Red Sox claim Christian Arroyo off waivers

The Red Sox have been living on waivers pretty much since the transaction freeze was lifted earlier this summer, but those moves have all been on the pitching side. We’ve talked a lot about the pitching churn for a few weeks now, but while the position players haven’t exactly performed as well as we’d hoped, they also haven’t been so bad that the team needed a constant revolving door of new players. Well, during Thursday’s beatdown at the hands of the Rays, the Red Sox did add another position player on waivers, claiming Christian Arroyo from the Indians.

Arroyo is out of options, so he will join the team on the active roster in New York for this weekend’s series against the Yankees. The roster has had an extra pitcher for the last couple days after Ryan Weber replaced Andrew Benintendi when the latter went on the injured list, so expect a pitcher to go down to make room for Arroyo. We’ll update this post when that question is answered.

As for Arroyo himself as a player, he is a former first round pick from the Giants back in 2015 and was a top-100 prospect once on Baseball America’s list (number 62 before the 2016 season) and thrice on MLB Pipeline’s (in 2016, 2017 and 2018, all in the 81-89 range.) While he comes with some pedigree, though, Arroyo never really made good on that promise. He had a couple of solid seasons in the low minors, but never had the true breakout.

The infielder — he’s mostly a third baseman but he’s played the two middle infield spots as well — is familiar to Chaim Bloom, as he was part of the package that went from San Francisco to Tampa Bay in the Evan Longoria deal. Arroyo played a little bit with the Rays over a year and a half and he was roughly an average hitter, though that was over sporadic playing time. He was traded to Cleveland last summer. He also missed most of last season with a forearm injury.

Arroyo is still only 25 years old so he’s not totally over the hill, but he is running out of chances in the majors. When he’s at his best, he can play good defense, make solid contact and limit his strikeouts. The ceiling isn’t huge on this profile despite the pedigree, but there’s a potential good bench player there. With Benintendi out, I’d expect José Peraza and Tzu-Wei Lin to play more in the outfield, which could open up some infield playing time for Arroyo.