate while sitting in his usual 90 mph range with his fastball.

The Halos opened a spot on the 40-man roster when they designated Trey Mancini for assignment this afternoon. They therefore didn’t need to announce a corresponding move tonight, but they will need to open an active roster spot once Heineman joins the club for their weekend series in West Sacramento.

Heineman will probably bump Logan Porter back to Triple-A. The Halos have operated with a Logan O’Hoppe/Porter tandem for the past week. They’ve needed to go well into the catching depth chart with Travis d’Arnaud out due to plantar fasciitis and Sebastián Rivero undergoing hamate surgery. O’Hoppe’s bat has picked up this month after a very slow start, while Porter has a full slate of minor league options and can go back to Triple-A.

The 34-year-old Heineman has spent the past year and a half in Toronto. He had a career-best .289/.361/.416 showing over 64 games last year. Heineman has been a light-hitting depth catcher for the majority of his career and owns a .154 average with one homer in 87 plate appearances this season. He got some run while Alejandro Kirk was out with a broken thumb. Brandon Valenzuela outplayed him and remained on Toronto’s MLB roster as the backup when Kirk returned.

Heineman is out of minor league options and had to get through waivers for the Jays to send him to Triple-A. The Angels jumped the waiver line with the trade, taking on the remainder of his $1.2375MM arbitration salary in the process. Heineman is an excellent receiving catcher with a good arm, so he’ll improve the team defense behind the dish. He’ll remain eligible for arbitration for another two seasons if he holds his MLB job.

5:50pm: The Royals are acquiring right-hander Randy Dobnak from the Mariners, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Dobnak triggered an upward mobility clause in his minor league deal with the M’s a few days ago. Kansas City will need to open a 40-man roster spot but have several players who could be transferred to the 60-day injured list. Though Dobnak is getting a 40-man spot, he has options and Passan says Dobnak will be sent to Triple-A Omaha initially.

Dobnak, 31, signed a minor league deal with the Mariners in the offseason. It was recently reported that there was a June 15th upward mobility clause in that deal. The way such clauses usually work is that the player is offered up to the 29 other teams in the league. If any one of them wants to give him a roster spot, the signing team has to trade him or give him a roster spot themselves.

The righty triggered the clause after a pretty decent showing for Triple-A Tacoma. He logged 70 innings over 13 starts, allowing 4.24 earned runs per nine. Considering that the Rainiers play in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, that’s not too bad. His 12.8% strikeout rate was barely half of typical big league average but his 7.9% walk rate was good and his 59.9% ground ball rate was very strong.

The Mariners are perhaps the team with the least need for more rotation depth. They are already six deep at the major league level and struggling to juggle Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryan Woo, Bryce Miller, Emerson Hancock and Luis Castillo. They also have prospects Ryan Sloan and Kade Anderson dealing in the minors.

The Royals, meanwhile, have recently seen their starting group take a few notable hits. Each of Cole Ragans, Kris Bubic and Seth Lugo have landed on the IL in the past six weeks. That has left them with a patchwork rotation consisting of Michael Wacha, Luinder Avila, Noah Cameron and Stephen Kolek in four spots. Mitch Spence made a spot start this week but was immediately optioned back to the minors afterwards. Depth arms like Ben Kudrna and Ryan Bergert required season-ending surgeries earlier this year.

In short, they can use any fresh arms they can find, so Dobnak is a sensible pickup for them. If he gets called up at some point, he can add to his major league track record, which currently consists of 140 2/3 innings over multiple seasons with the Twins with a 4.86 ERA, 13.9% strikeout rate, 6.1% walk rate and 56.8% ground ball rate.

Photo courtesy of Frank Bowen IV, Imagn Images.

Stratton, 29, was acquired from the Pirates last summer after Pittsburgh designated him for assignment. Atlanta sent minor league outfielder Titus Dumitru and cash the other way and have been using Stratton as an up-and-down reliever since then.

He has tossed 17 1/3 big league innings since that trade with a 2.08 earned run average. That’s obviously a nice number but there’s some luck in there. He has benefited from a .261 batting average on balls in play and 87.9% strand rate. Though his 22.5% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate in that span are decent, his 4.00 FIP and 3.73 SIERA suggest he has been more serviceable than dominant. In the minors this year, he has thrown 24 2/3 innings with a 4.38 ERA, 21.2% strikeout rate and 47.1% ground ball rate, with a bloated 14.2% walk rate.

He now heads into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so Atlanta could spend as long as five days exploring trade possibilities. It seems likely that Stratton will garner interest somewhere. He still has options, which is always appealing for clubs. He also has intriguing stuff, averaging about 96 miles per hour with his four-seamer and sinker. He has also thrown a cutter and a slider this year. He also had some decent results with the Bucs earlier in his career and now has a 3.75 ERA in 69 2/3 big league innings.

As for Strider, he landed on the 15-day IL a few days ago due to elbow inflammation. The club subsequently announced that he would be shut down for four weeks before undergoing a follow-up MRI. If that imaging is clean, he can begin ramping back up.

Even if everything goes to plan, the ramp-up period will probably take as long as the shutdown period, so he is probably looking at an absence of a couple of months even in a best-case scenario. That means this transaction shouldn’t really alter expectations about his return but it does concretely rule him out until the middle of August.

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Wynns, 35, is a veteran depth catcher. He has appeared in 299 big league games scattered across eight seasons, never topping 66 contests in any individual campaign. He doesn’t provide much from the batter’s box, currently sitting on a career line of .228/.273/.342. That translates to a 66 wRC+, indicating he has been 34% below league average at the plate.

He has a stronger reputation in regards to his work behind the plate. Publicly available metrics generally give him solid grades for his blocking and his work with the running game. His framing numbers aren’t as strong but mostly due to some poor results earlier in his career. He’s been closer to league average when looking at the past three to five seasons.

Wynns finished last season with the Athletics. They tendered him an arbitration contract, agreeing to a $1.1MM salary for 2026. He got out to a slow start to the season and was designated for assignment and then released in early May. That led to a minor league deal with the Angels, though that club traded him to Atlanta for cash. He spent a little over a week on the roster with Atlanta until Drake Baldwin came off the injured list, which squeezed Wynns onto the waiver wire. He currently has a .075/.125/.075 line in 57 plate appearances this year.

Now that he’s a free agent again, Wynns will look for his next opportunity. Catching depth is always in demand, so he should get calls, though he may have to settle for a minor league deal. If any club gives him a spot, he can be paid the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That will be subtracted from what the A’s pay, as they are currently on the hook for the remainder of his salary.

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Weiss, 29, made his big league debut with the Astros this season. The former D-backs farmhand parlayed a breakout 2024-25 performance in the Korea Baseball Organization into a one-year, $2.6MM deal with the ‘Stros. Weiss turned in a 3.73 ERA in 16 starts with the KBO’s Hanwha Eagles in 2024 and a 2.87 ERA across 178 2/3 innings last year, all the while showing strong strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates.

The signing hasn’t panned out as hoped. Weiss has appeared in nine games as an Astro, two of them starts, and posted a 7.62 ERA in 26 frames. He’s fanned a roughly average 22.9% of his opponents but also issued walks at an unacceptable 15.3% clip. More problematic is how homer-prone Weiss has proven against big league hitters; in his 26 frames, he’s faced 131 hitters and surrendered eight long balls. That’s an average of 2.77 round-trippers per nine innings. Put another way, he’s surrendered a homer to 6.1% of the batters he’s faced.

Weiss’ performance in Sugar Land hasn’t been better. He’s pitched 20 1/3 innings there and been tagged for an 8.41 earned run average. He hasn’t been quite so homer-prone or given out quite as many walks, but he’s fanned fewer hitters and struggled badly with men on base.

There’s still time for Weiss to turn things around, but Houston’s early return on that minimal investment isn’t anywhere close to what the team hoped. Weiss had already been pitching at the Triple-A level for more than a month, and he’ll now head back to the Space Cowboys and try to pitch his way back into Houston’s big league plans.

The 39-year-old Carrasco has been on and off the roster all year long. He and the club clearly have an understanding about a relationship they are both comfortable with. As a veteran with years and years of service time, he can’t be optioned to the minors. Instead, he has been repeatedly added to the roster to give the club a fresh arm. After a short period of time, he is designated for assignment, clears waivers, elects free agency and then signs a new minor league deal.

For the club, the benefit is obvious, as they effectively get a 41st man on their 40-man roster. Carrasco’s occasional appearances allow them to rest their other arms and reduce wear and tear over a long season. For Carrasco, he would probably prefer a steadier job but that’s hard to find, with his age and effectiveness. He posted a 6.36 earned run average from 2023 to 2025. He has a much better ERA of 3.00 this year, though in a small sample of nine innings over five appearances. With this gig, at least he gets sporadic hits of big league pay.

Last night’s game was suspended due to rain in the second inning. It was continued today with the Giants eventually winning 7-2. Grant Holmes had started last night but was replaced when the game continued today, with Atlanta using four pitchers to get through the remainder. As they go into the nightcap, Carrasco could be called upon to cover multiple innings, if needed.

Camargo, 26, signed a minor league deal with Atlanta last year. He has a very small amount of big league experience, having played five games with the Twins in 2024. He went hitless in seven plate appearances but did draw a walk. He hasn’t hit much in the minors either but has generally received favorable reviews for his glovework on the farm.

Drake Baldwin was behind the plate for the first game. Teams usually don’t ask a catcher to squat for both ends of a doubleheader, so Sandy León or Camargo could catch the second game. That could perhaps allow Baldwin’s bat to stay in the lineup as the designated hitter while the club still has a catcher on the bench. Camargo has an option and could be easily sent back to the minors after the game.

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