Yankees To Sign Heath Bell
By Jeff Todd [June 13, 2014 at 4:46pm CDT]
The Yankees have agreed to sign reliever Heath Bell to a minor league deal,
reports Chad Jennings of LoHud.com (via Twitter). (Mark Feinsand of the New
York Daily News tweeted that a deal appeared to have been reached, since Bell
was added to the roster of Triple-A Scranton.)
That makes Bell’s third AL East team on the season. He started the year with
the Rays after coming over in trade from the Diamondbacks, and was signed to
a minor league deal with the Orioles upon being released by Tampa Bay. But
Bell opted out of his contract with the O’s.
The 36-year-old righty has had a rocky go of it in recent years, though
advanced metrics suggested that bad luck had explained some of his poor
results. But things went from bad to worse in 2014, as Bell owns a
hard-to-sugarcoat 7.27 ERA through 17 1/3 innings with the Rays and a 4.22
mark in 10 2/3 frames with Triple-A Norfolk (the Orioles’ top affiliate).