3-29-24 – By Corey Shrader – @CoreyShrader
The Pittsburgh Pirates have struck a deal with the New York Yankees. The Bucs are sending JT Brubaker & international bonus pool money to The Bronx Bombers for a Player to Be Named Later. While there is no return to react to quite yet, it is prudent to discuss Brubaker briefly.
Brubaker debuted with the Pirates in 2020, pitching 47.1 innings with 48 strikeouts in a promising abridged first year with the team. The former 6th round pick became a stalwart in the rotation during the next two years, posting a sub-optimal 4.99 ERA but also throwing 315.2 innings with 324 strikeouts in those three seasons.
Unfortunately, JT succumbed to an elbow injury which required Tommy John surgery during Spring Training in 2023, so it has been a while since anyone has seen him throw a pitch. What many might not remember is that he was looking super interesting before going down.
Across 5 Grapefruit League starts in 2023 Brubaker’s performance looked like this:
17.1 IP, 36.6 K%, 4.2 BB%, 5.19 ERA, 3.58 FIP
Obviously that ERA is not what you want to see – but drilling down some, the major uptick in K-BB% combined with his FIP were raising some alarm bells that this guy might be on the verge of something here.
Spring training’s small sample size cuts both ways here. One could be tempted to look too closely at the positive and hand-wave away the inflated ERA and on the other side of the coin hand-wave away the 32.4 K% and the borderline elite 4.2 BB%. Taking either tact would be fair.
I for one would take a 60/40 approach here and see the positives as being more indicative of a step forward coming for JT. Because we already had some information from the 2022 season telling us that he has a pair of very effective breaking balls in his arsenal. A slider that registered a .299 xwOBA and a curveball that was good for a .272 xwOBA are truly tantalizing building blocks for a starter. But his arsenal is deeper than this – I believe that Brubaker was on the “Mitch Keller track” of developing a more well-rounded, kitchen sink, type of repertoire. It also must be noted that Brubaker had gone to TREAD Athletics, just like Keller had.
His biggest bugaboo, which is a bit of a familiar story for other Pirates pitchers, is an unreliable fastball. His sinker was not generating effective results, oftentimes not serving its intended purposes and generating poor contact or ground balls. But there was indication that this was changing some in Spring of 2023. But, again, we truly do not know how it was going to play. He was injured prior to Pirates fans getting to see if it was for real.
Now he heads to New York and the Yankees have a very good pitching development system of their own. Whether or not he will remain a starter is unknown. As it stands now, I would wager that he will. The Yankees find themselves somewhat light on MLB level pitching and Brubaker should come back at some point during the 2024 season.
I look forward to seeing how Brubaker’s game continues to progress. It would not be surprising to see him throw productive innings wearing pinstripes in the not-so-distant future.
Steel City Pirates 