{"id":92187,"date":"2024-12-16T16:17:32","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T21:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=92187"},"modified":"2024-12-16T16:17:32","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T21:17:32","slug":"mariners-drew-pomeranz-signing-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/16\/mariners-drew-pomeranz-signing-details\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariners Add Depth to Bullpen, Sign Former All-Star Pitcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to multiple reports, the Seattle Mariners and Drew Pomeranz are in agreement on a minor league deal, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AramLeighton8\/status\/1861596273637310968\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aram Leighton of Just Baseball.<\/a> The deal includes an invite to spring training.<\/p>\n<p>Pomeranz, 36, battled a rough couple of years, not seeing major league action since 2021 due to injury. Since his All-Star days, Pomeranz has bounced from the rotation to the bullpen, not locking down a spot. However, he caught new life as a high-leverage bullpen arm in 2019 and dominated throughout 2020 and 2021. Seattle has found itself in need of high-leverage arms, following the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/10\/yimi-garcia-signs-two-year-deal-blue-jays\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">departure<\/a> of Yimi Garcia, injuries to Matt Brash, and Gregory Santos, and Gabe Speier&#8217;s regression.<\/p>\n<h2>Drew Pomeranz Inks Minor League Deal<\/h2>\n<p>The Mariners could&#8217;ve seen Pomeranz&#8217;s arsenal or lack thereof. The key is in the simplicity, throwing two pitches: a four-seam fastball, and a knuckle curve. In 2021, he threw his four-seam fastball 75.3% of the time. Opponents weren&#8217;t necessarily fooled by batting .238. But even with that, he still racked up a WHIF of 29%, which is well above the major league average (22%).<\/p>\n<p>Pomeranz&#8217;s knuckle curve, thrown 24.7% of the time would benefit from being thrown more. He managed a WHIF of 20%, holding batters to a .148 average on the pitch in 106 pitches.<\/p>\n<p>Pomeranz was still a very effective pitcher in 2021, pitching to a 1.75 ERA in 27 games. But, in 2020, Pomeranz mixed up his pitches and found even more success. He pitched to a 1.45 ERA in 20 games. Surprisingly, he used his fastball more, at 79.6%. But it was how he navigated at-bats that was different. His knuckle-curve PutAway% was 28.6%, about 3.5% above average. In 2021, it was down 10%, at 18.2%. His fastball PutAway% was 24.4% in 2020 and 25.9% in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The Mariners&#8217; pitching lab specializes in picking up pitchers down on their luck and building them up. They&#8217;ve publicly maintained that this is from allowing pitchers to play to their strengths and keeping things simple.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to multiple reports, the Seattle Mariners and Drew Pomeranz are in agreement on a minor league deal, reports Aram Leighton of Just Baseball. The deal includes an invite to spring training. Pomeranz, 36, battled a rough couple of years, not seeing major league action since 2021 due to injury. Since his All-Star days, Pomeranz [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5357,"featured_media":92208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_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":[17,1071,35],"tags":[278,5585,3494],"class_list":["post-92187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mariners","category-mlb","category-news","tag-drew-pomeranz","tag-matt-brash","tag-yimi-garcia"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92187","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\/5357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92209,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92187\/revisions\/92209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}