89
« Last post by craig on December 02, 2024, 09:09:59 am »
Over his 908-inning big-league career, 168 starts, only 14 relief appearances. 10 relief appearances with Seattle in 2022, a several at start of career, but other than Seattle he's been a starter. However, hasn't had a lots-of-starts-lots-of-innings season since 2019. (185 innings, 32 starts).
Will be interesting to see what Hawkins, Hoyer, Counsell say about projected opportunity. Planned into rotation? Or maybe a bit Smyly-like? Might start, might relieve, we'll see how the competition shakes out and let performance guide the usage? Has pretty good splits versus lefties, career-wise, so might perhaps end up being a useful bullpen guy? $14.5/year suggests more than bullpen plan, though.
Career-wise, 4.85 ERA, not impressive. Primary vulnerability has been the HR-ball, so seems kinda like the profile that Hoyer gravitates towards, other than Stroman he's usually trended towards strike-throwing gopher guys. 1.6HR/9 over career. That's with lots of his career innings pitched for Detroit, which is not HR-inflation stadium. Perhaps a hope is that with Wrigley as a power-suppression park, that HR's won't kill?
Looking at career profiles, of course, is of mixed value. With all of the modern pitch optimization, I have no idea what his pitch-mix profile looks like today versus in earlier years.