The Phillies have agreed to a minor league deal with veteran right-handed reliever Lou Trivino, reports Matt Gelb of The Athletic. They’ll be the third organization of the season for the Pro Edge Sports client.
Trivino, 34 in October, has suited up for both the Dodgers and Giants in 2025. He’s pitched a combined 38 1/3 major league innings and logged a 4.42 ERA with a well below-average 15.7% strikeout rate but a strong 7% walk rate. That marks Trivino’s first big league work since the end of the 2022 season. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2023 and has also had a notable shoulder injury in the two years he was off the mound.
This version of Trivino didn’t look nearly as sharp as the pre-injury iteration. His fastball, which averaged 97.3 mph at its peak and 95.6 mph in the three years leading up to his surgery, has sat at 94.7 mph thus far. Trivino’s 1.40 HR/9 is a career-high, and his opponents’ chase rate and swinging-strike rate are both considerably lower than at his best.
That said, there’s no risk in taking a minor league flier on a pitcher with a track record like that of Trivino. He made his MLB debut with 74 innings of 2.92 ERA ball for the 2018 Athletics and, from ’18-’22, picked up 52 holds and 37 saves while working to a 3.86 ERA with a 24.5% strikeout rate and 10.6% walk rate.
Philadelphia won’t really be counting on Trivino for anything. He’s a depth add after president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski & Co. made a pair of splashy deadline upgrades, signing free agent David Robertson and trading prospects Eduardo Tait and Mick Abel to pry star closer Jhoan Duran away from the Twins. Trivino could eventually work his way to the majors, but with Duran, Orion Kerkering, Matt Strahm and Tanner Banks leading the way, Robertson soon to join and the return of lefty Jose Alvarado looming later this month, there are far fewer paths to the majors in Philly than there might’ve been even two to three weeks ago.
And he was so good in LA.
I am a fan of the smaller, 40 man fringe moves and minor league depth signings. Most fans scoff at anything that does not bring in a star, but when an organization is running well and they have some development chops, then some of the small stuff will pan out every now and then.
Get someone such as Trivino with a track record and work with him and maybe you have a leg up on signing him and bringing him to camp next season where he might be further along in his recovery.
I think Trivino has a better path to the majors than this writer envisions. Robertson has gotten lit up so far for Lehigh Valley, and nobody knows how good Alvarado will be after three months off. Even if Robertson and Alvarado take the roster spots of Alan Rangel and Seth Johnson, the Phillies still need to call up another pitcher on September 1 and don’t seem inclined to call up Painter.
Worrying about Robertson’s numbers as he ramps up is just a waste of time. The velo was solid in his last start and he will likely pitch in lower leverage spots once he gets here for the first couple of weeks anyway. He just needs to get reps right now.
By September they will know whether he will pay off or not, but the first few LHV appearances mean nothing at all.
You’re absolutely correct, Phillies1993! If you study the game logs, you’ll see that the only team that did much damage to Trivino was Milwaukee—one game in San Francisco, and the last weekend in Los Angeles. There’s also some interesting numbers under the hood on Statcast that Gelb missed—he’s in the 90th plus percentile in exit velocity and soft contact. Fastball velo is well above average too, and he isn’t walking anyone either. If he gets his SO numbers up, he’s going to add a lot to this pen as a Swiss Army knife. I like this move by Philly too!
Ryan Pressly is the guy to get, more upside and could actually help in August, and September.
Low risk, medium reward I like it.
Home comin’