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On filing day for salary arbitration, the Dodgers reportedly came to a deal with one of their arbitration-eligible players in Vidal Nuno. The left-handed reliever, acquired this off-season for Carlos Ruiz, will make $1.125 million in 2017, according to Jon Heyman.
dodgers, vidal nuno settle at $1.125M
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) January 10, 2017
Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors was basically on the money yet again with his projected $1.1 million, and that sounds about right for a player that appears to amount to what is essentially lefty reliever depth.
When Nuno was acquired, I talked about his profile a bit.
Vidal Nuno is a 29-year-old lefty relief pitcher with a career ERA of 4.02 and FIP of 4.48. In 58.2 innings last year, he posted a 3.53 ERA and 4.51 FIP, which generally fits with his habit of pitching better than his peripherals might suggest. However, that doesn’t mean that he’s necessarily good. While Nuno’s 20.7 K% was about league average and his 4.5 BB% was well above average, he also had a major homer problem and surrendered a dinger 11 times in 2016, which is not necessarily a thing the bullpen needs more of.
Nuno’s stuff doesn’t indicate anything much more promising either. He primarily uses a three-pitch mix of a fastball, slider, and change, with the fastball generally sitting in the 89-91 mph range and his change grading out as above-average even though his slider is his primary off-speed pitch. While he has allowed a .799 OPS to righties in his career and a .641 OPS to lefties, his stuff profile certainly doesn’t fit a LOOGY type, and I would think if anything he’d be less prone to ridiculous splits.
So yeah, nothing overly impressive, but a serviceable major-league quality relief arm from the left side will always have utility.
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The Dodgers had previously come to agreements with Scott Van Slyke and Chris Hatcher to avoid arbitration, and Darin Ruf will actually make close to the minimum as he didn’t qualify as a Super Two, so there remains only four players (Yasmani Grandal, Alex Wood, Luis Avilan, Josh Fields) that have yet to agree to terms with the Dodgers from the initial eight arbitration cases.
