Jack Curry of YES Network broke the news of a seemingly minor trade between the Yankees and Rockies, as Angel Chivilli was sent to the Bronx after sporting a 7.06 ERA last season.
This was not a year where the luck was bad and the process was good, Chivilli struggled to turn a high whiff rate into a high strikeout rate and got barreled up in-zone often.
Just 23 years old, the right-hander is a raw pro pitcher who has spent his career with the worst place you could be if you’re a pitcher from both an on-field and off-field standpoint.
The Yankees are taking a flier on a high-upside arm, and here’s how they could turn him into an impact bullpen piece for 2026.
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What Does Angel Chivilli Already Bring to the Table?
The Yankees have been on a string of acquiring relievers with nasty changeups, and Angel Chivilli falls into that bucket as batters hit just .225 against that pitch as it picked up a Whiff% of over 45%.
His changeup is effective due to the sharp drop it gets at a high velocity for a changeup as he’s comfortable throwing this pitch to both lefties and righties.
It ties into what the Yankees do well on the pitching side, they’re one of the most aggressive teams in the sport when it comes to having their RHPs throw changeups or splitters to RHBs.
Major League Baseball seems to be subtly shifting more towards offspeed pitches, splitters became the pitch of the postseason in 2025 and I expect clubs to target offspeed-heavy pitchers more and more as a result.
Sam Briend and Matt Blake (as expected) were among the first to hop onto the trend, and acquiring a pitcher who fits their pitching vision for the current offensive landscape is a win already.
The other standout trait is his velocity; the fastball sits at 97.1 MPH but he also throws a 90 MPH gyro slider with tight spin, and the ability to throw smoke should give him a larger margin of error in-zone.
Velocity is one of the strongest indicators of success, you could argue this is the most impactful aspect of whether a pitch will succeed or not in the big leagues.
Last season the Yankees ranked 29th out of 30 bullpens in average fastball velocity (four-seam/sinker) ay 93.3 MPH, Chivilli immediately attacks that need if he makes the team out of camp.
That being said, his 7.06 ERA occurred for a reason, and the Yankees will need to do what the Rockies could not to get more out of that mix.
How should they go about it?
What the Matt Blake Lab Could Transform This Project Into
The lowest hanging fruit here is the four-seam fastball, which actually has more of a sinker shape due to having more horizontal break than vertical ride.
Angel Chivilli’s fastball averaged 10 inches of Induced Vertical Break (IVB) and 16 inches of Horizontal Break (HB) when pitching away from Coors Field, which tends to suppress fastball movement.
This is while throwing with a four-seam grip, I wonder what the Yankees could get out of this movement profile if Chivilli were to use a true two-seam grip and get more depth or run on that heater.
Seeing him throw an 8 IVB/17 HB sinker wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, and that would give him a pitch he can use to get even more soft contact on the ground.
I’d also like to see the fastball usage decrease, which ties into our second adjustment which would be tweaking that slider shape.
Looking at the pitch plot for Angel Chivilli, I want that slider to have more downward bite and shave off some of its current IVB (~4 inches).
This would give him a deathball, a pitch that lives around the zero line in horizontal break while having plenty of vertical drop, as its a platoon-neutral pitch that would be nasty paired with his changeup and fastball.
As I’ve so elloquently illustrated on that lovely plot, I want more depth on that slider and more sink/run on the fastball, these two tweaks seem to fit the arm-slot and release bias that Chivilli has.
He doesn’t have the kind of pitch plot or mechanical traits that would scream sweeper or riding four-seamer, but rather someone who has similar pitch characteristics to Wandy Peralta.
I inverted Wandy Peralta’s pitch plot fromn 2023 since he’s a lefty…and there’s a shocking similarity in the fastball, changeup, and slider shapes.
Chivilli doesn’t get as much arm-side movement on his changeup, but that’s thanks to Coors Field, he actually averages closer to 14 inches of horizontal break on it when away from Colorado.
It’s not a one-for-one match, but these two pitches have incredibly similar mixes with similar arm angles while releasing the ball with a similar orientation.
The similarites are even greater when you start looking at their Key Performance Indicators and underlying metrics before they landed in the Bronx.
One developmental note I’d like to add here as a caution is that project relievers aren’t guranteed to succeed or even make the changes that you think are possible.
Furthermore, Chivilli is 23 years old; the Yankees have not had a reliever under the age of 24 make at least 10 appearances for them in a season since 2020.
Yerry De Los Santos was acquired ahead of 2024 and didn’t debut with the Yankees until 2025, Brent Headrick was acquired this past season but didn’t play much of a role on the roster.
I think there’s a real chance we don’t see much of him until 2027, but if he takes to the changes I think we could see fairly quickly, then he could breakout in 2026 and play a real role on the 2026 roster.