Lucchesi Elects Free Agency After Angels Outrightly Assign Him to Triple-A

Joey Lucchesi has seen this script before. When the Angels outrightly assigned the 32-year-old left-hander to Triple-A Salt Lake after he cleared outright waivers unclaimed, Lucchesi did exactly what he did after the 2024 season with the Mets: he elected free agency and walked away.

For a veteran who posted a 3.76 ERA in 38 1/3 innings for San Francisco last year, accepting a Salt Lake Bees assignment would have meant trading a major league paycheck for a bus seat in the Pacific Coast League. That calculation rarely favors a Triple-A affiliate when the player has recent MLB results to lean on.

The mechanics of this situation matter. Clearing outright waivers means no other MLB club claimed Lucchesi off the wire at his salary — not necessarily an indictment of his ability, but a signal that teams have other solutions in-house and weren't prepared to absorb his contract mid-roster cycle. Once unclaimed, the Angels had the right to outright him to Salt Lake; Lucchesi had the right to refuse. He refused, for the second consecutive year.

The DFA itself was nobody's idea of a plan. Ryan Johnson, Sunday's scheduled starter, was scratched with a viral infection on April 5, forcing the Angels to reach into their pitching pipeline for George Klassen. The 24-year-old right-hander, ranked No. 4 in the Angels' system by MLB Pipeline, needed both active and 40-man roster space to be added. Lucchesi, carrying a 7.71 ERA and a 3.429 WHIP across 2 1/3 innings in three appearances, was the most expendable arm on the staff.

Klassen's debut was imperfect but eventful: 2 2/3 innings, two earned runs, five walks, and four strikeouts against the Mariners. The Angels survived, winning 8-7 in 11 innings when Nolan Schanuel lifted a walk-off sacrifice fly.

Lucchesi's Angels tenure was a command problem from the jump. He allowed five of the first six hitters he faced to reach base in his season debut, then threw two scoreless outings without solving the underlying issue — four walks and a hit batter across 2 1/3 total frames. Manager Kurt Suzuki had praised Lucchesi's "funky delivery" and predicted he'd be "really tough on lefties" when the Angels signed him on March 24, two weeks after San Francisco released him to make room for reliever Ryan Borucki. The delivery stayed funky; the strike zone never followed.

For the Salt Lake Bees, Lucchesi's departure creates a genuine innings gap on the left side. His 2025 ground-ball rate of 53 percent and walk rate of 7.3 percent, both better than MLB averages, would have represented innings-eating credibility in the PCL. That role now falls to younger arms in the Angels' system, and with Klassen promoted to Anaheim, Salt Lake's left-handed depth becomes the immediate question shaping the next wave of call-ups to the big league club.

The Angels still carry Drew Pomeranz and Brent Suter as their two bullpen southpaws. Lucchesi was signed specifically to be the third. That slot is now vacant, and the in-system options to fill it are either already in Anaheim or still developing.

His open-market options aren't bleak. A club willing to discard 2 1/3 Angels innings and focus on a lefty reliever who generated soft contact all of last season with San Francisco will find a credible track record attached to a 32-year-old arm that has been here before and knows exactly what the open market offers compared to a Salt Lake City bus schedule.