OAKLAND — The A’s officially welcomed first-round draft pick A.J. Puk into the fold Thursday, and the lefty from the University of Florida made a pretty nice first impression.
Manager Bob Melvin went so far as to compare Puk’s slider to that of former Yankees star Dave Righetti, who has been the longtime pitching coach of the Giants.
“I was saying we should get ‘Rags’ over here because that slider looked like Dave Righetti’s slider, which was one of the best sliders in all of baseball,” Melvin said before Thursday’s Bay Bridge Series game. “It’s just kind of one of those disappearing sliders.