Insider Believes Detroit Tiger Should Target This Veteran Free Agent Pitcher
The Detroit Tigers have a lot of strong suits, but they will still look to upgrade the roster all over the place. One of the most important parts of the team that needs a boost is the rotation. Although Tarik Skubal is a bonafide ace, Casey Mize's future is unknown and they shipped Jack Flaherty off. The Tigers will likely be in the running for some of the big names, but they made need to look at a different tier of pitcher.
The Athletic's Cody Stavenhagen threw a name out recently on the 'Tiger Territory' poscast in Nick Pivetta.
"A name that I believe the Tigers just might like a ton, none other than Nick Pivetta from the Boston Red Sox. He's going to be a free agent this winter. You might hear that name and you might think 'Ok, he was kind of supposed to be good in like 2018 or something, right?'" the beat writer began.
Pivetta was a pretty highly touted prospect, but has never had an ERA under four, underperforming quite a bit. There is a lot to like below the surface numbers, including his 10 K/9 in his career.
He's coming off of a season in Boston in which he started 26 games with a 4.14 ERA and 103 ERA+ in 145.2 innings. Pivetta would be a bit of a project, but something the Tigers should look into.
"He dominates the strike zone, 6.1 percent walk rate, that's really good. Strikes out a lot of guys, 28.9 percent strike out rate, more than 10 K's per nine. His walks have decreased, his strike outs have increased, or stayed steady over the years," Stavenhagen explained.
He then goes on to mention Pivetta's Stuff+, an advanced pitching metric that essentially comes down to how good a pitcher's stuff is when the results are taken away. The 31-year-old had the best rating in the league last season.
Currently, Spotrac has Pivetta's market value at a four year deal around $60 million. It would be a less expensive deal than signing a pitcher like Luis Severino or Walker Buehler, which could help them to bolster the team in other areas.
While his surface stats might not be exciting, what's under the hood is. It might be a big of a project for Detroit, but one that could pay huge dividens. Now that they have made the playoffs, they will need to look for more upgrades in all aspects of the team.
