The Marlins are in agreement on a two-year, $6MM contract extension with reliever Richard Bleier, reports Daniel Álvarez Montes of El EtxtraBase. The deal extends Miami’s window of club control over the southpaw by a season, as he’d been ticketed to reach free agency at the end of the year. Bleier is represented by Vision Sports.

Bleier has spent the past year and a half in South Florida, as the Fish acquired him in August 2020 while their roster was being decimated by a COVID-19 outbreak. It looked like a nice buy-low for the Marlins at the time, as Bleier had performed well from 2016-18 before things went off track in 2019. Miami took a low-risk flier on him returning to his early-career form, and he’s done just that.

The Florida Gulf Coast product has made 87 appearances in a Marlins uniform, working 71 2/3 innings of 2.89 ERA ball. He’s certainly not the flashiest reliever, having only punched out 18.1% of batters faced. Yet Bleier has walked just 3.6% of opponents and he’s induced grounders on almost two-thirds of balls in play against him. Among 197 relievers with 50+ innings since the Marlins acquired him, only three (Aaron Bummer, Clay Holmesand Emmanuel Clase) have been more successful than Bleier at keeping the ball on the ground. Despite lacking high-velocity, swing-and-miss stuff, Bleier has held opposing hitters to a .242/.275/.337 line in that time.