{"id":82263,"date":"2024-08-06T16:16:39","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T20:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=82263"},"modified":"2024-08-06T16:16:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T20:16:39","slug":"yankees-release-duane-underwood-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/08\/06\/yankees-release-duane-underwood-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Release Right-Handed Minor League Pitcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/08\/02\/jd-davis-released-by-yankees\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">The New York Yankees<\/a> have released 30-year-old right-handed <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2021\/08\/27\/reliever-rankings-20210827\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">relief pitcher<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/u\/underdu01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-06_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Duane Underwood Jr.<\/a>, who can now sign with any team. Now a free agent, he had been pitching for the Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. Underwood signed a minor-league contract with the Yankees in the offseason.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Yankees have made the following roster moves affecting SWB:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 RHP Duane Underwood, Jr. released from Minor League Contract by NY Yankees on 8\/5<br \/>\n\u2022 OF Oscar Gonzalez placed on the 7-Day injured List, retroactive to 8\/5<br \/>\n\u2022 INF Caleb Durbin promoted from Somerset<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 SWB RailRiders (@swbrailriders) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/swbrailriders\/status\/1820869949205721325?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 6, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Minor League Pitcher Duane Underwood Jr. Released By Yankees<\/h2>\n<p>Underwood Jr. has played for the Chicago Cubs, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Puerto Rico national baseball team. His release comes as a surprise, as he was putting up decent numbers in Triple-A. He had a 3.26 ERA and a strikeout rate of 23.4% across 38 2\/3 innings of work. Underwood never got the opportunity to play in the majors with the Yankees this season, mostly because of his walk rate, which was 14%. He has a 5-10 record with a 4.63 ERA in his MLB career.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Can you believe that&#8217;s how it ends?! \ud83e\udd2f<\/p>\n<p>Duane Underwood Jr. catches a 100.3 MPH liner back to the mound from No. 5 <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Mets?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Mets<\/a> prospect Luisangel Acu\u00f1a to close a 10-inning ballgame. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/D9CesS2mF2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/D9CesS2mF2<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 SWB RailRiders (@swbrailriders) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/swbrailriders\/status\/1810865109620678957?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 10, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>His time in the majors with both the Pirates and Cubs had both ups and downs. His best ERA (2.25) was in 2018 but through a very small sample size across four innings pitched. But this season in the minors, he has had some memorable moments. On July 9th, Underwood Jr. made an impressive catch on a 100.3 mph line drive from New York Mets prospect <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=acuna-003jos&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-06_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luisangel Acu\u00f1a<\/a>. The play was made effortlessly, which ended a 10-inning game. Back on June 4th, Underwood Jr. came on in relief and pitched a 1-2-3 inning and recorded a pair of strikeouts, and the RailRiders ended up winning that game 4-2 against Norfolk.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the Yankees releasing Underwood, they also placed outfielder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gonzaos01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-06_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oscar Gonzalez<\/a> on the IL and have promoted <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/08\/02\/jd-davis-released-by-yankees\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">infielder<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=durbin000cal&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-06_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Caleb Durbin<\/a> from Double-A Somerset to the Triple-A RailRiders. This will be a big plus for them as they use him at multiple infield positions. Durbin sports a .277 batting average this season across three levels (A, AA, AAA). His offensive spark can be utilized in Triple-A.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Yankees have released 30-year-old right-handed relief pitcher Duane Underwood Jr., who can now sign with any team. Now a free agent, he had been pitching for the Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. Underwood signed a minor-league contract with the Yankees in the offseason. The Yankees have made the following roster moves affecting SWB: \u2022 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4831,"featured_media":82295,"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":[5,1071,35],"tags":[28678,3335,164,6012,4681],"class_list":["post-82263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yankees","category-mlb","category-news","tag-duane-underwood-jr","tag-luisangel-acuna","tag-new-york-mets","tag-oscar-gonzalez","tag-triple-a"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82263","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\/4831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}