{"id":388049,"date":"2026-01-03T02:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T02:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/388049\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T02:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T02:03:08","slug":"astros-designate-kaleb-ort-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/388049\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros Designate Kaleb Ort For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Astros announced they\u2019ve designated reliever\u00a0Kaleb Ort<\/a> for assignment. That opened the 40-man roster spot to finalize their three-year free agent deal<\/a> with Tatsuya Imai<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ort landed in Houston on a waiver claim from Baltimore early in the 2024 season. He turned in a 2.55 earned run average across 22 games the rest of the way. Ort made a career-high 49 appearances last year but was unable to maintain the numbers he showed in a smaller sample. He allowed 4.89 earned runs per nine across 46 innings.<\/p>\n

The righty missed bats at an above-average clip and struck out more than a quarter of opposing hitters. That came alongside a near-14% walk rate, however, well above the 4.3% mark he\u2019d posted in his MLB work a year earlier. Ort also allowed a higher than average home run rate for a third consecutive season. While manager Joe Espada preferred to use him in the middle innings, he was pressed into a few higher-leverage spots when\u00a0Josh Hader<\/a> and\u00a0Bennett Sousa<\/a> were lost to injury in August. That pushed Bryan Abreu<\/a> into the closing role and left Ort as one of their more established right-handed setup arms.<\/p>\n

It unfortunately didn\u2019t take long before Ort joined his bullpen mates on the injured list. He went down with elbow inflammation at the beginning of September. That knocked him out for the rest of the season. There\u2019s no indication he won\u2019t be ready for Spring Training, but he was already on the roster bubble. Ort is out of minor league options and approaching his 34th birthday.<\/p>\n

Houston has Hader, Abreu, Sousa, Steven Okert<\/a>\u00a0and Bryan King<\/a> in the season-opening bullpen, assuming health. Enyel De Los Santos<\/a> and\u00a0Nate Pearson<\/a> are out of options and near-locks to break camp. Pearson signed a $1.35MM free agent deal, while De Los Santos is guaranteed a $1.6MM salary after avoiding arbitration. There wouldn\u2019t have been much flexibility for in-season maneuvering if they also carried Ort. He\u2019ll be traded or placed on waivers within the next five days. Ort has less than three years of MLB service and no prior outright assignments, so the Astros could keep him around as a non-roster invitee if he gets through waivers unclaimed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Astros announced they\u2019ve designated reliever\u00a0Kaleb Ort for assignment. That opened the 40-man roster spot to finalize their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,22904,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-388049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-kaleb-ort","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}