{"id":685937,"date":"2026-05-21T21:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/685937\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T21:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:22:09","slug":"braves-claim-maverick-handley-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/685937\/","title":{"rendered":"Braves Claim Maverick Handley – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Braves on Thursday claimed catcher Maverick Handley<\/a> off waivers from the Orioles, per a team announcement. Righty Hurston Waldrep<\/a> moves from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL in a corresponding move. Handley was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett.<\/p>\n

Handley, 28, was the Orioles\u2019 sixth-round pick in 2019. He\u2019s spent his entire career in the organization. Over the past year, he\u2019s been on and off Baltimore\u2019s 40-man roster and up and down between Baltimore and the Orioles\u2019 Triple-A affiliate in Norfolk. Handley has only 48 big league plate appearances and has gone just 3-for-42 in that time. It\u2019s not a good big league track record, clearly, but Handley logged a .258\/.373\/.367 slash in Triple-A last year. He\u2019s regularly posted lofty walk rates in the minors, and he\u2019s regarded as a quality defender.<\/p>\n

Handley isn\u2019t going to jump right onto the big league roster, but he gives an injury-decimated Atlanta catching corps some depth. The Braves recently put star backstop Drake Baldwin<\/a> on the injured list due to an oblique strain. He\u2019s likely looking at a weekslong absence. Veteran complement Sean Murphy<\/a> isn\u2019t an option at the moment. After spending the early portion of the season rehabbing from hip surgery, he suffered a broken middle finger and is sidelined for another two months or so.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s left the Braves with a light-hitting catching tandem of Sandy Le\u00f3n<\/a> and Chadwick Tromp<\/a>. Both are decent defenders who can\u2019t be expected to hit in the majors. That\u2019s true of Handley as well, to an extent, though he at least has quality on-base numbers in the minors thanks to his penchant for drawing walks. Le\u00f3n and Tromp both regularly post on-base percentages in the .250 range.<\/p>\n

Waldrep\u2019s move to the 60-day IL is purely procedural. It does nothing to impact his timetable to return. The talented young righty underwent spring surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow. Since his IL placement was retroactive to three days prior to Opening Day \u2014 the maximum allowed \u2014 he\u2019s already effectively spent 60 days on the IL. Moving from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL doesn\u2019t reset the required minimum, but it does open a 40-man spot. Waldrep isn\u2019t on a minor league rehab assignment yet anyhow, so he\u2019s not especially close to returning, but this won\u2019t change anything when he\u2019s finally ready to be activated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Braves on Thursday claimed catcher Maverick Handley off waivers from the Orioles, per a team announcement. Righty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,228184,328586,591,85],"class_list":["post-685937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-hurston-waldrep","tag-maverick-handley","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685937","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=685937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}