Meet The New Guy: Mauricio Llovera

Who is he and where did he come from?

He’s Mauricio Llovera. The Red Sox acquired him late last night from the Giants. They sent Marques Johnson to San Francisco as compensation.

What position does he play?

Like just about every player the Red Sox have acquired, he’s a reliever.

Is he any good?

He was DFA’d by the Giants and hasn’t been able to establish himself as a full-time major leaguer over the past few years, so not yet. That doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for him though. He comes with a mid-90s sinker and a low-80s slider with a lot of sweep. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but the sinker gets a lot of ground balls and the slider gets some whiffs. In AAA this year, those two pitches returned an incredibly respectable 28.6% strikeout rate and a 7.1% walk rate.

Also, pitch models aren’t everything, but Stuff+ loves what he’s got. The sinker and slider finished last season at 102 and 120 respectively, and both numbers are even higher this year in a smaller sample.

Sell me this pen.

Remember John Schreiber and Brennan Bernardino? They were acquired for next to nothing as well, and they worked out pretty well. And if it doesn’t work out, who cares? It’s not like he’s all of a sudden the 8th-inning, ultra-high leverage guy.

Show me a cool highlight.

Here’s a pretty wicked sinker. 95.5 MPH with 16 inches of arm side run. Not half bad.

What’s he doing in his picture up there?

Statistically, the best guess is throwing a slider, as those account for 51.4% of the pitches he’s thrown this season.

What’s his role on the 2023 Red Sox?

He’s out of options, so he’ll join the major league club and be towards the back end of the bullpen. He has really solid splits against righties, so he’ll probably come out of the pen with a couple of righties due up, likely with a big lead or while trailing until he earns some trust. Again, he wasn’t brought in to be the closer, just to give Alex Cora another arm to play with.