Rays reunite with reliever on minor league deal

The Rays inked right-handed relief pitcher Joey Krehbiel to a minor league deal with an invite to Spring Training.

The 32-year-old right-hander has 74 innings of experience in the majors, the majority of which came during the 2022 season with the Baltimore Orioles.

The former 12th-round pick has spent all of his career as a reliever, with no season of more than 70 innings pitched across his time in organized baseball.

He's pitched to a 4.74 FIP and -0.4 FanGraphs WAR over his time in the majors, with an ERA of 3.65 that speaks to someone who might be discarded due to his inability to limit walks, induce chases, and get opposing hitters to swing and miss at his pitches.

Throughout most of his time in the majors, Krehbiel has been significantly below-average in those areas, but he's still been moderately successful in getting outs by posting ridiculously low BABIP numbers.

Skeptics might look at that and say he's been lucky in his brief cameos, which speaks to why at age 32, he's still signing a minor league deal instead of a major league contract.

Optimists would say that he could very well possess that rare skill of avoiding hard contact while allowing a lot of balls to be put in play.

Either way, the Rays clearly saw something they liked, and that usually means the optimistic view of a player will win out, especially when it comes to pitchers.

There are some fun signs of future success for Krehbiel; as mentioned previously, he's done a great job of limiting hard contact, rating consistently well in expected metrics that weigh quality of contact allowed, as well as mostly ranking well in average exit velocity allowed in his time in the majors.

Another plus for Krehbiel is his pitch usage. He's been a fastball-first pitcher most of his career, including his time in 2022, where he used the pitch 35% of the time in the biggest sample size for his performance, but his Stuff+ speaks to someone who should be using either his cutter or slider far more than his fastball, as both are 115 in that mark.

His fastball is still manageable, sitting at around 94, but it's rated in the mid-80s in regards to Stuff+, meaning it's around 15-20% below league average in terms of "stuff."

That's not always the end-all, be-all for pitches, but the Rays have other more effective ways of looking at pitch shapes, and if they're in agreement with the Stuff+ models, his slider/cutter could play up a bit more during his time with the Rays, if he's open to change.

Hopefully, regardless of whatever change comes for Krehbiel, it leads to success and the Rays get to add another talented option out of the 'pen, because you can never have enough pitching.