The KT Wiz of the Korea Baseball Organization announced on Monday that they’ve signed right-hander Donn Roach to a one-year deal that will pay him $850K (via Jee-ho Yoo of Yonhap News).
Roach, 26, has bounced all over the league in the past two seasons, spending time on the 40-man roster with the Padres, Cubs, Reds, Blue Jays, Mariners, Tigers and Athletics. He finished up the 2016 campaign with Oakland but was outrighted off the 40-man roster following the season and became a free agent.
Roach pitched just 5 1/3 innings in the Majors this year and 3 1/3 innings in the Majors in 2015 despite all of that activity on the transaction front. In total, he has 39 Major League innings under his belt and a 5.77 ERA with 4.6 K/9 against 4.2 BB/9. However, Roach has logged an enormous 67.1 percent ground-ball rate in his limited big league time, and that massive number is typical for the righty, who routinely racks up grounders at an elite clip in the minors as well. Though Roach has a 3.95 ERA in 357 2/3 innings at Triple-A and has averaged just 4.5 K/9, his control (2.3 BB/9) and ground-ball rate (61.6 percent) have been excellent at that level. Those two traits have made him appealing enough to appear on seven 40-man rosters since Opening Day 2014 despite a pedestrian strikeout rate and almost certainly played into his interest from Korea as well.
Well in spring training he was lights out and I thought he’d maybe even become an elite setup guy. I’m no longer going to put a little, if not anything into spring training.
To paraphrase the great Lou Brown.
Its easy to be great when you are playing against guys who will be bagging groceries next week.
Good for him- no way he was getting anything more than a Non-Roster Contract- way to get some guaranteed money.
Roach was a workhorse for me in MLB The Show 15.
Lol