Braves Designate Jorge Mateo For Assignment

The Braves are designating shortstop Jorge Mateo for assignment, relays Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That’ll open a roster spot for Ha-Seong Kim, who’ll be on the active roster tomorrow as a utility player. President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos also confirmed they’ll reinstate catcher Sean Murphy from the 60-day injured list (via Mark Bowman of MLB.com).

Murphy’s return was the impetus for Atlanta trading Joey Bart to the White Sox this afternoon. They brought back a depth reliever in Duncan Davitt while going back to Murphy and Drake Baldwin as their catching tandem. Murphy has been out since mid-May after sustaining a left middle finger fracture on a catcher’s interference. He has been limited to four games this year, as his rehab from last fall’s hip surgery cost him the first month of the regular season.

Kim has been limited to 27 games by a finger injury of his own. He hasn’t hit at all in his 82 plate appearances and accordingly lost his hold on the starting shortstop job. Anthopoulos confirmed that rookie Jim Jarvis will remain the starting shortstop with Kim on hand as a backup infielder. Mauricio Dubón is slated for a super utility role but should remain in the lineup somewhere on the diamond most days.

That squeezes Mateo off the roster. He has more than five years of service time and can refuse a minor league assignment while retaining his $1MM salary. That makes it very likely he’ll be released. Mateo got some run as the everyday shortstop before Jarvis came up from Triple-A. The veteran infielder has mostly been in a utility role and hit .240/.285/.380 with four home runs across 137 plate appearances. He stole 10 bases in 11 tries.

Atlanta has subtracted some speed from its bench between the Mateo DFA and trading Eli White to the Red Sox. They’re mostly counting on Kim and Murphy to be solid depth pieces, while Lane Thomas should provide more offense in a platoon outfield role than White did. Dominic Smith is the only player from the position player bench whose role is unchanged, as he’ll remain a left-handed complement who could get some work at designated hitter.