The Dodgers have signed right-hander Jesse Hahn to a minor league deal, reports Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. They have also signed left-hander Stephen Gonsalves to a minor league deal, per J.P. Hoornstra of Dodgers Nation. The lefty is represented by John Boggs & Associates while the righty is with Excel Sports Management.
Hahn, 34, pitched in the big leagues from 2014 to 2021. He made 82 appearances, 50 of them being starts, suiting up for the Padres, Athletics and Royals. He allowed 4.22 earned runs per nine innings in that time, tossing 311 1/3 frames. His 18% strikeout rate wasn’t especially impressive but he kept 49.5% of balls in play on the ground.
Most of that work came in the earlier part of his career. He missed the entire 2018 season due to a UCL sprain that ultimately required surgery, then was held to less than 18 big league innings in each of the next three seasons. In early 2021, he landed on the injured list due to right shoulder impingement syndrome and he doesn’t appear to have pitched anywhere since that season.
Gonsalves, 29, has just 10 major league appearances on his track record. He tossed 24 2/3 innings for the 2018 Twins and another 4 1/3 for the 2021 Red Sox. He has a 6.21 ERA in that small sample of work. He missed most of 2022 due to Tommy John surgery but return to the mound last year on a minor league deal with the Cubs. He tossed 28 1/3 innings on the farm last year with a 5.72 ERA.
He was once a notable starting pitching prospect with the Twins but seemed to stall out upon reaching Triple-A. While he has an ERA under 3.00 at each minor league level below for the top one, his Triple-A ERA is 4.09. Across six separate seasons, he’s walked 15.2% of hitters at that level. He has transitioned from the rotation to the bullpen in recent years but hasn’t been able to log many innings due to the surgery.
The Dodgers are generally unafraid of taking a shot on talented pitchers with injury histories, with Blake Treinen, Daniel Hudson, Jimmy Nelson, J.P. Feyereisen and Alex Reyes just a handful of examples. There’s no real risk in bringing these two aboard on minor league deals to assess their arm health up close.
Neither of them would be optionable if added to the roster but Gonsalves has less than a year of service time and could be retained beyond the upcoming campaign if he clicked for the Dodgers. They only have three southpaws on their 40-man right now, with Caleb Ferguson, Alex Vesia and Ryan Yarbrough making up the club’s lefty contingent. That perhaps leaves a path open for Gonsalves to get back on track here in 2024.
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