Phillies Re-Sign Tim Mayza to MLB Deal, Return Zach McCambley to Marlins, Re-Assign Lou Trivino
4:47 PM: The Phillies reassigned a right-hander Lou Trivino in Triple-A. Like Mayza, Trivino is an Article XX(B) player who opted out of his minor league contract this weekend. It is not yet clear if Trivino will activate his clause and enter free agency, or if he will bide his time in Triple-A until his next release date on May 1.
9:21 AM: The Phillies announced this morning that left-hander Tim Mayza re-signed to a major league contract after the lefty exercised his opt-out clause in his minor league contract and was cleared by the organization yesterday. To make room for Mayza on the 40-man roster, the Rule 5 pick is right Zach McCambley he was sent back to the Marlins. McCambley was apparently placed (and successfully cleared) sometime before the move to bring him back to Miami.
Mayza, 34, is entering his ninth big league season. He has spent the majority of his career thus far as a member of the Blue Jays, and after an uneven start to his career in his 2017 major league debut late in the 2019 season, he emerged from an injury-riddled 2020 campaign to become one of Toronto’s strongest relief arms. From 2021 to 2023, Mayza turned in top-quality results for the Jays with a 2.67 ERA and 3.20 FIP in 155 innings of work. Of course, it should be noted that those strong numbers came with a large division of the platoon. While his ERA against southpaws was just 0.67, his numbers against righties were more pedestrian: he sported a 4.19 ERA, 3.96 FIP, and a 24.7% strikeout rate across those three seasons.
Even looking at those small numbers against the righties, however, Mayza’s fall from grace in 2024 was shocking. In 50 games, the lefty’s ERA reached 6.33, and while his 4.50 FIP suggests some of it was due to the luck of his batted balls and his sequence, he still struck out 14.4%. As bad as those season-long numbers are, however, Mayza has shown signs of returning to form after being shipped to the Yankees in the middle of the season; in 18 innings of work with the Bombers, Mayza posted a 4.00 ERA with a 3.94 FIP, though his strikeout rate still sat at a below-average 16.2%.
This left Mayza in an unsatisfactory situation as he looked at 2025, and when he got a league deal with the Pirates, he spent most of the season on the injured list due to straining. He pitched just 15 innings in the majors last year between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (which claimed him off waivers from the Pirates midseason). During that time, he posted a 3.78 ERA and a 4.16 FIP that more or less matched his career as a member of the Yankees. His strikeout rate returned to a very respectable 20.3%, however, and that was enough to convince the Phillies to give him another shot at a minor league deal entering camp. Mayza’s 5.40 ERA in 8 1/3 spring innings isn’t exactly encouraging, but the big news coming out of camp is that the strikeout appears to be back. He struck out 27.0% of his opponents this spring, and that was enough to convince the Phillies to put him back on their roster for the 2026 season.
As for McCambley, the righty was a third-round pick by the Marlins back in 2020. Originally drafted as a starter, McCambley was converted to relief in the 2022 season and moved up the minor league ladder as a reliever. He split the 2025 season between Triple-A and Double-A, and during that time posted a combined 2.90 ERA with a 33.1% strikeout rate in 62 innings of work. That was enough to draw Philadelphia’s attention in the Rule 5 draft, but he walked (six) more batters than he struck out (four) in his 7 1/3 innings of work with the Phillies during Spring Training. That lack of control was enough for the Phillies to decide to move on from McCambley, who now returns to the Marlins as a non-participant but could be asked to put on probation at some point this year.
