The Pirates have agreed to a minor league deal with lefty reliever Eric O’Flaherty, Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports tweets. He’ll receive an invitation to MLB camp.
It has become cliche at this point, but the Bucs do have a record of helping to turn around once-productive pitchers. And O’Flaherty certainly fits the general mold of past refurbishment projects.
The 31-year-old was at one time rather dominant for the Braves, running up a 1.99 ERA over nearly 250 frames from 2009 through 2013. He averaged a pedestrian 7.2 K/9 in that span, but limited the free pass (2.5 BB/9), got a ton of easy outs (58.3% groundball rate), and was plenty useful even against right-handed hitters.
Things weren’t so rosy last year, his first full campaign back from Tommy John surgery. He ended with an abysmal 8.10 ERA, which only got worse after a mid-season trade from the Athletics to the Mets. And the peripherals weren’t great either, as O’Flaherty ended with 6.3 K/9 against 5.4 BB/9. He was able to generate grounders right at his career rate, and there are indications he suffered some bad luck (.388 BABIP, 57.6% strand rate), but clearly he has some work to do to get back on track in the coming spring.