Trade details: New York Yankees acquire RHP Camilo Doval from the San Francisco Giants in exchange for C Jesús Rodríguez, RHP Trystan Vrieling, INF Parks Harber and LHP Carlos de la Rosa.
As the trade deadline arrived, the Yankees continued to try to build a brand-new bullpen on the fly, acquiring Doval from the Giants for four players who weren’t even among the Yankees’ top 20 prospects this offseason.
Doval had two-plus outstanding years for the Giants from his debut in 2021 through the end of 2023. He cut his walk rate the moment he reached the majors, a rare example of the phenomenon, but at least evidence that it can happen. He’s gone from sinker/slider to slider/cutter over the last few years, with the control going way backward in 2024 and only partially coming back this year.
His slider is easily a plus pitch, but if it lands in the strike zone, it’s a bug rather than a feature, and he throws the cutter more for strikes — often near to the heart of the strike zone. He’s not the first guy I’d want to call on in a late-game, high-leverage spot, but he’s a weapon I’d want to have available if a strikeout was of the utmost importance. He’s got two years of team control remaining, which doesn’t mean as much for a reliever as it would for anyone else, but does distinguish him from rental players.
The best of the four players going to the Giants is Rodríguez, a short, squat-built catcher/third baseman who has real feel to put the ball in play, mostly doing so on the ground. He’s hitting .317/.409/.430 on the year for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He has a flat swing that has produced a lot of medium contact; I don’t think changing his swing to try to get the ball in the air is going to produce any real change in the power output.
He’s got good hands at third, but he’s not quick enough on his feet to stay there, so his only real chance to have big-league value is if he can stick behind the plate. He’s got the arm for it, and I think his hands will work there, too, but the rest is a work in progress. The Yankees only had him catch about half the time in Triple A this year, which isn’t ideal for the development of a skill that needs repetitions.
Vrieling was the Yankees’ third-rounder in 2022 but has stalled in Double A. He’s 90-94 with a bunch of fringe-average pitches and has missed a lot of time with various elbow concerns. In addition to sharing his name with two very good board games, Harber is a 23-year-old corner infielder who has yet to reach Double A, beating up on younger pitching this year before going on the IL a few weeks ago. He’s an organizational player. Carlos de la Rosa is a 17-year-old left-hander who made seven starts in the Dominican Summer League this season.
Were the Giants just trying to move Doval at any cost? Maybe they feared a further decline in his control/command, or just that anyone throwing this hard is living on Borrowed UCL Time. If Doval is just an above-average reliever for the next two-plus years for the Yankees, this will turn out to be a great pickup for New York.
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