4 former Pirates who could end up back in Pittsburgh via free agency

Trevor Williams

Trevor Williams put up some decent numbers with the Pirates in 2017-2018. However, he’d struggle over his next two seasons before being let go. Since then, he’s bounced around the league, pitching both as a long reliever and starting pitcher. But he is arguably coming off his best campaign since 2018, this time with the Washington Nationals.

Williams pitched 66 2/3 innings and logged a 2.03 ERA, 2.79 FIP, and 1.03 WHIP. The right-hander has never been one to strike out many batters, but his 22.7% strikeout rate is a career-best mark and was slightly above average. He also had a solid 6.9% walk rate, which is the second-best of his career thus far, and a 0.41 HR/9 rate (a single-season best).

But don’t take these numbers at face value. Williams only started 13 games and was limited because of injuries. He had a .261 batting average on balls in play despite a career average BABIP of .299. The veteran also had an abnormally low 4.2% HR/FB ratio despite a solid, albeit not elite, 6.6% barrel rate.

While Williams may not be a low-2.00 ERA-type pitcher, that doesn’t mean he can’t be effective. He still had a 3.82 xFIP, 3.96 SIERA, and 3.13 xERA. Baseball Prospectus’ DRA- also had him at an above-average 95. That might mean he’s due for regression, but not enough to make him unplayable, and it would still make him a solid middle-to-back end rotation arm. For reference, in 2018, when he had a 3.11 ERA, he also had a 4.54 xFIP, 4.68 SIERA, 4.14 xERA, and 104 DRA-, so there might be some merit to his ‘24 performance despite the small sample size.

The Pirates could re-sign Williams and slot him into the fifth spot of the rotation. That would give them many avenues to explore in their usage (or potential trade of) pitchers like Bailey Falter andJohan Oviedo, as well as youngsters on the 40-man roster like Braxton Ashcraft and Mike Burrows.