Brian Cashman just couldn’t help himself. On Wednesday, the Yankees sent first base prospect TJ Rumfield packing to the Colorado Rockies in exchange for a right-hander named Angel Chivilli. If you just looked at the back of Chivilli’s baseball card, you might think the front office had finally lost the plot. A 7.06 ERA over nearly 60 innings is the kind of number that usually gets a pitcher a one-way ticket to a secondary league in a different hemisphere.
But the Bronx isn’t where careers go to die anymore—at least not if you have a pulse and a power arm. We have seen this movie before with multiple guys. The Yankees don’t care about your ERA in the thin air of Denver. They care about the fact that Chivilli is 23 years old and hurls a baseball with the kind of violence that makes scouts drool.
The Coors Field Tax is Real
Context is the only thing that matters in a trade like this. Pitching at Coors Field is basically like trying to play golf in a hurricane. Everything is different. Breaking balls don’t break and fastballs that should soar just sort of hang there like a neon sign for hitters. Chivilli was essentially a sacrificial lamb in that environment.
His 1.69 WHIP looks like a disaster, but the underlying metrics tell a much sexier story. Last year, his changeup and slider weren’t just good; they were borderline elite at making professional hitters look foolish. We are talking about a 42.6 percent whiff rate on the change and over 45 percent on the slider. When people miss that often, it usually means the pitcher has stuff that shouldn’t be sitting in the basement of the NL West.
Velocity Can’t Be Taught
The foundation here is a four-seamer that averages 97.1 mph. Sure, that heater got tattooed last year to the tune of a .434 xwOBA, but you can fix a pitch’s shape. You cannot fix a guy who throws 89. Matt Blake is probably already in a dark room somewhere looking at high-speed cameras and plotting how to turn that straight heater into a weapon.
Cashman practically admitted as much when he told SNY that they’ve added a “quality arm” to their stable. It is a classic low-risk, high-reward gamble. If Chivilli can find a way to land just a few more first-pitch strikes—he was at a measly 55.6 percent last year—the rest of his arsenal is going to play up immediately.
Rumfield was never going to see the dirt at Yankee Stadium with the current logjam at the corners. Trading a blocked prospect for a live arm with multiple years of team control is the kind of efficiency that wins divisions. If the Yankees can polish this diamond in the rough, 2026 might just be the year the league realizes they let another one get away.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Chivilli is pitching high-leverage innings by August while we all wonder how the Rockies let him walk for a backup first baseman.
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