Every MLB club adds a few extra pitchers to bolster its organizational depth, and this year the Seattle Mariners brought in a veteran with five seasons of major-league experience on a minor-league deal.
Left-handed pitcher Josh Fleming — a former fifth-round draft pick by the Tampa Bay Rays who logged 254 2/3 innings in the majors between 2020 and 2024 — joined the Mariners in January. He spent nearly the entire season with Triple-A Tacoma, where he led the team’s bullpen in innings pitched.
Ultimately, Fleming never got his shot to pitch for the big-league team, which made sense given how proficient the Mariners were at run prevention. And with the season over, Fleming will get the chance to explore new opportunities.
F
leming elected minor-league free agency, according to the official transactions log on his roster page.
Assuming he wants to keep playing, Fleming will look for a new minor-league deal that grants him an invitation to spring training with a club in February. He’s out of options, so if he ever makes it back to the majors, he’ll have to stay there for his team to avoid placing him on waivers.
Fleming made a solid first impression during his brief seven-game stint with the Rays in 2020, but his ERA rose to 5.09 over 104 1/3 innings the next season — the largest workload of his big-league career. Overall, across his time with the Rays and the Pittsburgh Pirates, he owns a 4.77 career ERA. One persistent issue has been his inability to miss bats, as reflected by his career strikeout rate of just 5.7 K/9.
With Triple-A Tacoma, Fleming served mostly as an innings-eater, logging 84 1/3 frames and posting a 4.91 ERA with 44 strikeouts. He was briefly released in June but soon rejoined the organization on a second minor-league contract.
For a former Division III pitcher (for the hilariously-named Webster University Gorloks), Fleming has already had a standout professional career. But to advance any farther, he’s got to find some way to get batters to stop making such easy contact against his arsenal.
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