The Red Sox and right-hander Dinelson Lamet are in agreement on a minor league contract, per the team’s transaction log at MLB.com. The Rockies designated Lamet for assignment on June 17 and released him a week later.
It’s been a tough season for the 30-year-old Lamet, who missed multiple weeks due to a back injury and has been hit hard when healthy enough to take the mound. The 6’3″ righty pitched 25 2/3 innings with Colorado but was tattooed for 33 earned runs on 38 hits and a dismal 22 walks in that time. Lamet’s 31 strikeouts in those 25 2/3 frames look like a strong number, but because of all the walks and long innings, he’s actually only fanned 23.1% of his opponents — well below his career mark of 30.2%. His 16.4% walk rate, meanwhile, is a career-high mark.
Once one of the top pitchers in the National League, Lamet has endured a precipitous decline in recent seasons. The righty showed enormous strikeout potential early in his career with the Padres, but Tommy John surgery wiped out his 2018 season. He had a solid return in 2019 and looked to be taking his game to new heights in 2020, when he posted a 2.09 ERA, 34.8% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate in 69 innings during the shortened 2020 season — good for a fourth-place finish in NL Cy Young voting.
Lamet entered the 2021 season locked into San Diego’s rotation, but forearm injuries limited him to 47 innings with a pedestrian 4.40 ERA. He’s struggled to get back on track. In 58 frames between the Padres, Brewers and Rockies over the past two seasons, he’s yielded a grim 8.53 ERA. Lamet’s fastball, which averaged 97 mph in 2020, was sitting at 95 mph in this year’s 25 2/3 innings. His strikeout rate, swinging-strike rate, opponents’ chase rate, walk rate and home-run rate in 2023 are all at career-worst levels.
Obviously, the past few seasons do little to inspire confidence in a turnaround. However, the Rockies are on the hook for the remainder of Lamet’s $5MM salary, meaning the Red Sox would only owe him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the MLB roster. In other words, the minor league deal amounts to a free look at a big arm who as recently as 2021 was viewed as a potential high-end starting pitcher. At the very least, Lamet can provide rotation or bullpen depth in Triple-A, and if the Sox are able to get him back on track in a way that the Rockies weren’t able, he’ll only cost them a few hundred thousand dollars down the stretch. If not, they can move on with minimal investment in this particular dice roll.