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By Jackson Roberts
Contributing Sports Writer
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The Boston Red Sox love pitching, and they love to find it from unexpected sources.
Over the last few seasons, we've seen pitchers whose names no one knew when they arrived at Red Sox spring training wind up making a major impact on the season. Names like Garrett Whitlock, Brennan Bernardino, and Justin Slaten were relative unknowns until Boston uncovered them.
There are several candidates to join that list this spring, and now, Patrick Halligan's name has been added.
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On Monday, the Red Sox signed Halligan, most recently a Houston Astros farmhand, to a minor-league contract with an invite to spring training. The transaction took a couple of days to be added to the official records of Major League Baseball, but Andrew Parker of SoxProspects first reported Halligan's deal on Tuesday.
Halligan, 26, originally was drafted in the 13th round by the Kansas City Royals out of Pensacola State College in 2021. He has since moved on to the Atlanta Braves and Astros organizations. Kansas City released him in 2023, and the Braves traded him for cash to the Astros last April.
Standing 6-foot-6, Halligan has been racking up strikeouts in the minors, punching out 133 batters in 108 innings across the last two seasons in the upper levels. He's not as velocity-dominant as most hurlers of his size, and instead relies on a splitter that has earned him a 70 grade on the 20-to-80 scale from Fangraphs.
Competition will be stiff to win one of the few spots in the Boston bullpen out of spring training, but if Halligan begins the year at Triple-A, he could arrive in the majors relatively quickly if he keeps racking up K's. Someone in the bullpen inevitably gets hurt every few weeks, so Boston is counting on depth to keep itself afloat.
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