{"id":1498,"date":"2025-04-30T00:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T00:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/1498\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T00:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T00:19:10","slug":"padres-to-designate-yuli-gurriel-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/1498\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres To Designate Yuli Gurriel For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Padres are going to designate first baseman Yuli Gurriel<\/a> for assignment and place infielder Mason McCoy<\/a> on the 10-day injured list, per AJ Cassavell of MLB.com<\/a>. McCoy dislocated his left pinky finger recently. Those will open roster spots for outfielder Jason Heyward<\/a> and infielder Luis Arr\u00e1ez<\/a> to be activated from the IL.<\/p>\n

Gurriel, 41 in June, signed a minor league deal with the Friars in the offseason. They were looking for some cheap ways to add some offense, with holes in a couple of spots, including their designated hitter and bench mix.<\/p>\n

Both Gurriel and Gavin Sheets<\/a> had good spring performances and cracked the Opening Day roster. Sheets has done a better job of carrying it into the regular season, as he\u2019s hitting .275\/.314\/.438 for a wRC+ of 111. Gurriel, on the other hand, has produced a dismal .111\/.200\/.139 line.<\/p>\n

Arr\u00e1ez recently landed on the concussion IL, which moved Sheets from a regular designated hitter to a regular first base role. That allowed Gurriel to hang around for while but he would have been hard pressed to find playing time going forward with Arr\u00e1ez back in action. Presumably, Arr\u00e1ez and Sheets will share most of the first base and DH playing time going forward.<\/p>\n

The Friars should put Gurriel on waivers in the coming days. Based on his age and recent performance, he\u2019s not likely to garner much interest. He hit .243\/.297\/.356 for a wRC+ of 82 over the 2022 through 2024 seasons. As a veteran with at least five years of service time, Gurriel would have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency in the event he clears waivers.<\/p>\n

McCoy\u2019s injury will subtract a bit of infield depth but Heyward might indirectly help with that. Tyler Wade<\/a> has been covering center field lately due to injuries to Jackson Merrill<\/a> and Brandon Lockridge<\/a>. With Heyward now off the IL, he can rejoin the outfield mix alongside Wade, Fernando Tatis Jr.<\/a>, Tirso Ornelas<\/a>, Oscar Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a> and Connor Joe<\/a>. If there\u2019s an injury to middle infielders Xander Bogaerts<\/a> or Jose Iglesias<\/a>, Wade is capable of moving to the dirt and leaving center field to someone in that group.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of David Banks, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Padres are going to designate first baseman Yuli Gurriel for assignment and place infielder Mason McCoy on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,873,85,1366,4,1367],"class_list":{"0":"post-1498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-jason-heyward","10":"tag-luis-arraez","11":"tag-mason-mccoy","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-yuli-gurriel"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114424051373069119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}