The Pittsburgh Pirates have assigned right-handed pitcher Nick Mears to Bradenton on a rehab assignment. The 25-year-old reliever had arthroscopic surgery on his right elbow in February and he was placed on the 60-day IL during Spring Training. He isn’t eligible to return until June 6th, but the rehab assignment could run longer if necessary.
Altoona had a dust up with Richmond on Sunday and it led to some suspensions that will begin today, with Luis Ortiz and Lolo Sanchez sitting out four games each. No word on whether any other players were suspended, but suspensions in the minors are staggered so teams aren’t severely short-handed for any games. The bench clearing incident stemmed from the previous series between the two teams when a Richmond pitcher went headhunting on back-to-back pitches to Connor Scott and the umpires did nothing about it. Then a Richmond batter overreacted to a pitch that literally came closer to hitting the guy on the on deck circle and the teams have had bad blood since. The umpires for the first series deserve the blame, but they got nothing from their poor handling of the situation and the players had to pay for it.
Infielder Claudio Finol was assigned to Altoona to help them out during this time. He was on the developmental list with Greensboro.
The local media got updates on the injured players from the Pirates Director of Sports Medicine, Todd Tomczyk. Included in there was a note on Quinn Priester:
Medical updates from Pirates director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk:
Mears — Rehab 2nite
Cederlind — UCL good. Building motion/strength.
Marisnick — Slightly ahead
Priester — Live BP today. “Should be on his way of getting back into affiliated ball soon,” Tomczyk said.— Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) May 25, 2022
If anymore minor league transactions come up today, we will post them here unless it is major news.
