{"id":76255,"date":"2025-07-05T07:42:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T07:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=76255"},"modified":"2025-07-05T07:42:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T07:42:58","slug":"yankees-sign-joel-kuhnel-to-minors-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=76255","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Sign Joel Kuhnel To Minors Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<header><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fieldlevelmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/20098441.jpg\" alt=\"Astros trade for RHP Joel Kuhnel - Field Level Media - Professional sports  content solutions | FLM\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By Darragh McDonald | <time datetime=\"2025-07-04T22:24:37-05:00\">July 4, 2025<\/time> at <time datetime=\"2025-07-04T22:24:37-05:00\">10:24pm CDT<\/time><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div>\n<p>The Yankees announced today that right-hander <strong>Geoff Hartlieb<\/strong> elected free agency in lieu of accepting an outright assignment. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment earlier this week. Because he has been previously outrighted in his career, he has the right to reject all future outright assignments. The Yankees also added an arm, signing right-hander <strong>Joel Kuhnel<\/strong> to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He was with the Phillies on a minor league deal but was released yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Hartlieb, 31, signed a minor league deal with the Yanks in the offseason. He was selected to the roster on Monday and designated for assignment on Wednesday. In between, he tossed one inning against the Blue Jays on Tuesday, allowing three earned runs on two hits and three walks while striking out three. He is out of options so the Yankees effectively had to designate him for assignment in order to remove him from active roster while making space for a fresh arm.<\/p>\n<p>That was a rough outing but he was in good form in the minors prior to getting called up. He tossed 35 innings for Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre with a 3.34 earned run average, 26.2% strikeout rate, 6.9% walk rate and 41.3% ground ball rate.<\/p>\n<p>He also has some previous big league work on his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, though it\u2019s not especially sparkling, as he has a 7.62 ERA in 80 1\/3 innings. His 48% ground ball rate is strong but his 20.3% strikeout rate and 14.9% walk rate are both subpar figures, particularly the latter. He\u2019ll head to the open market and see what kind of opportunities are out there for him.<\/p>\n<p>Kuhnel, 30, may have triggered an opt-out provision in his deal with the Phils because he has been putting up good numbers this year. In 32 1\/3 innings for Triple-A Lehigh Valley, he had a 3.62 ERA. His 20.6% strikeout rate was a bit below average but his 3.1% walk rate was tiny and he got ground balls on a huge 66.3% of balls in play.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s generally been Kuhnel\u2019s recipe. In 93 2\/3 big league innings in his career, he has only struck out 18.7% of batters faced but has limited walks to a 5.9% pace and gotten opponents to pound the ball into the ground at a 52% clip. That\u2019s led to a 5.86 ERA but his .311 batting average on balls in play and 63.8% strand rate are both on the unfortunate side. His 4.46 FIP and 3.77 SIERA paint him in a more favorable light.<\/p>\n<p>The Yankees love groundballers and, as the old saying goes, there\u2019s no such thing as a bad minor league deal. Kuhnel has been assigned to the RailRiders and will try to work his way onto the big league roster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yankees lose Hartlieb but add Kuhnel. Click over to MLB Trade Rumors to read more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":76259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2503,2504],"class_list":["post-76255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","tag-geoff-hartlieb","tag-joel-kuhnel"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Yankees Sign Joel Kuhnel To Minors Deal - News 365<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=76255\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yankees Sign Joel Kuhnel To Minors Deal - News 365\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yankees lose Hartlieb but add Kuhnel. 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