The Nationals have agreed to a one-year contract with Steve Cishek, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The contract comes with a $1.75MM guarantee, along with $500K in performance bonuses, per Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.
Signing a veteran like Cishek, who will turn 36 in June, is a fairly logical move for a club that underwent a massive fire sale at last year’s deadline. While the headliners of that selloff were Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, the bullpen also took a hit with the deals of Daniel Hudson and Brad Hand. That left the club with a reliever corps that largely consisted of unproven players with limited big league experience, with the exception of Will Harris. However, Harris turns 38 in August and only threw six innings last year before surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome ended his season.
In contrast to the lack of reliability, Cishek has been remarkably consistent. In each season since 2011, Cishek has thrown at least 44 innings, with the exception of the shortened 2020 season, where he still logged 20 frames. Since his debut in 2010, he’s appeared in a total of 668 games, notching 644 1/3 innings with an ERA of 2.85, strikeout rate of 24.7%, walk rate of 9.6% and groundball rate of 49%. With the exception of 2020, he’s never had an ERA higher than 3.58 in a season.
More to come.