Pittsburgh Pirates Add Depth Pitching Piece in Veteran Wily Peralta

The Pittsburgh Pirates have added to their pitching depth by signing veteran Wily Peralta to a minor league deal

The Pittsburgh Pirates continue to address their pitching needs and their latest move came on Wednesday by adding veteran right-hander Wily Peralta to the organization on a minor-league deal according to FanSided's Robert Murray. Peralta will receive a spring training invite from the Pirates as part of the deal.

Peralta pitched in the Washington Nationals organization last season with Triple-A Rochester. In 24 games for Rochester, Peralta made 24 starts, pitching in 102.2 innings while posting a 6.31 ERA and a 1.568 WHIP.

Last season, Peralta struggled with his control, allowing 4.8 walks per nine, he also allowed 9.3 hits per nine. On a positive note, he did strike out 8.8 per nine.

The 34-year-old veteran last pitched in the Major Leagues in 2022 with the Detroit Tigers and had a strong season across 28 games pitched. In 38.1 innings pitched, Peralta had a 2.58 ERA. Control issues were present for the Dominican Republic native who allowed 5.6 walks per nine that season.

In that 2022 season, Peralta's fastball still was among the upper echelon in baseball, averaging out at 95.4 mph, the 76th percentile for all pitchers according to Baseball Savant. He also allowed just a 4.5% barrel percentage for the season as well.

On top of his fastball, Peralta also has a sinker, slider, and split finger in his arsenal. He used all four pitches in 2022 quite evenly with his slider being used the most at 29.8% while his split finger was used the least at 20.7%.

For his career, Peralta has been a ground ball pitcher with 50% of his batted balls since 2015 ending up on the ground thanks to hitters getting on top of the ball 37% of the time in the same timespan.

He has done a quality job at limiting fly balls as also done a quality job at limiting fly balls well with just an 18.3% fly ball percentage since 2015. Hitters do, however, hit quite a bit of line drives of him with 26.8% of all batted balls resulting in line drives.

Overall, Peralta has been in professional baseball for 17 seasons, his career getting underway in 2006. He broke into the majors six years later in 2012 with the Milwaukee Brewers and stayed in the majors until this past season.

In his 10 career seasons in the majors, Peralta has a 56-61 career record in 258 games including 139 career starts. In those 258 games, he has a career 4.29 ERA across 911 innings pitched.