The Royals signed reliever Jesús Tinoco to a minor league contract. The move was announced by Kansas City’s Triple-A team in Omaha. Tinoco elected free agency after being designated for assignment by the Rangers last week.
A 29-year-old righty, Tinoco has pitched in parts of five MLB campaigns. That includes nine appearances with Texas this season. Tinoco had a rough go during that stretch, surrendering nine runs across 10 innings. He struck out nine, walked seven and hit a pair of opponents. Tinoco had turned in solid results for Triple-A Round Rock, working to a 3.80 earned run average through 21 1/3 innings. He fanned upwards of 30% of batters faced with a 47.1% ground-ball rate.
Tinoco owns a 4.58 ERA in 76 2/3 big league frames. His underlying marks are quite a bit worse, as Tinoco has a career 18.1% strikeout rate while walking 14% of opponents. The 29-year-old has a 4.46 earned run average in 153 1/3 innings at the Triple-A level. He had a solid 2.83 mark over 35 frames in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball a season ago.
The Royals have had one of the worst bullpens among postseason contenders. GM J.J. Picollo has made clear that upgrading the late innings will be a deadline priority. Tinoco isn’t going to impact the deadline calculus, but the mediocre bullpen could afford him a path back to the big leagues.