Transaction Update
Yesterday, the Boys in Durham dropped a transactions post, which is always welcome in the New World Order (since 2019-20) of next-to-no-minors-news from November to February.
RE-SIGNED
● RHP Daison Acosta
● C C.J. Stubbs
SIGNED
● RHP Clay Helvey
RELEASED
● LHP Jeffrey Familia
● SS Diego Hernandez
● RHP Jose Hernandez
● RHP Anel Martinez
● C Jose Pena
● RHP Gustavo Rivas
● RHP Enyerber Rivero
● OF Robert Santos
Perhaps the only surprise is how many DSL guys were sent packing, which probably shouldn’t be now that pushing them stateside has a real cost in terms of counting against the lower cap on rostered players.
It’s also consistent with another thing I’ve noticed over the past four seasons: Release information is now given up much more freely, especially during the regular season when it used to be that a guy was put on the 7-day I.L. then never heard from again.
We now return you to the Sunday before Thanksgiving, where the Sunday scaries are compounded by the existential dread of dinner with your low-information relatives on Thursday.
Clay Helvey:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=helvey000cla
Will turn 28 on Valentine’s Day. Had 12.2 K/9 at AAA but walked 4.4. Was pretty unlucky with a .343 BABIP against. All in all, he looks like another Nuke LaLoosh type, who might do something if he can ever find the strike zone.
Reason to root for Helvey: he was picked in the 22d round, number 646 overall. For frame of reference, here is the Nats’ 2018 draft:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/index.fcgi?team_ID=WSN&year_ID=2018&draft_type=junreg&query_type=franch_year
Thank goodness for Jake Irvin!
These DSL releases were all posted on the Rochester website on 11/13. Clay Helvey was there a week ago as well. If you go the roster and click on WSH transactions, you’ll see the transactions on the same day or the day after they happen.
Glad to see they were able to keep Acosta around. He quietly had an excellent season, and finally got promoted to Rochester in late September, so he should be firmly in play for major league playing time in 2025.