At least six teams have “expressed significant interest” in Tom Koehler, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com tweets. Koehler was recently non-tendered by the Blue Jays.
Koehler had been a reliable back-end starter for the Marlins for most of his career. However, he struggled out of the gates for Miami in 2017. The right-hander posted a 7.92 ERA in twelve starts for the Fish, at least in part due to horrific command; he walked 29 batters and allowed 15 home runs across 55 2/3 innings. ERA estimators such as FIP, xFIP and SIERA suggest that he was better than his surface results indicate, but all three still pegged him at a 5.00+ ERA performance.
After bouncing between the Marlins’ major league club and Triple-A New Orleans for the majority of the season, Koehler was traded to the Blue Jays and pitched almost exclusively out of the bullpen. As a reliever, he dramatically reduced the usage of his slider in favor of more curveballs. That led to some respectable results; Koehler’s strikeout rate jumped to 24% (up from 17% with the Marlins), and he managed to get his walks somewhat under control as well. The result was a respectable 2.65 ERA in an admittedly small sample size of 17 innings.
Despite his solid performance in Toronto, the Jays elected not to tender Koehler a contract for the 2018 season. It wasn’t entirely a surprise; the righty was projected to earn about $6MM in his final trip through arbitration after making $5.75MM in 2017. Koehler was listed among MLBTR’s non-tender candidates.
It makes perfect sense that Koehler would have a large handful of suitors. He could be viewed as either a bounce back four or five starter, or a multi-inning relief option with decent upside; either would be intriguing to a plethora of MLB teams. The 31-year-old will be relatively inexpensive, and probably won’t require a commitment longer than one year.
Am I the only one that hasn’t been able to access the comments sections at the MLB website?
Nope.
I don’t think I’d be comfortable guaranteeing him money when there are so many better pitchers who you could probably get for just as much on the market.
Pirates type of signing
Here we have another pitcher that (if healthy) could be considered by Dan Duquette for next year´s rotation.
You beat me to it. As soon as I saw that 7.92 ERA, I immediately thought that he’d make the perfect addition to the Orioles rotation.
17 innings out of the BP for Toronto after a 7.92 ERA as a Marlins starter. Another indicator of how desperate MLB teams are for pitching. A split minor/major contract with ST invite and opt out on May 1 if not on ML roster makes sense.
Mets please.
What would they have to give up for Koehler and Brian Ellington?