On Friday the Minnesota Twins announced that they had claimed right-handed reliever Oliver Drake off waivers from the Toronto Blue Jays and outfielder Johnny Field from the Cleveland Indians.
Field, 26, will head to Triple-A Rochester, while Drake, 31, will wear No. 32 and join the team in time for Saturday’s game at Target Field against the Kansas City Royals.
Field’s entire MLB career spans the 62 games he played with the Tampa Bay Rays earlier this year before he was designated for assignment on July 20. He was claimed by the Indians four days later and sent to Triple-A Columbus, and then was again DFA’d by Cleveland on July 31 to make room for trade deadline acquisition Leonys Martin.
Field hit .231/.253/.373 with six homers in 179 plate appearances for the Rays, and saw time defensively at each outfield position as well as throwing a scoreless inning for Tampa Bay back on May 13 against the Orioles.
Field is a career .272/.332/.445 hitter across six minor-league seasons, and has stolen as many as 23 bases with as many as 14 homers across various stops while on the farm in the Rays system. He was Tampa Bay’s fifth-round pick in 2013 out of the University of Arizona.
Drake has pitched 117 innings across four major-league seasons, and this year alone has pitched in the big leagues for four teams: Milwaukee, Cleveland, Los Angeles (A) and Toronto.
He has a career ERA of 5.00 (3.51 FIP) and has fanned 129 batters. The strikeouts are the allure here, and while he has a WHIP of 1.55, he’s managed to keep the ball in the yard for his career (0.8 HR/9) with an acceptable walk rate (3.9 BB/9).
There isn’t much potential left in Drake considering he’s 31, but he has a career swinging-strike rate of 12.5 percent — 13.3 percent this year — and he induces grounders at an above-average rate for his career (46.9 percent).
His splitter is the moneymaker, with a career whiff rate of 17 percent and a 53.2 percent groundball rate.
Depending on who gets booted to make room for him — the best guess is Gabriel Moya or maybe Matt Belisle gets DFA’d — but it’s not the worst gamble in the world.
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