The Angels placed right-hander Ben Joyce on the 15-day injured list Friday, prior to the club’s 14-3 loss to the Astros. Joyce is dealing with inflammation in his throwing shoulder, and the IL placement is retroactive to April 9. Righty Michael Darrell-Hicks was called up from Triple-A to take Joyce’s spot on the active roster.
Shoulder inflammation brought Joyce’s 2024 season to a premature end, as the reliever didn’t pitch after September 3. Joyce posted a 2.08 ERA, 23.2% strikeout rate, 58.9% grounder rate, and 9.9% walk rate over 34 2/3 innings in between his June call-up and that September 3 date, establishing himself as a force out of the Angels’ bullpen. While Joyce had the high grounder rate and modest strikeout total of a pitch-to-contact type of hurler, he is best known for being one of the baseball’s hardest throwers, as Joyce averaged an absurd 102.1mph on his fastball last season.
Joyce has such extreme velocity that it registered as unusual when his fastball was humming at “only” 99.3mph during his last outing, but something seemed amiss when he allowed three runs on four hits over just a third of an inning on Tuesday against the Rays. Joyce told MLB.com’s Rhett Bollinger and other reporters that his shoulder was feeling fine during the game, and that he only started feeling sore while playing catch on Wednesday.
There isn’t yet any timeline for when the reliever might be able to return to action, though Joyce indicated that the IL placement was somewhat precautionary in nature. He said initially, he “just kind of thought it was normal soreness, and ended up getting reevaluated and just a little more inflamed than we wanted it to be. So [we’re] just trying to get ahead of it.”
The three-run meltdown against Tampa boosted Joyce’s ERA to 6.23 over 4 1/3 total innings this season, though he hadn’t allowed any earned runs in his four prior appearances. The Angels have been using Joyce as a high-leverage fireman in front of closer Kenley Jansen, and so Joyce’s absence will essentially mean that everyone else in the Los Angeles bullpen might have to take a step up the depth chart. Ryan Zeferjahn might be the favorite for the role out of default, as Zeferjahn is one of the few pitchers that has gotten off to a decent start within a tough couple of weeks for the Halos relief corps.