Major League Baseball roster moves are a convoluted, exciting business. Outfielder Jake Fraley found that out the hard way this year.
After spending three relatively stable years with the Cincinnati Reds, Fraley wound up getting designated for assignment for the first time in August, and after the Atlanta Braves DFA’d him again earlier this month, he became a member of the Tampa Bay Rays.
Though it looked like the Rays might allow Fraley to compete for a job in their wide-open outfield this season, Tuesday’s roster news leaves us to wonder why they bothered claiming him at all.
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Fraley among six players DFA’d by Rays on Tuesday
Aug 30, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Atlanta Braves outfielder Jake Fraley (16) advances home to score against the Philadelphia Phillies in the tenth inning at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Ross-Imagn Images | Kyle Ross-Imagn Images
On Tuesday, the Rays designated two outfielders for assignment, and Fraley was one of them. He spent a grand total of 12 days in the organization, following a season where he put up a respectable .714 OPS in 76 combined games for the Reds and braves.
The upcoming season is the last in which the seven-year veteran Fraley is eligible for arbitration, so he’d have been owed at least a few million dollars if he wasn’t DFA’d or non-tendered by the Friday deadline.
Fraley will almost certainly clear waivers, and the Rays stand virtually no chance of getting him to accept an outright assignment to Triple-A Durham. He’s earned the right to test free agency if a team doesn’t want to pay his arbitration salary, and that appears to be the scenario that’s playing out.
Sometimes, teams will DFA players at this time of year just to trade them to teams hoping to skip the line on waivers. But again, that makes very little sense with Fraley, who will be eligible for arbitration if he’s on a 40-man roster by Friday.
Unless the Rays had some sort of assurance from Fraley that he wanted to be in the organization this season between the time they claimed him and the time they let him go, it seems odd that they bothered to pick him up, considering their 40-man roster crunch is very obviously pressing.
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