Yankees acquire pitcher JT Brubaker from Pirates

In a move we’ve previously seen, the Yankees acquired a low-profile arm from the Pittsburgh Pirates. Seeking some depth for its starting rotation, Brian Cashman struck a deal to bring JT Brubaker to town for a player to be named later. Some international signing bonus money also came over to New York’s side. The trade was first reported by Pirates beat writer Alex Stumpf and confirmed by the Yankees themselves.

There is a big wrinkle here playing a role in the right-hander’s price tag since Brubaker is working his way back from Tommy John surgery. However, having undergone the procedure in early April 2023, the expectation is that he’ll be ready to pitch again around midseason.

As a player already on the 60-day IL, Brubaker won’t require any corresponding move to join the Yankees roster. In case you haven’t watched a ton of NL Central play over the last few seasons, the 30-year-old had been a steady presence in Pittsburgh’s rotation from 2020-22 with underwhelming results.

One could look at the surface and be dismissive, but especially considering the modest price of a PTBNL, there are points to pique your interest. However, one of the stats that most quickly stabilizes in terms of being projectable production with a pitcher is strikeouts. After a not-so-large sample, you get a solid feel of what to expect.

Brubaker was never a big strikeout arm with a 23.3-percent average and while that made sense as a sinker-heavy arm, there was room for improvement. Working on some changes in the spring 2023 prior to his injury, Brubaker had 15 punchouts in only 8 frames, enough to make you look at what was different. Not to say that this was the new Brubaker, but he had been working on actionable changes during that period.

As chronicled by Michael Ajeto for Baseball Prospectus, Brubaker was focusing on his changeup at a higher usage, and it was paying dividends — particularly since he was able to separate it more from his sinker. Interestingly enough, another objective of his was something that the Yankees found great success with, in the past few seasons: looking for more sweep action in his curve.

It’s not far-fetched to project the Yankees’ being able to work with him on the optimization of a sweeper, a pitch better served for his profile than the curve that did work well in a short sample.

In the context of low-risk moves, Brubaker’s acquisition is intriguing enough, even more so when you project the need for some depth behind this rotation in 2024 and beyond.