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Trevor Cahill DFA'd, Eric Chavez to DL; J.J Putz and Will Harris recalled

Four moves this afternoon; two expected, one slightly surprising, and one definitely not anticipated, as the Diamondbacks designate Trevor Cahill for assignment.

By Jim McLennan
Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports

To start with the obvious, Zach Buchanan was the first to report Will Harris's arrival:

But it took a little while for any official acknowledgement to be forthcoming. Even Eric Chavez was initially vague on the details:

Harris was with the team for the Australia trip, and the first couple of weeks of the regular season, but didn't come anywhere close to reproducing his impressive 2013 form. In seven appearances, covering 8.1 innings, he was charged with nine runs, all earned, on ten hits and three walks. However, most of the damage was done in one really bad outing on April 3 against the Giants, where he faced seven batters, with two being retired and the other five crossing home-plate. But he has been very effective since being sent down to Reno, with a 1.12 ERA over 20 games for the Aces, and a K:BB ratio of 24:10 in 24 innings.

Eric had been hitting pretty well, putting up a 118 OPS+ for the Diamondbacks, over 44 games and 81 PAs. One problem this does create, is that we don't have any obvious backup for third-base, so Martin Prado probably isn't going to be getting a day off for quite some time. If necessary, the possibilities would include Nick Evans, Didi Gregorius or, as suggested by Gibson over the weekend, even Tuffy Gosewisch. Yeah. I'm not exactly enthusiastic about most of those prospects, but I guess, if it's just for a day, it's unlikely to be fatal.

The recall of J.J. Putz is also not too much of a shock. He had been out since May 3, but was rehabbing with the Aces in Triple-A, pitching for them on the 5th and 6th. With the relief corps being quite heavily used in the Atlanta series, as well as the team in the middle of a long stretch of games without a day off, an extra reliever was apparently deemed more important than replacing Chavez's bat. However, the big news is what the team did to make room for Putz:

Yep, the team has bitten the bullet on Trevor Cahill, who started the season in the rotation, but performed so miserably that he was eventually dumped to the bullpen, after a 9.17 ERA in four games. The results as a reliever have been better, with Cahill posting a 3.04 ERA over 23.2 innings, but it doesn't appear he features in the plans for Arizona going forward. One wonders if he may be the first casualty of new Chief Baseball Officer, Tony La Russa? If so, Cahill probably isn't going to be the last. The team now has a period to try and trade Cahill; we'll see if anything is worked out.

[Edit] An alternative suggestion being floated is that the team does want to move Cahill back into the rotation, but needs to get him lengthened out first, and that can only really be done in the minor leagues. If that is the case, they won't be looking for a trade partner, and will be hoping no other team puts a claim on Cahill which would block such a move. Not sure whether or not Cahill also has enough service time to be able to refuse a minor-league assignment, but one presumes if this is the plan, that had already been cleared with him.

I'll go watch Game of Thrones now. :)

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