Giants claim OF Ryan McKenna from Orioles

According to FanSided’s Robert Murray, the San Francisco Giants have claimed 27-year old outfielder Ryan McKenna off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles. The right-hander had been designated for assignment five days ago when the O’s activated veteran Austin Hays off the IL. This, after they’d already outrighted him to Triple-A before the start of the season.

So, given that McKenna is out of options and can no longer be outrighted to Triple-A, this all seems like a Churn move designed to either capture lightning in a bottle or simply provide warm bodies until the roster stabilizes. Heliot Ramos, Luis Matos, and Marco Luciano are all optionable, and if they struggle or another player gets healthy in a hurry, they could go and the Giants will need another right-handed outfield bat.

According to the team’s transactions page, Jung Hoo Lee was moved to the 60-day IL to clear up a 40-man spot for McKenna. We’ll see what the active roster move could to get him on the roster. I’m leaning Tyler Fitzgerald at the moment unless the team is willing to go down to 12 pitchers for a bit, but I think they’d want to keep Wisely for his left-handedness and want to give Luciano some run until Ahmed’s return — and Estrada could perhaps play over there in a bind.

McKenna’s Orioles tenure was unremarkable. Prior to this year, he hit .222/.299./318 (.617 OPS) in 508 plate appearances, with just 6 home runs and a 3.85:1 strikeouts (169) to walks (44) ratio. His minor league career has been equally unremarkable: .263/.351/.408 but with a 2.1:1 strikeouts to walk. He’s also stolen 84 bases across 9 minor league seasons (32 caught stealing). He can play all three outfield positions and he’s pitched a little (15.43 ERA in 2.1 MLB innings).

He did have a nice little 9-game stint for Baltimore in this brief callup: 3-for-8 with 2 home runs, a walk, a strikeout, and a caught stealing. Churn, baby, churn.

Meanwhile, in bad news: Alex Cobb has “paused” his throwing program again.

I was one of those foolish fans who thought that Alex Cobb actually would come back and be fine for 120 innings this season, but in retrospect, this was always a long shot. The Giants had to make the pitching moves they made this offseason because the near-term was going to be really tough without him in the mix, which was the most likely scenario. Snell being out and being bad has certainly hurt, but the pick-me-ups provided by Jordan Hicks and Kyle Harrison have done enough to stem the tide.

Cobb and Ray after the All-Star break and maybe only over the final 6-7 weeks of the season seems like the best case scenario for the team.