{"id":74265,"date":"2025-06-02T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/74265\/"},"modified":"2025-06-02T19:10:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T19:10:10","slug":"pirates-claim-ronny-simon-designate-tanner-rainey-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/74265\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Claim Ronny Sim\u00f3n, Designate Tanner Rainey For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pirates have claimed infielder Ronny Sim\u00f3n<\/a> off waivers from the Marlins. The latter club designated him for assignment last week. Right-hander Tanner Rainey<\/a> has been designated for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot for Sim\u00f3n. Mike Rodriguez<\/a> first reported that Sim\u00f3n would be joining the Pirates. Craig Mish of the Miami Herald<\/a> reported that it would be a waiver claim. Alex Stumpf of MLB.com<\/a> reported that Rainey was the corresponding move.<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f3n, 25, got his first major league call just over a month ago. The Marlins selected his contract on April 20th and he stuck on the roster until he was designated for assignment on May 30th. He got into 19 games and stepped to the plate 56 times, producing a batting line of .234\/.327\/.277.<\/p>\n

That was a fairly unremarkable performance from a statistical point of view but Sim\u00f3n got thrust into the spotlight in an unusual way. As relayed Jason Foster and Christina De Nicola of MLB.com<\/a>, Sim\u00f3n had a nightmare game against the Padres last week. The Fish were up 6-0 on Tuesday but several errors and general defensive miscues from Sim\u00f3n allowed the Friars to engineer an 8-6 comeback victory.<\/p>\n

Amid the chaotic contest, Sim\u00f3n was seen wiping tears from his face. After the game, he received plenty of encouraging messages from his teammates and even his opponents. Per the MLB.com story, Padres such as Manny Machado<\/a>, Luis Arr\u00e1ez<\/a> and Fernando Tatis Jr.<\/a> sent supportive texts to Sim\u00f3n after the game. In addition to that challenging on-field experience, Sim\u00f3n also had to deal with getting sent into DFA limbo a few days later. However, he has quickly found a new home by landing with the Pirates.<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f3n\u2019s major league time isn\u2019t much to go on. Presumably, the Pirates are paying more attention to his minor league work. In 2,328 minor league plate appearances, he has a .266\/.341\/.446 line and 108 wRC+. Before getting called up this year, he got into 15 Triple-A contests and had a massive .354\/.441\/.521 line in that small sample.<\/p>\n

As of July of last year, FanGraphs<\/a> considered Sim\u00f3n to be one of the top 20 prospects in the Rays\u2019 system, noting that his switch-hitting and defensive versatility gave him a good shot to eventually become a utility player. He has experience at the three infield positions to the left of first base as well as the outfield corners. He\u2019s generally been able to steal about 20-35 bases annually. The Rays didn\u2019t give him a 40-man spot at the end of last year, which led him to sign a minors deal with the Marlins coming into 2025.<\/p>\n

He still has a full slate of options, so the Pirates can keep him in the minors if they don\u2019t have room at the big league level. Rainey\u2019s DFA does open an active roster spot but the Pirates might recall a pitcher rather than playing with the pitching staff shorthanded.<\/p>\n

Rainey, 32, signed a minor league deal with the Pirates in the offseason and was selected to the roster about a month ago. He has since tossed 7 2\/3 innings over 11 appearances, allowing nine earned runs. There\u2019s surely a bit of luck in there, especially from a 35.7% strand rate that is ridiculously low, but he also hasn\u2019t done himself any favors by walking 16.2% of batters faced. On the positive side, his 24.3% strikeout rate and 45% ground ball rate are solid numbers.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll now head into DFA limbo, which can last for as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Pirates could take five days to try to line up a trade. Rainey\u2019s overall track record includes 197 big league innings with a 5.44 ERA. From 2019 to 2024, he logged 182 1\/3 of those innings with a 4.49 ERA, 28.5% strikeout rate and 14.1% walk rate.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pirates have claimed infielder Ronny Sim\u00f3n off waivers from the Marlins. The latter club designated him for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4,10,776,64,4297,10097,2058],"class_list":{"0":"post-74265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-pirates","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","13":"tag-pittsburghpirates","14":"tag-ronny-simon","15":"tag-tanner-rainey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114615355052790303","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74265","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=74265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}