{"id":564859,"date":"2026-02-10T21:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/564859\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T21:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:30:20","slug":"mariners-sign-connor-joe-jhonathan-diaz-to-minor-league-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/564859\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariners Sign Connor Joe, Jhonathan D\u00edaz To Minor League Deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mariners announced Tuesday that they\u2019ve signed first baseman\/outfielder Connor Joe<\/a> and left-hander Jhonathan D\u00edaz<\/a> to minor league deals. Both players receive invitations to major league spring training. D\u00edaz was outrighted by Seattle last week and briefly elected free agency but will return on a new minor league pact.<\/p>\n

Joe, 33, briefly appeared with both the Padres and Reds last season but only totaled 42 plate appearances in the majors. He didn\u2019t hit well in that time but from 2021-24 logged a respectable .244\/.339\/.395 batting line (99 wRC+) with 35 homers, 82 doubles, nine triples, an 11.2% walk rate and a 21.6% strikeout rate in 1566 plate appearances between Colorado and Pittsburgh. He spent most of last year in Triple-A, where he posted a disappointing .225\/.346\/.306 slash in 205 trips to the plate.<\/p>\n

In 645 career plate appearances against lefties, the right-handed-hitting Joe is a .247\/.344\/.401 hitter, just a bit north of league-average by measure of wRC+. He\u2019s logged 874 innings in right field, 944 innings in left field and 1089 innings at first base, with solid grades at first and in left field. Seattle already signed Rob Refsnyder<\/a> to pair with lefty-swinging DH\/corner outfielder Dominic Canzone<\/a>, but Joe provides some depth in the event of an injury to Refsnyder.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old D\u00edaz has pitched briefly in parts of five major league seasons but only has 46 1\/3 MLB frames under his belt. He\u2019s worked to a 4.66 ERA in that small sample, fanning 33 of 219 opponents (15.1%) against 27 walks (12.3%). He\u2019s been a solid member of the Mariners\u2019 Triple-A rotation in each of the past two seasons, starting at least 22 games in both seasons and keeping his ERA in the low 4.00s.<\/p>\n

D\u00edaz isn\u2019t likely to crack Seattle\u2019s Opening Day roster, but he\u2019s a serviceable depth arm to have down in Tacoma and could be in line for additional opportunities in 2026 after right-hander Logan Evans<\/a> underwent UCL surgery recently. Evans was likely Triple-A-bound himself but was sixth on Seattle\u2019s rotation depth chart behind the quintet of Logan Gilbert<\/a>, Bryan Woo<\/a>, George Kirby<\/a>, Luis Castillo<\/a> and Bryce Miller<\/a>. Right-hander Emerson Hancock<\/a> is probably the first man up in the event of an injury now, but D\u00edaz joins him, Casey Lawrence<\/a> and fellow non-roster invitee Dane Dunning<\/a> in that conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners announced Tuesday that they\u2019ve signed first baseman\/outfielder Connor Joe and left-hander Jhonathan D\u00edaz to minor league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,1537,10875,4],"class_list":["post-564859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-connor-joe","tag-jhonathan-diaz","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116048470104553117","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564859","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=564859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}