San Diego Padres claim RHP Tyrell Jenkins off waivers from Cincinnati Reds

The San Diego Padres have claimed pitcher Tyrell Jenkins off waivers from the Cincinnati Reds, as the Reds’ twitter account confirmed on Tuesday afternoon.

RHP Tyrell Jenkins has been claimed off waivers by the San Diego #Padres.

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) January 3, 2017

If you're not familiar with Jenkins at this point, that's pretty forgivable. He spent a grand total of 11 days in the Cincinnati organization, having only just been claimed on December 23rd of last year, and odds are you spent a lot of those 11 days with turkey, family, booze, family, and booze. And if you're not privy to where he came from prior to that, that's forgivable as well - the Padres will be the fourth team he's joined this offseason, as he's already been traded to the Texas Rangers from the Atlanta Braves and claimed from the Rangers by the Reds.

At just 24 years of age, it's easy to see him as a former Top 100 overall prospect and 1st round draft pick and question why the Reds simply let him go. However, he's fought shoulder injuries repeatedly since 2013, and despite a decent ERA in his minor league career, he's struggle to post the kind of peripheral numbers to truly make him as exciting a prospect as he once was.  His career MiLB K/9 of 6.5 and K/BB of just 1.85 pretty well emphasize that.

With roster spots pretty easily cleared and replaced this time of year, it's easy to see why the Reds chose to roll the dice on passing him through waivers, since Jenkins would've been a decent wild card arm to keep in the system without occupying a 40-man roster spot. Concurrently, it's easy to see why another rebuilding club (the Padres) would claim him, as It's been one of Cincinnati's signature strategies in recent seasons. The likes of Keyvius Sampson and Dan Straily both came to the Reds on waiver claims as essentially the final member of the team's 40-man roster in the last two offseason - obviously those have produced significantly different levels of return - and each of Richie Shaffer and Arismendy Alcantara were added in similar moves already since the end of the 2016 season.

Seeing as this move frees up a spot on the team's 40-man roster (again), I'd wager that we'll probably see them search the waiver wire again before the season (again).