Martin Perez fills the soft tossing lefty profile popular with Pirates

What are the Pirates getting in new lefty Martin Perez

The Pittsburgh Pirates added another name to the rotation for the 2024 season, signing left-handed pitcher Martin Perez to a one-year contract worth $8 million.

With a desperate need to start pitching, this is the second left-handed pitcher they have added this off-season (Marco Gonzales).

It follows a trend that Ben Cherington has followed throughout his tenure with the Pirates: left-handed, soft-tossing starting pitchers. Before Perez (and Gonzales, for that matter) were pitchers like Rich Hill, Jose Quintana, and Tyler Anderson.

With Johan Oviedo out for the season, that puts the first three of the potential rotation at Mitch Keller, Perez, and Gonzales.

Here’s a little bit more of a breakdown of Perez.

Last year - Perez won 10 games for the World Series-winning Texas Rangers in 2023, posting a 4.45 ERA (4.96 xFIP) across 141.2 innings pitched. His last 15 games came out of the bullpen as the Rangers loaded up for their championship run.

He pitched much better out of the bullpen, posting a 2.78 ERA as a reliever, compared to 4.94 as a starter.

What he brings - Perez has never been a big swing and miss-getter, holding a career 16% strikeout rate in the majors.

Last year, he threw his sinker 42.9% of the time, and it only generated a whiff rate of 9.7%, so the ball was getting put into play a lot. His next two most used pitches were his change-up (26.5%) and cutter (22.1%). Perez also threw a four-seam, curveball, and slider, all 4% or less.

According to Run-Value on Baseball Savant, his sinker was by far his best pitch, with a +8. The cutter, one of the worst in the majors, was at -13.

Since Baseball Savant started to track him having a cutter, it’s fluctuated between being a solid offering (+13 RV in 2022) and one of his worst (this past season). The numbers for 2022 look like they’re part of an overall outlier season for Perez.

Perez is a heavy ground-ball pitcher, which plays well into having the best defensive third baseman in the game right now. He has a career ground-ball rate of 49.1% and has never been lower than 38.5% (2020 with the Red Sox).

How he fits - This is easy, the Pirates need pitching, so from a particular perspective it’s hard not to like this signing. They need arms, and Perez is a player who has multiple 100+ inning seasons under their belt.

On the other hand, this fills more like a guy who will fill some innings for you, and history would say they may not always be competitive innings.

He had a WAR of 4.0 in 2022, but when you add in what he’s done since 2020, it’s still just 5.6. So, he’s averaged a WAR of 0.5 in the three other seasons.

So unless you are unlocking a season that looked like a complete outlier over his entire career - his highest WAR outside of 2022 was 2.3 in 2016 - this may not move the needle far enough of a direction they need to go in.

The Pirates have at least added some established major league arms that should be able to cover innings but may not be able to provide the impact needed for the position they are in regarding the rotation.