Who is Jared Burton?

Yesterday, in LEN3's live chat, he answered a question about right handed relievers.  He mentioned the usual guys, Carlos Gutierrez, Alex Burnett, Joel Zumaya; but then he finished his answer by saying, "Watch out for Burton."  Maybe I missed something this off-season while I was stressing over the 3-13 Vikings, the drowning-by-the-day Wild, or the injury plagued Team Tubby.  Maybe I missed something this off-season while obsessing over my new favorite point guard throwing alley-oops to whoever will go get them down at Target Center.  When I read that answer, I said to myself, "self, who the heck is Burton?"

After doing about 2 minutes of research, I realized why I probably missed this.  Jared Burton was signed as a free agent on November, 11, 2011.  My wife's birthday.  Forgive me.

Jared Burton is a 30 year old right-hander that has spent his entire major league career with the Cincinatti Reds - another reason I didn't know who this guy was.  The Reds drafted him from the Oakland A's in the 2006 Rule 5 draft.  He made 164 appearances, all out of the bullpen, in the last 5 years for the Reds; however, he only pitched a total of 8 innings in the majors in the last 2 seasons.  Most of his 2010 season was spent in AAA, while 2011 was a season plagued by inflammation in his right shoulder.  His rehab assignment started July 28th of last year back at AAA Louisville, where he pitched a total of 13 innings last year.

Burton throws a low-90's cutter, a mid-80's slider, a low 80's change up, and a low-90's fastball.  He has a really good career ERA of 3.41, with an average of 3.9 walks and 7.6 strikeouts per 9 innings.  Without too much major league experience since 2009, it's hard to know what to expect out of Jared Burton; especially coming off a right shoulder injury.  What we do know is that when he has been in the bigs, he has been pretty effective.  I don't expect his cutter to look like Rivera, but if he is healthy, this was a solid pick-up for the Twins.  So...

Watch out for Burton.