Pittsburgh Pirates: Five Left-Handed Pitching Free Agent Targets

Brooks Raley

Brooks Raley was a Chicago Cub farmhand back in the early-2010’s. He made his debut in 2012, but would only pitch 38.1 innings between ‘12 and ‘13. After bouncing around with the Minnesota Twins and LA Angels in 2014, Raley would head over to South Korea for a few seasons.

Raley returned to the states in 2020 and pitched only 20.1 innings in 2020 with the Cincinnati Reds and then the Houston Astros. While Raley had a poor ERA, he struck out a ton of batters, kept his walks down, and overall had a solid season despite the poor surface numbers.

It was more of the same for Raley in 2021. Raley pitched 49 innings with the Astros, posting a 4.78 ERA. But make no mistake, he’s much better than his ERA suggests. Raley had a strong 3.27 FIP and 1.20 WHIP. Raley struck out over 30% of batters faced (31.7%) while having a sub-8% walk rate (7.8%). Plus he had a 1.1 HR/9 rate.

Raley was the best-of-the-best when it came to inducing soft contact. He was in the top 100th percentile of exit velocity (83 MPH) and hard-hit rate (21.5%). Both of those led the league. He was also in the 90th or better percentile of fastball RPM (92nd percentile) and curveball RPM (95th percentile). Outstanding numbers, and even better once you consider he had a 45.3% ground ball rate. The only real knock on him was his 26.3% line drive rate which isn’t very good.

Raley had both an xFIP (2.91) and SIERA (2.90) below 3. He also was well above average in DRA, having a DRA- of 75 (25% better than league average), overall posting a 3.47 mark. The only stats he was below average in were ERA and line-drive rate. Aside from that, he was an outstanding left-handed relief pitcher.

Raley gets swings and misses, he seldom lets opponents square him up, and is overall one of the most underrated arms on the market. If there was any relief pitcher the Pittsburgh Pirates should heavily pursue, it would be Raley.