Red Sox
“He’s a guy that has performed well in this market.”
The Red Sox extended a $21.05 million qualifying offer to veteran pitcher Nick Pivetta on Monday while forgoing one for outfielder Tyler O’Neill. Pivetta has until Nov. 19 to decide whether to accept or decline the one-year deal.
O’Neill came off of the season with 31 home runs and a slash line of .241/.336/.511 while Pivetta had a 4.14 ERA over 26 starts.
Boston’s chief baseball officer Craig Breslow discussed this decision at the GM Meetings in San Antonio on Monday.
“We’ve been pretty outspoken about our need for pitching, and obviously we know Nick really well,” Breslow told reporters. “This is ultimately where we landed. We’ll see how things play out from here.”
This comes after Breslow’s comments on an episode of “The Greg Hill Show” in September, asserting that the team can never have enough quality pitching.
“I think we definitely saw stretches of him just being dominant and, certainly, we can dissect the performance to a greater degree,” said Breslow on Monday. “But he’s a guy that has performed well in this market — has all of the underlying metrics. He gets a ton of swing-and-miss; he doesn’t walk guys. He can get guys out pitching in the strike zone.
“As you think about what a Major League starting pitcher needs to be able to do to be successful, he has a lot of those ingredients.”
In addition to Pivetta, 12 other MLB players received qualifying offers on Monday, including Yankees outfielder Juan Soto.
The Red Sox will receive draft pick compensation should Pivetta decline the offer and sign with another team.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
