The Cleveland Indians continued their run of signing veteran players to minor league contracts Friday as the team came to terms with Alex Wilson.
Reliever Alex Wilson has signed a minor league deal with the Cleveland Indians. The contract includes an invite to Spring Training with a chance to make the big league club. ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news Friday evening.
Alex Wilson took to his Twitter account Saturday morning to announce the move.
Perhaps Wilson was taking a page out of Matt Joyce’s book who had a similar Tweet Friday. Joyce also signed with the Indians and announced the transaction on Twitter.
Alex Wilson is the latest of a series of bullpen acquisitions
This is not the first move that the Indians made to supplement their bullpen. Cleveland brought back Oliver Perez earlier this offseason. Earlier this week the Tribe acquired Nick Wittgren from Miami. Rather than rely on in-house options, Cleveland is wisely signing players to team friendly deals.
Alex Wilson has been a fairly productive relief pitcher in his career. Wilson has a career 3.23 ERA in 320.2 innings pitched. The majority of Wilson’s 290 appearances came while wearing a Tigers uniform. In his first two seasons with Detroit Wilson’s ERA was 2.19 and 2.96 respectively. However a bit of regression occurred as his ERA spiked to 4.50 in 2017 before settling down to a more respectable 3.36 in 2019.
Wilson certainly has a good chance to make the Indians roster out of Spring Training. The bullpen has some openings and Wilson is more than capable of taking on a middle reliever role for Cleveland.
If Alex Wilson can make that the team and become a reliable bullpen arm it will go a long way. Coming into the offseason Cleveland’s weakness was the bullpen. While it may not be a strength, it does not appear it will be as big of a liability as it was once thought to be.
