My name is Steve Manfred (no relation to Rob), and I work in the press box at the baseball field here in River Falls, WI for our high school, Legion, and amateur town ball teams. I know JP's parents a little bit through that, and I've been keeping a close eye on his progress. It had been a frustrating year from our perspective in that he was putting up the best numbers of any reliever at the Yankees' AAA club and got named to the All-Star Team for the International League, yet because they didn't have him on their 40-man roster and had a lot invested in those who they already did have on it, he never got a call-up. I also get the feeling that someone at their MLB level has certain "projection" pigeonholes they put people in and stubbornly stick to them even when the evidence in the real games is saying something else. Certainly the Yankees' fan forum that's the equivalent of this one was full of fans who wanted to see Feyereisen get a call-up as opposed to the guys they did bring up, and they were upset with this trade. His season was stellar from April to July, with his WHIP even going just under 1.00 at one point. They always put him in in "high-leverage" situations, as they call them, protecting a tie or small lead in the late innings. He stumbled just a bit in late July and early August, particularly in a string of extra inning games they wound up in, where this year in the Int. League they've been using the "pace of play" runner rule, where you start extra innings with a runner on 2nd base. His walks rate climbed somewhat trying to keep that extra runner put, and one of his two losses was in one of these games. (iirc, they did an intentional walk to fill first base, then put an extreme right shift on the next batter and he poked one up the left side where there was no one to field it, scoring the go-ahead runs) He finally solved that problem the third time it came around, and then his late August to September was more like his early part of the season had been. He finished with 10 wins, more than anyone else on that club. I saw upthread that someone has quoted that scouting report on him that basically says he really needs to work on his slider. That report is outdated - I first read that language before this season started, and it's been cut-and-pasted by people into other reports and stories multiple times. A major reason he had such great success this season was he had in fact worked on and greatly improved his slider. Two days before the trade, he was named to Team USA. I suppose the Brewers will now have to consent to his participation, but if they give it, he'll be pitching with Team USA in a qualification tournament taking place in Mexico this coming November. This is to qualify the USA to be in the tournament at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. Win this tournament, and the US in in. There are two more chances to get in after this. A couple of other facts about him you don't see in the usual media... he played for one summer in amateur ball when he was 18 and just before he went to UW-Stevens Point. This was for the River Falls Fighting Fish that won the WBA state championship that year, 2011. He also played in the Northwoods League for the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters. He was in just a handful of games in 2012, but played a full summer season with them in 2013, where they used him as a closer. His season line there was 22 games, 31.0 IP, 17 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 9 BB, 38 SO, 3 wins, 1 loss, 11 saves, 1.16 ERA, and he made the All-Star Game in Eau Claire that year. (got to see that one myself - pitched a 1-2-3 inning, iirc) The rest of his career is easily look-up-able as it's all been with teams in the affiliated minor leagues, first in the Cleveland system, then in the Yankees. He's had one significant injury. In 2018 his performance took a serious downturn in August, and it turned out it was because he had a bone chip in his throwing elbow. Yankees medical staff had that removed in the off-season, and as far as I know he's had no ill effects since. Certainly this season's numbers don't show anything wrong.
