Brewers DFA Smoak, acquire Vogelbach

MILWAUKEE -- Less than two weeks after the Brewers cut their losses with veteran Brock Holt, they did the same with slumping first baseman Justin Smoak.

The Brewers on Thursday designated for assignment Smoak and acquired well-traveled hitter Daniel Vogelbach off waivers from the Blue Jays, adding a player who’d been DFA’d himself twice in the past 15 days. Vogelbach will be in uniform when the Brewers open a three-game series at Cleveland on Friday night.

Like Holt, Smoak signed with the Brewers for one year plus a club option, but he didn’t perform. Smoak was slashing .186/.262/.381 through 126 plate appearances, with five home runs and 40 strikeouts. He had one hit and 10 strikeouts in his last 23 at-bats.

With so many hitters struggling at once, Smoak ran out of time to turn it around.

“You never completely know when it is the right time, especially in a season like this,” Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “There is some feel involved in this.”

Vogelbach was an All-Star for Seattle last year, when he hit 30 home runs in his first full big league season. But he did the vast majority of that damage before the All-Star break and experienced a quiet second half, then slumped out of the gates in 2020 and was DFA’d by the Mariners on Aug. 19 and subsequently sent to Toronto for cash, then DFA’d by Toronto on Tuesday. In all, he is 5-for-57 with two home runs and 15 strikeouts this season.

The Brewers are searching for some kind of spark for an offense that ranks next to last in the National League at four runs per game (the Reds were last as of Thursday, at 3.95 runs per game) and 12th of 15 NL teams with a .683 OPS. In Vogelbach, Stearns said, the Brewers still see solid underlying skills, starting with strike-zone awareness. They will work with him to access his power again.

With Smoak out and Ryan Braun dealing with an ongoing back issue, the Brewers are suddenly very thin at first base. Vogelbach has experience there, although he is more of a designated hitter-type. Jedd Gyorko, one of the Brewers’ few offseason acquisitions who is hitting (.955 OPS) while primarily playing against left-handed pitchers, has also seen time recently at first base and will probably get the first shot, Stearns said.

Could Braun play first base eventually?

“I think step one is let’s get Ryan back in the lineup and make sure he’s healthy,” Stearns said.

Vogelbach entered the season with one-plus year of Major League service, so he is controllable through at least 2024 should the Brewers decide to retain him beyond this season.

In another roster move on Thursday, the Brewers optioned right-hander Phil Bickford back to the alternate training site and reinstated Brandon Woodruff from the paternity list. Woodruff is scheduled to start at Cleveland on Saturday.

American Family Field logo unveiled
Wisconsin-based American Family Insurance said it collaborated with the Brewers on the new logo unveiled Thursday for American Family Field -- the pending name for what is now Miller Park. The stadium name change will take place on Jan. 1, 2021.

The new look takes the traditional American Family logo and changes it from its red and royal blue to the yellow and navy of the Brewers and adorns the American Family roof with a visual representation of the stadium’s convertible dome. It eventually will be installed in three very prominent places: On the exterior side of the ballpark over the main entrance facing Interstate 94, replacing the ballpark’s current featured sign; on top of the scoreboard; and on the major free-standing sign adjacent to I-94.

Francis, Holt to join alternate training site
The Brewers are adding two more players to their 60-man player pool and assigning them to the alternate training site: Right-hander Bowden Francis and second baseman Gabe Holt. The moves won’t be announced by the team until the players complete intake testing.

Francis, 24, was a seventh-round Draft pick in 2017 who split last season between advanced Class A Carolina and Double-A Biloxi, logging a 4.23 ERA in 142 2/3 innings with 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings. Holt, 22, was a seventh-round pick in 2019 out of Texas Tech who played for a pair of rookie-level affiliates last year.