New York Yankees RHP Jonathan Loaisiga will square up today against LHP Ryan Yarbrough and the Tampa Bay Rays.
Loaisiga is a 25 year old right-hander from Nicaragua, who grew up in Managua. He made his major league debut with the Yankees on June 15, 2018, but was up and down between the major league club and AAA Scranton Wilkes-Barre most of the season.
While Loaisiga had a relatively poor campaign for the Yankees in 2019, to be fair he was hampered by injury (shoulder strain) which ate a chunk out of his season. He was out of the big leagues from May 8th to August 15th and as a result pitched only 31.2 innings in ’19 for the Yankees. Ryan Chichester of pinstripealley.com ranked Loaisiga’s performance at the season’s end with a D+ as his stat line looked like this: 4.55 ERA, 37 Ks, 1.48 WHIP, 10.5 K/9, 4.5 BB/9, 4.95 FIP, 0.2 WAR.
However, it was not all bad for Loaisiga, as Chichester pointed out:
Through his final 15 innings of the year, Loaisiga pitched to a 3.00 ERA and struck out 20 batters, but allowed 14 hits along the way. With that lively fastball and a curveball with a spin rate that’s just outside of the top-10 percentile in all of baseball, you would like to see more shutdown outings from Loaisiga, but perhaps the final month of the year was the start of a trend in the right direction.
With his elite fastball and plus curve, Loaisiga will be a pitcher to watch this season as Yankee fans hope to watch a healthy Loaisiga improve to become the pitcher was slated to become either as a spot starter or as an effective weapon out of the bullpen.
