ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Struggling left-hander José Suarez was designated for assignment by the Los Angeles Angels after his latest poor outing.
The Angels also designated infielder Cole Tucker for assignment, activated infielder Brandon Drury from the 10-day injured list and selected the contract of right-hander Zach Plesac from Triple-A Salt Lake on Monday.
Plesac was then assigned to start in his Angels debut Monday night against Milwaukee when scheduled starter José Soriano was scratched about two hours before the first pitch with lower abdominal pain.
Suarez joined the Angels' rotation midway through the 2021 season and pitched well through 2022, going 16-16 with a 3.86 ERA. The 26-year-old Venezuelan hasn't been able to recapture that form since then, missing most of 2023 with a left shoulder injury and going 2-5 with an 8.22 ERA in 29 appearances over the past two seasons overall.
“He just wasn't performing,” Angels manager Ron Washington said. “We need to get some people up here to perform. We certainly want to keep him in our organization, so our fingers are crossed that he won't get claimed and we can keep him and get him right. He just wasn't right.”
Suarez took two losses on the Angels' road trip last week while giving up nine runs on 11 hits in 3 2/3 innings. His ERA jumped to 8.15 when he allowed five runs on five hits over one inning Sunday in Los Angeles' 13-6 loss to San Francisco.
Washington also said Suarez didn't irritate the Angels when the lefty curiously said he thought he had pitched well against the Giants.
“I think when you're a baseball player, you're going to be positive about what you do out there,” Washington said. “But it's obvious the results weren't there, so that's it.”
Plesac joined the Angels in January after his five-year tenure in Cleveland ended. The right-hander is 26-27 with a 4.20 ERA in his major league career as a starter for the Guardians, and he has made 13 starts for Triple-A Salt Lake this year.
Plesac was scheduled to start again in the minors on Tuesday, so the Angels decided to put him on the mound a day earlier after Soriano was ruled out.
“I'm just looking for Zach to be Zach,” Washington said. “He's a starter. Stay out there as long as he can. I don't think when he flew here, this was his idea. But it is what it is, and he's a starter.”
Drury has been out May 8 with a hamstring injury, missing 34 games. The veteran was off to a rough start in the Angels' first 30 games, batting .173 with one homer and six RBIs.
Tucker has batted .180 with a .563 OPS for the Angels, who recalled him in late April.
Luis Rengifo wasn't in the Angels' starting lineup Monday night after exiting Sunday's game with a bruised wrist after getting hit by a pitch, but Washington said the injury isn't thought to be serious.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB
Los Angeles Angels pitcher José Suarez (54) hands the ball to manager Ron Washington (37) as he exits during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants, Sunday, June 16, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Los Angeles Angels pitcher José Suarez throws to an Arizona Diamondbacks batter during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — He has run for office, published hundreds of thousands of leaked government documents online, and once lobbied to save his local swimming pool. One of the most polarizing and influential figures of the information age, Julian Assange is now free after five years in a British prison and seven years in self-imposed exile in a London embassy.
What's next for the WikiLeaks founder remains unclear.
Assange, 52, landed in his homeland of Australia this week after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that put an end to an attempt to extradite him to the United States. That could have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence in the event of conviction.
“Julian plans to swim in the ocean every day. He plans to sleep in a real bed. He plans to taste real food, and he plans to enjoy his freedom,” his wife, Stella Assange, told reporters Thursday at a news conference that Assange did not attend.
Her husband and the father of her two children would continue to “defend human rights and speak out against injustice,” she said. “He can choose how he does that because he is a free man.”
Assange himself has given no clues.
All friends and acquaintances of Assange interviewed by The Associated Press this week emphasized that they did not know his future plans and underscored the toll taken by his ordeal — in prison he spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, following years in self-exile inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
“I just want him to survive this ordeal and be happy. I don’t care what Julian does next,” said Andrew Wilkie, an Independent Australian lawmaker who met Assange before the hacker launched WikiLeaks — and was one of the first politicians to lobby for Australia to intervene in his case.
But some also found it hard to imagine Assange wouldn't eventually return to the preoccupations that have long captured him.
“I suspect though that he doesn’t switch off, and it’s hard to see him just disappearing to a beach shack forever,” added Wilkie.
Assange was “unable to walk past injustice” said Suelette Dreyfus, a lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne who has known Assange since he was a teenager, hacking secure networks for the fun of it. Dreyfus, who once lobbied alongside Assange to save a swimming pool in Melbourne, said her friend's health had worsened during his years in a British jail.
“But I suspect he will not sit on a beach for the rest of his life,” she said.
It is unclear what will happen to WikiLeaks, the site Assange founded in 2006 as a place to post confidential documents exposing corruption and revealing secret government workings behind warfare and spying. That work led him to be celebrated by supporters as a transparency crusader but lambasted by national security hawks who insisted that his conduct put lives at risk and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism.
The site remains online, although Assange told The Nation in 2023 that it had ceased publishing because of his imprisonment, and because state surveillance and the freezing of WikiLeaks funds had deterred whistleblowers. Assange’s plea deal with the U.S. included an agreement to destroy any unpublished U.S. documents.
“Will he go back to WikiLeaks and, if he does, will he do it differently? I don’t know,” said Wilkie, the lawmaker.
One matter where Assange’s views are known is his hope for a pardon from a current or future U.S. president on the charge he pleaded guilty to as part of his deal.
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said President Joe Biden is not considering one.
Media analysts worry the conviction threatened to cast a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Assange has always insisted he is a journalist and the case could lead to the prosecution of other reporters, said Peter Greste, a professor at the University of Queensland and a former foreign correspondent who was jailed in Egypt for his reporting.
In the past, Assange had designs on elected office, making an unsuccessful bid for the Australian senate with his WikiLeaks party in 2013, although he has not suggested he will contest an election again.
“When you turn a bright light on, the cockroaches scuttle away. That’s what we need to do to Canberra,” he told the news program “60 Minutes” the same year, when asked why he wanted to enter politics.
But where the government of the day had despised Assange — a mutual feeling, he said — he was met in his homeland on Wednesday with a hero’s welcome, including from some politicians and a public who had not supported him before.
It reflected a slow reversal of views about the WikiLeaks founder in Australia – but it belied an odd tension, too. In a recent high-profile case, an Australian judge sentenced a former army lawyer to almost six years in prison for leaking classified information that exposed allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. Assange’s legal team mentioned the case on Thursday.
Analysts said that case and others, along with the renewed focus on Assange, drew attention to a fraught national culture of information secrecy that has been endorsed even by some of the politicians who celebrated Assange’s freedom.
“We have some of the most restrictive legislation on access to public information in the world, and we have no constitutional protection for press freedom or freedom of speech,” said Greste. “I hope that Julian does also get involved in campaigning to support press freedom, and transparency and accountability of information in Australia.”
Even when Assange did address the idea of what he may do next — in a 2018 interview for the World Ethical Digital Forum, credited as his last public appearance before he was jailed — he was typically enigmatic.
“I don’t know,” he said. “No, I mean I do know. But I don’t know what I should answer in response to that question.”
Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange embraces his wife Stella after landing at RAAF air base Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26 2024. Assange has returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange embraces his wife Stella after landing at RAAF air base Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26 2024. Assange has returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves after landing at RAAF air base Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26 2024. Assange has returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the federal court in Saipan, Mariana Islands, Wednesday, June 26 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures after landing at RAAF air base Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26 2024. Assange has returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
