2016 Pittsburgh Pirates projections – Arquimedes Caminero

One of the under-the-radar pickups for the Pirates last off-season was bullpen arm Arquimedes Caminero, who contributed well in his middle relief role. He looks to improve upon his success in 2016.

This off-season the writers at Pirates Breakdown will take a look at two different sets of projections for meaningful players on the roster and give you, the readers, their take on whether or not they think said player will meet, surpass, or fall below those projections. The projections for Steamer and ZiPs (created by Dan Szymborski) can be found on fangraphs.com. Check out all of our previous projections here.

The Pirates front office has been known for being able to put together a low-cost, yet very effective bullpen in recent years. In fact, paying guys like Mark Melancon and Tony Watson the amount of money they’ll make in 2016 is out of the ordinary for the team, and the overall cost of the bullpen in 2016 is higher than usual. One of the low cost pickups last off-season was relief arm Arquimedes Caminero, who was acquired for cash from the Marlins after being designated for assignment. After a slow start, he turned out to be a effective, high-velocity arm for one of the best bullpens in all the majors last season.

This season, Caminero, who hasn’t even hit arbitration yet, hopes to continue to improve his walk numbers while striking out a high number of batters, which should lead to continued success.

Let’s take a look at his projections for 2016.

Don’t worry too much about Caminero’s 2014 numbers; he spent most of his time in the minors, and it just shows how great Neal Huntington is at finding these arms from out of nowhere. The projections are comparable to how Caminero did last year, his first season as a major contributor in the majors. Both projections see his ERA getting lower along with his walk numbers, which probably go hand-in-hand. The only noticeble difference between the projections is that Steamer only sees Caminero tossing 55 innings, a drop of almost 20 innings from last season. This would be due to either an injury or Caminero losing innings to someone like John Holdzkom or Rob Scahill, which is certainly possible, though I don’t see that happening.

Caminero was the usual high-velocity, high-walk pickup for the Pirates’ pen. He still has moderate walk issues, but Ray Searage knows how to help pitchers keep that under control. If he can do this, and continue striking out batters at a high clip, he should be successful once again in 2016.

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