Four players who were just acquired on Tuesday have been activated by the Orioles.
The Orioles traded for a bunch of players on Tuesday. One shuffle for the organization was sending away the prospects needed to acquire them. The next shuffle comes when the players actually arrive onto the major league roster. The team finished off this juggling on Thursday afternoon with a series of changes to the 26-man roster.
Newly-activated players, as listed by the Orioles:
- DH/OF Eloy Jiménez (#72)
- LHP Trevor Rogers (#26)
- OF Austin Slater (#16)
- INF Livan Soto (#73)
The Orioles announced that Rogers is the starting pitcher for tonight’s game against the Guardians.
Adding these four players required four other roster moves. These are the moves that could have been predicted based on the trades plus yesterday’s injury to Jordan Westburg.
- Optioned to Triple-A Norfolk: OF Heston Kjerstad, LHP Keegan Akin
- Placed on 10-day injured list: INF Jordan Westburg (right hand fracture)
- Designated for assignment: OF Cristian Pache
Pitcher Vinny Nittoli, previously DFA’d, passed through waivers and has elected to become a free agent rather than accept an assignment to Norfolk.
Gregory Soto, who the Orioles also acquired on Tuesday, was activated yesterday. Add that to Friday’s trades for Zach Eflin and Seranthony Domínguez and that’s a lot of change to the roster in just the last week. Pache was also acquired in one of those Friday deals and he’s already on the way out.
It’s going to be interesting to see how often the Orioles choose to use Jiménez and Slater. They provide some notional right-handed balance to the lineup, but their 2024 performance to date doesn’t give much reason to believe they offer any improvement. Maybe there’s another Aaron Hicks-like revival to come here. I’d have kept Kjerstad around, but nobody asked me.
As we’ve already seen with Pache being dumped within a week, the fact that the Orioles traded for the player doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to be here for the duration. If a few weeks have gone by and either or both of Jiménez and Slater are hitting like they’ve been hitting up to this point, the O’s could chuck them in turn. That could mean bringing Kjerstad back or giving Coby Mayo a September chance.