Mitch Talbot Signs With Korean Team

Mitch Talbot‘s tenure with the Cleveland Indians is officially over: the 28-year-old right-handed pitcher has signed with the Korean Baseball Organization’s Samsung Lions for $300,000 U.S., according to Nayer.com (link is in Korean).

He went 12-19 with a 5.04 ERA (4.97 SIERA), 1.60 WHIP, and 1.3 fWAR (-0.3 WARP, -0.6 rWAR) in 40 starts with Cleveland over the last two years. He was below replacement-level by every major metric in 2011, when he went 2-6 with a 6.64 ERA (4.98 SIERA) and a 1.85 WHIP in 12 starts before being outrighted in October.

After a getting off to a hot start in 2010 (largely fueled by a lucky BABIP), Talbot came back to earth in the second half and struggled even more this year, even when he was healthy enough to get on the field. The problem is Tablot’s combination of wildness (4.2 career BB/9 rate) and lack of strikeout stuff (his K/9 rate is under 5.0): neither issue alone would necessarily be enough to prevent him from being a useful pitcher, but it’s hard for a hurler with a career 1.19 K/BB ratio to sustain success for long.

Talbot became a minor-league free agent after he was outrighted off of the 40-man roster, but this marks the official end of his time in Cleveland.

He originally came to the Indians from the Rays in 2009 as the player to be named later in the Kelly Shoppach trade.

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