The San Diego Padres are reportedly “in agreement” on a minor league deal with veteran starting pitcher Jeremy Guthrie, according to a report from Ken Rosenthal and Jon Morosi of FoxSports.com on Friday.
Guthrie was released from his minor league deal with the Texas Rangers on Thursday, per John Blake, the team’s executive vice president of communications.
Guthrie is coming off a season with the Kansas City Royals in which he posted career worsts in ERA (5.95) and WHIP (1.551) since becoming a full-time starter in 2007. He also allowed an American League-high 29 home runs at a whopping 14.1 percent home run rate with a minus-1.8 bWAR.
The team left him off the playoff roster in the fall less than a year after he started Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. The Royals declined to pick up his $10 million mutual option to keep him in 2016 and bought him out for $3.2 million.
His departure was expected, given the high value of his contract and his underperformance.
Guthrie signed with the Rangers in late February as an insurance starter who would compete for the fifth and final rotation spot with Chi Chi Gonzalez and Nick Martinez. Cole Hamels, Martin Perez and Colby Lewis are slated at the top, respectively, with ace Yu Darvish expected to rejoin the team midseason.
The Padres are a better fit for Guthrie, given their lack of starting pitching depth beyond Tyson Ross, James Shields and Andrew Cashner.
Guthrie’s days as a top-of-the-rotation hurler are probably over, but he could vie for big league time toward the back end of the rotation in San Diego.
All advanced stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.
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