{"id":78475,"date":"2024-06-29T16:50:48","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T20:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=78475"},"modified":"2024-06-29T16:50:48","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T20:50:48","slug":"red-sox-claim-alex-speas-waivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/29\/red-sox-claim-alex-speas-waivers\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox Claim Right-Hander After Astros DFA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boston Red Sox announced on Saturday that they have claimed right-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/speasal01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-29_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alex Speas<\/a> off waivers from the Houston Astros. Speas was designated for assignment by Houston last week to create a 40-man roster spot for left-hander <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kingbr02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-29_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bryan King<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/RedSox?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#RedSox<\/a> today claimed RHP <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/speasal01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-29_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alex Speas<\/a> off waivers from the Houston Astros and optioned him to Triple-A Worcester.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Red Sox (@RedSox) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RedSox\/status\/1807115494597575100?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 29, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Red Sox Claim Right-Hander Alex Speas from Astros<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second-round pick in the 2016 MLB draft,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Speas<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> made three appearances for the Rangers last season. He gave up three earned runs over two innings of work before the 26-year-old was designated for assignment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was selected off of waivers by the Chicago White Sox in October before being traded to the Oakland Athletics. Speas was claimed by the Houston Astros last month and made one appearance before being designated for assignment yet again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Between Double-A and Triple-A last season, Speas had a 2.86 ERA with 85 strikeouts and 38 walks over 56 2\u20443 innings. Speas stepped away from baseball in 2022 after spending all of 2019-2020 recovering from Tommy John surgery. He has made 21 appearances between the three Triple-A affiliates so far this season, and carries a 10.38 ERA. He owns a career 9.00 ERA over four innings at the major league level.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>What Speas Brings to the Table<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2018, Speas was clocked throwing as hard as 102 mph on his fastball. Now, he sits between 93-97 mph with some suggesting he may, post-injury, be better as a starter than a reliever. His velocity has led to a 32.73% strikeout rate across his 165 \u2153 career innings in the minors. But his 18.24% walk rate explains why the 26-year-old right-hander has yet to find a home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Claiming Speas will give the Red Sox some extra <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/04\/28\/red-sox-dfa-joely-rodriguez-call-up-naoyuki-uwasawa\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">bullpen depth<\/a> in the minors after optioning him to Triple-A Worcester. This is especially true given the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/27\/kenley-jansen-trade-rumors\/\" target=\"_self\">trade rumors<\/a> surrounding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/j\/janseke01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-29_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kenley Jansen<\/a>. Boston&#8217;s pitching development has been improving under new chief baseball officer <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/breslcr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-29_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Craig Breslow<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who knows a few things about managing control issues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boston enters Saturday sitting 8 1\/2 games back in the division and 1 1\/2 games back for the Wild Card. The Red Sox relievers have combined for the ninth-best bullpen ERA in the majors with a 3.51 ERA.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Boston Red Sox announced on Saturday that they have claimed right-hander Alex Speas off waivers from the Houston Astros. Speas was designated for assignment by Houston last week to create a 40-man roster spot for left-hander Bryan King. The #RedSox today claimed RHP Alex Speas off waivers from the Houston Astros and optioned him [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":78488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1071,35],"tags":[7494,28245,28251,246,432,283,259],"class_list":["post-78475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-redsox","category-mlb","category-news","tag-alex-speas","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-craig-breslow","tag-houston-astros","tag-kenley-jansen","tag-oakland-athletics","tag-texas-rangers"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}