Tampa Bay Rays Promote Jose Alvarado, Demote Chih-Wei hu

The Tampa Bay Rays have promoted Jose Alvarado from Double-A Montgomery straight to the big leagues in order to add a left-handed reliever to this bullpen. Last night following their victory over the Marlins, the Rays demoted Chih-Wei Hu to Triple-A Durham.

Jose Alvarado is just 21 years old, fixing to turn 22 on the 21st of this month. The Rays originally signed Alvarado as an international free agent back in March of 2012 and he has slowly climbed the organization latter since then. The Rays added him to the 40-man roster this past off-season to protect him in the Rule V draft, despite him not appearing above the A level yet.

Alvarado was assigned to Double-A Montgomery to begin the 2017 season and over nine games thus far, he has struck out 33.3% of opposing hitters and has walked just 11%, which isn’t that great but down from his previous career mark of 15.3% heading into the year.

The Rays and their fans can expect high octane from Alvarado who averages around 98 MPH on his fastball, plus he also possesses a decent curveball in the low 80’s to go along with it. Over his career has been a ground ball machine with 78% of the balls in play against him this season have been on the ground. He had a 63% groundball rate last season.

Once he takes the field, he’ll become the Rays youngest player since Delmon Young in 2007 and their youngest pitcher since Scott Kazmir during the 2005 season.