Veteran left-hander Lucas Luetge has opted out of his minor league deal with the Red Sox and become a free agent, according to Katie Morrison-O’Day of MassLive. The lefty first signed with the Red Sox back in February but will now return to free agency in search of a better deal elsewhere.
Luetge, 37, is a veteran of seven MLB seasons who first made his big league debut back in 2012 as a member of the Mariners. He spent his time with Seattle shuttling between the major and minor leagues, during which time he posted a middling 4.35 ERA with a 4.27 FIP in 89 big league innings with a similar 4.21 ERA across 94 appearances in the minors. While Luetge enjoyed a strong 47.7% groundball rate in the majors during his years in Seattle, a lackluster 19% strikeout rate combined with an elevated 12.1% walk rate seemingly limited his potential, leaving him to be outrighted off the Mariners’ 40-man roster in late 2015.
He elected free agency shortly thereafter but would not return to the majors until 2021, when he joined the Yankees as a member of their bullpen. The lefty enjoyed the best seasons of his career by far when in the Bronx as he posted a sterling 2.71 ERA with a 2.92 FIP in 129 2/3 innings of work for the club across the 2021 and ’22 seasons. His strikeout rate ticked up to a strong 25% while he slashed his walk rate to just 5.8%. While those improvements came at the expense of his groundball rate (39% with the Yankees), the results more than justified his change in approach and made it somewhat surprising when the club designated him for assignment during the 2022-23 offseason.
He was traded to the Braves shortly thereafter and opened the 2023 campaign in their bullpen, though he didn’t last long in Atlanta after allowing eleven runs in 9 2/3 innings of work across his first nine appearances as a Brave. He was outrighted to the minor leagues but remained with the club and returned to the big leagues with them to throw four scoreless innings across three appearances down the stretch, but that improvement and his middling work with the club’s Triple-A affiliate (3.75 ERA in 24 frames) weren’t enough to convince the Braves to retain Luetge for the 2024 campaign.
Back in free agency for the first time since signing with the Yankees, Luetge signed on with the Red Sox. He never broke into the big leagues with the club, though he’s looked quite impressive in 41 2/3 innings of work for Triple-A Worcester with a 3.02 ERA and a solid 26.7% strikeout rate. Given the constant interest around the league in left-handed relief depth, it would hardly be a surprise if a club saw Luetge’s success in the minor leagues with Boston and his previous success with the Yankees and decided to bring him into the organization, whether as a non-roster depth option on a minor league deal or perhaps even as an immediate member of the big league bullpen.
