On Wednesday afternoon, the Detroit Tigers announced they had signed veteran right-hander reliever Jacob Barnes to a minor-league deal with an invitation to spring training. It sounds like a really good idea. The 31-year-old pitched for the New York Mets and then for the Toronto Blue Jays last season after a midseason trade. The results were rather spotty.

Erratic has been the name of the game for Barnes over the past few seasons. The hard-throw, big-right-hander entered the league with the Brewers in 2016 and has been a big contributor to their field for several seasons. But since 2019, a season that from the start has featured several nagging hip and shoulder injuries, his performance has seen plenty of wild leaps as he struggled against his control and fell victim to the long ball. . He should make a very interesting project for Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter, and with luck, Barnes could add another dimension to an already strong Tigers relieving box.

The six-foot-two, 231-pound ball features a four-seam fastball with good vertical motion. Typically, Barnes sits at 94-95 mph with the heater on, but he can run it up to 98 mph whenever he wants. He throws a very large volume of fastballs, using the scabbard 59.1% of the time in 2021. An 89 mph cutter is his other main step, used 38.1% of the time last season, with the occasional step mixed with left-handed people like a change of pace.

The fastball has far above average vertical motion and far below average horizontal motion. It’s a fairly straight riding radiator that generates a fair amount of puffs and low air contact. A relatively low trigger point allows Barnes to launch the radiator up the area on a very flat attack angle, which adds to the deception and appearance of lift on the pitch, and draws in a lot of puffs. and routine balls. The cutter has a well above average horizontal motion and builds up a lot of puffs, giving it a pretty good pair of guns.

The cutter generates a high volume of puffs mostly at the bottom of the area and below, especially at Barnes’ arm. However, the two are quite crushable at hip height and don’t pair well together. Coming up with pitch plans that optimize his business while avoiding the middle of the box from top to bottom will be a big part of Fetter’s job to improve Barnes’ results and avoid the home run issues that tend to plague him. .

If that sounds a bit like Joe Jiménez’s profile, well, you’re not mistaken.

One item that will be interesting to watch is if the Tigers are trying to get Barnes to use his split change more often. The organization has seemed to like separators a bit in recent years, with Casey Mize and last year’s Wily Peralta being notable examples. As the Splits go, Barnes’ version is a fairly straight version that would seem to pair very well with the fourseamer if he could find a consistent grip on the pitch. It’s a relatively new offering that he just started implementing to a noticeable degree last season. He doesn’t always maintain his arm speed and stay on top of the court the way he needs to, but if he could find more consistency he would add a tricky wrinkle to his game for hitters to deal with.

Another interesting note about Barnes is that he receives a well above average number of balls in the middle of the field. Comerica Park should be of some benefit to him in terms of keeping some of those flying balls deeper in the park.

This is only a minor league deal, so there is no real commitment from the Tigers. Judge the results in this context. Barnes is as likely to collapse in the spring with ongoing control issues that he is due to play a role next season. However, the Tigers’ best relievers are largely guys who move the ball from side to side. Other than Jiménez, they don’t have a lot of vertically oriented relievers with good fastballs and good velocity. If Barnes works, he would bring a very different look to the table than most of the Tigers’ other pens.

We would love to see the Tigers pursue a legitimately good reliever to add to the box, and hopefully they will do so again once the new CBA is agreed upon. But what the 2021 season has shown us is that quality and depth plays and projects can go a long way in building a pitching team throughout the long Major League baseball schedule. Whether or not Fetter and assistant pitching coach Juan Nieves can settle Barnes or not, it’s the kind of thoughtful and profound addition that has been sorely lacking for most of Al Avila’s tenure as general manager. The impact of its new assistants and coaching staff continues to shine.