The Pittsburgh Pirates announced on Sunday afternoon that left-handed pitcher Cory Luebke has refused his outright assignment to Indianapolis and he has been given his unconditional release. Luebke was designated for assignment last Saturday when the Pirates added Jorge Rondon and Jacob Stallings to the 40-man roster. In nine appearances for the Pirates, Luebke had a 9.35 ERA in 8.2 innings.
UPDATE 4:35 pm: Chad Kuhl has officially been added to the 25-man roster for tonight’s game. The Pirates optioned Kyle Lobstein to Indianapolis to make room for him on the active roster and they designated Curtis Partch for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster. You can read all about Chad Kuhl in the two articles posted here today. The book on Chad Kuhl and the pitch that got him to the majors.
Partch has pitched well for Indianapolis this season, but in his only game with the Pirates in two call-ups, he allowed all three batters he faced to reach base. He has a 1.29 ERA in 35 innings over 22 appearance with Indianapolis, picking up 37 strikeouts.
Lobstein has had four stints with the Pirates this season, posting a 3.96 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP in 25 innings over 14 appearances.
Pirates GM Neal Huntington had this to say about Luebke’s decision to leave:
“He has five years of service and he can do that. We knew that the second time we called Cory up that if we decided he wasn’t one of our 12 that we wanted in Pittsburgh, that he would probably leave and he did. No hard feelings. I don’t think this is the way anybody wanted it to go. It certainly isn’t the way we hoped it would go. For whatever reason, we weren’t able to translate the success that he had in Triple-A to success at the major league level. I wish Cory well. A good man that worked hard. We just decided to go in a different direction, and is his right, he did too.”
