The Orioles announced that right-hander Albert Suarez has been designated for assignment. Prior to today’s doubleheader with the Tigers, Baltimore activated left-hander Grant Wolfram from the 15-day IL to use him as the 27th man, and Wolfram will now stay on the 26-man roster in Suarez’s place.
These transactions are becoming routine for Suarez, who has now been DFA’ed three times by the Orioles in under a month. The first designation saw Suarez clear waivers and then elect free agency, as a previous outright on his resume allowed him to decline the Orioles’ outright assignment to Triple-A Norfolk. However, Suarez quickly re-signed with the O’s on a minor league contract, then was selected back to the active roster, and DFA’ed and outrighted again within the span of five days.
This time, Suarez chose to just accept the outright assignment, and spent a couple of weeks in Norfolk before the Orioles selected his contract again last Tuesday. Unless Suarez is claimed off waivers, it seems probable that Suarez will end up staying with the O’s in some fashion, either via accepting the outright assignment or another free agent trip that results in another fresh minor league deal.
Suarez is out of minor league options, so the O’s have to designate him and expose him to the waiver wire whenever the club wants to shift him off the active roster. Suarez has some leverage in this back-and-forth situation given his ability to reject outright assignments, but it could be that he is content to stick it out in a familiar environment with the knowledge that he’ll probably get another look in the majors pretty soon.
Amidst all this roster shuffling, Suarez has a 2.75 ERA over 19 2/3 big league innings this season, including four shutout frames in Game 2 of today’s doubleheader (a 4-1 Orioles loss). Suarez’s ability to eat innings has made the former swingman and starter into a useful long man for Baltimore, though he has barely more strikeouts (10) than walks (nine) and he benefited greatly from a minuscule .186 BABIP.