Off-Season Transactions -- Latest: Miscellaneous Updates

[Mass Haas]

First a link to the now-closed lengthy mid- and late-season transaction thread which began in July:

 

http://forum.brewerfan.net/viewtopic.php?t=865?page=1

 

Our first off-season note is actually a retraction. During the final week of the season, the Huntsville Times reported that LHP Jeff Housman was released by the organization. This was not the case, and the Brewers contacted the Times shortly thereafter, but unless it was tucked away somewhere, no correction was published.

 

Housman will enter his 7th year in the system this spring. He's currently listed on Nashville's roster for eventual Rule 5 placement purposes. An organization "owns" a player on his initial affiliated contract for seven seasons.

[And That]

As mentioned in yonder minor league free agent thread, Luismar Pena's agent has confirmed that Pena has signed a new minor league deal with the Brewers, averting his impending free agency.

[Mass Haas]

Mike Jones designated for assignment to make room for Houston catcher Eric Munson --

 

Thread for discussion on Major League Forum

[kgbaseball]

Mike Jones was resigned to a minor league deal. Does he still have 0 options after the resigning?

[Mass Haas]

Mike Jones remains at zero options. He signed a one-year deal. Next fall he'll be free to leave again, meaning the Brewers would have to sign him again to a minor league deal. If he makes a miraculous comeback late in 2007, the Brewers could add him to the 40-man roster next fall, but he'd have to make the 25-man roster in spring 2009 or be exposed to waivers again in another outright process. Still a long, long, longshot.

 

More importantly, the Brewers have resigned 26-year-old RHP Marino Salas to a minor league deal. Claimed off waivers from Baltimore after the 2006 season, Salas dominated at Huntsville and got his first taste of AAA with Nashville. He may get a chance to close for the Sounds in early 2008.

 

Marino Salas Career Statistics

 

The Nashville site reports that Salas worked two scoreless innings in his first outing for Oriente in the Dominican Winter League.

[kgbaseball]

Per Baseball America:

 

Signed: RHP Mark DiFelice, RHP Mike Jones, LHP Sam Narron

Released: RHP Luis Jimenez, RHP J.T. King, RHP Craig Langille, RHP Patrick Lawler, RHP Mike Marksbury, RHP Guillermo Salinas, RHP Chris Toneguzzi, LHP Anthony Drinkard, OF Charles Iacono

[kgbaseball]

Brad Nelson added to the 40 man

[Mass Haas]

Released: RHP Luis Jimenez, RHP J.T. King, RHP Craig Langille, RHP Patrick Lawler, RHP Mike Marksbury, RHP Guillermo Salinas, RHP Chris Toneguzzi, LHP Anthony Drinkard, OF Charles Iacono

 

Some notes:

 

Jimenez, who just turned 19, was a 6'7" RHP who was suspended for a portion of 2006 for performance-enhancing drug use. In 48.2 IP over the past two seasons, he walked 63 batters.

 

Salinas, who turned 19 on Saturday the 28th, exhibited similar control issues, although not quite an extreme (34 in 47.2 IP).

 

Lawler turns 23 this December, and his small-sample numbers look fine, but well, no ground ball outs; he was worthy of an undrafted contract, but dismissed so quickly?

 

Marksbury struggled at Brevard after his indy league signing in late July.

 

Drinkard, unlike Lawler, did not pitch well while toiling on his undrafted free agent signee contract.

 

In two years in Maryvale, Iacono stole 46 of 54 bases but did little else well at least numbers-wise-- another "older" undrafted free agent.

 

Now the drafted players --

 

Hopefully Taylor Green will pan out, because "Team Canada" is really striking out on the draft pick front north of the border. There's still hope for 2004 16th round pick Alex Periard, but Langille was the 6th round pick that year out of Nova Scotia, and he never got out of rookie ball. That's better than long-gone Mark James (14th round, 2005).

 

Toneguzzi was another Canadian, but by way of Purdue (13th round, 2006). Who realized he'll be 25 in February? King was drafted in the 22nd round in '06 out of an Oklahoma jumior college.

 

Iacono the only position player in the bunch, depth and organizational soldier-ism being what it is, it's pretty hard to get dropped when you're a position player. We see this every fall and spring. Now pitchers, that's another story...

[dadofandrew]

Never heard of a single release, so they never got far.

[And That]

Iacono was one of the fastest guys in the organization, but was never able to make good contact. I liked J.T. King a little, but since Al hadn't heard of either of those guys, they weren't worth my thoughts.

[biedergb]

Is there a limit to the number of visas a team has? The reason I ask is MassHass's post about the releases and most were either latin american signings or Canadians. If there is a limit, then these releases make me wonder if they released some guys for other signings who are waiting to come the US.

 

Taking Al's point a bit further, because of this site many of us know a lot about players at all levels. But these types of guys are released all the time. Rookie league players simpy have to excel or demonstrate some excellent tools to suceed, otherwise they simply fill rosters.

[Mass Haas]

The following players who were potential minor league free agents have re-signed 2008 minor league contracts with the Brewers organization:

 

OF Mel Stocker

SS Ozzie Chavez (heading into his 9th season in the chain)

INF Guilder Rodriguez (heading into season eight)

RHP E.J. Shanks

 

In the minor league free agent thread we wrote:

 

Below are the players not listed, including three pitchers and a catcher signed in the final week of the season for the Nashville postseason. We'll find out about them and if Guilder Rodriguez and Ozzie Chavez agreed to extend their stays in the organization.

 

RHP Matt Ginter

RHP Kenny Ray

RHP Franklin Nunez

C Brian Munhall

LHP Rusty Tucker

 

Nunez, Munhall, and Tucker all remain, as each must have signed 2007 contracts that contained language for the 2008 season. Ginter and Ray are out, minor league free agents, like Alec Zumwalt. They may have declared early, and thus didn't appear on Baseball America's list.

 

So, to summarize, these guys will be back, at least in spring training:

 

OF Mel Stocker

SS Ozzie Chavez

INF Guilder Rodriguez

RHP E.J. Shanks

RHP Franklin Nunez

C Brian Munhall

LHP Rusty Tucker

[dadofandrew]

Stocker may be one of the best PR's to play in the last decade, he might well be up again in September. He can sure fly.

 

I wonder, how does Darren Ford's speed compare to Stocker's?

[Mass Haas]

Thanks to the always-helpful Nashville site, we learn that 32-year-old RHP Jason Karnuth is the first Brewer minor league free agent signee of this offseason from outside the organization. Karnuth has been strictly a reliever since 2000. Nothing personal to Jason, but here's hoping we can get a tad more excited about future announcements.

 

Nashville Site Update

 

Jason Karnuth Career Statistics from Baseball Cube

 

Karnuth may have caught someone's eye in Venezuela, where he's pitched well this winter

 

Karnuth hurt this past June (reconstructive facial surgery) playing peacemaker in battle over iPod volume

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/images/players/mugshot/ph_400112.jpg

 

Cached view of latest Toledo Bio Page

[molitor fan]

See I think this is a fine signing - a AAA closer with some MLB experience. Decent stats, and doing well in winter ball too....his low k numbers are the primary red flag of course.

[dadofandrew]

I would guess he was signed for Nashville rather than Milwaukee.

[twobrewers]

I would think Nashville as well. (At least I hope so)

 

But we are likely to have Salas, Pena and now Karnuth fighting for the closing spot?

[kgbaseball]

RHP Edwin Linares, C Orton Rodriguez, and SS Carlos Guzman were also signed within the last week

[kgbaseball]

Chris Narveson and Scott Cassidy signed, update from Tom Haudricourt

You have to like the Narveson signing, as he's always had a fair amount of potential, but injuries have taken their toll.

[biedergb]

I agree, nice pick up on Narveson. He was one of those pitching prospects (I know there's no such thing) in the Cards system who was derailed by injuries. I heard he was doing well last year, but would be a MR/LOOGY kind of pitcher now.

[Mass Haas]

Feature stories on the new RHP's chosen in the Minor League phase of Rule 5:

 

RHP Juan Sandoval has an amazing story -- his name seemed hauntingly familiar:

 

Profiles in Courage and Grit.... RHP Juan Sandoval

Feb 28, 2007

 

A little over a year ago, then 25 year old Mariners' pitching prospect Juan Sandoval was having dinner with his girlfriend in his native Dominica, overhearing an argument between a security guard and a drunken customer.

 

The next thing he knew, he heard the sound of a shotgun being pumped nearby, then the pain of richocheting buckshot carving into his face and right eye.

 

Doctors in the local hospital were unable to do anything for him, so he was transferred to a facility in the capital city of Santo Domingo, where he underwent several surgeries over the next six months. The eye was "saved" but his vision in that side was permanently lost.

 

Prior to this year, Sandoval last pitched for the AA San Antonio Missions, who are no longer part of the Mariners' organization, with a record of 9-11 and a 4.03 ERA.

 

He is now a non-roster invitee to the major league spring training camp in Peoria AZ, where he has already thrown in an intersquad game on Tuesday. He gave up a 500+ foot home run to outfield prospect Mike Wilson, but otherwise pitched well for his first attempt in nearly two years.

 

He has put in a lot of hard work since his accident and surgeries, both in the Dominican and in Seattle. He knows that he is not likely to make the 40 man out of spring training, but is hoping to be assigned to AAA Tacoma for the minor league season.

 

From where I sit, it takes a lot of guts to be a one eyed pitcher, and the M's are to be congratulated for standing behind him and letting him come back to try and get back into the game.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2003585066_mari23.html

 

Shotgun blast ruins eye, but M's prospect returns

By Geoff Baker

Seattle Times staff reporter

 

February 23, 2007

 

PEORIA, Ariz. -- Counting the bounces of ground balls hit his way is something Juan Sandoval would have scoffed at a year ago.

"One, two, three ... glove!"

That stuff was for little kids . Certainly not for him, a professional pitcher and rising prospect hoping for a promotion to Class AAA by the Mariners.

But that all changed Feb. 4, 2006, when Sandoval was dining at a restaurant in his Dominican Republic hometown of Bonao. There was a nearby argument between the restaurant's bouncer and a drunken man. The man left, but returned moments later with a shotgun. Sandoval heard the gun's pump-action, turned to see what was happening and took a blast to the upper torso and face.

Three of the shotgun pellets lodged in his right eye, leaving it permanently blind.

Nearly a full year, a pair of surgeries, two visits to a retinal specialist in Seattle and plenty of guts later, the 26-year-old is on a field here with the Mariners as a non-roster invitee to spring training. He's learned to pitch and field his position with only one eye, using tips like "one, two, three ... glove!" to gauge the speed and closeness of grounders and compensate for his lost depth perception.

Sandoval has improved his fielding to the point where he no longer has to count the bounces, only his blessings.

"When I got shot, I didn't know if I was going to keep playing baseball, keep my eye, or lose my vision," says Sandoval, whose carefree smile conceals just how much he's gone through. "I was just lucky to be alive. That was the only thing I cared about."

"One, two, three ... glove!"

The words are a reminder to Sandoval of where he's been and how far he's come.

"I don't like to be around a lot of people now," he says. "Especially when I'm back home and I go out somewhere. If I go to a restaurant to eat, I like only a few people to be there. I don't want to go where it's crowded, where something can happen."

He recalls the fear that gripped him as the pellets struck his face, causing him to leap from the table where he'd been sitting with his girlfriend, Elisa, and her aunt and uncle.

They too, were slightly hit, but suffered minor injuries. Sandoval could feel blood gushing down his face and remembers grabbing a restaurant patron in a panic and screaming: "Is my eye still there? Is my eye still there?"

Sandoval was rushed to a local hospital. Three days later, he had surgery to take the pellets out of the eye -- arranged by the Mariners -- in a better-equipped facility in the capital of Santo Domingo.

"They also cleaned it, got the blood out of there and did all they could to make it look normal," he says. "The doctors told me that if I'd waited another day, I would have lost the eyeball."

Only a slight reddish tinge remains, a hint at the trauma his eye sustained.

But saving it permanently, after the first surgery, meant spending three weeks in a darkened area of his parents' home to avoid the sun's glare. It meant having his meals spoon-fed to him in order to keep his head upright so that the eye wouldn't shut tight.

It took three months for his eye to strengthen, completely open and be free of swelling.

Sandoval underwent more surgery on July 17 to have a dose of silicone implanted in the eye to prevent the eyelid from forcing itself closed. Though it now looks almost completely normal again, his tear duct is dried up and the eye is dead from a vision standpoint.

Baseball had been an afterthought.

"It was a long time before I could even try to play again," Sandoval said. "But I love baseball. I wanted to try to play again."

In October, he began playing catch from a distance of only five feet at a stadium in his hometown.

"It was really strange," he said. "I couldn't tell how deep the background was. I had to keep my glove right up near my face. "

Sandoval later headed to the nearby Mariners training complex in a compound behind the home of fabled super-scout Epy Guerrero. He took ground balls with other players, did some running and threw bullpen sessions -- not yet medically cleared to pitch.

"He had to re-learn everything," said Mariners head trainer Rick Griffin. "He'd completely lost his depth perception. He lost the ability to catch and judge a ball coming toward him on the mound. He had to re-learn balance."

The biggest concern, one that remains to this day, was how well he'd field comebackers to the mound.

"I had trouble judging the distance of the ball, so [pitching coach Manuel Marrero] told me to count the bounces," Sandoval said. "So, I would count, 'One, two, three ... ' and the ball would go into my glove."

Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi saw Sandoval throw a bullpen session during an early December trip to the Dominican Republic. Sandoval later told Bavasi he'd like the opportunity to attend big-league camp.

"We had already made an internal decision that we'd invite him if he got medical clearance to pitch," Bavasi said. "He was very eager and seemed ready to give it a try."

"One, two, three ... glove!"

Sandoval has tried to put those words and the past behind him. He takes pride in how he did regular, on-field workouts with other players during his recovery. He never asked for special treatment and doesn't want any.

The man who shot him claimed the gun went off accidentally. He was dirt poor, with a wife and family and had spent a week in jail when Sandoval finally talked to the police.

"I told them I didn't want to press charges, so they let him go," he said. "He was very poor and he made a mistake. Having him in jail wasn't going to change anything for me."

Sandoval used to run his fastball into the low 90s, with a smooth, loose delivery. He was 9-11 with a 4.03 earned-run average for Class AA San Antonio in 2005, but needed to resolve some control issues.

Like the rest of his recent past, though, none of that matters now. Out here, it truly is a new beginning for a pitcher keeping his remaining eye focused straight ahead.

"I'm just very happy to be here right now, in my first big-league camp," he said. "I know how lucky I am to be here and I'm going to do my best. I do everything like the other players now. I'm no different than they are."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/02/22/2003584814.jpg

 

A baseball bounces off the chest of pitcher Juan Sandoval after he misses catching it during a drill. Sandoval is blind in one eye.

AP Photo by Elaine Thompson

[Mass Haas]

Closest we could find to a feature article on RHP Brett Campbell, who had a call-up with the Nationals late in 2006:

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2006/082006/08312006/217985

Campbell a diamond in rough

August 31, 2006
By TODD JACOBSON
Fredericksburg.com

Brett Campbell had pitched just a handful of innings in his college career when he was drafted in 2004, and when he was taken by the Montreal Expos after his senior season at Kennesaw State University, it was in the 34th round.

Even his parents weren't terribly optimistic. His dad, Brad Campbell, was a 27th round pick of the Braves in 1978 and never made it out of the minors. His mom was, typically, a concerned mom.

"A lot of people didn't expect too much," said Campbell, a right-handed reliever now at Triple-A New Orleans with the Nationals. "The chances and opportunities for a 34th rounder weren't too good, but I went into it with an open mind."

Campbell, after all, wasn't a typical late-round pick.

He didn't pitch much at Division II Kennesaw in Northwest Georgia. He was a third baseman by trade and an occasional pitcher out of the bullpen in college. He had thrown a bit in high school, too, and while his fastball reached the low-90s, it was as raw as his slider and changeup.

"He was a guy that touched 94 [mph] with an above-average slider," said Dana Brown, the Nationals director of amateur scouting. "You take a shot. We weren't really getting a guy we thought could help us win at the minor league level, but he developed into a pretty good prospect."

It didn't take him long.

After going 4-2 with a 1.69 ERA and 19 saves last season at low Single-A Savannah, the 25-year-old began a quick ascent through the Nationals' system at high Single-A Potomac this season.

In stops at Potomac, Double-A Harrisburg and Triple-A New Orleans, Campbell was a combined 3-5 with a 2.79 ERA in 60 outings, establishing himself as an unlikely prospect along the way.

Though he was among the last signed picks in 2004, he became the second member of the Nationals' '04 draft class to reach Triple-A--faster than Erick San Pedro (second round), Ian Desmond (third round) and Collin Balester (fourth round).

And this fall, he'll pitch in the prospect-rich Arizona Fall League, something he never envisioned two years ago.

"I can't wait," Campbell said. "When I got the phone call telling me I was going to Arizona, coming from the 34th round and going to the AFL, where each team's best prospects are playing, I am really excited about it. Hopefully I can go out there and show these guys what I've got."

[Mass Haas]

A June 2005 Scouting Report on Juan Sandoval

[Mass Haas]

Nothing really "feature story" on RHP Joe Bateman, did see this nugget:

 

Joe Bateman almost went from July 17 to the end of the season without allowing an earned run. Entering the last game of the season, Bateman had tossed 19 consecutive innings without allowing a run. He gave up only eight hits and six walks in that span. Bateman entered the last game of the season on September 3 at Bowie in the 8^th inning. Bateman pitched a scoreless 8^th, but with two outs and a runner on third base in the 9^th, Bateman threw a wild pitch allowing Nolan Reimold to score from third. The batter at the plate, Morgan Clendenin eventually grounded out to end the season.

 

Just a reminder that the active Rule 5 thread, including Callix Crabbe to the Padres' discussion (also noting Bo Hall to the Yankees' minor league system) is here; there are some stat links there and I'm sure you're all comfortable searching at Milb.com or the Baseball Cube if you wish to dig deeper at this time on the newest Brewer farmhands.

[Mass Haas]

And yes, "Richard Campbell" goes by his middle name of Brett, hence any confusion from the Rule 5 lists earlier today...