Emerson Hancock demoted for southpaw reliever Joe Jacques

The Seattle Mariners have demoted RHP Emerson Hancock to Triple-A Tacoma following his start on Tuesday, creating space for LHP Joe Jacques to join the bullpen. The 26 year old righty got hit around by the Kansas City Royals last night, pushing his season numbers to a 5.47/5.60 ERA/FIP in 77.1 IP, with -0.5/-0.4 bWAR/fWAR representing the difficulties for Hancock to stabilize. Despite upping his velocity and stretches of success and competency like he had from mid-May through mid-June, Hancock’s maintained a trait from his minor league days of occasional complete implosions. His four worst starts contain 27 earned runs in 15.2 innings are good for a 15.50 ERA, while the other 11 have been a quite satisfactory 20 earned runs in 61.2 IP - a 2.91 ERA. The same would be true of any pitcher to some degree, but Hancock has been distinctly decent or apocalyptic, with little in between.

Whether Seattle chooses to recall Logan Evans or go for another one-off spot starter remains to be seen. Joe Jacques, in the meantime, will join a Mariners bullpen that’s been light on lefties for a long time. Gabe Speier has been the lone southpaw in the pen. Jacques was acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers at the start of June for RHP Will Klein, and has been laboring through the indignity of pitching in the Pacific Coast League with the Tacoma Rainiers subsequently. The 30 year old has 29.2 innings under his belt in the bigs, split between the Boston Red Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks in 2023-24. He was a 33rd round pick out of Manhattan College for the Pittsburgh Pirates back in 2018, and is a groundball specialist as many lefty relievers tend to be. Until Sunday, it seems likely that Seattle will run with nine in their bullpen to close out this stretch of 17 consecutive games.