Pirates Closer Felipe Rivero Has Changed His Name To Felipe Vázquez

Pirates reliever Felipe Rivero has changed his name to Felipe Vázquez, matching the surname of his sister, Prescilla Vázquez.

He has already legally made the change and his jersey should reflect his new name soon, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The 26-year-old lives with his sister in Florida in the offseason, and she’s been very involved in his career so far—she was the person who asked him to drop Scott Boras as his agent this winter, and he’s said that she was the primary negotiator of the new four-year deal that he signed in January after leaving Boras. (“I just signed the contract and that was it.”)

Vázquez was dealt to Pittsburgh at the deadline in 2016 and took over as their closer last year, after bumping his velocity up from the mid-90s to touching triple digits. That’s in addition to a ridiculous changeup, which ends up as a swing-and-miss about 30 percent of the time and helped give him a strikeout rate of 10.51 per nine innings last year.

[ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]