Toronto Blue Jays Sign Sam Gaviglio
In a minor move, meant to add starting pitching depth, the Toronto Blue Jays have traded for Sam Gaviglio from the Kansas City Royals in exchange for cash or a player to be named later. In a corresponding move they have designated Matt Dermody for assignment. The earlier acquisition of Sam Moll made Dermody more expendable as he was bumped further down the team's left handed reliever depth chart.
The Blue Jays 40 man roster is currently full and there are still potentially 3 non roster invites who may make the opening day roster. Because of the need for roster spots, Gaviglio may not last very long on the team's 40 man.
Gaviglio is fine rotation depth for a team in desperate need of just that. In 16 appearances, 13 starts last season he had a 4.36 ERA, albeit with an ugly 5.81 FIP. His xFIP, which normalizes home run rates, was better at 4.80. They aren't numbers that scream "Get this guy in the rotation!" but for someone who is probably #7 on the team's rotation depth chart you could do worse.
Gaviglio gets a good amount of groundballs, which this front office seems to like. His 49.4% groundball rate would have ranked 12th among starters had he thrown enough innings to qualify. He had a 53.4% rate in AAA which would have been good for 5th among major league starters. Keeping the ball on the ground will be key for him if he hopes to have major league success.
Gaviglio's main weakness is that he doesn't strike a lot of batters out. He struck out only 15.7% of opposing batters in the majors last season and has been below 20% at every stop he has had in AAA.
Gaviglio's greatest asset is his control. He walked only 1.5 batters per 9 innings in AAA last season, but that number increased to 3.15 in the majors. If he's going to have any sort of success in the majors he can't walk that many batters. He doesn't have the stuff to get away with giving away free base runners.
Gaviglio's control is nice, but without the strikeouts he has a profile that can be tough to watch. If he's just pumping in easy to hit strikes he's going to allow a lot of home runs despite his high groundball rate. This is sort of what we saw from Matt Dermody, except Dermody allows many more flyballs so his home run rate was an extremely ugly 2.42 HR/9.
It's worth noting that Steamer projections are fans of what Gaviglio does and have him down for a 4.39 ERA with peripherals to match. Baseball Reference also has him down for a respectable 4.40 ERA. Those are more than playable numbers for a guy so low on the depth chart and would mean he is capable of being a league average starting pitcher. The other projection systems are not as optimistic and see him more of a 4.60-5.00 ERA pitcher.
This move is nothing more than injury insurance. Joe Biagini is still a question mark as to what he is capable of as a starter. The options behind Biagini are still unproven in the upper minors. Bringing in Gaviglio means the team has a borderline major league talent who can be plugged in until someone passes him on the depth chart. If Gaviglio can get his walk rate down closer to his AAA numbers and maintain the high groundball rate he even has the upside to be a solid back-of-the-rotation pitcher.
