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UPDATE: Jeff Passan of ESPN confirmed the Twins are indeed finalizing a deal with Parker. His sources say it's a one-year deal worth slightly more than $3 million.
Here's what I wrote about Parker in the non-tender tracker we ran here at Twins Daily on Nov. 30:
And I added this in my recap of the day's activity:
At least in my eyes, Parker stacks up favorably when you compare him to some of the other relief pitchers available on the market. That's especially true if we look back at 2017-18 numbers combined.
Past two seasons
Blake Parker
2.90 ERA, 3.55 FIP, 1.03 WHIP, 22.8 K-BB%
Adam Ottavino
3.50 ERA, 3.72 FIP, 1.25 WHIP, 18.1 K-BB%
Cody Allen
3.82 ERA, 3.87 FIP, 1.26 WHIP, 20.7 K-BB%
Kelvin Herrera
3.47 ERA, 4.15 FIP, 1.28 WHIP, 14.5 K-BB%
*Moments after the Parker news broke Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the White Sox signed Herrera to a two-year, $18 million deal with a vesting third-year option.
To be fair, there's a good reason why I zoomed out to the past two seasons. Parker is coming off a much less impressive season than he posted in 2017. Two seasons ago his FIP was 2.71, last year it was 4.40.
According to Baseball Savant, Parker relies on his four seamer 58 percent of the time while mixing in a splitter 31.1 percent of the time and his curve at 10.9 percent. All three of those offerings took a dip in velocity from 2017 to last season, with the four-seam fastball going from 93.5 mph in 2017 to 92.1 last year.
So there are certainly some things to like about Parker and some to be concerned about, as you would expect from a player who was recently non-tendered.
Again, it's important to point out that at this time the signing has not been confirmed, but it would be surprising to see someone like Ken Rosenthal to connect a player to a team without having a strong inclination that things were fairly settled.
Something to keep in mind is the Twins' 40-man roster is currently full, so they'll need to DFA another player to make room for Parker. Last week the Twins designated Aaron Slegers to make room for Nelson Cruz.
4:23 Update: Jeff Passan is reporting that the deal is close and believed to be worth slightly more than $3 million.
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