8:46pm: Germán’s base salary for the upcoming season would actually be $1.25MM if he secures an MLB roster spot, Mackey reports (X link). There’s also a 2025 club option with a base value of $2.25MM. Germán could earn additional performance bonuses in both seasons.
7:57pm: The Pirates are in agreement with Domingo Germán, as first reported by Mike Rodriguez (on X). Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets that it’s a minor league pact. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman tweets that the righty will get an invite to major league camp.
Germán reached the market after being placed on outright waivers by the Yankees. That ended a six-year run in the Bronx that included a fair number of highlights but was also marked by off-field issues. Germán broke through as a big league starter in 2019 when he turned in a 4.03 ERA across 143 innings.
That September, MLB placed Germán on administrative leave after he reportedly assaulted his girlfriend at a charity event. MLB finished its investigation that offseason and suspended him for the first 81 games of the 2020 season. That year wound up being shortened by the pandemic, so MLB reinstated him after he missed the entire 60-game schedule.
Germán returned to the Yankees in 2021. He missed parts of the next two seasons battling shoulder issues, combining for a 4.17 ERA over 170 2/3 innings. He held a spot in the New York rotation for the early portion of last year. Germán’s start to the year was middling and he was suspended for 10 games in mid-May after failing a foreign substance inspection.
He carried a 5.10 ERA through his first 14 appearances into a late-June start in Oakland. Germán turned in a legendary performance at the Coliseum that night, throwing MLB’s 24th perfect game, the first since Félix Hernández’s outing in 2012. Germán followed that up with a 4.61 ERA over five starts in July.
On August 2, the Yankees announced they were placing him on the restricted list so he could report to an inpatient treatment facility for alcohol abuse. Lindsey Adler of the Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that an apparently intoxicated Germán had argued with teammates and coaches in the New York clubhouse and flipped a couch amidst those confrontations. New York placed him on the restricted list and moved on from him at the end of the season.
Pittsburgh will give the 31-year-old another opportunity to pitch his way back to the big leagues. The Pirates have an open rotation mix behind staff ace Mitch Keller. The Bucs added soft-tossing lefties Martín Pérez (via free agency) and Marco Gonzales (through trade) over the offseason. That duo will hold down rotation spots, with righty Luis Ortiz also likely to be in the mix. Bailey Falter, Josh Fleming and former top prospect Roansy Contreras are all competing for swing roles, but none of that group was especially successful in 2023. Prospects Quinn Priester and Jared Jones (the latter of whom is not on the 40-man roster) could battle for jobs as well.
Germán joins Eric Lauer, Chase Anderson, Wily Peralta and Michael Plassmeyer as non-roster players who have big league experience. There may even be room for two members of that group to snag season-opening jobs if the Bucs don’t go outside the organization for someone like Michael Lorenzen or Mike Clevinger at this point in the winter. Germán has more than five years of major league service and could not be optioned back to the minors without his consent if the Bucs call him up at any point.