Looking at the three arms acquired in the Alex Verdugo trade
Craig Breslow has made his first move of the offseason, trading Alex Verdugo for three arms from the Yankees. Here’s an in-depth look at all three acquisitions, with more analysis from the Rule 5 Draft on the way.
Greg Weissert
Greg Weissert is a very fascinating arm from the Yankees — I’ve seen the opinions of some who aren’t huge fans of him, but there’s a lot to like. He throws five pitches and gets some absurd horizontal movement at his Chris Sale-like arm slot. The 28-year-old righty had a 2.90 ERA in 38 outings for Triple-A Wilkes-Barre/Scranton this season before putting up a 4.05 ERA in 17 outings for New York this season.
Weissert’s most popular pitch (35% usage) is his tail-heavy sinker, which sits 94 at 110 Stuff+, getting 17" of run at a mid-5° VAA while it induced an impressive 60 GB% this year. The 80-mph sweeper (27%) on the other hand isn’t that impressive of a pitch; the 20" of sweep and near 3000 RPMs it gets is rather attractive but it struggles to get whiffs and it yielded an ugly .697 xSLG in the majors this season; FanGraphs stuff+ is also just 92 though it does get some solid CStr% numbers and it’s only swung at 35% of the time.
Weissert’s arm slot creates some very flat approach angles on the four-seamer (25%) despite just 13" of ride, which gives him some impressive bat-missing rates around a 20 SwStr%/40 Whiff%; has a 110 stuff+ at 94 and a 4.4° VAA. The righty then mixes in a changeup and a cutter, both are used around 5% of the time — changeup at 85 gets a pretty 17" of fade while getting great whiff action and the 91-mph cutter has some nice cut-ride to it.
Richard Fitts
24-year-old Richard Fitts, who Red Sox Twitter has already taken the initiative to make his name ‘Dick’ Fitts, put up a 3.48 ERA in 27 starts for Double-A Somerset this season, being named the Eastern League Pitcher of the Year. The right-hander gets great extension while Baseball America touted him as having the ‘best control’ in Double-A — yielded just a 2.53 BB/9 this season.
Fitts possesses some great ride on the fastball that gives it the ability to generate whiffs, as it averages 93 and can touch 97 while getting ~18" of IVB and just ~4" of run; spin rates are also in the 2400 RPMs range. Slider is mid-80s with a confusingly high ~6" of carry and ~7" of sweep, but he pounds the zone with it at a rate over 50% and has impressively high spin rates. Changeup is mid-to-high 80s and gets some decent tail at ~10" of run. Some don’t project him as a starter, which makes sense — that changeup isn’t graded all that well by scouts and the fastball/slider duo is more projectable as a reliever.
Nicholas Judice
Standing at a towering 6-foot-8, Judice was drafted in the eighth round by the Yankees this past summer, about 200 spots ahead of his №420 ranking by Baseball America. He hurled 53 innings and slated a 3.74 ERA for ULM, striking out 66 while only walking 15.
Judice mainly works between his fastball and slider while mixing in the changeup and curveball. The curveball gets some sweep and the changeup averaged an impressive 18" of run, but were not thrown often. The fastball sits low-to-mid 90s but doesn’t have a bat-missing shape with it being a dead-zone 15"/ride and 15"/run, however given his frame there’s probably room to still add velocity. His secondary pitch in the slider sat mid-80s with ~10" of sweep and was able to get some whiffs with it. Judice has a three-quarter arm slot and sort of a funky delivery that Baseball America describes as ‘whippy.’ Johnny Davis gave him the third-best arsenal Stuff+ in college baseball in a May 3rd tweet too — mind you, Paul Skenes was at 1.
Data credit for Fitts and Judice: Lance Broz, Chris Clegg, Baseball America
