Dodgers @ Giants April 22, 2015: So Much Roster Churn

Usually, when the team makes a roster move to import a new player, there’s a post, especially when it’s a 40-man player. But as we’re quickly learning, there’s no usual when it comes to the roster manipulations of this front office. (Also we all have day jobs, so.)

	Dodgers			Giants
	7:15 p.m.			San Francisco, Ca.
SS	Rollins		LF	Aoki
1B	Turner		2B	Duffy
RF	Puig		CF	Pagan
2B	Kendrick		C	Posey
LF	Van Slyke		RF	Maxwell
CF	Heisey		1B	Belt
3B	Uribe		3B	Arias
C	Ellis		SS	Crawford
P	Kershaw (L)		P	Bumgarner (L)

Today’s move continues the churn at the bottom of the 40-man roster that began last week when the Dodgers designated David Huff to claim Ryan Dennick, then designated Dennick to claim the moderately interesting Daniel Corcino, because now they’ve designated Corcino to trade for Washington lefty reliever Xavier Cedeno, who had himself been designated earlier this month.

Got all that? This has generated a lot of questions about why they’re bothering to claim guys that they subsequently DFA almost immediately, but there’s plenty of reasons why that makes sense. For example, in this latest cycle, perhaps they preferred Cedeno to Corcino all along but couldn’t get him at a price they were interested in. (Washington agreed to “cash considerations,” as their time to make a call was running out.) Perhaps they like Corcino and just think they can sneak him through waivers, as they did Dennick. Or maybe they got their first look at Corcino — he was awful in relief of Julio Urias last night — and decided he wasn’t worth the effort after all.

Anyway, Cedeno is moderately interesting himself, but not more than that. 27 in August, the 2004 31st-round pick of the Rockies has been kicking around in the bigs since 2011, getting into 77 games for Houston and Washington, though 44 of those came in 2012 alone. If he has any sort of skill, it’s as a LOOGY — for his career, lefties have a .306 wBA, while righties have a .404 mark. (For comparison, Miguel Cabrera‘s career mark is .405, so, that’s bad.) Since he’s out of options, he’ll need to find his way onto the 25-man roster in the next few days or risk being DFA’d himself, though reportedly he’ll land on the roster somehow.

So there’s that, and that’s not the only news of the day. As anyone who’s been paying attention for the last 24 hours has known, Adam Liberatore was optioned and Chris Heisey was recalled, so that Joc Pederson can get a day off. It’s not an accident that this is happening today, since having Andre Ethier spot against the lefty Madison Bumgarner sounds awful, and in fact Don Mattingly has gone heavy with the righties tonight, giving Justin Turner a start at first and Scott Van Slyke in left.

Heisey, of course, is all but certainly only around for the day, because we already know that Mike Bolsinger will be coming up to start tomorrow. (Brim will be thrilled.) Then, Bolsinger is exceptionally like to get optioned out himself, with Cedeno perhaps now moving ahead of Daniel Coulombe as a short-term third lefty option in the pen. (Remember that Liberatore can’t return for 10 days, barring an injury.) It seems like this is the kind of churn we’re going to see all year, and I have to say, I love it. One player we won’t be seeing, however, is veteran Freddy Garcia, who was signed to a minor league deal on March 31 and was cut loose today.

If it seems like all that overshadows the spectacular pitching matchup tonight, it shouldn’t. It’s just never quiet with this team these days.

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