Roster update

Trevor Foss

Since our last roster update on April 1, the Wild Things have been busy signing players recently released from minor-league spring training camps. Most of those players have been pitchers who likely will play more than casual roles with Washington this summer. You would think that relying heavily on recently released minor leaguers can be a good thing for an independent team, but that's not always the case (more on this in an upcoming blog post).

The players signed by the Wild Things since April 1 include:

* Pitchers Tyler Bolton, Trevor Foss, Zac Grotz, Connor Kendrick and Andrew Woeck. These are players who bounced around the rookie and Class A leagues the last two years. An exception is Kendrick, who was a 9th-round draft pick of the New York Yankees in 2013 out of Auburn and won six games in the high-Class A Florida State League in 2014, then was organizational filler last year, pitching in 14 games in Class A, two in Class AA and one in Class AAA. Grotz has something going for him in that he's an R2, which makes him more valuable when talking roster limitations. The player whose numbers impressed me most is Foss. He had a very good senior year at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and won 13 games in three years in the L.A. Angeles' system.

* Catcher Kyle Pollock. He might have the biggest impact of any player signed this month. The only other catcher on the roster is Eddie Sorondo, who played in just four games with Washington last year after John Fidanza was placed on the disabled list. According to the transactions on the Frontier League website, Fidanza has not yet been re-signed for 2016. This means Pollock, who had a nice career at the University of Evansville and spent two years in the Kansas City Royals' system, has to considered the likely starter.

Meanwhile, pitcher Luke Wilkins, who led Washington with eight wins last year, was placed on the suspended list along with outfielder Ryan Mathews. Players on the suspended list can be activated but they are usually on that list simply to prevent them from signing with another Frontier League team. They rarely play again, which means it's unlikely that Wilkins will make it back to Washington from Australia.