{"id":642108,"date":"2026-05-01T06:02:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T06:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642108\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T06:02:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T06:02:20","slug":"vince-velasquez-elects-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642108\/","title":{"rendered":"Vince Velasquez Elects Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Righty\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/velasvi01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-30_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Vince Velasquez<\/a> elected free agency after being outrighted by the Cubs on Tuesday, according to the MiLB.com <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.milb.com\/roster\/transactions\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">transaction tracker<\/a>. Infielder\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kingesc01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-30_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Scott Kingery<\/a> was <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2026\/04\/cubs-outright-scott-kingery.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">also outrighted<\/a> and had the right to test the market, but he evidently accepted the assignment. He\u2019s in the lineup tonight with Triple-A Iowa.<\/p>\n<p>Velasquez signed an offseason minor league deal with Chicago. He started three of four appearances with Iowa, allowing eight runs (seven earned) through 17 innings. He struck out 19 opponents while issuing nine walks and hitting a batter.<\/p>\n<p>The Cubs brought Velasquez up for a long relief spot last week. He pitched 2 1\/3 scoreless frames in a blowout loss to the Dodgers. That was his first MLB appearance in three years. Velasquez threw 31 pitches and wasn\u2019t going to be available the next day, so the Cubs designated him for assignment. He went unclaimed on waivers.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a decent chance Velasquez returns to the Cubs on a new minor league deal. That\u2019s the most common outcome in these situations, but the 33-year-old could explore opportunities elsewhere if he sees a better path back to the highest level with a different organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Righty\u00a0Vince Velasquez elected free agency after being outrighted by the Cubs on Tuesday, according to the MiLB.com transaction&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,49336,85,305924],"class_list":["post-642108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-scott-kingery","tag-sports","tag-vincent-velasquez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642108","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=642108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}