fedpkg verrel produces garbage because it is effectively using:

rpm -q --qf %{VERSION} --specfile

This produces a version for each subpackage the specfile creates. As an example fedpkg verrel for libmsn produces the following which is the concatenation of the version and releases of the base package, devel and debuginfo:

libmsn-4.04.04.0-1.fc131.fc131.fc13

The old makefile system uses this:

shell rpm $(RPM_DEFINES) -q --qf "%{VERSION} %{RELEASE}\n" --specfile $(SPECFILE)| head -1

fedpkg probably wants to just use the following and keep just the first line returned:

rpm -q --qf "%{VERSION}\n" --specfile