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Oliver Drake passed through waivers unclaimed and accepted his assignment to Triple-A Durham. He will remain with the Tampa Bay Rays.
Much like Odysseus, Drake’s journey seemed never-ending, as he went through the DFA carousel with several teams this offseason, including twice with the Rays, but now he finally knows where he’ll be spending his spring.
Over the past calendar year, the well-traveled Drake has been designated for assignment eight times by myriad teams. He pitched for a major league record five of them during the regular season. The last 12 months have given Drake quite a bit of notoriety, as he appeared on several big-name podcasts such as Effectively Wild and Baseball Tonight.
The 32-year-old is effectively a two-pitch pitcher, working with a fastball-splitter combo that helped him produce a very solid swinging strike percentage, but the results have not been as spectacular as they could have been.
Overall, in 2018, Drake had a 5.29 ERA and a 3.24 FIP to go along with a 24.4 K% and 8.1 BB%, while opposing batters hit .272 off of him over 47 2⁄3 innings pitched. Most of these appearances came with his final team, the Minnesota Twins, with whom he appeared in 19 games.
The Rays re-acquired Drake from the Toronto Blue Jays earlier this month for cash, but with the addition of outfielder, Avisail Garcia, decided to once again test the waiver wires and designate Drake for assignment.