{"id":279511,"date":"2025-11-13T02:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T02:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279511\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T02:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T02:57:11","slug":"rays-return-rule-5-pick-nate-lavender-to-mets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279511\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays Return Rule 5 Pick Nate Lavender To Mets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Rays announced that Rule 5 pick\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=lavend000nat&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-12_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Nate Lavender<\/a> went unclaimed on waivers and was returned to the Mets. He\u2019ll be back in the New York organization without occupying a spot on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n<p>Lavender never got a shot with Tampa Bay. The former 14th-round pick had undergone internal brace surgery in May 2024. The Rays took a flier on him in the Rule 5 draft halfway through his rehab. They hoped he\u2019d make it back in the second half of the \u201925 season and battle for a spot in the big league bullpen. It didn\u2019t happen, as it appears he suffered some kind of setback. Lavender didn\u2019t pitch at any level this year and was designated for assignment when the injured list went away last week.<\/p>\n<p>Rule 5 draftees need to spend their entire first season in the new organization on the MLB roster or injured list. Lavender met that criterion, but they also need to spend at least 90 days on the active roster in total. If that doesn\u2019t happen in year one because of injury or suspension, the player\u2019s Rule 5 status carries into the winter and following season.<\/p>\n<p>The silver lining for the 25-year-old southpaw is that he spent a season on the major league injured list. He picked up a year of service time and, more importantly, was paid the $760K league minimum salary. That\u2019s no small matter for a player who received a $125K signing bonus at draft time and had never before occupied a spot on a 40-man roster. That said, it\u2019s obviously disappointing that he wasn\u2019t healthy enough to audition for a long-term bullpen spot in Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n<p>The Illinois product will try to earn that opportunity with the Mets. Lavender struck out nearly 37% of opponents while combining for a 2.98 ERA between the top two minor league levels in 2023. If he\u2019s healthy, he\u2019ll probably get a non-roster invite to big league Spring Training. Even if he doesn\u2019t break camp, he could put himself on the radar for a midseason promotion if he continues missing bats at that level with Triple-A Syracuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rays announced that Rule 5 pick\u00a0Nate Lavender went unclaimed on waivers and was returned to the Mets.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,127367,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-279511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-nate-lavender","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}