Mariners, Kevin Correia Agree To Minor League Deal

The Mariners and right-hander Kevin Correia have agreed to a minor league deal with an invite to big league Spring Training, tweets Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times. Correia, a client of All Bases Covered Sports Management, is in Mariners’ camp today, he adds. Seattle has since announced the move.

Correia, 34, struggled to a 5.44 ERA in 154 innings between the Twins and Dodgers in 2014 — the second season of a two-year, $10MM pact he had inked with Minnesota prior to the 2013 campaign. Correia pulled his weight in the first year of the deal, registering a 4.18 ERA in 185 1/3 innings, but his middling strikeout rate (4.8 K/9 over the past two seasons) and hittable arsenal appear to have caught up with him in 2014.

Both FIP and xFIP feel that Correia’s ERA could’ve been a bit lower, pegging him at 4.67, and the veteran righty has shown very good control over the past four seasons (2.3 BB/9). The Mariners had a good experience with a similar veteran pitcher in 2014, receiving 165 innings of a 3.65 ERA from right-hander Chris Young, who eventually signed with the Royals. They’ll hope for similarly productive results from Correia, though perhaps in a different role; It seems unlikely that he’d crack a rotation that figures to include Felix Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, J.A. Happ, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker when all are healthy (with Roenis Elias and Erasmo Ramirez serving as fallback options), but Correia could compete to serve as a long reliever in manager Lloyd McClendon’s bullpen.