Minnesota Twins: The other free agent starting pitchers

Andrew Cashner

Andrew Cashner has travelled quite the road as a major league pitcher. For a time as a part of the San Diego Padres rotation, he was viewed as one of the most promising young arms in all of baseball. Like too often is the story, Cashner was then hit with injury and has been trying to work back into form ever since. He found some positive momentum as he tried to make good on a 1-year contract he signed last offseason with the Texas Rangers.

The positive about 2017 for Cashner is that he was able to log the third most innings for a season in his career with 166.2 innings pitched. His ERA also climbed back down to 3.40 after an ERA of 5.25 and 4.34 the previous two seasons.

Digging beyond those numbers, the picture begins to look a little worse for Cashner. His FIP in 2017 was much higher than his ERA at 4.61. That difference between the two numbers usually suggests results were not always on par with actual performance. His K/9 also took a nose dive down to 4.6 K/9, the worst of his career. Similarly, Cashner’s swinging strike rate dropped down to 6.1%

Cashner is another reclamation project and in signing him the hope for any team will be that he would continue to build himself back into the pitcher that made everyone excited about him from 2012-2015. The numbers make it seem that Cashner may be trying to remake himself a bit as a pitcher, so he may never be the same pitcher he was before his injury. On a one year deal, he could be worth a flier, but Cashner was rumored early on to be seeking a 3-year deal which may not be an investment many teams would be willing to make on him.