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The Tigers announced on Friday that they had appointed the outfielder Nomar mazara for assignment and optional infielder Willi Castro at Triple-A Toledo. Voltigeur Derek hill and infielder Isaac Paredes are up Toledo in a pair of matching list moves. Detroit also named southpaw Miguel Del Pozo as the 27th man for today’s doubles program against the Twins.
At just 26, Mazara has already ranked among baseball’s elite prospects, entering the 2016 season as one of the sport’s 25 most promising minor leagues. He looked in the game when he made his MLB debut this season too, hitting .266 / .320 / .419 with 20 homers in 145 games. It wasn’t a dominant performance, of course, but Mazara was only 21 at the time and taking the leap with just 23 Triple-A games under his belt. It was an impressive performance, and it was reasonable to expect him to only improve with more reps against the big league pitchers.
This, however, never really turned out to be true. Mazara spent the next four seasons as the first right fielder in Texas, but more or less continued to repeat his 2016 season. He posted a 93 OPS and 91 wRC + as a rookie in ’16 and, starting of 2017-19, posted collective scores of 94 and 92 in those same respective categories. He hit exactly 20 home runs again in 2017 and 2018 before hitting 19 in 2019. Essentially, he had settled in as a slightly below average hitter with well below average defensive ratings. The Rangers traded him to the White Sox during the Winter 2019 fixtures.
At this point, Mazara was a very interesting change of scenery candidate. He had plateaued at Arlington, of course, but he was a former Top 25 prospect entering his 25-year season with two years of club control remaining. For the White Sox, that was a smart enough dice roll to see if they could help Mazara take the plunge. Instead, he got the worst career batting line of .228 / .295 / .294 with a single home run and a career-high 29.5% strikeout rate in 149. matches last summer. Chicago didn’t call him in during the offseason.
Mazara tried his luck with his second club AL Central, landing with the Tigers on a one-year, $ 1.75 million contract at the end of the offseason. Things went a little better in Detroit than in Chicago, but only by little. Mazara’s strikeouts are down a bit and he’s shown a bit more pop. However, his overall .212 / .276 / .321 hitting line through 181 home plate appearances so far just wasn’t enough for the Tigers to continue to give him batting appearances on more controllable players. that hope to emerge in the long term. Detroit.
The Tigers will have a week to trade Mazara, attempt to get him through outright waivers or place him on release waivers. Mazara has over five years of service, so even if he goes through outright waivers without a claim, he can reject an outright minor league assignment and keep all of his remaining salary. Another club is unlikely to claim that salary, given their poor performance at the plate. The most likely outcome is that Mazara will become a free agent, either through an unconditional release from the team or through the rejection of an outright assignment. At this point, he would be free to sign elsewhere for just the pro-rated league minimum. That amount would be subtracted from the roughly $ 753,000 the Tigers still owe him until the end of the season.
Hill, 25, is a former Tigers first round player who has had a few rare appearances in the Big League but has yet to have a long audition. However, he reached .320 ./. 373 / .508 in 133 AAA plate matches, and he will now return to Detroit for his second stint of the 2021 campaign.
Paredes, 22, has been ranked among the Tigers’ top prospects since joining the Tigers alongside Jeimer candelario in trade 2017 who sent Justin wilson and Alex avila cubs. He hasn’t touched much in 145 previous MLB appearances, but his .261 / .357 / .412 slash in Triple-A will allow him to take a peek at struggling Castro – another infield hope that stumbled to .214 /. 278 / 0.341 slash through 280 home plate appearances with the Big League club so far in 2021.
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