The Samsung Lions of the Korea Baseball Organization have signed right-hander Denyi Reyes, per Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News. The deal is for $800K, including $200K of incentives.
Reyes, 27, has been a fringe major leaguer for the past few years. He was able to toss 7 2/3 innings for the Orioles in 2022 and 19 2/3 innings for the Mets in 2023. He has a combined 6.26 earned run average in that small sample of 27 1/3 frames. He was outrighted by the Mets at the beginning of the offseason and elected free agency.
A few years ago, he was a notable starting pitching prospect with the Red Sox. In 2018, he tossed 155 2/3 innings in the minors with a 1.97 ERA, split between Single-A and High-A. In 2019, he moved up to Double-A and threw 151 1/3 innings. His ERA jumped to 4.16 but he was still just 22 years old at the time.
The pandemic wiped out the minor leagues in 2020 and Reyes’s results have been on the tepid side since then. As mentioned, his small sample of major league work hasn’t been amazing and he also has a 6.30 ERA at the Triple-A level.
The Lions and Reyes will be hoping that a change of scenery can get him back on track. He will also lock in a salary figure higher than if he stayed in North America, where he likely would have been limited to minor league deals. If things go well overseas, Reyes is young enough that he could perhaps return to North America in a year or two, a path taken by players like Erick Fedde, Josh Lindblom, Merrill Kelly and others.
KBO teams are allowed a maximum of three foreign players and this will be the Lions’ third, as they already signed infielder David MacKinnon and right-hander Connor Seabold. As pointed out by Yoo, this means the Lions won’t be re-signing David Buchanan, who has spent the past four years pitching for the Lions with a 3.02 ERA in that time.
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