Five years ago, the Pirates and White Sox reportedly discussed a potential deal to acquire José Quintana, but balked at the asking price of several of the club’s top prospects.
In 2021, it took just $2 million to acquire him.
The Pirates have a one-year major league deal in place with the veteran lefty, pending a physical. Like you would expect for any pitcher who is about to sign a one-year, $2 million deal in November, he is coming off a pretty terrible 2021 season where he went 0-3 with a 6.43 ERA and -0.7 WAR over 29 appearances, 10 of which were starts. You can point to him having a better FIP (4.66) and xFIP (3.75) as a sign of optimism, but it's been three straight years where his FIP has been significantly lower than his ERA. This may be a trend rather than an outlier.
There was a time where Quintana was one of the most valuable, reliable pitchers in baseball, pitching at least 200 innings with a mid-3 ERA every season from 2013-2016 for the White Sox. That Quintana is gone. The question is if he could regain his Cubs form, where he provided good innings and a slightly better than average ERA. Basically, can he be Tyler Anderson 2.0?
At the risk of oversimplifying, this Baseball Savant chart should tell you what you need to know:
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In his last full season in 2019, Quintana allowed a barrel in 5.9% of his batted balls. In 2021, it doubled to 11.9%.
Just about every batted ball stat you could think of was terrible. His 21.4% home run to fly ball ratio was eighth worst among the 269 pitchers who threw at least 60 innings last year. His 90.6 mph average exit velocity ranked in the bottom 12% last year. His 45.5% hard hit rate was in the bottom 6%. And out of the 440 pitchers who faced at least 150 hitters, his .477 wOBA on contact was 4th worst, putting him in the bottom 1%.
This is a new development, because before last year, his batted ball stats were quite good. What exactly caused the change? There are theories. He needed to undergo surgery on his left thumb in 2020 and missed almost the entire season. Perhaps that lingered into the next year.
He modified his changeup grip during spring training 1.0, making it a four-seam grip instead. All of his pitches got hit last year, but that was hit harder than it had in the past, too.
After pitching from the first base side of the pitching rubber in the past, he moved over to the third base side at the start of last year. While he would move his positioning again midseason, he was setup closer to the middle rather than his old spot.
“Sliding back over to the first base side makes it easier to command the breaking ball,” Angels pitching coach Matt Wise told Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register when Quintana started to shift over. “And his fastball we think plays a little bit better over there.”
Quintana’s success will be entirely derived from him improving his batted ball peripherals. There’s no way to hide from it. Sure, he had a 4.18 ERA as a reliever last year, signaling he could pitch out of that role and extend his career, but he allowed six home runs over 28 innings in that role. That’s not sustainable.
So why go through all this fuss for a pitcher who might not be positioning himself well and is getting hit so hard that two teams let him go last year? Well, not to oversimplify again, but here’s a start:
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Quintana was never a pitch to contact guy, but his strikeout totals were always fairly average. He got enough punchouts, but never a ton. That changed in 2021. All of a sudden, he was getting more whiffs than ever (29.1% compared to 20.8% in 2019), especially with his breaking and offspeed stuff. Batters were chasing out of the zone more, and his 28.6% strikeout rate ranked in the top 20% of all pitchers.
He was a different Quintana than we’ve seen before. He did a really good job missing bats, but if the hitter made contact, duck for cover.
Jai Correa of Pitcher List took a look at Quintana’s spike in whiffs earlier in the the season and attributed it to a jump in breaking ball usage and him getting better extension on his curveball. The latter gives it a new shape because it reduced the flight distance, and it’s something that we saw in his brief 2020 cameo, too.
Quintana started the year relying on his sinker more, but quickly abandoned it once the calendar turned to May. His strikeouts and whiffs weren’t reliant on that drop, and being able to use it effectively gives him another tool. But if Quintana is going to click, high fastballs and curveballs that tunnel is going to have to be the key. He wasn’t able to effectively do that in 2021, but it’s worth another venture.
There’s no word yet on what Quintana’s role will be, but it seems safe to assume he will at least get the opportunity to earn a spot in the rotation to start the year. The Pirates have a handful of good young pitchers like Roansy Contreras, Miguel Yajure and Max Kranick who could probably be in the opening day rotation, but also could probably benefit from some reps in Indianapolis first. That’s fine, and Quintana could either go into the bullpen midseason to open up a spot, or if he pitches well, just stay in the rotation.
The Pirates made two similar signings last year in Anderson and Trevor Cahill. Both were virtually no risk, like Quintana’s deal, and Anderson ended up giving them four good months before being traded for a couple fringe prospects. Cahill never worked out. I’d say that’s the barometer of how this signing could go, with Anderson being the best case scenario and Cahill the worst. The only way this deal can be viewed as a bad thing is if it’s the only pitching depth Ben Cherington acquires this winter.