Rays lefty Ryan Yarbrough has hired Excel Sports Management as his new representation, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports on Twitter. MLBTR’s Agency Database reflects the change.
The 28-year-old Yarbrough is likely on track to qualify for arbitration next season as a Super Two player. That would mean an early entry into the process and substantially enhanced career earning power.
Yarbrough could present a fascinating test case for an arbitration system that has twice (Josh Hader, Dellin Betances) recently reaffirmed the importance of saves even as teams reduce their reliance on old forms of pitching usage. In his case, Yarbrough has thrown nearly as many innings as a traditional starter — topping 140 in each of the past two seasons — but has often done so when taking the ball from an opener.
There’s no doubting that the 28-year-old hurler has been quite a useful player for the Tampa Bay organization. He carries a 4.02 ERA with 7.6 K/9 and 2.2 BB/9 in his 289 career frames. It certainly ought to help his cause that he has racked up 27 wins despite formally making only twenty MLB starts to this point.
Wow! Didn’t see this coming!
So in other words he’ll get traded because he’ll be too expensive
Interesting test case for what John Smoltz (and others) predicted would be the real problem with “openers”.
Don’t think it leads to a trade this year, but with Super-2 likely next winter, and a LOT of LH starting depth in minors, he’s certainly a candidate post-season.
Yarbs is a smart pitcher and consistant winner!
He’s never been the darling of the scouting set, and the case can be made he’s always been old for whatever class he’s been in, but those good numbers he’s always generated have to come from somewhere. And, being less dependent on pure stuff, you can almost project continued improvement, if not at least continued performance at a not-bad-at-all level.