New York Yankees Scouting Report On LHP Justus Sheffield

Scouting Report

Size/Stature/Delivery
Sheffield is generously listed at 5’10”, though he may actually be more around 5’8-5’9. He’s also quite lean, so his listed 195 pounds looks generous as well.

He works from the center of the rubber in the games I’ve seen, though I’ve been told that he’s had games working from just off-center since coming to the Yankees. He has a nice easy motion, but you can see from the apex of that motion the effort that comes into generating the mid-90s top end velocity that comes from such a small frame. He torques his hip hard back toward second base as well as his shoulder before exploding everything in one incredible motion toward home plate. He finishes with a high leg kick, which is likely due to the amount of force generated that he needs to simply come down from.

In watching Sheffield, the first thing you notice is that he repeats very well, and he moves very quickly. Whether he’s in the motion or the stretch, he moves quickly to the plate, and he drives hard to the plate. His struggles of command and/or control that I noted were typically due to that very fast explosion toward the plate leaving his arm slot (normally a high 3/4) dragging just a touch behind. That leaves him trying to generate the movement with just his arm rather than his legs, and it doesn’t go well for him.
Pitches
Sheffield features a 3-pitch mix with a fastball that runs from 90-94 MPH. The fastball features excellent movement that I noted to move glove side and with some sink. He tended to get more lateral movement than vertical movement from the stretch, but that was plenty effective on the pitch if he located it low in the zone. The pitch is not a pitch that runs 95+, however, so when he misses his spot, it’s a fastball that can be hit hard. He locates the fastball extremely well, though, seemingly missing only when he gets more movement than even he expected.

His primary breaking pitch is a slider that he runs between 84-87 MPH. He gets tremendously good depth on the pitch. The pitch, when used low in the zone, has a sharp downward plane that can really be a heavy ball for the hitter to attempt to drive. When it’s up in the zone, the pitch can get a little “loopy”. His best showings on the pitch had movement in on a lefty hitter as it got the depth, which is unusual movement for a pitcher to get from his slider.

Out of his stretch, Sheffield tends to loop the slider a lot more than out of his wind up. He threw the pitch to both-handed hitters without worry, and the hard break he gets has hitters swinging over the top of it constantly. The pitch at its best is Sheffield’s best swing-and-miss pitch.

His change up is his third pitch, and in my viewing, it ran 81-85 MPH. Many worried of the pitch early on in his career, and he’s been tagged as a potential reliever both due to his change being quite a bit behind both his fastball and slider. He’s done a lot of work on the pitch, and what I appreciate in watching the pitch is that he has great arm deception on the pitch, but he gets a different break on the change than the fastball, so it can create a lot of swing and miss. The biggest issue that Sheffield has in the change is controlling that new-found movement. If he can find the ability to do that, he can really make some big strides.

Video

Next: Future Outlook