{"id":398452,"date":"2026-01-07T22:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/398452\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T22:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:36:07","slug":"orioles-designate-jhonkensy-noel-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/398452\/","title":{"rendered":"Orioles Designate Jhonkensy Noel For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orioles announced that they have claimed outfielder Marco Luciano<\/a> off waivers from the Pirates, a move which was previously reported<\/a>. To open a 40-man spot, outfielder Jhonkensy Noel<\/a> has been designated for assignment. The O\u2019s also announced that left-hander Josh Walker<\/a>, who was designated for assignment last month, has cleared waivers and been sent to Triple-A Norfolk.<\/p>\n

Noel, 24, was just claimed off waivers two days ago. It may seem strange to acquire a player and then immediately cut him from the roster but this sequence of events is becoming more common in baseball and the Orioles are one of the more aggressive teams in attempting it. The ideal outcome for the team is that the player eventually clears waivers and stays in the organization as depth without taking up a roster spot.<\/p>\n

Baltimore fans should be familiar with the upside of the move. The O\u2019s acquired Ryan O\u2019Hearn<\/a> from the Royals in January of 2023. He was designated for assignment two days later and cleared waivers. A few months after that, he hit his way back onto the roster and was a productive member of the club for over two years.<\/p>\n

Up until he was claimed by the Orioles, Noel had spent his entire career with the Guardians. With that club, he has shown huge power potential but also a poor approach at the plate. He has 351 big league plate appearances to this point with 19 home runs but his 4.8% walk rate and 32.8% strikeout rate are both awful numbers. Despite the long balls, he has a .193\/.242\/.401 batting line and 79 wRC+, indicating he\u2019s been 21% worse than the league average hitter.<\/p>\n

He exhausted his final option season in 2025, which has pushed him into fringe roster territory. The Guards nudged him off and the O\u2019s scooped him up. He\u2019s now back into DFA limbo again, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the O\u2019s could field trade interest for the next five days, but the Guards weren\u2019t able to line up a trade in the previous weeks. Most likely, Noel will be back on the waiver wire.<\/p>\n

Despite the rough major league results, he could draw interest from the raw power and also his better minor league numbers. Over the past two years, he has stepped to the plate 536 times at Triple-A. His 7.5% walk rate and 23.7% strikeout rate at that level are still not great but much closer to average. That\u2019s helped him put up a .285\/.349\/.538 line and 130 wRC+.<\/p>\n

If some other club scoops him up, Noel has just over a year of big league service time. That means he can be controlled for five full seasons and is still two years away from an arbitration raise. If he clears waivers, the O\u2019s can keep him. Since he doesn\u2019t have three years of service nor a previous career outright, he doesn\u2019t have the right to reject an outright assignment.<\/p>\n

The situation with Walker is somewhat similar. The O\u2019s claimed him off waivers from the Phillies in August. The O\u2019s then signed him to a major league deal in November. Salary terms of that pact haven\u2019t been reported but it presumably pays Walker something slightly above the $780K league minimum, since he still hasn\u2019t qualified for arbitration.<\/p>\n

He was designated for assignment two days later. Like with the O\u2019Hearn and Noel situations, the O\u2019s were hoping Walker would clear waivers and stick with the club in a non-roster capacity. It didn\u2019t work initially, as Atlanta claimed him. But that club designated him for assignment a few weeks later, which allowed the Orioles to claim him back. The O\u2019s then tried again, designating Walker for assignment once more on December 19th.<\/p>\n

DFA limbo normally only lasts a week at most, but there are different rules around the holidays, so Walker lingered in the ether for a few weeks. Today, he finally has clarity on his status. While he probably isn\u2019t glad to lose his roster spot, he now at least knows which spring training location he\u2019ll be reporting to.<\/p>\n

Walker will try to win in the Baltimore bullpen at some point in 2026. His major league track record isn\u2019t amazing, as he has a 6.59 earned run average in 27 1\/3 innings. However, he just posted some intriguing minor league numbers in 2025. Split between the Blue Jays, Phillies and Orioles, he logged 42 2\/3 Triple-A frames. His 4.64 ERA in that sample isn\u2019t too exciting but he struck out 24.1% of batters faced and got grounders on 52.1% of balls in play.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Ken Blaze, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orioles announced that they have claimed outfielder Marco Luciano off waivers from the Pirates, a move which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,79480,200424,196310,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-398452","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-jhonkensy-noel","11":"tag-josh-walker","12":"tag-marco-luciano","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398452","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=398452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}