Royals Sign Obscure Journeyman Jamey Wright

He had a pretty good FIP for the Rangers last year: 4.10. And CHONE projects him to manage the same in 2009: 4.10. tRA didn’t like him last year as a starter, but had him as a nearly average reliever. So, as miscellaneous minor league signings go, this is a decent one.

He really is an effective groundball specialist. In recent years, he’s had a GB% often around 60% and a FB% usually below 25. Mix in a decent LD and you’ve got a fairly decent major league pitcher. As long as you keep him in the bullpen, he can be useful.

Don’t expect much, but Wright is a good insurance policy.

Wright really was pitching pretty well (for Royals’ standards) that year KC Chris is talking about…if I remember correctly. Then we oddly never called him up despite the loads of crap that we had pitching at the MLB level, so the conspiracy theory was on. But he was definitely useful for Texas the last two years as a guy who could come in whenever one their pitchers had given up 7 runs by the third inning….but he also pitched quite a bit in 7th/8th inning set-up roles.

Decentish groundball AAAA pitcher. I don’t have a problem with him getting a few starts in August if we have some guys on the DL.

Compare Wright’s first and second-half splits on BR. His BABIP in particular shot way up above his career rate of .307, and although he was really lucky in the opposing-slugging department early on in the season, he was a pretty serviceable reliever for us most of last year.

I think he’ll do well for you guys as long as you can keep his pitch count down. Obviously, the Rangers ran through an absurd number of pitchers last year, so he was overworked by the time we made it to the second half. He isn’t the sort of guy you can call upon every night, but he’s probably good for about 60 or 70 innings, and maybe a bit more if given enough rest in between appearances.

Low-risk AAA insurance. It looks like he pitched almost exclusively out of the pen last year with ok results for Texas despite not having the keen pitching instict and 95 mph fastball of the Pr0f3550r.

At the very least, it doesn’t cost the Royals much of anything, and he’s good insurance against having to bring up a Newman or Fulchino.

As NYRoyal notes, CHONE projects a good 4.10 FIP. I don’t know if he can do it or not, but you know, as a reliever, that would make him of the best guys in the ’pen outside of Soria and Tejada.

I remember on the Caravan two years ago, GMDM talked about how it was important to have at least “seventeen guys” that you thought were at least ML leve replacement pitchers.

The reason is that you can replace any injury on the 25-man roster without disturbing roles.

With twelve pitchers in the majors you need two possible starters, righty and lefty relievers and a closer candidate in AAA. Two starters because you never know when you might need one immediately and you don’t want it to be a guy who pitched yesterday.

Signing Wright is just what it looks like, a no-cost AAA insurance policy. One of the three: Hochevar, Davies or H. Ramirez won’t be in the rotation. That guy can join Wright at AAA and be ready at a moment’s notice.

Solid signing.