The Cincinnati Reds have signed right-handed pitchers Wilmer Rios and John Murphy. Rios will be pitching for Team Mexico in the World Baseball Classic in March. That puts a total of 17 Reds players in the WBC next month.
Wilmer Rios has spent his entire career pitching in Mexico. The soon to be 29-year-old has pitched in parts of 9 seasons in his home country. He’s pitched in both the summer and winter leagues, pitching out of the bullpen and in the rotation over that time. This past year he made 29 starts that covered 171.2 innings for Moncolva during the summer and Hermosillo during the winter. Between those two stops he put up an ERA of 3.20. For context, his ERA in the summer with Moncolva was 4.47, while the league ERA was 6.11 (it is an extremely hitter friendly league). In the winter his ERA was 1.84, while the league ERA was 3.81.
Prior to the 2021 season, Wilmer Rios had mostly pitched out of the bullpen, but would make spot starts here and there. He threw over 100 innings in each of 2018 and 2019 while making 24 starts and 80 relief appearances between the two seasons. In 2021 he made 24 starts with just 6 relief appearances, and then in 2022 made 29 appearances in the rotation without ever pitching out of the bullpen. You can see the career stats for Wilmer Rios here.
John Murphy pitched for four seasons for the Maryland Terrapins in college, making a few starts but spent much of his time in the bullpen. After being undrafted he hit the indy ball circuit and has pitched for several teams.
Last year he pitched for Gateway in the Frontier League. It was a breakout year for him as he posted a 2.75 ERA in 36.0 innings, allowing just 25 hits, walking just 8 batters (and one of those was intentional), and he struck out 63 of the 142 hitters he faced (44%).
Murphy has always missed plenty of bats – his strikeout rate in 2020 was 15.9 batters per 9-innings pitched, and in 2021 it was 12.6 batters per 9-innings pitched. But he also walked 14 batters per 9-innings in that 2020 season, and in 2021 he saw a big improvement, but still walked 5.2 batters per 9-innings pitched. The walks virtually disappeared in 2022 and it turned around his career as he posted an ERA that was far and away the best he’d ever had. You can see John Murphy’s career stats here.
