José Barrero Elects Free Agency

Orioles infielder/outfielder José Barrero was removed from the team’s 40-man roster and has elected free agency, reports Francys Romero of BeisbolFR.com. Presumably, that subtraction came by way of outright waivers. Barrero has been outrighted in the past and thus had the right to elect free agency upon clearing waivers. The 28-year-old Barrero only appeared in two games with Baltimore this season. He went 1-for-6 with a single but spent the remainder of the year in Triple-A, where he batted .202/.305/.400 with 23 homers and 13 steals in 499 trips to the plate. Barrero once ranked among the sport’s best prospects, climbing as high as No. 33 on Baseball America’s top-100 list ahead of the 2022 season. He was a high-profile signing out of his native Cuba, inking a $5MM signing bonus with the Reds back in 2017. He made his big league debut with Cincinnati in 2020 and has now appeared in parts of six big league seasons without any real production to show for it. Barrero torched minor league pitching in 2021, hitting a combined .303/.380/.539 between Double-A and Triple-A, but outside of a productive 2023 stint in Triple-A, his minor league numbers have cooled off since. He’s bounced from the Reds organization to the Rangers, to the Cardinals and now the Orioles. He’s a career .182/.238/.256 hitter with a colossal 36.2% strikeout rate in 484 major league plate appearances. His huge ’21 and ’23 Triple-A numbers have been weighed down by poor showings in parts of four other seasons at that level. Overall, he’s tallied 1777 Triple-A plate appearances with a middling .227/.311/.438 batting line. While Barrero has primarily been a shortstop in his career, he does have nearly 750 innings in center field under his belt. He’s also logged more than 500 innings at the hot corner and more than 300 innings at second base. He has a big arm, but his formerly plus speed has fallen below average. He’ll look around the league for new minor league opportunities this winter. View Comments (2)