{"id":851559,"date":"2026-08-11T15:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851559\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T15:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:24:14","slug":"yankees-release-rafael-montero-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851559\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Release Rafael Montero – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Yankees have released veteran right-handed reliever Rafael Montero<\/a>, per an announcement from their Triple-A affiliate, the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. He\u2019d signed a minor league deal back in February.<\/p>\n

Montero, 36 in October, hasn\u2019t pitched in the majors yet this season. If he doesn\u2019t latch on with another club and make it to the big leagues, it\u2019d be the first season since 2018 he hasn\u2019t logged a major league inning. Even that 2018 season was technically spent in the majors, however, as Montero was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery on the 60-day injured list. Including that year, he\u2019s spent the past dozen seasons as a big leaguer.<\/p>\n

Montero\u2019s season was delayed due to visa issues that prevented him from getting to camp on time with the Yankees. Since he didn\u2019t pitch at all during camp, he opened the season in extended spring as he built up toward joining the RailRiders in Scranton.<\/p>\n

That delay pushed his season debut to the final few days of April. After missing a month of the year, he\u2019s pitched 27 innings and logged an unsightly 5.67 ERA in that time. That earned run average is at least partly skewed by an enormous .385 average on balls in play, however. Montero has fanned a strong 25.8% of his opponents against a manageable 10.2% walk rate. He\u2019s only plunked one batter, and opponents have only connected on three homers \u2014 exactly one round-tripper per nine frames. Montero\u2019s 44.6% ground-ball rate, 34.1% opponents\u2019 chase rate and 11.8% swinging-strike rate are all better-than-average marks.<\/p>\n

Montero hasn\u2019t been giving up too much hard contact; his opponents have averaged 89.5 mph off the bat with a 38% hard-hit rate. His velocity isn\u2019t close to its peak, when he averaged 96.1 mph on his four-seamer with the 2023 Astros, but he\u2019s sitting 93.9 mph on his four-seamer and 94.1 mph on his sinker, so he\u2019s hardly a soft-tosser even as he settles into his mid-30s.<\/p>\n

Clubs in search of bullpen help can now weigh a minor league look at the veteran Montero, whose most recent action in the big leagues saw him post a 4.48 ERA, 22.9% strikeout rate, 14.6% walk rate and 48.4% ground-ball rate in 60 1\/3 innings between the Braves, Astros and Tigers last season. He finished out the \u201925 season with Detroit, posting a 2.86 ERA (1.53 in his final 17 outings) through 22 frames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yankees have released veteran right-handed reliever Rafael Montero, per an announcement from their Triple-A affiliate, the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,33447,85],"class_list":["post-851559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-rafael-montero","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851559","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=851559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}