{"id":82069,"date":"2025-06-05T21:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T21:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/82069\/"},"modified":"2025-06-05T21:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T21:15:09","slug":"athletics-designate-cj-alexander-for-assignment-reinstate-michael-kelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/82069\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics Designate CJ Alexander For Assignment, Reinstate Michael Kelly"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletics announced a series of roster moves today, as relayed by Mart\u00edn Gallegos of MLB.com<\/a>. Right-hander Michael Kelly<\/a> has been reinstated from the restricted list and left-hander T.J. McFarland<\/a> has been reinstated from the 15-day injured list. In corresponding active moves, the A\u2019s have optioned right-handers Elvis Alvarado<\/a> and Justin Sterner<\/a>. To open a 40-man spot, infielder\/outfielder CJ Alexander<\/a> has been designated for assignment.<\/p>\n

Kelly was one of four players suspended by Major League Baseball<\/a> for one year after a league investigation revealed that the quartet had placed small-scale bets on Major League Baseball games while playing in the minor leagues back in 2020-22. Kelly\u2019s bets came in October of 2021, when he was pitching at the Triple-A level in the Astros\u2019 system. He made only ten bets for a total of $99.92, with three of those bets coming on games involving the Astros\u2019 big league club during the postseason.<\/p>\n

The one-year suspensions have now been served and all four players are eligible for reinstatement today. The Diamondbacks have already reinstated<\/a> left-hander Andrew Saalfrank<\/a>. Padres lefty Jay Groome<\/a>\u00a0and Phillies infielder\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Rodr\u00edguez<\/a> should be reinstated today as well. None of the four bet more than $749 in total, and none were on the 40-man roster at the time their bets were placed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the key distinction for that quartet receiving one-year bans as opposed to former Padres\/Pirates utilityman\u00a0Tucupita Marcano<\/a>, who received a lifetime ban (announced in conjunction with these four suspensions). Marcano wagered more than $150K on 387 bets involving MLB games while he was on a big league roster \u2014 including 25 bets on Pirates games while he was on Pittsburgh\u2019s major league injured list (rehabbing a season-ending ACL tear).<\/p>\n

Major League Baseball\u2019s rules regarding gambling stipulate that \u201cAny player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has no duty to perform, shall be declared ineligible for one year.\u201d Players, umpires, club officials and league officials who place bets of \u201cany sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform\u201d are subject to permanent bans. Further details on the investigation and its findings were provided\u00a0in a league-issued press release<\/a>\u00a0last year at the time of these suspensions.<\/p>\n

Prior to his suspension, Kelly had managed to log 52 big league innings for the Phillies, Guardians and A\u2019s. Most of that came just before his absence, as he logged 31 1\/3 innings with Oakland last year, allowing 2.59 earned runs per nine. His 17.2% strikeout rate last year wasn\u2019t especially strong but he kept his walks down to a 7.8% level. He\u2019ll now get a chance to build upon all those numbers after having served his suspension.<\/p>\n

While on the restricted list, Kelly did not count against the club\u2019s 40-man roster tally. Now that he\u2019s back, Alexander has been nudged off. Alexander will head into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the A\u2019s could take as many as five days to explore trade interest.<\/p>\n

Alexander was claimed off waivers from the Royals in September. Between those two clubs, he has a .160\/.160\/.160 batting line in a tiny sample of 25 big league plate appearances. His minor league work has naturally been greater in both quantity and quality. Dating back to the start of 2024, he has a .287\/.357\/.544 batting line and 121 wRC+ in 595 plate appearances at the Triple-A level. He has a bit of defensive versatility, with experience at all four corner spots. He can still be optioned to the minors for the rest of this campaign and one additional season. He could perhaps appeal to clubs who have roster space and want some extra position player depth.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Neville E. Guard, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletics announced a series of roster moves today, as relayed by Mart\u00edn Gallegos of MLB.com. Right-hander Michael…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,15132,7634,6616,20354,4,3226,11480],"class_list":{"0":"post-82069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-cj-alexander","11":"tag-elvis-alvarado","12":"tag-justin-sterner","13":"tag-michael-kelly","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-mlb-athletics","16":"tag-t-j-mcfarland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114632834038008186","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82069","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=82069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}