Albert Abreu & Greg Weissert | Profile & Projection | 874

Not every day you get to do your favorite play. Hey, welcome back to another episode of Talking Yanks Players Profiles and Projections because we got two fellas on this episode. A little end of the bullpen, I was going to say slop, but we've got the slop coming. They've been MLB guys, we've got more coming because of injuries. These guys seemingly might make the roster, I think Albert Abreu will because he's out of options. Greg Weissert, people are projecting to, and he could, he was part of the team last year. It's Weissert and Abreu. Jake, your two favorite players, which one are you talking about when you said your favorite player? My two favorite players, I think it starts with Albert Abreu for me. It was a funky year for Albert Abreu in the Yankees gym because he was traded for Jose Trevino, who won the platinum glove right before the season, along with Robbie Alstrom. I don't want that left out. The Texas Rangers then traded him to the Kansas City Royals for Johansi Murrell, your Johansi Murrell. They waved him. They say, we're out, Albert, and then the Yankees picked him back up and then they ran him. He had a couple of really solid stretches for the Yankees. When did the Yankees pick him up? Do you know, do you have the month or whatever? He was picked up June 21st. He was selected off waivers from the Kansas City Royals. Very interesting, because Matt Blake liked him. For all the other teams, Rangers, Royals, he was a four-pitch pitcher. Up until June 12th, the sinker was his most used pitch in most games, not every game, at 35 percent. When the Yankees got him back on the 21st and then June 23rd, he makes his first appearance for the Yankees, he becomes 70 percent sinker from there on out. Throw that one good pitch, which he didn't really have the year prior when he was with the Yankees, or he was slider sinker. They did bring him back. If he didn't have the history of getting DFA'd, getting DFA'd, getting DFA'd, if this was another pitcher that was just out there that the Yankees, we didn't know the history, and the Yankees went and they just got him, and then they said, oh, but yeah, we have a trick for you. We're going to have you throw that pitch. We would be a little bit like, oh yeah, Blake found another dude he's going to fix. Because we know that they've come and gone on him, we've seen him do well and bad, we don't have that same kind of enthusiasm that you had when they got Clay and when they get some other guys. Well, technically, the Yankees haven't come and gone on him. That's been a little bit of a half myth. His biggest thing was blocking Marinaccio during the August times, which sucked, but again, that became a roster option thing. The Yankees traded him for Trevino. They were going to have to DFA him, probably, or cockroach him. So then he got DFA'd by the Royals, so the Yankees snagged him back up. So the Yankees, in theory, have been in on Albert this whole time. There was a little bit of Averex with Albert Abreu last season, which our fans all know about that, because he comes over and he has a beautiful stretch leading up to the trade deadline. 14 games, 17 innings, a 106 ERA. And some of those are 8th inning spots for Albert Abreu that the Yankees then, trade deadline passes, Albert Abreu doesn't have options, Marinaccio does. Marinaccio goes down when he'd been a better pitcher than Albert Abreu, and Albert Abreu has a bad August that felt like we were getting tortured. So there's stuff to like about Albert Abreu. He's 27. I mean, the fastball velo, he sits at 98. It's 98 percentile fastball velo. Like you said, the slider has really good numbers against it, a 125 batting average against. You'd probably like to see he threw that 29 percent last year. You'd probably like to see that number go up, because that number goes up, and that should probably even help the fastball even more, because you can't sit on that. So it feels like he's a fastball slider guy, which is supposed to be Matt Blake's bread and butter. He's 27. His biggest thing is he's wild. It seems like he doesn't fully know where it's going, but also his stuff can be good enough that he could be almost like an aim for the middle pitcher, and we can make this work that, I don't know, if we did his PPP, or this combined PPP a couple weeks ago, we would have said, how long is he going to cockroach? Now, I mean, it looks like he's got a cockroach path to victory. Yeah, and I like that the Yankees have a platform, like throw that sinker more. He was a sinker ball pitcher that wasn't getting a ground ball rate above 50, which isn't a good formula, but once he came back from the Yankees, I believe that rate went up to like 55. Once they said, throw the sinker way more, 70 percent of the time, throw that pitch, and then also his walk rate changed after that. He started throwing strikes more, I mean. Which is like the Matt Blake full recipe. Yeah. I mean, in Texas, he had a 28.6 percent walk rate, and I think with the Yankees in his first like two months with them, it was under 10. Yeah. Just throw that pitch. That's Clay Holmes, Wandi, they were wild, and they threw more pitches. They said, throw your good pitches and be less wild, dude. That's your best way to have a chance, so, I don't know, I mean, there's some glimmering hope with Albert Abreu that he could be a nice storyline of the season, or he could be kind of absent and not a part of it at all, a couple bad weeks. Yeah. Relief life, baby. That's all it is. What are his spring training stats for Albert? They're using him, and they're using him after starters. Albert Abreu, four games, 5.2 innings, two hits, no walks, no earned runs. How many strikeouts? Not a lot, right? Two. Yeah, he's a ground ball pitcher now. So, pitch to your strengths. He came in after Clark against, in that Braves game, he went one inning pitched, then with one K. Let's see, I was just, they were using him kind of in a way they would use a guy that they like, because spring training, all the good hitters hit for the first three innings, and then they get out of there, especially early on. So, the higher up you go throw a guy, the more you want him to face MLB hitters. In his second game, he came out after Lou Trevino and pitched the second inning, again, one inning pitch, zero hits, zero walks, zero Ks, so just ground balls in play, probably. Pat Burnham. Yeah, he's gonna get some run, and I think he's gonna be a guy they look at to be a mop-up guy in some way. You look at King, Trevino, those are guys they use when runners are on base. Get that ground ball, turn two situation. Also wonder how much a shift helps or hurts in being such a ground ball guy. Now, that's something across baseball, we don't know, like, do you want guys that, pitchers that get the ball on the ground that much now, or is those gonna result in way more hits, because you can't really calibrate for that. Lionel Messi. Two innings pitched after Rodan pitched, zero hits, zero walks, zero strikeouts, zero runs. So that's six batters faced, six balls in playouts. Lean it into it. Don't worry about it. That's kind of cool. All right, maybe I'm getting interested. Do we have, I think I know the answer, and I don't think I love the answer, but I want to ask. Are there any heartstrings with Albert Abreu? No. 1.2 innings pitched, two hits, one K. Remember that White Sox game he came in? Extra innings, the 10th inning, he got the save. That's going back to 2021, when he was cockroaching, and he had a stretch where the Yankees bullpen like leaned on him. I don't know. Him a heel. We've got a, I'm sure some people do, we got a little bit of a shield for Albert Abreu. Some people might, it just seems like he's the type of pitcher that, you know, he's part of that. It's incredible that Sessa broke through. It's risky to hold your heart. He's part of that 2016 Yankees sold, and he's the prospect they got for Brian McCann, so kind of cool connection to some stuff, but I wouldn't say heartstrings, but interested. He wasn't good down the stretch last year in August. Got hurt. Yeah. And it was like Velo dipped and stuff, it wasn't completely phantom, all that. Then he came back for the last game of the season or something like that. Big game. But yeah, he had a, August was tough. All right, so Abreu's going to be on the roster. He's going to be throwing the sinker or the two seam, whatever you want to call it, and burning some worms in the infield. How about this? My SeatGeek Code John Boy preseason, where you get 15% off. We've been doing some over-unders and stuff. Download the SeatGeek app. They really easy. Green means good, red means bad. They show you the tickets, go get the green tickets, that means good. They give it a score too. It's easy. Real easy. Easy money. So John Boy preseason, 15% off with SeatGeek. Go do something. For Albert Abreu, I want him to give me a little heartstrings. You know? Give me a little personality or give me a couple moments this year where I'm like, all right, Albert Abreu, you're on the team. Grow a funny mustache. Look like a cop. Is that what you're asking him? I'm open. Okay. I'm open. Okay. I'm not saying I'm not. Speaking of cops. Ooh. Greg Weiser. Yeah. That's a guy with some personality. Fordham guy. Went to school in the Bronx. Has a mustache. Looks like a cop. Sweepy Slider. I don't know if I believe in his slider, which I think is going to shock a lot of people because it's very fun to look at. Well, if they're talking Yanks listeners, I don't think they're shocked, but if they're new, do you think a lot of Yankees people don't believe in his slider? No. You hammered it pretty home. If they listened last year, you like, this isn't the first time you said it. Oh, I remember saying like Carlos, like good hitters. You weren't a big fan of this slide. Looks cool. It looks very cool. It gets results. I just think good hitters, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a fine line. It's almost like a blitz ball slider where either you throw it on that perfect thread and it is unhittable. You get it like one rotation a little less on the wrong line and it is fat to righties. Feels like hitters can get a good look at it. It's so slow as you see it sweeping. Yes. Um, now I, I wonder how they use Weiser if he becomes a righty lefty type guy. Cause I believe the slider, or I believe he's good against lefties when he doesn't throw the slider, when he throws the sinker and the fork, his sinker is actually pretty nice. I don't. 95 mile per hour slinker. He was the triple a closer for a while last year and he was racking up good stats. We were excited to see him when he came up and he's got kind of the weird stance on the mound, which we don't love. Yeah. He had a really tough first outing right in Oakland and then he persevered past that. So good job by him. He was really good against lefties last year. I don't think he gave up a hit. Sure. I think he was, uh, 20 played appearances or something like that. No hits. Why not? So I don't know what his minor league splits were in that regard, but that's pretty good because who else can, he's out one, he's good both ways. So he'll get lefties or did he just not face great lefties? It'd be interesting. 14 at bats. His sinker to right. He's got, got beat up a little bit, but, um, the expected numbers are better than the actual numbers. I mean, it's a four 29 batting average against the sinker to righties, but expected batting average one 90. So I don't really know what that means. Is he going to be the most up down guy this year? Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't, um, break camp in the bullpen. They say, right. He could not. They want him to go be the closer, like go pitch at high leverage and go there. I think he's going to, uh, be on the roster. I'm not sure. Um, yeah, I guess the first question with him is, is he going to break camp? Like did, did they give one of their rehab guys, I say rehab guys, uh, reborn guys and Jimmy Cordero and James Norwood a shot, or are they going to say, Oh, wife's dog, go get it. Or is he going to be the seventh guy in the pen? I don't know. I, they're definitely going to use his options. He's going to be up and down. Um, I guess we'll see if anything else breaks the end of this season. I feel like for the Yankees in their bullpen, they'd almost rather reward one of these veteran guys like a Jimmy Cordero, uh, if, if they like how they've looked this spring training and you know, Weissert knows he's going to get the call at some point, but I don't know. I, you wouldn't be shocked if he's on the opening day roster. He struck out Matthew Lugo looking or swinging, looking who struck out Mason Wynn, struck out Moises Gomez, Curtis Meade, Homer dot. Those are the righties. I'm trying to, uh, raise third baseman. I have raised. I don't know. They play everybody everywhere. So he's faced a good, an even amount lefties righties in spring. So far, obviously you're not going to like platoon a guy in spring that much got us got to see what you got and he's giving up to lefties. He's giving up one hit CJ Abrams, got them Abrams and me might be left side of the infield guys very soon. So, so that's Weissert. I mean, he's going to be up and down. His slider scares me against good righties. You see it. I don't know if the numbers are there yet to reflect it. It's a very small sample size. It's just a, I guess I should say, I think you can get it by good writing once. Okay. But like, I believe it was the career about when we were there, doubleheader against the twins. When I said, Oh, I don't think he should throw that again at one. And then we went to the next or we were watching the next day too. Yeah. Tough matchup. Carl's career. Tough matchup for a lot of guys, but you know, and there's, there's some science to what you're saying too. I mean, I think it's the difference between the fastball and the slider is like 13 miles per hour, which again can be a good thing, but also like you're saying, if a hitter can read that and see where it's going to end up interesting to watch. All right. So I just found something that he's doing pitch mix wise this spring. He's to righties. He's throwing his four seam fastball, not his two seam fastball to righties, at least according to baseball Savant stats, which is like I said, it got hit decently last year. So that's a change he might be making or that's, yeah, I don't know. I can't deep dive too much, I guess I am already deeper than I should be of you. Very exciting slider. Visually. It's pretty cool. Cool if it's a real weapon. Get in the warehouse, Greg. He'd be good, wouldn't he? No, that was to lefties, he's throwing the four seam. What? His sinker was great versus lefties last year, but he's not throwing it this year. Oh, it don't make no sense.