Former Toronto Blue Jays reliever now a free agent after outright release from Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks have released right-hander Kendall Graveman, after he was designated for assignment on Monday.

Graveman, now 34, began his MLB career with a cup of coffee in Toronto in 2014 before the Blue Jays shipped him off to Oakland in the Josh Donaldson trade.

He then spent the next four seasons putting up serviceable numbers as a back-end starter, until Tommy John surgery in 2018 led the A's to non-tender him.

After a lost 2019 season and another injury-marred campaign in 2020, Graveman turned heads in his first full season as a reliever in 2021.

Across 56 innings for the Mariners and Astros (Seattle dealt him to Houston before the deadline), he put up a 1.77 ERA and 3.30 SIERA, striking out 27.5% of batters and inducing groundballs at a highly impressive 54.9% rate.

Of course, groundballs had always been his specialty, and it was the strikeouts that really showed he had tapped into something new.

Graveman signed a three-year, $24MM guarantee with the White Sox the subsequent offseason, and he avoided the injured list entirely over the first two years of the deal.

In fact, his 133 appearances and 131 1/3 innings for Chicago and later Houston (he was traded again ahead of the 2023 deadline) both ranked 10th among AL relievers in that span. He pitched to a 3.15 ERA and 4.01 SIERA.

Unfortunately, the injury bug came back to haunt him in 2024, and Graveman missed the entire season after undergoing shoulder surgery.

He inked a one-year, $1.35MM deal with the D-backs this past winter, though the value of the pact could more than double with performance bonuses.

Yet, once again, Graveman opened the season on the injured list, this time with a back strain.

He made his return in May, but over 19 games and 17 2/3 (interrupted in the middle with a hip impingement), the righty gave up 14 runs on 23 hits and 12 walks, striking out only nine.

His velocity was down significantly on his four-seam, sinker, and slider, but truth be told, no one needed a radar gun to tell his stuff just wasn't the same.