Pittsburgh Pirates: Four Low Cost High Reward Free Agent Targets

Sean Doolittle

Sean Doolittle has been one of the highest quality left-handed relief pitchers in baseball the past handful of seasons. Throughout his career Doolittle has pitched 395.2 innings with the Oakland Athletics and Washington Nationals tune of a 3.07 ERA, 2.79 FIP and 0.96 WHIP. He’s struck out 29.1% of all the batters he has faced while walking them at an equally strong rate of 5.1%. Home runs have never been a big issue for the left hander with a 0.93 HR/9 rate. He’s also seen as a decent pitcher by xFIP (3.52), SIERA (2.78) and DRA (3.55)

The issue is that while Doolittle is effective when he is healthy, he’s spent a decent amount of time on the injured list throughout his career. The two time all-star has pitched 50 or more innings in a season just three times since his 2012 rookie campaign. This past season Doolittle struggled heavily allowing five earned runs on nine hits, three of which were home runs, in just 7.2 innings of work. Some of these struggles can likely be attributed to an oblique issue in 2020.

Still, Doolittle would be a nice grab on a cheap one year bounce back contract. He was effective during the Nats’ 2019 World Series run having a 1.74 ERA in 10.1 postseason innings. From 2015 to 2019, he averaged about 1.3 fWAR per 50 innings pitched. He also has a solid career 87.4 MPH exit velocity and 32.4% hard hit rate. Both of those are above average marks.

Right now, the Pittsburgh Pirates have very few left-handed options in the bullpen as their depth with Sam Howard and Austin Davis as their only two southpaws on the 40-man roster. After trading Nik Turley, they could use another left-handed relief pitcher, especially one with high-leverage experience. Plus,  if he is healthy and effective, Doolittle could fetch back something pretty good at the deadline. Even rental relievers have been able to retrieve pretty notable returns as of recently.