Last year at the trade deadline, the Pittsburgh Pirates got two players from the Atlanta Braves in exchange for then-closer Richard Rodriguez. Bryse Wilson already had major league experience and has been bouncing back and forth between the Pirates and Triple-A this season.
Ricky DeVito, the other player in the deal, didn’t play due to rehabbing an injury at the time of the deal. He made his organizational debut in 2022.
Assigned to Greensboro to start the year, DeVito has shown some strong swing-and-miss stuff, but has taken a step back when it comes to his control. Throwing strikes had always been an issue, but in his brief playing time last year it looked like he was making progress.
An eighth-round pick by the Braves out of Seton Hall, DeVito has posted great ‘reverse splits’ when it comes to playing at home compared to on the road. He’s pitched far better in Greensboro (3.32 ERA, 27 K in 21 2/3 innings) than he has away (5.50 ERA, 22 K in 18 innings). A huge part of that has been an extreme ground ball rate. At home, DeVito has been able to put together a fantastic 3.63 GO/AO ratio, and overall has been able to induce ground balls 66% of the time.
A large part of his success comes from splitter, a pitch that Fangraphs has rated as a ‘plus-plus’ pitch (70/70). He’s used that to miss bats and induce weak contact over the course of the season.
With a lot of movement on his pitches, which includes a splitter rated a '70' on FanGraphs, DeVito gets a lot of weak contact, and has a ground ball rate of 66% this year #LetsGoBucs pic.twitter.com/8p88WnCM9Z
— Anthony Murphy (@__Murphy88) July 10, 2022
You can see in this clip a lot of weak contact induced. Just in the video above that’s 13 outs recorded, or 4 1/3 innings worth of soft contact into the ground. With the limited availability of Greensboro game, there are only nine innings available from DeVito, so that’s about half of the outs recorded on video from weak grounders.
DeVito mixes in a mid-90s fastball, curve, and slider along with his splitter and does a great job and using each of the pitches off of each other. You can see just how unhittable his stuff can be at times, it’s just a matter continuing to work on the control. The righty has 24 walks to go along with nine hit batters in 39 2/3 innings pitched.
The other player in the Richard Rodriguez, Ricky DeVito has had an up and down season this year. He has great stuff, and misses a lot of bats, but control has been an issue. He's also pitched better in Greensboro, which is rare #LetsGoBucs I'll have more on him Tuesday pic.twitter.com/jWMiwSdIBd
— Anthony Murphy (@__Murphy88) July 10, 2022
DeVito is an interesting prospect to keep an eye on. He missed a good chunk of the season last year with an arm injury, and has already nearly doubled his innings this season.
He has the stuff to pitch out of the bullpen at the next level, even with some of the control issues. He’s going to have to scale it back as well, as his walk rate is currently 13%. The encouraging part is that he has pitched well in Greensboro — obviously no easy matter — so if he can do that and get the walks under control, that should set him up going forward.
THIS WEEK ON PIRATES PROSPECTS
Williams: Are the Pirates Headed in a Positive Direction?
Travis Swaggerty on Learning the Corners
Ricky DeVito: Plus Movement Allowing Weak Contact, Generating Misses
