I had this player on my team last year, a "filler" (Dur 42, STM 24, CNTRL 90, L52,R44, V79, three pitches, two at 70 OVR 53) pitcher really who in arbitration wanted a three year contract at $3.5 million a year. Just not worth that, so I released him, he entered free agency and as all he wanted was a spring training invite, I brought him back. Just to see, not expecting anything out of him.

Only he's been tearing it up in Spring Training. In six innings he's given up six hits, one home run, struck out six, has a WHIP of 1.33 and an 3.00 ERA, compared with a 1.71 and a 3.95 ERA in the minors last year. His rantings are down (not much his OVR is down to 52, one of his pitches lost a point, and his control went to 89).

The rest of my ML pitching staff is in line (slightly better in most cases) with how they did over the regular season. So I'm not sure what to make of his "improvement".

What is your experience? Do players who play well durring ST carry over that play to the regular season? And if so would he be worth bringing in as a setup man at $350K for a year?

Many owners don't play veterans in the ST. Or they limit their playing time. I wouldn't put ANY stock in ST performance.

players play according to their ratings, there are no "streaks"

also MikeT is right, alot of owners don't play vets in spring training, i play alot of LoA and rookie ball guys so put no stock in his average performance

Thank you MikeT23 and schuyler101.

I had heard somewhere that you needed to play your vets in ST to "warm them up". So I've been playing them, but keeping their pitches (tandum SP's with PC set to 20 each, LR PC at 25, SU, 10) and PA to a min (starts start on the bench and come in on the rest/def rotation after the seventh inning).

If there is no benefit to do so, maybe I should revisit that, rather than risking injury.

All of that, plus, 6 IP is a small sample size. His next appearance could see a pair of singles and a home run and bring the WHIP up to 1.83 and the ERA up to 7.50 just like that.

To answer your final question, a pitcher with splits of 52/44 is not going to be effective over the long run. You can probably find somebody better for just as cheap.

If you really want to try this guy out, as long as you're still in Spring Training, you can release him from his Invite-only contract and then re-sign him immediately thereafter to a 54k minor league contract. Assign him to AAA and then you can give him a lot more than 6 innings early in the regular season.

AAA hitters will probably be as good as the average of the mixture of vets and prospects he faced in ST. If he bombs out, then you've only lost 54k. If he does well enough for you to promote him, then you've saved some $$ on the pro-rated salary increase to ML minimum.