A few days before Thanksgiving, the Brewers announced that they were parting ways with Hunter Renfroe via trade. As for the return package itself, it was nice to receive three young controllable arms in return. The Angles gave Janson Junk, Elvis Peguero, and Adam Seminaris to the Brew Crew.
When taking a closer look at this trio, only Janson Junk is a top 30 prospect. Adam Seminaris has not made his big league debut and is not the 40-man roster. Elvis Peguero has not had success in the big leagues, but is young and Matt Arnold described him as a high octane arm.
It is easy to see how Arnold drew this conclusion. Peguero’s sinker averages out at 96 MPH and his slider 91 MPH. He certainly possesses a ton of velocity, in which there is always a place in the league for someone who can pump heat consistently.
Elvis Peguero must improve in this one area if he wants to find success next year. That is by not tipping his pitches.
With the Angles, Peguero was called out by teammate Mike Trout for tipping his pitches. Reports indicate that Trout informed him of this after the game. It also was reported that Peguero did not have a conversation with the Angles pitching staff.
A full breakdown of how he was tipping his pitches is below.
With the Brewers, this is the first area they should focus on. As mentioned in the video, Peguero was starting with his hands at a specific position depending upon which type of pitch he was throwing. This could alter his arm slot, the way the baseball appears to hitters, and impact multiple areas within the throwing motion.
If the Brewers can clean this up, he may start to see better results. His slider had a 30% whiff rate last year but his sinker just 9%. Not allowing opposing batters to know which pitch is coming and having them appear the same coming out of his arm would go a long way for Peguero. Hopefully the Brewers pitching development team can start working with him on this right away.
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