Red Sox’s Richard Bleier (from Matt Barnes trade) has ‘very live stuff’

The Red Sox were able to work out a trade for Matt Barnes on Monday after designating him for assignment last Tuesday.

Boston acquired left-handed relief pitcher Richard Bleier from the Marlins. Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom discussed Bleier on MassLive.com’s Fenway Rundownpodcast Tuesday.

“It (the trade) brought a player to us who we’ve liked for a while who has a lot of experience in our division,” Bloom said.

Bleier, who will turn 36 on April 16, has posted a 3.06 ERA in 308 career major league outings. He recorded a 3.55 ERA in 55 outings last year. He does have AL East experience, pitching for the Yankees in 2016 and the Orioles from 2017-20.

“This guy’s track record speaks for itself,” Bloom said. “There’s a reason he’s been this good for this long. He’s not somebody that overpowers you. He throws a ton of strikes.”

He is a strike-thrower. He he has averaged 1.5 walks per nine innings in his career. He throws a sinker, cutter, slider and changeup. His sinker averaged 89.8 mph last season, per Baseball Savant.

“It’s not overpowering stuff but it’s very live stuff,” Bloom said “Very hard to square up. Keeps the ball on the ground, pitches to contact. And again, a strike-thrower who’s not afraid of situations and fits us nicely.”

As noted already on MassLive.com, he ranked in the 90th percentile in barrel rate (limiting hard contact) and the 94th percentile in walk rate (he walked just 10 batters) in 2022, according to Statcast.

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Were the Marlins in on Barnes before Boston DFA’d him?

“That one is not something we knew was going to happen at the time of the DFA,” Bloom said. “Obviously, I think you do this whenever you can — it’s something we’re always doing and especially when we’re in the situation we’re in. It’s a good situation where we have a lot of talent on our 40-man. You’re always trying to look for, ‘OK, if there is an opportunity to add, what would we do roster-wise?’ So we do try to canvass the market pretty thoroughly. And if there is a way, especially with someone who means as much to the organization as Matty does, if there is a way to avoid the DFA process for a player and just jump straight to a trade, you always prefer that outcome. In this case, we didn’t have that. So the DFA process had to play out. And just in terms of once that’s happening and talking to different clubs, it came up that this might be a fit. And something we were able to hash out with Miami and seemed to be something that worked for everybody.”