Pittsburgh Pirates sign RHP Juan Nicasio

Tonight, the Pittsburgh Pirates signed Juan Nicasio to a one year, $3 million deal to strengthen their bullpen for the 2016 season.

Juan Nicaso is coming off a pretty decent 2015 season with the Los Angeles Dodgers where he pitched to a 3.86 ERA with a 2.83 FIP and a 43.3 percent ground ball rate.

Nicasio has spent the bulk of his career with the Colorado Rockies, which isn’t exactly a pitching friendly environment, so a change of scenery to Pittsburgh and PNC Park could be very beneficial for him. He’s coming off a pretty solid season in Los Angeles, which is also a very pitching-friendly city and ballpark.

Nicasio is mostly a fastball/slider pitcher as he threw his fastball 74.2 percent of the time and his slider 24 percent of the time in 2015. He also saw an upswing in velocity in 2015 as his average fastball was 95.1 MPH, which is two miles per hour faster than his career average.

He gives the Pirates another power arm out of the bullpen, which is something every bullpen can use. Because of his plus fastball and slider combination, he was able to strike out over 10 batters per nine innings last season, which was a career high and easily better than his career average of 7.35 K/9. Nicasio gives the Pirates’ bullpen some depth and he likely serves as a replacement for Joe Blanton‘s role in the bullpen.

The biggest positive about Nicasio is that he is still only 29-years-old, and he doesn’t have a ton of mileage on his arm in his career. He’s only thrown 439.1 innings in his big league career, most of which came in 2013 when he was a starter for the Rockies. He has seemed to found his niche as a reliever, but could definitely be used in the swing man role for the Pirates in 2016. Nicasio also gives the Pirates the added bonus of having an extra year of control as he is under contract through 2017 as that is his final year of arbitration.  This gives the Pirates potentially huge value if Nicasio pitches up to his potential and improves on a very solid 2015 season.

Nicasio’s biggest flaw is his poor walk rate. He had a 12.3 percent walk rate in 2015, which translated to 32 walks in 58.1 innings for the Dodgers. You could very much compare him to Arquimedes Caminero in the sense that he has a very good fastball, but at times really struggles with control. This is something that Ray Searage has been very good at fixing during his time as pitching coach. So it wouldn’t be overly surprising to see Nicasio see a huge decrease in his walk rate in 2016.

Juan Nicasio might not steal any headlines, but any time the Pirates take interest in a pitcher, you have to assume they see something most people don’t and there are a lot of positives to Nicasio’s game, so it’s very understandable that the Pirates would be interested in him. He throws hard and and found his strikeout game in 2015. The Pirates have been very good at taking under-appreciated pitchers and turning them into something valuable. Nicasio has the tools to be a very good late inning reliever for the Pirates. Let’s just hope that Uncle Ray is able to work his magic once again.

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