The Kansas City T-Bones have traded infielder Marcus Lemon to the New Jersey Jackals of the Can-Am League for right-handed relief pitcher Kyle Hansen.
The team has also signed infielder J.C. Rodriguez for 2018 and announced that outfielder Chantz Mack has retired from baseball.
Kyle Hansen joins the T-Bones from New Jersey of the CAN-AM League, where the Oyster Bay, New York, native spent the last week of the 2017 season after being traded from Trois-Rivieres on Aug. 25.
Hansen appeared in four games with the Jackals with a 4.50 ERA in four innings of relief. In 17 games with Trois-Rivieres he went 3-0 with a 1.56 ERA in 17 games out of the pen, totaling 17.1 innings with 25 strikeouts. Hansen saved eight games combined last season.
Hansen was a sixth-round pick by the Chicago White Sox in 2012 out of St. John’s University. In five seasons with the White Sox organization, the right-hander went 20-17 with a 4.16 ERA in 119 games with 20 starts over 249.0 innings of work.
Hansen struck out 241 over the five seasons in affiliated ball, reaching AA Birmingham in 2015 and 2016. Hansen began his independent career with Long Island of the Atlantic League after his release from Chicago, going 1-2 over 16 relief innings to finish the 2016 season.
Marcus Lemon spent one season with Kansas City, playing in 98 games and hitting .265 with eight home runs and 45 RBI for the T-Bones. Lemon spent the majority of the 2016 season at AA Birmingham for the Chicago White Sox. He also spent 17 games at AAA Charlotte in the International League.
Lemon was the fourth-round pick by the Texas Rangers in the 2006 June MLB Amateur Draft out of Eustis High School. He’s played for four major-league organizations including Texas, Atlanta, Detroit and Chicago.
The T-Bones signed switch-hitting infielder J.C. Rodriguez, a former New York Mets minor leaguer, who spent seven seasons in the Mets system. He is a career .242 hitter in 579 games with 19 home runs and 197 RBI with 74 stolen bases. In the field Rodriguez has a career fielding percentage of .961.
In 2017 Rodriguez spent 127 games at high A St. Lucie in the Florida State League, hitting .214 with four homers and 40 RBI. Rodriguez added 16 stolen bases while playing 118 games at shortstop with a .937 fielding percentage. He began the season playing three games a AA Binghamton in the Eastern League.
Rodriguez, a native of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, was signed as an 18-year-old in 2011 and spent the first two seasons in the Dominican Summer League with the Mets. He made his state side debut with the Mets Gulf Coast club in 2013 and made the steady climb up the New York organization ladder.
In 2014 with Kingsport in the Appalachian League, Rodriguez hit .312 in 49 games, and at low A Savannah in the South Atlantic League, he played in 112 games with a .254 average in 2015. In 2016 he appeared in a career-high 124 games at Columbia in the Sally League, hitting .237.
The Kansas City T-Bones signed Chantz Mack on June 5 and inserted him immediately into the lineup. On his first night against Wichita he went deep and went 3-for-4 with a double and a pair of RBI.
Mack, who was born in Miami, Florida, was drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 29th round of the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft from the University of Miami. In his only “indy” ball season, Mack hit .247 in 80 games with 10 home runs and 48 RBI in 2017.
Full and half-season ticket packages for 2018, flex plans and group ticket sales are now on sale online at tbonesbaseball.com or by calling 913-328-5618 or visiting in person the T-Bones Stadium Box Office.
– Story from T-Bones