The Phillies have announced that they have come to an agreement with free agent pitcher, Roberto Hernandez, to fill a spot in their rotation. Roberto, formerly known as Fausto Carmona, has had two good seasons (2007 and 2010) in his professional career since entering the league in 2006. Of his 8 professional seasons, he has had 5 season of over 5 ERA baseball. He has a career record of 59-82 with a 4.67 ERA, 5.56 K/9, 3.31 BB/9, .94 HR/9, 58% GB%, and 12.5 HR/FB%.
Last year, he pitched 151 innings for the Tampa Bay Rays, showing improvement and a return to potential back-end rotation capabilities. In 32 outings, he had a 4.89 ERA, but had a career high 6.74 K/9 and a career low 2.26 BB/9. A ground ball pitcher, he did show a decline in Groundball rate, but still had an impressive 53% GB% below his career 58% GB%. His decrease in GB% went hand-in-hand with an increase in home runs allowed, setting a career high in HR/9 at 1.43 and HR/FB% at 21%. These are concerning numbers for Citizens Bank Park.
Removing the 2007 and 2010 seasons (6.1 WAR) Roberto has a WAR accumulation of 2.3. He fits a need in that he is fairly durable and is primarily a groundball pitcher. Assuming we did not over commit to a multi-year or multi-million dollar deal, this should be a low risk and low reward transaction. Roberto is a safe bet to provide between 0 and 1 WAR, with a non-zero (but close) chance at 2 WAR, making a one year deal above $2-3M plus incentives extremely risky, in my opinion.
