Orioles Designate Jhonkensy Noel For Assignment

By Darragh McDonald | January 7, 2026 at 2:40pm CDT

The Orioles announced that they have claimed outfielder Marco Luciano off waivers from the Pirates, a move which was previously reported. To open a 40-man spot, outfielder Jhonkensy Noel has been designated for assignment. The O’s also announced that left-hander Josh Walker, who was designated for assignment last month, has cleared waivers and been sent to Triple-A Norfolk.

Noel, 24, was just claimed off waivers two days ago. It may seem strange to acquire a player and then immediately cut him from the roster but this sequence of events is becoming more common in baseball and the Orioles are one of the more aggressive teams in attempting it. The ideal outcome for the team is that the player eventually clears waivers and stays in the organization as depth without taking up a roster spot.

Baltimore fans should be familiar with the upside of the move. The O’s acquired Ryan O’Hearn from the Royals in January of 2023. He was designated for assignment two days later and cleared waivers. A few months after that, he hit his way back onto the roster and was a productive member of the club for over two years.

Up until he was claimed by the Orioles, Noel had spent his entire career with the Guardians. With that club, he has shown huge power potential but also a poor approach at the plate. He has 351 big league plate appearances to this point with 19 home runs but his 4.8% walk rate and 32.8% strikeout rate are both awful numbers. Despite the long balls, he has a .193/.242/.401 batting line and 79 wRC+, indicating he’s been 21% worse than the league average hitter.

He exhausted his final option season in 2025, which has pushed him into fringe roster territory. The Guards nudged him off and the O’s scooped him up. He’s now back into DFA limbo again, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the O’s could field trade interest for the next five days, but the Guards weren’t able to line up a trade in the previous weeks. Most likely, Noel will be back on the waiver wire.

Despite the rough major league results, he could draw interest from the raw power and also his better minor league numbers. Over the past two years, he has stepped to the plate 536 times at Triple-A. His 7.5% walk rate and 23.7% strikeout rate at that level are still not great but much closer to average. That’s helped him put up a .285/.349/.538 line and 130 wRC+.

If some other club scoops him up, Noel has just over a year of big league service time. That means he can be controlled for five full seasons and is still two years away from an arbitration raise. If he clears waivers, the O’s can keep him. Since he doesn’t have three years of service nor a previous career outright, he doesn’t have the right to reject an outright assignment.

The situation with Walker is somewhat similar. The O’s claimed him off waivers from the Phillies in August. The O’s then signed him to a major league deal in November. Salary terms of that pact haven’t been reported but it presumably pays Walker something slightly above the $780K league minimum, since he still hasn’t qualified for arbitration.

He was designated for assignment two days later. Like with the O’Hearn and Noel situations, the O’s were hoping Walker would clear waivers and stick with the club in a non-roster capacity. It didn’t work initially, as Atlanta claimed him. But that club designated him for assignment a few weeks later, which allowed the Orioles to claim him back. The O’s then tried again, designating Walker for assignment once more on December 19th.

DFA limbo normally only lasts a week at most, but there are different rules around the holidays, so Walker lingered in the ether for a few weeks. Today, he finally has clarity on his status. While he probably isn’t glad to lose his roster spot, he now at least knows which spring training location he’ll be reporting to.

Walker will try to win in the Baltimore bullpen at some point in 2026. His major league track record isn’t amazing, as he has a 6.59 earned run average in 27 1/3 innings. However, he just posted some intriguing minor league numbers in 2025. Split between the Blue Jays, Phillies and Orioles, he logged 42 2/3 Triple-A frames. His 4.64 ERA in that sample isn’t too exciting but he struck out 24.1% of batters faced and got grounders on 52.1% of balls in play.

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Blue Jays Continuing To Pursue Kyle Tucker

By Anthony Franco | January 6, 2026 at 7:37pm CDT

The Blue Jays had already been one of the sport’s most aggressive teams before signing NPB star Kazuma Okamoto to a four-year, $60MM contract over the weekend. Okamoto joins Dylan Cease, Cody Ponce and Tyler Rogers as significant free agent acquisitions. They’ve also been one of the clubs most frequently tied to the top two free agent hitters, Kyle Tucker and Bo Bichette.

There has been plenty of speculation that the Jays could be Tucker’s eventual landing spot. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com wrote yesterday that two of his sources pegged Toronto as the favorite for the market’s top player. Meanwhile, Mitch Bannon of The Athletic reports this evening that the Jays are making a stronger push for Tucker than they had earlier in the winter. Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet adds that the sides have had recent conversations, though he suggests the door remains open to Tucker or Bichette. Toronto’s interest in Tucker stretches back to the beginning of the offseason; he visited the club’s Spring Training facility in Dunedin on December 3.

RosterResource calculates the Jays’ payroll around $280MM, which is already $40MM above where they opened the 2025 season. Their luxury tax estimate sits at $308MM, more than $20MM north of last year’s season-ending tax number. They’re above the $304MM mark that represents the top tier of penalization. That already has them on track to pay around $30MM in luxury taxes, more than all but four teams (the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees and Phillies) paid last season. Any future spending is taxed at a 90% clip on the average annual value. A hypothetical $35MM AAV for Tucker would come with a $31.5MM tax on top of it.

It’s unclear how much of a deterrent the tax obligations are for the Jays. They’re already into uncharted financial waters after coming a few inches away from their first World Series in three decades. The Rogers ownership group and the front office are clearly committed to a win-now posture. George Springer, Shane Bieber, Kevin Gausman and Daulton Varsho will all be free agents next offseason. That’s a lot of money coming off the books but also four key contributors whom they’re not guaranteed to have back in 2027, which should only increase the motivation to make another run this year.

Tucker, a career .273/.358/.507 hitter, is the best offensive player available. He’d step into an everyday right field role, pushing Anthony Santander to left. The Jays would have Springer as their primary designated hitter. Okamoto and Addison Barger could play either third base or factor into the corner outfield. It wouldn’t leave much playing time for Nathan Lukes, who’d be a speculative trade candidate. Lukes is coming off a solid season (.255/.323/.407 with 12 homers) but isn’t the kind of player who’ll prevent teams from making a run at a star.

If the Jays were to land Tucker, that’d almost certainly close the door on a reunion with Bichette. One team signing the top three free agents in an offseason is essentially without precedent, and adding both players would push Toronto’s luxury tax number well above $350MM. Bannon indeed suggests that while the Jays aren’t out of the running for Bichette, a new deal with their longtime shortstop looks less likely after the Okamoto signing.

Playing Okamoto and/or Barger regularly at third base pushes Ernie Clement to second, where Bichette would probably be penciled in if he heads back to Rogers Centre. The bigger deterrent may simply be a reluctance on the team’s part to make a long-term commitment to Bichette. Bannon writes that a reunion could be more likely if the infielder settles for a shorter deal that allows him to opt out after the first season.

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Newcomb brings veteran presence, rotation competition to White Sox

54 minutes ago

CHICAGO -- At 32 years old, and with parts of nine seasons and 223 games of Major League experience, left-hander Sean Newcomb immediately becomes the old man, or at least the true veteran, of the 2026 White Sox staff.

To take that idea one step further, Newcomb will have the Spring Training chance to feature that same unofficial position as part of the White Sox rotation.

“He’s going to come in and compete for a starting job, a job in the rotation I should say, which we are really excited about,” said manager Will Venable during a Wednesday Zoom. “We know he had some success in both the starting role and the reliever role, so he is capable of doing both, but he’s going to be in that mix for a starting-rotation job, and we are excited to help support him.”

“I’ve always been a starter, starter mentality,” said Newcomb on the Zoom call. “Over the past few years up in the big leagues, I’ve done a lot out of the 'pen, but even those outings I’ve had a lot of three-, four-plus innings outings. So, it’s kind of the same mentality for me, just be ready to attack a lineup once or twice, three times through if it gets to that point with five or six innings.”

Newcomb joined the White Sox via a one-year, $4.5 million deal as a free agent after posting a 2.73 ERA with two saves, four holds and 91 strikeouts over 48 combined appearances (five starts) and 92 1/3 innings with the Red Sox and Athletics in 2025. His success came primarily out of the bullpen, ranking fifth in the Majors among left-handed relievers with a 2.19 ERA and tied for seventh with 70 innings pitched.

After joining the Athletics on May 27, the southpaw finished 2-1 with a 1.75 ERA, a .214 opponents average and 50 strikeouts in 36 relief outings covering 51 1/3 innings. His 1.75 ERA since May 29 was the seventh-best mark among MLB relievers with at least 45 innings pitched. The first-round pick of the Angels in the 2014 Draft has a career 4.41 ERA in 65 starts and a 3.84 ERA over 158 games out of the bullpen.

Working as a starter allows Newcomb to better employ his six-pitch mix -- including a sinker employed with success in 2025, and what he described as a slurve. But it’s more basic than starter or reliever for Newcomb, as he discussed with Venable on Tuesday, and his role goes beyond on-field responsibilities.

“Just looking for some good quality innings to be eaten up,” Newcomb said. “I’ll kind of be one of the older guys on the staff, kind of coming in and being one of those kinds of presences for the younger guys.”

“His flexibility is great,” Venable said. “Having been successful in different ways, he can help our players, which is something that we’ll look to him to take a little bit of that role.”

The native of Boston joins the Northeast White Sox nucleus -- featuring Shane Smith, Mike Vasil and Sean Burke, who all hail from the same geographic area. Newcomb works out with Vasil and Smith during the offseason, while Burke and Smith will be battling with Newcomb to fill out the rotation’s front five.

Newcomb had White Sox questions for Vasil and Smith during this free-agent process. They had nothing but good things to say, according to Newcomb, who becomes the latest bona fide elder statesman of this developing young core.

“They kind of seem like they're on the up, on the climb right now, just as far as all the young guys and some of the changes they made all the way around,” Newcomb said. “It kind of was the perfect storm. It's pretty similar to what I had done with [the A's]. It was a spotty couple of years, then I had a good year last year with them.

“But it was pretty similar as far as just kind of, I guess, the rebuild or just the next wave of the prospects and everyone kind of coming into their own. So it's definitely something I like to be a part of. Obviously the goal is to go out there and win, but these dudes are all, it seems like, in their mid-20s just getting going. So it's an important time for them and the organization. It's definitely going to be fun to be a part of it."

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[ Kansas City, Chicago, and Detroit keep inching closer with every large or small deal they make. I hope someone is keeping track! ]

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