{"id":102400,"date":"2025-06-18T18:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=102400"},"modified":"2025-06-18T18:00:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:00:41","slug":"yankees-activate-jt-brubaker-yankees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/06\/18\/yankees-activate-jt-brubaker-yankees\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Activate JT Brubaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More than 15 months after being <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/29\/pirates-trade-brubaker-yankees\/\" target=\"_self\">dealt to the New York Yankees<\/a>, right-handed pitcher JT Brubaker is finally making his debut in pinstripes. On Wednesday afternoon, New York announced that they&#8217;ve reinstated the Ohio native from the 60-day injured list. Though it&#8217;s been over a year since the Pittsburgh Pirates sent Brubaker to the Yankees, it&#8217;s been over two years since the 31-year-old has pitched off a major league mound.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Prior to tonight\u2019s game, the Yankees reinstated RHP JT Brubaker (#34) from the 60-day injured list.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 New York Yankees (@Yankees) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Yankees\/status\/1935400735849537652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 18, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Bad, Bad Luck<\/h3>\n<p>In April of 2023, Brubaker underwent Tommy John surgery to repair his UCL after a few average seasons in Pittsburgh. After missing the entirety of 2023 and &#8217;24 whilst in recovery, he then sustained three broken ribs while pitching in a Spring Training game this past February. This required 3 more months of recovery, but now Brubaker is finally ready to pitch in a live game once again.<\/p>\n<h3>Starter to Long Reliever<\/h3>\n<p>With the Yankees&#8217; rotation more than full right now, even with <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/06\/yankees-mri-confirms-lat-strain\/\" target=\"_self\">other injuries to multiple starters<\/a>, Brubaker will likely see a lot of innings out of the bullpen. Another reason for this is to give his arm time to become accustomed to pitching in live games once again, a necessary precaution being that he hasn&#8217;t thrown a single pitch since 2022.<\/p>\n<p>This move will give a lot of leverage to both New York&#8217;s rotation and bullpen; with <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/06\/05\/ryan-yarbrough-emerging-starting-role\/\" target=\"_self\">reliever-turned-starter Ryan Yarbrough<\/a> moving out of the &#8216;pen, Brubaker can slip into the role of the Yankees&#8217; primary long reliever. He could also take over games in the case of the occasional blowup start, which will be huge in terms of saving other bullpen arms.<\/p>\n<h3>Back at Last<\/h3>\n<p>Having thrown just 315 2\/3 innings with a 4.99 ERA in the 5 years since his 2020 debut, Brubaker will be looking not only to get back on the mound (which at this point is a huge accomplishment in itself) but to excel while doing so. Relegated to a bullpen role for the time being, perhaps the right-hander will end up becoming another key cog in the Yankees&#8217; ever-changing bullpen machine.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: Dave Nelson-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 15 months after being dealt to the New York Yankees, right-handed pitcher JT Brubaker is finally making his debut in pinstripes. On Wednesday afternoon, New York announced that they&#8217;ve reinstated the Ohio native from the 60-day injured list. Though it&#8217;s been over a year since the Pittsburgh Pirates sent Brubaker to the Yankees, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5148,"featured_media":102435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1071,35],"tags":[6223],"class_list":["post-102400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yankees","category-mlb","category-news","tag-jt-brubaker"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102400"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102436,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102400\/revisions\/102436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}