The Cardinals announced Friday that they’ve claimed right-hander Zak Kent off waivers from the Guardians. The Cards already had a pair of 40-man vacancies and are now up to 39 players on the roster.
Kent, 28 in February, made his big league debut in Cleveland this past season. He tossed 17 2/3 innings out of the Guards’ bullpen and yielded nine earned runs (4.58 ERA) with a 21.1% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate. Kent averaged 92.6 mph on his four-seamer and 93.6 mph on a sparsely used sinker. His breaking offerings include a mid-80s slider and a low-80s curveball.
Though Kent didn’t show much in his relatively limited run at the MLB level, he turned in a sharp 2.84 ERA in 38 Triple-A frames last year. Command issues still plagued him, evidenced by 13.2% walk rate, but he also set down more than 31% of his opponents on strikes. He’s long been credited as having a pair of plus breaking pitches, but his sub-par fastball velocity and poor command have undercut the quality of both those breaking pitches.
Kent is out of minor league options, so the Cardinals can’t send him to Triple-A Memphis next season without first passing him through waivers. There’s no guarantee he makes it to spring training on the 40-man roster, but if he does stick on the roster all winter, Kent should have an opportunity to win a job in what should be a wide-open competition for at least four bullpen spots (five, if the Cardinals trade JoJo Romero, as expected).
Links to another Zack Kent
And this site thought the cards were in a rebuild…
With Chaim Bloom in charge this is called “business as usual”. Get used to it Cards fans. It’ll be infuriating most of the time but the payoff should be a deeper farm system
We’re used to a way of operating that is infuriating. Can’t be any worse than what we had.
Merry Christmas, Del!
– Neal Page
Seems like a decent add to stash on the 40 man, hope next week opens up a few more spots….
There are several waiver claims. The teams want to stock up on depth.
So the Cardinals picked up a 28yo Zak Kent,an unknown quality,an expect to trade 29yo Jo Jo Romero, known as a quality reliever,to prepare for the future. Can someone make sense out of this plan?
Win less games now in order to win more games later.
That sounds suspiciously like a plan.
Cardinals are interested in challenging the Pirates for last place next season. Romero can bring back a young player or two and someone like Kent can eat some innings as a replacement
This is a nice pickup. Low-risk move. If he can stay healthy, he’s got a chance to be a pretty solid relief pitcher.