Since I can’t go scout players in person as I usually would, I’ve been watching various young players so far this season to provide scouting-like notes from home, focusing on players who are either still rookies or just recently lost rookie eligibility but haven’t established themselves yet in the majors. Here are my notes from the first four days of action.
The Dodgers called on Dustin May at the last minute to fill in for the injured Clayton Kershaw on Opening Day, and May showed quite thoroughly why he was the top right-handed pitching prospect in baseball this winter, with absolutely ridiculous stuff that was only undermined by some bad luck and unhelpful defense on balls in play.
Advertisement
May was 96-100 mph on his two-seamer with plus life throughout his outing, along with a power cutter at 93-94 mph and wipeout breaking ball at 86-87 mph, with all three pitches effective against hitters on both sides, the curveball especially so against lefties. May got a ton of chases on the two-seamer and cutter, and nobody hit the cutter or curveball hard all night. He was largely undone by some weakly hit balls and by Corey Seager struggling with some hard-hit balls in his direction, but I don’t think that reflects badly on May, who came out of the game after just 60 pitches and 4 1/3 innings. This is top-of-the-rotation stuff, with control, and the athleticism to see his command improve too.
Corbin Burnes’ 2019 season was an abject disaster, as the Brewers’ right-hander had the third-worst home runs per 9 innings rate of any MLB pitcher with at least 40 innings on the season, surrendering 17 homers in 49 innings. He may have been tipping his pitches somehow, or just suffering a rather sudden loss of command, but getting him back to where he was in 2018, when he was one of the top pitching prospects in the high minors, seems like a key to the Brewers’ odds of contending.
Burnes came out hot on Saturday, overthrowing in the first and bumping 98 mph, but settled in at 93-96 mph after that with better command and control. He used both four- and two-seamers*, working up with the former, along with a very sharp slider at 86-89 mph that was often tight like a cutter, along with a downer curveball that he’d use on lefties as well as righties and a changeup he used a few times up and in or up and away to lefties.
*Statcast tagged the two-seamer as a cutter.
Burnes’ command improved after the first inning, but it was never really average on Saturday, even after he stopped trying to work at his maximum velocity. Some of it was still just overthrowing, rushing through his delivery, but he also didn’t seem to have the same confidence with his stuff in the zone that he showed in the minors; he ran a slew of deep counts, going to 2-2 or 3-1 on seven of the 10 hitters he faced after that first inning, but did get plenty of swings and misses on everything but the four-seamer. Based just on this one outing, I’d say he would be more effective if he worked with the four-seamer up at the top or above the top of the zone and used any of his breaking pitches, all of which have strong spin rates, when he wants to work middle-down.
Brady Singer’s major-league debut for the Royals was a solid one, despite Cleveland’s lineup, which was full of lefties and switch-hitters, taking advantage of Singer’s weakness as a right-hander without a third pitch. He managed to get through five innings without much damage even though he threw just two changeups, both to left-handed batters, by using his best pitch, his slider, and especially working with it down in the zone to get through all of those lefties.
Advertisement
Singer was 93-96 mph throughout his outing, along with that plus slider at 83-85 mph, which he used middle-down and below, going in to lefties with it, but especially succeeding by staying on top of the pitch more to get a greater vertical break. Singer’s arm slot looks a little higher, which is definitely good news for his ability to start, and didn’t cost him anything on his slider against the three right-handers in Cleveland’s lineup — he threw 13 sliders, and hitters didn’t connect on any of them, swinging and missing at 5.
Singer got away with some things, like hanging a slider up to Francisco Lindor in the third, but also had some impressive sequences against all of those left-handed hitters. In that same at-bat, he struck out Lindor swinging with two sliders that broke almost straight down, getting Lindor to swing right over the top of both of them. I’m still skeptical that he can get by against lefties without a viable changeup, but at least he showed some capacity to get them to chase his slider by working with it down in or below the zone.
Dinelson Lamet looked dominant for much of his outing against a tepid Arizona lineup on Saturday night, working from 96-100 mph with a very sharp slider at 87-89. The Padres’ right-hander has always had two premium pitches, showing this stuff both before and after 2017 Tommy John surgery, but as with Singer, he has had trouble with left-handed batters and even in a strong outing Saturday didn’t show the third pitch he’ll need to reach his potential as a starter.
On Saturday, Lamet didn’t even bother with his below-average changeup, throwing 80 pitches, just over half of them sliders. It certainly worked, as when Diamondbacks’ hitters swung at the slider, they missed a third of them. The pitch doesn’t have an elite spin rate to it, but it breaks sharply and comes in at both a high enough velocity and with enough separation from the fastball that he can get away with using it as a change-of-pace to lesser left-handed batters, especially when he locates it down and in to those hitters. It didn’t hurt that both he and Arizona starter Robbie Ray seemed to get a wide, high strike zone, and Lamet took better advantage of it than Ray did. It did surprise me to see the Diamondbacks’ left-handed hitters struggle to adjust to Lamet — only Ketel Marte and Kole Calhoun managed to hit him, with just one apiece — and given his lack of a third pitch of any sort, more looks at him will force him to use the changeup more, or find another weapon. That said, he showed absolutely nothing on Saturday that should give the Padres concern about him starting even against lefty-heavy lineups.
Mitch Keller continues our trend of looking at young starters without third pitches, and while he threw five innings and allowed just two hits and one run, he didn’t miss many bats at all against St. Louis. Cardinals hitters swung and missed just five times against Keller in 87 pitches, and just one of those was by a lefty, on a cutter down in the zone.
Advertisement
The Pirates’ right-hander, who lost his rookie eligibility when he started the third inning on Sunday, was 91-94 mph on his four-seamer, which doesn’t have great spin or life, and relied heavily on his plus curveball, which was mostly 12/6 or close to it and showed huge depth. Keller has struggled for two years to find a credible weapon to use against left-handed batters, and on Sunday his choice was a new-ish slider/cutter at 83-88 mph that is a good weapon down and away from right-handers but is less effective against lefties. He threw four changeups according to Statcast, all to lefties, none of which registered a swing and miss, and the pitch is still a nonfactor for him with neither good movement nor deception.
The other disappointing part of Keller’s outing was his velocity; he peaked at 94 mph and worked quite a bit at 91-92 mph, well below what I saw from him in the minors, and not enough — given the pitch’s spin and movement — to make it an effective second pitch to the curveball or a pitch he can establish early in counts to get ahead. Left-handed hitters crush his fastball, and it doesn’t dominate right-handers either. I’m not sure where the missing velocity went; maybe he’s just slow getting started after the long layoff from March to early July, and we’ll see 96-97 mph from him again in a few outings. I hope that’s the case, as what Keller showed us on Sunday isn’t really a starter package.
The Blue Jays brought out two rookies in a tandem start on Sunday, both of whom were acquired in trades in 2019. Right-hander Thomas Hatch, who started the game, came over from the Cubs last July for David Phelps; lefty Anthony Kay, who relieved Hatch, was one of the two prospects the Jays acquired from the Mets for Marcus Stroman.
Hatch was unimpressive, although this was in line with his history; he was supposed to be a big sinkerballer, but he’s 94-96 mph with arm-side run, not sink, and doesn’t get groundballs often enough to matter. He has a solid changeup with good arm speed and a little fade, probably a solid-average pitch, and a fringy slider/cutter at 85-88 mph. He looks like a bullpen guy, useful on a staff but lacking a swing-and-miss pitch to consider him as a starter or for any high-leverage role.
Kay, however, looked much better, with a plus changeup at 85-89 mph that gets great deception from his arm speed and a little late action to the pitch. He was 91-94 mph, giving up a home run on a 92 mph fastball right down the middle to a right-hander, and gave up a double on a fastball at 93 mph in about the same place, so there’s clearly a message here that middle-middle is not the place for him to work. His curveball has just average spin but he used it well at 76-77 mph, using it in and out to lefties. It’s a third pitch for him but I think close enough to average for it to work.
Kay, like Keller, has thrown harder in the past, and I’d like to see another half-grade of fastball velocity before saying he’s back to what I thought he was at the time of the trade, a potential league-average starter with three average or better weapons. He got seven swings and misses, all on fastballs, by changing speeds effectively, but has to avoid the heart of the zone and could use a little more velocity, since getting more movement on it is probably unlikely. He’s still a back-end starter even if this is all he has.
Luis Robert’s debut weekend went pretty well, with a home run, several other very hard-hit balls, and just three strikeouts in 12 trips to the plate. The Twins chose not to challenge Robert inside at all — he saw one fastball up and in, and nothing else on the inner third of the plate or truly inside. That’s baffling, since it’s his weakest spot, and the book on him in the minors was to go hard in and maybe soft away, although he can extend his arms well enough that he can still beat you with breaking stuff or changeups on the outer third. His homer came on a slider sent right over the middle of the plate, and his first major-league hit, a hard-hit single to left field, came on a hanging breaking ball left over the middle of the plate too. Robert’s most impressive hit was the double he hit off Cody Stashak in his first game, where he fell behind 0-2 but fouled two more pitches off and then drove a 93 mph fastball up and away to right-center. He also battled from 0-2 to earn a walk on Sunday off lefty Lewis Thorpe, who tried to come inside multiple times with a fastball and two breaking balls. He showed he can hit a hanging breaking ball, and has plenty of power the other way, but the questions scouts had about his ability to handle velocity inside weren’t answered either way on this first weekend.
(Photo of May: Keith Birmingham / MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
