ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Catcher Travis d'Arnaud has agreed to a $12 million, two-year contract to join the Los Angeles Angels as a veteran backup to Logan O'Hoppe.
The Angels announced the deal Tuesday, adding their third veteran already in the offseason.
D'Arnaud is a Long Beach native and a 12-year major league veteran who spent the past five seasons with Atlanta. He batted .238 with 15 homers and 48 RBIs over 99 games last season for the Braves, who gave him an $8 million salary this year and declined their $8 million option for 2025.
D'Arnaud will turn 36 before next season, and Angels general manager Perry Minasian envisions him as both a mentor and a backup to O'Hoppe, perhaps the most promising player in the young core of his rebuilding club.
The 24-year-old O'Hoppe played 136 games for Los Angeles last season, batting .244 with 20 homers and 56 RBIs. D'Arnaud should give more rest next season to O'Hoppe, particularly when the Angels face left-handed pitchers.
“Travis just stuck out for us as someone that could not only play at a high level, but for his makeup,” Minasian said. “He’s been on winning teams. He knows what winning teams do. He’s got the ability to affect the locker room in as positive a way as anyone I’ve ever been around. He’s great with young pitching. He’s great with coaching staff. He’s great with manager. He’s just an awesome guy, and a hometown guy who lives 25 minutes away.”
D'Arnaud gets $6 million annually in his new deal.
He won the World Series with the Braves in 2021 and made the All-Star team in 2022. He began his career with the New York Mets before making brief stops with the Dodgers and Tampa Bay in 2019.
D'Arnaud knows Ron Washington well from the Angels manager's previous tenure as a Braves coach.
Los Angeles also acquired slugger Jorge Soler from Atlanta in a trade and signed veteran reliever Kyle Hendricks earlier in a busy offseason. Minasian worked for top Braves executive Alex Anthopoulos in Toronto and in Atlanta.
The Angels lost 99 games this year in the worst season in franchise history.
Right-hander Guillo Zuñiga was designated for assignment to make room. Minasian said the acquisition of d'Arnaud doesn't necessarily mean the Halos will part with Matt Thaiss, a backup catcher who has also played other positions for the Angels, who drafted him in the first round in 2016.
Minasian also said Sal Fasano has joined the club as an assistant pitching coach. The veteran major league catcher — who played two games for the Anaheim Angels during their 2002 World Series championship season — spent the past eight years on the Braves’ coaching staff working with their catchers.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB
FILE - Atlanta Braves' Travis d'Arnaud rounds second base after hitting a walkoff home run to win a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals, Sept. 28, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jason Allen, File)
ROME (AP) — Italian President Sergio Mattarella sharply rebuked Elon Musk on Wednesday for weighing in on Italian court rulings that have stymied the government’s plans to process some asylum-seekers in Albania.
Musk, who is expected to have a top advisory role in Donald Trump’s new administration, wrote Tuesday on X that “these judges need to go.” He was referring to the latest Italian court ruling against right-wing Premier Giorgia Meloni’s much-touted Albania immigration deal.
“This is unacceptable. Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?” he wrote in a subsequent post Wednesday.
The posts concerned a Rome court's refusal to rule on a formal request to detain seven migrants rescued at sea and transferred to Albania for processing. Monday's ruling resulted in the men being brought to Italy for processing.
Mattarella didn’t cite Musk by name but — in an unusually piqued statement — made clear on Wednesday that he was referring to him. Italy's head of state demanded respect for the country's sovereignty, especially from other soon-to-be public officials.
“Italy is a great democratic country and … knows how to take care of itself while respecting its Constitution,” Mattarella said in a statement issued by his spokesman.
“Anyone, particularly if as announced is about to assume an important role of government in a friendly and allied country, must respect its sovereignty and cannot attribute to himself the task of imparting prescriptions,” the statement said.
Trump announced Tuesday that Musk, one of the most influential people around the U.S. president-elect, would help lead a Department of Government Efficiency, essentially an independent advisory panel to eliminate waste and fraud.
Musk is a supporter of Meloni and has met with her in Rome on a few occasions, and in September joined her at an awards ceremony on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Photos of them together made such news that Musk seemingly felt the need to tamp down speculation by posting “We are not dating.”
Musk has a history of making provocative statements and sparring with leaders on X. Earlier this year, he posted messages insulting U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and saying the United Kingdom was headed for civil war. He has also clashed with a Brazilian supreme court justice over free speech, far-right accounts and purported misinformation on X, and also accused Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, of “major election fraud” after that country’s disputed election.
Later Wednesday, an Italian representative of X, Andrea Stroppa, tweeted what appeared to be a statement from Musk that said he had spoken during the day with Meloni. According to Stroppa's tweet, Musk “expresses his respect” for Mattarella and the Italian Constitution but insists on his right to freedom of expression.
The courts’ rulings have raised the ire of Meloni’s far-right-led government, which has been seeking strategies to ease the strain on Italy of the arrival of migrants seeking a better life in Europe. The government had held up the opening of the Albanian centers as a centerpiece of its immigration crackdown, also as a means of deterrence, and said they could be a model for Europe.
In both cases, Italian courts referred the cases to the EU court of justice in Luxembourg to rule if the countries of origin for the migrants are considered safe for repatriation. There is no word on when the European court might rule.
But as a result of the Rome court decisions, no migrant has yet been processed in the Albanian centers, which are budgeted to cost Italy 670 million euros ($730 million) over five years to build and operate.
Italy's opposition says the money could be much better spent on reinforcing Italian-operated migrant processing centers, while human rights groups say the outsourcing of asylum processing contravenes international law.
The centers opened in October after a months-long delay, because crumbling soil at one of the facilities needed to be repaired. They are run by Italy and are under the country's jurisdiction, while Albanian guards provide external security.
FILE - Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk listens as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - Sergio Mattarella, President of Italy, right, addresses journalists at the end of the Arraiolos Group meeting in Porto, Portugal, Oct. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Miguel Angelo Pereira, File)
CORRECTS TO PRIME MINISTER, NOT PRESIDENT - FILE - Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, right, presents Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni with an award during the Global Citizen Awards dinner, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Michelle Farsi, File)
FILE - Sergio Mattarella, President of Italy, right, addresses journalists at the end of the Arraiolos Group meeting in Porto, Portugal, Oct. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Miguel Angelo Pereira, File)
FILE - Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, right, presents Italy's President Giorgia Meloni with an award during the Global Citizen Awards dinner, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Michelle Farsi, File)
Italy's president sharply rebukes Elon Musk over comments on X about migration court rulings
Italy's president sharply rebukes Elon Musk over comments on X about migration court rulings
FILE - Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk listens as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
