{"id":76347,"date":"2024-06-10T16:52:11","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T20:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=76347"},"modified":"2024-06-10T16:52:11","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T20:52:11","slug":"jake-woodford-pittsburgh-pirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/10\/jake-woodford-pittsburgh-pirates\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates to Sign Free Agent Reliever on a Minor League Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/woodfja01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-10_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jake Woodford<\/a> is in agreement to a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chris Cotillo of<em> MassLive.com<\/em> reports. Woodward will settle in as a member of the rotation at Triple-A Indianapolis. The 27 year old elected free agency over the weekend after accepting an outright with the Chicago White Sox. Woodford posted a 10.80 ERA and\u00a0 7:5 K:BB over 8 1\/3 innings with Chicago. In two starts, he was tagged for 10 runs on 15 hits and five walks with seven strikeouts. He had a rough go at Triple-A Charlotte, pitching 49 2\/3 innings with a 5.26 ERA across ten starts.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Righty Jake Woodford, who just elected free agency after being DFA by the White Sox, is expected to sign with the Pirates, per source.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChrisCotillo\/status\/1800236583515242687?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 10, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Jake Woodford Signs with the Pirates<\/h2>\n<p>Woodford was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2015, where he spent his entire career prior to this season. The right-hander did post a 3.26 ERA as a swingman with the Cardinals from 2021-22. In parts of six Triple-A seasons, Woodford pitched to a 4.19 ERA with a 19.5 percent strikeout rate and a 10.2 percent walk rate.<\/p>\n<h3>Woodford is Familiar with the National League Central<\/h3>\n<p>Woodford is familiar with the NL Central. His performance against the division has come against the Milwaukee Brewers. In eight games, Woodford posted a 3.20 ERA with 22 strikeouts in 25 1\/3 innings. Opposing hitters on the Brewers slashed .205\/.286\/.364 in 98 plate appearances. He provides a major league caliber option for a Pirates team that has battled with inconsistencies in the bullpen. But Woodford could work his way into the mix for a long-relief or fifth starter role with the Pirates.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We believe we have a ton of talent in the bullpen. We believe we can stack up with anybody from a talent perspective,&#8221; general manager Ben Charington said on the radio. &#8220;We&#8217;ve had some stretches where it&#8217;s been inconsistent. You&#8217;re not going to find guys with better stuff. It doesn&#8217;t mean we won&#8217;t keep looking, but that&#8217;s an area where we&#8217;re just as focused on, &#8216;How do we help our guys be more consistent?'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pittsburgh&#8217;s rotation includes fellow rookies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/skenepa01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-10_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Paul Skenes<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=jonesja09,jones-013jar&amp;search=Jared+Jones&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-10_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jared Jones<\/a>&#8211; in addition to All-Star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kellemi03.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-10_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mitch Keller<\/a>. Left-handers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/perezma02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-10_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez<\/a> and Martin Gonzales were expected to hold down spots in the rotation behind Keller and Jones. Unfortunately, Perez landed on the injured list last month with a groin strain. Meanwhile, Gonzales has made only three starts before a forerarm injury that&#8217;s sidelined him for two months. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/priesqu01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-10_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Quinn Priester<\/a> joined them on the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/06\/pirates-sign-justin-briuhl\/\" target=\"_self\">injured list due to a lat strain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jake Woodford is in agreement to a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com reports. Woodward will settle in as a member of the rotation at Triple-A Indianapolis. The 27 year old elected free agency over the weekend after accepting an outright with the Chicago White Sox. Woodford posted a 10.80 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3686,"featured_media":76350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1071,35],"tags":[28245,4563,3718,3255,507,2762,6371,2694,168],"class_list":["post-76347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pirates","category-mlb","category-news","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-jake-woodford","tag-jared-jones","tag-martin-perez","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-mitch-keller","tag-paul-skenes","tag-quinn-priester","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}