CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #90
Lamigo Monkeys News: Matthew Grimes
On June 11, according to the official website of the York Revolution, the Lamigo Monkeys have signed the former Baltimore Orioles farmhand Matthew Grimes from the Atlantic League.
The contract of RHP Matthew Grimes has been purchased by the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan. Good luck overseas, Matthew! ? pic.twitter.com/10FVMVjkdr
— York Revolution (@yorkrevolution) June 10, 2019
Grimes, the 27-year-old right-hander spent 2014 to 2018 within the Orioles system with the last two seasons mostly in Double-A and a brief stint in Triple-A.
Prior to his signing with the Lamigo Monkeys, Matthew Grimes posted a record of 3.72 ERA and 1.28 WHIP across 46 innings of work for the York Revolution.
As of today, the Monkeys have not officially confirmed the signing. But from our understanding, the Monkeys’ scouts were spotted in the Atlantic League back in early May. One can only assume Grimes must be one of the pitchers that caught the scouts’ eyes.
With the signing of Grimes, the Monkeys now have four foreign players on staff with Michael Nix, Radhames Liz and Roger Bernadina on the first team roster. Should Monkeys decide to call-up Grimes to the first-team, they would have to release one of the existing foreign players.
Further Readings
Foreign players come and goes, therefore we compiled a foreign players tracker to keep track of all the foreign players signing for the 2019 CPBL season.
Looks like he’ll be a good backup guy
Oh for sure, young guy too, good back up option. Would be interesting to see which player the Monkeys are going to cut to make room for Grimes. There is some possibility we might see Roger Bernadina getting axed.
Grimes is not one of the Atlantic League pitchers I expected a CPBL team to sign. However, he’s reasonably young, he’s obviously willing to pitch in Taiwan, and he was probably relatively cheap to sign, particularly if he’s going to start on Lamigo’s minor league club.
Right now, Dave Kubiak, Craig Stem, Kyle Davies, Mitch Atkins, Joe Van Meter, Seth Simmons and Buddy Baumann look like the best available Atlantic League starters. Maybe one or more of them will be signed to start the second half of the CPBL season.
Under the normal circumstance, we might see the Monkeys assigning Grimes to the farm team as the long-term back up. However, a couple of things happened recently that could potentially change everything.
Here are a few potential outcomes: (I will go into details in the next blog post)
1. Monkeys have a tiny lead in the first half season. Anything can happen in a series. Might even see them drop down to the last place if they are not careful.
2. Radhames Liz is too inconsistent, throws too many walks.
3. Roger Bernadina might be injured? He was hit in the elbow last weekend and left the game early. Monkeys have been awfully quiet about it too, which could be a red flag.