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The Texas Rangers have placed David Dahl on the 10 day injured list, the team announced this afternoon. To replace Dahl on the injured list, the Rangers have purchased the contract of outfielder Jason Martin from AAA Round Rock. To make room for Martin on the 40 man roster, the Rangers transferred Kohei Arihara from the 10 day injured list to the 60 day injured list.
As I mentioned in the lineup post, Dahl had a collision with the right field fence early on in last night’s game, and the beats said he reported it was feeling worse today. The official i.l. designation is “rib contusion,” though there appears to be some concern that there is a possible cracked rib. In any case, with just a three man bench, its hard to keep an unavailable position player on the active roster, so if the sense was that Dahl wasn’t going to be ready to go in the next day or two, it would make sense that the Rangers would make a roster move.
That move is bringing up spring, and early minor league season, sensation Jason Martin. Martin was signed this past offseason as a minor league free agent and was in camp as an NRI. He had a strong spring performance, went to the Alternate Training Site and impressed, and has mashed in the first couple of weeks of the AAA season, slashing .302/.413/.755 in 63 plate appearances over 15 games for Round Rock, including a home run last night.
Getting called up today for the game in Anaheim is something of a homecoming for Martin, who was an 8th round draft pick out of Luther High School in Orange, California, in 2013 by the Houston Astros. Martin, 25, was sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates in January of 2018 as part of the Gerrit Cole trade, and in limited major league action in 2019-20 he slashed .200/.294/.244 in 51 plate appearances over 27 games.
Martin is kind of a tweener who can play center field but who doesn’t really have the glove to be there regularly, and who is better suited defensively for left field but doesn’t really have the bat to stick there. That being said, the bat has been impressive thusfar this season, and with Dahl’s injury he’ll presumably get a chance to get some plate appearances in the majors.
The Rangers had a 40 man roster spot available with Arihara being out for potentially the rest of the season, and Martin has an option remaining, per Fangraphs, so procedurally it is relatively easy to bring him up and, if the Dahl i.l. stint is a short one, option him back to Round Rock without exposing him to waivers.