The Pittsburgh Pirates announced that right-handed pitcher Ricky DeVito has been sent to the Texas Rangers as the player to be named later in the Mark Mathias trade made on Wednesday.
DeVito was acquired by the Pirates in the Rich Rodriguez trade made during the 2021 season. DeVito was injured at the time, so he didn’t debut with the Pirates until 2022. He was an eighth round pick out of college in 2019, who pitched just 57 innings over the 2019-21 seasons, despite working as a starter during that time.
He pitched for Greensboro last year, where he had 5.40 ERA, a 1.53 WHIP and 90 strikeouts in 70.1 innings over six starts and 29 relief appearances. The 24-year-old had some obvious control issues, with 44 walks, 14 hit batters and 15 wild pitches in his somewhat limited time.
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.