Scott Blewett's name has made him a punchline –and MLB's roster churn made him disposable
Scott Blewett can’t escape the puns—or the transactions. As he changes teams for the third time in two months, he’s still waiting for a shot to stick.
He’s heard the jokes and puns his entire life.
“I’m not going to correct anybody. If someone asks me, I’ll tell them, but it is what it is,” right-handed pitcher Scott Blewett told the Baltimore Banner in mid-April, acknowledging that his last name isn’t pronounced Blew-it, but rather Blue-ett.
“I know the puns will fly around. If that’s the worst thing people say about me, then it’s a pretty good day.”
After his dreadful performance on Thursday against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Blewett’s long-running battle with nominative determinism may have taken its hardest hit yet.
Tasked with preserving a 9–3 lead in the eighth, Blewett gave up a solo shot to Ketel Marte but escaped further damage.
The Braves got the run back in the bottom half of the frame and sent Blewett out to nail down the 10–4 win. He struck out Eugenio Suarez to begin the inning before things unraveled.
Lourdes Gurriel homered. Tim Tawa walked. Alek Thomas homered. Jose Herrera walked.
That ended Blewett’s afternoon as closer Raisel Iglesias came on to get the save in a game that was a blowout minutes earlier. But Iglesias fared no better, coughing up three earned runs and the lead in just two-thirds of an inning.
It wasn’t the All-Star closer who bore the brunt of fan frustration — it was Blewett.
The internet was predictably merciless. Fans pounced not just on his outing but on his surname, weaponizing it into cruel punchlines.
“Scott Blewett should never get a job again just because of his last name,” one X user said.
Another user took one step further, suggesting the pitcher “should not be allowed to compete in MLB unless he changes his last name.”
But Blewett was the easy punchline to underscore the Braves’ season-long struggles. As Hall of Famer Tom Glavine put it: “If you were looking for rock bottom, this might be it.”
After the loss, the Braves made sweeping changes to the pitching staff — including cutting Blewett and calling up nine-time All-Star Craig Kimbrel, who had been working his way back after being designated for assignment by the Baltimore Orioles late last year, which put his career in jeopardy.
For Blewett, it was the latest foray into uncertainty.
“DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING”
After three years away from the majors, Scott Blewett was pitching — and pitching well — for the Minnesota Twins in 2024.
His locker inside the clubhouse faced a quote from a franchise legend, which Blewett often turned to for perspective:
“Don’t take anything for granted because tomorrow is not promised to any of us.”
“The quote up there from Kirby Puckett probably says it best, right?” Blewett told the Kansas City Star in August of 2024, nodding toward the sign. “Live for the day.”
For a pitcher whose career path had been anything but linear, those words carried weight.
Despite minor league struggles, the former top prospect made his debut with the Kansas City Royals in 2020, fulfilling a dream the Syracuse, New York, native had held since he was five years old.
Since then, Blewett’s road had been defined by uncertainty.
He was DFA’d by the Royals in April 2021 to clear a 40-man roster spot, resurfacing for just three MLB appearances late in the season. Then came the grind: two forgettable seasons in the minors with the Chicago White Sox and Braves, a desperate reset overseas with the Uni-President Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League, and a creeping fear that the big leagues had passed him by.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Blewett admitted, reflecting on the tailspin of his early career — including an 8.52 ERA in Triple-A in 2019. He pointed to a lack of consistent instruction and a failure to harness his pitch mix as key factors in his struggles.
But in 2024, something clicked. Signed by Minnesota on a minor-league deal, Blewett rediscovered the stuff that once made him a prized second-round pick. He posted a 1.77 ERA over 12 appearances for the Twins, earning praise from manager Rocco Baldelli.
“Being able to give him some more opportunities will be good,” Baldelli said.
It felt like the start of a long-awaited second chapter, but thus far, 2025 has been the most extreme state of flux.
It’s a feeling thousands of players have had, just ask former first-round pick and four-time DFA casualty Jesse Biddle.
He found himself on the move constantly — sent packing because of timing, roster mechanics, or a stretch of poor performance despite prior success.
“People don’t totally understand how settled you get,” he said. “We play every damn day. You build up these friendships and these relationships. It’s hard to change. It’s hard to move teams in the middle of the season.”
OUT OF OPTIONS
Outside of Thursday’s blow-up, Blewett had logged six straight scoreless outings for Atlanta. Before that, he allowed just one earned run over nine innings with the Twins and Orioles — only to be DFA’d by both.
“I think there have been times in my career where I’ve been given opportunities and I feel like I’ve done my best with them, and then you get DFA’d,” Blewett said.
It’s a vicious cycle, especially for players who can’t escape it.
“Whether it’s an option or a DFA, it breaks your heart — 100 percent,” said retired MLB catcher Ryan Lavarnway, whose career included nine DFAs. “You were good enough yesterday, but you’re not good enough today. You were part of the family, part of the club, part of the team yesterday — but today, you’re not. I think our whole lives, we grow up and want to be a part of something. Being part of a team becomes a family, and you want that.
Being optioned or DFA’d — it’s more than just a paper move or a geographical move. There’s an emotional aspect that gets ignored. There’s also the finance piece, the logistical piece: Where am I gonna live? Where’s my stuff? Where’s my family? The human side is often overlooked.”
Every season, a few players get caught in the never-ending churn of DFA limbo — and more often than not, they’re relievers.
In 2018, Oliver Drake set a record by pitching for five teams in one year, thanks to five separate designations. Last season, Mike Baumann tied the mark.
The chaotic, historic, borderline-comedic year that made Oliver Drake MLB's most wanted unwanted man
If you look up the definition of ‘designated for assignment’, it’s surprisingly easy to associate one specific player with the transaction.
In recent years, pitchers like Preston Guilmet (11 DFAs), Kyle Tyler (8), Shaun Anderson (8), and Jake Reed (8) have become synonymous with baseball’s transactional churn. They’re arms-for-hire, shuffled from clubhouse to clubhouse, cycled through like Bounty paper towels: kept just long enough to soak up a mess, then wrung out and tossed aside.
“God, was I designated 11 times?” Guilmet said during a recent interview. “I always joke because, you know, I was good enough to keep getting opportunities but not good enough to earn a spot and stay anywhere and that was the kind of a very, maybe unique middle road to be in.”
In that middle road, there are a lot of questions
“When I got DFA’ed [the first time], I didn’t know what to do,” said Anderson, who was DFA’d just a few weeks ago after his latest MLB shot with the Los Angeles Angels. “I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know whether I should go home, or stay here. They have no info for you, they just tell you you can’t come to the field.”
Even basic logistics like housing can underscore how fragile a roster spot is.
Drake took over a fellow reliever’s apartment midseason in 2018, during his record-setting string of five DFAs. Biddle had a similar experience the following season—one that left him reflecting on just how impersonal the process could be.
“I’m trying to find an apartment in Seattle and, I don’t know why, but I accepted the team apartment of a guy who got DFA’ed—another pitcher,” Biddle recalled of his 2019 DFA that took him from the Braves to the Mariners. “I’m staying in his apartment with his furniture. It felt like this island of misfit toys, this sort of graveyard for relief pitchers, this sort of hospice where we wait to die.”
The dreaded three letters — DFA — hit players at all stages of their career. But players like Drake, Baumann, and now Blewett carry the added burden of no roster flexibility.
Blewett is out of options — baseball’s dreaded bureaucratic cliff. Once there, he can’t be sent to the minors without first passing through waivers. So when a team needs his roster spot, there’s only one path: designate him for assignment and hope the system is kind.
It rarely is.
After Thursday’s trouncing, reports surfaced that Blewett would be DFA’d for the third time this season. But before the Braves could make it official, they quietly worked out a trade — sending him back to Baltimore in exchange for cash considerations.
It marked his third transaction in less than two months, and his second stint with the Orioles in that same span. For Blewett, the roster carousel never really stops — only pauses, briefly, before spinning again.
Blewett still draws interest for a reason: he’s 29, pitching at the league minimum salary ($760,000), and when he’s on, the stuff plays. His underlying numbers suggest bad luck — not bad stuff — with solid swing-and-miss rates and a much lower expected ERA than his actual one.
For the second time this season, Blewett is Baltimore-bound.
His limbo periods are getting shorter but stability is becoming a four-letter word.
He’s stuck between clubhouses, routines, lives — waiting for the next transaction to tell him where he belongs.
The Braves DFA’d Kimbrel after just one appearance. In his first outing since re-joining the Orioles, Blewett pitched well again, tossing 1.2 scoreless innings.
But in this world, one bad outing is all it takes to start the cycle again.
Editor’s note: The story was updated on Sunday, June 8, to reflect the Braves designating Craig Kimbrel for assignment and Blewett making his first appearance for the Orioles after re-joining the team.
SOURCES
Kostka, A. (2025, April 18). Don’t blow it when pronouncing Orioles reliever Scott Blewett’s last name. The Baltimore Banner. https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/sports/orioles-mlb/orioles-reliever-scott-blewett-last-name-jokes-ZT3OGEPQ6NGCXLGWEDRRAR2N2Y/
John Shipley, Pioneer Press. (2024, August 29). Twins need reliable bullpen arms. Could one of them be Scott Blewett? Yahoo Sports. https://sports.yahoo.com/twins-reliable-bullpen-arms-could-224800858.html
Rosenthal, K. (2025, June 6). After hitting ‘rock bottom,’ Braves can still salvage their season — if they snap out of it. The Athletic. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6407214/2025/06/06/atlanta-braves-rock-bottom-season/
Worthy, L. (2020, February 26). Royals pitcher Scott Blewett took a step back in Omaha but learned from failure. Kansas City Star. https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article240654751.html
Ryan Lavarnway, interview with author, September 6, 2024
Shaun Anderson, interview with author, September 10, 2024
Preston Guilmet, interview with author, November 13, 2024