{"id":44384,"date":"2025-08-04T10:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T10:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/44384\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T10:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T10:48:08","slug":"al-notes-thornton-buxton-rays-vargas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/44384\/","title":{"rendered":"AL Notes: Thornton, Buxton, Rays, Vargas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mariners placed Trent Thornton<\/a> on the 15-day injured list on Friday, and announced that the right-hander will miss the rest of the season due to a torn left Achilles tendon.\u00a0 Thornton had to be carted off the field after he suffered the injury in the ninth inning of Thursday\u2019s 6-0 M\u2019s win over the Rangers, as the reliever fell while leaving the mound to cover first base on an Adolis Garcia<\/a> grounder.\u00a0 Follow-up tests revealed the unfortunate and expected news of an Achilles tear, and while a specific recovery timeline isn\u2019t yet known, Thornton could be in jeopardy of missing some time at the start of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Thornton has a 4.68 ERA over 42 1\/3 innings for Seattle this season.\u00a0 A few particularly rough blowups have inflated his ERA, but his 17.8% strikeout rate is well below Thornton\u2019s 26.2 K% from 2024.\u00a0 Owed a raise from his current $2MM salary in his final year of salary arbitration, Thornton will probably still be inexpensive enough that he won\u2019t be non-tendered this winter, barring an unwelcome injury diagnosis.\u00a0 Since coming to the Mariners in a trade from the Blue Jays prior to the 2023 deadline, Thornton has been a workhorse out of Seattle\u2019s pen, with a 3.65 ERA over 140 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n

More from around the American League\u2026<\/p>\n

Byron Buxton<\/a> firmly denied<\/a> any possibility of a trade away from the Twins back in mid-July, stating that he would use his contract\u2019s no-trade provision to remain \u201ca Minnesota Twin for the rest of my life.\u201d\u00a0 It probably isn\u2019t surprising that Buxton hasn\u2019t changed course just a few weeks later, but in the wake of the Twins\u2019 deadline selloff, Buxton reiterated to the Athletic\u2019s Dan Hayes<\/a> and other reporters that \u201cnothing\u2019s changed.\u00a0 It\u2019s just part of baseball.\u00a0 It\u2019s the business side of it.\u00a0 Just cause we go through these tough roads or whatever, it is what it is.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be better once we get on the other end of it and figure things out a little bit more\u2026.But I ain\u2019t going nowhere.\u201d\u00a0 Buxton is owed roughly $49.6MM through the end of the 2028 season, and he has full no-trade protection until the end of the 2026 campaign.
\nMost of the Rays\u2019 deadline moves saw the team obtain either big leaguers or big league-ready talent in return, which was the team\u2019s stated goal in any deal involving controllable talent heading out of Tampa.\u00a0 President of baseball operations Erik Neander told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times<\/a> that the Rays received \u201ca lot of interest\u201d in some veteran players, but \u201cthat wasn\u2019t going to happen for A-ball prospects this time around.\u201d\u00a0 The intention is to keep the team competitive for 2026 but also not robbing this year\u2019s team of a chance to make a late run.\u00a0 The Rays have dug themselves into a hole with their dismal play over the last five weeks, as the club is now 55-58 and sit five games back of the final AL wild card berth.
\nMiguel Vargas<\/a> was a late scratch from Saturday\u2019s White Sox lineup, and the team placed the corner infielder on the 10-day injured list today due to a left oblique strain.\u00a0 While oblique problems are difficult to diagnose in terms of a timeline, Vargas\u2019 strain is believed to be mild, so he could only miss a couple of weeks.\u00a0 A very streaky season has evened out to a 97 wRC+ for Vargas over 439 plate appearances, with 13 home runs and a .229\/.305\/.402 slash line in Vargas\u2019 first full season in Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners placed Trent Thornton on the 15-day injured list on Friday, and announced that the right-hander will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[1993,49,48,31380,462,82,31381],"class_list":["post-44384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-byron-buxton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-miguel-vargas","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-trent-thornton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44384","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=44384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}