In November the Rangers signed 34-year-old right-handed pitcher Doug Fister to a one year, $4 million contract. The contract includes $4.5 million option for 2019 and a $500,000 buyout.
He’ll be one of the new faces in their starting rotation. This will be his 10th season in the majors.
In his nine year career he is 82-85 with a 3.68 ERA and 3.80 FIP in 1,356 1⁄3 innings.
Fister was a gold glove finalist in 2013 after having a zero error season, his last season with the Detroit Tigers.
Fister’s career went south after leaving Detroit, as he struggled with injuries and effectiveness from 2014-16. In 2017, with his career on life support, he got a chance with the Boston Red Sox mid-season, and in 18 games had a 4.88 ERA with a 3.98 FIP in 90 1⁄3 innings.
Fister threw a complete game one-hitter last season, August 22, at Cleveland after starting the game off with a lead-off homer to Francisco Lindor.
He averages 2.13 walks per nine innings since 2011 and according to MLB.com, Fister’s “zone-swing rate is the lowest of any pitcher who has thrown at least 600 innings in the pitch tracking era (since 2008).”
While his performance the last few years has been sub-par, there were signs of improvement over his last couple of months in Boston, and Jeff Sullivan did a piece at FanGraphs in September that examined Fister’s Boston renaissance, and discovered that his stuff was back to the levels it was in 2012-13, when he was a solid #2 starting pitcher.
That’s all I got, so here’s some gifs.