Thoughts after the Yankees trade for JT Brubaker

The Pittsburgh to New York pitching pipeline is still up and running. On Friday, the Yankees acquired righty JT Brubaker and $500,000 in international bonus pool money from the Pirates for a player to be named later. Brubaker had Tommy John surgery last April and is expected back around the All-Star break. He’s on the 60-day injured list, so no 40-man roster move was necessary.

“I know he did some decent things as a starter in '21 and '22 with the Pirates,” Aaron Boone told Bryan Hoch about Brubaker. “I know we like his arm.”

Brubaker, 30, was Pittsburgh’s Opening Day starter in 2022. He had a 5.00 ERA (4.49 FIP) with almost perfectly league average underlying numbers – 23.3% strikeouts, 7.8% walks, 43.5% grounders, 89.3 mph exit velocity – from 2021-22, his two healthy seasons. His elbow gave out last spring and Pirates GM Ben Cherington told Alex Stumpf that Brubaker’s rehab is going well. No issues there.

The short version is the Yankees picked up someone who could be a useful depth arm at minimal cost, and the Pirates did … something. I don’t fully understand the trade from their perspective, though I’m sure they had their reasons. I wound up writing more about this trade than I expected, so I might as well break it out into its own post rather than bury it in Tuesday’s. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Money and team control

I’m going to start here because it’s easiest. Brubaker will make $2.275M this year and remain under team control as an arbitration-eligible player in 2025. Add in the 110% luxury tax rate, and all-in the Yankees are on the hook for $4.7775M this year. Brubaker won’t pitch enough this year to get a significant raise through arbitration. He’s looking at $3M or so next year, maybe $4M if things really go well. He’s very low cost, relatively speaking.

Also, Brubaker does have minor league options remaining, so the Yankees can send him to Triple-A. That’s a nice little bit of roster flexibility as he works his way back from elbow reconstruction. This move might be more about 2025 than 2024. Whatever Brubaker gives the Yankees this year is a bonus. Next year, you can see him sliding into Luke Weaver’s swingman role. Point is, the Yankees can keep Brubaker next year too.

Surprise! He throws a sinker

The Yankees love sinkers and, like most pitchers they acquire these days, Brubaker has a mid-90s sinker. Or at least he did before his elbow gave out. We’ll see what he looks like when he’s healthy. He also has a mid-80s slider and low-80s curveball, both with good spin (here’s video). Brubaker checks a lot of boxes for the Yankees, so much so that I wrote about him as a trade target leading up to the 2022 deadline:

A sinker, two high-spin breaking balls, an occasionally average changeup, and control that is at least average seems like a decent foundation, no? I’d be curious to see what pitching coach Matt Blake and the rest of the organizational pitching gurus could do with Brubaker. I mean, the Pirates couldn’t make Holmes and his 97 mph sinker good. There's probably more here than Brubaker has shown.

Brubaker seems like a guy who needs guidance and to make some adjustments, so perhaps he would be better as an offseason target, giving Blake & Co. a nice long runway to work with him over the winter and in Spring Training. Making adjustments in-season can be tough. Holmes did it, but Andrew Heaney did not. Brubaker interests me as a project for Blake and his people.

Before Tommy John surgery Brubaker was said to be a sneaky good command pitcher who is especially adept at running his sinker in under the hands of righties. Jonathan Loáisiga is Exhibit A, though he’s not the only guy on the staff we’ve seen do this in recent years:

Brubaker also had success burying his slider and curveball down and away from righties/in on lefties. The results haven’t been great, but a) the arsenal is solid, and b) the Pirates are not known to get the most out of their pitchers. They’re doing a bit better these days, though they still lag behind smarter clubs at coaching up pitchers. There’s a reason they’re still quasi-rebuilding.

First things first: Brubaker has to complete his Tommy John surgery rehab. Stumpf says Brubaker recently started throwing off a half-mound, so he still has a ways to go. We should see him pop up in minor league rehab games in June sometime as long as there are no setbacks. Once Brubaker’s done rehabbing, Blake and director of pitching Sam Briend will get to work with whatever adjustments they have in mind.

The IFA money

The Pirates had the largest international bonus pool ($7.11M) and the Yankees the smallest ($4.65M), and apparently Pittsburgh is not planning to spend it all, so they traded some of it. This money is for the 2024 international signing period. The Yankees have to spend it before the signing period ends Dec. 15th. They can’t roll it over to next year (like for Roki Sasaki) or anything like that.

Chances are the Yankees already have a signing(s) lined up and needed to trade for more bonus pool space to complete said signing(s). That’s usually how it goes. It’s not “trade for the money and we’ll figure out what to do with it later.” For what it’s worth, four of MLB.com’s top 50 international prospects are still unsigned:

• Venezuelan SS Kennew Blanco (No. 9): “Blanco impresses evaluators with his competitive streak and work ethic … has the skill set to impact the game on both sides of the ball”

• Dominican SS Raymel Ortiz (No. 26): “Ortiz's bat-to-ball skills stand out on both sides of the plate … The teen’s defense compares favorably to the best defenders in the class”

• Dominican OF Jeremy Denaud (No. 40): “Denaud is a big, strong outfielder with a chance to have above-average tools across the board … he profiles best in center field.”

• Dominican OF Anderson Paula (No. 49): “Paula has tons of power potential, and it’s that tool that makes him one of the most intriguing international prospects on the market.”

Maybe the Yankees will sign one (or more!) of them? I have no idea. Keep in mind guys like Henry Lalane and Carlos Lagrange were not highly regarded prospects during their signing period. The Yankees have done well finding under-the-radar prospects in international free agency.

What I do know is $500,000 is a significant chunk of change, especially this late in the signing period. Most of the top prospects signed Jan. 15th, the day the signing period opened. The Yankees traded for the bonus pool money with a plan in place. They know exactly where they’re going to spend it. Remember when they traded Billy McKinney for bonus pool money? It was spent later that day.

The PTBNL and the Pirates

When the trade was announced, I figured there had to be a catch. Why are the Pirates trading a useful depth arm and international bonus pool money for a player to be named later? Are they that desperate to shed the $2.275M they owe Brubaker? Did he suffer a setback during Tommy John surgery rehab? It’s a weird trade for them. Cherington says it’s simply a matter of reallocating resources.

"We got to a point as we got into Spring Training, we started recognizing if Bru's contribution was more second half of 2024 and then 2025, (we) feel good and learn more about our starting alternatives, we feel like it opened up the possibility of maybe getting a different kind of guy for him now as opposed to waiting,” Cherington told Stumpf. “During Spring Training we circled back to teams that had expressed interest in the past, and this is the one we lined up on with the Yankees. As we looked at that, the alternatives, trying to concentrate as much as we can on 2024, put our resources into 2024, we just felt all those factors added up to making sense for us.”

Oftentimes in these situations the player to be named will come from an agreed upon pool of 4-5 players. The Pirates will spend the next few weeks scouting those players, then pick one. The Yankees and Pirates did this with the Iván Nova trade. They agreed to a list of players, the Yankees scouting them, and then a few weeks later they picked Tito Polo and Stephen Tarpley.

I don’t know if that’s what happened here. I’m just saying it’s a possibility. To get Brubaker and international bonus money, I guess there’s a chance the PTBNL is relatively significant? Not a Top 30 Prospect, but not a nobody either. PTBNLs must be named within six months, though the timing means the trade deadline is the real deadline. They can’t complete this in August or September.

The Pitt > NY pipeline

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, or if they line up often because they value similar traits in pitchers, or if the Yankees see the Pirates as an easy target, but there’s been an awful lot of Pirates pitchers making their way to the Bronx the last few years. This is the fifth Pirates-Yankees trade of the Matt Blake era and the third involving Major League players. All three sent a Pirates pitcher to the Yankees:

• Jan. 24th, 2021: Jameson Taillon for Roansy Contreras, Maikol Escotto, Canaan Smith-Njigba, and Miguel Yajure

• July 26th, 2021: Clay Holmes for Diego Castillo and Hoy Jun Park

• March 29th, 2023:  JT Brubaker and international bonus pool money for a PTBNL

Taillon gave the Yankees two solid seasons and Holmes has been one of the best relievers in the game since the trade. The six players the Yankees gave up in the Holmes and Taillon trades have combined for -1.5 WAR in the big leagues, and only Contreras, Escotto, and Smith-Njigba remain with the Pirates. Contreras is a reliever now, Escotto’s a non-prospect, and Smith-Njigba just got DFAed. Sheesh.

It’s not just the trades though. Nick Burdi was drafted by the Pirates and began his career in Pittsburgh. He’s in the Yankees’ bullpen now. Former Pirates relievers Yerry De Los Santos and Duane Underwood Jr. are in Triple-A. Justin Wilson started his career with the Pirates and had two stints with the Yankees (including 2021). And then there’s Gerrit Cole, maybe the most notable Pirates pitcher turned Yankees pitcher ever (it’s either Cole, Jack Chesbro, or Goose Gossage).

“I was pumped to see that we just traded for him,” Holmes told Gary Phillips about the Brubaker trade. “I just shot him a text. I think he’s excited. I played with him some in the minor leagues, some in the big leagues in Pittsburgh. He’s shown flashes. He was Pittsburgh’s minor league pitcher of the year one year and he’s had some success in the big leagues. But I think there’s a lot more in the tank.”

Pittsburgh to New York pipeline aside, there is a chance this trade is a whole bunch of nothing. It could be that the PTBNL is a player not worth sweating, the prospect(s) the Yankees sign with bonus pool money doesn’t work out, and Brubaker doesn’t show much later this year and the Yankees non-tender him in the offseason. That might even be the most likely outcome. This is far from a slam dunk.

I do think this is a good roll of the dice and a pretty interesting move though. Brubaker has shown he can be a useful big leaguer when healthy, and the Yankees have had success coaching up sinker pitchers. The cost is low – if the PTBNL was going to be a notable prospect, he would have just been named at the time of the trade – and there’s some upside. Big upside? No, probably not, but there’s a chance this works out nicely. I am intrigued. Nifty trade.