Red Sox Sign Veteran Pitcher Who Once Flashed Ace-Like Upside

The Red Sox tapped into the trade market and free agency this week to bolster their organizational pitching depth.

Boston on Tuesday signed right-hander Dinelson Lamet, according to MLB.com’s transaction log. The move came one day after the Red Sox acquired righty Andrés Núñez in a deal with the Kansas City Royals.

Lamet made 16 appearances (four starts) with the Colorado Rockies this season, and it would be an understatement to say he struggled in the Mile High City. The 30-year-old went 1-4 with an 11.57 ERA, a 6.57 FIP and a 2.338 WHIP across 25 2/3 innings. He struck out 10.9 batters per nine innings but issued a jarring 7.7 walks per nine.

The lackluster performance continued a trend of inconsistency for Lamet, who battled injuries in recent years and mostly scuffled when healthy enough to take the mound. Lamet owns a 4-10 record, a 6.69 ERA, a 4.62 FIP and a 1.705 WHIP in 70 appearances (13 starts) spanning 105 innings since the beginning of 2021. He pitched for the Rockies and San Diego Padres in that stretch.

But there was a point where Lamet looked like a potential ace. He finished fourth in National League Cy Young voting for the pandemic-condensed 2020 season, going 3-1 with a 2.09 ERA, a 2.48 FIP and a 0.855 WHIP in 12 starts (69 innings) for San Diego. And he’s long shown an ability to miss bats, posting a 12.5 K/9 in 26 starts between 2019-20 and an 11.7 K/9 in 361 1/3 career big-league innings.

It would be reckless to expect Lamet to morph back into a budding front-end starter with Boston, especially given his history of injuries and the diminished velocity with which he’s operated in recent seasons. (Lamet’s fastball velocity ranked in the 96th percentile in 2020, as opposed to the 70th percentile this season.)

Still, he’s an intriguing reclamation project, both because of the low cost of acquisition (the Red Sox only owe him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on their MLB roster) and his youth (he turns 31 on July 18) relative to some of the other options that typically trickle across free agency this time of year.