The Rockies have signed right-hander Xzavion Curry to a minor league contract, according to his transaction log on MLB.com. He had been pitching in the Mexican League since the Marlins released him earlier this year.
Curry, 27, began his career in the Guardians organization and made his MLB debut with Cleveland in 2022. Over the next three seasons, he appeared in 50 games (15 starts) for the club, tossing 129 innings with a 4.53 ERA and 5.19 SIERA. He didn’t miss many bats (15.2% strikeout rate) or prevent dangerous contact (29.4% groundball rate, 44.7% hard-hit rate), but he threw enough strikes to get through innings and limit damage to a serviceable degree. Nonetheless, the Guardians designated him for assignment last August, and the Marlins put in a claim.
The righty didn’t last long in Miami, pitching 18 innings last season and three earlier this year. All told, he has a 4.38 ERA but a 5.12 SIERA in 150 MLB innings. Unfortunately for Curry, he also has a 7.19 ERA in 76 1/3 innings at Triple-A over the last two years. He’s given up 39 walks and 23 home runs while striking out only 58, resulting in a 7.56 FIP. Thus, it wasn’t necessarily surprising when the Marlins released him less than a year after they claimed him off waivers.
In seven appearances with the Tigres de Quintana Roo over the past few weeks, Curry had more success, putting up a 3.44 ERA in 34 innings. For context, the average ERA in the Mexican League this season is 5.82. While the sample was small, his strong showing down south was enough to convince the Rockies to give him a call. He will now report to the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes, where he will serve as right-handed depth for MLB’s worst bullpen according to both SIERA and FanGraphs WAR.
Scrabble Curry
Xyzavion feels like a more intuitive spelling.
Xzavion is worth 26 pts before you even count any of the bonus squares.
A fact likely greater than his lifetime WAR will be.
Is it pronounced ‘Zavion’ or ‘Ex-Zavion’? Either one sounds neat.
The latter.
Ex-Zavion or former Zavion; either would be correct.
Since half of their AAA pitching staff is now up with the Rockies, it makes sense that they need to backfill with signings like this.
And a question. When you see stats about bullpen ERA or WAR like in this post, do they exclude the innings pitched by position players? Austin Nola’s 8-run outing the other day could distort the stats.
Curry favor, por favor
Xzavion Curry sounds like a dish pepple with jetpacks will eat in the year 3000, or sooner, if Elon Musk has anything to say about it.
X gon give it to ya
“X gon give it to ya” could be an advertising jingle for the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Speaking of Elon Musk, Xzavion Curry could also be the name of one of his children or something you can order at his new restaurant.
Guards fans had affectionately made a lot of curry-themed memes for X/Twitter during his time with the team. We’ll always have those