The Royals announced that they signed Jose Mijares to a one-year, Major League contract for 2012. The deal is worth $925K, according to Rustin Dodd of the Kansas City Star (on Twitter). Kansas City's 40-man roster is full with the addition of the 27-year-old SFX client.
“We expect Jose to be a solid addition from the left side that further strengthens our bullpen,” Royals GM Dayton Moore said in a press release. “He has been especially good against left-handed hitters in his career and will give Ned [Yost] more options to match up late in the game.”
Mijares posted a 4.59 ERA with 5.5 K/9, 5.5 BB/9 and a 31.1% ground ball rate in 49 innings for the Twins this past season, only to be non-tendered in December. He owns a more respectable 3.16 ERA in four MLB seasons to go along with career marks of 6.9 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9. Mijares will join sophomore left-handers Tim Collins and (potentially) Everett Teaford in Kansas City's bullpen.
Depth move, nothing more.
I hope Joe Mauer gets plenty of hits off Mijares.
No Show Joe will have to be active for more than half the schedule, in order to get a lot of hits off anyone.
I’m not too worried about Joe next season. He should be ready to go come March.
He should be ready to go to the DL come April. ;)
If he survives the off-season without his legs falling off.
The quitter probably re-injured a knee kneeling down to propose to his boyfriend
Nah, he was doing the Tebow.
So what happened in 2011 to cause his BB% to spike? Looks like he had nice numbers in ’09 and ’10 but the bottom fell out last year.
Twins officials were typically frustrated with his lack of conditioning. Perhaps in 2011 he just wasn’t able to get “in shape” by the start of the season.
“In shape” for Mijares is a relative term.
Not sure, but his stats against lefties were still decent
Yep, he’s always been solid against lefties. If the Royals indeed plan on making him into a LOOGY, he should be a great find for them.
Technically, round and doughy is a shape.
hes a headcase and the twins tried to use him against too many righties. He lost any shred of command he used to have and a couple mph. Could be an ok LOOGY next year but I doubt it.
He struggled to throw strikes and pitched behind in the count more than he had in past years, particularly vs. RHP. Due to the state of the Twins pen he was also left in to face RH hitters more than usual.
but the bottom fell out last year
It wasn’t so much the bottom that fell out, but the muffin top.
Twins could have paid him $200K less than this in arbitration, which means he was a tradeable commodity. And yet they non-tendered him. There is something going on here that we don’t know.
How do you figure? MLBtraderumors was projecting Mijares to make $1M in Arbitration. The KC contract is in line with that projection.
My assumption is that he was specifically made an example of, as an outcome of the front office re-shuffle. Wasn’t doing things the Twins way, it seems. Jose wasn’t the only one with a questionable offseason training regimen, but he’s the one who they cut for it. As we see, Jose comes out of this about the same, financially, so I’m not sure what message this actually conveys in the clubhouse.
Royals could have a pretty nice bullpen next year.
I love this move. It takes some pressure off Tim Collins to go in and get lefties out
Funny, of all the players the Twins let go, this one is most likely to come back and bite them. At least against most of their lineup.
also the most likely to literally bite them, in an attempt to feed
Mijares should have been removed after melting down in 2009. Does anyone remember when Delmon Young yelled at him after getting plunked? Mijares deserved that.