Pat Venditte: Novelty Act Or Viable Bullpen Prospect?

(Courtesy of Noah Addis/The Star-Ledger)

(The following is being syndicated from The Yankee Analysts)

** This is my other contribution to Prospect Week over at TYA from earlier today.  Enjoy. **

One of the more intriguing members of the Yankee farm system is a player who hasn’t showed up on any of the top prospect lists I’ve seen over the past few months and likely never will. That player is Pat Venditte, the ambidextrous relief pitcher from Double-A Trenton. Venditte is conversation-worthy because his ability to pitch with both hands essentially makes him three pitchers in one. He can be the switch-pitcher who keeps hitters guessing, lessens the need for managers to play the matchup game with their bullpens, and inspires the creation of a new set of rules specific to ambidextrous pitchers; he can be a strictly right-handed reliever with a fastball-curveball pairing; he can be a lefty specialist with a sidearm fastball-slider combination. Yet Venditte was left unprotected by the Yankees in last year’s Rule 5 Draft, he was not invited to Spring Training, and he’s likely ticketed for a return trip to Trenton to start the 2012 season despite being 26 and coming of a solid year of 132.1 combined innings pitched for Trenton and in a Mexican winter league. This begs the question, is Venditte actually a prospect? Or is he destined for a career as organizational depth?


At first glance, Venditte would appear to be an ideal candidate for an opportunity to be a member of the Yankees bullpen. His ability to pitch with both hands essentially creates an extra arm in the ‘pen and a 26th man on the roster, which would fit right in with the Yankees’ desire for depth and roster flexibility. By having the ability to switch hands from batter to batter, Venditte is also essentially lessening his workload and stress on each arm, meaning he could be available to pitch more and pitch on shorter rest than a “normal” pitcher who only throws with one arm. He’s also no slouch out there on the bump. In his first full season at the Double-A level last year Venditte posted a 3.40/3.39 ERA/FIP slash with an 8.80 K/9, and over the course of his MiL career he has a 2.24 ERA and has struck out 304 batters in 264.2 IP while allowing only 13 HR. He can generate swings and misses and keeps the ball in the park, two key things that you want to see from a relief pitcher. On paper, that’s a guy most people would want in their ‘pen.

What causes Venditte’s stock to start to level off is likely the perception that his being ambidextrous makes him a “jack of all trades, master of none” type of prospect, and those prospects are typically the ones who fizzle out on their rise through the system when their good but not great skill level catches up to them. If you want to look at Venditte that way, there might already be some evidence of that taking place. As impressive as Venditte’s overall numbers are, the 8.80 K/9 value from last season was a pretty significant drop from the strikeout numbers he was registering in the lower levels.

Before 2011, Venditte had never had a K/9 value below 10.53, so there’s an implication there that the both-handed novelty could already be wearing off as he moves up and faces better competition. This is where stuff becomes more important and in that category none of Venditte’s offerings have been classified as elite or even very good. He primarily sits high 80s-low 90s with his right-handed fastball, mid-80s with his lefty fastball, and neither his curve nor his slider have ever been called “nasty.” With his K rate dropping the way it did when he made the jump from High-A to Double-A, there’s a chance his stuff might not stand up against upper-level hitting skill.

Based on performance alone, though, Venditte was certainly worthy of a promotion to Scranton this year, but because of the logjam in that bullpen he’s stuck back in Trenton. As an older college pitcher, he was already operating under a shorter timeframe to make it to the show than most prospects and now Venditte stands to lose some of that precious time by having to repeat the same level. This is what makes the Yankees’ decision to not invite him to Spring Training all the more puzzling. Venditte stands to gain nothing and lose everything in terms of prospect credibility by pitching again in Trenton and running the risk of not pitching as well as he did in 2011, while the Yankees have everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving him a shot.

Concerns about how his stuff will play against the best hitters in the world aside, an ambidextrous pitcher is incredibly rare in baseball and could be incredibly valuable. Even if he’s just been doing it with smoke and mirrors the last four years, Venditte hasn’t just skated by in the Minors. He’s pitched very well. What’s to say he couldn’t catch lightning in a bottle and have some success for a while at the Major League level? As much as Joe loves to play the matchup game with his relievers, it seems like Venditte would be right up his alley as a potential one-man matchup nightmare.

Whatever he does end up becoming, Pat Venditte is a fascinating piece of the farm system and definitely worth watching. If he were 22 instead of 26, this piece probably isn’t even being written. Unfortunately for him, the clock is ticking on his career opportunity and he already appears to be bumping his head against the glass ceiling. Hopefully he gets an opportunity to move up to Triple-A early this season so we can all see how his switch-pitching game translates there. For such a rare commodity, it would be a shame to not get the chance to see what he can be and be left to wonder what could have been.